Editor – Joel Katz
Israel's Masorti (Conservative) Movement
decided to approve the ordination of homosexual rabbis, in a dramatic vote on
Thursday.
The Schechter Rabbinical Seminary, affiliated
with the movement, will admit gay and lesbian students for training as
spiritual leaders as of the upcoming school year.
In doing
so the Israeli Conservative Movement is joining the American branch of the
movement, whose rabbinical seminaries have been admitting gay students for some
years.
D'ror Chankin-Gould, 28, a gay student at the
American Jewish University, the movement's rabbinical school in Los Angeles,
said the decision was "something that we've been dreaming of for
years."
"It's just been a lot of pain and a lot of
tears and a lot of years to get to this place," said Chankin-Gould, who is
in Israel for a year of religious studies.
"We have now an opportunity for more
committed, wonderful teachers to rise up in Israel and to teach their Torah and
to model for Israeli society and for the Jewish people what it means to include
all of our voices."
Since some
of the professors at Schechter are not comfortable with ordaining gays and
lesbians from a halachic standpoint, we came up with a solution that preserves
the principle of "halachic pluralism," meaning different halachic
points of view are recognized as valid. I commend the board and staff members
who worked this out, I was not part of that process.
No rabbi
will be required to be part of the beit din (rabbinic court) that ordains any
particular individual. Candidates for ordination will be able to choose their
beit din from rabbis serving on a new "rabbinic council" that
Schechter will form.
Thus, if a particular rabbi does not believe it is
halachically proper to ordain gays and lesbians he or she will not be required
to be a part of a beit din for such rabbis.
For Amichai Lau-Levine, who is training for the
rabbinate and is openly gay, news that the rabbinical seminary in Jerusalem
will admit LGBT students next is a personal victory.
“This decision is not just about LGBT rights,” he
wrote in his blog. “It is an important statement about Halachic change,
evolving social-legal norms and the courage to make progress in a society so
suspicious of changes and so badly in need of this fresh approach.”
Rabbi
Rebecca W. Sirbu, is the Director of Rabbis Without Borders at CLAL – The
National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership.
I will never forget the day that myself and
another student met with the then Chancellor Ismar Schorsch.
The two of
us began to passionately speak about the Jewish values which informed our
belief that gays and lesbians should be ordained.
After only
a few sentences had left our mouths, the Chancellor interrupted and said, “Let
me stop you there. Gays and Lesbians will not be ordained at JTS while I am
still Chancellor. It is not going to happen.” Then, he escorted us out of his
office.
If they even apply, gay and lesbian Jews may not
enroll as students of the Schechter Rabbinical Seminary,
Israel’s only program for training Masorti rabbis.
...At the end of the summer of 2007, gay and
lesbian students entered the doors of JTS’ Cantorial and Rabbinical Schools. I
met them (just as I met the other new students), and I was pleased to discover
how wonderful they were.
Many of them were serious about Jewish practice, like
I was. Many of them were serious about their love for sacred texts, like I was.
And many of them were serious about prayer, about Shabbat, about kosher food,
and about the whole shebang, like I was.
The writer, a rabbi,
is the director of ITIM: Resources and Advocacy for Jewish Life and the rabbi
of Kehillat Netivot in Ra’anana.
Beginning in 2002, the
ministry initiated a secret protocol that raised the bar on who is considered a
convert.
Even if one went
through the 10 plagues of conversion, crossed through the Red Sea and accepted
the Torah, one still is not accepted as Jewish by the State of Israel...
unless. Unless one can demonstrate a host of proofs that seem to change with
the winds.
Joel
Alan Katz posted a link to the op-ed on Facebook,
eliciting this from one prominent Conservative rabbi [Rabbi Andrew Sacks, ed]:
I have just returned from Budapest where I led a Seder for Dor Hadash – a Masorti affiliated group of young people. I expect to write about this profound and moving visit very soon.
I would guess that half of the participants were not Halachically Jewish (maybe more). But from my perspective, they were certainly Jewish in all but a technicality. David makes some points that are very worthy of discussion. These points are even more relevant in many of the former Communist countries.
I do not buy “The Rabbinical Assembly of the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism should accept patrilineal descent: I am Exhibit A!” argumant. One could pull out B through Z to establish the opposite.
I rather suspect that patralinial may be the next big controversy in the Conservative Movement.
The Tel Aviv Municipality has formally asked
the Transportation Ministry for permission to operate seven new bus lines in
the city on Shabbat, beyond the Shabbat lines already requested.
Most of
the proposed new lines would connect southern neighborhoods with those in the
east and north of Tel Aviv.
Tiomkin
says the new lines will cover most of the city and decrease the use of private
cars in favor of public transport "in harmony with the policy of the
ministry, which isn't implemented for 60 days a year in Tel Aviv. The cost of
the operation of these [new] lines will be covered by the passengers."
Tel Aviv
Chief Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau issued a harsh response, calling on the mayor to
cancel the decision, saying he was "filled with a feeling of deep
disappointment and pain upon hearing of the council's decision.
www.timesofisrael.com April 19, 2012
Social media-driven political activism took a
new turn over the weekend, when secular groups demanding that buses be allowed
to run in Tel Aviv on Shabbat staged a “message-in” using popular traffic
reporting software Waze.
The point of using Waze was to protest the fact
that the only way to get around Tel Aviv was by car since buses weren’t
available, said Ilai Har-Segor of the Free Israel group.
www.aabgu.org April 18, 2012
“Both
religious and secular communities use their power as consumers, albeit in
different ways, to shape the public sphere,” according to Drs. Guy Ben-Porat
and Omri Shamir of the Department of Public Policy and Administration in BGU’s
Guilford Glazer Faculty of Business and Management.
“The shift
away from the formal political realm is a result of a deadlocked political
system that is no longer able to regulate boundaries between the religious and
secular realm.”
For more than five decades, Leila Jabarin hid her
secret from her Muslim children and grandchildren - that she was a Jewish
Holocaust survivor born in Auschwitz concentration camp.
Although her family knew she was a Jewish
convert, none of them knew of her brutal past.
It was only in the past week that Jabarin, who
was born Helen Brashatsky, finally sat down and told them the story of how she
was born inside Auschwitz, the most notorious symbol of Nazi Germany's wartime
campaign of genocide against Europe's Jews.
“But I
didn’t choose my religion,” he says, “as opposed to Rufeisen, who converted to
Christianity of his own free will as an adult.
In my case everything was forced
on me when I was a few days old. If I were to receive new immigrant status,
that would be the realization of my mother’s dreams; she was a Zionist and
wanted to travel to Palestine. That would have commemorated her name. The fact
that the state is denying me this right – that’s not love of God, it’s simply
fanaticism. It’s fundamentalism. I’m sure that the God of the Jews loves me as
I love Him.”
The
Interior Ministry maintains a dry formalism: “An examination of the details of
the case indicates that the Law of Return does not apply to Mr. Weksler.
The body
of Polish Col. Wladyslaw Kowalski lay in the morgue of Ichilov Hospital in Tel
Aviv for five days. Nowhere in the country could a cemetery be found that would
agree to his final request to be buried "alongside Jews."
The
rabbinate was unwilling to compromise on its principles so that a Christian
could be buried in a Jewish cemetery.
The fact
that he had been declared one of the "Righteous Among the Nations,"
who had saved some 50 Jews during the Holocaust, among them his future wife,
was not sufficient to change that decision - nor was the fact that during World
War II he had himself circumcised as a sign of identification with the Jewish
people.
Its title
sounds dry, and its style is certainly scholarly, but if you want to understand
the roots of Israel’s “culture wars,” a good place to start would be Menachem
Mautner’s “Law & the Culture of Israel” (Oxford
University Press, 267 pages, $60/£35)
Prof.
Menachem Mautner: I think the religious-Zionist group is pivotal to the future
of Israel, less because of its numbers than because of its institutions.
It has
yeshivot, ulpanot, schools, newspapers and journals. It’s less materialistic,
and it’s a group that constantly asks serious questions about the identity of
Israel, how it should look culturally: How do you make one people and nation
out of a society composed of both secular and religious Jews, both Jews and
Arabs?
I’m also
sympathetic because its people are ready to sacrifice for the general welfare
and common good of the state.
Recently the Knesset
was presented with a bill seeking to allow chief rabbis to hold their post for
a second 10 year term in office.
The law is mostly intended to allow the chief
Sephardic rabbi the opportunity of extending his term in office which is why it
has been nicknamed the Amar Law.
The same law would
also enable the Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi Metzger to serve for an additional term,
but the chances of him being reelected are slim.
Yisrael
Beiteinu has submitted a bill which would eliminate Israel's local religious
councils and transfer their powers to municipal governments.
According
to the proposal, the religious councils would be completely eliminated, while
responsibility for the services that they currently provide would be
transferred to local governments. The Interior Minister would be authorized to
establish guidelines governing all aspects of the change.
www.theyeshivaworld.com April 22, 2012
The court was
responding to a petition filed by community residents who feel the religious
council has failed to include all the shuls in the electoral process and
therefore, there is inadequate representation.
The Chief Rabbinate
has decided to delay Jerusalem Day events by 24 hours this year, from Saturday
night to Sunday, in order to prevent any Sabbath desecration that may occur
during preparations.
The decision applies
mainly to private events and isn't mandatory for State institutions; no changes
are therefore expected for national ceremonies planned for the holiday, which
celebrates the reunification of the capital. Jerusalem Day is to take place on
May 20.
Israel is, on top of everything else, a
gigantic open-air laboratory for experiments in Judaism and Jewish identity,
mixing and matching old and new forms, deliberately and on the fly, with vision
and no little improvisation.
One of the more interesting recent
specimens isReligiozionisticus Postreligious.
Everyone, including the species itself,
calls them datiyim l'she'avar, Religious Zionists (datiyim) who
have left—or, more conveniently, Datlashim. Their numbers are growing.
Tom W. Smith,
NORC/University of Chicago
www.norc.org April 18, 2012
Religion and Economic
Liberty
- What does religion say about economic and political freedom?
- Can freedom co-exist with religion?
- Is capitalism not only efficient but also moral?
Ariel
Beery is the co-founder and co-director of the PresenTense Group
Those of us who
still believe in the Zionist dream, who believe the Jewish state is the only
way the Jewish people can truly fulfill their creative collective potential in
the world, need to act fast.
It’s not enough to compare Israel to Western
countries in terms of our quality of life, education, or services.
Nefesh
B'Nefesh brings some some 2,000 new immigrants from North America to Israel
every year.
That they
are mainly religious does not mean they decided to make aliyah because of the
preaching of rabbis or religious figures.
If a small
minority on the fringes of the Orthodox community immigrates to Israel, it is
despite the total silence on the subject of American Jewish religious leaders.
The
previous generation of American rabbis still spoke of settling the land,
preaching that it was a "mitzva" to do so.
Today
Orthodox rabbis and other influential figures have dropped the issue entirely
from their sermons and speeches.
Q. What
transformed you from a Canadian Jewish student activist to a committed Zionist
and suburban soccer dad living in Ra’anana, Israel?
A. I don’t know that I have been transformed. I was born in Israel, grew up in Canada and came back for my [Israel Defense Forces] service. I continue to commute to my office in Toronto.
It’s true that I did not grow up observant and I’m Orthodox today. I’m totally committed to Judaism and Zionism. I wanted my four daughters and son to grow up in the only Jewish state we have.
The family loves being here, and although I still bring organic maple syrup back from Canada, everyone feels at home. As for soccer, I am vicariously living out my fantasies through my 10-year-old son, who was asked to play for a Brazilian youth team when he was only 8.
The various laws of return seem to be working. Fewer Israelis are
moving to the United States while a growing number of American Jews are
immigrating to the Jewish state and more Israelis living abroad are making
their way back home, new immigration statistics show.
The numbers seem to herald a victory for Israel, which has taken
bold steps to keep its citizens from moving away. But the immigration data may
be more indicative of America’s economic woes than of Israel’s growing
attractiveness.
Corporal Maya Liss, a 24-year-old new immigrant
from Los Angeles, received the IDF Award of Excellence this week.
The new olah served as a coordinator for new
immigrants in the IDF’s Meitav unit, which handles the placement of recruits
and discharge of soldiers.
Is liberal
Zionism an oxymoron? These days, it's easy to think it is. Many people on the
left have, reluctantly, accepted that right-wing extremists are today's true
Zionists, and have, therefore, dropped away from Zionism, or have styled
themselves "post-Zionists," or have come to regard Israel as
irrevocably tainted by its Zionist identity.
Book Review: Elana
Maryles Sztokman’s The Men's Section: Orthodox Jewish Men in an Egalitarian World.
Reviewed
by Yoel Finkelman, Published on H-Judaic ,April, 2012
Commissioned
by Jason Kalman, Men of the Minyan
Editor – Joel Katz
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