Only give funding to places with synagogues - Israeli chief rabbi to new minister

New Interior and Health Minister Moshe Arbel should only give government funding to localities with synagogues and yeshivas, Israel's Sephardi Chief Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef told him on Saturday night in a video that KAN published on Sunday morning.

He also told Arbel not "to talk about it explicitly because it's not legal. Do it smartly."

The comments were made at a weekly religious studies session that Yosef holds on Saturday night.

In the video, Arbel does not respond to Yosef's comment, but he does chuckle.

In response to the video, Labor MK Gilad Kariv wrote on Twitter "may you have the help of God doing illegal things. This is the face of the Chief Rabbinate. How shameful. How embarrassing."

Yisrael Beytenu chairman Avigdor Liberman called to fire Yosef from his role.

"It's time to stop the madness that is the theft of public treasury through deals made by the ultra-Orthodox business in the Knesset and in the official state institutions," he said. "Separation between religion and state is the order of the hour."

The Movement for Quality of Government submitted a complaint against Yosef with the commissioner for complaints against judges saying he abused his position as a religious judge.

The NGO said that Yosef's actions "cause in practice to the weakening of public faith in the decisions of the rabbinical court and the authority of its judges to conduct just trial without being politically swayed."

Moshe Arbel takes over from Arye Deri

Last week on Monday, Shas announced that Arbel would take on the role of interior and health minister after the party's chairman Arye Deri was disqualified from being a minister by the High Court of Justice because of his convictions of financial crimes.