Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef was addressing Jewish legal aspects of the blessing on seeing fruit trees blossoming, during the current Hebrew month of Nissan, and, specifically, whether one should bless one tree or at least two.
In that context, he mentioned a blessing uttered upon seeing an unusual creature, citing the example of encountering a black person who has two white parents on the street in America.
In a footage aired by the Ynet news site, Yosef could be seen referring to black people by the pejorative Hebrew word “Kushi,” and then going on to term a black person a monkey. His office told Ynet that the comparison was a quote from the Talmud.
Yosef has been known to court controversy in his sermons. In a sermon delivered in May last year, he appeared to suggest during his weekly sermon that secular women behave like animals because they dress immodestly.
In March 2016, Yosef was forced to retract a comment that non-Jews should not live in Israel, calling it theoretical.
