Editor – Joel Katz
Special
edition on Tal Law alternative coming soon
He thanked the Rabbinical
Assembly President Rabbi Gilah Dror, for "tolerating the unbearable fact
that the state of Israel doesn't recognize her as a rabbi while her son is
serving as an intelligence officer."
Speaking of a bill introduced by MK David Rotem,
which, for the first time in Israeli law would give the Chief Rabbinate
authority over Jewish conversion, Lapid insisted he would do anything in his
power to ensure it disappears.
"Israel can't be the only country in the Western world
not to have freedom of religion," he said. "I will support civilian
marriages and do everything in my power to ensure equality to all denominations
of Judaism. No one can claim ownership over the Jewish God."
Eight years have passed since the IDF issued its
guidelines on Israeli-Jewish identity, titled “Yeud and Yechud” (Mission and Distinctiveness).
The text was drawn up by
order of then chief of staff Moshe Ya’alon, under the direction of Maj. Gen.
Elazar Stern, former head of the Personnel Directorate, in conjunction with
Benjamin Ish-Shalom, a professor of Jewish philosophy and founder and rector of
Beit Morasha of Jerusalem: The Academic Center for Jewish Studies and
Leadership.
The State Comptroller's Report, published
Tuesday, took the army to task for ongoing tension between the Education Corps
and the Military Rabbinate, saying that there was "complete distrust"
between the two bodies. The report also noted a huge increase in military
exemptions for religious reasons.
The comptroller points out that while in the
past the Education Corps was solely responsible for all education activity in
the IDF, recently the Military Rabbinate and others have become involved in
activity, causing ongoing tension between various IDF bodies.
The number of haredim drafted into the IDF is
low, while the rate of those who are rejected or exempt is steadily increasing,
State Comptroller Micha Lindenstrauss stated in his 2012 report, which was
released on Tuesday.
The state comptroller
determined that while the army was able to meet the government's enlistment
demands, it was still not doing enough to recruit haredim.
According to the
report's findings, between 2003 and 2010 the number of potential recruits who
were dismissed from army service after declaring that their main occupation is
studying Torah (Torato Omanuto) climbed by 60%, from 39,000 to 63,000.
Shahar Ilan, director of religious freedom
lobbying group Hiddush:
“The state comptroller here has exposed the sad
truth on the enlistment of the ultra- Orthodox in the IDF,” Ilan told the Post.
“Although there are some important achievements, the rate of increase in draft
evasion [through full-time yeshiva study] is much bigger.”
“The conclusion is obvious: It is not possible to
continue with such a slow rate of improvement, because the demographic increase
in the haredi population is growing much faster than its enlistment rate.”
At a
recent Knesset hearing I attended about women being forbidden to speak on
certain radio stations, the manager of one of the stations told us his solution
for a woman’s voice on air.
He said
that they have a fax machine where women can send their questions or opinions
and a man would be happy to read what they wanted to say on air. He saw this as
an acceptable compromise.
By Allison
Kaplan Sommer www.haaretz.com
May 6, 2012
Charlotte
Fischer, the Executive Director of SACRED (South African Centre for Religious
Equality and Diversity):
“We see
this as part of a much broader policy of removing women from public life that
is sweeping across the Jewish world.
It also involves a rewriting of Jewish
history - where the voice of women has always been present - and the complexity
of halacha.
We see what’s happening to us in South Africa as deeply linked to what’s
happening to women in Bet Shemesh, in Modi’in with the circus, and in Jerusalem
with the buses.”
“Secular politicians in Israel make greater and
greater concessions to the ultra-Orthodox,” Anat Hoffman said, “because they
are a very obedient crowd in a democratic game – they vote in a block, in one
way.”
Hoffman and other
‘Freedom Riders’ post sings to remind riders of the Supreme Court’s decision.
Hoffman told Amanpour, “We went to court representing a variety of Orthodox
women. We won the caseand [the sign] is hanging in every Israeli bus, right
behind the driver.”
The sign reads, “Passengers may sit in any seat of his or
her choosing… harassing a passenger regarding his or her seating choice may
constitute a crime.”
Anat
Hoffman:
“I think we should blow the partition [dividing
the men’s side of the Wall from the women’s side] to hell. We should do a time
share, and give them [the Orthodox] a few hours in the morning, then down goes
the partition, and we can all celebrate, and liberate the Wall once more.”
"I
want American Jews to feel that they have license to make their voices heard in
Israel about this," said Hoffman, a former member of the Jerusalem City
Council who now directs the Israel Religious Action Center, the advocacy arm of
the Reform movement in Israel.
"The
fact that the keys to the holiest site for the Jewish people have been given to
the smallest and most extreme faction of the Jewish world is a shame."
http://blogs.timesofisrael.com May 7, 2012
There are groups that advocate for allowing
Jews to pray on the Temple Mount (I am not referring to those in favor of
rebuilding the Temple on the site currently occupied by the Dome of the Rock),
and there are groups that advocate for greater freedom of Jewish worship at the
Kotel.
But it seems that despite the similarity of the rhetoric deployed in
support of both positions, each group tends to apply these rights and freedoms
selectively.
By Jonah
Rank http://blogs.timesofisrael.com
April 23, 2012
A Religious Misogynist is not only the man who
throws chairs from the men’s section over to the women at the Western Wall. A
Religious Misogynist is also the woman who chides another woman not to sing so
loudly that a man might hear her prayer.
By Gabriella Mervis
Opinion http://womenofthewall.org.il
April 30, 2012
My name is Gabriella
Mervis, and I am the new intern with Women of the Wall. I first decided
to connect with the organization after a horrific Yom Kippur incident during which I innocently wore my Tallis
at the Kotel (admittedly, as an American, I didn’t even know it was illegal)
and I got harassed by a woman claiming to work there.
I felt humiliated,
upset, and saddened by the lack of religious freedom in Israel. Searching
for an outlet to express my anguish and disappointment, I immediately knew I
wanted to be involved with the work of Women Of the Wall.
The first Orthodox
woman to come up to us simply asked what blessing we say when we put on the
talis; the second woman asked if our talises keep us warm; and, so, the
heckling and harassment continued.
By Tomer Zarchin
www.haaretz.com May 6, 2012
A woman who has refused for 16 years to grant her husband a
divorce was put behind bars last week - the first time a woman has been
arrested in such a case.
The 60-year-old woman, a teacher, has appealed to the Supreme
Court, whose president, Asher Grunis, will decide today whether to keep her
under arrest.
...In a hearing, [the
president of the Chief Rabbinical Court, Rabbi Shlomo] Amar told the woman to
make an offer she would consider acceptable, but she has not made one. The case
was returned to the Jerusalem Rabbinical Court, which ordered her arrest after
she failed to appear at a hearing on Monday.
The
author, online editor of Tradition, teaches at Yeshivat Hakotel.
The recent controversy relates to the standards
of conversion and who has the authority to determine them.
Rabbi
Sherman asserted that Israeli population registries must follow the ruling of
leading haredi decisors including rabbis Elyashiv and Eliezer Schach, who had
declared that any conversion that did not entail full-fledged mitzva observance
was meaningless.
He further
contended that his court had supervisory jurisdiction over all courts in the
state’s system, and that in contemporary times all declarations of fidelity to
Halacha remain subject to examination based on future observance.
www.theyeshivaworld.com May 2, 2012
Rabbi Shlomo Dichovsky serves as the
director-general of the nation’s rabbinical court system.
[He] added that he
feels if one stops being shomer Shabbos in 2, 5, or 20 years after giyur, the
beis din cannot retroactively cancel giyur since one cannot know what kavana
one had when one went to mikve.
Rabbi Sherman feels
the beis din can and must retroactively pasul one’s giyur. This is the core of
the dispute which is obviously significantly more complicated.
For the first time in five years, a large group
of Bnei Menashe immigrants from northeastern India is slated to make aliya this
summer.
Some 50 families, numbering upward of 250 people,
are expected to come before the end of August with the approval of the Interior
Ministry, to be followed by another group later in the year. The families will
be settled in the Galilee in coordination with the Ministry of Immigrant
Absorption.
Views
are mixed on taking advantage of Israel's "right of return," ranging
from enthusiasm over settling in the Jewish state to reluctance over being
uprooted and having to find a new home and learn a new language.
"I think it's fair to say that in
absolutely the whole of Africa, they are unique because there are plenty of
other tribes, many, many, many other tribes throughout Africa, who claim to
have Israelite origins," Parfitt said.
"But the (Lemba) are the only tribe who
claim to have Israelite origins who've actually got any genetic proof. There is
this very strong DNA evidence that they came from the eastern
Mediterranean," he said.
…
there's no reason on earth why civil matters such as marriage, divorce, money,
custody and child support should be decided by non-egalitarian religious courts
that are committed not to Israeli law, but to religious law.
So in
the run-up to the next election, a moment before we draft "everyone,"
it's high time to close the rabbinical courts and abolish them.
By Avraham
Burg Opinion www.haaretz.com
May 25, 2012
I have to admit: The status quo has not been static for a
long time now. It's dynamic and moving in one direction: toward religiosity,
not necessarily religiosity of the pleasant kind.
Despite my great
respect for tradition and heritage - the heritage of my father's house - I am
bound to a human sovereign to whom the rabbi must be subordinate, too. The sole
source of consensual authority must be the Knesset, not the beit knesset, the
synagogue.
Several non-Jewish youths recently managed to sneak
onto a trip organized by Taglit-Birthright, the program that sponsors free
trips to Israel for young Jews from the Diaspora in an effort to strengthen
their connection to Judaism and Zionism, Army Radio reported Monday.
Editor – Joel Katz
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