Editor – Joel Katz
By Kobi Nahshoni
www.ynetnews.com April
11, 2012
Representatives of the
non-Orthodox Jewish movements in Israel have complained to the tourism minister
and the minister of public diplomacy and diaspora affairs against Israel's
hotels, which they claim are systematically discriminating against tourist
groups from abroad by not allowing them to hold prayer services according to
their customs.
Executive Director and CEO of the Masorti Movement Yizhar Hess said: "There is no connection between the rules of kashruth and their enforcement in the kitchen and the activities in other departments of the hotel...”
By Judy
Lash Balint, Joint Media News Service www.jewishjournal.com April 10, 2012
A quiet
revolution is taking place in the Israeli education system.
When the next
school year begins in September, a third stream of state-approved schools will
join the existing secular (mamlachti) and religious (mamlachti dati)
school systems that have defined Israeli education since the founding of the
state.
According
to Rabbi Michael Melchior, founder of Meitarim, the Network for Jewish
Democratic Education, Knesset approval in February to implement a comprehensive
State Pluralistic Education System will encourage students from both observant
and secular backgrounds to study together, with a curriculum based on Jewish
values of tolerance, Jewish peoplehood and humanism.
By Nathan
Jeffay www.thejc.com April 11, 2012
A new service
allows diaspora Jews who want to marry in Israel to organise their marriage
licence online.
Thousands
of Jews fly to Israel to get married every year, but they have long been
daunted by the bureaucracy of applying for a marriage licence from Israel's rabbinate.
Over the
years many have given up and circumvented the Israeli rabbinate, bringing their
own rabbi from abroad and registering the marriage back home.
But given that
Israel law states that marriages can only be performed by the national
rabbinate, this has been seen as legally problematic.
JPost.com
Editorial www.jpost.com
April 10, 2012
Bringing together
religious and secular Israelis in a military framework entails compromise on
both sides.
Secular soldiers need
to understand that enforcing kosher rules enables their religious fellows to
serve with them.
But religious soldiers
and their rabbis also have an obligation. They should do their best to find
leniencies in Halacha where possible so that secular soldiers are not forced to
endure unnecessary burdens.
Whether the issue is
gender segregation, threats to refuse military orders to evacuate a settlement,
or adherence to Shabbat, religious soldiers and their rabbis should embrace
moderation, not religious extremism.
By Jeremy Saltan www.jewishpress.com April
16, 2012
The human
resources division of the IDF reported last week that they were forced not to
draft 100 ultra-orthodox men that would have enlisted due to cutbacks in
per-soldier finances from the treasury.
Asked why
the Treasury cut down on the financing, the officer said: “The cost of a haredi
soldier is very high, we have to pay him for family costs, special training
(without women), special food, Torah lessons – all these things cost money.
We
get 5400NIS per month per soldier from the treasury, and they needed to
cut down to make the budget for 2011.”
By Jeremy
Sharon www.jpost.com April 16, 2012
Several prominent
national-religious rabbis have expressed support for Lt.-Col. Shalom Eisner,
the officer who was filmed striking a pro-Palestinian activist in the face with
his M-16 rifle.
Former IDF chief rabbi
Avihai Rontzki has also weighed in on the incident, and slammed what he labeled
“an instinctive and impulsive” reaction against an officer who has “given his
life everyday for the sake of the Jewish nation.”
By Meir Wikler Opinion
www.haaretz.com April
15, 2012
Dr. Meir Wikler is a
Brooklyn based psychotherapist, author and lecturer.
When Yad
Vashem in Jerusalem opened its new wing, known as The Holocaust History Museum,
in 2005, it was much ballyhooed as a state of the art, multi-million dollar
Holocaust museum to top all others.
While
praise for the new museum wing has poured forth from dignitaries and laymen,
the unified opposition of so-called ultra-orthodox, or Haredi Jewry, has stuck
out like a sore thumb. Why have Haredim been so upset?
By Iris Rosenberg
www.haaretz.com April
15, 2012
Iris Rosenberg is the
Spokesperson at Yad Vashem, Jerusalem.
Meir Wikler’s latest article on what he perceives as bias against Haredim
at Yad Vashem is replete with misinformation.
To
claim, as his headline does, that “Yad Vashem honors only Holocaust’s secular
victims” is outrageous and can only be a result of an unfounded bias.
By Avi
Rath Opinion www.ynetnews.com
April 11, 2012
How simplistic and
shallow it is to define “religious” and “secular” based on superficial,
irrelevant criteria.
We got so used to the stereotype whereby anyone who has a
beard and sidelocks is automatically religious, not to mention a rabbi, while the
guy with the ponytail or earring is automatically classified as a secular.
…The time has come to
mature and leave this childish approach behind.
By Jeremy
Sharon www.jpost.com April 16, 2012
The Jerusalem District
Court postponed Monday morning the evidentiary stage in the trial of Rabbi
Motti Elon for alleged indecent acts, in order to allow the defense team time
to review the new material and to present its response to the state attorney’s
office.
Jerusalem District
prosecutors requested last week to add four new witnesses to the case to
testify about the rabbi’s custom of hugging his students, as well as the
testimony of a social worker who says she saw one such event.
Rabbi Dr. Haviva
Ner-David is a rabbi, teacher, and writer living on Kibbutz Hannaton in the
Lower Galilee in Israel.
In Israel,
mikvaot (ritual baths) are generally run by the Israeli Rabbinate, which
does not recognize non-Orthodox conversions and therefore does not even allow
such conversions to take place in their state mikvaot.
… I had a
dream of turning the Hannaton mikveh into a pluralist mikveh
where anyone (man or woman, gay or straight, single or married, Orthodox or
religiously liberal, Jew or non-Jew) who wants to immerse could do so, and
where the terms and conditions of the immersion would be up to the one who is
immersing.
William Kolbrener, a professor of English Literature at Bar
Ilan University, writes widely on Jewish life and culture; his Open Minded Torah: Of Irony, Fundamentalism and Love is published by Continuum (2011).
The zionism I advocate, however, the zionism with a small
"z," has modest aspirations, not messianic pretensions. My
strong, even passionate, allegiance to a weak zionism, a liberal zionism, even
an American-style zionism, aspires to cultivate a neutral public sphere,
paralleling that of the American context.
But like its counterpart, the Israeli public sphere, though
putatively "neutral," would continue to be shaped by the history, culture
and traditions—even the symbols, and especially the calendar—of the majority
Jewish culture.
This is a zionism confident in an inclusive and diverse
public sphere, one which will cultivate a growing separation between religion
and State as a place for exchange, not coercion.
By Leonard
Fein Opinion http://forward.com
April 8, 2012
Holding Israeli citizenship in itself is hardly a
sufficient condition for being a “complete Jew.” Even Yehoshua recognizes that.
He does, however, argue that we in America do not fulfill even the necessary
condition for Jewish completeness, which is geographic. We here are in an
existentially wrong place.
By Yehuda
Kurtzer Opinion www.tabletmag.com April 6, 2012
But if Yehoshua’s argument hinges on the second approach—that
living in Israel enables certain possibilities for Judaism that are not
possible without sovereignty—then he may actually be right. But he is only half
right.
Believers Documentary - Official Trailer 1 - Judaism from Aaron Porteous on Vimeo.
By Tamar
Rotem www.haaretz.com April 12, 2012
Aliza
Lavie has traced their history and customs and collected every detail she could
in order to shed light on the role of women in Jewish ritual and in the
community.
The result is a new book, "Minhag Nashim: Masa Nashi shel
Minhagim, Tekesim, Tefilot Ve'siporim ("Women's Customs: A Journey of Jewish
Customs, Rituals, Prayers and Stories" (Yedioth Books, Hebrew).
Editor – Joel Katz
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