JERUSALEM — Haredi Orhodox Shas Party spiritual leader Rabbi Ovadia Yosef during his weekly sermon called the Jewish Home Party a “Jewish home for the gentiles” and said it is forbidden to vote for the party.

“They call them the ‘Jewish Home’ but this is not a home for Jews; it is a Jewish home for gentiles,” Yosef said on Saturday night. “It’s forbidden to vote for them. These are religious people? Anyone who votes for them denies the Torah.”

The attack appears to be over the National-Religious party’s position on separation of church and state. Candidates for the Jewish Home Party have called for civil marriage and conversion reform.

“Rabbi Ovadia Yosef is an important spiritual leader for numerous publics in Israel, and we have only admiration and respect for him. Habayit Hayehudi’s aim is to be a bridge between different parts of society, and we will continue along that route. If we are being attacked by all the parties at the same time, we must be doing something right,” said the Jewish Home Party in a statement in response to Yosef’s attack. 

On Sunday, Shas activists discovered that religious books housed at its headquarters in Or Yehuda were burned in an arson attack.

Also on Sunday, the headquarters of the center-left HaTnuah, or The Movement, Party, headed by Tzipi Livni was vandalized with spray painted-graffiti reading “Yigal Amir was right.” Amir assassinated Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin during a peace rally in 1995.