Shmuel Eliyahu

**Shmuel Eliyahu** or **Shemuel Elijah[u]**, also known as **"Samuel Eliyahu"** or **"Samuel Elijah[u]"** (Hebrew: שמואל אליהו; born 29 November 1956) is an Orthodox Judaic Israeli activist and rabbi.

He is the Chief Rabbi of Safed and a member of the Chief Rabbinate Council.

Rabbi Shemuel Eliyahu and his policies regarding Arabs and Palestinian peoples are dubbed discriminatory in nature.

On 30 May 2022, the United States Department of State, under the Biden administration, revoked or suspended his visa to enter the USA.

## Early life

Shmuel Eliyahu was born to Mordechai Eliyahu, the former Sephardi Chief Rabbi of Israel, and his wife Tzviya.

Just as his father, Rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu studied at Yashlatz and Mercaz HaRav at Jerusalem, he too studied at Yashlatz in Jerusalem, and later at Mercaz HaRav Kook, where he was a student of Zvi Yehuda Kook.

He also served in an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) combat unit.

## Career

Eliyahu received his _semikhah_ (ordination as rabbi) at age 23, and at age 29 was appointed to the position of Municipal Rabbi of Shlomi. Three years later,  he was appointed the Chief Rabbi of Safed.

In July 2013, Eliyahu ran for the position of Sephardi Chief Rabbi of Israel. Israeli Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein requested that Eliyahu abandon his candidacy, noting that he had made a number of offensive statements against Arabs.

Member of Knesset Issawi Frej (Meretz) submitted an emergency petition to the High Court asking that Eliyahu be disqualified, since "election of a racist like Eliyahu to the position would be the start of the destruction of values in the State of Israel".

The High Court rejected the petition based on technicalities. In December 2013, Eliyahu petitioned the High Court against the Attorney General for using confidential information that was gathered as part of the failed criminal investigation that Weinstein sent to the election committee in his attempt to prevent Eliyahu from running.

In October 2014, Eliyahu failed to win election as Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem, losing out to Shlomo Amar by a vote of 28 to 18 in the municipality's 48-member electorate.

In June 2015, Eliyahu was involved in investigating the allegations of sexual abuse committed by self-styled Safed " kabbalist" Ezra Sheinberg against 14 women who came to him for marital therapy. Eliyahu brought the case to the attention of the Israel Police, and in 2018 Sheinberg was sentenced to more than 7 years in prison.

In November 2021, Haredi children's author Chaim Walder was the subject of a _Haaretz_ exposé, accused of engaging in sexual abuse of minors and married women who came to him to receive therapy over a 25-year period. Eliyahu convened a beth din (rabbinical court) in Safed, encouraging Walder's victims to come forward and submit testimony against him, and found him "guilty beyond any doubt". On 16 December, Eliyahu summoned Walder to the beth din. Ten days later, _Haaretz_ reported that the Israel Police had opened an investigation into Walder, but that he had not yet been questioned. The following day, Walder was found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound adjacent to his son's grave in the Segula Cemetery in Petah Tikva. He left a suicide note wherein he professed his innocence, beginning it with

### Government of Israel

In 2008, in the wake of a corruption investigation that targeted Ehud Olmert, Eliyahu issued a pamphlet entitled "A Religious Prime Minister – It's Possible", in which he wrote

In 2022, Eliyahu was instrumental in convincing Knesset Member Idit Silman to abandon the Yamina party, an act that led to a coalition crisis in the Bennett–Lapid government, which Eliyahu considered to be too accommodating to Arabs and hostile to the Chief Rabbinate. In April of that year, Eliyahu and his wife Tova met with Silman in their Jerusalem home to congratulate her on her decision.

Just as father Mordechai Eliyahu, who ran as the Sephardic Chief Rabbi of Israel, came out as one of the staunchest supporters of Rabbi Meir Kahane, one of whose books did he write a glowing approbation to and eulogize in Messianic terms, Shmuel Eliyahu carried on his tradition by assuming closeness to Itamar Ben-Gvir, leader of the far-right, conservative Otzma Yehudit.

Samuel Eliyahu's son Amihai, a member of that party, was elected to the Knesset in 2022, assuming the role of Heritage Minister.

### Jerusalem

Following an address in December 2017 in which U.S. President Donald Trump recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and announced plans to relocate the U.S. embassy there from its current location in Tel Aviv, Eliyahu organized a joint letter signed by 250 Israeli Orthodox rabbis praising Trump's historic proclamation, stating, "You will be remembered in the history of the Jewish people."

On Jerusalem Day in 2022, Eliyahu ordered a large turnout for an annual flag march, saying that anything less would embolden the Palestinians in the wake of a recent spate of attacks against Israelis. The following day, the U.S. State Department in the Biden administration revoked Eliyahu's visa to enter the United States. While no explanation was given for this, Israeli officials surmised that it was due to Eliyahu's statements regarding Arabs. A spokesman for Eliyahu blamed the action on Reformist and anti-Zionist elements.