For the second day in a row, Israel’s Ambassador to the US Yechiel Leiter  on Thursday issued a condemnation of a cabinet member in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government — this time calling out Social Equality Minister May Golan for slandering Reform Jews, saying that their rabbis “marry dogs.”

While Leiter vowed to apologize on behalf of Israel to the US Reform community, he was himself under fire and being urged to take back remarks calling the left-wing Israel lobby group J Street, a “cancer.”

Golan’s attack on Reform Judaism came as Reform rabbi and Democrats MK Gilad Kariv assailed her in the Knesset plenum on Wednesday following reports that the minister had secured Rafi Kedoshim — an ex-convict and power player in the ruling Likud party — a NIS 22,000 ($7,550) government salary ahead of the coming Likud primaries.

“What Rafi Kedishim has been doing in recent years, you won’t do in another 200 incarnations — while you walk with the Women of the Wall or marry dogs in delusional synagogues,” Golan said in remarks at the Knesset plenum on Wednesday.

Leiter posted on X on Thursday in response, saying, “I condemn in the strongest terms Minister May Golan’s verbal attack on MK Gilad Kariv and on Reform Judaism in general.”

“As an Orthodox Jew and as Israel’s representative to the United States, I find her words disgusting and reprehensible, worthy of excoriation and rebuke,” Leiter says.

“Theological, political and ideological differences are fine, even necessary for a healthy people. But there is a line that cannot be crossed — it is a line that divides debate from hate and separates altruism from populism. Too many are crossing the line,” he continues.

“May Golan’s statement is one of them. I will visit with leaders of the Reform movement soon, in person, to apologize on Israel’s behalf,” Leiter says.

Kariv later accused Golan on social media of having “spread disgusting antisemitic slander against millions of Reform Jews.”

“This is the most anti-Zionist and antisemitic government in the history of Israel,” he said.........

© The Times of Israel