A small token to get you going until next year
By Yair Rosenberg
Can an unlikely alliance of renegade rabbis
and right-wing politicians strip the ultra-Orthodox of their power?
The fundamental challenge therefore entails
abolishing the coercive power of the Chief Rabbinate, most notably with
respect to the crucial issues of personal status – marriage, divorce,
conversion and burial.
Many modern-Orthodox leaders, both here and
in Israel, to say nothing of the leaders of the liberal religious streams,
agree that the time is long overdue to transform the Chief Rabbinate from an
office that exercises coercive power to one that entails moral influence.
So why do we have chief rabbis? They are no
more than historical relics of an era when the Jews were tiny embattled
minorities, routinely deprived of their civil rights as individuals and as a
community, and when religious leadership was invested with a social and
political significance unimaginable in today's world. …
Few, however, were very upset that the
deceit took place within the walls of the institute that is supposed to be
the holy of holies of Jewish morality, the chief rabbinate of Israel.
The High Court of Justice this week issued
an interim injunction forbidding the Council of the Chief Rabbinate from
ordaining anyone as a rabbi who has not passed the written exams usually
required by the rabbinate.
Several local rabbinates are refusing to
allow women to testify towards a person’s marital status for the purpose of
marriage registration, The Jerusalem Post has learned.
In Judaism, idolatry is a serious matter.
Determining which Christian symbol might be considered an idol is serious,
too: It could disturb Christian-Jewish relations and damage Israel’s foreign
relations. And yet Israel’s rabbinate is many things — detached from
reality, sometimes corrupt, frequently manipulative, rarely in touch with
the beliefs of most Israelis —
An advocacy group for women whose husbands
refuse to grant them a Jewish divorce expressed surprising, if guarded,
support Sunday for a candidate for Ashkenazi chief rabbi who is considered
relatively conservative, rather than for a leader of the more liberal Tzohar
rabbinical group.
This blatant intervention in a strictly
religious matter of Jewish law became a precedent for subsequent rulings
that curtailed the Chief Rabbinate’s powers. A ruling by the Chief Rabbinate
that Christmas trees render a restaurant unkosher would inevitably be
challenged in court. Judging from past rulings, the Chief Rabbinate would
probably lose.
As New Year's Eve approaches, the dispute
over celebrations renews. Restaurant and banquet hall owners in Haifa are
lashing out at the local Rabbinate for threatening to revoke their kashrut
permits if they host celebrations on December 31.
The local rabbinate in Haifa issued a
warning last week to hotels and event halls in the city that they risk
losing their kashrut supervision if they allow New Year’s Eve celebrations
to take place in their establishments.
For several years now at Christmas time,
municipal rabbis were warning businesses from marking Christian holidays,
threatening to rescind kashrut certificates. In 1998, following a High Court
appeal on the matter, the Chief Rabbinate backed down.
"Who raised their hand and didn't get one
yet?" ~ "Rabbi Bakshish-Doron"
Former chief Sephardi Rabbi Eliahu
Bakshi-Doron was indicted for fraudulent receipt of goods or services under
aggravated circumstances on Monday for his role in the so-called "rabbis'
file" affair, in which hundreds of security forces officers were ordained as
rabbis in order to qualify for a pay raise.
“The defendant knew that the holders of the
fictitious ordinations would receive significant salary benefits from the
state coffers,” read the indictment submitted to the Jerusalem District
Court.
Ne’emanei Torah Va’Avodah, a
national-religious lobbying organization, said the case once again proves
the necessity of separating the rabbinate from the political establishment.
“The system is broken,” said Ne’emanei Torah
Va’Avodah chairman Shmuel Shetah.
Bakshi-Doron served as Sephardi chief rabbi
of Israel from 1998 to 2003 and, as head of the Chief Rabbinical Council of
Israel, authorized the issuance of the rabbinic credentials.
Following author Yoram Kaniuk's highly
publicized legal struggle to be registered as "irreligious,"* which made it
all the way to the District Court, 42 people on Thursday petitioned the High
Court of Justice to attain the same status.
“I did not call for a complete recognition
of Reform by the State of Israel,” Rabbi Yuval Cherlow wrote in an email to
The Jewish Standard.
Rabbi Eric Yoffie, past president of the URJ,
said that while Cherlow’s original statement neither endorsed nor embraced
the Reform movement, “He is saying that the religious situation in Israel is
a problem for American Jews; and while this is self-evident, Israelis don’t
appreciate and recognize it.”
As a major in the army reserve who served in
the prestigious Sayeret Matkal unit, then made a fortune in Israel’s booming
technology industry, Mr. Bennett embodies one popular vision of today’s
Zionist ideal.
He wears the knitted kippa that is the
religious-Zionist signature but lives in the affluent town of Raanana, north
of Tel Aviv — and not in a West Bank settlement — because, he said, his wife
is secular.
The Knesset’s synagogue would host its first
ever Masorti egalitarian minyan if the Tzipi Livni Party wins the 13 seats
necessary to elect New Jersey-born, North Carolina-raised Prof. Alon Tal in
the January 22 election.
Tov, a moderate haredi political movement,
has filed a request with the High Court of Justice to be included as a
respondent to a petition filed by Yair Lapid and his Yesh Atid party against
a government decision allowing the Civilian Service Directorate to enlist
1,300 haredi men into its national service program by August 2013.
The Vizhnitzer Rebbe, Rabbi Yisroel Hager,
has called on yeshiva students not to report to IDF recruitment centers upon
receiving their initial draft orders inviting them to begin the IDF
screening process. The rabbi said he himself would take responsibility for
the mutiny.
Discussing the Plesner committee's
recommendation to designate a group of “diligent learners” who would be
granted a full and permanent exemption, Deri said: “No one will decide for
us who can and who cannot study Torah, who is gifted, who is a genius and
who is not a genius.
The significance of this is that the ability
of religious soldiers to bargain over the issue of which mission will be
placed on the army has been strengthened even further. …
Bennett's expression of refusal, against
which left and right momentarily united eagerly, is a negligible threat.
United Torah Judaism (UTJ) has written to
the Central Election Committee asking that it ban a Kadima advertising
campaign that the haredi party claims is false and constitutes incitement.
The Egged bus company on Sunday said it will
allow Kadima to post campaign posters containing the words "yeshiva
students" on its buses after initially refusing to do so. Meanwhile, the
Central Elections Committee asked the Dan bus company for an answer on the
matter.
Dan brought the issue to its lawyers, and
did not acquiesce to Kadima’s requests to hang the advertisements on its
buses.
It is impossible to fully address the abuses
of the rabbinical court system without first understanding the gender
dynamics involved.
Rebbetzin Levin is a graduate of the
Jerusalem Nishmat Yoetzet Halachah
programme, which trains women to offer guidance on areas of taharat
hamishpachah—– encompassing aspects of marriage, sexuality and women’s
health.
The three-justice panel of the Tel Aviv
District Court on Monday, Baruch Hashem sided with a Jewish mother seeking
to prevent her children’s non-Jewish father from taking the children to
Holland.
In an answer to a question from the audience
of students he was addressing, Bennett said, "These are two clashing values.
I am for 'live and let live,' but this clashes with the values of Israel as
a Jewish state. It has a set of family values. The state cannot absorb or
contain official recognition of same-sex marriage."
A controversial presentation was waiting for
those who were getting married or divorced at the Chief Rabbinate in Tel
Aviv last week.
Israel's Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar recognized
them as a lost tribe in 2005, and about 1,700 moved to Israel over the next
two years before the government stopped giving them visas.
The Kolbotek report documenting outrageous
animal abuse in the Adom Adom slaughterhouse in Beit Shean has led some to
turn to the Chief Rabbinate of Israel to revoke the company’s hashgacha.
The hidden camera documented regular
unacceptable abuse of cattle before shechita, which has since led to
international outrage along with demands to halt the sale of cattle to
Israel from Australia.
The senior editor of a daily ultra-Orthodox
newspaper was assaulted late Thursday night outside his Jerusalem home in
what is thought to be a politically motivated attack.
But Rachel isn't on vacation. After
suffering years of unspeakable abuse and cruelty in her own home, she fled
to Bat Melech,
the only organization in Israel that provides shelters for battered women
from the national religious and ultra-Orthodox populations.
Israelis who are not planning to vote in the
upcoming Knesset elections can make some money out of it: The anti-Zionist
Satmar Hasidic sect intends to pay every Israeli who promises not to vote,
regardless of his or her religious affiliation.
A new initiative by a group of
ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students in the north is gaining a growing following
in the Haredi community. It calls on yeshiva students to refrain from
discussing the upcoming election, and allows those who do so to enter a
lottery twice a week that may net them a NIS 500 prize.
An ultra-Orthodox organization is demanding
an immediate halt to work on a combined public, commercial and residential
project in Ashkelon, saying that remnants of Jewish graves have been found
at the location.
Police arrested a young ultra-Orthodox man
last week after he was caught using a hammer to smash centuries-old painted
wall tiles at King David’s Tomb in Jerusalem. He told police he did so
because an older friend had advised him that “the tiles were stopping his
prayers from reaching the tomb.” The man said he was hoping that his prayers
for a bride would be answered.
A report in Ma’ariv claimed that
Construction and Housing Minister Ariel Attias of Shas said in internal
discussions that unless the party retains the Housing portfolio, Prime
Minister Binyamin Netanyahu will not be able to form a government after the
upcoming election.
“We don’t have anyone to go with, we are
going together with him [Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu],” Shas co-leader
Aryeh Deri said on Saturday night. “I hope he also keeps the faith and takes
us along," Deri said, adding that some leaders of his party were talking
"openly” about excluding Shas.
Shas has been waging a tense battle with
right-wing parties - the joint Likud Beiteinu roster on the one hand and
Habayit Hayehudi on the other.
Rabbi Rafael Pinhasi, secretary of the Shas
movement’s Council of Torah Sages, was caught on tape criticizing joint
political leader Arye Deri for comments he has made claiming leadership of
the party.
The Muslim authority managing the Temple
Mount on Sunday dumped tons of unexamined earth and stones excavated from
the holy site into a municipal dump, in violation of a High Court
injunction, Maariv reported on Monday.
Hear the word "prophet" and the names
Jeremiah, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Jesus or Mohammed may come to mind. While these
are figures from the distant past, Rabbi Shmuel Fortman Hapartzi is training
a new generation of prophets for a new age.
The 16th annual Love of Poetry festival in
Jerusalem opened yesterday. The festival is sponsored by the Mashiv Haruach
poetry journal. This year’s theme is on the Jewish prophets and their
prophecy as poets and poetry.
Haredi leaders expressed fury on Saturday
night with the Jerusalem Municipality’s decision to allow a large Christmas
tree to be displayed next to Jaffa Gate at the entrance to the Old City.
The city issued a permit to a private
individual to set up a tree for three days last week. The permit ended on
Thursday and the permit-holder removed the tree.
Forget Christmas fruitcake, eggnog and
peppermint candy canes. At one particular family-run joint in Jaffa,
customers celebrating the Christian holiday will be treated to a rather
untraditional delicacy today: sufganiyot – the classic Hanukkah doughnuts.
“Israel is proud of its record of religious
tolerance and pluralism, and Israel will continue to protect freedom of
religion for all,” Netanyahu said. “And we will continue to safeguard places
of Christian worship throughout our country.”
Aviv has joined a unique new Jewish-Arab
singing group, the Jerusalem
Youth Chorus,
which is sponsored by the YMCA and is the brainchild of Micah Hendler, who
recently graduated from Yale where he was a member of the university’s
fabled Whiffenpoofs a cappella choir.
Collected by
http://religionandstateinisrael.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/religion-and-state-in-israel-december_27.html.
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