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Chief Rabbi discovers Middle East solution in ancient text

Britain's Chief Rabbi, Jonathan Sacks, has sparked controversy with his new book The Dignity of Difference: Stop Killing Each Other, It's Not Funny and It's Not Grown-up.

While most of it is dull, turgid stuff, the book's radical interpretation of an obscure sentence in Exodus will have major implications for the Middle-Eastern crisis, experts say.

Speaking on the Yesterday programme, Sacks told of when some in-depth scholarship suddenly revealed the solution to him. "I was brushing up on my Old Testament when I found this bit that said 'Though shalt not kill'," he said. "No-one seems to have noticed it before, or perhaps they've misread it. If I'm right then God would be furious with Israel and our chances of remaining his chosen people may be well and truly buggered."

Professor Sacks' interpretation of the neglected text drew swift attack. Rabbi Gold, speaking from Jerusalem, said: "Biblical instruction should not always be taken literally, unless its obviously God's true intention, like not eating shellfish or getting circumcised. This passage is clearly metaphorical or most likely satirical. God is always killing people in the Old Testament, and slaughtering people you disagree with is a time-hallowed tradition of all great monotheistic religions."

Meanwhile in the UK, Melanie Phillips declared in The Daily Telegraph: "The Chief Rabbi's outrageous criticism of Israel just shows how prevalent anti-Semitism is in British culture."

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