Thursday, March 27, 2014

Religion and State in Israel - March 27, 2014

Editor – Joel Katz
Religion and State in Israel is not affiliated with any organization or movement.


CONVERSION
Op-ed: The truth about the conversion bill
By Rabbi Seth Farber

In the past week, the chief rabbis of Israel and major rabbinic leaders of the Religious Zionism stream have been outspoken contesting the new conversion bill. Publishing their comments on Israeli websites, giving speeches and Torah lectures, and speaking to their students, rabbis such as Chaim Druckman, Shlomo Aviner and Yaacov Ariel have all concluded that the present law is a threat to Judaism and the future of the Jewish people.

 … The above-mentioned rabbis speak of three problems with the law:
1. It is legislating halacha and the Knesset has no right to do that.
2. It will recognize non-Orthodox conversions.
3. It ignores the chief rabbi of Israel, who should be the halachic standard- bearer.
Each of these is patently false.


“When you’re centralizing authority, to whom are the people you’ve given this power responsible to?” Rabbi Avi Weiss, founder of the liberal Orthodox rabbinical school Yeshivat Chovevei Torah, told JTA.

“A convert’s evaluation can continue till the end of their lives.”

“There’s no doubt their standards have changed,” Weiss said. “It’s one thing if somebody asks you to make an evaluation. But you’re evaluating conversions that took place 30 years ago, and your evaluation is based on your post-GPS standards. Had the RCA been asked about the conversion 20 or 30 years ago, the RCA would have signed off on it.”

By Shmuel Rosner

The more people opt out of the rabbinate-managed system of conversion, marriage, burial, the closer we get to a tipping point — when enough Israelis will no longer abide by rabbinate rules, it will finally be recognized by Israelis to be what it already is, a nuisance rather than a huge problem.

Then, the question of whether it should be dismantled will become one of less urgency and less importance. Mainly, a question related to the waste of funds on an outdated institution.

By Harry Maryles

The rabbinate should not be looking at how much they dislike a profession or how inappropriate it is for a woman to be in it. What they should focus on is enforcing their own rules about the sincerity of commitment to Halacha by the potential convert.
I therefore see absolutely no justification for the what the rabbinate has done. It is hurtful to the convert and it is hurtful to the Klal in that it will discourage good people from even considering conversion.

By Rabbi Stewart Weiss
[W]e should have been well-prepared for all this. For years, we fought hard to force Russia to lift the Iron Curtain, sincerely believing that our efforts would succeed and that these compatriots of ours would ultimately “come home.” We should have organized, right from the get-go, committees of tolerant, enthusiastic Orthodox rabbis – of the Tzohar or Beit Hillel type – who would have taken the “new recruits” under their wing and guided them slowly but surely into the fold. Utilizing a more lenient halachic approach, rather than taking the strictest line possible, we could have bestowed a proper conversion upon thousands of these people.







RABBINATE/RABBINICAL COUNCILS





KOTEL/WESTERN WALL/WOMEN OF THE WALL


RELIGIOUS SERVICES MINISTRY/JEWISH IDENTITY ADMINISTRATION


EDUCATION

Religious organizations cannot be allowed to meddle in the public school system, while religious schools remain ideologically insular.


IDF HAREDI DRAFT










HAREDI SOCIETY
By Isi Leibler

The power of the radical rabbis will only be reversed if we exercise people power. We must insist that a moderate Zionist rabbinical leadership take control of fundamental issues affecting all Jewish citizens. If the haredi-controlled Chief Rabbinate remains an obstacle, the Modern Orthodox and national religious camp should set up its own independent rabbinate.

By Rabbi Berel Wein

I think that we can all agree that the two main events in the Jewish world of the past century were the Holocaust and the establishment of the State of Israel. These two cataclysmic events changed the present Jewish society radically if not even permanently. Yet much of Orthodoxy inexplicably ignores these two events as though they never happened.






SHABBAT



JEWISH AND DEMOCRATIC STATE
By Tomer Persico


AGUNOT/MARRIAGE


ALIYAH/ISRAEL-DIASPORA RELATIONS






CHRISTIAN COMMUNITY


ETHIOPIAN JEWS


HOLOCAUST


KASHRUT/RITUAL SLAUGHTER



BEIT SHEMESH MUNICIPAL ELECTIONS


RELIGION AND SOCIETY











SHAS


SHMITA


TEMPLE MOUNT



  • Poll: 85% 'non-religious' Israeli boys read Torah on Bar Mitzvah
  • Poll: 60% Israeli youth make sure or try to eat in restaurants which have kosher certificate
  • Poll: 67% of Israeli youth say their family recites Kiddush on Shabbat
  • Poll: 13% Haredi youth plan on joining IDF
  • Survey: 87% of Israeli youth say they eat Shabbat dinners with their families
  • Poll: 25% of Haredi youth identify as 'Zionist' 



Editor – Joel Katz
Religion and State in Israel is not affiliated with any organization or movement.
All rights reserved.




Thursday, March 20, 2014

Religion and State in Israel - March 20, 2014

Editor – Joel Katz
Religion and State in Israel is not affiliated with any organization or movement.


CONVERSION

A controversial bill that would allow local rabbis to oversee conversions to Judaism in Israel passed the Knesset’s Constitution, Law and Justice Committee Wednesday by a vote of 7 to 4.

The bill will now return to the Knesset plenum for its second and third readings, which likely will take place during the Knesset’s spring session


Rabbi Gilad Kariv, executive director of the Israel Movement for Reform and Progressive Judaism, welcomed the new law as well as “any move aimed at making the conversion process easier,” adding that his movement will “stand its ground to ensure that the law remains unchanged during the next reading.”







By Rabbi Uri Regev

By Rabbi Reuven Hammer

This law and that law will not solve the problem. Drastic measures are needed to solve the problems that confront Israeli society in religious matters. Only the elimination of this governmental monopoly, the Chief Rabbinate, will do.



Israeli gossip columns were abuzz this week over news that a reality television star discontinued her conversion to Judaism after the Orthodox rabbinate demanded that she quit her budding acting career.

Yesh Atid MK Rabbi Dov Lipman said Levy’s case demonstrated the need for a new approach to conversion, referencing legislation on the issue currently in the Knesset.


Shortly after the newspaper article appeared, the story broke in the media that Levy had been told she could not continue toward conversion if she insisted on continuing to study acting and working as a performer.

She told the press Sunday that she was shocked by the news that came in a phone call from the rabbi she was studying with toward conversion, who was acting as her liaison to the conversion court. He said he was told by the conversion authority that “An acting career does not go together with the spirit of the religion.”


"Dear Alin Levy,
There’s something I want to say to you: Don’t convert to Judaism. Don’t apply to convert.
Keep your distance from the rabbinate, from its rabbis, its judges, its clerks, its kashrut inspectors…"




KOTEL/WESTERN WALL/WOMEN OF THE WALL

By Bonna Devora Haberman

By Vanessa Ochs

By Shulamit Magnus

By Rachel Cohen Yeshurun


SHABBAT

Mayor Huldai replied to the letter on Tuesday and stressed that only one percent of service-providing businesses could operate, and only in places and areas where their operation does not cause disturbance.

Last month Tel Aviv's city council authorized a new proposal which paves the way for regulating business operation on Saturday.



The protracted battle to have the capital’s newest and largest cinema operational during Shabbat, despite a government mandate to keep it closed, hit a roadblock Sunday when the Supreme Court ruled that the decision to keep Cinema City open must be put to a vote at Jerusalem’s city council.



By Gil Troy




WOMEN AND JUDAISM





BRIT MILAH/CIRCUMCISION


AGUNOT/MARRIAGE

A number of major Jewish American organisations plan to join forces with Israeli groups to end the Israeli chief rabbinate’s control over marriage, burials and other personal status issues.




RELIGION AND STATE/JEWISH AND DEMOCRATIC STATE





ALIYAH/ISRAEL-DIASPORA RELATIONS







CHRISTIAN COMMUNITY



GENDER-SEGREGATION

Israeli beauty queen
Doron Matalon is a firm believer that good things can come from bad experiences. As a soldier in December 2011, she was sexually harassed by an ultra-Orthodox man on a Jerusalem bus.

Now, as the first runner-up in the recent 64th Miss Israel pageant, she plans to use her newfound fame to help advance the fight for women’s rights in her country.


PURIM





HOMOSEXUAL/GAY/LGBT COMMUNITY






IDF HAREDI DRAFT






By Rabbi Daniel Landes


ORGAN DONATION


BEIT SHEMESH MUNICIPAL ELECTIONS

[Sign] “Women are requested not to use this sidewalk.”
Mayor Abutbul: “There won’t be discrimination! We’ll build yeshivas and mikvahs for secular residents too!”






RELIGION AND SOCIETY







ADINA BAR SHALOM: ISRAEL PRIZE

Bar Shalom, who will receive the award on Israel's Independence Day, told Ynet moments after receiving the news: "I am very excited. This decision surprised me and I am very grateful to those who selected me."

She added that her joy was mixed with sorrow: "All my life I wanted to have my father by my side when anything happy happened in my life. I hope that he can see this from above and that he is glad that I have honored him and the family.

"When father received the prize I was six years old, and I said to myself that I hope he will be proud of me for doing good deeds and caring for others. He wanted to change the world, and I am helping him. It's a sort of closure which only took place thanks to the home I was raised in."





RELIGIOUS ZIONISM



TEMPLE MOUNT
By MK Moshe Feiglin


Editor – Joel Katz
Religion and State in Israel is not affiliated with any organization or movement.
All rights reserved.