Manchester school cancels talk by rabbi who implicated Jews in the Holocaust

A strictly Orthodox school in Manchester has cancelled a talk that was due to have taken place next week by a controversial outreach rabbi who believes that autism and Down’s Syndrome are the result of sins in a past life and that Ashkenazi Jews helped to bring the Holocaust on themselves because of assimilation.

Rabbi Yosef Mizrachi from New York was due to speak next Thursday evening at Beis Yaakov High School during a short visit to the UK.

But the school said it had cancelled the booking, made by an outside party, because “we wouldn’t want to be associated with the event”.

Rabbi Mizrachi, who has also opined that mixed parties increase the incidence of cancer, has previously been condemned by the Office of the Chief Rabbi and the senior rabbi of the S & P Sephardi Community, Rabbi Joseph Dweck.