The leaders of Israel’s Orthodox religious establishment have promised to attempt to restrain young zealots from further violent demonstrations like one which occurred here Sunday when a gang of about 80 Yeshiva students broke into the home of the director of the Shaare Tsedek Hospital to protest against his refusal to prohibit autopsies at the hospital. Rabbi Isser Untermann, the Ashkenazic chief rabbi, and Dr. Zerach Warhaftig, the Minister for Religious Affairs, said they would urge Yeshiva heads to prevent further incidents. Dr. Warhaftig expressed regret over the incident and praised the hospital’s director. Dr. David Maier, as “a good doctor and a good Jew.”
The raid on his home, in which his aged mother was manhandled and furniture smashed, was denounced as a “pogrom” by Mayor Teddy Kollek of Jerusalem who urged police to take every legal measure against the perpetrators. Rabbi Shear Yashuv Cohen, the deputy mayor, who belongs to the Orthodox National Religious Party, sent a telegram to Dr. Maier describing the affair as a “desecration”. Police took 79 of the raiders, members of the ultra-Orthodox “Eidah Charedit” group into custody. They were released on parole Monday for the Passover holiday. The group is one of several extremist religious sects which do not recognize the State of Israel; it regards the Satmar Rebbe in New York as its spiritual leader.
Dr. Maier, himself Orthodox, has followed the policy on autopsies set by his predecessor which was to let the hospital’s rabbi rule in each case on whether a post mortem was permissible according to Jewish religious law. The zealots claimed the hospital’s officiating rabbi was not sufficiently Orthodox.
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