Editor – Joel Katz
By Moran
Azulay
www.ynetnews.com January 16, 2012
The Israeli Forum for
Equal Service condemned the cabinet's intentions to once again extend the law
and claimed that the law has failed.
"It is sad to see that the prime minister is ignoring a petition signed by 50 major generals and lieutenant colonels which was sent to him with a demand to change the law," was the forum's official response.
By Attila Somfalvi
www.ynetnews.com January 16, 2012
Defense Minister Ehud Barak said during an Independence
faction meeting that "The Tal Law hasn't fulfilled the hopes we had for it
10 years ago.
In my opinion the right thing to do is to extend it by one year
old, and in the mean time find a new solution."
www.jpost.com January 16, 2012
"We should form
an organization to reestablish the Tal Law," he said at a meeting of his
Independence party.
"The army should decide who it wants, and the rest
should go to national service."
By Jeremy
Sharon
www.jpost.com
January 16, 2012
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said on Monday
in the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee that the government intends to
approve the extension of the Tal Law for another five years.
Netanyahu said the
decision will be brought for ministerial approval on Sunday.
By Moran Azulay
www.ynetnews.com January 16, 2012
"In 2011 there
were 2,400 who enlisted in the military and civic service. Out of that 1,282
enlisted into the IDF. That's a 40% rise when compared to last year. From 2008
the numbers triples."
By Chaim
Levinson
www.haaretz.com January 16, 2012
The Israel Defense Forces' decision to prohibit
Orthodox soldiers from boycotting events at which women sing has claimed yet
another casualty, as secular-religious tensions continue to mount.
Rabbi
Elyakim Levanon, head of the Elon Moreh yeshiva and a prominent religious
Zionist figure, has informed pupils of his intention to quit his post in
protest against the General Staff's decision.
...In explaining his decision, Levanon added
that he wants to be able to speak freely about women singing, without the
yeshiva or its pupils "being harmed by such pronouncements."
By Yoav Zitun www.ynetnews.com
January 10, 2012
Air Force Rabbi
Lieutenant-Colonel Moshe Raved will not continue in his current position but
will continue to serve in the corps.
The decision was reached in a meeting
Raved held with Air Force Commander Brigadier General Edo Nehoshtan.
Less
than a week after resigning his position in a program integrating Haredi men
into the army, the chief rabbi of the air force has been dismissed from his
chaplaincy post, the IDF announced yesterday.
By Jeremy
Sharon
www.jpost.com
January 11, 2012
[Shahar Ilan, the vice president of Hiddush]
added that he had received numerous calls in the last two weeks from the
ultra-Orthodox community asking him why the army is seemingly working to
destroy the project.
“Shahar [Haredim in
IDF] is the basis on which a new, more moderate haredi community is being
built,” Ilan continued, citing the statistic that more than 90 percent of
soldiers who served in the program were now employed. “We must not let it
fail.”
By Jeremy Sharon www.jpost.com
January 11, 2012
UTJ MK Moshe Gafni
said: “Today, because of the decision of the General Staff, and the IDF Chief
Rabbi's hesitation, a haredi Jew who comes to me and says ‘I’m going to [the]
Shahar [army program for haredi men],’ in the past I would have said ‘great,
good luck to you.’
Today I say don’t enlist, because their intention is to
change you into a different person.”
Therefore,
we demand that you oppose the Tal Law that will come to the Knesset in the next
year, and to legally require military or national service to all citizens of
Israel. Until you draft all 18-year-old citizens, true Zionism cannot exist
here.
This is a
simple and zionist promise: If you won’t do it, we will bring change.
To see the
Facebook page in Hebrew, click here www.facebook.com/profile.php
By Kobi
Nahshoni
www.ynetnews.com January 9, 2012
Soldiers and yeshiva
students from severa Hesder yeshivas have called on Chief of Staff Lieutenant
General Benny Gantz to reconsider his order to forbid religious troops from
leaving official IDF ceremonies that include women singing.
The letter, sent to Gantz
on Monday after it was first circulated among the students, claimed that
"enforcing the attendance of religious soldiers when women are singing is
in direct opposition to the Jewish Halacha and is in fact secular coercion,
which goes against the principles of liberty, equality and justice in general
and the spirit of the IDF particularly."
By
Anshel Pfeffer Opinion www.haaretz.com
January 13, 2012
It is impossible to predict how the
ultra-Orthodox community will evolve in this new era of choice.
Will rabbis try
and rival each other with excessively hardline edicts, or will there be
competition with those trying to liberalize Haredi ideology, making it more
compatible with a modern lifestyle? Most likely we will see both these
developments simultaneously.
As the last of the generation of rabbis born in
the early 20th century close their eyes, an age of rabbinical hegemony is
coming to an end.
Referring to the norm of Haredi men studying
Torah instead of working, [Rabbi MK Chaim Amsellem]
said,
"Tens of thousands are chained within a study framework that doesn't
always suit them.
The Haredi public is tired of being called parasitic and
accused of not serving in the army, but it doesn't know what to do about it.
They're trapped. People with financial interests, standing and power tell them,
'Don't open your mouth, you're hanging out your dirty laundry in public.'"
By Michael
Lipkin Opinion www.lipkinfamily.com
January 15, 2012
As Americans, which most of us are, we have
such an ingrained sense of personal liberty that there was, and is, no way we
are going to back down let these people walk all over us.
We’ll defend your right to practice your
religion however you want, but if you don’t let us do the same then we will be
in your face big time.
...
"What’s going on here is about much more than the sleeve lengths of 8 year
old girls; it’s about politics, control, and limited resources.
By Joshua
Mitnick
www.csmonitor.com January 11, 2012
"It takes a lot
to shock Israelis, because they've seen so much here. They don't have time to
think about other things," says Orly Erez Lihovsky, a lawyer for the
Israel Religious Action Center.
"It's at a stage where it can't be ignored
anymore."
By Rabbi
Naftali Brawer Opinion www.thejc.com
January 16, 2012
Dr Naftali Brawer
is an ordained Orthodox rabbi and the chief executive of Spiritual Capital
Foundation.
Charedi
leaders must move beyond strongly-worded condemnations of the symptoms and
begin targeting the cause.
They must try to recapture what was best about
Charediyut while offloading its uglier current manifestations.
By Catrina
Stewart
www.independent.co.uk January 10, 2012
Meanwhile, the women within these communities
are afraid to speak out, says Hannah Kehat, founder of Kolech, an ultraorthodox
women's group.
"It's social control. If they [the women] go against
somebody, the [extremists] exclude them, tell people they are not religious
enough, attack them, say bad things about their families," says Ms Kehat,
who grew up in Mea Shearim. "It's terror," she adds.
By Rachel
Sarafraz
www.jpost.com
January 10, 2012
Ultra-Orthodox organization Eda Haredit (Badatz)
slammed government intervention seeking to prevent gender segregation in the
public sphere, in a flyer posted online on Monday.
According to the
flyer, the government "recently burdened the world of the
god-fearing," and used deception to wage war against barriers seeking to
protect modesty and holiness.
By Jeremy
Sharon
www.jpost.com
January 11, 2012
The letter, which
appeared on posters in haredi (ultra- Orthodox) Jerusalem neighborhoods on
Monday night, was written in the name of Rabbi Tuviah Weiss, the head of the
Eda Haredit rabbinical court, and his deputy Rabbi Moshe Shternboch.
William Kolbrener, professor of English
literature at Bar-Ilan University, is the author of, most recently,“Open Minded
Torah, of Irony, Fundamentalism and Love” (Continuum, 2011).”
In a paradoxical and surprising way,
ultra-Orthodox Jews — who mostly dismiss Freud’s thought — are more Freudian
than Freud himself. As a result of this hyper-consciousness, they create a
repressive culture of silence.
I do not want my girls constantly policing
themselves, nor do I want to be surrounded by men who, in autocratic and
arbitrary fashion, justify their discriminatory attitudes.
I do want women,
including my four daughters, to participate in the public sphere — without
fear.
By Rabbi
Dov Litman Opinion www.jewishpress.com
January 16, 2012
Yes, it is true. I,
as a Haredi with right wing political leanings, stood on the same stage with
representatives of Yisrael Chofshit, Hitorirut Yerushalayim, and Meretz – three
secular and very left wing groups – at the massive rally in Bet Shemesh on the
last night of Chanukah.
...I have been
stunned at the venom with which people have written about these “left wing” and
“anti-religious” groups. Have those critics ever taken the time to actually
talk to representatives of these groups?
Yes, I disagree with these groups
about many fundamental ideas but sitting with them during the planning of the
demonstration taught me so much.
By Jeremy
Sharon
www.jpost.com
January 12, 2012
Rabbi Dov Lipman, who
has been campaigning against ultra-Orthodox extremism in Beit Shemesh, has
threatened to sue Beit Shemesh Mayor Moshe Abutbol for libel following his
recent interview in the weekly magazine Ami on January 4.
Lipman, who heads the
Committee to Save Beit Shemesh, has taken particular issue with how Abutbol
described him as having “fought against every building that went up to house
haredim, night and day.”
Abutbol also said in the interview that he “condemn[s]
Dov Lipman and his cohorts who have been a thorn in the side of Bet Shemesh for
years.”
Michael
Knopf is the Assistant Rabbi of Har Zion Temple in Penn Valley, Pennsylvania,
and a recent graduate of the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies in Los Angeles.
Jews and
non-Jews need to know that the Haredi-Fundamentalist community does not
represent true Judaism or hold a monopoly on Jewish authenticity.
There
are decidedly non-fundamentalist approaches to Judaism that are viable,
vibrant, and valid.
The
Jewish future can only and must only be won by a Judaism that integrates
religious and scientific truths, a Judaism that values both tradition and
modernity.
By Anna
Wexler
www.unpious.com January 18, 2012
This film contains
different narrative threads: there are stories about leaving, stories about
leaving and coming back, and stories of never leaving at all.
In some ways, my
story is different from those of other Unpious readers: I grew up in the
Modern Orthodox community and so the scars of my painful departure from
Orthodox Judaism are not visible on the outside.
But on the inside—where it
counts—I believe we suffered the same trauma, of experiencing the whole
universe as a rug that has been suddenly been pulled from beneath you.
By William Kolbrener
Opinion
http://openmindedtorah.com January 13, 2012
‘Please remove me from your list.’
After writing my last piece in the Jewish Daily
Forward about women in the ultra-orthodox community, I received a lot of emails
like that.
...Finally, to the American rabbi who wrote me,
telling me knowingly: ‘you see, you cannot live in the ultra-orthodox world in
Israel. I told you so.’ I would have to say, you are right, it is
hard to live in Israel. But – and this was my motivation for writing my
Forward article – I have seven children, four of them girls, and I want the
world they live in – they are Israeli – to be better for them.
So can we talk?
I hope so; my kids are counting on it.
By Yaakov
Lappin and Jeremy Sharon www.jpost.com January 15, 2012
Six men from the
ultra- Orthodox community in Jerusalem and a bank clerk were arrested early
Sunday morning, on suspicion of embezzling millions of shekels in charitable
funds, along with other financial crimes.
The arrests follow an
undercover investigation led by Jerusalem Police and the Tax Authority, which
lasted for several months, police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said.
According to the
police, a team of fund-raisers working out of a Mea She’arim office since 2000
collected funds from donors in Israel and abroad, claiming that the money would
be used to help elderly people, widows, orphans and others in need.
The suspects allegedly
ran an extensive charity appeal network, and deposited the cash they raised
into an account at a branch of Mercantile Bank in Mea She’arim, before
transferring it to several accounts that were not declared to charitable
regulators.
From there, the money
was allegedly funneled to “sections of the [haredi] community,” Rosenfeld said.
Some of the cash was used to buy apartments for yeshiva students, police
suspect.
By Oz
Rosenberg www.haaretz.com January 16, 2012
Includes
Photo Gallery
Two
leading extremist ultra-Orthodox figures were arrested on Sunday on suspicion
of tax fraud and money laundering, sparking Haredi riots in Jerusalem and Beit
Shemesh.
Nachman, a bystander who claimed to be a nephew
of Shapira, said the ultra-Orthodox community just wanted to be left in peace.
“We don’t want to
interfere with the seculars and we don’t want them to interfere with us in our
neighborhoods,” he said.
By Kobi Nahshoni
www.ynetnews.com January 15, 2012
Earlier, more than 30
rabbis from the Eda Haredit marched towards the Russian Compound police station
where they prayed.
By Oz
Rosenberg www.haaretz.com January 15, 2012
Eda
Haredit leader Rabbi Yitzhak Tuvia Weiss said that the arrest of the six is as
if he himself was arrested.
By Telem Yahav
www.ynetnews.com January 14, 2012
The State Prosecutor's Office has filed an
indictment this week against two brothers who molested their younger sister,
Yedioth Ahronoth reported Friday.
The abuse continued for years after a rabbi
advised the parents against involving to the police, saying that such
incidents "happen in many families."
By Jeremy
Sharon
www.jpost.com
January 16, 2012
MK Meir Sheetrit’s law proposes to abolish the
Law for Jewish Religious Services of 1971, through which local religious councils
were established, close all local religious councils, and create religious
services departments within local municipalities to provide the same services
which the councils currently do.
By Israel Moskovitz
www.ynetnews.com January 13, 2012
When Chief Rabbi Yona
Metzger tried to raise the Torah scroll at Kibbutz Ein Harod, he found it
particularly difficult – the ceiling was too low.
Metzger recently
decided to spend Shabbat in the secular kibbutz.
The
process of obtaining Kashrut certification cannot serve as an excuse to charge
extra, at least not in the case of price-controlled food, said Finance Minister
Yuval Steinitz and Agriculture Minister Orit Noked on Monday.
The
order follows innumerable complaints that dairy products bearing the Badatz
stamp of approval sell for as much as 20% above the government-set price.
By Jeremy
Sharon
www.jpost.com
January 10, 2012
According to a recent
kashrut update from the Chief Rabbinate, Häagen-Dazs is not approved by the
State Rabbinical Authority, and stores and outlets with kashrut certification
that continue to sell the ice cream could lose their kashrut license.
The OU said in
response to the rabbinate notice that it continues to give a kashrut
certification to Häagen-Dazs “in line with the ruling of Rabbi Moshe Feinstein
for peoplewho are not particular about consuming only supervised milk.”
By Ari Galahar
www.ynetnews.com January 13, 2012
Senior Chief Rabbinate
officials have sent a letter to local rabbis, claiming that Häagen-Dazs ice
cream is not kosher and therefore must not be marketed in Israel.
Following an inquiry by Ynet's local portal
Mynet, the Shufersal supermarket chain announced that it would pull the ice
cream from its shelves.
Rabbi Gideon Sylvester directs the Rabbis for
Human Rights Beit Midrash at the Hillel House of the Hebrew University of
Jerusalem and serves as the British United Synagogue's Rabbi in Israel.
In
Israel, the Bema'aglei Tzedek organization champions decent working conditions
for people many of whom have no voice to protest.
Its
"Tav Chevrati" or "Seal of Ethical Kashrut" certifies that
our restaurants treat their workers properly and that where possible, venues
offer facilities for the disabled.
...Now,
Bema'aglei Tzedek is encouraging people to sign an on-line pledge to patronize
restaurants that fulfill terms of the Tav.
AP
www.washingtonpost.com January 15, 2012
Israel’s
democracy has long been a point of pride for its citizens — setting the country
apart in a region of autocratic governments. But veteran settler leader Benny
Katzover says democracy is getting in the way of what he believes is a higher
purpose.
“We didn’t
come here to establish a democratic state,” Katzover said in an interview with
The Associated Press. “We came here to return the Jewish people to their land.”
By Jeremy
Sharon
www.jpost.com
January 11, 2012
The High Court of
Justice decided on Tuesday to delay ruling on a petition by anti-discrimination
group Noar Kahalacha until a clearer picture of alleged discrimination against
Sephardi girls in haredi (ultra-Orthodox) schools was available.
Supreme Court
President Dorit Beinisch, who was presiding along with Justices Edna Arbel and
Uzi Fogelman, recommended that a further hearing be held on July 1, after the
school registration process for the 2012/2013 academic year was complete, to
determine whether progress had been made in combating the phenomenon.
She requested that
both Noar Kahalacha and the Education Ministry provide updates at the upcoming
hearing.
In an enlightening talk with Lady Globes last
week, Adina Bar-Shalom, the daughter of Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, rebuffed the
interviewer's remark that the ultra-Orthodox community has earned the labels of
"moochers" and "parasites."
"I don't accept that," Bar-Shalom
replied, adding that the same way the state supports scientists, so too should
it support Haredim who are learning.
"There
are many researchers and only one Shechtman; but even so, all scientists are
living at the state's expense and getting their salaries from the state."
...one
cannot use the term "living at the expense of the state" to create an
insipid analogy, which is manipulative and one-sided and doesn't hold up to any
measure of scrutiny.
By Yair Ettinger www.haaretz.com January 10, 2012
Shas MK Nissim Zeev, for example, told
reporters, "It's natural that such a monster, who is built on hatred of
Judaism and will be a second edition of Tommy Lapid, is going to emerge."
Israel Eichler, of United Torah Judaism, said,
"Whoever hasn't seen the incitement campaign of recent months as the
opening blast of this party are the only ones who can be surprised. We
aren't."
In all
three of the right's losses since 1977, the same factor played a dominant role:
Whenever the threat of religious extremism attains the same prominence as
external threats, the right is in trouble.
Who is
likely to be in Lapid's inner circle? Two names that come up repeatedly are
those of Herzliya mayor Yael German and Rabbi Shai Piron, a rabbi at Petah
Tikva's hesder yeshiva (combining religious studies with military service).
...Piron,
who has worked to foster understanding between observant and secular Jews, is a
close friend, with whom Lapid shares an interest in education.
By Raphael Magarik http://blogs.forward.com January 13, 2012
“Unorthodox,” a documentary film by Anna Wexler
and Nadja Oertelt, is named both for its subjects — questioning and rebellious
Orthodox youth — and for its own production process.
The film follows three
Orthodox teenagers as they become more religious during their “gap years” in
Israeli yeshivot, but their stories are filtered through Wexler’s own narrative
of leaving Modern Orthodoxy after high school.
By Melanie
Lidman
www.jpost.com
January 13, 2012
For the first time in a decade, soldiers in
uniform will be allowed to access the Temple Mount, Judaism’s holiest site.
Due to the sensitive
nature of the area, which also holds the Dome of the Rock and al-Aksa Mosque,
soldiers had been prohibited from entering the area in uniform.
By Melanie
Lidman
www.jpost.com
January 12, 2012
Construction on the controversial Simon
Wiesenthal Museum of Tolerance Jerusalem (MOTJ) is expected to begin in the
coming weeks, despite a number of setbacks including the resignation of the
architects.
According to Museum of
Tolerance officials, the museum is awaiting the permit to begin digging the
foundation, which they expect to receive within the next few weeks.
The
architects of the Museum of Tolerance in Jerusalem have become the latest planners
to quit the project, Haaretz has learned.
...According to the Wiesenthal Center, the new
plan was intended to reflect "the current global economic situation,"
costing only $100 million.
The plan includes exhibition spaces, an
education center, a theater, an auditorium, offices, a restaurant and a gift
shop.
By Gil Shefler www.jpost.com January 13, 2012
Jewish pilgrims should
be allowed to visit the grave of a 19th-century sage in Egypt next week to take
part in an annual ceremony, a Jewish group told Cairo on Thursday.
The Conference of European Rabbis said Egypt’s
decision to prohibit Jews from visiting the burial site of Rabbi Yaakov
Abuhatzeira in the Nile delta this year violated human rights and sent the
world a message of religious intolerance.
AP www.haaretz.com January 11, 2012
Egypt's
Foreign Ministry said Wednesday it had told Israel that it would not be
"appropriate" for Israeli pilgrims to make an annual visit to the
tomb of a 19th-century Jewish holy man in the Nile Delta, as activists
mobilized to block the pilgrimage route.
For the first time, Deputy State Prosecutor
Shai Nitzan has filed charges against Jews who make unauthorized visits to
Joseph's Tomb on the outskirts of Nablus. Four young men have been indicted at
the Kfar Sava Magistrate's Court.
By Kobi Nahshoni
www.ynetnews.com January 15, 2012
Shas' spiritual
leader, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, paid a tribute to former Egyptian President Hosni
Mubarak in his weekly sermon Saturday night. "He has fallen and I pray to
God to save him from his enemies," the rabbi said.
Editor – Joel Katz
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