Editor – Joel Katz
While on a trip to Israel last month, a group of
students from the Solomon Schechter School in Westchester, New York, which is
associated with the Conservative Judaism movement, were denied use of a Torah
scroll for their prayer service at a hotel because they were conducting a
mixed-gender service.
On Shabbat morning, one of the group’s counselors
requested the use of a Torah scroll from the hotel’s synagogue, but the hotel’s
religious supervisor told them they could only use it if their service was not
mixed and they would not call women up to the Torah.
By Lahav
Harkov www.jpost.com March 26, 2012
When asked specifically
if he will allow Conservative rabbis to marry couples, Mofaz said that he
believes civil marriages should be expanded to include Jewish people.
Livni also discussed
civil marriages as the best way to reach a compromise with the rabbinate.
However, Livni was
skeptical about the possibility of ever compromising with haredi parties,
citing her experiences as immigrant absorption minister and justice minister
with matters of conversion and rabbinical courts, in which she was unable to
reach a middle ground.
By Yair
Ettinger www.haaretz.com March 21, 2012
The new
law, which was sponsored by MKs Otniel Schneller (Kadima) and Zevulun Orlev
(Habayit Hayehudi), states that every divorce decree issued by a rabbinical
court must include a date by which the get is to be arranged.
If either
spouse fails to provide the get by the specified date, the rabbinical court
will now be required to reconvene and consider imposing sanctions.
The law
also requires the court to reconvene on a regular basis to track the status of
the get, whether or not sanctions are imposed.
By Jeremy
Sharon www.jpost.com March 21, 2012
Bat-Sheva
Sherman-Shani, director of the Yad L’Isha women’s rights group, said that the new
law effectively tripled the time it would take for the court to convene a
hearing.
She added that the
repeated hearings the new law requires would actually weaken the position of
these “chained women” because it would make them more circumspect about employing
alternative methods of pressure on their husbands, for fear that the court
would penalize them for circumventing its authority.
By Asher
Zeiger www.timesofisrael.com March
21, 2012
On the Mavoi Satum
website, Kahane-Dror refers to the bill as “an important milestone in the
struggle for women’s rights in Israel and for the near equality between the
sexes regarding marriage and divorce.”
She also expressed hope that the
bill will reduce, perhaps completely prevent the abuse and blackmail that
exists under the current law, and will “end the red-tape of the rabbinical
courts” in enforcing divorce laws.
By Kobi Nahshoni
www.ynetnews.com March
20, 2012
The law states that a
date will now be fixed for a "divorce arrangement" within 45 days of
the ruling. If a divorce is not granted at that time, a hearing will then be
held to decide on the imposing of sanctions against the refusing party within
another 45 days.
The court will also
hold a follow-up hearing within 90 days where the sanctions will be reviewed –
until the divorce ruling is fulfilled and granted.
The ongoing failure to
appoint rabbinical judges to the Supreme Rabbinical Court for Appeals has led
Justice Minister Yaakov Neeman to make three temporary appointments to the
court.
Neeman, in
consultation with Sephardi Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar and MK Otniel Schneller
(Kadima), appointed two haredi judges, Rabbi Nachum Prover and Rabbi Yitzhak
El-Maliach, along with Rabbi Eliezer Igra, a national-religious judge.
The selection of Igra
represents the first time in over a decade that a rabbinic judge from the
national-religious community has sat on the court.
Batya Kehana, the
director of the Mavoi Satum divorce-rights lobbying group, said that although
they were very happy with the appointment of Igra, the organization was
extremely concerned with the judicial inclinations of Prover.
So
practicing Orthodox Jews converted by Orthodox rabbis in the USA are now being
refused Aliyah as Jews. The Orthodox world has gone mad.
There is only one
solution, get rid of the rabbinic monopoly on status. Open up the market the
way it is in the USA. Anyone can find someone to do what they want to do, just
as anyone can give degrees.
But if you want to get into a specific college you
have to meet their criteria. In fact some Chasidic groups are much easier to
convert through, but then would you necessarily want to join them?
By Jay P. Lefkowitz http://online.wsj.com
March 22, 2012
Mr. Lefkowitz is a
lawyer in New York City and adjunct professor at Columbia Law School.
The stakes
for American Jews, too, are grave. In the de facto caste system created by the
Israeli rabbinate, the vast majority of American Jews (fewer than 15% are
Orthodox) fail the test of religious purity, and even American Orthodox rabbis
are under pressure to conform to the chief rabbi's standards.
No less
important, the gulf between Israeli and American Jews may widen over the next
generation as Jews whose conversions are not accepted in Israel have children
of their own.
Messrs.
Ellenson and Gordis demonstrate that there is an alternative within Jewish law
to the religious extremism of the Israeli chief rabbinate today.
By Greg
Melikov www.bizjournals.com March
23, 2012
What do Rosa Parks and Tanya Rosenblit have in
common? They are women who stood up for liberty and justice in two democratic
nations more than 5,000 miles apart.
Ironically, both women made their stand in
December although the events were about 56 years apart. Simply, they wouldn’t
vacate their seats on a bus to men.
The Herzliya city council voted Tuesday in
favor of public bus transportation on Shabbat, following the lead of Tel Aviv.
Currently only Haifa and Eilat have public bus service on the Sabbath and
Jewish holidays.
Last month the Tel Aviv city council asked the
Transportation Ministry for permission to run such a service. Yesterday, in a
12-5 vote, the Herzliya council supported limited service on Shabbat along
major arteries; this would include the Seven Stars Mall, the city park and the
seafront.
By Melanie
Lidman www.jpost.com March 21, 2012
The Transportation
Ministry ordered a halt to Friday evening shuttles from the Hebrew University
to the center of the city last week on the basis that they were operating
public transportation without a license.
According to student
union spokesman Amir Koren, any private organization or individual can rent a
bus, including during Shabbat, but the driver cannot charge on a per passenger
basis.
Students were previously paying 5-6 shekels for each trip, but now the
student union will pay the entire cost of the rental in order to continue the
shuttles.
By Melanie
Lidman www.jpost.com March 21, 2012
MK Nitzan Horowitz (Meretz) joined Jerusalem
Meretz activists for a pub crawl on Wednesday night in downtown Jerusalem to
hand out copies of his new guide about Jerusalem spots that are open on
Shabbat.
By Elana
Sztokman Opinion http://blogs.forward.com March 22, 2012
Ruth the
Moabite is the ideal Jew. It is no accident that she has become the
paradigmatic convert.
She was
more deeply Jewish than many Jews are, Jews who turn away from the pain of the
other, Jews who are so fixated on their own navels that they can no longer even
feel what the other is feeling.
Ruth was
more connected to the Divine than some who people claim to speak for Torah, who
twist and distort Torah to hurt people — to hurt women — who erroneously think
that it’s God’s will to place women behind curtains or in backs of buses
or under layers of clothing. God is compassion, and Ruth reminds us of that.
I
personally do not know what it means to be a complete or a partial Jew;
moreover, I reject any demand that I need to live a full rather than a partial
Jewish existence. This is a demand that many orthodox Jews (even though by no
means all) feel entitled to make.
I am sure
that A.B. Yehoshua rejects their definition of ‘full Jewishness’. But why
should his own definition of ‘full Jewishness’ as living in Israel have any more
claims to legitimacy than that of the ultra-orthodox or the national-religious
that you cannot be a full Jew outside Orthodox Judaism?
Donations by U.S. Jews to Israeli nonprofits
have doubled during the past 12 years, according to a first-of-its-kind study
conducted by professors at Brandeis University.
The study, scheduled to be completed in late
April, disproves the widely held view by many Israelis that philanthropic
donations from the United States have dropped over time due to economic and
political reasons.
In fact, the study - previewed last week during
a hearing by the Knesset Subcommittee for the Relations of Israel with World
Jewish Communities - suggests quite the opposite.
Immigration to Israel from North America and
Europe decreased last year even though these places were mired in financial
crisis, the Immigrant Absorption Ministry said.
Immigration from the United States and from European nations facing growing unemployment increased in both 2009 and 2010, but that trend halted last year, it stated.
The annual event,
organized by Nefesh B’Nefesh together with the Ministry of Immigrant Absorption
and the Jewish Agency for Israel, offered participants workshops and seminars
on how to find employment in the Jewish state should they decide to make aliya.
The caucus, which was initiated by The
Jewish Agency, will act to strengthen the ties between Israel and the Jewish
world. Measures will include legislation and an increase in dialogue between
members of Knesset and global Jewish leaders.
A particular emphasis will be
placed on strengthening the connection between Jewish young people abroad with
Israel, and with the world Jewish community.
The caucus’s activities will be
conducted in coordination with the Ministry of Public Diplomacy and Diaspora
Affairs, and in partnership with the Jewish Agency, whose work strengthening
ties with Jewish communities abroad is historic.
Among the many extremist voices reverberating in
the public arena, Rabbi Eli Sadan is trying to present an alternative, one that
is halachically and socially moderate.
He claims that this is the voice of the silent
religious-Zionist majority – "these statements represent at least 80% of
the religious public," which is why he chose to write a pamphlet titled
"A Direction for the Religious Zionists" that tries to help people
from the sector of society to find the right words to avoid the general criticism,"
in his words.
By Yedidya Atlas Opinion www.algemeiner.com March 20, 2012
The author currently holds the rank of Lt.
Colonel in the IDF reserves.
Mr. Hersh seems incapable of distinguishing
between “Haredim”, “National-Religious” and “settlers”, since he mixes them all
together as one group.
...Despite Mr. Hersh’s attempt to impugn Haredi
soldiers, the nine cadets in question were identifiably of the
“National-Religious” sector and not “Haredim.”
Rabbi Elyakim Levanon was not involved at all
in their quietly slipping out the back row of the darkened auditorium, and was
not involved in talks with the commanders of the unit or Officers Training
School.
...There is no other university in the country that requires (Jewish) religious studies along with academic courses, and there is no other university in the country that restricts specific courses to men or women.
Is the requirement that women who participate
in specific courses be married for at least a year more problematic than
keeping men out of them, or Arab women who have been married for a year or
more? [...]
Prof. Elimelech Horowitz
Talmudic studies department, Bar-Ilan
University
Editor – Joel Katz
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rights reserved.
