Rabbi accused of anti-LGBT incitement in his new book against ‘postmodernism’

Left-wing Israeli activist Yair Fink filed a police complaint against Rabbi Zvi Thau over the recent publication of his book, “On Dealing with Postmodernism and Breaking Free from its Shackles.”

In his complaint, Fink accused Thau of incitement “against hundreds of thousands of members of the LGBT community.”

Fink connected Thau’s views with the death of Shira Banki, a teenage girl killed while attending a Gay Pride march in Jerusalem in 2015.

Banki was stabbed by an ultra-Orthodox Jewish man, Yishai Schlissel, who had just recently been released from a 10-year prison sentence for stabbing three people at the 2005 Gay Pride march.

“The police must act a moment before the next murder,” Fink said.

Thau’s book does not use the Hebrew words for LGBT, but it does refer to a “new culture of eliminating the family” and condemns terms such as “parent 1” and “parent 2” on some government forms instead of “father” and “mother.”

In his book, Thau warns: “The blurring of the sexual identity of the child until he does not know whether he is a boy or a girl undermines his more elementary confidence in his identity, and hence the path to eliminating his Jewish identity is short, and since he is not sure of his national identity, he loses the power to stand against the national narrative.”

Thau is a founder of the Hazon movement and is the rabbi of Avi Maoz, who heads Israel's Noam political party.

Maoz has caused controversy with his comments about the LGBT community. As a member of the coalition, he was given authority over a newly-created government body called the “Jewish National Identity Authority.”

Rabbi Thau, is known to be a strong opponent of Christianity and has complained and warned his students about the “influence of Christian forces” in academia, the media, the education system, and the judicial system.

As a disciple of the late Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook, Thau is considered an expert in the teachings of Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, father of Zvi.

Both Kooks are considered to be the spiritual fathers of the form of religious Zionism which has become a dominant form of Judaism in Israel today.

Thau advocates for a government based on Orthodox rabbinic law and has called for reduced rights for non-Jews, women and minorities, including LGBT.

The rabbi recently attacked the belief of other disciples of Rabbi Abraham Kook that “they must be pleasant and nice.”

“There is no avoiding going out to war and sometimes even making extreme and shocking statements," Thau wrote.