Aryeh Deri: Ultra-Orthodox Jews must honor Israel’s Holocaust Day

    Interior Affairs Minister and head of the Shas party Aryeh Deri, speaks at El Hama’ayan Passover conference at the Jerusalem’s Teddy Stadium in Jerusalem on April 13, 2017.

Interior Minister Aryeh Deri, who heads the ultra-Orthodox Shas party, said on Monday that ultra-Orthodox Jews must honor Holocaust Remembrance Day, and not doing so is a “desecration of God’s name.”

Some members of the ultra-Orthodox community refuse to commemorate Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Day because it was instituted by a secular Israeli government and is not rooted in the Jewish religious tradition.

In an interview with Israel Radio, Deri, head of Israel’s largest ultra-Orthodox political party, rejected this view and stressed the importance of remembering those who were killed by the Nazis and never forgetting the horrors of the Holocaust.