May 21, 2012
Editor – Joel Katz
JTA www.timesofisrael.com May
16, 2012
A female Reform rabbi took her
place on the religious council of Mevasseret Zion, a suburb of Jerusalem.
Rabbi Alona Lisitsa said she did
not feel hostility from the rest of the representatives — all Orthodox — of the
local religious council, according to reports.
The Reform Mevasseret Zion
Congregation put forth Lisitsa’s name to join the council nearly a year ago.
The appointment was delayed in the
Religious Affairs Ministry, until the courts got involved and ordered the
ministry to approve the appointment.
The community’s population is
mixed secular-religious.
By Revital
Hovel www.haaretz.com May 15, 2012
The Haifa District Court on Tuesday rejected an
appeal submitted by Professor Uzzi Ornan, who sought to compel Israel's
Interior Ministry to recognize his citizenship based on the fact that he was
born in Israel, rather than on the grounds that he was Jewish.
Ornan, a linguist and member of the Academy of
the Hebrew Language, who is also the founder of the League against Religious
Coercion in Israel, petitioned the Interior Ministry in 2010 to recognize him
as an Israeli, not on grounds of being Jewish but because he was born in
Israel.
By Lahav Harkov www.jpost.com May 16,
2012
The Knesset voted down a bill on Wednesday that
would allow same-sex and interfaith couples to wed.
The legislation, proposed by MK Nitzan Horowitz
(Meretz), would open the option of civil marriages for those who may not be wed
according to Halacha (Jewish law), as well as those who choose not to be
married by the Chief Rabbinate.
It was rejected, with 39 MKs opposed and 11 in
favor.
By Elli Fischer Opinion http://blogs.timesofisrael.com
May 15, 2012
[B]y insisting on holding onto a
very thin slice of governmental power, the rabbinate dooms itself to a much
more profound irrelevance and contempt.
By winning the marriage battle, it
loses the much broader war for the hearts and minds of Jews. Instating a civil
option will, hopefully, help rehabilitate the image and restore the relevance
of halakha to broader Jewish life in Israel.
By Jeremy Sharon www.jpost.com May 17,
2012
The Rackman Center for the Advancement of the
Status of Women at Bar-Ilan University on Wednesday held a conference on
promoting the use of prenuptial agreements compatible with Jewish law.
The agreement presents
a multi-layered approach to solve the problem of men who refuse to give their
wives a bill of divorce, or get, thereby conferring upon them the status of an
aguna – and preventing them from getting remarried and having children.
By Greer
Fay Cashman www.jpost.com
May 17, 2012
Rackman
Center director Prof. Ruth Halperin-Kaddari said the status of women in Israel
has remained much the same for the past decade, though in some respects it has also
worsened.
“While
Israel considers itself a progressive democracy, this can’t be said for the
sphere of family law,” she told Shapiro and BIU President Prof. Moshe Kaveh.
Halperin-Kaddari is the only Israeli member of the United Nations Committee for
the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW).
By Haim
Handwerker www.haaretz.com
May 20, 2012
[I]n the
World Baseball Classic regulations there is a "heritage provision"
which allows anyone entitled to citizenship in a given country to also play for
it.
This World
Baseball Classic provision makes it possible for every Jew to play on the
Israeli team, by virtue of the Law of Return. Taking advantage of this
opportunity, Kurz has invited a number of outstanding American former major
league baseball players to join the team. So far, three have accepted...
By Melanie Lidman www.jpost.com May 13, 2012
The Kiryat Hayovel neighborhood in
Jerusalem will be the future site of a secular yeshiva and pre-army program,
the Jerusalem municipality announced on Sunday in the latest step of the
neighborhood saga that has pitted ultra-Orthodox residents against secular and
national-religious residents.
Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat announced
that the Warburg compound in the neighborhood will not be dedicated to haredi
educational institutions, as had been decided by the previous mayor, Uri
Lupoliansky, who is haredi.
Levinson was quick to
point out that the secular yeshiva’s new location is not meant to be
antagonistic to Kiryat Hayovel’s haredi population, and that the institution
also attracts haredi participants at some programs.
By Nir Hasson www.haaretz.com May
20, 2012
Jerusalem's
secular residents have won an important victory in an ongoing battle against
ultra-Orthodox groups over the fate of an open field in Kiryat Hayovel.
Mayor
Nir Barkat announced last week that the contested tract of land in the
southwestern neighborhood of the capital would be used for a yeshiva - a
secular yeshiva, that is.
The large
barren field in Kiryat Hayovel has, in recent years, turned into a flashpoint
between secular and ultra-Orthodox groups.
The neighborhood has become a symbol
of secular opposition to the increasingly Haredi character of Israel's capital.
By Nir
Hasson www.haaretz.com May 17, 2012
After 15 consecutive years of declining
enrollment in Jerusalem's secular public schools, this year 109 more children
were enrolled in the city's secular elementary schools than last year.
The change is negligible in a city the size of
Jerusalem, but secular people hope it signals a trend.
Rabbi Uri
Ayalon says last year's uptick in the number of secular children in the school
system does not surprise him.
"There
is no doubt the secular population is beginning to raise its head. They feel
less oppressed. People want to be with winners. The moment they feel, 'my
people are here,' and not because they have no choice, it has an impact,"
he says.
By Rabbi
Uri Regev Opinion www.jewishjournal.com May 15, 2012
Rabbi Uri Regev is the
president of Hiddush — Freedom of Religion for Israel
Now is the time for
American Jewry to realize that change can happen. You can contribute by
demonstrating your desire for an Israel that lives up to a vision of religious
freedom and equality and stops the delegation to second-class status not only
of women, but also Reform and Conservative Jews, and many Jews by Choice.
Now is the time to offer
support to the organizations and movements working to realize this vision, to
raise a clear and unequivocal voice in communicating to Netanyahu: It is high
time for religious freedom and equality for Jews in Israel.
By Rachel
Azaria Opinion www.haaretz.com
May 18, 2012
How can it
be possible, you're probably asking, that the need to spare men embarrassment,
or the possibility of being attracted to a woman, justifies taking a chance on
women's lives?
It's an
excellent question. No less significant is the question of why the Jerusalem
municipality - including the city's secular mayor - would cooperate with this
travesty.
How is it
possible that signs promoting a walk for breast cancer awareness include not a
single word about that disease.
By Allison
Kaplan Sommer www.haaretz.com
May 15, 2012
The head
of the Kfar Sava Women’s Council reacted with fury after it was revealed that a
decision had been made by the city ‘youth council’ which organizes the event,
to ban girls from singing solo, at the request of the national-religious youth
movement B’nai Akiva, which said it would not participate in the event if
female singing voices were part of it.
Rabbi Uri
Ayalon: “There must be no negotiation or compromise when it comes to equality
of the sexes.”
By Jeremy
Sharon www.jpost.com May 20, 2012
The Matan Women’s Institute for Torah Studies, a
respected and popular religious seminary, has announced that it will be closing
its flagship course in Talmudic studies due to a shortfall in funds.
A statement from Matan
said that budgetary constraints resulting from the global economic downturn
meant that it could no longer afford to run the course and finance the
stipends.
Students on the
current course will be able to finish their third and final year of study next
year but unless more funds are forthcoming, the program will close after that.
By Mordechai I. Twersky www.haaretz.com May 18, 2012
We hoped
that our start-up support would enable the Institute to continue to operate
without Avi Chai's funding, and such was the case until recently," Eli
Silver, Avi Chai-Israel's executive director, said in a statement released to
Haaretz, noting its $1.5 million in grants to the institute through 2005.
"A
three-year program for a 12-person cohort is a significant investment in a
relatively small number of program participants," Epstein says of Matan's
Talmudic institute.
As Avi Chai winds down it operations, Epstein predicts the
Matan case "does portend a painful scenario that will be repeated each
year until the 2020 Avi Chai sunset."
The following statement has been
issued by Matan – The Women’s Institute for Torah Studies, following reports in multiple publications of the
closing of the Advanced Talmudic Institute.
By Yehudah
Mirsky Opinion www.thedailybeast.com
May 17, 2012
The
current status quo has endured thanks to an unholy alliance of Haredi and
secular politicians, who scratch each other's backs, and get each off the hook
from having critically to engage their own Jewishness.
Haredi
politicians like having friends in the secular political class, who enjoy
looking tolerant vis-Ã -vis Haredi colleagues, and who no longer quite believe
in their own values.
Some knowledgeable observers think that once the
dust settles, nothing will have changed, and they may be right. But
is it too much to hope that the coming months might see something more?
By Nehemia
Shtrasler Opinion www.haaretz.com May 15, 2012
[Housing
and Construction Minister Ariel] Atias’ torpedoing the agreement is part of a
struggle the housing minister is waging to have most of the affordable
apartments (about 5,000 all told ) earmarked for the Haredi community.
Atias did
this by unilaterally setting the criteria for distributing the apartments. He
decided that the primary criterion for participating in tenders for the
cost-price "mehir lemishtaken" apartments, for which the government
discounts the land by 50 percent, will be years of marriage.
By Moshe
Raveh Opinion www.jpost.com
May 16, 2012
The writer is a
professor and the president of Bar-Ilan University.
The Council for Higher Education in Israel, under
the leadership of its Planning and Budgeting Committee chairman, Prof. Manuel
Trajtenberg, has drawn up a comprehensive plan to make higher education
accessible to the ultra-Orthodox public by opening macharim (haredi
frameworks) that aim to reach a target of 27,000 ultra-Orthodox students,
ultimately amounting to 9 percent of the entire student population – a
representation similar to that of the haredi sector within the population as a
whole.
About 70 percent of young haredi students see
themselves spending an extended amount of time engaged in religious studies in
yeshiva, according to research conducted by the Industry, Trade and Labor
Ministry.
Between 15-40% of
respondents, depending on stream, said they would only limit their time in
yeshiva upon getting married, in order to learn a profession or enter an
institute of higher learning to gain a foothold in the job market.
By Hila Weisberg www.haaretz.com May
15, 2012
Between
25% and 30% of unmarried yeshiva students aged between 17 and 20 do not foresee
devoting their futures mainly to religious study, according to a poll
commissioned by the Industry, Trade and Labor Ministry and conducted by two
researchers who study the ultra-Orthodox community.
By Jeremy Sharon www.jpost.com May 13,
2012
Haredi news website
Tzofar published an op-ed on Friday titled “Take out Yaron London” in response
to an article by London in the Yediot Aharonot daily asking what efforts
could be made to reduce the amount of haredim in Israeli society.
By Tzipi Malchov www.ynetnews.com May 13, 2012
During the meeting, Deputy Mayor Yitzhak Pindros
and Councilman Yaakov Halperin were opposed to inviting renowned Israeli singer
Yardena Arazi to perform at the annual Yakir Yerushalayim (Worthy Citizen of
Jerusalem) awards.
The ceremony is set to
take place on Jerusalem Day at the Tower of David adjacent to the Old City and
the Jaffa Gate.
By Nati
Tucker www.haaretz.com May 14, 2012
Journalists
from the ultra-Orthodox radio station Kol Chai have set up a workers' committee
and joined a new journalists' organization that operates under the auspices of
the Histadrut labor federation.
By Yair
Ettinger www.haaretz.com May 15, 2012
A rabbinical judge who has been accused of
bribery and refusing to compel abusive husbands to grant their wives a divorce
has recently been appointed head of the Jerusalem Rabbinical Court, one of the
country's largest and most important Jewish religious courts.
Sephardi
Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar appointed Rabbi Yisrael Yifrah to the post despite
receiving complaints about Yifrah that had prompted him to remove the rabbi
from the list of candidates for the Great Rabbinical Court.
By Maya
Epstein www.haaretz.com May 10, 2012
Thus, eighty-one percent of ultra-orthodox
surfers say they watch videos online. They also report blogging more often than
secular or merely "observant" Jews.
Religious
Israelis are the most active group in terms of uploading videos, with 29
percent saying they do so, compared with 19 percent of secular Israelis.
By Joanna
Paraszczuk www.jpost.com
May 13, 2012
In 2005,
before his contract at the ministry ended, Bilik allegedly took a copy of the
stolen data to a haredi organization in Jerusalem, where he provided database
services connected with the organization’s donors.
A course launched last
month to train haredi male counselors how to work with sexually abused children
in their community indicates a new willingness to address an issue that was
once considered taboo.
“The whole approach to
this is different for haredim than for secular people,” said Tali Shlomi,
director of Knowledge, Technology and Resources at Haruv...
By Asher
Zeiger www.timesofisrael.com May
17, 2012
Giving a lesson recently on the laws of the Sabbath, Rabbi
Ovadia Yosef, the spiritual leader of Shas and former Sephardi chief rabbi,
ruled that the laws are different regarding Jews and gentiles in terms of
violating the Sabbath to save a life.
What should religious
doctors do if a gentile is injured in a car accident on Shabbat and is rushed
to the hospital? According to Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, this does not warrant
violating the sanctity of the Sabbath.
By Aviad
Glickman www.ynetnews.com May 17, 2012
Two men were charged
on Thursday with assaulting a 70-year-old woman due to what they believed was
her involvement in a pedophile ring that operated in a Jerusalem neighborhood,
Ynet reported.
By Lior
Lehrs http://jiis-jerusalem-eng.blogspot.com.au
May 7, 2012
According to data from the
Jerusalem Municipality, in the 2011-2012 academic year the city’s municipal
educational system has 224,650 students. Of these, 43% attend Haredi
educational institutions...
Among students in grades 7-12 (middle
and high school), a total of 37% receive a Haredi education, 33% receive a
municipal Arab education, and 30% receive a state or state-religious education.
By Noah
Klieger www.ynetnews.com May 16, 2012
Some 30 descendants of
the Templars, a Protestant sect of German origin of that settled in Israel in
the mid-1800s, arrived in the Jewish state from Germany recently for an
emotional reunion, Yedioth Ahronoth reported.
The group, which was
hosted by the Schechter Institute of Jewish Studies, convened at the same
building that housed the Templar center centuries ago, located in Tel Aviv's
Neve Tzedek neighborhood.
Members of the Temple Society believed that
inhabiting and working the Holy Land will bring forth the savior.
By Nir
Hasson www.haaretz.com May 16, 2012
On a stand
at the book fair in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia about two months ago was a sign
advertising the first translation in history of the Babylonian Talmud into
Arabic.
The huge
project, which sparked debate in Saudi Arabia over the propriety of advertising
the sale of Jewish religious literature in a Muslim country, was the work of a
Jordanian research institute.
By Itamar Marlios www.ynetnews.com May 19, 2012
A group of some 90
Jordanian researchers has spent six long years translating the entire Talmud
into Arabic – an echo of Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz, who labored 45 years
translating the Babylonian Talmud from Aramaic into Hebrew.
By Yori
Yalon www.israelhayom.com May 16, 2012
In 1999, only 5.8% of new immigrants chose to make
their homes in Jerusalem. In 2005, the number jumped to 12% and in 2010 a
record 15% preferred the holy city as their place of residence. In comparison,
only 6% of immigrants chose Tel Aviv in 2010 and only 5.5% chose Haifa.
By Rabbi
Shlomo Brody www.jpost.com May 17, 2012
Since 1948, religious
Zionists have debated how to religiously celebrate our national sovereignty.
Among rabbis and laypeople alike, there remains a strong sense that beyond
outdoor hikes and barbecues, we must manifest our joy and gratitude in
religious expression.
By Andrew
Esensten www.haaretz.com May 18, 2012
The first
issue of Torah Tidbits - the weekly "parsha pamphlet" produced for
the Anglo community by the Orthodox Union's Jerusalem center - appeared in 1992
in two Jerusalem synagogues. It was a single piece of paper with a dvar Torah
on one side and announcements on the other.
The
1,000th issue, which can be found this Shabbat in nearly 500 synagogues in
Israel, as well as online at www.ttidbits.com, is a full-color booklet with an
aliyah-by-aliyah summary of the week's Torah portion, commentaries from rabbis,
event notices, mazel tovs, advertisements and more.
By Eli
Ashkenazi www.haaretz.com
May 20, 2012
On Shabbat
morning two weeks ago Rabbi Gavriel Marzel, the assistant of the Chabad Tzemach
Tzedek synagogue in the Old City of Safed, discovered that six Torah scrolls
had been stolen. The same thing had happened in recent years in four other
synagogues in the Old City. In most cases valuable items of Judaica were
stolen.
By Maor
Buchnik www.ynetnews.com May 17, 2012
A group of kids
playing in a deserted house in the old city of Safed was surprised to uncover
an unexpected treasure of six Torah scrolls hidden under piles of sheets and
blankets.
By Danna
Harman www.haaretz.com May 15, 2012
“Just for
fun, we put together a holiday video parody for ourselves and the other
alumni,” says Shani Lachmish, 25, who, like the rest of the Fountainheads, is a
graduate of Ein Prat, an academy for leadership that offers programs for young
Jews- men and women, secular and religious, Israeli and foreign – who come
together to study Bible, Talmud and Western philosophy.
By Akiva Eldar www.haaretz.com May
17, 2012
The Jerusalem Rabbinical Court has awarded legal
and administrative custody over Joseph's Tomb in Nablus to two rabbis who have
been involved in organizing visits to the site without the army's permission.
The IDF
Spokesman's Office told Haaretz that the claim that the rabbis are henceforth
in charge of the site is ridiculous.
"Visits
to Joseph's Tomb are coordinated by the Civil Administration and arranged by
the Israel Police, in coordination with rabbinical figures, including the
rabbis mentioned, and the Palestinian Authority," it said in a statement.
By Jeremy
Sharon www.jpost.com May 15, 2012
The Jerusalem District Court accepted the state
attorney’s request to add five new witnesses to the trial of Rabbi Mordechai
“Moti” Elon, who is accused of indecent assault against two minors.
The testimony of the new witnesses will be used
to support the claims of the two plaintiffs against Elon.
Judge Haim Liran said
that some of the testimonies of the new witnesses were significant and their
inclusion in the trial is therefore justified.
By Melanie
Lidman www.jpost.com May 20, 2012
Police arrested three right-wing activists on the
Temple Mount on Sunday morning, after a group of activists started praying on
the holy site in honor of Jerusalem Day.
MKs Michael Ben Ari and Uri Ariel (National
Union) joined the activists in the pilgrimage to commemorate the anniversary of
the 1967 Six-Day War, when Israeli soldiers liberated Old City and the Temple
Mount from Jordanian forces.
By Jeremy
Sharon www.jpost.com May 17, 2012
But inter-religious and political concerns aside,
there is another, less prominent but nevertheless bitter dispute currently
being waged, this one between different Orthodox Jewish groups regarding the
permissibility of going up to Judaism’s holiest site.
The divisions among
different rabbinic leaders are sharp; some outlaw ascent to the Temple Mount in
absolute terms on pain of spiritual excommunication; others see the refusal to
go up and insist on the Jewish right to pray at the site as a deviation from
Torah law.
May 21, 2012
Editor – Joel Katz
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