Editor – Joel Katz
By Tomer Zarchin www.haaretz.com May
29, 2012
Attorney General Yehuda
Weinstein announced on Monday that he is closing the investigation of two
revered West Bank rabbis who wrote a religious text, Torat Hamelech (The King's
Torah ), which argues there are times when Jews are allowed to kill gentiles
who pose no physical threat of violence.
The authors are rabbis
Yitzhak Shapira and Yosef Elitzur, while the text was endorsed by leading
Chabad Rabbi Yitzhak Ginzburg and Kiryat Arba Rabbi Dov Lior.
"Evidence issues
enjoin the closing of this case," wrote Weinstein. "Negative
responses to this book can be made at the public level."
By Jeremy
Sharon www.jpost.com May 28, 2012
Director of the Reform Movement in Israel Rabbi
Gilad Kariv said that closure of the case sends a message that “racial
incitement is permitted in Israel and bears no price.”
“This is the most racist book written in Hebrew in recent years,” Kariv continued. “This is a dangerous message that will lead not just to more words of incitement, but also to actions.”
By Aviad
Glickman www.ynetnews.com May 28, 2012
The attorney general
also stated that it was "obvious that the decision to close (the case) was
not in any way an expression of acceptance for the serious statements presented
in the book. The opposite is true, the statements are, according to the
attorney general, deserving of condemnation and denunciation."
See also:
By Anat
Hoffman Opinion http://blogs.rj.org May 14, 2012
For some reason, when ideas are
put down in a book they are given more authority. Seeing something crazy in
writing makes it literature, and if it is written in Hebrew it is holy. The
book I am talking about today is neither literature nor holy. It is simply
evil.
Rabbi Aharon Yehuda
Leib Shteinman, one of the leaders of the Lithuanian branch of haredi Judaism:
"There are eight
billion people in the world. And what are they? Murderers, thieves, brainless
people… But who is the essence of this world? Has God created the world for
these murderers? For these evil-doers? "
JTA www.haaretz.com
May 24, 2012
Belgium’s health minister said she was
“profoundly troubled” by the behavior of her Israeli counterpart, Yaakov
Litzman, after the haredi Orthodox minister refused to shake her hand at a
conference.
The
failure of haredi yeshiva students to do army service is most responsible for
the perception of haredi detachment and indifference.
But even
here, the inference is wrong. Haredim do not claim that they have no
responsibilities to their fellow Jews in Israel (though they are far more
likely to frame those duties as owed to the Jewish people than to the State of
Israel). Rather, they believe that their Torah learning is a vital component
not only of national security but of national prosperity.
Given
Israel’s remarkable achievements in both the military and economic spheres,
those claims cannot be rejected out-of-hand.
… [W]ithout a belief in Sinai, it is hard to
fashion a coherent account of the Jewish historical mission or even to
articulate why the continued existence of the Jewish people, and by extension
the State of Israel, matters.
By Roni Shuv Opinion www.haaretz.com May
28, 2012
After
watching the first part of Amnon Levy's highly-rated documentary series on the
ultra-Orthodox ("The Haredim," recently broadcast on Channel 10) my
instinctive response was, Where is my passport and how does one get a green
card?
… I am not
what I saw on the screen. It is not me, not my family, not my friends and not
one of the Haredim I know. The portrait presented was strange, miserable, at
times primitive, and at other times distorted.
...Who is
a Haredi? A person just like you, with an individual personality and different
customs. It's as simple as that and as true as that.
By Samuel
Sokol www.5tjt.com May 24, 2012
Speaking
at a pre-Jerusalem Day celebration, a holiday shunned by much of the chareidi
community, Amsalem told supporters of the English-language branch of his
recently established Am Shalem [“whole nation”] political movement that
solutions must be found for the issue of integration of chareidim into the
national life of the State of Israel while maintaining sensitivity to their
legitimate religious concerns.
Amsalem
has proven popular—even, he says, among secular Israelis—due to his advocacy of
increased participation of chareidim in the workforce while appealing to
religious Jews by pushing for more Jewish education in secular schools.
By Roni
Linder-Ganz www.haaretz.com
May 20, 2012
The
committee's recommendations are a political bombshell, especially in light of
the fact that the Deputy Health Minister Yaakov Litzman, is ultra-orthodox of
the Gur sect and the United Torah Judaism religious party.
Despite,
this people who work close to Litzman said he will not oppose the
recommendations and will leave the ministry's administration to deal with the
recommendations.
By Samuel Sokol www.5tjt.com May 24,
2012
5TJT: How do you intend to reach out the chareidi
community? How do you respond to the chareidim who say that they cannot follow
you because you disagreed with Rav Ovadia Yosef?
C.A.: I
don’t deal with them. In the chareidi world it is normal that people pasul each
other all the time. We are not against anyone; we respect everybody.
By the
chareidi, someone who doesn’t go on their exact path is considered off the
derech. The chassidim are against the Lithuanians, and the Lithuanians are
against the chassidim. I’m not against anyone.
Whoever
wants to join us should join. I don’t exclude anyone. We don’t want to continue
that path.
By Telem
Yahav www.ynetnews.com May 24, 2012
A single mother has
petitioned the High Court of Justice this week to allow her to complete the
artificial insemination process she had started using a sperm donor – despite
the fact the donor has decided to withdraw his contributions for newfound
religious reasons.
By Danna Harman www.haaretz.com May
27, 2012
It is 2 A.M. at the central bus station in south
Tel Aviv, a place experiencing rising tensions between the locals and the
thousands of African migrants and migrant workers who have made this
neighborhood their home.
“In the Torah you are commanded to love God, your
neighbor – and the love the stranger who lives among you,” says Eran Baruch,
head of the BINA Center for Jewish Identity and Hebrew Culture, which operates
Israel’s first secular Yeshiva, located directly across from the bus station.
By Judy
Lash Balint Opinion http://blogs.timesofisrael.com May 28, 2012
One of the things Jews in the Israel of 2012 do is to observe
the centuries-old Kabbalistic custom of Tikkun Leil Shavuot, a night
dedicated to Torah study, as well as showing up en masse at the Kotel. Anyone
taking part in this Shavuot experience has not only changed him/herself but
contributed to the definition of modern Israeli identity.
By
Mordechai I. Twersky www.haaretz.com May
26, 2012
From
partnered groups and lectures to the traditional sunrise walk to the Western
Wall, English speakers in Israel will have a host of options to choose from
this weekend as they embark upon the annual battle to make it to sunrise as
part of the Shavuot festival's all-night study marathon.
By Jeremy
Sharon www.jpost.com May 25, 2012
The Tzohar rabbinical
association is planning an extravaganza of intellectualism, spiritualism and
Torah study for the traditional all-night learning sessions of Shavuot, which
falls out on Saturday night and Sunday.
By Rabbi
Jeff Cymet Opinion www.haaretz.com May
20, 2012
As a Masorti rabbi who has dedicated his career
to providing access to the traditions of our culture to Israelis, I know that,
despite the great cultural richness of Israel today, much that is essential to
the future of our Jewish civilization is as much at risk of being lost here in
Israel as elsewhere, especially due to government policies in Israel that
inhibit access in Israel to much that is essential and valuable within the
Jewish religious tradition.
As special
as the quality of life is here in Israel, there is still much that we can and
must do to go about improving it.
The writer has a PhD
from Bar-Ilan University in Talmud and Jewish Oral Law, is a rabbinical court
advocate and coordinator of the Agunah and Get-Refusal Prevention Project of
the Council of Young Israel Rabbis and the Jewish Agency.
Bar-Ilan University
has decided to confer an honorary doctorate upon Malka Puterkovsky in a special
ceremony to be held on May 22. With no formal rabbinic training, the Israeli
Ms. Puterkovsky has developed into a traditional Orthodox rabbinic leader. That
is, traditional in all ways but one – she is a woman.
By Andrew
Esensten www.haaretz.com May 25, 2012
For two days each May, the dusty desert town of
Dimona receives an infusion of color and excitement, courtesy of the African
Hebrew Israelite community, which celebrates its "exodus" from the
United States with musical and dance performances, a parade through the city
and a watermelon feast.
The Hebrew Israelites, often referred to as Black
Hebrews, represent the largest community of African-American expatriates in the
world (at approximately 2,500).
They began leaving the United States, which they
refer to as Babylon, in 1967 during the height of the Civil Rights Movement.
By Pascale
Fournier, Pascal McDougall and Merissa Lichtsztral
The
article will attempt to test out this claim and to comprehend Israeli women’s
condition by analyzing the operation of the Sanctions Law, a religious
legislation intended to address the plight of the agunah.
Through
field work and interviews with Israeli Jewish women, this article will attempt
to assess the concrete impacts of religious and secular family law on women.
By Itay Blumenthal
www.ynetnews.com May
28, 2012
A woman who presented the
rabbinical court with extremely suggestive correspondence between her husband
and other women on Facebook convinced judges that his actions
constitute infidelity.
AP www.washingtonpost.com
May 23, 2012
Israeli
archaeologists have discovered a 2,700-year-old seal that bears the inscription
“Bethlehem,” the Israel Antiquities Authority announced Wednesday, in what
experts believe to be the oldest artifact with the name of Jesus’ traditional
birthplace.
On May
16-17, 2012, the Israel Democracy Institute hosted an international conference
on the Role of Religion in Human Rights Discourse as part of the activities of
its Human Rights and Judaism project, which is directed by Prof. Yedidia Z.
Stern, Prof. Shahar Lifshitz, and Prof. Hanoch Dagan.
Topics to
be discussed at the conference include Freedom of Religion, Freedom from
Religion, Religion as a Source of Human Rights, Religion and Human Rights on
the Ground, and Religion and Gender.
July
30-August 2, 2012 Yale University
By Ruth
Eglash www.jpost.com May 23, 2012
The chief rabbi of Israel’s Ethiopian community,
Yosef Hadane, welcomed on Tuesday the first-ever professional translation of
the five books of the Torah, or Chumash, into Amharic.
By Judith Sudilovsky http://cnsblog.wordpress.com
May 25, 2012
Swiss Cardinal Kurt
Koch, president of the Pontifical Commission for Religious Relations With the
Jews, was warmly welcomed by a largely Jewish audience to an intimate gathering
focusing on Jewish-Catholic relations.
By Jeremy
Sharon www.jpost.com May 28, 2012
A row has broken out
in the Arab community over a bill proposed in Knesset by MK Ghaleb Majadle
(Labor) to shorten the term limit of the president of the Shari’a court system.
The current term limit
is 10 years, which Majadle, the Knesset deputy speaker, seeks to reduce to
seven.
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Editor – Joel Katz
Religion and State in Israel is not affiliated with any organization or
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