News | Abortions delay Messiah's arrival: Israeli rabbis

Israel's two chief rabbis said they will renew the fight against pregnancy terminations as they warned that the high number of abortions in the Jewish state was delaying the arrival of the Messiah, Israeli press reported on Tuesday.

Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi Yona Metzger and his Sephardic colleague Shlomo Amar condemned, in a letter to Israel's faithful, what they called "a veritable epidemic, which every year claims the lives of tens of thousands of Jews," Ynet news said.

The rabbis said "the vast majority of abortions are unnecessary and forbidden by Halacha" but also "adding to the gravity of this transgression is the fact that it impedes the coming of redemption."

According to the two rabbis some 50,000 abortions are performed in Israel every year and said only 20,000 are legal.

"What heart doesn’t cringe by these numbers which indicate nothing less than a pandemic… and the loss of tens of thousands of Jewish souls every year," the paper quoted the rabbis as saying