Prime Minister Yair Lapid’s wife, Lihi Lapid, announced that she sued Rabbi Tovia Singer, director of the counter-missionary organization Outreach Judaism after he spread a lie that she had converted to Christianity shortly before the Nov. 1 election.
In an Instagram post shared four days ago, Lapid wrote that she was suing Singer “because I am the great-granddaughter of former Tel Aviv Chief Rabbi Moshe Avigdor Amiel.”
She wrote, “He was the chief rabbi of Antwerp for 16 years, until he was called to come to the Holy Land – and he came. Zionism burned inside of him when he came in 1936 to be the chief rabbi of the young city that rose in the sands.”
Two days before the election, Lapid’s website was hacked and “strange messages” started appearing in her name, including images of her wearing a cross in photos of her and her husband. The messages said that she was not Jewish, but had converted to Christianity.
Lapid said that Singer had apologized to her and that she would not be demanding payment from him. However, she wants to clear her name. She also said that while he can apologize, his retraction would not reach everyone who believed the original lie.
“Money is not important to me,” she wrote. “What is important is my good name. What is important is my Judaism.”
Lapid went on to write that Judaism and Zionism are paramount to her identity, from family kiddush every week to celebrating Jewish holidays and being the mother of an Israeli soldier.
“No one can say anything else and expect me to be silent,” she said.
