Editor – Joel Katz
Religion
and State in Israel is not affiliated
with any organization or movement.
By Shmuel Rosner
A vast
majority of Israelis have repeatedly expressed their support for integrating
Haredis into the military. They also support (if not with similar zest) their
integration into the workforce. But it’s not clear whether they've considered
the long-term risks.
A yeshiva
student who refused to report to the IDF recruitment center, after a senior
rabbi called on his followers not to respond to draft notices, says he would be
"glad to go to prison."
The young
ultra-Orthodox men who obeyed the call of Rabbi Shmuel Auerbach, leader of the
radical Lithuanian Orthodox faction, are defined by the army as defectors and
will be handled by the Military Police for failing to show up at the
recruitment center after being called up three times.
In light
of recent government proposals widely viewed in the hareidi world as a threat
to Torah study, hareidi-religious leader Rabbi Aharon Leib Shteinman issued a
call Wednesday to Jewish men to learn Torah for five days straight.
The three
MKs of Degel Hatorah, the non-hassidic component of the United Torah Judaism
party, met with spiritual leader of the haredi world Rabbi Aharon Leib
Shteinman at the end of last week to discuss with him the details of the Kandel
Plan for increasing haredi enlistment.
By Yedidia Z. Stern
It is
imperative to ignore the discourse of hatred that defines the ultra-Orthodox as
ignorant parasites, and it is equally imperative to ignore the discourse of
hatred that defines the secular as religion haters and enemies of Judaism.
Now
is the time for responsible politics that sees drafting the Haredim while at
the same time taking into account the values that they hold most dear as two
vital sides of the same national coin.
Contrary
to most voters’ desire for immediate action, Yesh Atid’s platform offers
Haredim a five-year grace period before any draft takes effect.
“In five
years’ time there will be so many changes that the Haredim will be able somehow
to bring the old situation back,” warmed Idan Miller, chair of Common Ground,
which lobbies for universal service.
Uri Regev, president and CEO of the
Hiddush organization for religious pluralism, bemoans the half-decade wait
time, which he says is “conveniently scheduled to ‘kick in’ only after the next
elections.”
MK Piron:
"We are in disagreement because the relationship between religion and state
should be different. We are in disagreement because we want everyone to study
the core subjects."
By Hillel
Halkin
Now that they
are nearing 20% and growing fast, Israel must either integrate them or collapse
under their weight. Drafting them is the first and biggest step toward doing
this.
Many, perhaps most, Haredim realize this, even if few will say so in public. Very few of them may want to serve in the army; but how many non-Haredim, if given the choice, would want to serve, either?
Many, perhaps most, Haredim realize this, even if few will say so in public. Very few of them may want to serve in the army; but how many non-Haredim, if given the choice, would want to serve, either?
They are
not given the choice, and neither should Haredim be. Let Israel’s new
government have the courage to enact this principle in law, and other
governments can go on to other things. By then, the situation may be ripe for
them.
By Ohad
Shaked
If you
succeed in reaching an agreement on such an important tissue, you will be able
to reach agreements with the haredim on other matters as well - and certainly
promote your agenda. If you choose not to follow this path, you will be
responsible for a civil war, should it break out.
By Jonathan Rosenblum
If the
government declares all-out ideological war on the chareidi world and insists
on the draft of 18-year-old yeshiva students, then all the trends towards
greater chareidi participation in the IDF, and in the private economy as well,
will likely be reversed.
Participation in the IDF will then be viewed as
submission to a government decree against the citadels of Torah.
By Rabbi Eliezer Melamed
I recall
entering the IDF draft office for a skills assessment exam. The army personnel
were shocked to see a Chareidi girl interested in enlisting. One of the men administering
the exam told me I was crazy and that I should apply for an exemption before it
was too late.
CARTOON: Shas is
chasing after Labor Party leader Shelly Yachimovich, who is their last hope for getting
into Israel's next coalition. If they
don't succeed in wooing her into Netanyahu's coalition, they'll sit together in the
opposition.
Yacimovich
has become the Haredi parties’ last hope. Without her, they are doomed
to the hell of opposition. But she continues to hold firm. “Our decision is
final,” she told her party’s MKs on Monday. We’re preparing with full force to
be an effective, fighting opposition.”
By Aviad Kleinberg
The
ultra-Orthodox in Israel chose the political arena because they want to enjoy
the best of both worlds. Now that there is a possibility that they will be
treated like any other player, they yell "Gevalt! A community in Israel is
being boycotted!" But this is not true. No one is boycotting the haredi
community.
Shas
co-leader Aryeh Deri looks set to record his second failure since reentering
politics last year: His enthusiastic support for Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu, a key element of his strategy throughout the election campaign, now
looks like a losing bet on a horse that’s likely to buck him off, together with
all the other ultra-Orthodox representatives in the Knesset.
With Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu apparently moving toward forming a coalition
government that does not include Israel's ultra-Orthodox Jewish political
parties, ultra-Orthodox institutions stand to lose huge sums of state funding.
…
Netanyahu may not be eager to face down the politically powerful Haredi parties
with whom he has long partnered. He is thought not to trust Yesh Atid or
Habayit Yehudi, whose leaders could compete with him for leadership of the
country, and may need Shas and United Torah Judaism's support against them in
the future.
But the
fact remains, if the Haredi parties end up in the opposition, they will lose
major sources of institutional influence.
"This
is a way to generate change in Haredi society – quietly and from the
bottom," he says. "Our three yeshivas could put out 600 graduates a
year, all of them agents of change. They will return to their communities, to
the sudden discovery that they're not such bad marriage prospects after all –
since they keep a Haredi lifestyle and can also support themselves. This is the
way to transmit the message that learning a trade is something good. It's a
foot in the door," says Peleg.
But for
now, this solution is tolerated only for the drop-outs. Most Haredi youth won't
study anywhere but a full-fledged yeshiva. And even this limited program for a
small population must stay out of the limelight, with no mention of civics
studies or army service. That's the only way the rabbis are willing to go along
with it.
By Nati
Tucker
Yair Lapid
and Naftali Bennett, chairmen of Yesh Atid and Habayit Hayehudi, respectively,
have refused to join the government unless Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
accepts their stance and pushes through legislating mandating Haredi
conscription.
But they are achieving the opposite of what they intended: The
Haredim are becoming more extreme in their positions, more insular and less
willing to consider a compromise.
By Shmuel
Rosner
The Haredi
challenge is complex and dealing with it requires setting preferences and
priorities that will dictate recommended approaches.
In any case, we cannot
assume that dealing with the problem requires flexibility (or “submission”)
only from the Haredim, and it is important to understand that the non-Haredi
community, in overcoming one of the challenges, will likely pay a price that it
had not necessarily anticipated in relation to the others.
By Dror
Eydar
Excluding them would
be a historically irresponsible act. The haredim realize that things are not
going to continue as they were. They, too, know the election results.
The
haredi street is ripe for finding a solution. But the representatives of
general society must deal with the issue of equality in sharing the
national-service burden in real and sincere partnership with the haredim.
By David M. Weinberg
Our new
government must help haredim out of the hole they have dug for themselves by
ending the all-encompassing government support system for those not even
attempting to get a modern education or earn a living. The “world of Torah”
will be strengthened, and Israeli society healed.
Over
2,500 Haredi men and women are currently studying law, business, accounting and
health professions at Israel’s Ono Academic College Haredi Campus, while
thousands more have graduated and are gradually enhancing the community’s
capacity for self-sufficiency.
The Rebbe
of Peremyshlyany, Rabbi Meir Rosenboim, appealed to secular leaders to
understand why haredim had no place in the army as they were actually defending
Israel from a great calamity.
By not
studying the Torah and following its precepts, the rabbi said, it was actually
the secular Israelis who caused the dangerous security issues and so had a
greater duty to serve in the army than the haredim.
Here at
Beit Midrash Sci-Tech Kfar Zeitim, Torah studies take place next to vocational
classes in computer technology, electrical training, woodworking and even
agriculture.
The
Industry, Trade and Labor Ministry, along with the Finance Ministry, is
inaugurating career centers for the ultra-Orthodox public in Jerusalem and Bnei
Brak to be run by the municipalities under the ministry’s supervision.
The two
teachers from the Alumim school in Ramat Hasharon, one of them an Arab, had
arrived in Jerusalem on Thursday afternoon to offer their condolences to the
school's principal who had lost her mother.
Jewish law
lets members of the public inform on suspected tax evaders if the wrongdoers
have been warned that they are violating civil and religious law, the Keter
Institute for Economics and Torah said Tuesday.
Rabbi
Shlomo Aviner and prominent kabbalist Rabbi David Batzri say it is permitted to
desecrate Shabbat as part of attempts to prevent romantic relationships between
Jewish women and Arab men.
Dozens
of police and Prison Service officers searched the streets of downtown
Jerusalem on Wednesday for a man imprisoned for six years for refusing to
divorce his wife who escaped from custody by leaping from a bathroom window.
By Renee Ghert-Zand
For
instance, Esther is identified only as “the cousin of Mordechai.” All it says
on the sign for Rachel Imeynu (Rachel the Matriarch) Street is that she was
“wife of Jacob and mother of Joseph and Benjamin.” By way of comparison, King
David is described not as the son of someone, but as “one of the great kings of
Israel.”
Rabbi Dr.
Aharon Lichtenstein, what do you see as the future of religious Zionism and its
greatest challenges in the next 10 years?
I don’t
know what future religious Zionism will look like, but I would like to see
deeper levels of Torah knowledge and commitment, interacting with the needs and
potential of the society in Eretz Yisrael and of Jewish communities in the
Diaspora as well.
One of
the two witnesses set to testify against Rabbi Motti Elon, who is on trial for
sexual harassment, refused to take the stand Tuesday, forcing the prosecution
to drop half of the charges against him at the final stages of the court case.
If you're
a secular Jew and have religious friends, you've probably been invited by them
occasionally to "do Shabbat in our house."
Up until
now, if you accepted the invitation, you would have had to arrive at their home
before the start of Shabbat, but a new halachic ruling aims to change that.
Rabbis
from the Orthodox Beit Hillel organization have issued a ruling that it is
permissible to invite a non-religious person to your home for a Shabbat meal,
even if they will travel by car on the Sabbath itself.
Jerusalem
police closed the Temple Mount to visitors on Wednesday morning after an
altercation between a group of Jewish visitors and a group of Muslim women.
Jerusalem
police removed MK Moshe Feiglin (Likud Beytenu) from the Temple Mount on Monday
morning after the politician demanded entry to the Dome of the Rock, saying he
was exercising his rights as a Knesset member.
A
particularly exotic group of immigrants is expected to arrive in Israel soon:
About 100 Jewish Indians living in a jungle on the banks of the Amazon River in
Peru.
Ethiopian
students from the religious boarding school Hasidim in the north are segregated
in a separate learning stream according to an Army Radio report.
Israel’s
Health Ministry has ordered an investigation into whether government employees
or health workers prescribed a birth control drug to Ethiopian immigrant women
as a way to control the population.
There will
also be a representative of the Ethiopian community on the panel, who will be
chosen by Yesh Atid MK Penina Tamanu-Shata. The new MK recently met with
Litzman and demanded that he “not abet a cover-up of the issue and have it
quickly examined by an investigative committee.” The committee will try to
determine who was involved in setting a policy, if any, of routinely injecting
Ethiopian women with the contraceptive.
Dr
Mushira Aboodia, a gynaecologist working at Jerusalem's Hadassah medical
centre, said the majority of Ethiopian women she had met received Depo-Provera
injections.
Rabbi
Schneur Zalman Revach, from the Institute for the Study of Agricultural Torah
Commandments in Israel, is outraged by [Rabbi Ovadia] Yosef’s statement that
most people in Israel have no tradition of eating locusts and cannot rely on
the marks, even if the insect goes by the name of locust. Revach says Yosef
cannot rule on the issue without examining the specific creatures that landed
in the south this week.
Editor – Joel Katz
Religion
and State in Israel is not affiliated
with any organization or movement.
