Editor – Joel Katz
Religion
and State in Israel is
not affiliated with any organization or movement.
By Hila Weisberg http://english.themarker.com
December 21, 2011
Six hundred people turned out on Tuesday for an employment
fair in Haifa targeting the Haredi community.
It was the second such
event of its kind in recent months, as organizers and participants acknowledged
that the ultra-Orthodox were increasingly recognizing that they needed to leave
their own community in order to earn a decent living.
"The problem is that companies aren't offering to train, but rather are looking for people with degrees or training, and most of Haredi society lacks this," [Yehiel Rosenberg] said.
"The ultra-Orthodox know the salary of an avrekh [a married, male yeshiva student] isn't enough to buy food," he said.
By Kamoun
Ben Shimon www.jpost.com December 20, 2011
Poverty,
the extraordinary growth of haredi society, and economic changes, including the
cutback in National Insurance benefits, have created a new reality for haredi
men.
Since the
beginning of the 1990s, increasing numbers of yeshiva students are seeking
gainful employment. At a recent job fair in Jerusalem, hundreds of haredi men –
many times more than the government organizers had anticipated – turned out to
inquire about gainful employment.
But the
road that leads out of the yeshiva and into the world of work is fraught with
difficulties for these men. They must face the extremists in their own
community. The transition from welfare benefits to gainful employment is
financially challenging, if not impossible.
The
training available to them does not often prepare them for the job market. And
if, after all this, they do find a job, many feel that they are rejected by the
same secular society that demands that they get out and work.
By Maayan Lubell
http://uk.reuters.com December 22, 2011
"There are two States of Israel in
one," said economist Dan Ben-David, head of the Taub Center for Social
Policy Research.
"One is a state of high-tech, universities and medicine at the forefront of human knowledge. And then there are all the rest, who make up a huge and increasing part of Israel and who do not receive the skills or conditions to work in a modern economy."
A report by the Organisation for Economic
Co-operation and Development (OECD) this month said problems in haredi
education were "likely to increase in importance over time" and that
Israel must step up pressure on ultra-Orthodox schools.
"The ultra-Orthodox community should be more forcefully encouraged to strengthen the vocational skills of its youth, in part by stronger curriculum requirements for the receipt of state funding," the report said.
By Isi Leibler Opinion
www.jpost.com December 21, 2011
Ultra-Orthodox children, like their counterparts
in the Diaspora, must receive an education which will enable them to earn a
livelihood and not be destined to remain permanently dependent on state
welfare.
Their
schools should be denied funding unless they include core subjects such as
mathematics, science and language in their curricula. Like other citizens, they
too must contribute toward citizenship and serve in the army or at least
undertake some form of national service.
By MK
Rabbi Haim Amsalem Opinion www.israelnationalnews.com December
23, 2011
While a
few select and elite scholars must always be designated to focus exclusively on
Torah study, the rest of the nation, including Hareidim, must go to fight.
Many may
question my suggestion that all Israelis serve based on religious grounds.
After all, doesn't the army present religious challenges for the
soldiers?
The answer
to this question is very straightforward. It must first be stated that
IDF officially observes Jewish law from its creation and this policy is part of
its Supreme Command Code.
Aside from
this, the IDF has made adjustments in recent years which transformed serving
into a completely appropriate experience for soldiers of all religious
backgrounds.
By Gili Cohen
www.haaretz.com December 22, 2011
The heads of nine
pre-military programs on Wednesday called on thousands of their graduates in
the IDF to stand up against the religious fanaticism in the army.
By Yoav Zitun www.ynetnews.com
December 25, 2011
Some 20 Golani Brigade soldiers were asked by a
non-military rabbi over the weekend to wear their berets and attend a Torah
lesson, Ynet has learned.
The
soldiers, who belong to a reconnaissance unit, were not certain whether the
lesson was optional or mandatory.
[M]embers of the
Chabad movement, Lubavitch Hasidim affiliated with the messianic right, are
planning to visit dozens of Israel Defense Forces bases and outposts during the
holiday to distribute sufganiyot and Hanukkah menorahs to the soldiers.
Although the army has
not authorized these visits, Chabadnikim enter the bases freely, often leaving
informational material in the synagogues.
Chabad's website
invites supporters to its Hannukah party at the Anatot army base, near
Ramallah. The IDF Spokesman's Office said in a response that it had not
received a permit request from Chabad and would review any that arrived.
By Hirsh Goodman Opinion www.jpost.com December 22, 2011
The writer is a senior research associate at the
Institute for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University.
The military induction center in Jerusalem is,
with obvious irony, in the middle of an ultra-Orthodox neighborhood.
For
generations now, Jerusalem’s teenagers, taking their first step along the path
to compulsory military service, have had to wade through an ever-growing mass
of haredi teenagers who are almost automatically exempted from doing the same.
By Ahiya Raved
www.ynetnews.com December 22, 2011
Unidentified vandals have severely damaged an
archeological site near the northern town of Afula on Thursday.
A receptacle containing equipment and antique
artifacts was torched in the incident.
By Ari Galahar
www.ynetnews.com December 23, 2011
Want to be
the godfather at a newborn's circumcision ceremony? All you have to do is
donate $35,000.
An ad published recently in ultra-Orthodox
newspaper Hamodia offered the right to become a godfather to the person willing
to make a donation to the Committee for the Purity of the Camp.
...In
recent years, the committee has been promoting sex segregation on certain bus
lines and the creation of separate routes to the Western Wall for men and
women, and fighting against the opening of businesses in haredi centers in
Jerusalem after midnight.
By Judy Siegel-Itzkovich www.jpost.com December 24, 2011
Dr. Naftali Fish, an American- born clinical
psychologist:
The haredi
world, he continues, “is having a reaction to the loss of balance after the
Holocaust.
With so
many haredi Jews lost, they became more separate and extreme so as to grow in
numbers and retain members of the community. But insisting that everybody has
to dress same way and learn Torah all day goes against the Judaism that existed
before World War II.
There is
small elite capable of devoting all their time to Torah, but normative behavior
is to work in addition to setting aside time to learn Torah,” says the
psychologist.
“More
moderation is needed. So many communities were destroyed that haredim developed
a strong fear of the secular world in the Diaspora and in Israel.”
By Ben
Hartman www.jpost.com December
22, 2011
Education Minister Gideon Sa’ar (Likud) dedicated
the first state religious educational institution in Jaffa in decades, at a
Hanukka ceremony at the Yafeh Nof school on Wednesday evening.
Granak
said that about 70 percent of the parents were not religious, but were looking
for a place where their children could learn “basic Jewish values” in a
non-mixed environment. Twenty-five years ago there were seven state religious
schools in Jaffa, but they closed one by one, he said.
By Ben
Hartman
www.jpost.com December 19, 2011
Yakobovitch
was part of a group of eight ZAKA volunteers at the Tel Aviv marina on Monday,
finishing a course for the private search and rescue organization’s
special-diving unit, which trains to assist as amphibious first responders.
While the
volunteer team numbers more than 248 mainly secular divers, according to ZAKA,
the eight men who finished the course on Sunday and Monday this week represent
what the organization said are the first haredi (ultra-Orthodox) volunteers for
the squad.
The Gur Hassid and United Torah Judaism MK, who
fiercely opposed the construction project on a lot where ancient bones of
pagans were found but who was overridden by the government, said Tuesday he
would not attend the ceremony.
...Litzman
moved the project because he insisted the ancient graves on the land were those
of Jews and had to remain undisturbed.
By Kobi Nahshoni www.ynetnews.com
December 21, 2011
Rabbi
Menachem Froman of the settlement of Tekoa is calling for firm action against
"price tag" activists, stating that burners of mosques must be
deported from Israel.
By Ophir Bar-Zohar www.haaretz.com
December 22, 2011
Former Prime Minister
Ariel Sharon's stroke in January 2006 came about because of his role in
disengagement from Gaza, according to a campaign to be launched on December 31
by an extreme right-wing religious party, Eretz Yisrael Shelanu.
The B’nai B’rith World Center and the Israeli
non-profit organization Bridge of Gold will co-sponsor a festive
menorah-lighting ceremony at the historic Hurva Synagogue in the heart of
Jerusalem’s Old City Jewish Quarter.
By Rabbi
Dov Lipman Opinion www.jpost.com December
20, 2011
The writer
is a rabbi, author and the director of the English Speakers Division of Am
Shalem, the new political movement headed by MK Rabbi Haim Amsalem. His website
is wwww.rabbilipman.com
The issue
dates back to the aftermath of Operation Solomon in 1991 when 14,000 people
were airlifted to Israel in a dramatic 48-hour rescue operation. But at the
same time, an equal number were left behind to cling to the hope that their
dream of making it to their homeland would soon come true.
Year after
year passed, controversy after controversy erupted in Israel about the Falash
Mura and their precise halachic (Jewish legal) status as Jews because their
ancestors converted to Christianity more than 100 years ago.
Mainly,
however, the people waited. Fourteen thousand Jews in Gondar and another 1,000
or so in Addis Ababa continue to languish in transit camps.
WHY HAVE
they been left behind?
By Ruth
Eglash
www.jpost.com December 20, 2011
Emanuel
Hadane, the brother of Israel’s Ethiopian Chief Rabbi Yosef Hadane, has taken
up the cause of more than 20,000 Ethiopians of Jewish descent who are not
eligible under Israeli government criteria to make aliya.
According
to Hadane, who is a trained lawyer, his brother – the rabbi – is supportive of
his attempts to try and reverse the government’s position on this issue and
allow immigration from Ethiopia to continue until the last of the Falash Mura
(Ethiopian Jews whose ancestors converted to Christianity more than a century
ago) arrive in Israel.
By Ruth
Eglash
www.jpost.com December 16, 2011
Ethiopian
aliya is a complicated business, made more complex by a series of declarations
and retractions from successive Israeli prime ministers and interior ministers
over the past decade.
The situation is even further complicated, say locals, by
widespread corruption among those who previously facilitated pre-aliya services
here and because of an oral history that has been mishandled or misunderstood
from the start.
By Melanie
Lidman
www.jpost.com December 22, 2011
A year
after the Prime Minister’s Office began funding security cameras in the Mount
of Olives cemetery, vandals desecrating graves are caught more often, and are
more easily convicted due to video evidence.
A rare clay seal that appears to have been used to
authenticate the purity of ritual objects used in the Second Temple has been
discovered during excavations near the Western Wall, the Israel Antiquities
Authority said Sunday.
www.forward.com December
23, 2011
The Stephen Wise Free Synagogue’s Rabbi Ammiel
Hirsch is leading an interfaith group of 16 prominent New York religious
leaders on a mission to Israel and the West Bank.
The group, which includes prominent Christian and Muslim leaders as well as Jews, will meet seek to “promote peace and understanding” during the high-profile weeklong trip starting January 6.
By Shuki Sadeh
http://english.themarker.com December
20, 2011
Among the posh crowd who summer in the Hamptons, on Long
Island, is one of Israel's most prominent rabbis, Yoshiyahu Pinto. Pinto heads
up Shuva Israel, an international network of charities, yeshivas and other
religious institutions.
By Josh
Nathan-Kazis http://forward.com December
20, 2011
Pinto is among the most prominent of a new breed
of Israeli rabbinic gurus with influence in Israel’s business and political
spheres.
A scion of two prominent Moroccan rabbinic lines,
his followers include Nochi Dankner, billionaire owner of the Israeli daily
newspaper Maariv, and Jacky Ben-Zaken, a prominent real estate investor.
Leading political figures from across the Israeli
spectrum — including Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, opposition leader
Tzipi Livni, former Labor Party leader Amir Peretz and Gideon Ezra, a former
minister of internal security — appeared at a recent event hosted by Pinto in
Israel.
At the event, which was covered by Israel’s
Channel 10, Labor Knesset member Benjamin Ben-Eliezer described how he woke
from a coma after Pinto wept at his bedside.
By Barak Ravid www.haaretz.com
December 22, 2011
Some two months ago, the Prime Minister's Office received a
request to arrange a conference call with some Jewish and Christian leaders.
… But, in the end, the conference call was not held.
By
Benjamin Spier www.jpost.com December 22, 2011
The Jerusalem
Municipality gave out free Christmas trees last Wednesday by the Jaffa Gate of
the Old City, to celebrate the upcoming holiday. However, the holiday spirit of
giving quickly gave way to a chaotic dash by local residents to grab as many
free trees as possible.
By Daniella Cheslow AP
www.salon.com December 21, 2011
The founders of Neve Shaanan, a neighborhood in
southern Tel Aviv, planned their streets in the shape of a seven-branched
candelabra — a symbol of their Jewish faith.
Ninety years later, the streets
are full of Christmas decorations, reflecting a flowering of Christianity in
Israel’s economic and cultural capital.
Tens of thousands of Christian foreigners, most
of them laborers from the Philippines and African asylum seekers, have poured
into the neighborhood in recent years.
www.haaretz.com December
22, 2011
By Melanie
Lidman
www.jpost.com December 25, 2011
David “Dudu” Ohana, who owns the Mania
supermarket in the Mahaneh Yehuda open-air market, is the Jerusalem Santa Claus
of traditional food and spices, ensuring that at least mealtime can give the
foreign workers a connection with homes across the world.
(original
AP post from September 2011)
AP www.ynetnews.com December 24, 2011
In an
unprecedented endeavor, a few Muslim believers are crossing the Holy Land's
volatile boundaries of culture, faith and politics to bring Islam to Israel's
Jews – hoping, improbably, that some will be willing to renounce their religion
for a new one.
Editor – Joel Katz
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