Editor – Joel Katz
www.ynetnews.com
January 31, 2012
The Israel Religious
Action Center (IRAC) petitioned the High Court of Justice on Sunday, demanding
that it instruct the State to appoint a non-Orthodox rabbi in Jerusalem in a
bid to end the alleged discrimination in religious services given to the
capital's residents.
The petition, submitted by Reform and
Conservative rabbis and communities, claimed that there were hundreds of
neighborhood rabbis in Israel – all of them Orthodox men whose salaries are
paid from taxpayers' money.
According to Rabbi Gilad Kariv, executive
director of the Israel Movement for Progressive Judaism, "The State of Israel
is the state of all factions and communities of the Jewish people, and the
Orthodox monopoly over rabbinical services must end.
The writer is CEO of
PresenTense Israel. She previously served as CEO of the Israel Women’s Network.
The most substantial
bias against women that exists today in Israel is perpetrated by the country’s
chief rabbinate, with the backing of politicians and lobbyists, both secular
and religious, who care more about coalition politics than the full and equal
participation of women in public life.
...If we want to break
through this glass ceiling, and ensure women’s equality in the Jewish state, we
must act quickly to change the structure of the rabbinate, to strengthen
requirements for equal representation in all governmental bodies, and to make
the bold statement that the Jewish People do not permit men to have sole
authority over the lives of women.
The writer is deputy
chairman of the World Zionist Organization and a member of The Jewish Agency
Executive. The opinions expressed herein are his own.
“The results of the
survey are evidence that Israeli Jews are committed to two significant values,”
says Dr. Eli Silver, director
of Avi Chai-Israel, under whose auspices the research was carried out:
“preserving Jewish tradition on the one hand and upholding individual freedom
of choice on the other.” What a flavorful idea.
The Chief Rabbinate,
however, doesn’t appear to like it, and is doing whatever it can to squash the
trend of the last several years that has seen a new generation engage with
tradition in non-traditional ways.
United Torah Judaism and Shas vetoed government
support on Monday afternoon for a bill that proposes that two places for women
be reserved on the committee which appoints rabbinical judges, or dayanim, to
the rabbinical courts.
Although the bill was approved for a first
reading in Knesset by the Ministerial Committee for Legislation on Sunday, UTJ
and Shas claimed in Monday’s meeting of coalition faction chairmen that it
would change the status quo in matters of religion and state.
According to the coalition agreement, UTJ and
Shas may veto coalition support for any such measures.
Chief Rabbi Yona Metzger on Monday night called
for dayanim, or rabbinical judges, to shut down the Supreme Rabbinical
Court for Appeal in protest over the ongoing suspension of the appointments
committee for rabbinical judges.
The committee was suspended by the High Court in
November following a petition by the Emunah women’s rights groups protesting
the complete absence of women on it for the first time in 12 years. Emunah
argued that the lack of female representation on the committee violates gender
equality laws.
The Supreme Rabbinical
Court of Appeals upheld a life sentence handed down to a man who has refused
for ten years to give his wife a bill of divorce.
In the hearing in
November, details of which have only now been released, the panel of rabbinical
judges – headed by rabbinical supreme court president Chief Rabbi Yona Metzger
– ruled against Gorodetzki.
In a creative
interpretation of the law, the judges ruled that it is Gorodetzki himself who
is restricting his own freedom, as well as that of his wife, and that he holds
the keys to his personal liberty.
According to a recent
study conducted by the Rackman Center for the Advancement of the Status of
Women at Bar-Ilan University, punitive sanctions are imposed by rabbinical
courts in only 1.5% of the cases in which they are applicable.
Irit
Rosenblum, an attorney, is the founder and executive director of New FamilyOrganization
According
to Jewish law, Liat is "a fatal wife" (isha katlanit ), a type of
"black widow." Marrying her is considered by the ancient sources to
be potentially life threatening.
This is
because a woman who has been widowed twice is suspected of having killed her
husbands, if not actively, then by bringing a curse or bad luck upon them.
And
since the curse could endanger any future husbands, a woman in this position is
forbidden to marry a third time.
...It is
time to end the monopoly held by religion over family life and to allow civil
alternatives for marriage in Israel. Liat Harel's story is only one reason why.
The Jerusalem
neighborhood of Mea Shearim is in a state of uproar after a young
ultra-Orthodox man took a second wife before divorcing the first one.
Pashkevilim denouncing him and his new wife have
been posted on walls across the haredi neighborhood, including pictures of the
woman.
According to a source
in Mea Shearim, the unusual act was aimed at hurting the "Taliban
women" faction, which the bride is affiliated with.
Despite a new
ministerial directive presented to the Knesset on Wednesday instructing burial societies
and municipal rabbis that they may not prevent women from giving eulogies at
funerals, concerns remain that the directive will not be enforced.
Opposition leader
Tzipi Livni, as well as religious rights groups, expressed disappointment that
the renewal of a burial society’s license, which oversees Jewish funeral
ceremonies, is not conditional on compliance with the ministry’s guidelines.
Suddenly, those young people – many of whom are
native Israelis – discover that they are not registered in Israel as Jews. This
means they cannot get married in Israel (or be buried as Jews), leading to
complete undermining of the Israeli awareness among hundreds of thousands of
citizens and the establishment of a society within a society.
In 2005, the Tzohar rabbis'
organization decided to deal with the problem through the Shorashim project,
which provides information to immigrants from the former USSR (and other
countries) and helps them clarify their Jewish status when dealing with the
rabbinical establishment.
There is no
justification for maintaining apparatuses that enjoy such huge budgets for the
sake of so few encounters. We are talking about offices, secretaries, religious
councils’ chairmen, their deputies, and their associates. We should also note
that these people always happen to be haredim, who make a living this way –
that is, we support them in our role as taxpayers.
...I believe that
religious services should be managed within a small unit at the existing
municipal apparatus, and I also think there is no room for imposing fees for
these services. The payment should be included in the municipal taxes
Once there was a secular majority. No more.
That's the finding of a comprehensive, newly published study, "Beliefs,
Observances, and Values among Israeli Jews"...
The illusion of a "secular majority"
has been with us for many years, sabotaging the prospect of forging a
pluralistic Jewish melting pot in Israel.
...The
imaginary melting pot, into which Israel tried in vain to stuff the ultra-Orthodox
and national-religious population groups, never had a chance.
But the vast majority of Israelis consider it
logical to organize the entire life cycle - marriage, divorce, military
service, diet, transportation, burial - according to comprehensive religious
regulations, without any possibility of choice.
This religious steamroller, which is financed
and operated by the state, constantly subverts its sovereign and democratic
foundations...
Indeed,
in the absence of a separation of this kind, there is no substantive difference
between "the national Jews" and "the Haredim" other than
some theological nuances, their lifestyles, and the trappings of the various
political parties they form in order to divvy up the Knesset seats.
...Changing
the face of the country? Separating religion and state? Israelizing and
normalizing our existence? Forget it. After all, we are all Jewish
nationalists.
It is therefore
time for Israeli society to bury a long-lasting myth: the belief that secular,
liberal Israelis are the mainstream that in the future will once again own the
country.
...Secular
liberals must take a radical step. We should refuse to participate in the
perversion of democracy that says that majorities should crush minorities.
...There
is, of course, a third option, where the right and the religious come to
understand and accept the basics of liberal democracy and respect minority
rights. But that sounds like science fiction.
The results have
far-reaching implications for the basic assumptions of our communal life here.
The Jewish State is gaining strength. Its first leaders threw their prayer
shawls and tefillin overboard, and now we are bringing them back from deep
water.
But, in the meantime, we must not be silent. Now is the time to
speak up, as progressive Jews, as modern Jews, as authentic Jews.
We must demand, through the
purse strings of the American Jewish community, that our federations and
organizations publicly withhold funding from these extremist groups that have
turned a beautiful religious tradition into an ugly mob cloaked in religious
garb, who spit on women, attack Israeli soldiers and policemen, and would just
as soon send most modern Jews to the back of the bus, if not under it.
www.ynetnews.com
February 1, 2012
Tourism Minister Stas
Misezhnikov (Yisrael Beiteinu) said that his party will begin to promote legislation
that touches upon issues of state and religion even if it means hurting the
coalition.
www.jpost.com
February 1, 2012
According to the
survey, only 28 percent of respondents believe that the Tal Law should be kept
intact, a statement released by the Knesset Channel announced Wednesday.
The survey also found
that 73% of respondents believe that haredim claim that prayer helps to protect
Israel's security, and therefore they should be exempt from military service, is
not justified. In contrast, 17% believe that this claim is justified.
“The
government didn’t correctly estimate the cultural gap between the haredim and
the mere idea of military service,” said Zeev Lerer, a professor on gender and
organization at Tel Aviv University. “The Tal Law failed and it will continue
to fail. It will take a long and deep revolution to incorporate the idea of
military service.”
Even if
haredim did decide to join the army en masse, it’s not clear that the army is
prepared to utilize them. On one hand, there is a growing manpower shortage. At
the same time, the army has to make special accommodations for them, such as
organizing all-male units and providing glatt kosher food.
“It really
is more of a symbolic issue,” Lerer said.
“As the army has become more
dependent on women serving, often in more combat roles, I don’t see how they
can absorb the haredim. It would mean a complete change in the identity of the
army.”
Today, after many years of postponement and
vagueness, the time may have come to look at realistic options and give up the
impossible.
...The option that remains
is to officially exempt the haredim from military service (something that has
happened in practice a long time ago) and gain them in the workforce.
...Given this state of
affairs, wouldn't it be more appropriate to gradually shift to a professional
army?
A group of religious former IDF soldiers have
drafted a petition demanding the army to enlist them for reserve service, Ynet
learned Wednesday.
The group, which consists of dozens of former
combat troops who served on the strictly-haredi Netzach Yehuda Battalion,
claimed that the IDF refuses to call them in for reserve duty. The few who have
been asked to serve were assigned to non-combat roles, despite their fighter
training.
"The army is looking into the possibility of
establishing another reserve unit for troops who served on Netzah Yehuda,"
the IDF said. "(…) Due to the uniqueness of the sector and its needs,
these soldiers cannot be assigned to other reserve units."
It
appears now that the main result of last summer's protests will be that the
ultra-Orthodox will start being drafted to army service or at least required to
do national service.
The
public supports this. Most political parties support this. Two weeks ago,
Benjamin Netanyahu was still talking about extending the Tal Law by another
five years, but now he lacks a majority to do that for even 15 minutes.
....Shas and United Torah Judaism cannot
threaten to call for early elections, since elections are approaching in any
case.
The Association for the Torah-Observant Soldier
has submitted a complaint to the state comptroller protesting the treatment of
religious soldiers at the IDF’s Officer Training School.
In a letter sent to the office of Micha
Lindenstrauss on Sunday morning, the association listed a series of events that
have occurred at the training school’s base in recent months which they say
illustrates a pattern of frequent infringement upon the religious rights of
observant Jewish soldiers.
A new national-religious rabbinical group that
will include women in its leadership as equals is to be launched on Wednesday.
The group, to be known as Beit Hillel, already
has 110 rabbis signed up, along with 30 women who are considered Torah
scholars.
It was founded by congregational rabbis in the
central region, who say they represent the silent majority of the
national-religious population that is frustrated and alarmed by creeping
extremism and the deterioration of women's status in the sector.
The
organizers note that unlike rabbinic groups in the Hardal
(Ultra-Orthodox-nationalist) stream, in Beit Hillel congregational rabbis will
set the tone, rather than yeshiva heads, who, the founders say, are less in tune
with the needs of households and families.
The Tel Aviv municipality has reconfirmed its
policy of shutting down businesses on Shabbat, apart from the Jaffa area, which
has a small Jewish population.
The municipality's decision comes after a
reappraisal of its Shabbat policy instigated by a request made by the Tel Aviv
District Court last October.
Fourteen years after they launched their
campaign, parents from Ra’anana are celebrating the opening this week of a new
public school in the city, which they say will fill a glaring need in their
children’s education.
The school adheres to the pluralistic yet religiously
traditional makeup that is the DNA of the TALI school system.
Like others, Schwartz said his background in the
American Jewish community influenced his desire to push for a TALI school. He
said he and the other parents who supported the school had been inspired by the
US Conservative Movement’s Solomon Schechter day schools and were essentially
looking to build their own version in Ra’anana.
www.haaretz.com
February 3, 2012
The families
of 400 Tali students in Ra'anana attended a dedication ceremony on Sunday for
the school's new building, named in honor of donor Stanley Frankel.
When Rabbi Reuven
Stamov arrives in Ukraine next March he might receive a mixed reaction from
local members of Conservative Judaism. While they are certain to congratulate
him on becoming the movement’s first rabbi in the former Soviet Union, they
might also be wondering what took him so long.
Sunday morning, when Reuven Stanov was
accredited as a rabbi, the Conservative movement moved one step closer to
realizing a mission it describes as almost messianic: building the first
Conservative Jewish community in the Commonwealth of Independent States.
The Ukrainian-born Stanov, 38, was accredited
by the Schechter Institute for Jewish Studies in Jerusalem Sunday as part of
its program of preparing Conservative rabbis as spiritual leaders.
American
Jewish support is of course valuable to Israel (though sometimes, one feels it
would be a good idea for Israeli leaders to meet other American Jews, not just
those who tell them how wonderful they are ). But it cannot serve as a
substitute identity.
“Most Israeli
politicians are ignorant and don’t care [that] their words affect the
Diaspora,” he said.
In this case, the calming
idea is this distortion of American Jews: It doesn’t matter, Israelis tell
themselves, that we’re no longer as invincible as we would like to believe we are,
because these soft suckers, our cousins from America, are downright laughable.
Doron
Karni, VP of International Marketing for Taglit-Birthright Israel said Taglit
was "very pleased" to see that Eretz Nehederet, "the most
prominent comedy television show in Israel, has put Taglit-Birthright Israel on
the agenda as one of the most important programs in the Jewish world.”
According
to Karni, the parody is a testament to the way in which Taglit-Birthright
Israel “has become so entwined in Israeli culture.”
At the
newly-revived religiously and socially progressive Kibbutz Hannaton in Lower
Galilee, a tradition has evolved
to hold a women’s circle at our mikveh (ritual bath) for each
woman a few weeks before she is due to give birth.
Thankfully, we have
located on our kibbutz a unique mikveh in the
Israeli scene: Shmaya: A Spiritual and Educational Mikveh in Galilee, where anyone can come to immerse for whatever
purpose—with or without guidance, in private or with accompaniment .
That is
how an old tradition of women immersing in the mikveh before giving birth was transformed at Hannaton into
a ritual gathering that speaks to the modern, progressive women of our small
kibbutz.
When Rabbi Gail Diamond and
her partner made aliyah in 2001, they were making a choice to stay together.
Though the two were married in a synagogue in East Falmouth, Mass. in 1996, the
same-sex union wasn’t legal in the state until 2004.
Dror Bondi, 35, is writing a doctorate on
Heschel's interpretive approach and has published a book, in Hebrew, about
Heschel...
...Not
long after the [Rabin] assassination, Bondi began studying at the Ma'aleh
Adumim hesder yeshiva and that is where he says he was exposed to general
philosophy through reading the works of Rabbi Kook. He was searching for
answers and became close to Rabbi Shimon Gershon Rosenberg (known as Harav
Shagar ) and his students at the Siah Yitzhak Yeshiva in Efrat.
The Ein Prat Seminary is bursting with life.
Yahel Eliahu from Jerusalem came here after serving in the air force. … The
seminary was founded eight years ago by Micah Goodman, a scholar of Jewish
philosophy and modern philosophy who lives in Kfar Adumim.
Editor – Joel Katz
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