On December 30, 1996, Yosef Lapid appeared on the television program “Popolitika.” To mark the imminent new year, an astrologer by the name of Elitzur Kadoshi had also been invited to the program. Lapid asked him if he was a fraud and left the studio. The episode was considered a national event, and the next day Lapid was interviewed on the radio. He said, among other comments: “I am angry at astrologers, because they are not stupid, they are frauds.”

Kadoshi sued Lapid for slander and last week won his case. Judge Yitzhak Shimoni, the deputy president of Jerusalem Magistrate’s Court, ordered the former justice minister to pay the astrologer NIS 50,000, including costs.

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“The test of astrology does not lie in the existence of an unequivocal connection between a forecast and its fulfillment (as in the concept of forecast in physics), but in the influence the act of consultancy has on the life of the seeker, on his ability to find useful meanings and patterns in his life story, and so forth … The stories it produces are in fact grasped by the clients as a useful instrument for guidance and coping with situations of uncertainty.”