Rabbi who cursed Rabin targets Sharon
Yaakov Katz, THE JERUSALEM POST
Mar. 30, 2005
Yosef Dayan, who enacted a pulsa denura – Aramaic for "lashes of fire" – death curse against Yitzhak Rabin shortly before his assassination, has received a green light from kabbalistic rabbis to place the same curse on Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in the next few days.
"This is the next step and it needs to be prepared," Dayan told The Jerusalem Post on Tuesday. "We need to do this since [Sharon] and the system he runs are not stopping."
Dayan, who said he had met with several senior rabbis recently seeking permission to place the curse, met Tuesday with Yehoshua Ben-Shushan – a Jerusalem kabbalist and a leader of an early-'80s plot to blow up the Dome of the Rock.Other far-right activists associated with Dayan said they had heard he had gotten a go-ahead to proceed with the curse, which is based on passages from the Zohar, kabbala's major work.
Dayan said in September that he would be willing to cast the curse, but only after receiving authorization from senior kabbalistic rabbis. While Attorney-General Menahem Mazuz decided at the time not to investigate Dayan for criminal offenses, Justice Ministry officials told the Post on Tuesday that they might need to revisit the issue.
"If he [simply] wishes something inside his soul, we cannot necessarily do anything [to stop him]," a Justice Ministry official said. "If the curse is instigated, however, we will need to check the circumstances to see if it was done in public and if people are willing to act upon the curse."
In October, Dayan led a group of activists who reenacted a First Temple-era water libation ritual at the Shiloah Spring in the east Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan, with the goal of removing Sharon from power and instituting a Jewish monarchy.
Right-wing activists said Tuesday the curse would not give them the right to assassinate Sharon but was rather a "prayer for divine intervention."
"How it happens isn't of interest," one said. "For all we care, he can die of a heart attack."