Od Yosef Chai

Od Yosef Chai, also known as Od Yosef Hai (Hebrew: עוד יוסף חי, Joseph still lives) is a yeshiva situated in the West Bank settlement of Yitzhar. Od Yosef Chai includes several related institutions; a yeshiva high school, a yeshiva gedola (post-high school yeshiva), a kollel (yeshiva for married men) and the publishing house that released "The King's Torah", and other materials.

The yeshiva was initially located at Joseph's Tomb in Nablus, but was relocated to the settlement of Yitzhar after the original site was abandoned following the outbreak of the Al-Aqsa Intifada. In April 2014 The IDF seized the yeshiva, which functioned as the headquarters from where violent attacks on both nearby Palestinian villages and Israeli security forces were launched, and Talmudic studies there were suspended.

"The yeshiva occupies an unusual discursive space – neither mainstream religious Zionist (though some of its teaching staff were educated in this tradition) nor formally affiliated with the Hasidic movement, despite Ginsburgh’s own affiliation with Chabad and despite his teachings being steeped in its Kabbalistic inheritance".

In 2003 the president of the yeshiva Yitzhak Ginzburg was charged with incitement to racism for authoring a book calling Arabs a "cancer". One of the yeshiva heads, Yitzhak Shapira, was investigated by Israeli police for his book, The King's Torah whose main focus is the halachic adjudications of killing non-Jews. The book proved controversial in its declaration that the killing of gentile babies was permissible because of "the future danger that will arise if they are allowed to grow into evil people like their parents." Shapira was arrested for direct involvement in an arson attack on a West Bank mosque. He denied involvement and was later released due to lack of evidence. Shapira was filmed accompanying some of his students to an Arab village where he watched them throwing stones.

In November 2011 the Israeli Education Ministry closed the religious school associated with the yeshiva. The closure was approved by Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein following the recommendation of Shin Bet on the basis of student and staff involvement in violence against Palestinians and Israeli security services. Over a period of years students had been arrested in connection with price tag attacks.

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Wikipedia