During his speech at the Memorial Day of Remembrance (Yom HaZikaron) ceremony for Israel’s fallen soldiers on 20 April 2026, [1] South Africa’s Chief Rabbi Warren Goldstein attacked Pope Leo for daring to condemn US-Israeli military aggression in Iran and reject the sanctification of war by MAGA figures such as US Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth. In the savvy professionally edited YouTube video of the ceremony entitled “Chief Rabbi to the Pope,” the Chief Rabbi tells the mostly young Jewish audience that Pope Leo’s “hands are dripping with blood.”:
… Pope Leo, who in his sermon before Easter, had the audacity and the brazenness and the cruelty to say that those all of those who wage war will be turned away by God and that their hands are dripping with blood. How dare he? His hands are dripping with blood because he makes no distinction between good and evil. He makes no distinction between the barbarians of Hamas, the genocidal maniacs of Iran, and the noble and brave soldiers of the state of Israel who are defending civilization itself. To lack the moral insight to see a difference between good and evil is to disqualify yourself from religious leadership in your essence and in your soul….[2]
Along with affectively charged patriotic music in the background, this sensationalist click-bait mimics the style and content of online videos targeting right-wing MAGA audiences in the US. The speech does not even begin to engage with the deaths of young combatants but instead foregrounds the spectacle of political polemics on an international right-wing stage. Dead soldiers become political cyphers and fodder for holy war and the Chief Rabbi’s social media profile. The Office of the Chief Rabbi, formerly occupied by the conciliatory and liberal late Rabbi Cyril Harris, had in the space of two decades been transformed into a MAGA-style warmongering machine.
Rabbi Warren Goldstein has served as the Chief Rabbi of South Africa since 2005. His Wikipedia page notes that he completed a PhD at the University of Witwatersrand Law School while practicing as a rabbi.[3] His PhD thesis compared western and Jewish law and was published in a book entitled Defending the Human Spirit: Jewish Law’s Vision for a Moral Society. The thesis argued that Talmudic law had arrived at political rights, women’s rights, criminal law and poverty alleviation ahead of Western legal systems. His recent speeches and responses to the Gaza genocide suggest that he has developed a position that is greatly at odds with ‘Western’ law, including human rights and international law.
The Chief Rabbi of South Africa is appointed by the Union of Orthodox Synagogues (UOS) of South Africa on the recommendation of a committee consisting of leaders from various Jewish communal organizations. The position is generally held for life or until retirement. Rabbi Goldstein, as spiritual leader for the orthodox Jewish community of South Africa, is the first South African-born Chief Rabbi. What distinguishes his tenure from his predecessors is his far-right politics, extremism and extensive use of YouTube videos, Facebook and other social media platforms to promote both his own profile and his pro-Israel positions. He has also used the office to close down alternative Jewish liberal and progressive traditions, thereby abandoning the more conciliatory position of his predecessor. This was strikingly evident last year when the Chief Rabbi endorsed President Trump’s Oval Office attack on President Ramaphosa for being complicit in a “white genocide” in South Africa.[4]
On 21 May 2025, President Trump’s Oval Office was once again transformed into the set of a reality television show livestreamed into the homes of many millions of viewers all over the world. The meeting between the US President and South Africa’s President Ramaphosa quickly shifted gear from the initial pleasantries to spectacular political theatre as Trump played video material purporting to be evidence of a ‘white genocide’ in South Africa. As this political theatre was taking place in the White House, a real-time genocide was unfolding in Gaza with Israel’s relentless bombardment, its humanitarian blockade of food, water and medical aid, and its refusal to comply with international court rulings. In the face of these developments, and an intensification of international pressure and criticism of Israel, South Africa’s Chief Rabbi Warren Goldstein decided it was time to respond.
In his response in a Facebook video message, the Chief Rabbi accused President Cyril Ramaphosa of many things, including allowing a ‘South African genocide’ to take place.[5] Although the Chief Rabbi refrained from using the term ‘white genocide,’ and acknowledged that all South Africans are victims of violent crime, he endorsed the key talking points of President Trump’s MAGA movement and South Africa’s rightwing white nationalist agenda. But the Chief Rabbi went much further, claiming that the ‘shame’ and ‘humiliation’ that Ramaphosa had experienced in President Trump’s Oval Office was ‘divine retribution’ for South Africa’s genocide case against Israel in the International Court of Justice (ICJ). As I argued at the time in an op ed, [6] the Chief Rabbi’s MAGA polemic was diametrically opposed to liberal and progressive strands of Judaism. A year later, the Chief Rabbi doubled down on his MAGA-style polemic.
The Chief Rabbi’s attack on Pope Leo in April 2026 was, unsurprisingly, perceived to be deeply offensive to Catholics in South Africa, and the rest of the world. Even the South African Jewish Board of Deputies (SAJBD) found it necessary to distance itself from this divisive and polemical speech. In a public statement, Karen Milner, the SAJBD’s National Chairperson, stated that the attack on the Pope was “unsubstantiated and inflammatory rhetoric [and] had crossed a clear red line, both in their lack of factual grounding and in the divisiveness and hurt they have caused to fellow South African citizens”:[7] She added:
We have witnessed deepening polarisation across South African communities. It is the responsibility of leadership to foster robust debate on difficult issues without allowing that debate to degenerate into offensive slurs. This weight falls particularly on religious leaders… We categorically reject any attempt to drive wedges between South Africans… The SAJBD believes that interfaith is a space for respect, tolerance, and engagement. We remain deeply committed to meaningful and respectful dialogue with the interfaith community…[8]
Russell Pollitt, the parish priest of Holy Trinity Catholic Church in Johannesburg questioned the theological grounds for this sanctification of war. [9] Like Pope Leo, he argued that sanctifying war lacks the “compassionate approach one might expect from a religious leader for the innocent victims, women and children, of Israel’s ongoing military actions in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon and across the Middle East.”[10] Father Pollitt also observed that “warmongers” have for centuries used religion to justify wars. But the instrumentalization of religion for war did not seem to bother the Chief Rabbi.
The Chief Rabbi claimed in his speech that, because “our fallen soldiers are holy and pure and dwell in the heavens… the wars that Israel has fought since its inception are just wars.” He also praised “the holy soldiers of the state of Israel who fought and continue to fight in Gaza, in Lebanon, in Iran” [and] not only defend the state of Israel, but indeed all of human civilization. If good people do not stand up, the world will be consumed with darkness.” [11] Underpinning this discursive framing is the suggestion that those who do not support and defend the ‘Greater Israel’ project are neither human nor civilised. The speech was peppered with binary oppositions between holy and pure soldiers and barbarians at the gate.
The idea that soldiers killed in war automatically become holy, pure and sacrificial has absolutely no ethical, philosophical, biblical or legal grounding. From this perspective, dead combatants automatically become holy martyrs in what is then declared to be a war just. This circular reasoning forecloses any space for reflection on the devastation and human suffering of war. It also results in an ethically flawed political theology that obscures any reference to the massive civilian deaths and devastating destruction of the infrastructures of life in Gaza and other parts of the Middle East.
These kinds of framings of the war dead also fail to register that large numbers of young Israelis and their families may not wish to sacrifice their lives in Israel’s forever wars. An obsession with the sanctification of the war dead revealed a Chief Rabbi tone deaf to the grief and suffering of the families of soldiers and civilians who die in wars.
The Chief Rabbi’s attack on the Pope also signals that he has joined forces with Trump, Vance and US Secretary of War and former Fox News television host, Pete Hegseth. Both Hegseth and the Chief Rabbi revel in instrumentalising religion for Holy War. Hegseth had attacked the Pope for insisting that “Jesus does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war, but rejects them.”[12] A longtime reservist, Hegseth left the service after being reported by fellow service members for his Crusader tattoos, which have been associated with white supremacist and extremist groups.[13] The institution of the Chief Rabbi has found common ground with Hegseth and his ilk in calling for Holy War rather than compassion and compliance with international law and Just War principles.
In Christian Just War theory from Augustine of Hippo (Thomas Aquinas) to modern Catholic teaching, as well as in secular ethics, a just war depends on quite specific criteria, including just cause (self-defence, defence of innocents); legitimate authority and proportionality. Just war does not in any way depend on a soldier’s courage, holiness or purity. Indeed, there are many examples of brave soldiers participating in unjust wars. Ironically, the Chief Rabbi’s political theology of Holy War can be traced to Pope Leo’s own Christian tradition, where martyrs were promised absolution. This allowed wars to be declared as righteous even if they were not just. Similarly, nationalist civil religion – based on fascist, communist, imperial and nationalist memorial cultures – have allowed modern states to sacralise dead combatants as ‘martyrs of the nation’. Fortunately, recent Catholic Popes – following long and painful lessons from violent pasts and the rise of liberal humanism – have broken with these warmongering political theologies.
The Chief Rabbi does not even acknowledge alternative traditions of Jewish religious and philosophical thought that refuse to sanctify war, and which caution against the idolatry of state and military power. For Yeshayahu Leibowitz,[14] Jewish Law or the Halakhah, which lies at the centre of Judaism, requires a clear separation of religion from the machinations of the State. Leibowitz criticises religious justifications of national concerns, policies, wars, and politics. Moreover, he claims that such idolatry has been the driving force of Israeli annexation policies and military occupation of territories conquered in the 1967 war. From this perspective, a state, land or army should never be sanctified as it corrupts religion by blurring the distinction between God and nationalism. This speech, along with the Chief Rabbi’s other social media content,[15] reveals an alignment of his office with political theologies associated with MAGA-style white nationalism. Yet, a growing number of young Jews in South Africa, the US, UK and Israel, no longer want to be associated with such toxic brands of political theology. As alternative Jewish voices such as South African Jews for a Free Palestine (SAJFP) and Jewish Democratic Initiative (JDI) are becoming more vocal and visible in the public sphere, the claims of mainstream Jewish institutions to speak for all South African Jews are increasingly being contested. The responses to the Chief Rabbi’s attack on Pope Leo shows that even a staunchly Zionist organisation such as the South African Jewish Board of Deputies is beginning to come under pressure to reconsider its traditional positions of blind loyalty to Israel.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ia1MNZoBc_M
[2]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ia1MNZoBc_M
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_Goldstein
[4] https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/opinionista/2025-06-03-chief-rabbi-abuses-legal-religious-concepts-in-ramaphosa-attack/
[5] https://www.facebook.com/ChiefRabbiGoldstein/
[6] https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/opinionista/2025-06-03-chief-rabbi-abuses-legal-religious-concepts-in-ramaphosa-attack/
[7] https://www.sajr.co.za/chief-rabbi-faces-blowback-from-pope-critique/
[8] https://www.sajr.co.za/chief-rabbi-faces-blowback-from-pope-critique/
[9] https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/opinionista/2026-04-27-rabbi-goldsteins-attack-on-pope-leo-is-theologically-confused-and-inaccurate/
[10] https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/opinionista/2026-04-27-rabbi-goldsteins-attack-on-pope-leo-is-theologically-confused-and-inaccurate/
[11]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ia1MNZoBc_M
[12] https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/03/world/middleeast/pope-iran-war.html
[13] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2026/apr/10/pete-hegseth-christianity-iran-war-crusade
[14] Leibowitz, Y. 1995. Judaism, Human Values, and the Jewish, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
[15] https://www.facebook.com/ChiefRabbiGoldstein/