Avi Maoz, a right-wing MK slated to join the incoming Netanyahu government, sparked outrage today when he compared forms of liberal Judaism to the darkness in the Chanukah story.
Mr Maoz, the only Knesset member of the extremist anti-LGBT party Noam, said in a speech in the Knesset that the Chanukah story was fitting for current times, noting that the Maccabees had to drive out the forces of Hellenistic Jews, who wanted to combine Judaism with comparatively liberal Greek culture.
Maoz is reportedly set to become a deputy minister in the new government and head of a newly-created authority for Jewish identity.
In what Knesset members described as a tirade, Mr Maoz said: “The spirit that the Greeks and the Hellenists tried to instil in the Jewish people is the real darkness.” He then sang several lines from the popular Hanukkah song “We Came to Expel the Darkness.”
