Editor – Joel Katz
By Mati
Gill Opinion http://blogs.timesofisrael.com
March 29, 2012
The writer
served as bureau chief for the former Israeli minister of public security and
is a Captain (res) in the IDF.
No
Orthodox religious establishment should have the power to deny me and my fellow
Israelis our basic human and civil rights.
...Economic monopolies
have been rightfully targeted in Israel’s social justice movement. It’s time
for us to focus on the religious monopoly that directly affects all our lives.
I’m a proud Israeli and Conservative Jew, and I’m mad as hell, and I won’t take this anymore.
By Aviad Glickman www.ynetnews.com April 2,
2012
The Reform Movement, the Israel Movement for
Progressive Judaism, Professor Asa Kasher and several other Jewish groups filed
a High Court petition Monday urging the criminal prosecution of rabbis Yitzhak
Shapira, Dov Lior, Yitzhak Ginsburg and Yosef Elizor.
The four penned the controversial book "The
King's Torah," which the petition says contains racist statements that
constitute incitement and sedition.
By Aaron
Howard http://jhvonline.com March 29, 2012
Interview
with Anat Hoffman
“In
Israel, we have 4,000 state rabbis, a billion-and-a-half-shekel industry
dealing with kashruth, almost 63,000 students who are exempt from the army and
devoted to Torah study – at the cost of three quarters of a million shekels
(about $250,000) each, plus an army of eruv inspectors, mikveh inspectors,
shatnez inspectors.
So yes, the Orthodox religious establishment has a economic
monopoly with a tremendous interest in maintaining its economic power.”
By Jeremy
Sharon www.jpost.com April 3, 2012
The review, produced by the pluralistic Hiddush
organization, said that despite widespread discussion of the issues in the
Knesset, particularly regarding discrimination against women and haredi enlistment in the IDF, few practical achievements were made in
addressing these concerns.
Hiddush also singled out MK Moshe Gafni of the
ultra- Orthodox United Torah Judaism party for obstructing the implementation
of the Trajtenberg Committee’s recommendations pertaining to education and
employment in the haredi sector.
Hiddush’s Director, Reform Rabbi Uri Regev, said
however that the only way to deal with the issue in light of “haredi
obstructionism” is for Likud and Kadima to form a “civilian government” without
any ultra-Orthodox parties – in order to carry out “a revolution for religious
freedoms and achieve equality in sharing the burden of military service.”
CWJ’s petition states that the law reserving
four places for men without a similar number for women is a serious affront to
justice and equality.
“This law contradicts the State’s commitment to
eliminating all forms of discrimination against women,” says attorney Susan
Weiss, director of CWJ.
“It also contradicts the 1951 Equal Rights Law, which
mandates fair representation of women in public bodies.”
By Rabbi
Josh Yuter Opinion http://joshyuter.com March 30, 2012
The problem of agunot
is serious, as are the consequences for permitting ahalakhically married
woman to remarry.
But this is not a new problem; even the Talmudic sages
recognized the difficulties of agunot and even responded with their own
enactments, but within their parameters of halakhah.
Rabbi Yitzhak Levy is the leading candidate to
replace Rabbi Haim Druckman as head of the conversions authority, Ynet learned
Thursday.
Levy's candidacy is promoted by the locator
committee formed to find a replacement for Druckman.
According to a report in Makor Rishon, Levy's in
favored by both the Prime Minister's Office's and Chief Sephardic Rabbi of
Israel Shlomo Amar.
Mr. Lefkowitz blames the Orthodox for causing a
rift in the community through rulings that affect only a minimal number of
conversions, but he cites approvingly the Reform movement's recognition of
patrilineal descent, in opposition to both the Orthodox and Conservative
movements, even though this will affect the religious status of hundreds of
thousands of children.
By Akiva Novick www.ynetnews.com March 28, 2012
Chief IDF Rabbi Rafi Peretz
has established a new Military Rabbinate division in recent months to deal with
the identification of fallen troops – similar to the civilian organization
ZAKA.
The rabbinate is also
looking into acquiring an advanced apparatus that cuts the DNA recognition
process from eight hours to less than an hour.
By Yossi
Verter www.haaretz.com March 29, 2012
The
social protest, he told Haaretz in a telephone interview on Wednesday, will
center primarily on the "unequal bearing of the burden" - in other
words the fact that Haredim aren't drafted.
He emphasized that
“the Tal Law” is splitting the coalition and that there are coalition members
that would prefer early elections over actually resolving the issues in
dispute.
By Shmuel
Rosner Opinion www.jewishjournal.com
April 1, 2012
Interview
with Dr. Shlomi Ravid, the director of the Center for Jewish Peoplehood
Education, discusses Zionism and the role of philanthropy in Jewish life.
The belief
in Jewish Peoplehood provides the ideological and conceptual foundations of
Zionism. Zionism is after all the belief that the Jewish People is entitled to
a national home.
You can’t
really support the State of the Jewish People unless you recognize and believe
in Jewish Peoplehood.
Here again
the dichotomy is false. It exists on the part of those Zionists who turned the
means into an end, and believe that we are not a People with a State but
actually a State with a People.
I happen
to be a second generation Zionist, son of Israeli pioneers, whose Zionism is
based on his belief in Peoplehood.
By Melanie
Lidman www.jpost.com April 1, 2012
More than 100 boys,
all of whom have lost a parent, will celebrate a mass bar mitzva ceremony at
the Western Wall on Monday, in the 21st annual communal bar mitzva organized by
the Chabad movement’s volunteer wing.
Rabbi
David Shabtai, MD, is the author of “Defining the Moment: Understanding Brain
Death in Halakhah,” available at DefiningTheMoment.com
The Rabbinate’s importance lies not in rabbinically
approving a final decision on the matter or in providing “supervision” for
medical procedures.
Rather,
the Chief Rabbinate must remain involved because it represents Judaism’s most
ancient system of ethics and values.
After all, this is what defining what
death means and determining when it occurs is really about. Whether the law
should accept or reject the Rabbinate’s position, is a separate question.
By Suzanne
Selengut http://thejerusalemreport.wordpress.com
March 26, 2012
When Rivka Schwartz (not her real name), a Haredi woman,
received an invitation to a women’s lecture at a private home in her Jerusalem
neighborhood, she stashed it aside.
The lecture run by a Jerusalem women’s nonprofit organization
called Bishvilaych – the Evelyne Barnett Women’s Comprehensive Health Center,
was heavily endorsed by rabbis in her community and although the wording was
vague for modesty reasons, Schwartz understood it would offer important
information on breast cancer prevention. Still, her hectic schedule as a
mother to a large family meant she had to pass.
It was not until five months later, after finding a lump in
her breast, that she remembered the invitation.
The Price of Uncertainty
By Prof.
Shaul Magid Opinion www.shma.com April
2012
Shaul
Magid is the Jay and Jeannie Schottenstein Professor of Jewish Studies in
Modern Judaism at Indiana University Bloomington and a member of the Advisory
Board of Sh’ma.
Many of us
were deeply disturbed by the exhibition of Haredi, or ultra-Orthodox, zealotry
in Beit Shemesh, a bedroom community outside Jerusalem, earlier this year.
Many
essays were written about the uncouth Haredim and their uncompromising beliefs,
about the political ramifications of such egregious behavior in Israel’s public
space, and about the decline of Israel’s cosmopolitan civility.
But these
events of zealotry also raise theoretical questions that are perhaps less
popular, albeit no less important, for understanding the present state of
Judaism.
By Yehiel Poupko Opinion www.shma.com April 2012
Rabbi
Yehiel E. Poupko is Judaic Scholar at the Jewish United Fund/Jewish Federation
of Metropolitan Chicago.
Magid accurately describes the current state of belief among many Jews and
Westerners. This description does not include me or many other Orthodox Jews.
My faith affirmations are absolute truth claims.
When I say, “I believe,” it is
by definition an exclusionary statement. Some Jewish faith affirmations deny
something sacred to me as a believing Orthodox Jew. The same is reciprocally
true for my faith affirmation.
By Laura
Shaw Frank Opinion www.shma.com April
2012
I wish for
the impossible: for the Haredi extremists to visit our school’s Room 228 on a
Monday morning during second period, they might think differently.
It is their
sequestering themselves from anyone who believes differently that allows them
to think they are the only ones who know the truth — the only ones who know
what God wants.
By Jeremy Sharon www.jpost.com
April 2, 2012
Rabbi Gilad Kariv, executive director of the Israel
Movement for Progressive Judaism, described the challenge of dealing with
refugees and immigrants as “the most important moral test for our society.”
The State of Israel, he said, like all other
states in the Western world, has to develop immigration policies and take
necessary steps to secure its borders.
Rabbi Benny Lau, a prominent national-religious
figure and rabbi of the Ramban Synagogue in south Jerusalem:
“What we must do as a
Jewish society is design policies according to the Torah, which recognize the
foreigner who lives among us as a human being with his own identity,” he said.
Some 20 representatives of community centers
belonging to the Keren Kehilot organization met with Finance Minister Yuval
Steinitz recently to discuss a possible budget increase for the Zionist
religious group.
Shay Tuval, who heads Keren Kehilot, an umbrella
organization coordinating over 50 "Garin Torani" centers nationwide,
told Steinitz that State funding for the movement remained unchanged for the
past 15 years, despite the growth and development it has undergone.
Editor – Joel Katz
All rights reserved.
