Israeli TV Channels are Doomed
Media Man Says Israeli TV Channels are Doomed

by Gil Ronen
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/133941
10/20/09

(IsraelNN.com) The financial woes of television's Channel 10, which now requires a government bailout, do not surprise David ("Dudu") Elharar – a well-known singer, music producer and media personality. Elharar told Arutz Sheva's Hebrew news service that Channel 10's predicament is not the result of mismanagement but a phenomenon that will repeat itself, not just in Channel 10 but in the larger Channel 2 as well.

"First of all it is good that they are incurring losses – both Channel 10 and Channel 2 are losing and that is excellent,” he opined. “And why do they lose money? Because they ignore a large part of the nation that has truly stopped watching them a long time ago.”

Not just the television channels but all of the radio channels, too, including the local radio stations, are in constant violation of the Broadcasting Authority Law, according to Elharar. “The Broadcasting Authority Law says outright that they must, in their broadcasts, reflect the life of the nation, provide a podium for artists from all the nation's streams – they must, by law, reflect the cultural treasures of the entire nation and strengthen Jewish tradition,” he explained. “In Article 3 it says that the broadcasts will provide room for the different views that are common among the public. Unfortunately, [while] they all operate under the Broadcasting Authority Law, none of them does this.”

The State of Tel Aviv

“What we have here in Israel is 'The State of Tel Aviv' – completely secular stations that broadcast contempt for Judaism throughout the day,” he protested. “They are not allowed to do what they do according to the Broadcasting Authority Laws. Their problem is not whether or not they give air time to local creations or not, but whether or not they operate in accordance with the law. Because this is a Jewish state and not the West. This is Asia, we are surrounded by enemies and we have to fight for our status, and the media needs to broadcast patriotism and spread the knowledge of why we are fighting and what we are fighting for.”

The reason why people are leaving the media channels is that the media channels have left the people, determined Elharar, who is fighting a court battle for the right to continue to host a weekly program on IDF Army Radio. “The people in the television industry do not care about the nation. The funny thing is that if Channel 10 were to broadcast content that was opposite to what it broadcasts today, if it cultivated love of the homeland, all of the viewers would return to it. That is exactly what we saw in the elections – it is what the nation wants. The TV channels' ideology received just three Knesset members. The guys from Meretz are their representation.”

Elharar estimated that almost three million citizens do not watch the Israeli television channels. “A million Russian citizens watch TV in Russian, the hareidis have no TV sets and thousands more have taken the television out of the house. Others just watch sports, or people like my wife who only watch the Hidabroot (religious) channel. Nothing will save this media – and I mean the popular papers, too; until they understand that their job is to report and not to rule us they will continue to lose money.”

Labels: Israel, Israeli culture, Israeli media, Secular Israeli culture, Secular Israelis

- posted by Izak @ 9:02 AM (0) comments

 
Desperation and decline of Reform and Conservative Judaism: First African-American Female rabbi convert to Judaism
Pulpit Of Color

by Stewart Ain
Staff Writer
http://www.thejewishweek.com/viewArticle/c36_a15842/News/New_York.html#
05/20/2009

As a student rabbi, Alysa Stanton — who next month becomes the first ever African-American woman rabbi — was assigned to intern in a congregation in Dothan, Ala.

But no sooner did she arrive than the president of the congregation called the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Cincinnati to complain.

“He said, ‘Are you kidding,?’” recalled Rabbi Ken Kanter, director of HUC’s rabbinical program.

Stanton said she was told that a “black person ministering to a white congregation in the Deep South was unheard of.”

However, Rabbi Kanter said, the congregation “very quickly recognized they had a rabbi who happened to be a woman and who happened to be African-American. She quickly became their rabbi ... and at the end of the year they wanted her to stay because she was so well loved.”

Stanton said the challenge had been to “put aside mutual stereotypes and prejudices and get to know each other on our own merits. We did it and [developed] phenomenal relationships. I will always hold a special place for them in my heart.”

That experience gave her the confidence to consider another congregation in the South when it came time to apply for her first full-time position, which she will assume after her ordination June 6. The synagogue is Congregation Bayt Shalom in Greenville, N.C., about 70 miles east of Raleigh in the eastern part of the state.

Stanton and a half-dozen other candidates from both the Reform and Conservative movements were interviewed by phone by the congregation’s 10-member search committee, according to Michael Barondes, the congregation’s president. Stanton and a Conservative rabbi were then invited for a visit.

“She led an adult education class and met with the youth group and made a tremendous impression on the congregation,” Barondes said of Stanton. “She has musical skills and a singing talent that was impressive. And she has interpersonal skills and the ability to engage people — adults and children. She was also able to articulate the desire to help us come up with a plan to unite the diverse Jewish community in a one-synagogue town.”

About 70 percent of the 56-family congregation is Reform and the rest Conservative. The congregation is affiliated with both movements.

“The fact that she is a convert was not a factor [in her selection],” Barondes said. “She was not the only Jew-by-choice who applied for the position. ... And the fact she is African-American played no part. During her three-day visit, she was able to impress so many people that the congregation overwhelmingly supported her candidacy.”

Stanton, 45, grew up in a Pentecostal Christian home in Cleveland, Ohio. At the age of 6, her family moved to a Jewish neighborhood in Cleveland Heights, Ohio.

It was there that her Uncle Ed, a devout Catholic who also occasionally attended the local synagogue, explained to her what the mezuzahs meant on the neighbors’ doorposts. When she was 10 and already on her own spiritual quest, he gave her a Hebrew grammar book.

“My mother is a woman of faith,” Stanton said. “She taught us that we need to have a spiritual base and she gave us the freedom to chose what that is. For me, Judaism was where I found a home.”

At the age of 11, Stanton moved with her family to Lakewood, Colo., and by the time she was in her early 20s, she said she had decided to convert to Judaism.

“I sought out a rabbi and each week I traveled 144 miles to meet with him in Denver for intensive, one-to-one study,” she said, adding that after a year she converted, appearing before a bet din [Jewish court] and going to the mikveh.

“Initially when I converted my family was shocked,” Stanton said, adding that her mother (her father is deceased) and sister and two brothers have been “very supportive — my rock during this long journey.”

For about the last 15 years, her rabbi in Denver has been Steven Foster of Temple Emanuel, a Reform congregation. He said he found Stanton to be “a very spiritual person who brings the best of two different cultures together. She is a terrific person and we will be lucky in the Jewish community to have her as a rabbi.”

Rabbi Foster said that although Stanton was converted by a “right-wing Conservative rabbi,” she later “connected with us because of our history with social justice issues. ... She used to teach for us and sing for us and when she decided to become a rabbi we all supported her.”

One of her professors at HUC, David Weisberg said the fact that Stanton landed a job already in this tight job market — only about half of the graduates have jobs — is evidence of her special qualities.

“She has a love of Judaism and a pull for the study of the Torah,” he said. “She is very sensitive about the issues of piety and love of Torah.”

Steve Sunderland, a friend at the neighboring University of Cincinnati, called Stanton a “remarkable young lady who has a spiritual commitment to Judaism that is rare. ... She has it clear in her mind that she is a Jew who happens to be African-American. She sees being an African-American one additional gift she brings to Judaism.”

Those thoughts were echoed by Rabbi Samuel Joseph, an HUC professor of Jewish education and leadership development, who said he has “never met anyone more determined.”

“She loves being Jewish and wants to serve the Jewish people,” he said. “It’s always tough being the first, but she wasn’t going to let anything stop her. I don’t believe she ever thought about becoming a pioneer.”
Stanton said, in fact, that she did not know she was the first until after she started rabbinical school.

Rabbi Kanter said Stanton’s prior career, as a licensed psychotherapist specializing in grief and loss – she was called upon to counsel people after the Columbine High School massacre in 1999 – “is an important talent to bring to the rabbinate.”

Stanton is a single mother of a 14-year-old, Shana, who she adopted at the age of 14 months. Stanton later married and divorced. Because of complications from gastric bypass surgery, she was forced to complete her rabbinical studies in seven rather than five years.

Steven M. Cohen, an HUC research professor of Jewish social policy, said it is “no coincidence” that Stanton is being ordained the same year Barack Obama was sworn in as president.

“He is a man who represented the aspiration to cross ancient boundaries, rivalries and conflicts,” he said. “She crosses both religious and ethnic boundaries in her own life, representing a pioneering model of Jewish continuity. ... She is not alone in that the number of converts and others coming to Judaism from non-conventional backgrounds is probably at its peak in American life.”

The Institute for Jewish and Community Research in San Francisco estimates that 20 percent of the six million American Jews are racially and ethnically diverse by birth, conversion and adoption. And there have been an estimated 20,000 to 30,000 marriages between Jews and African-Americans since the civil rights movement.

Diane Tobin, the institute’s associate director and director of its Be-Chol Lashon program, said her organization has worked with Stanton as part of its mission to “advocate for the growth and diversity of the Jewish people.”

Although Stanton is the first female African-American rabbi, there are many black male rabbis worldwide, Tobin said.

“With the election of President Obama, the Jewish community is very interested in its diverse roots,” she said. “We have always been a diverse people and young people in particular want to see themselves as part of a global people. ... Mainstream Jewish communities want to partner with us and introduce diversity as part of their programming.”

Although Stanton and her daughter will be the only black members in her Greenville congregation, Tobin said she would be interested to see if they attract blacks to the congregation.

Ernest Adams, 62, an African-American in Manhattan who converted to Judaism in 1997, said he is “meeting more and more black folks in synagogues.”

“In the South the Jewish community couldn’t be as liberal as the Jews up North, where you could find Jews marching with Martin Luther King,” he said. “In the South, the rabbis had to be cautious. But now that a white Southern congregation can hire a black rabbi, there is a significant change. The fact that it has been greeted with equanimity means there’s a big shift. The culture is changing.”

Stanton said graduation day will be something special, not just because she is the first African-American woman to be ordained a rabbi but because of the medical problems she had to overcome to get there.

“I went back to school in a wheelchair [at one point],” she recalled. “So to be finishing now is so poignant on so many levels. God has sustained me.”

Labels: African-Americans, Conservative Judaism, Conversion to Judaism, Female clergy, female rabbis, Reform Judaism

- posted by Izak @ 3:25 PM (0) comments

 
Conservatives lady rabbi in key position
Historic moment in N.Y. as first woman named to lead Rabbinical Assembly

By Anthony Weiss
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1035178.html
Sun., November 09, 2008 Cheshvan 11, 5769

The central organization for Conservative rabbis has appointed a woman as its top executive, making it the first of the three major Jewish denominations to appoint a woman as the head staffer for one of its organizational bodies.

The Rabbinical Assembly announced on October 29 that Rabbi Julie Schonfeld had been appointed to take over as its new executive vice president.

Schonfeld will replace Rabbi Joel Meyers, who will step down in July of 2009 after 20 years running the R.A.

"It's 23 years after the first woman was ordained in the movement," Rabbi Elliot Dorff, a professor at the American Jewish University told the Forward.

"That's a generation, basically. We're finally at the point at which a woman could be appointed to a major administrative post within the movement."

Despite the historic nature of the appointment, Schonfeld herself downplayed the importance of her gender.

"I think that my rabbinate is really defined by the ideals that I share with all of my colleagues and with all Conservative Jews worldwide, regardless of my gender," Schonfeld told the Forward.

The move comes at a time when the Conservative movement has been undergoing a major shift in its leadership. Arnold Eisen took over as chancellor of the movement's flagship school, the Jewish Theological Seminary, in 2006, and the movement's synagogue wing, the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, is in the process of looking for a new executive vice president.

In the last decade, the Conservative movement has struggled with shrinking membership roles and debates about the proper mission of the movement.

Sense of territorialism

Rabbi Andrew Sacks, director of the Rabbinical Assembly of the Masorti movement, Conservative Judaism's Israeli wing, said he hoped that the change in leadership would revitalize the movement and lead to greater cooperation between its agencies.

"I think it will diminish the sense of territorialism and make the movement more appealing and stronger," Sacks told the Forward.

Schonfeld will not be a totally new face to the R.A., having served as the organization's director of rabbinic placement since 2001. During that time, she worked on a variety of issues, including a comparative study of rabbis' career advancements by gender.

Schonfeld will also offer continuity in another sense, as both she and Meyers are members of the Temple Israel Center in White Plains, N.Y.

Labels: American Jews, Conservative Judaism, Conservatives, Egalitarianism, Jewish feminism, Jewish women, Masorti Judaism, Women rabbis

- posted by Izak @ 5:05 AM (0) comments

 
Conservative Judaism "too poor" to support its main seminary
JTS Facing $2 Million Budget Shortfall

Seminary to dip into ‘rainy day’ fund; adjunct faculty may lose jobs.

by Stewart Ain
Staff Writer
The New York Jewish Week
06/25/2008
http://www.thejewishweek.com/viewArticle/c37_a12538/News/National.html

The Jewish Theological Seminary is facing a new financial crisis and plans to dip into what its new chancellor calls a “rainy day fund” to cover a $2.2 million budget shortfall, The Jewish Week has learned.

The grim financial picture emerged last Thursday when Chancellor Arnold Eisen met with the entire seminary staff at 9 a.m. to disclose the shortfall. He also provided an overview of the seminary’s operations, which one attendee described as a “pep talk,” and insisted that the seminary was stronger than ever and would get through this.

His office said Tuesday that he was traveling and unable to be reached.

The seminary’s provost, Alan Cooper, met privately 90 minutes later with the faculty.

“Most faculty showed up, which is amazing” in the summer, said one faculty member. “We all knew it was going to be about our financial condition and of our failure to reach our budgetary goals. ... They have raised less than they hoped for.”

Benjamin Gampel, chairman of the Faculty Executive, said the “faculty was concerned but quite respectful.” He said Cooper told them “the people who have contracts and are on tenured tracks are all safe. When there are cuts, those cuts would be of the new people.”

Another faculty member who was at the meeting recounted that Cooper went even further, announcing that the seminary’s 68 part-time teachers — who comprise about half of the seminary’s faculty — should understand that their rehiring is not a certainty for the academic year beginning in September 2009. Cooper was at the seminary Tuesday but did not return phone calls or e-mails.

Although the seminary hired two new senior faculty members this year — Evyatar Marienberg and Michelle Lynn-Sachs — it was made clear that a hiring freeze is now in effect and that adjuncts and those faculty who have contracts that end next year should not expect to be rehired.

In addition, the faculty was told that those earning more than $100,000 would not receive a cost of living increase or a raise next year. Those who earn less than $100,000 would receive a cost of living increase and a 2 percent raise, according to those who attended the meeting.

Elise Dowell, the seminary’s senior director of communications, said she did not attend the meeting but understood it was a “somber meeting in a respectful way.”

She said the steps proposed were “what any responsible administration would do.” Dowell stressed that there are “no plans for future cuts at this time,” but added: “We constantly review where we are, and to be financially responsible we will be looking at the institution at large and identifying ways to deal with the current economy.”

Asked about the $2.2 million budget shortfall, Dowell would say only that the seminary would be taking “slightly over $2 million” from a “rainy day fund.”

The bleak economic picture comes at a time when the seminary is still searching for a development director to succeed Rabbi Carol Davidson, who recent left.

“We had been hearing for weeks now that fundraising was not doing well,” said one faculty member. “But they said that nothing is certain until the end of June [the end of the fiscal year]. We were told that what we heard was not the last word.”

Dowell insisted that fundraising was better this year than last, but unlike in previous years she declined to provide any numbers or the reason for the change. In 2004, she said the seminary had raised $17 million compared with $14 million in fiscal year 2001.

Nor would Dowell disclose the size of the operating budget, how much money was in the “rainy day fund,” whether the seminary had ever tapped it before and whether it was different from the reserve fund from which the seminary borrowed millions just a few years ago.

In December 2004, The Jewish Week reported that the seminary was facing a debt of about $50 million, had imposed a hiring freeze and had to sell land at Amsterdam Avenue and 100th Street it had bought four years earlier for graduate housing. In addition, it sold two apartment buildings on 122nd Street adjacent to the campus that had been used to house students. Graduate students are now tenants there.

The seminary has been circumspect in its finances and it is not known whether all of the money borrowed from the reserve fund — estimates of the amount taken range from $26 million to $50 million — has been repaid.

Financial troubles for the 122-year-old seminary, the academic and spiritual center of Conservative Judaism worldwide, come at a time when the Conservative movement is losing members to the Reform movement. In 10 years from 1990 to 2000, membership in Conservative synagogues dropped from 915,000 to 660,000.

The troubles at JTS also come as rabbinical seminaries of both the Reform and Orthodox movements are reporting strong financial growth.

A spokeswoman for Yeshiva University, the central institution of Modern Orthodoxy, said it expects to raise $140 million this fiscal year. Aside from a $100 million gift last year from Ronald Stanton — the largest ever for Jewish education — the university raised $59 million last year.

“We have hired 56 full-time faculty for graduate and undergraduate programs this year,” she said. “Since 2003-2004, we have expanded our undergraduate faculty by 30 percent. ... We are having an excellent year — an exceptional year.”

Rabbi David Ellenson, president of Hebrew Union College –Jewish Institute of Religion, said there has been a dramatic turnaround financially since he became president seven years ago.

At that time, the school, the intellectual, academic, spiritual and professional leadership development center of Reform Judaism, had a $4 million deficit and a $32 million budget. It took four years to turn things around through a number of cutbacks and the elimination of redundancies, Rabbi Ellenson said.

Today, he said, the college is operating with a balanced budget of nearly $39 million and its endowment has increased in the last five years almost 1 1/2 times “due to fundraising and prudent investments.”

“We hire part-time faculty where necessary and in a way that is responsible and prudent,” Rabbi Ellenson said. “There is no institution of higher learning that is not challenged by fiscal issues and questions of sustainability. We feel good about the direction in which we have moved and are happy to have a completely balanced operating budget.”

Labels: Conservative Judaism, Conservatives, Jewish education, Jewish Theological seminary, JTS

- posted by Izak @ 6:45 PM (0) comments

 
Conservative Judaism goes down the tubes...
Another Area Day School To Close Its Doors

Solomon Schechter School of Suffolk County victim of tuition costs and perceived lack of commitment in the area.

by Stewart Ain
Staff Writer
http://www.thejewishweek.com/viewArticle/c36_a7605/News/New_York.html

Faced with a steadily declining enrollment and the inability to attract new students, the Solomon Schechter School of Suffolk County has decided to close its doors in June after 26 years of operation. The action leaves the Jewish Academy in East Northport, a school for children age 2 through the second grade, as the only Jewish day school in Suffolk.

“It’s a very sad thing for Suffolk County,” said Honey Pine, who taught Hebrew at the school for all 26 years. “It’s sort of like an end of an era.” She said the school, which was housed in the Suffolk Y Jewish Community Center in Commack, started with 50 students and in about 10 years had as many as 175 students. This year, it had 52 and was unable to attract new students despite a major recruitment drive by a professional director of admissions.

Laura Buechler, a former chairman of the board of education, said that over the years the school “turned out terrific young people. ... It’s heartbreaking.”

Tuition is $12,000 and many families have two children in the school, she noted.
“It’s very difficult for families to spend that kind of money, particularly when hard economic times makes it even more difficult,” Buechler added. “And Suffolk has some very good school districts. You have to really be committed to send your kids here.”

The Suffolk Schechter closing comes a few months after the closing of the Metropolitan Schechter High School in Teaneck, N.J. That school was formed two years ago after it and the Schechter High School in Manhattan merged.

Richard Krulik, the Suffolk Schechter school’s president, said the administration is “working closely with the Nassau Schechter to integrate our students” both in the elementary-middle school in Jericho and the high school in Glen Cove. Because the Jericho school is more expensive than the Suffolk school, which has grades K-8, UJA-Federation arranged for an anonymous donor to cover the tuition differential and provide the same financial aid parents had received in the Suffolk school, according to Rabbi Deborah Joselow, managing director of UJA-Federation’s Commission on Jewish Identity and Renewal. “The leadership of the Suffolk school estimated that the financial aid will be about $120,000,” she said.

Rabbi Joselow stressed that the aid would be provided to Suffolk students who transfer to any Jewish day school. Representatives of both the Hebrew Academy of Nassau County and the Jewish Academy have also met with Suffolk’s parents.
“We are asking parents to sign up for a new school by April 14 so we can figure out the amount” of assistance, she said.

In addition, because many Suffolk students live too far from the Nassau schools to be eligible for busing by their public school districts, Rabbi Joselow said another anonymous donor has agreed to pay any additional costs for private busing.

“The idea is to make it as easy as possible for the families and the schools to transfer and absorb the new students,” she said. Lelah Fleischer, president of the Schechter school in Nassau, said she is aware that for some parents who live on the North Fork of Long Island the “logistics are horrible” because of the distance involved. She also emphasized the importance for Suffolk Schechter students to transfer to another Jewish day school. “We’ll support them no matter where they go,” she said. “Of the 52 children, families with 46 children have inquired about the schools. And we’re already processing applications from a lot of them.”

Fleischer noted that her school is about to begin environmental and traffic studies to examine the feasibility of moving its high school from Glen Cove to the grounds of Temple Beth Sholom in Roslyn Heights. Rabbi Tuvia Teldon, director of the Jewish Academy, said his school has 80 students and could accommodate another 30 or 40. He said that if there is a demand, he would add a third grade next year.

“We consider it to be a community emergency and we want to do our part to help these families,” he said. “I feel a tremendous responsibility because we will be servicing 100,000 Jews in eastern Nassau and all of Suffolk.

“In Suffolk, the population is not really looking for a Jewish day school education and so we tried to establish our school to the finest in general studies with a strong Jewish component,” said Rabbi Teldon, whose school is under Orthodox supervision. “About 80 percent of our parents are unaffiliated. Hopefully we’ll be able to grow and serve as the day school of Suffolk.”

On March 20, a day after the decision was made to close the school, career counselors from FEGS, a UJA-Federation agency, arrived at the school to help the 22 full and part-time teachers prepare their resumes. “A lot of them have not been in the job market for quite a long time and they needed to learn how to market themselves,” Rabbi Joselow said. In addition, SAJES, the county’s central agency for Jewish education, has also worked with the teachers to help them prepare lesson plans and presentations that they will have to make when they interview for new positions, according to Deborah Friedman, SAJES’ executive director. “Our priority has been to ensure that the children, families and teachers make a seamless transition and stay within the system of Jewish education,” she said.

Rabbi Joselow emphasized that UJA-Federation has been working for several years with the Partnership for Excellence in Jewish Education to try to help the Suffolk Schechter grow.

“We have been working with all of the non-Orthodox schools on Long Island to try to get them to work together” in terms of joint programming and efficiencies in management, the rabbi pointed out. “PEJE helped with financial resource development, marketing, governance and admissions,” she added.

“Everybody was going in the same direction to try to keep the school open for years, not just this year.”

Robert Abramson, director of the Solomon Schechter Day School Association, said the leadership of the school had done everything possible to grow the school.

“At some point I hope and pray there will be a place for a Schechter school in Suffolk,” he said. “But it’s not only about Schechter, it’s about other day schools out there too.”

He was referring to the fact that both the Hebrew Academy of Suffolk County and the Torah Academy of Suffolk County both closed over the years because of a lack of students.

“People who moved out there are not looking for day schools,” Abramson said. “Everybody I talk to says this is a population we have to reach, but it’s not easy.”

Rabbi Joselow said UJA-Federation has commissioned a study by Insight Research of Manhattan to learn why Jewish parents on Long Island and Manhattan don’t send their children to Jewish day schools. “It started a few months ago,” she said. “We don’t know of any marketing study like this. They have finished the Long Island segment and are still doing Manhattan. We hope to have it out by mid-summer.” Friedman of SAJES said her organization plans to use it in determining how next to proceed.

“There seems to be a lack of awareness of the richness of a Jewish day school and perhaps in Suffolk County we will have to look at other Jewish day school models,” such as community day schools, she said. “Sometimes you have to say goodbye to something before you can begin anew,” she said. “We want to leave our options open for the future. We have a lot of smart leaders out here and a lot of people who care about Jewish education. Those are the people who will join us to help us figure it out.”

Labels: American Jews, Conservative Judaism, Jewish days schools, Jewish education, Solomon Schechter School

- posted by Izak @ 4:15 PM (0) comments

 
Modern Orthodox women move closer to becoming rabbis
Who's that woman in the pulpit?

By Shmuel Rosner
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/959981.html
Mon., March 03, 2008 Adar1 26, 5768

NEW YORK - She waits patiently for the end of the service before going up to the synagogue's pulpit. This is the policy and she respects it. Women are not allowed there until the service has been completed. This is how it was before her, and this is the custom now. Her husband doesn't get it - he thinks that she ought to propose a change. But Elana Stein Hain is not in any hurry. "Caution" is the key word in a conversation with her that took place recently in Manhattan's Upper West Side. This caution "is the only way for me to be effective," she said.

She is part of a new fashion that is getting quite a lot of attention in modern Orthodox circles in America, an offshoot of one of the few trends that are occurring almost simultaneously in America and Israel - the Orthodox women's revolution. Or to use plain English: women taking key, quasi-rabbinic roles in synagogues. They are almost rabbis, but not really. Or maybe really, but just not called by that name. They deliver sermons, but they cannot lead prayers, nor can they officiate at weddings. But maybe at other ceremonies: for example, funerals.

Elana Stein Hain is one of these young women. The Jewish Center has hired her to serve as a "resident scholar." She teaches, counsels and delivers sermons on Sabbaths and holidays. However, as noted, only after the entire prayer service has been completed. Not like a rabbi, who delivers his sermon between the shaharit and musaf services, or between the kabbalat Shabbat and aravit services. This is an Orthodox synagogue, after all.

And she is comfortable with this role, even with the limitations that Orthodoxy imposes on her. "I respect the system, and therefore I am also prepared to accept things that aren't exactly the way I would like them to be," she said. In any case, she herself is far from a revolutionary. Indeed, she believes that it is necessary to "preserve the differences between men and women," because "men are more gender-neutral" - a statement that is almost scandalous in its conservatism. She laughs at her congregation affectionately: When they hired her for this position, "they thought they were very cutting-edge," religiously speaking. But Stein Hain knows that they are in truth very traditional. They have not broken any barriers. Were it up to her, it is doubtful that they ever would.

Breakthrough or not?

The women who serve in Orthodox synagogues in New York - and one in Chicago as well - come from similar backgrounds. They all studied in the Talmud program at Yeshiva University or at institutions of learning like Drisha in New York or Nishmat in Jerusalem. Sara Hurwitz is a "religious mentor" at the Hebrew Institute in Riverdale, in the Bronx. Lynn Kaye has been given the position of "rabbi's assistant" at Congregation Shearith Israel in Manhattan and is defined as the "director of Jewish life and learning," a bombastic title for a role that is very similar to that of a rabbi. Among them are women who are revolutionary and those who are less so, women who are ambitious and those who are less so. Their roles are perhaps another step in a slow revolution, but there are those who believe that it is the last step.

In any case, the Orthodox women's revolution is above all a revolution of learning. This is what brought them in the first place to insist on a more central place and a more active role in their communities. Rivka Haut and Adena Berkowitz, who recently finished editing a bencher (booklet containing the grace after meals and other songs and prayers) entitled Shaarei Simcha ("Gates of Joy") that is intended primarily for women, noted this week, "Thirty years ago, women who participated in women's tefillah [prayer services] were considered beyond the mainstream. All this has occurred in about 30 years! A major accomplishment indeed."

But the yardstick for measuring the size of the achievement is subjective. Where Haut and Berkowitz identify a breakthrough, Samantha Shapiro sees a kind of stasis that borders on insult. She, too, was initially enthusiastic about the new generation of learned women, but about a month ago, writing in the American magazine Slate, she described women's roles in synagogues as follows: "It now seems a little sad to me that women devote their intellect, time and passion to Torah and to the system of Jewish law without being formally recognized by that system, and often being seen as a threat to it."

Stein Hain does not especially like that article. She also does not look like someone who is aiming to threaten her congregation. Rather, she is trying to avoid any suspicion of threat. Like her, others are also careful not to step on any toes. Kaye, who like Stein Hain is a graduate of the Talmud program at Yeshiva University, is happy with the title that has been given her. Even if she would like to see a woman hold the title "rabbi," she would certainly not want this to happen before the congregation is ready.

Thus both women are very aware of the degrees of caution they must exercise - which are not identical. Each synagogue has its own capacity for encompassing change, or the appearance of change. Ben Harris of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported three months ago, for example, that Hurwitz will be given a new title at her synagogue - morateinu, our teacher. This reflects a promotion - but a limited one. And that brings us to the real question: Are we talking about a stage on the way to full participation, one station before "rabbi," or is this the last stop?

"The next step? I don't know if there is one," said Stein Hain. There are women who are prepared to say that they want more, but not necessarily to a newspaper.

Only in New York - and Jerusalem

The "next step" is Dina Najman. In her case, the disguise has almost been cast aside. Berkowitz and Haut pull her out as the clearest, most outstanding example of women's advancement in the Orthodox Jewish world: a woman who is "head of the congregation" at Kehilat Orach Eliezer (familiarly known as KOE), located in the same fashionable area of Manhattan. This week, someone who is very familiar with American Orthodoxy scoffed that there are only two places in the world where a woman can fulfill a function in an Orthodox synagogue: in Jerusalem's Katamon neighborhood and in New York's Upper West Side.

When Najman was appointed to the position a year and a half ago, The New York Times devoted an article to her. She was the first, a pioneer. However, her appointment was helped by a fact that was usually buried deep inside the media reports: Her synagogue does not officially belong to any organization of Orthodox congregations. It is free to do whatever it chooses, and the Orthodox are free to disown it.

And some of them have definitely done so. Rabbi Avi Shafran of Agudath Israel of America, for example, wrote that this synagogue is "pointedly - and significantly - unaffiliated." Najman can walk around with a self-made Orthodox label - and certainly her self-image, education and observance of tradition are all Orthodox. But the label will remain controversial.

In any case, Najman's congregation has not flourished since she was appointed to head it. It has been caught in a predictable trap: For someone who is Orthodox, it is too permissive, and for someone who is not Orthodox, there are more liberal options - for example, congregations where there is total equality between men and women. Thus the narrow crack between Stein Hain's cautious conservatism and Najman's less cautious conservatism defines the border between what is already permitted - even if not prevalent - and what is still outside the establishment.

This is territory from which Stein Hain distances herself as much as she possibly can. It is almost dusk in Manhattan, and she excuses herself to recite the evening prayers in the depths of the Starbucks branch at the corner of Columbus Avenue and 86th Street. Afterward, she will walk to her synagogue, barely five minutes away. And she will also have her picture taken, on one condition: that the photograph look like a woman who is on the pulpit to deliver a sermon. Only a man, after all, is permitted to pray there.

Labels: Female clergy, female rabbis, Feminism, Modern Orthodox Judaism, Rebbetzin

- posted by Izak @ 9:36 AM (0) comments

 
Justifying Israeli homosexuals by attacking Haredim
A proud father of a gay son

By David Fogel
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/959968.html
Mon., March 03, 2008 Adar1 26, 5768

Full disclosure: I'm the proud father of a gay son. And I'm not the only one. Our prime minister, Ehud Olmert, is the proud father of a gay daughter - a daughter who has become a symbol, the pride of the community, for being an open lesbian and a brave fighter for equal rights for the homosexual community.

And because I know, from personal acquaintance, that Ehud Olmert is a warm and loving father, I am angry at his thundering silence in light of the nonsense and incitement against the homosexual community by several leaders of Shas.

As long as the leaders of this party were content robbing the public coffers, as long as they adopted the extortion methods of the Ashkenazi ultra-Orthodox parties, we somehow accepted it; after all, this has been going on since the establishment of the state. It's true that there has been a certain innovation here: To date, the MKs of the Ashkenazi ultra-Orthodox parties have not been convicted of criminal offenses or served prison terms - but we have become accustomed to this, too.

But the Shas wheeler-dealers are no longer satisfied with reaching into the public coffers. As faithful representatives of worldviews that were common during the Middle Ages, they have pulled out a new "winning" card - as far as they are concerned, nothing less than an ace - the homosexual card.

I have no desire to repeat their nonsense, or to try to diagnose the psychological problems that lie behind these statements. I only know that in this difficult country, where hooligans mercilessly beat up helpless elderly people, there has been an increase - so my son and his friends tell me - in hooligans also beating up homosexuals who are walking innocently in the city streets, minding their own business. We can assume that some of these hooligans draw encouragement and confirmation from the contemptuous words uttered by the Shas wheeler-dealers.

I return to Ehud Olmert.

Olmert is a sophisticated and experienced politician, as evidenced by the wisdom and the cunning behind his extraordinary success at maintaining his coalition. There probably has been no prime minister who did that as well as he does. And still, we can also expect him to understand that there are far more important things than survival. For example, the dignity of his children.

Therefore, if I were Ehud Olmert, I would convene all the Shas MKs in a closed room and tell them the following: I have no intention of preaching morals to you and explaining to you what damage you are causing my daughter's community. As far as I am concerned, you can continue to think whatever you wish. But if you dare once again to utter such nonsense in public, you will find yourselves outside the coalition.

The writer is the chair of Fogel-Ogilvy Advertising Ltd.

Labels: Gay pride parade, Haredi Judaism, Homosexuality, Homosexuality in Israel, Israeli gays, Israeli Jews, Israeli society

- posted by Izak @ 9:29 AM (1) comments

 
Modern Orthodox Pre-Marital Sex Woes
Chief rabbi prohibits single women from going to mikve

By MATTHEW WAGNER
The Jerusalem Post
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1202246357590&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
Feb 10, 2008 1:27 Updated Feb 10, 2008 2:55

In an attempt to stem a trend of quasi-condoned premarital sex among young modern Orthodox men and women, Chief Ashkenazi Rabbi Yona Metzger has issued a prohibition against allowing single women to use mikvaot (ritual baths).

In a letter dated January 24 and addressed to the rabbis of the Land of Israel, Metzger warns of a trend in which young modern Orthodox men and women use mikvaot to circumvent one of the severest prohibitions connected with sexual intercourse.

"It is absolutely prohibited to allow a single woman to immerse herself in a mikve," wrote Metzger. "And it is an obligation to prevent her from doing so."

Metzger also advised that ritual bath attendants should be told to prevent single women from immersing themselves.

Jewish law proscribes sexual relations with a woman during and after menstruation until she immerses herself in a mikve. This prohibition is known as nidda.

Traditionally, only married women have been permitted to remove the prohibition of nidda via a mikve, so they can have sexual relations with their husbands.

In contrast, single women have traditionally been prevented from using a mikve because it would, in theory, remove the main prohibition against sexual intercourse.

There is no Biblical prohibition against a male and a female having sexual intercourse once the obstacle of nidda has been removed.

There is, however, a less stringent rabbinic injunction against premarital sex.

In recent years modern Orthodox men and women have been postponing marriage to pursue higher education and careers. Others have simply not found the right person with whom to settle down.

As a result, some young Orthodox people, who feel obligated to adhere to Halacha, but who also find celibacy impossibly difficult, have used the mikvaot to remove the main legal obstacle to premarital sex.

Prof. Tzvi Zohar of Bar-Ilan University wrote an article in March 2006 condoning premarital sex that aroused fervent debate in religious Zionist circles.

Zohar's article, printed in Akdamot, an academic journal on Jewish thought published by Beit Morasha, analyzed the opinions of leading halachic authorities from the Middle Ages, such as Nachmanides, and those of the modern era, such as Rabbi Ya'acov Emden, and showed that many permitted sexual relations without marriage.

In an arrangement sanctioned by Jewish law, according to these opinions, the woman becomes a pilegesh, or concubine. Neither the man nor the woman has any obligations or rights, but both must adhere to family purity laws in accordance with Halacha.

Labels: Jewish college students, Jewish teenagers, Jewish youth, Judaism and sex, Mizrachi, Modern Orthodox Judaism, Modern Orthodoxy, Negia, Negiah, Pre-marital sex, Sex and Judaism

- posted by Izak @ 5:21 AM (0) comments

 
Homosexuals provoke Haredim in Jerusalem
Shas MK: Gays are causing Israeli society to self-destruct

By Shahar Ilan, Haaretz Correspondent
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/949273.html
Wed., January 30, 2008 Shvat 23, 5768

As a Knesset panel deliberated Tuesday on proposals to ban all gay pride parades in Jerusalem, MK Nissim Ze'ev (Shas) accused the homosexual community of "carrying out the self-destruction of Israeli society and the Jewish people."

Ze'ev also said homosexuals were a plague as "toxic as bird flu."

The Knesset Constitution, Law and Justice Committee met to debate two bills presented by religious party members which would amend the Jerusalem municipality's Basic Law to prevent gay pride parades from being held within the city limits.

The bills were presented by MK Eli Gabai (National Union - National Religious Party) and MK Yitzhak Vakhnin (Shas).

Both bulls were passed in a preliminary reading in the Knesset plenum and have have now been brought for committee deliberations ahead of a first reading.

MK Zahava Gal-On (Meretz) said in response to Ze'ev's comments that "when I hear concepts like plague and self-destruction, I don't believe they are in the lexicon of expressions. The capital city does not belong only to the ultra-Orthodox."

The chairman of Israel's LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender) organization, Michael Hammel, called Ze'ev's words embarrassing and frightening.

"The right to march in the capital city is not a local 'Jerusalemite' matter," he said. "This is a culture war, where politicians are trying to turn Jerusalem into their private property."

Committee members decided that public figures from the religious and homosexual communities in Jerusalem would meet to discuss the gay pride parade on a separate occasion.

MK Yitzhak Levy (NU - NRP) said, "the current situation is that this is a crippled and small protest: once you close a stadium, once you give 100 meters. There should have been a discussion to find new ideas, thus I am calling for a discussion."

Noa Setet, who runs Jerusalem's Open House - the organization which has initiated the parade - seconded Levy's suggestion, but added that the group had scheduled two meetings in the past and Levy's aides had canceled both of them.

Levy denied having canceled the meeting and said he intended two recruit other public figures from the religious community for the future discussion.

----

Haredi court places curse on upcoming Jerusalem Gay Pride parade

By Yair Ettinger, Haaretz Correspondent
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/869201.html
Tue., January 29, 2008 Shvat 22, 5768

The ultra-Orthodox rabbinical court, Haredi Badatz, placed a "curse" Sunday on the participants in the upcoming Gay Pride parade scheduled to take place next week in Jerusalem.

The court also cursed the police officers who will be maintaining order during the parade.

Badatz rabbis plastered warning posters on Jerusalem city walls saying "All those involved in the matter, those of impure souls and those helping them and guarding them, they will feel in their souls a curse, a bad spirit will come over them and haunt them, they will never be cleansed of their sins, from the judgment of God, in their bodies, their souls and their finances."

The ultra-Orthodox leaders plan to stage a "large demonstration which will shake the foundations for the sake of Jerusalem's holiness." The demonstration will likely take place next week, but the warning posters disseminated Sunday afternoon are perceived by the ultra-Orthodox community as a green light to begin protests even sooner.

The rabbis decided to try to bring about the cancellation of the parade through protest after their "diplomatic efforts" to negotiate the cancellation with the Jerusalem police failed.

The leader of the Haredi community, Rabbi Izhak Tuvia Weiss told the police that he was opposed to mass demonstrations, and asked senior police officials to rescind the authorization it had given to the gay and lesbian community to hold its Gay Pride parade in the streets of Jerusalem.

According to some Haredi officials, Rabbi Weiss was disappointed by the meeting he had last week at his home with the chief of the Jerusalem district police force, Major General Aharon Franco, who refused to cancel the parade.

In the wake of his diplomatic failure, Rabbi Weiss agreed to join the more militant members of the community in supporting the mass demonstration against the parade.

----

15 arrested protesting against Jerusalem Gay Pride parade

By Yuval Yoaz, Yair Ettinger and Jonathan Lis, Haaretz Correspondent
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/873070.html
Thu., June 21, 2007 Tamuz 5, 5767

Fifteen arrests were made as hundreds of ultra-Orthodox protesters threw stones, prompting police to use water cannons against them at a demonstration in Jerusalem early Thursday, against the Gay Pride march planned for later on Thursday.

The protest erupted after Israel's High Court cleared the way for the march on Thursday by dismissing an appeal against it by right-wing groups.

The High Court decision was published late Wednesday. The parade is set for a short route past the historic King David hotel to a nearby park, where a gathering is to be held.

Every year, the parade sparks a heated reaction from religious Jews, Christians and Muslims.

Ultra-Orthodox Jews have rioted repeatedly against the march over the past week, burning tires, assaulting policemen and damaging police cars. Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said 22 policemen were injured in the riots, and 110 people were arrested.

Jerusalem's annual Gay Pride parade has been a relatively modest affair, with none of the flamboyant costumes or nudity common at similar events elsewhere in the world, or even in the nearby Israeli city of Tel Aviv.

At the 2005 march, an ultra-Orthodox man stabbed and wounded three marchers.

The 5,000 marchers expected Thursday will be guarded by 7,000 law enforcement personnel, Rosenfeld said. Because of security concerns, he said, the parade route is only 500 meters (yards) long.

Last year, security concerns led to cancellation of the parade. Instead, gays held a closed festival at a Jerusalem sports stadium.

Jerusalem Mayor Uri Lupolianski implored the court to cancel the parade in a personal message, though this contradicts the municipality's official stance. "The Jerusalem municipality's management regards this parade as a severe provocation, harmful to the delicate balance between the different interests of the city's various population groups," said Lupolianski's note. "The city's management therefore calls upon the court to cancel the parade and prevent violence."

Underscoring his views, ultra-Orthodox demonstrators protesting the parade confronted police Tuesday night in the capital's Mea Shearim neighborhood.

Earlier this month, however, the municipality adopted an official stance that runs contrary to Lupolianski's position: It decided that there was no reason for the city to prevent the parade from taking place.

Jerusalem police work to combat threats of violence
Jerusalem police on Wednesday detained three men in their 20s who were suspected of preparing caltrops and planning to place them on the road during the Gay Pride parade.

Police also found 60 tires hidden in the Gilo neighborhood and suspect that residents were planning on burning them at the parade.

The police have completed security preparations for the event, which will begin at 17:00 on Thursday. The parade will commence at the intersection of Hess and King David streets in Jerusalem and continue towards Liberty Bell Park.

They have also completed security preparations for the Ultra-Orthodox counter-protest which will take place at the same time at the intersection of Jaffa and Sarei Yisrael streets.

A temporary police headquarters will be established near the parade's route.

The High Court refuses right-wing petitions against parade
The High Court on Wednesday cancelled three petitions for the parade's cancelation which were under review since Tuesday. One was filed by the Kochav Echad nonprofit organization, the second by Industry Minister Eli Yishai, who heads the Sephardi ultra-Orthodox party Shas, and the third by right-wing activists Itamar Ben-Gvir and Baruch Marzel. All three petitions demanded that the parade be canceled on the grounds that it would offend the religious community's sensibilities.

Ben-Gvir and Marzel initially requested that their petition be reviewed by a different bench, but their request was rejected. Originally, they claimed, the panel was to have comprised Justices Edmond Levy, Elyakim Rubinstein and Joseph Elon - all of whom are either religious or from a religious family - but an "unknown party" replaced that panel with one comprised of Deputy High Court President Eliezer Rivlin, Justice Ayala Procaccia and High Court President Dorit Beinisch. Before rejecting their request for a different bench, Beinisch told Ben-Gvir and Marzel: "You may consider yourselves honored to have your request reviewed by the current panel."

During the hearing, the justices urged the Jerusalem Open House to give the event a restrained and modest character.

Ben-Gvir argued that "a march through the streets of Jerusalem would almost certainly generate violent rioting. The parade would offend hundreds of thousands of ultra-Orthodox and traditional Jews, as well as Christians and Arabs."

As police were completing their deployment in Jerusalem in an effort to ensure the safety of tomorrow's parade, ultra-Orthodox activists from the fundamentalist Edah Haredit sect continued to stage violent protests in Mea Shearim. In contrast, leaders of the mainstream factions of the ultra-Orthodox community instructed their followers to refrain from participating in protests against the parade, citing "educational damage to the community."

Jerusalem municipality still has not hung up Gay Pride parade flags

The Jerusalem Municipality has yet to put up Gay Pride flags along the route of the planned Gay Pride parade scheduled for Thursday, despite what the Jerusalem Open House called an "explicit promise to do so by [Wednesday] morning at the latest."

City officials said they had intended to hang the flags on Thursday morning, for fear anti-Gay Pride protestors will vandalize them overnight, but following a threat by the Open House that it would file a petition with the High Court of Justice, agreed to hand out the flags Wednesday afternoon.

In a letter sent to Mayor Uri Lupolianski, Open House attorney Gilad Barnea accused the mayor of "trying to disrupt and sabotage the ongoing preparations" for the parade.

The Jerusalem Municipality said in response that it was acting in accordance with High Court decisions

In recent years, the municipality has repeatedly committed itself to hanging the Gay Pride flags - as it does with the flags of other groups that hold events in the capital - only to fail to do so.

Shahar Ilan and Yair Ettinger contributed to this article

----

Some 3,500 march in gay pride parade in Jerusalem

By Jonathan Lis and Yair Ettinger, Haaretz Correspondents and The Associated Press
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/873597.html
Mon., June 25, 2007 Tamuz 9, 5767

Roughly 3,500 people marched in the much-contested gay pride parade in Jerusalem on Thursday evening, as some 1,500 ultra-Orthodox men and right-wing activists demonstrated against the event.

Some 500 ultra-Orthodox protesters marched along Jaffa Street in the city, in an attempt to intersect the march and confront the participants. Police blocked the demonstrators, however, arresting 12 of them.

"I am demanding my civil rights, including the right to get married and have children," said marcher Guy Frishman, 27. "I want to have rights like every other person."

One man evaded police to approach marchers, yelling: "Filth! Get out of Jerusalem!" He was escorted away by police.

The march took place under heavy guard, with more than 7,000 police officers protecting the participants. The Magen David Adom emergency medical service was expected to deploy 45 ambulances and 200 medical personnel along the parade route.

The number of participants was far less than the 5,000 people the parade's organizers had believed would take part.

The parade began at the junction of King David Street and Moshe Hess Street and ended in the nearby Liberty Bell Park.

Earlier Thursday, a resident of the ultra-Orthodox Mea Shearim neighborhood in Jerusalem was arrested on Jaffa Street in possession of a small improvised explosive device.

Elsewhere in the city, ultra-Orthodox demonstrators set fire to garbage cans in Shabbat Square and disrupted traffic in the area. In Beit Shemesh, two ultra-Orthodox demonstrators were arrested by police.

Parade organizers petitioned the High Court of Justice on Thursday to instruct the Jerusalem municipality to station fire engines and sewage draining vehicles at the site of the post-parade rally, in order to bypass a firefighters' strike which threatened to bring about the cancellation of the rally.

Six days ago, some 1,500 firefighters went on strike and refused to secure events or grant licenses to businesses. The firefighters said they would not grant a license to the parade organizers.

Right-wing activist Itamar Ben-Gvir submitted a petition to the High Court earlier Thursday, citing fire code violations in his call for the cancellation of the parade.

Although the strike did not prevent the marchers from holding the parade, it did result in the cancellation of the post-parade rally.

Police limited the route of the parade, authorizing organizers from the Jerusalem Open House gay rights organization to hold a procession along a stretch of only several hundred yards.

Police began scouring the route on Wednesday, to prevent the possibility of extremists planting explosives or other means of injuring the participants.

The officers selected to participate in the operation had prepared for a wide variety of scenarios, ranging from stabbing attempts to terrorist attacks with multiple casualties.

Two years ago, an ultra-Orthodox demonstrator, Yishai Schlissel, leaped into the parade and stabbed three participants who sustained minor to moderate wounds.

On Wednesday night, 23 ultra-Orthodox demonstrators were arrested and two police officers were hurt in violent protests against the march. The protesters hurled rocks and firebombs at the police officers. Two police cars were damaged and one was set on fire. The police used water cannons to disperse the protests.

Jerusalem also saw demonstrations in Givat Shaul, Mea Shearim, Beit Yisrael and Bait Vagan. On some occasions, protesters threw stones at the police and set fire to garbage canisters. Four officers suffered minor injuries, and seven protesters were arrested. Police also found two dummy explosives, one in Beit Hakerem, the other in Ramot. The fake explosives included notes warning that the dummy bombs would be replaced with real ones unless the parade was canceled.

----

They're here, they're queer - be proud of Israel

By Bradley Burston
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/873728.html
Mon., July 09, 2007 Tamuz 23, 5767

JERUSALEM - I'm proud of the State of Israel. It may have more faults per capita than any nation in the world, faults which are duly broadcast, rerun, critiqued, and condemned as nowhere else. It may have more critics per capita than anywhere else in the world, in particular among its majority population of restive, instinctively kvetching, eternally disappointed Jews.

I know every criticism by heart. I'll see your every damning denunciation, and raise you 10. But I am proud of this country, and the gay pride parade in Jerusalem goes a long way toward explaining why.

I am proud of a country which - under the burden of a 24/7 threat of Islamic Jihad terrorism, under a daily Hamas barrage of Qassam missiles on a small town in the Negev, under an explicit Iranian threat of erasure in the future and client militia brushfire wars in the near present - deploys 8,000 police, nearly half of its entire active-duty force, to protect a parade in Jerusalem by a minority group that is routinely denigrated by many members of two of the holy city's largest and most vocal communities: the ultra-Orthodox and the Palestinians.

I am proud of the gay community, which made strenuous efforts to assure that the parade would be held in areas far from the ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods and other areas where the march would serve to offend residents.

I am proud of the police for standing up to yeshiva students who, screaming "Nazis! Nazis! Nazis!" at the officers, pelted them with rocks, bottles, angle iron and Molotov cocktails, all the while breaking windows, smashing streetlights, and setting fire to tires and garbage dumpsters.

I am proud of ultra-Orthodox rabbis and yeshiva masters, who, though appalled by the parade and what they see as the abomination of homosexuality, publicly and unequivocally forbade their students from taking part in violent demonstrations.

I am proud of a country that scorns the slimy Meir Kahane disciple Itamar Ben-Gvir when he screams at gay celebrants in a Tel Aviv parade "the Nazis should have finished you off."

I am proud of the policeman on King David Street who, when asked by a passing pre-schooler about the flag with the rainbow colors, replied, "There are boys who love boys, and girls who love girls."

I am proud of a country in which the army's influential radio station airs the views of the daughter of the prime minister when she states that the right of gays and lesbians to march in their capital city is as inherent as their right to vote.

Just as I am proud of Israel's last Eurovision song contest winner, an acclaimed diva who began life as a man, who told a television interviewer why she believed that in the interest of respect for the holy city, the parade should not be held there.

And I am proud, as well, of the fact that Israel Television gave air time to a rabbi to explain his strong opposition to the march, and to the woman anchor who, asked by the rabbi what she would do if her son told her she was gay, said that she would hold him and be grateful for his openness.

There are many who argue that a Jewish country cannot countenance a public celebration of homosexuality. It is time for them to take the advice of leading rabbis, who placed this announcement in the Lithuanian Haredi newspaper, as quoted by the Jerusalem Post:

"Demonstrating should be done by each person in his place [by feeling outrage in the soul, by praying and beseeching (God) against the loathsome blasphemy]."

All of us who live here have our personal list of obscenities, perversions and abominations, as committed by our fellow Jewish residents of Israel. We may find their actions politically abhorrent, culturally unbearable, spiritually bankrupt, personally offensive.

They are a big part of the price of living in this country, riven along fault lines dividing and enraging left and right, secular and religious, Mizrachi and Ashkenazi, sabra and immigrant.

It may be the built-in flaw of a Jewish homeland, this infighting among the Jews it has brought home.

But as the gay pride parade proves, the most profound strength of a Jewish country are those Jews who strive to learn to live with the Jews with whom they so profoundly differ.

We're here. By definition, we are all of us, each in our own ways, queer. We should, all of us for our own reasons, be proud.

----

Labels: Abomination, Anti-Torah, Gay pride parade, Gays, Homosexuality, Israeli society, Jerusalem

- posted by Izak @ 8:32 PM (0) comments

 
Saudi prince offers Israelis to become "Arab Jews"
Saudi prince: If Israel quits Arab land, it could join Arab world

By Reuters
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/946355.html
Tue., January 22, 2008 Shvat 15, 5768

A senior Saudi royal has offered Israel a vision of broad cooperation with the Arab world and people-to-people contacts if it signs a peace treaty and withdraws from all occupied Arab territories.

In an interview with Reuters, Prince Turki al-Faisal, a former ambassador to the United States and Britain and adviser to King Abdullah, said Israel and the Arabs could cooperate in many areas including water, agriculture, science and education.

Asked what message he wanted to send to the Israeli public, he said:

"The Arab world, by the Arab peace initiative, has crossed the Rubicon from hostility towards Israel to peace with Israel and has extended the hand of peace to Israel, and we await the Israelis picking up our hand and joining us in what inevitably will be beneficial for Israel and for the Arab world."

The 22-nation Arab League revived at a Riyadh summit last year a Saudi peace plan first adopted in 2002 offering Israel full normalization of relations in return for full withdrawal from occupied Palestinian, Syrian and Lebanese land.

Israel shunned the offer then, at the height of a violent Palestinian uprising in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

But it has expressed more interest since the United States launched a new drive for Israeli-Palestinian peace at Annapolis, Maryland, last November, aiming for an agreement this year.

Prince Turki, who was previously head of Saudi intelligence, said that if Israel accepted the Arab League plan and signed a comprehensive peace, "one can imagine the integration of Israel into the Arab geographical entity."

"One can imagine not just economic, political and diplomatic relations between Arabs and Israelis but also issues of education, scientific research, combating mutual threats to the inhabitants of this vast geographic area," he said.

'Arab Jews'

His comments, on the sidelines of a conference on the Middle East and Europe staged by Germany's Bertelsmann Foundation think-tank, were some of the most far-reaching addressed to Israelis by a senior figure from Saudi Arabia.

The desert kingdom, home to Islam's holiest shrines, has no official relations with Israel, although both are key allies of the United States in the region.

"Exchange visits by people of both Israel and the rest of the Arab countries would take place," Prince Turki said.

"We will start thinking of Israelis as Arab Jews rather than simply as Israelis," he said, noting that many Arabs historically saw Israel as a European entity imposed on Arab land after World War Two.

Prince Turki, brother of Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal, holds no official position now but heads the King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies in Riyadh.

He said Israel could expect some benefits on the way to signing a treaty and making a full withdrawal, noting that after the 1993 Oslo interim accords with the Palestine Liberation Organization, regional cooperation had begun and Israel had achieved representation in several Arab states.

Those Israeli advances were reversed after the outbreak of the second Palestinian Intifada in 2000.

Israel was wary of the Arab League plan partly because it would entail handing back the Golan Heights captured in the 1967 Six-Day War, as well as redivision.

But an Israeli participant at the conference, Yossi Alpher, co-editor of the Bitter Lemons Israeli-Palestinian Web site and a former senior intelligence official, welcomed the comments.

"I was delighted to hear Prince Turki's description of the comprehensive nature of normalization as he envisages it within the framework of the Arab peace initiative," Alpher said.

"His remarks should encourage us Israelis and Arabs to deepen and broaden the discussion of ways to reach a comprehensive peace, implement the Arab peace initiative and reach the kind of cooperation that his highness described."

Alpher said he hoped that once there was a comprehensive peace, Israel's Arab neighbours would accept Israelis "as Jewish people living a sovereign life in our historic homeland" and not as "Arab Jews" or "European Jews".

----

Simshalom's response:

Arab Jews vs Jewish Arabs

Very funny!

The Saudi prince is willing to "convert" Israeli Jews into "Arab Jews" so does that mean that the Arabs are willing to become "Jewish Arabs" in return?

Besides, he may be alluding to the genuine Jewish tribes that lived in the areas of today`s Saudi Arabia, particularly the Jews of Medina who preceded Islam and were tricked by Mohamed to enter into negotiations and were then either slaughtered and the women were forcibly taken into captivity and made into Muslim concubines (including one for Mohamed himself who became his favorite wife.)

The prince must be willing to offer a few simple things in return from his own back yard like reparations for all the Jewish property that was confiscated from them by the Muslims following Muhamed`s rise to power and rescinding the present Saudi laws that forbid non-Muslims, especially Jews, from being in Saudi Arabia. This would then allow his imagined "Arab Jews" from Tel Aviv and Haifa to live and work freely without fear there.

Labels: Arabs, Israel, Israeli Jews, Saudi Arabia

- posted by Izak @ 1:21 AM (0) comments

 
French President's Jewish Greek roots
Book on Greek-Jewish roots of Sarkozy goes on sale in Greece

By DPA
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/943669.html
Thu., January 10, 2008 Shvat 3, 5768

A book on the Greek-Jewish roots of French President Nicolas Sarkozy, whose family can be traced back to the Jewish community in the northern port city of Thessaloniki, went on sale in Greece Thursday.

The book, whose English title reads Me, the Grandson of a Greek, was
launched during a lavish gathering in Athens late Wednesday by Greek Foreign Minister Dora Bakoyianni, former Socialist foreign minister Theodoros Pangalos, former prime minister Constantinos Mitsotakis and the ambassadors of France and Israel.

The book written by three Greek authors gives a historical account of the maternal family of Sarkozy, who were a part of the Jewish community in Thessaloniki, once nick-named the "Jerusalem of the Balkans."

The book reveals that Sarkozy's mother's family came to Thessaloniki from the French region of Provence.

Sarkozy's great-grandfather, Mordechai Mallah, a well-known Thessaloniki jeweler, and his wife, Reina, had seven children. One of them was Aaron, Sarkozy's grandfather.

At the age of 14, Aaron and his mother left for France where Aaron studied medicine and served as a doctor during World War I. He later met his wife, a nurse, in Paris and converted to Catholicism in order to marry her, taking the name Benedict. One of their children, Andree Mallah, married a Hungarian refugee named Paul Sarkozy. The couple had three sons, one of which was named Nicolas.

Paul Sarkozy left the family when Nicolas was 5 years old and the young boy was largely looked after by his grandfather, who used to tell his grandchildren stories from Thessaloniki.

Nicolas Sarkozy and his brothers did not know of their Jewish roots until after their grandfather passed away in 1972. The book's authors' claim Benedict did not tell his grandchildren about their Jewish roots in order to protect them, fearing another Holocaust, which ended up killing many of the Mallah family.

The authors write that at the age of 20, Nicolas Sarkozy travelled to
Thessaloniki to sell his family's property after they were struck with
financial problems.

Approximately 6,000 are left of the Jewish Community of Thessaloniki today.

More than 50,000 of them were massacred during the Nazi occupation of Greece.

Greek Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis presented Sarkozy with a copy of the book at the last EU Council meeting in Brussels. The Greek premier also promised him it would be translated into French.

Labels: Assimilation, France, French Jews, Greece, Greek Jews, Holocaust

- posted by Izak @ 11:58 AM (0) comments

 
Israel home to over 40% of world's Jews
Percent of world Jewry living in Israel climbed to 41% in 2007

By Anshel Pfeffer
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/941808.html
Sun., January 06, 2008 Tevet 28, 5768

The world Jewish population in 2007 is estimated at 13.2 million people, a rise of some 200,000 over 2006, according to a Jewish People Policy Planning Institute report published today.

In the past year, the number of Diaspora Jews shrunk by 100,000, while Israel's Jewish population rose by 300,000. Israel is now the home of 41 percent of worldwide Jewry, the report said.

According to a poll conducted by the institute and included in its report, most American Jews fear for the safety of Israel in the wake of the Second Lebanon War and Iran's nuclear program.

Respondents from Jewish communities in Europe and Latin America said they were less inclined to feel an affinity with Israel and they believed radical Islam was being dealt with successfully in their countries.

According to the report, two tiers exist among Jewish communities abroad: A religious one, whose sense of affiliation to Israel is increasing, and another whose Jewish sense of association is weakening and among whom intermarriage is more commonplace.

Institute managing director Avinoam Bar Yosef said the state should allocate more funds to reaching out to the 'second tier' of Diaspora Jews.

Labels: Israeli Jews, Jewish population, world Jews

- posted by Izak @ 8:47 AM (0) comments

 
Main Jews disappear
Study finds Maine has highest intermarriage rate in U.S.

By Anthony Weiss, The Forward
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/933218.html
Tue., December 11, 2007 Tevet 2, 5768

In Portland, Maine, even the editor of the local Jewish newspaper was born to intermarried parents, and when she got around to marrying, it was not to a Jew.

Given her own experience, Elizabeth Margolis-Pineo, editor of The Voice, was not surprised by a new demographic study that found Portland and its environs to have the highest intermarriage rate in the country.

According to the study, which was funded in part by an intermarried couple, 61% of couples in married Jewish households are interfaith. This is the highest rate of any North American Jewish community measured in the past 15 years.

"There are kids in the [Jewish] preschool named 'Piscapo' and 'Isajar,'" Margolis-Pineo said. "Unless you're an idiot, you realize that there's a lot of intermarriage."

The study was conducted by Ira Sheskin, the director of the Jewish Demography Project at the University of Miami.

The new figures place Portland ahead of both Seattle and San Francisco, which previously had shared the highest measured intermarriage rate, at 55%, according to information from the North American Jewish Data Bank.

The national intermarriage rate was 48% in the 2000-2001 National Jewish Population Survey. By comparison, Boston - the closest major Jewish population center to Portland - has an intermarriage rate of 46%. New York and Los Angeles have rates of 22% and 23%, respectively.

Given the relatively low level of Jewish affiliation in Portland, and the small size of the community - it numbers only 8,350 Jews - one of the most remarkable facts is that an expensive demographic survey took place at all.

The study was made possible, in part, by the chairman and former CEO of L.L. Bean, Leon Gorman, grandson of the iconic company's founder. Gorman is not Jewish, but his wife, Lisa, is.

----

Simshalom responds:

Secular Jews intermarry as Haredim are fruitful and multiply:

So it is only a matter of time that in the near future there will be only two types of Jews: Either Torah Jews like the Haredim who live by Halachah and have many children and whose communities will continue to grow OR the non-Orthodox secular Jews who marry gentiles and are on the road to disappearing forever as their numbers shrink.

So this is what it`s come to.

How sad and yet how predictable.

All this just proves that where there is no Torah and observance of the mitzvot there will also be not just no Judaism but no Jews in the end.
And where there is the commitment to live by the Torah and keep all its mitzvot then there will be growth not just of Judaism but also of Jews!

Labels: Assimilation, interfaith intermarriage, intermarriage

- posted by Izak @ 5:45 AM (0) comments

 
Jews face off against Jews in Jerusalem
Haredi dominance of Beit Shemesh 'is only matter of time'

By Yair Ettinger, Haaretz Correspondent
Tue., December 04, 2007 Kislev 24, 5768
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/930995.html

"Hitler and the messiah. The two dominate the walls and souls here," Amos Oz wrote in his book "In the Land of Israel" after visiting the Jerusalem neighborhoods of Geula and Mea Shearim in the fall of 1982. "The battle has been won. Zionism has been pushed away from here, as though it had never existed."

In the next chapter, Oz stops at Beit Shemesh, where he meets a group of young men, "their faces distorted with rage" at Mapai (the precursor of today's Labor party), Shimon Peres and the elites.

Twenty-five years later it seems that the chapter on Mea Shearim could be transposed to a few neighborhoods in Beit Shemesh, a city whose population now reaches 73,000. "Taking part in the profane elections is prohibited," and "Israeli women must dress modestly," declare posters around the city.

Local resident Nati Shauli did not even consider filing a police complaint two weeks ago after his car was vandalized. He and his wife came out of the grocery store in Ramat Beit Shemesh A, a mostly religious neighborhood, to find that their tires had been slashed. Shauli is convinced that whoever is responsible wanted to keep bare-headed women like his wife away from the ultra-Orthodox shopping center.

"Life has become insufferable here," he said in desperation.

A month ago, the neighborhood's national-religious residents held a demonstration vowing not to give in to the "hooligans." But a tour of Beit Shemesh shows that the fanatic element here also has complex and tense relations with the ultra-Orthodox community, which is identified mostly with Agudat Yisrael, Shas and Degel Hatorah.

The resemblance between Mea Shearim of days gone by and Ramat Beit Shemesh, one of the ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods, is not accidental. Some 15 years ago the housing shortage in Jerusalem drove the extreme, anti-Zionist Eda Haredit sect of Jerusalem's Haredi community to seek housing for young couples outside the capital. They chose Ramat Beit Shemesh B. Today these people are even more fanatic than those in Mea Shearim.

These extremists comprise an estimated 2 percent, no more than 15,000 of the Israeli ultra-Orthodox community. They are a minority in Beit Shemesh as well, but wield considerable power and influence.

The fanatics are mostly followers of Rabbi Shaya Rosenberger, a right-wing Satmar Hasid. Another group, a separatist group of Breslav Hasidim led by Rabbi Avraham Yitzhak Marmelstein, is even more extreme. In recent years these groups have conducted a series of campaigns - posting billboards calling for "modest behavior," introducing sexually segregated bus lines and recently protesting plans to open a state religious school near their neighborhood and opposing the sale of apartments in the neighborhood to people who are not ultra-Orthodox.

Two and a half weeks ago, police officers headed by Jerusalem police chief Aharon Franco and Beit Shemesh chief Oz Eliasi secretly met the leaders of the town's Eda Haredit sect. On their way to Rabbi Rosenberger's house the officers passed graffiti blasting Eliasi and branding him "the Nazi" and "evil."

People in the neighborhood described the meeting a "surrender," saying the police were now officially afraid of entering the neighborhood. They said the police had promised the rabbis to refrain from any activity in the neighborhood without the rabbis' prior authorization.

District police spokesman Shmuel Ben-Ruby said the meeting was intended to "open channels of communication with the rabbis to restore peace to the neighborhood. Nothing was promised and no prior coordination was agreed on before any police activity."

However the fanatics' energy is mainly directed at the silent ultra-Orthodox majority. People in Ramat Beit Shemesh A say that men harass ultra-Orthodox women merely for walking in the supermarket with wigs, as women from the Gerer Hasidic group do. They hurl insults at other women because they refuse to send their small sons to the part of the bus earmarked for men.

"We operate our own bus lines to preserve our way of life," a Ramat Beit Shemesh B resident said.

Relations between the different ultra-Orthodox groups will be tested next year in the municipal elections. More than a year and a half ago in the Knesset elections, despite the fanatics' attempts to sabotage voting, the political strength of the ultra-Orthodox prevailed. United Torah Judaism received most of the votes, 22.2 percent, in a town that had been a Likud bastion in 1982. Shas came in second with 19.9 percent of the votes, while the Likud, Labor and Kadima lagged far behind.

Agudat Yisrael, Degel Hatorah and Shas are convinced they will obtain a solid majority on the town council, but may not field a mayoral candidate just yet. "It may take another term," a Degel activist said. "But it's clear that the ultra-Orthodox dominance of Beit Shemesh is only a matter of time."

----

Simshalom's response:

So? Why can`t Charedim move anywhere they want...since for two thousand years Jews kept the Torah in the galut dreaming of returning to Jerusalem and Zion, and now that Torah Jews (such as Charedim) have made it to the finish line and are finally living and thriving in Zion and Jerusalem, they should be praised for upholding, validating and sanctifying the blood sweat and tears that the Jewish people went through in order to come and live in peace and harmony in the Jewish homeland.

It`s a disgrace that secular chiloni Jews think that there`s something wrong here, they are not thinking "Jewish" if they think that having Charedi Jews move into Jewish neighborhoods, in the Jewish homeland, is problematic.

Let the Charedi march go forth, they`ll win, and a word of advice to the Charedi-bashers and haters, if you can`t beat `em, join `em, the Charedim have many Kiruv Jewish Torah outreach programs designed to meet your needs which is bound to bridge the gaps and will help you feel better and more accepting. Remember: Ahavat Yisrael

----

Irene's response:

Dear Sim, since you do not live in Israel, I assume you prefer the good life in the USA and therefore do not really know the true situation here. Be that as it may, why can people not live and let live? Maybe if the Charedim would use a gentler and calmer way of bringing the non-frum jews back to frumkeit. By the way, chiloni is a very derogatory word and as a Jew you should know not to insult people.

I was on a bus that was attacked by this mob and a yound girl sitting next to me said to me if this is how the frum Jews behave, why should I continue my studies to become frum?

If they want Ramat Beit Shemesh Bet to be chareidi, I have no problem with that, but then they must sort out their own bus service, electricity, water, garbage collection etc (which by the way is subsidised by the WORKING people in Beit Shemesh).

----

Simshalom responds to Irene:

Irene...it`s not just Israel.

Hi Irene, thanks for responding. So you think I`m having an easy life in the US? Think again! You`re mixing up all sorts of information. You`re looking at hooliganism by a small minority of Charedim and their lack of paying taxes. So I agree with you about that. But that still doesn`t justify blanket hatred of Charedim by Chilonim (what else to call secular Jews in Hebrew? "Chachamim?)

It`s not just in Israel that Charedi population growth causes counter-attacks from non-religious Jews and in the US they have support from millions of non-Jews. So this isn`t a matter of geography or where one chooses to live (so far Jews live in all sorts of places, same reason Israelis leave Israel, but that`s a tangent.)

Chiloni Israelis do not study Torah and keep the mitzvot. Until they do, they`ll have nothing to stand on against the growth of Charedi families and communities, that for all their faults, and they have many, are based on Torah and Mitzvot with successful Kiruv Rechokim.

----

Kipa Sruga in Beit Shemesh responds:

Until a couple of years ago all the different groups of people lived together peacefully in Beit Shemesh. Beit Shemesh is a traditional kind of place where even the religiously non-observant are religious. Then these zealot hooligans came and started telling us what to do in our town. I didn`t ask them to come here. If they don`t like it they should go somewhere else.

----

Simshalom responds to Kipa Sruga:

Kipa Sruga: market forces will win in the end.

Jews have had to move many times from neighborhoods in the USA. Not only when it`s Blacks or others moving in, but also when groups of Jews, like the Charedim of Boro Park moved in & the Modern Orthodox didn`t feel comfortable and moved out. These are things that happen all the time. There is only one way to stop such things: the communities you belong to have more children & will automatically create a counter societal push. In the end, the media is miscasting this whole phenomenon, they like to scream "Charedim, Charedim" like "fire, fire" but that is just hysteria.

The truth is that all neighborhoods undergo socio-economic changes, & in this case even religious and cultural changes, & no amount of screaming or grandstanding will change it. The only advice is, if you don`t like it, & you see what`s going to happen down the line, find a neighborhood that you will be happy in. It`s not easy, but that is the only solution. The Charedim are just as wild & pushy as any group of Israelis.

----

Where the ultra-Orthodox are the moderates

By Yair Ettinger
Wed., December 05, 2007 Kislev 25, 5768
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/930796.html

"Hitler and the messiah. The two dominate the walls and souls here," Amos Oz wrote in his book "In the Land of Israel" after visiting the Jerusalem neighborhoods of Geula and Mea Shearim in the fall of 1982. "The battle has been won. Zionism has been pushed away from here, as though it had never existed."

In the next chapter, Oz stops at Beit Shemesh, where he meets a group of young men, "their faces distorted with rage" at Mapai (the precursor of today's Labor party), Shimon Peres and the elites.

Twenty-five years later it seems that the chapter on Mea Shearim could be transposed to a few neighborhoods in Beit Shemesh, a city whose population now reaches 73,000. "Taking part in the profane elections is prohibited," and "Israeli women must dress modestly," declare posters around the city.

Local resident Nati Shauli did not even consider filing a police complaint two weeks ago after his car was vandalized. He and his wife came out of the grocery store in Ramat Beit Shemesh A, a mostly religious neighborhood, to find that their tires had been slashed. Shauli is convinced that whoever is responsible wanted to keep bare-headed women like his wife away from the ultra-Orthodox shopping center.

"Life has become insufferable here," he said in desperation.

A month ago, the neighborhood's national-religious residents held a demonstration vowing not to give in to the "hooligans." But a tour of Beit Shemesh shows that the fanatic element here also has complex and tense relations with the ultra-Orthodox community, which is identified mostly with Agudat Yisrael, Shas and Degel Hatorah.

The resemblance between Mea Shearim of days gone by and Ramat Beit Shemesh, one of the ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods, is not accidental. Some 15 years ago the housing shortage in Jerusalem drove the extreme, anti-Zionist Eda Haredit sect of Jerusalem's Haredi community to seek housing for young couples outside the capital. They chose Ramat Beit Shemesh B. Today these people are even more fanatic than those in Mea Shearim.

These extremists comprise an estimated 2 percent, no more than 15,000 of the Israeli ultra-Orthodox community. They are a minority in Beit Shemesh as well, but wield considerable power and influence.

The fanatics are mostly followers of Rabbi Shaya Rosenberger, a right-wing Satmar Hasid. Another group, a separatist group of Breslav Hasidim led by Rabbi Avraham Yitzhak Marmelstein, is even more extreme. In recent years these groups have conducted a series of campaigns - posting billboards calling for "modest behavior," introducing sexually segregated bus lines and recently protesting plans to open a state religious school near their neighborhood and opposing the sale of apartments in the neighborhood to people who are not ultra-Orthodox.

Two and a half weeks ago, police officers headed by Jerusalem police chief Aharon Franco and Beit Shemesh chief Oz Eliasi secretly met the leaders of the town's Eda Haredit sect. On their way to Rabbi Rosenberger's house the officers passed graffiti blasting Eliasi and branding him "the Nazi" and "evil."

People in the neighborhood described the meeting a "surrender," saying the police were now officially afraid of entering the neighborhood. They said the police had promised the rabbis to refrain from any activity in the neighborhood without the rabbis' prior authorization.

District police spokesman Shmuel Ben-Ruby said the meeting was intended to "open channels of communication with the rabbis to restore peace to the neighborhood. Nothing was promised and no prior coordination was agreed on before any police activity."

However the fanatics' energy is mainly directed at the silent ultra-Orthodox majority. People in Ramat Beit Shemesh A say that men harass ultra-Orthodox women merely for walking in the supermarket with wigs, as women from the Gerer Hasidic group do. They hurl insults at other women because they refuse to send their small sons to the part of the bus earmarked for men.

"We operate our own bus lines to preserve our way of life," a Ramat Beit Shemesh B resident said.

Relations between the different ultra-Orthodox groups will be tested next year in the municipal elections. More than a year and a half ago in the Knesset elections, despite the fanatics' attempts to sabotage voting, the political strength of the ultra-Orthodox prevailed. United Torah Judaism received most of the votes, 22.2 percent, in a town that had been a Likud bastion in 1982. Shas came in second with 19.9 percent of the votes, while the Likud, Labor and Kadima lagged far behind.

Agudat Yisrael, Degel Hatorah and Shas are convinced they will obtain a solid majority on the town council, but may not field a mayoral candidate just yet. "It may take another term," a Degel activist said. "But it's clear that the ultra-Orthodox dominance of Beit Shemesh is only a matter of time."

----

Simshalom:

Why are Charedi victims portrayed as "aggressors" ?

It`s odd how a minority of Jews in Israel (Charedim) who are in real terms powerless (all the levers of power in the State of Israel are in hands of Chilonim) are constantly portrayed as if they were an invading force of "aggressors" when the opposite is true.

A Charedi Jew is limited where he can live whereas the Chilonim can live anywhere. Religious Zionists, while not Chilonim, also have more options than your average Charedi Jew who cannot separate from key institutions needed to survive, like yeshivas, chedorim, Bais Yaakovs for their children and communal organizations of religious life. Dress and lifestyle limit them.

Neighborhoods change all the time all over the world, as one group moves in and another moves out, based on essentially natural factors and forces, so the hysteria and crankiness generated against Charedim in situations like this are irrational reactions, when the real and Jewish thing to do would be to rejoice and celebrate that the Jewish people are expanding.

----

Joe Sittizen responds:

Charedim aren`t victims, they`re the agressors

I don`t know how Sim defines "victim", but when a bunch of charedim go out and beat people up on buses (which has happened many times, not just on the Beit Shemesh line last month), they`re on the offensive.

Slashing tires, threatening people, attacking people, insulting people, throwing bleach on women - the rational reaction is to label these charedim as aggressors.
The only irrationality appears to be the small subset of charedim who think they are beyond the laws of the Torah, let alone the laws of the land.

The best place for the violent charedi aggressors is the same place as any other violent whacko be they religious or secular - behind bars to cool off for a few months.

----

Simshalom responds:

Joe: Focusing on lunatic fringe does not tell the truth

Joe, I agree that ANYONE who commits crimes of violence against anyone, other than for self-defense, must be arrested, tried and punished. In any normal society if anyone attacks another passenger on a bus they must be arrested. Why are the bus companies allowing hooligans to get on the buses? and if Charedim don`t like the bus system, let them walk or start a Charedi bus company. But this is not what this article is about as it`s trying to paint ALL Charedim as the bad guys, which is just plain wrong.

Charedim are not monsters, and secular and religious Zionists are not all Tzadikim. If they`d stop the constant belittling, denigration, and dehumanization of Charedim, then the climate would change. These are your Jewish brothers and sisters drawing close to you and you should all be welcoming each other and not going for each other`s jugulars.

If the Charedim are all bad so how come so many Israelis of all ages are becoming Chozrei B`tshuva in so many places? Charedim must be good, no?

Labels: Haredi Jews, Israeli society, Jerusalem

- posted by Izak @ 1:55 AM (0) comments

 
Seven brides for...one "rabbi"?
'Rabbi' Has Seven Wives

by Zeddy Lawrence - Thursday 27th April 2006
http://www.totallyjewish.com/news/national/?content_id=3372

Community leaders this week stressed that a ‘rabbi’ in the UK who lives with seven so-called ‘wives’ had nothing to do with ‘contemporary Jewish custom and practice’.

Philip Sharp’s extraordinary lifestyle was splashed all over the media in recent days as a BBC TV documentary exposed his bizarre family set-up.

The 45-year-old who was once a DJ on the Jewish party circuit and who is variously described as a ‘rabbi’ and a ‘former rabbi’, claimed: “Six years ago I had an incredible visitation of God who began to speak to me in a way he’d never spoken to me before. I began to see things I knew hadn’t been seen for centuries.

He added: “God would give me revelations and would talk to me about my role in the restoration of the true nation of Israel as a prophet.”

Among the instructions Sharp was given was that he should live like a biblical king, taking several wives

“This is about true biblical covenant”, he said, “and it’s very, very beautiful.”

And while he didn’t sport a kippah, the programme showed Sharp wearing tsitsit, making Kiddush, blowing the shofar and quoting from the Torah. The various women in his life, meanwhile, who have names like Chava and Hannah, kept their hair covered and wore Stars of David around their necks.

And though the documentary talks of Sharp preaching at synagogues and of his wives, who have distinctly Jewish names, ‘embracing Judaism’, it only mentions briefly that he was actually a ‘messianic rabbi’.

According to the narrator: “He met his wives when they joined his congregation in Hove. When he became a king, the community were outraged and status as rabbi was revoked.”

Expressing their concern over the depiction of Sharp’s lifestyle, the Board of Deptuies issued a statement in which they said: “As far as The Board is aware Philip Sharp has no recognised rabbinical training or ordination, and therefore no right to be called rabbi. His lifestyle, with multiple female partners, is inconsistent with contemporary Jewish custom and practice.

”The British Jewish Community does not regard messianic groups, such as Jews for Jesus, and Sharp’s Shema Israel congregation as Jewish. They play no part in organised Jewish life in this country.

Readers of the various articles should not mistakenly believe that the practices and lifestyle described are part of the Jewish religion.”

Sharp and the programme’s producers declined to comment.

Labels: marriage, monogamy, Polygamy

- posted by Izak @ 12:23 AM (0) comments

 
Conversions news. Who is a Jew & Who is a Rabbi
Chief rabbi to demand stricter conversions during U.S. visit

By Anshel Pfeffer
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/913647.html
Thu., October 18, 2007

Sephardic Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar is visiting the U.S. this week in order to approve the appointment of religious court judges (dayanim) to the conversion courts of the Rabbinical Council of America (RCA).

The agreement reached between the RCA and Amar gives the Israeli Chief Rabbinate practical control over the conversion process in U.S. It will also create new problems for those wishing to convert to Judaism there, similar to the kind that exists today in Israel.

For years, the religious councils in Israel accepted conversions performed by rabbis of the RCA, the largest body of Orthodox rabbis in North America. But in recent years, marriage registrars in local religious councils here have refused to recognize conversions by the RCA, and refused to allow those converted to marry in Israel. This new policy was dictated by Amar, who also provided the councils with a limited list of American rabbis who were the only ones authorized to conduct acceptable conversions.

Amar is actually considered to be more lenient in conversion matters in Israel, but he is under strong pressure from ultra-Orthodox rabbis who want to severly restrict the number of conversions, and who are demanding that all converts keep a strict Orthodox lifestyle.

The ultra-Orthodox rabbis object to the RCA in the U.S., which is identified more with the Modern Orthodox community, and have even set up a rival organization, Netzah Mishpahat Yisrael, to provide stricter conversions. The new group is trying to achieve full control of the conversion process in both the U.S. and Israel. As a result, Amar gave the RCA a list of demands in order for their conversions to be recognized in Israel.

Among other things, Amar demanded to end the common method of conversion in the U.S. whereby local rabbis were allowed to do conversions in their cities. Instead, Amar is demanding that only special conversion courts undertake conversions, and that he approve the members of these courts.

These demands were a source of controversy within the RCA, and a number of members even threatened to secede from the council and set up a separate organization. However, in the end they gave in and agreed to Amar's demands, since a lack of recognition of RCA conversions by the Israeli Chief Rabbinate would seriously harm the RCA's standing and cause potential converts to go elsewhere.

The new conversion courts will potentially force converts in the U.S. to travel long distances in order to be converted by an approved conversion court, which will demand that candidates keep a strict Orthodox way of life, without knowing them or their personal history.

"The rabbi went to meet the religious judges and check the courts," Amar's office said. "They were not promised anything, and they did not promise us anything. In the meantime, the Rabbinate is continuing to recognize conversions by the rabbis it recognized in the past."

Rabbi Basil Herring, the executive vice president of the RCA, said in response: "We are pleased to host Rabbi Amar on his visit to New York and Chicago. We are discussing a number of important matters with him, including the issue of conversion."

----

Zionist rabbis consider independent conversions

By Anshel Pfeffer
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/914389.html
Thu., October 18, 2007

Forty-five rabbis from the national-religious movement have agreed to serve in proposed independent conversion courts that would operate without the recognition of the Chief Rabbinate. This challenge from within the Orthodox establishment to the Rabbinate's control of the process of converting to Judaism in Israel is a response to a long-standing perception that the rabbinical establishment is in thrall to the ultra-Orthodox tradition of making conversion difficult.

That position ignores the plight of the more than 300,000 immigrants from the former Soviet Union who are not Jewish according to halakha. If the recommendations of the interministerial committee on conversion to expedite the process are not implemented soon, the rabbis are expected to establish the proposed conversion courts. That would represent another stage in the undermining of religious-Zionist rabbis of the Rabbinate, following struggles over marriage, kashrut and shmita in the past several months.

The latest steps began about six months ago with a conference of the Joint Conversion Institute, which prepares most prospective converts in civilian and military frameworks. After the head of the institute, Prof. Benjamin Ish-Shalom, announced that the requirements of the religious courts kept many graduates from completing their conversion, 45 rabbis agreed to officiate in religious courts that would convert the graduates, even without recognition from the Rabbinate. Most of the rabbis, the majority of whom who prefer not to be identified, are associated with with Religious Kibbutz Movement and the Tzohar rabbis? organization.

The main obstacle to the initiative will be the Rabbinate?s refusal to recognize their conversions, which will prevent the converts from registering for marriage later on. Among the 45 is at least one municipal rabbi who has promised to enable converts in his jurisdiction to register at his city?s Religious Council.

The existence of non-Rabbinate Orthodox converts is likely to ignite a struggle on the part of the national-religious public, much of which has already severed its connections to the Rabbinate, and could end up in the High Court of Justice.

One of the rabbis involved in the new initiative is Rabbi Benjamin Lau of Jerusalem?s Ramban Synagogue. "I said that not only am I willing to take part in it, but also that I would house a rabbinical court in our synagogue," Lau said. He said that some members of his congregation served as rabbis and rabbinical judges in the United States and have experience with conversion.

"I think there will be no alternative, the Rabbinate is undergoing a process of dissolution. We saw it with the issues of marriage, kashrut and shmita, and conversion is the core of the matter. One of our roles as rabbis is to serve the public and I see this issue as fulfilling our function," Lau said.

Despite several cabinet rulings calling for the institution of an accelerated conversion process to expedite the integration into Israeli society of non-Jewish immigrants, only 2,000 people are converted each year on average. The Joint Conversion Institute was created about 10 years ago, in the wake of a government committee?srecommendations, as a combined Orthodox,Conservative and Reform institution for teaching prospective converts. Conversion itself remained in the hands of special conversion courts, whose judges were appointed by the Rabbinate, which also set the conditions for conversion. Most of the judges are under the influence of the Haredi Council of Torah Sages, which opposes large-scale conversion and requires converts, as well as their children and families, to adopt an observant lifestyle.

In many cases these demands delay conversion, even for candidates who have studied for years in preparation for conversion. The strict image of these courts has scared away many would-be converts. According to studies carried out by the army?s conversion program, Nativ, about 40 percent of non-Jewish immigrants expressed an interest before they immigrated in converting, while after a one year in Israel the number dropped by at least 20 percent.

Three and a half years ago, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon ordered the creation of a state conversion program that would facilitate the process, but the new arrangement did not change the basic stance of the religious judges. In many communities, the local religious councils and the local rabbis refuse to recognize the conversion certificates presented by immigrants when they come to register for marriage.

Two months ago an interministerial committee headed by Absorption Ministry Director General Erez Halfon submitted a comprehensive report on the issue. It recommended, among other things, appointing to the conversion courts 40 volunteer judges who would not be beholden to the Haredi rabbis and would introduce a willingness to help the converts in their desire to join the Jewish people instead of finding reasons to prevent their conversion. It also called for giving Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar full authority over conversion issues. Amar opposes the idea of the volunteer judges, on the grounds that they will not be rabbis vetted by him and operating in accordance with his directives. Justice Ministry officials, meanwhile, argue that volunteers cannot hold official judicial positions.

Olmert has not yet approved the committee?s recommendations. The heads of the Joint Conversion Institute believe the volunteer initiative will not be implemented. Ish-Shalom refused to comment on the issue, but sources in his institute said that if the problem is not solved during a meeting scheduled for next Tuesday in the Prime Minister's Office, the plan for independent conversion courts will go ahead.

----

Peres reaches out to leader of British Reform Jews

By Daphna Berman
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/914631.html
Sun., October 21, 2007

President Shimon Peres called yesterday for a more inclusive definition of Judaism and said the Jewish people have the right to decide who is a rabbi. He made the comments in his first official meeting with representatives of the Reform movement since he assumed the post in July. The meeting yesterday with leaders of Britain's Reform movement came in the wake of last year's crisis after then president Moshe Katsav refused to use the title "rabbi" in addressing Rabbi Eric Yoffie, president of the Union for Reform Judaism, which represents some 1.5 million Reform Jews in North America.

During the half-hour meeting at the President's Residence, Peres addressed delegation leader Rabbi Dr. Tony Bayfield as "rabbi," according to participants. Bayfield heads the Movement for Reform Judaism in the United Kingdom.

"If rabbis have a right to decide who is a Jew, the Jewish people have a right to decide who is a rabbi," Peres reportedly told the group. The president also said that he was "troubled" by attempts to narrowly define Jewishess. "We are a disappearing people," he said. "We are not the Chinese. There are only 14-15 million of us. We need to be more careful, generous and understanding."
- posted by Izak @ 10:51 PM (0) comments

 
Ann Coulter wants Jews to become Christians
Ann Coulter on CNBC Show: Jews Need 'Perfecting'

By E&P Staff
http://www.mediainfo.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003657196

Published: October 11, 2007

NEW YORK Appearing on Donny Deutsch's CNBC show, "The Big Idea," on Monday night, columnist/author Ann Coulter suggested that the U.S. would be a better place if there weren't any Jewish people and that they needed to "perfect" themselves into -- Christians.

It led Deutsch to suggest that surely she couldn't mean that, and when she insisted she did, he said this sounded "anti-Semitic."

Asked by Deutsch whether she wanted to be like "the head of Iran" and "wipe Israel off the Earth," Coulter stated: "No, we just want Jews to be perfected, as they say. ... That's what Christianity is. We believe the Old Testament."

Deutsch told E&P's sibling magazine, Adweek, today, "I was offended. And then, and this was interesting, she started to back off and seemed a little upset."

Asked to gauge her reaction, Deutsch said, "I think she got frightened that maybe she had crossed a line, that this was maybe a faux pas of great proportions. I mean, did it show ignorance? Anti-Semitism? It wasn't just one of those silly things."

A transcript, provided by Media Matters, follows.

DEUTSCH: Christian -- so we should be Christian? It would be better if we were all Christian?

COULTER: Yes.

DEUTSCH: We should all be Christian?

COULTER: Yes. Would you like to come to church with me, Donny?

DEUTSCH: So I should not be a Jew, I should be a Christian, and this would be a better place?

COULTER: Well, you could be a practicing Jew, but you're not.

DEUTSCH: I actually am. That's not true. I really am. But -- so we would be better if we were - if people -- if there were no Jews, no Buddhists --

COULTER: Whenever I'm harangued by --

DEUTSCH: -- in this country? You can't believe that.

COULTER: -- you know, liberals on diversity --

DEUTSCH: Here you go again.

COULTER: No, it's true. I give all of these speeches at megachurches across America, and the one thing that's really striking about it is how utterly, completely diverse they are, and completely unself-consciously. You walk past a mixed-race couple in New York, and it's like they have a chip on their shoulder. They're just waiting for somebody to say something, as if anybody would. And --

DEUTSCH: I don't agree with that. I don't agree with that at all. Maybe you have the chip looking at them. I see a lot of interracial couples, and I don't see any more or less chips there either way. That's erroneous.

COULTER: No. In fact, there was an entire Seinfeld episode about Elaine and her boyfriend dating because they wanted to be a mixed-race couple, so you're lying.

DEUTSCH: Oh, because of some Seinfeld episode? OK.

COULTER: But yeah, I think that's reflective of what's going on in the culture, but it is completely striking that at these huge megachurches -- the idea that, you know, the more Christian you are, the less tolerant you would be is preposterous.

DEUTSCH: That isn't what I said, but you said I should not -- we should just throw Judaism away and we should all be Christians, then, or --

COULTER: Yeah.

DEUTSCH: Really?

COULTER: Well, it's a lot easier. It's kind of a fast track.

DEUTSCH: Really?

COULTER: Yeah. You have to obey.

DEUTSCH: You can't possibly believe that.

COULTER: Yes.

DEUTSCH: You can't possibly -- you're too educated, you can't -- you're like my friend in --

COULTER: Do you know what Christianity is? We believe your religion, but you have to obey.

DEUTSCH: No, no, no, but I mean --

COULTER: We have the fast-track program.

DEUTSCH: Why don't I put you with the head of Iran? I mean, come on. You can't believe that.

COULTER: The head of Iran is not a Christian.

DEUTSCH: No, but in fact, "Let's wipe Israel" --

COULTER: I don't know if you've been paying attention.

DEUTSCH: "Let's wipe Israel off the earth." I mean, what, no Jews?

COULTER: No, we think -- we just want Jews to be perfected, as they say.

DEUTSCH: Wow, you didn't really say that, did you?

COULTER: Yes. That is what Christianity is. We believe the Old Testament, but ours is more like Federal Express. You have to obey laws. We know we're all sinners --

DEUTSCH: In my old days, I would have argued -- when you say something absurd like that, there's no --

COULTER: What's absurd?

DEUTSCH: Jews are going to be perfected. I'm going to go off and try to perfect myself --

COULTER: Well, that's what the New Testament says.

DEUTSCH: Ann Coulter, author of If Democrats Had Any Brains, They'd Be Republicans, and if Ann Coulter had any brains, she would not say Jews need to be perfected. I'm offended by that personally. And we'll have more Big Idea when we come back.

[...]

DEUTSCH: Welcome back to The Big Idea. During the break, Ann said she wanted to explain her last comment. So I'm going to give her a chance. So you don't think that was offensive?

COULTER: No. I'm sorry. It is not intended to be. I don't think you should take it that way, but that is what Christians consider themselves: perfected Jews. We believe the Old Testament. As you know from the Old Testament, God was constantly getting fed up with humans for not being able to, you know, live up to all the laws. What Christians believe -- this is just a statement of what the New Testament is -- is that that's why Christ came and died for our sins. Christians believe the Old Testament. You don't believe our testament.

DEUTSCH: You said -- your exact words were, "Jews need to be perfected." Those are the words out of your mouth.

COULTER: No, I'm saying that's what a Christian is.

DEUTSCH: But that's what you said -- don't you see how hateful, how anti-Semitic --

COULTER: No!

DEUTSCH: How do you not see? You're an educated woman. How do you not see that?

COULTER: That isn't hateful at all.

DEUTSCH: But that's even a scarier thought.

----

Simshalom comments:

Seeing an antisemite under every rug:

Coulter sounds like she`s advocating for the "Jews for Jesus" "Jewish Messianics" "Hebrew Christians" they could pay her commission for free advertsing. She`s talking the way Christians do when they dream of the Jews converting to Christianity. It`s not antisemitism, not in America at any rate. On the contrary, she admires the Jews, just that she`s expressing the standard Christian evengelical party line that it`s important for the Jews to become Christians. This is not hateful. It is missionizing and evangelizing 101. So now Jews know where she stands on this issue and should not engage her any more. Respect her for having the guts to have the courage of her convictions. This may come as a shock to some liberal Jews, but the Christians really do want the Jews to become Christians and if Jews do not study their heritage seriously and practice Judaism with devotion, chances are that they`re on a slippery slope to becoming Christians sooner or later, with the likes of Coulter prowling.

----

In Defense of Ann Coulter

By Jay D. Homnick
Published 10/15/2007

A couple of years ago, the girls' volleyball team of Seattle Hebrew Academy's junior high (where Michael Medved's children attend) went undefeated, dominating the parochial school league in that area. One team from a Catholic school came to play them for the first time and Principal Rivy Poupko Klitenik greeted their bus on arrival. "And what is the team name?" she asked.

"We are the Crusaders."

She gulped. "Well, I hope this time turns out better than the last."

Which brings us to the curious case of Donnie Deutsch, his nasty ambush of Ann Coulter, his real or pretended thick-headedness about the relationship between Jews and Christians, and the subsequent piling-on of Ann for utterly inoffensive remarks. I watched the video clip of the entire exchange carefully and those are my considered conclusions.

Here is what happened. Ann is promoting a book and in those circumstances she accepts all invitations, even into hostile territory. She came on Deutsch's CNBC show,The Big Idea, the interview appearing over a chiron reading: "Being Extreme Makes Millions." The host is a blow-dried pretty boy who wears half-glasses down on his nose to create a kind of Michael-Landon-meets-Erkel effect. He asked Ann what her ideal America would look like and she answered: "All the Democrats would be like Joe Lieberman and all the Republicans like Duncan Hunter."

He countered that he meant what kind of place America would be generally, not politically. A joyful place, she responds, safe and prosperous. More tolerant? Yes, definitely, like the mega-churches she lectures in where they are thoroughly diverse and integrated in an unself-conscious way. "What, a Christian America? No Jews, no Buddhists?"

In the course of the next few sentences of repartee, Ann makes a number of points. 1) That a Christian views himself as a perfected Jew. 2) That a Jew has to obey the Law to be in Heaven, but Christians believe they have a "fast track." 3) That this is basic to anyone familiar with the New Testament. 4) That there is nothing offensive in this to Jews. Deutsch, for his part, claims to be a practicing Jew, but says he finds this personally offensive, more appropriate for a Prime Minister of Iran than for an educated woman like Ann.

In fact, the only one exposing blind spots in his education was the host. If he does not know that Christians believe Jews are lacking something by not accepting Jesus as a savior, if he does not know that Jews believe Christians are to one degree or another in error by believing Jesus can save them, he is ignorant of the most basic facts of religious life. By the same token, at this stage in history both sides have concluded that they will not settle the theological differences short of a prophetic or Messianic intervention.

The serious people on both sides also know that they share a broad set of overlapping moral values along with an interest in a wholesome, family-oriented society and culture. If they stand on ceremony and refuse to work together because the other is not catechumenically correct, the result will be that the forces of depravity will divide them and conquer the street. In the meantime, each side chuckles to themselves that they have the spiritual edge. (Ann's view is more amicable than most; many Christians believe the Jews lost their Covenant entirely.)

I once saw a transcript of one of the forced debates that were common in the 13th century, where the king would compel a Jewish scholar to debate a Christian scholar. This particular manuscript did not identify the rabbi involved, but he was pretty fearless, pointing out the excesses of the Crusaders.

At one point the priest says to him:

"What if you are wrong and on Judgment Day God is angry at you for not
accepting Jesus?"

He answers:

"What if you are wrong and on Judgment Day God is angry at you for accepting Jesus? The answer is that as long as you make your best judgment in a sincere way, it is unlikely that a perfectly intelligent and just God will be angry."

To imply that Ann Coulter violated an intellectual norm, a religious norm, a social norm, by explaining the things she did in the manner she did, is simply misinformed -- if not crude religion baiting. It just ain't so. Indeed the contrast between Ann's Christianity and Ahmadinejad's Islam is particularly "striking," to use her adjective of preference. Remember who she used as an example in the sentence before to describe the ideal Democrat? None other than Joseph
Lieberman, the most traditionally practicing Jew in the history of the United States government.

Jay D. Homnick, commentator and humorist, is a frequent contributor to The American Spectator. He also writes for Human Events.

----

Ann Coulter's dream of a Jew-free America

By Bradley Burston
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/912606.html
Thu., October 18, 2007

From time to time, particularly in the wake of schoolyard shootings, failing markets, failing wars, failing administrations and the like, Americans take pause to take stock, wondering what's at the bottom of the malaise that afflicts their beloved, chronically clueless nation.

What is it, really, that's wrong with America?

If we're taking nominations, I'd like to open the bidding with Ann Coulter.

You may know her as the acerbic, not to say verbally abusive, syndicated columnist whose bare-knuckles conservative punditry raises hackles and ratings across the cable news spectrum.

This month, Coulter waded into the mess first made by Republican White House hopeful John McCain, when he referred to America as a nation founded on the principles of Christianity, indicating that he would prefer to see a fellow Christian in the White House.

Barely a week after McCain's comments, Coulter told an exasperated Jewish talk-show host that in her dreams, heaven - for that matter, America - is a place where everyone is Christian.

Where would the Jews have gone? She went on to explain that that Jews needed to convert to Christians in order to be "perfected," noting that Christians have a "fast track" to God.

Appearing on CNBC's The Big Idea, hosted by Donny Deutsch, Coulter was asked what America would look like if she had her way.

"It would look like New York City during the [2004] Republican National Convention," Coulter replied. "In fact, that's what I think heaven is going to look like."

Asked to expand on the theme, Coulter said "People were happy. They're Christian. They're tolerant. They defend America."

Deutsch, growing at once incredulous and offended, responded "So we should be Christian? It would be better if we were all Christian?" to which Coulter answered with a simple yes, later inviting Deutsch to attend church with her.

DEUTSCH: We should just throw Judaism away and we should all be Christians, then?

COULTER: Yeah.

DEUTSCH: Really?

COULTER: Well, it's a lot easier. It's kind of a fast track.
Deutsch then suggested similarities between Coulter's position and that of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

DEUTSCH: "Let's wipe Israel off the earth." I mean, what, no Jews?

COULTER: No, we think - we just want Jews to be perfected, as they say.

DEUTSCH: Wow, you didn't really say that, did you?

COULTER: Yes. That is what Christianity is. We believe the Old Testament, but ours is more like Federal Express. You have to obey laws.

A commercial break ensued, during which Coulter asked Deutsch for a chance to explain the comment about "perfecting" Jews. She adamantly turned aside all suggestions that the comment could be offensive to Jews, that it could be construed as hateful or anti-Semitic. "I don't think you should take it that way," she said. "But that is what Christians consider themselves: perfected Jews."

Until recently, I failed to take Ann Coulter seriously. I was wrong.

I was wrong to write off as mere stand-up racism her advice after the September 11 attacks ["We should require passports to fly domestically. Passports can be forged, but they can also be checked with the home country in case of any suspicious-looking swarthy males."]

I was wrong to write off as scattershot shtick her comments against women's right to vote, her suggestion that John Edwards was a "faggot" who should have been assassinated by terrorists, her depiction of Islam as a religion whose whose tenets are "along the lines of 'kill everyone who doesn't smell bad and doesn't answer to the name Mohammed.'"

I was wrong to see her as some highly intelligent, well-educated, perversely gifted panderer to the lower common denominator. I was wrong to see her as some overqualified infotainment shock jock. I should have taken her seriously.

Ann Coulter is my enemy. Ann Coulter is the kind of patriotic, persuasive, powerful American who is precisely what is wrong with America.

I'll never underestimate her again. Ann Coulter has a plan for the Jews. She has one for Muslims as well. And it's her people who are exactly the kind of Americans who could find the way to try to carry it out.

----

Simshalom comments:

Journalists screaming at the mouse on the floor:

Good knowing what's really bugging Brad Burston. Not Hamas. Not Hizbola. Not Mullahs. Not gays. Not assimilating Jews. Not Jews marrying gentiles. None evoke Burston's vitriol, only Ann Coulter in mini-skirt, brittle fake blond hair & cross on neck freak him out. Coulter was baited by Donny Deutsch on his show and guess what she really believes the standard party line of Evangelical Christians. What a surprise, some Christians are really Christians, and have certain beliefs. Woopi-doo! For 2,000 years Jews have known that Christians want to convert them and have managed to resist it. So what are Bradley Burston and Donny Deutsch so huffy and up in arms about? If they would truly learn Torah, practice the mitzvot, and read up on Jewish history they would get some perspective and know the difference between a mouse that roars and real antisemites. Burston and Deutsch demean themselves by acting like the maiden who spots a mouse, jumps on the table and screams. Shame on their silliness!

Labels: Christianity, Evangelism, Missionising

- posted by Izak @ 12:02 AM (0) comments

 
Reflections on Dr. Laura's flip-flops about Judaism
Dr. Laura, God Loves You

by Sara Yoheved Rigler
http://www.aish.com/spirituality/philosophy/Dr._Laura3_God_Loves_You.asp

Judaism is not a fast-food religion.

On August 5, 2003, Dr. Laura Schlessinger, America's most outspoken Orthodox Jew, made a bombshell broadcast to her 12 million radio listeners. She announced that she would no longer practice Judaism.

"I still see myself as a Jew," confessed Dr. Laura, who underwent an Orthodox conversion five years ago. "But the spiritual journey in that direction -- as hardcore as I was at it -- just didn't fulfill something in me that I needed... My identifying with this entity and my fulfilling the rituals of the entity -- that has ended."

As shocking as her rejection of Judaism is the longing glance she cast toward Christianity: "I have envied all my Christian friends, who really, universally, deeply feel loved by God. They use the name Jesus in referring to God... That was a mystery, feeling connected to God."

Some Christian commentators are having a field day. Joseph Grant Swank, Jr., wrote on a popular Conservative website: "Dr. Laura says that she gets from Judaism present-tense what she's always got from Judaism. The cold shoulder. She tried to deny it for years of study and ritual and hoop jumping. But now she cannot deny it any longer. It's a cold religion when it comes to Dr. Laura's appraisal of Judaism and she can't stand in the cold any longer."

It's an old canard. Decades ago a Catholic friend remarked to me: "Well, of course, the Jewish God is a God of law. The Christian God is a God of love." I, who at the time knew almost nothing about the Jewish God, was taken aback as much by the pat formula as by the matter-of-fact way in which he proclaimed it, like a piece of catechism well learned.

Three decades ago, like many assimilated Jews, I didn't know how to respond to my Christian friend. Today, however, having just come home from morning prayers at the Western Wall, where the women around me were praying to "the Jewish God" with such fervor, such devotion, such ardent love, I know exactly how to respond to Dr. Laura.

Is it possible that a religion that has produced such lovers of God as King David, the prophetess Devorah, the medieval poet Yehuda HaLevi, the 16th century mystics of Safed, the Baal Shem Tov, and the women who pray daily at the Western Wall can provide Dr. Laura no avenue of connection to God?

This is the Hebrew month of Elul, which in Hebrew forms an acrostic for the words: "I am my Beloved's, and my Beloved is mine." During this month before the High Holydays, the rabbis tell us, "The King is in the field." As my nine-year-old explains: "It means that God is very close to us. He's right here with us."

CLOSENESS TO GOD

The highest union with God that humans can achieve is union of will. To unite one's will with the divine will is ultimate closeness to God.

Even in human relationships, real love entails a uniting of wills, which often requires a submission of one's will to the will of the beloved. That is why real love, as opposed to Hollywood love, requires hard work and renunciation. If you want to go Italian, but your beloved wants Chinese, no matter how romantic the date, oneness will be achieved only if one of you loves enough to say (sincerely): "Whatever makes you happy is fine with me."

In this light, the greatest impediment to a relationship is not really knowing what the other wants. This problem crops up in our family every year on my husband's birthday, when my eagerness to give him what he wants is squelched by his not wanting anything in particular.

This year was different. My inquiry two weeks before his birthday solicited from him the definite response that he wanted an acclaimed four-volume set on the laws of Shabbat. Joyfully, I walked into our local Jewish bookstore and asked for the set.

It was out of print. The bookseller assured me that there wasn't a set to be had in all of Jerusalem, but the publisher was running off a new printing which should, with luck, be out in a month or two. I was crestfallen.

The day before my husband's birthday, I was shopping in the neighborhood of Geula when I passed a bookstore. A firm believer that it never hurts to try, I went in and asked for the set.

The storeowner replied, "I have the very last set in all of Jerusalem. Someone ordered it months ago, and I kept it for him, but he hasn't returned from America. So I'm willing to sell it to you."

Jubilant, I purchased the formidable tomes, and set out to meet my husband who had the car. We had arranged that he would wait for me at the top of the hill, some four blocks away. It was a hot day, and I was already schlepping a half dozen heavy packages. The four-volume set weighed a whopping ten pounds, but as I traipsed up the hill, I felt ecstatic that I could actually give my husband exactly what he wanted.

In the Torah, God told the Jewish people exactly what He wants from us. Far from being "saddled with the burden of the mitzvot," we are privileged to have 613 ways to connect with God. There is no greater demonstration of His love for us than the mitzvot: 613 channels of total connection.

Distinguishing between the "God of law" and the "God of love" is like distinguishing between my lawfully wedded husband and my lover. Ideally, they should be one and the same. In Judaism, the laws are the greatest manifestation of the love, like the laws of matrimony.

The tragic irony of Dr. Laura's spiritual crisis is that not feeling connected to God, she has renounced the very mitzvot that have the potential to connect her to God.

Five years ago, Dr. Laura purchased the right car. If it has not taken her anywhere, rather than junk the car, she would do well to check the immobilizer, check the gas gauge, make sure she has the right key in the ignition.

SLIDING INTO SECOND

Dr. Laura complained to her millions of listeners: "I felt that I was putting out a tremendous amount toward that mission, that end, and not feeling return, not feeling connected, not feeling that inspired."

The sense of connection with God that has eluded Dr. Laura does not come automatically. The pitfall of Jewish observance is that it's hard not to fall into a mechanical performance of mitzvot that are performed repeatedly, daily, sometimes many times a day. To perform the commandments as they are meant to be performed -- consciously, joyfully, focused on the Commander -- is a feat of mindfulness which requires consistent effort and a level of concentration enough to challenge a Zen adept.

Rabbi Shlomo Wolbe, a great contemporary sage, writes: "Obviously, when performing the mitzvot mechanically, there is neither mindfulness nor love nor joy."

What does Rabbi Wolbe recommend as an antidote to such mechanical performance of a mitzvah? Not to enter the mitzvah suddenly. Rather, "let us contemplate that the Holy One, Blessed be He, Himself, commanded us in this commandment, and that through it, we are connecting with Him." [Alei Shor, p. 327]

Life is busy. No one -- especially not a famous radio personality and author -- has time to do everything and do it right. Most of us perform mitzvot -- pray, recite blessings over food, etc. -- like a baseball player sliding into second base. We consider it commendable that we take the time to perform the mitzvah at all. The notion that we should take an extra couple minutes and pause before fulfilling a commandment to reflect on the One who has commanded us and to unite our will wholeheartedly with His may seem daunting, but this is the way the mitzvot are meant to be performed.

For example, before reciting the Shemona Esrai, the long prayer a Jew is obligated to recite two or three times a day, Maimonides writes that one is obligated to stop and reflect on the greatness of the God one is about to address. Given that it takes the average Jew anywhere from five to fifteen minutes to recite the Shemona Esrai, isn't it a shame not to take the extra two minutes of reflection before beginning in order to reframe the whole prayer as an exercise of love and closeness?

TAKING HALLAH

I have been religiously observant for 18 years. Three months ago, a woman started giving a course in our neighborhood on the mitzvah of taking hallah. In the Torah, God commands that once we enter the Land of Israel, when we bake bread, we should separate off a small piece of the dough and put it aside. This is one of the three mitzvot that are considered specifically given to women.

Not being the earthy type, I have never felt inclined to bake bread from scratch. With my bread maker, yes. With my husband (a pianist who loves to exercise his fingers by kneading) making the dough, and me just saying the blessing and breaking off a piece of dough, yes. But to take a ten-week course in the single mitzvah of separating hallah, no thanks.

When a friend asked me why I wasn't taking the hallah course, I replied glibly that I'm all air signs, and I'm not the earthy, bread-baking type.

My friend looked at me aghast. "Don't you know that all the blessings of physical abundance come down into the world through the performance of the mitzvah of taking hallah? The mitzvah also effects healing in 14 different ways."

I enrolled in the course, wondering how there could be so much to say about a single mitzvah.

"The mitzvah of hallah is cosmic in its effect," the teacher proclaimed. Every week my jaw dropped lower as she expatiated on the mystic ramifications of this one mitzvah.

Then she announced that the following week a rabbi would be coming in to teach us about the mitzvah's specific requirements in Jewish law. This would take two hours.

Two hours? I couldn't imagine how he could fill up two hours. And, of course, I already knew how to do the mitzvah.

I went to the class anyway. I discovered that I had been doing the mitzvah wrong.

The following week, our teacher announced, she would be demonstrating how to make hallah. I came prepared for a Pillsbury lesson that I didn't need because my husband has the world's best recipe for whole wheat hallah.

The demonstration was a life-changing event.

Now I make hallah once a month, and it's the spiritual highpoint of my month. I start by turning off the phone and announcing that no one is permitted into the kitchen until I've finished; this mitzvah requires total concentration.

Then I give charity, so that all my prayers will be favorably accepted. Then I say a chapter of Psalms, to open up the gates of heaven.

While sifting the flour, I sing, because joy is the foundation of all spiritual success. Then I add each ingredient consciously: sugar for the sweetness I hope to see in my family's life; yeast so that each member of my family will grow and expand; water represents Torah; when measuring salt, which represents rebuke, I fill two tablespoons, then shake some back into the salt container because we should always give less rebuke than we think we should; and as I slowly pour in the oil, I "anoint" each member of my family by name, praying for his or her specific needs.

Kneading is the time to pray. My teenage daughter and I take turns, each of us thinking of people to pray for by name: single friends that they should get married; childless friends that they should have babies; sick people and terror victims that they should have a speedy and complete recovery; people struggling financially that they should have livelihood. My daughter reminds me to add the names of Israel's missing soldiers and of Jonathan Pollard. On and on we knead and pray, with such spiritual focus and intensity, that the kitchen becomes charged.

Now the dough is ready to take the hallah, but the spiritual preparations to perform the mitzvah properly continue. Reading from a laminated sheet prepared and distributed by two Israeli sisters, I pray fervently that my performance of the mitzvah of hallah will repair the primeval sin of Eve. That just as she brought death into the world, I will bring life into the world, nullifying death, erasing the tears from every face.

Now I am ready to perform the mitzvah. I break off a small piece of dough, recite the blessing over the mitzvah, and with both hands lift the piece of dough above my head and proclaim: "Behold, this is hallah!"

My hands are quivering with the spiritual intensity of the moment. With my hands still raised, I utter two more prayers -- one that my taking hallah should be considered as if I had brought an offering in the Holy Temple, that it should atone for all my sins and be as if I am born anew, and the other for the complete and final redemption of the whole world.

It has taken me over an hour to perform this one mitzvah. I feel exalted, tremulous, ecstatic as I used to feel after hours of meditation.

For 17 years, I sporadically (and incorrectly) performed the mitzvah of hallah, while having no idea of the profundity and spiritual potential of the mitzvah. I slid into second base, recited the blessing, broke off a piece of dough -- and felt nothing. It did not connect me to God, except on the most rudimentary level.

The lack was not in the mitzvah. The lack was not in Judaism. The lack was in me.

The mitzvot are an unparalleled spiritual feast. Most Jews have barely tasted their sumptuousness. Connoisseurs know the difference between eating and dining. The latter takes time -- and concentration on the taste of every bite. A connoisseur dining in a five-star restaurant will not complain at how long the food takes to prepare. Nor will he assess the quality of the restaurant by how full he feels when he leaves.

Judaism is not a fast-food religion. Connecting to God through the mitzvot takes time, constant learning and a commitment to moving ever deeper.

My dear sister Laura, I invite you to try again. God loves you so much that He gave you His mitzvot, each one of which is a radiant path to connect to Him.

Please, my sister Laura, come to Jerusalem and bake hallah with me.

Author Biography:

Sara Yoheved Rigler is a graduate of Brandeis University. Her spiritual journey took her to India and through fifteen years of teaching Vedanta philosophy and meditation. Since 1985, she has been practicing Torah Judaism. A writer, she resides in the Old City of Jerusalem with her husband and children. Her articles have appeared in: Jewish Women Speak about Jewish Matters, Chicken Soup for the Jewish Soul, and Heaven on Earth.

Labels: Conversion, Conversion to Judaism, Orthodox Judaism

- posted by Izak @ 6:59 PM (1) comments

 
One Noah Feldman writes about marrying a non-Jew and the world erupts...

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Background:

See the Wikipedia articles about:

Dr. Noah Feldman at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noah_Feldman
and about his wife:
Dr. Jeannie Chi Yong Suk at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeannie_Suk

See also:

http://www.abovethelaw.com/jeannie_suk/
and/or
http://www.abovethelaw.com/noah_feldman/

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The wedding:

The New York Times
Archives
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9803E6D71539F936A2575BC0A96F958260

"WEDDINGS; Noah Feldman and Jeannie Suk
Published: August 15, 1999

Dr. Jeannie Chi Yong Suk, a daughter of Song Nam Suk and Dr. Chang Ho Suk of Great Neck, N.Y., is to be married this afternoon to Dr. Noah Raam Feldman, a son of Dr. Penny H. Feldman and Dr. Roy E. Feldman of Cambridge, Mass. Harold Hongju Koh, an Assistant Secretary of State, is to preside at the ceremony in the Harvard Club in Manhattan

Dr. Suk, 26, was until June a visiting lecturer on cultural exchange and interaction in literature at Yale College in New Haven, and an affiliate scholar at the Columbia University Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research in Manhattan.

In September, she will become a law student at Harvard University. She graduated from Yale and received a doctorate in philosophy in modern languages from Oxford University, where she was a Marshall scholar. She is keeping her name.

Her father is a gastroenterologist in Flushing, Queens. Her mother manages the practice and is a director of the Flushing branch of the Y.W.C.A.

Dr. Feldman, 29, was a clerk for Justice David H. Souter of the United States Supreme Court in Washington until last month. He is now a junior fellow at the Harvard University Society of Fellows in Cambridge, where he is conducting research on legal theory and history. He graduated from Harvard and received a doctorate in Islamic thought from Oxford, where he was a Rhodes scholar. He also holds a law degree from Yale.

His mother is a vice president of the Visiting Nurse Service of New York and the director of its Center for Home Care Policy and Research. His father is the president of Behavior Analysis Inc., a social policy consulting company in Cambridge."

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Orthodox Paradox

By NOAH FELDMAN

Published: July 22, 2007
The New York Times Magazine
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/22/magazine/22yeshiva-t.html?pagewanted=1&ei=5070&en=65c2da82af1f612d&ex=1186113600&adxnnl=0&adxnnlx=1185989885-jsnZxT0nRAAp2LVR422dBA

Noah Feldman, a contributing writer for the magazine, is a law professor at Harvard University and adjunct senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

A number of years ago, I went to my 10th high-school reunion, in the backyard of the one classmate whose parents had a pool. Lots of my classmates were there. Almost all were married, and many already had kids. This was not as unusual as it might seem, since I went to a yeshiva day school, and nearly everyone remained Orthodox. I brought my girlfriend. At the end, we all crowded into a big group photo, shot by the school photographer, who had taken our pictures from first grade through graduation. When the alumni newsletter came around a few months later, I happened to notice the photo. I looked, then looked again. My girlfriend and I were nowhere to be found.

I didn’t want to seem paranoid, especially in front of my girlfriend, to whom I was by that time engaged. So I called my oldest school friend, who appeared in the photo, and asked for her explanation. “You’re kidding, right?” she said. My fiancée was Korean-American. Her presence implied the prospect of something that from the standpoint of Orthodox Jewish law could not be recognized: marriage to someone who was not Jewish. That hint was reason enough to keep us out.

Not long after, I bumped into the photographer, in synagogue, on Yom Kippur. When I walked over to him, his pained expression told me what I already knew. “It wasn’t me,” he said. I believed him.

Since then I have occasionally been in contact with the school’s alumni director, who has known me since I was a child. I say “in contact,” but that implies mutuality where none exists. What I really mean is that in the nine years since the reunion I have sent him several updates about my life, for inclusion in the “Mazal Tov” section of the newsletter. I sent him news of my marriage. When our son was born, I asked him to report that happy event. The most recent news was the birth of our daughter this winter. Nothing doing. None of my reports made it into print.

It would be more dramatic if I had been excommunicated like Baruch Spinoza, in a ceremony complete with black candles and a ban on all social contact, a rite whose solemnity reflected the seriousness of its consequences. But in the modern world, the formal communal ban is an anachronism. Many of my closest relationships are still with people who remain in the Orthodox fold. As best I know, no one, not even the rabbis at my old school who disapprove of my most important life decisions, would go so far as to refuse to shake my hand. What remains of the old technique of excommunication is simply nonrecognition in the school’s formal publications, where my classmates’ growing families and considerable accomplishments are joyfully celebrated.

The yeshiva where I studied considers itself modern Orthodox, not ultra-Orthodox. We followed a rigorous secular curriculum alongside traditional Talmud and Bible study. Our advanced Talmud and Hebrew classes were interspersed with advanced-placement courses in French literature and European political history, all skillfully coordinated to prime us for the Ivy League. To try to be at once a Lithuanian yeshiva and a New England prep school: that was the unspoken motto of the Maimonides School of Brookline, Mass., where I studied for 12 years.

That aspiration is not without its difficulties. My own personal lesson in nonrecognition is just one small symptom of the challenge of reconciling the vastly disparate values of tradition and modernity — of Slobodka and St. Paul’s. In premodern Europe, where the state gave the Jewish community the power to enforce its own rules of membership through coercive force, excommunication literally divested its victim of his legal personality, of his rights and standing in the community. The modern liberal state, though, neither polices nor delegates the power to police religious membership; that is now a social matter, not a legal one. Today a religious community that seeks to preserve its traditional structure must maintain its boundaries using whatever independent means it can muster — right down to the selective editing of alumni newsletters.

Despite my intimate understanding of the mind-set that requires such careful attention to who is in and who is out, I am still somehow taken by surprise each time I am confronted with my old school’s inability to treat me like any other graduate. I have tried in my own imperfect way to live up to values that the school taught me, expressing my respect and love for the wisdom of the tradition while trying to reconcile Jewish faith with scholarship and engagement in the public sphere. As a result, I have not felt myself to have rejected my upbringing, even when some others imagine me to have done so by virtue of my marriage.

Some part of me still expects — against the judgment of experience — that the individual human beings who make up the institution and community where I spent so many years of my life will put our longstanding friendships ahead of the imperative to define boundaries. The school did educate me and influence me deeply. What I learned there informs every part of my inner life. In the sense of shared history and formation, I remain of the community even while no longer fully in the community.

If this is dissonance, it is at least dissonance that the modern Orthodox should be able to understand: the desire to inhabit multiple worlds simultaneously and to defy contradiction with coexistence. After all, the school’s attempt to bring the ideals of Orthodox Judaism into dialogue with a certain slice of late-20th-century American life was in many ways fantastically rich and productive. For those of us willing to accept a bit of both worlds, I would say, it almost worked.

Fitting In

Since the birth of modern Orthodox Judaism in 19th-century Germany, a central goal of the movement has been to normalize the observance of traditional Jewish law — to make it possible to follow all 613 biblical commandments assiduously while still participating in the reality of the modern world. You must strive to be, as a poet of the time put it, “a Jew in the home and a man in the street.” Even as we students of the Maimonides School spent half of every school day immersed in what was unabashedly a medieval curriculum, our aim was to seem to outsiders — and to ourselves — like reasonable, mainstream people, not fanatics or cult members.

This ambition is best exemplified today by Senator Joe Lieberman. His run for the vice presidency in 2000 put the “modern” in modern Orthodox, demonstrating that an Orthodox Jewish candidate could be accepted by America at large as essentially a regular guy. (Some of this, of course, was simply the result of ignorance. As John Breaux, then a senator from Louisiana, so memorably put it with regard to Lieberman during the 2000 campaign, “I don’t think American voters care where a man goes to church on Sunday.”) Whatever concerns Lieberman’s Jewish identity may have raised in the heartland seem to have been moderated, rather than stoked, by the fact that his chosen Jewish denomination was Orthodox — that he seemed to really and truly believe in something. His Orthodoxy elicited none of the half-whispered attacks that Mitt Romney’s Mormonism has already prompted in this electoral cycle, none of the dark hints that it was, in some basic sense, weird.

Lieberman’s overt normalcy really is remarkable. Though modern Orthodox Jews do not typically wear the long beards, side curls and black, nostalgic Old World garments favored by the ultra-Orthodox, the men do wear beneath their clothes a small fringed prayer shawl every bit as outré as the sacred undergarments worn by Mormons. Morning prayers are accompanied by the daily donning of phylacteries, which, though painless, resemble in their leather-strappy way the cinched cilice worn by the initiates of Opus Dei and so lasciviously depicted in “The Da Vinci Code.” Food restrictions are tight: a committed modern Orthodox observer would not drink wine with non-Jews and would have trouble finding anything to eat in a nonkosher restaurant other than undressed cold greens (assuming, of course, that the salad was prepared with a kosher knife).

The dietary laws of kashrut are designed to differentiate and distance the observant person from the rest of the world. When followed precisely, as I learned growing up, they accomplish exactly that. Every bite requires categorization into permitted and prohibited, milk or meat. To follow these laws, to analyze each ingredient in each food that comes into your purview, is to construct the world in terms of the rules borne by those who keep kosher. The category of the unkosher comes unconsciously to apply not only to foods that fall outside the rules but also to the people who eat that food — which is to say, almost everyone in the world, whether Jewish or not. You cannot easily break bread with them, but that is not all. You cannot, in a deeper sense, participate with them in the common human activity of restoring the body through food.

And yet the Maimonides School, by juxtaposing traditional and secular curricula, gave me a feeling of being connected to the broader world. Line by line we burrowed into the old texts in their original Hebrew and Aramaic. The poetry of the Prophets sang in our ears. After years of this, I found I could recite the better part of the Hebrew Bible from memory. Among other things, this meant that when I encountered the writings of the Puritans who founded the Massachusetts Bay Colony, I felt immediate kinship. They read those same exact texts again and again — often in Hebrew — searching for clues about their own errand into the American wilderness.

In our literature classes we would glimpse Homer’s wine-dark sea, then move to a different classroom and dive headlong into the sea of the Talmud. Here the pleasure of legal-intellectual argument had no stopping place, no end. A problem in Talmud study is never answered, it is only deepened. The Bible prohibits work on the Sabbath. But what is work? The rabbis began with 39 categories, each of which called for its own classification into as many as 39 further subcategories. Then came the problem of intention: What state of mind is required for “work” to have occurred? You might perform an act of work absent-mindedly, having forgotten that it was the Sabbath, or ignorantly, not knowing that action constituted work. You might perform an action with the goal of achieving some permissible outcome — but that result might inevitably entail some prohibited work’s taking place. Learning this sort of reasoning as a child prepared me well, as it has countless others, for the ways of American law.

Beyond the complementarities of Jewish learning and secular knowledge, our remarkable teachers also offered access to a wider world. Even among the rabbis there was a smattering of Ph.D.’s and near-doctorates to give us a taste of a critical-academic approach to knowledge, not just a religious one. And the teachers of the secular subjects were fantastic. One of the best taught me eighth-grade English when he was barely out of college himself, before he became a poet, a professor and an important queer theorist. Given Orthodoxy’s condemnation of homosexuality, he must have made it onto the faculty through the sheer cluelessness of the administration. Lord only knows what teachers like him, visitors from the real world, made of our quirky ways. (In the book of poems about his teaching years, we students are decorously transformed into Italian-Americans.)

In allowing us, intentionally or not, to see the world and the Torah as profoundly interconnected, the school was faithful to the doctrines of its eponym, the great medieval Jewish legalist and philosopher Moses Maimonides. Easily the most extraordinary figure in post-biblical Jewish history, Maimonides taught that accurate knowledge of the world — physical and metaphysical — was, alongside studying, obeying and understanding the commandments, the one route to the ultimate summum bonum of knowing God. A life lived by these precepts can be both noble and beautiful, and I believe the best and wisest of my classmates and teachers come very close indeed to achieving it.

The Dynamics of Prohibition

For many of us, the consilience of faith and modernity that sometimes appears within the reach of modern Orthodoxy is a tantalizing prospect. But it can be undermined by the fragile fault lines between the moral substructures of the two worldviews, which can widen into deep ruptures on important matters of life and love.

One time at Maimonides a local physician — a well-known figure in the community who later died tragically young — addressed a school assembly on the topic of the challenges that a modern Orthodox professional may face. The doctor addressed the Talmudic dictum that the saving of a life trumps the Sabbath. He explained that in its purest form, this principle applies only to the life of a Jew. The rabbis of the Talmud, however, were unprepared to allow the life of a non-Jew to be extinguished because of the no-work commandment, and so they ruled that the Sabbath could be violated to save the life of a non-Jew out of concern for maintaining peaceful relations between the Jewish and non-Jewish communities.

Depending on how you look at it, this ruling is either an example of outrageously particularist religious thinking, because in principle it values Jewish life more than non-Jewish life, or an instance of laudable universalism, because in practice it treats all lives equally. The physician quite reasonably opted for the latter explanation. And he added that he himself would never distinguish Jewish from non-Jewish patients: a human being was a human being.

This appealing sentiment did not go unchallenged. One of my teachers rose to suggest that the doctor’s attitude was putting him in danger of violating the Torah. The teacher reported that he had himself heard from his own rabbi, a leading modern-Orthodox Talmudist associated with Yeshiva University, that in violating the Sabbath to treat a non-Jew, intention was absolutely crucial. If you intended to save the patient’s life so as to facilitate good relations between Jews and non-Jews, your actions were permissible. But if, to the contrary, you intended to save the patient out of universal morality, then you were in fact guilty of violating the Sabbath, because the motive for acting was not the motive on the basis of which the rabbis allowed the Sabbath violation to occur.

Later, in class, the teacher apologized to us students for what he said to the doctor. His comments, he said, were inappropriate — not because they were wrongheaded, but because non-Jews were present in the audience when he made them. The double standard of Jews and non-Jews, in other words, was for him truly irreducible: it was not just about noting that only Jewish lives merited violation of the Sabbath, but also about keeping the secret of why non-Jewish lives might be saved. To accept this version of the tradition would be to accept that the modern Orthodox project of engagement with the world could not proceed in good faith.

Nothing in the subculture of modern Orthodoxy, however, brought out the tensions between tradition and modernity more vividly for a young man than the question of our relationship to sex. Modernity, and maybe the state-mandated curriculum (I have never checked), called for a day of sex ed in seventh grade. I have the feeling that the content of our sex-ed class was the same as those held in public schools in Massachusetts around the same time, with the notable exception that none of us would have occasion to deploy even the most minimal elements of the lesson plan in the foreseeable future. After the scientific bits of the lesson were over, the rabbi who was head of the school came in to the classroom to follow up with some indication of the Jewish-law perspective on these questions. It amounted to a blanket prohibition on the activities to which we had just been introduced. After marriage, some rather limited subset of them might become permissible — but only in the two weeks of the month that followed the two weeks of ritual abstinence occasioned by menstruation.

After that memorable disquisition, the question of relations between the sexes went essentially unmentioned again in our formal education. We were periodically admonished that boys and girls must not touch one another, even accidentally. Several of the most attractive girls were singled out for uncomfortable closed-door sessions in which they were instructed that their manner of dress, which already met the school’s standards for modesty, must be made more modest still so as not to distract the males around them.

Whatever their disjuncture with American culture of the 1980s, the erotics of prohibition were real to us. Once, I was called on the carpet after an anonymous informant told the administration that I had been seen holding a girl’s hand somewhere in Brookline one Sunday afternoon. The rabbi insinuated that if the girl and I were holding hands today, premarital sex must surely be right around the corner.

My Talmud teacher — the one who took the physician to task — handed me four tightly packed columns of closely reasoned rabbinic Hebrew, a responsum by the pre-eminent Orthodox decisor, Rabbi Moshe Feinstein, “in the matter of a young man whose heart lures him to enter into bonds of affection with a young woman not for purposes of marriage.” Rabbi Feinstein’s legal judgment with respect to romantic love among persons too young to marry was definitive. He prohibited it absolutely, in part on the ground that it would inevitably lead to nonprocreative seminal emissions, whether intentional or unintentional.

What Feinstein lacked in romantic imagination was more than made up for by Moses Maimonides, who understood the soul pretty well. He once characterized the true love of God as all-consuming — “as though one had contracted the sickness of love.” Feinstein’s opinion directed my attention to a passage in Maimonides’s legal writings prohibiting various sorts of contact with women. The most evocative bit runs as follows: “Even to smell the perfume upon her is prohibited.” I have never been able to escape the feeling that this is a covert love poem enmeshed in the 14-volume web of dos and don’ts that is Maimonides’s Code of Law. Perfume has not smelled the same to me since.

Difference and Reconciliation

I have spent much of my own professional life focusing on the predicament of faith communities that strive to be modern while simultaneously cleaving to tradition. Consider the situation of those Christian evangelicals who want to participate actively in mainstream politics yet are committed to a biblical literalism that leads them to oppose stem-cell research and advocate intelligent design in the classroom. To some secularists, the evangelicals’ predicament seems absurd and their political movement dangerously anti-intellectual. As it happens, I favor financing stem-cell research and oppose the teaching of intelligent design or creationism as a “scientific” doctrine in public schools. Yet I nonetheless feel some sympathy for the evangelicals’ sure-to-fail attempts to stand in the way of the progress of science, and not just because I respect their concern that we consider the ethical implications of our technological prowess.

Perhaps I feel sympathy because I can recall the agonies suffered by my head of school when he stopped by our biology class to discuss the problem of creation. Following the best modern Orthodox doctrine, he pointed out that Genesis could be understood allegorically, and that the length of a day might be numbered in billions of years considering that the sun, by which our time is reckoned, was not created until the fourth such “day.” Not for him the embarrassing claim, heard sometimes among the ultra-Orthodox, that dinosaur fossils were embedded by God within the earth at the moment of creation in order to test our faith in biblical inerrancy. Natural selection was for him a scientific fact to be respected like the laws of physics — guided by God but effectuated though the workings of the natural order. Yet even he could not leave the classroom without a final caveat. “The truth is,” he said, “despite what I have just told you, I still have a hard time believing that man could be descended from monkeys.”

This same grappling with tension — and the same failure to resolve it perfectly — can be found among the many Muslims who embrace both basic liberal democratic values and orthodox Islamic faith. The literature of democratic Islam, like that of modern Orthodox Judaism, may be read as an embodiment of dialectical struggle, the unwillingness to ignore contemporary reality in constant interplay with the weight of tradition taken by them as authentic and divinely inspired. The imams I have met over the years seem, on the whole, no less sincere than the rabbis who taught me. Their commitment to their faith and to the legal tradition that comes with it seems just as heartfelt. Liberal Muslims may even have their own Joe Lieberman in the Minnesota congressman Keith Ellison, the first Muslim elected to the U.S. Congress.

The themes of difference and reconciliation that have preoccupied so much of my own thinking are nowhere more stark than in trying to make sense of the problem of marriage — which is also, for me, the most personal aspect of coming to terms with modern Orthodoxy. Although Jews of many denominations are uncomfortable with marriage between Jews and people of other religions, modern Orthodox condemnation is especially definitive.

The reason for the resistance to such marriages derives from Jewish law but also from the challenge of defining the borders of the modern Orthodox community in the liberal modern state. Ultra-Orthodox Judaism addresses the boundary problem with methods like exclusionary group living and deciding business disputes through privately constituted Jewish-law tribunals. For modern Orthodox Jews, who embrace citizenship and participate in the larger political community, the relationship to the liberal state is more ambivalent. The solution adopted has been to insist on the coherence of the religious community as a social community, not a political community. It is defined not so much by what people believe or say they believe (it is much safer not to ask) as by what they do.

Marriage is the most obvious public practice about which information is readily available. When combined with the traditional Jewish concern for continuity and self-preservation — itself only intensified by the memory of the Holocaust — marriage becomes the sine qua non of social membership in the modern Orthodox community. Marrying a Jewish but actively nonobservant spouse would in most cases make continued belonging difficult. Gay Orthodox Jews find themselves marginalized not only because of their forbidden sexual orientation but also because within the tradition they cannot marry the partners whom they might otherwise choose. For those who choose to marry spouses of another faith, maintaining membership would become all but impossible.

Us and Them

In a few cases, modern Orthodoxy’s line-drawing has been implicated in some truly horrifying events. Yigal Amir, the assassin of Yitzhak Rabin, was a modern Orthodox Jew who believed that Rabin’s peace efforts put him into the Talmudic category of one who may be freely executed because he is in the act of killing Jews. In 1994, Dr. Baruch Goldstein massacred 29 worshipers in the mosque atop the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron. An American-born physician, Goldstein attended a prominent modern Orthodox Jewish day school in Brooklyn. (In a classic modern Orthodox twist, the same distinguished school has also produced two Nobel Prize winners.)

Because of the proximity of Goldstein’s background and mine, the details of his reasoning have haunted me. Goldstein committed his terrorist act on Purim, the holiday commemorating the victory of the Jews over Haman, traditionally said to be a descendant of the Amalekites. The previous Sabbath, he sat in synagogue and heard the special additional Torah portion for the day, which includes the famous injunction in the Book of Deuteronomy to remember what the Amalekites did to the Israelites on their way out of Egypt and to erase the memory of Amalek from beneath the heavens.

This commandment was followed by a further reading from the Book of Samuel. It details the first intentional and explicit genocide depicted in the Western canon: God’s directive to King Saul to kill every living Amalekite — man, woman and child, and even the sheep and cattle. Saul fell short. He left the Amalekite king alive and spared the sheep. As a punishment for the incompleteness of the slaughter, God took the kingdom from him and his heirs and gave it to David. I can remember this portion verbatim. That Saturday, like Goldstein, I was in synagogue, too.

Of course as a matter of Jewish law, the literal force of the biblical command of genocide does not apply today. The rabbis of the Talmud, in another of their universalizing legal rulings, held that because of the Assyrian King Sennacherib’s policy of population movement at the time of the First Temple, it was no longer possible to ascertain who was by descent an Amalekite. But as a schoolboy I was taught that the story of Amalek was about not just historical occurrence but cyclical recurrence: “In every generation, they rise up against us to destroy us, but the Holy One, blessed be He, saves us from their hands.” The Jews’ enemies today are the Amalekites of old. The inquisitors, the Cossacks — Amalekites. Hitler was an Amalekite, too.

To Goldstein, the Palestinians were Amalekites. Like a Puritan seeking the contemporary type of the biblical archetype, he applied Deuteronomy and Samuel to the world before him. Commanded to settle the land, he settled it. Commanded to slaughter the Amalekites without mercy or compassion, he slew them. Goldstein could see difference as well as similarity. According to one newspaper account, when he was serving in the Israeli military, he refused to treat non-Jewish patients. And his actions were not met by universal condemnation: his gravestone describes him as a saint and a martyr of the Jewish people, “Clean of hands and pure of heart.”

It would be a mistake to blame messianic modern Orthodoxy for ultranationalist terror. But when the evil comes from within your own midst, the soul searching needs to be especially intense. After the Hebron massacre, my own teacher, the late Israeli scholar and poet Ezra Fleischer — himself a paragon of modern Orthodox commitment — said that the innocent blood of the Palestinian worshipers dripped through the stones and formed tears in the eyes of the Patriarchs buried below.

Lives of Contradiction

Recently I saw my oldest school friend again, and recalling the tale of the reunion photograph, we shared a laugh over my continuing status as persona non grata. She remarked that she had never even considered sending in her news to our alumni newsletter. “But why not?” I asked. Her answer was illuminating. As someone who never took steps that would have led to her public exclusion, she felt that the school and the community of which it was a part always sought to claim her — a situation that had its own costs for her sense of autonomy.

For me, having exercised my choices differently, there is no such risk. With no danger of feeling owned, I haven’t lost the wish to be treated like any other old member. From the standpoint of the religious community, of course, the preservation of collective mores requires sanctioning someone who chooses a different way of living. But I still have my own inward sense of unalienated connection to my past. In synagogue on Purim with my children reading the Book of Esther, the beloved ancient phrases give me a sense of joy that not even Baruch Goldstein can completely take away.

It is more than a little strange, feeling fully engaged with a way of seeing the world but also, at the same time, feeling so far from it. I was discussing it just the other day with my best friend — who, naturally, went to Maimonides, too. The topic was whether we would be the same people, in essence, had we remained completely within the bosom of modern Orthodoxy. He didn’t think so. Our life choices are constitutive of who we are, and so different life choices would have made us into different people — not unrecognizably different, but palpably, measurably so.

I accepted his point as true — but for some reason I resisted the conclusion. Couldn’t the contradictory world from which we sprang be just as rich and productive as the contradictory life we actually live? Would it really, truly, have made all that much difference? Isn’t everyone’s life a mass of contradictions? My best friend just laughed.

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Stop ostracizing the intermarried

By Rabbi Shmuley Boteach

THE JERUSALEM POST
Jul. 22, 2007
http://joi.org/bloglinks/Stop%20ostracizing%20the%20intermarried%20%20Jerusalem%20Post.htm

This column would not have been written had its subject not first described himself and his predicament in this week's New York Times magazine.

Noah Feldman was a brilliant, Orthodox Jewish Rhodes scholar who arrived in Oxford in my fourth year as rabbi there in 1992. We quickly hit it off. For one thing, there was scarcely a subject - Jewish or secular - upon which Noah did not have some profound knowledge. We studied Talmud together several times a week and I made Noah a kind of secondary rabbi at our L'Chaim Society, such was the range of his Jewish erudition and his phenomenal capacity for teaching.

Noah was one of the most accomplished young students I had ever met. He was valedictorian of Harvard, a Rhodes and Truman scholar, and completed his Oxford doctorate in about 18 months, which may or may not be a university record. It was a source of great pride for me that Noah was observant and wore a kippa. We all marveled every Shabbat at Noah's incredible ability to read any section of the Torah at our student synagogue.

After graduating from Oxford, Noah went to Yale, where his observance began to wane. I heard from some of his classmates that he was dating a non-Jewish girl. Hearing that he was quite serious about her, when his girlfriend in turn came to Oxford as a Marshall scholar, I made a point of reaching out to her and inviting her to our Shabbat dinner.

My thinking was that Noah was far too precious to me and to the Jewish people to lose. If he was dating a woman whom he wished to marry, then it was our duty to try and expose her to the friendliness of the Jewish community with a view toward her exploring whether a serious commitment to our tradition was something that would suit her.

SADLY, OTHERS took a far different view. A mutual friend of ours who was a rabbi in Noah's life essentially told him that if he married outside the faith he would have to sever his relationship with him. Apparently, many of Noah's Orthodox friends made the same decision. The net result was that one of the brightest young Jews in the entire world was made to feel that the Jewish community was his family only if he made choices with which we agreed.

Of course I had wanted Noah to marry Jewish, and I took pride in the fact that I had helped to sustain his observance during his two years at Oxford. But the choice of whom he would marry was not mine to make. Before his wedding I wrote him a note that said, in essence, that we were friends and my affection for him would never change.

I told him that he was a prince of the Jewish nation, that his obligations to his people were eternal and unchanging, that whether or not his wife, or indeed his children, were Jewish, he would never change his own personal status as a Jew. I added that I knew he would do great things with his life as a scholar of world standing, and that he would always put the needs of the Jewish people first.

We remain good friends until today. I admire and respect Noah, and my wish is that perhaps, some day, his brilliant wife might see,of her own volition the beauties of our tradition and how family life is enhanced by husband and wife being of the same faith and practicing the same religious rituals.

True to my prediction, Noah went on, in his thirties, to become one of the youngest-ever tenured law professors, first at NYU and then at Harvard, and was chosen by the American government to serve as the consultant to the Iraqi provisional government in drawing up their constitution. Today he ranks, arguably, as the one of the youngest academic superstars in the US.

How tragic, therefore, that Noah's article in The New York Times magazine is a lengthy detailing of the alienation he has experienced from his former Orthodox Jewish day school and friends, who even cut him out of a class reunion photograph in which he participated.

FOR MORE THAN two centuries now, since the Emancipation, Jews have been debating how to deal with those who marry outside the community. The conventional response has been to treat them as traitors to the Jewish cause. We are all familiar with the old practice of sitting shiva for a child who marries out, as if he or she were dead, made famous in Fiddler on the Roof.

The extreme practice of ostracization was justified by the belief that only by completely cutting off those who married out would we be making a sufficiently strong statement as to the extent of their betrayal, thereby dissuading those who might follow suit.

There is one problem with this practice. Aside from the ethical and humanitarian considerations, it does not work. We have been practicing this alienation for decades, and yet intermarriage has grown to approximately 50 percent of the Jewish population! Worse, the practice is a lie insofar as it propagates the false notion that our Jewishness is measured only in terms of our being a link in a higher chain of existence, and that our Jewish identities have meaning only through our children. This absurd notion would deny the idea of Jewish individualism and how we are Jews in our own right.

I AM WELL aware of the fact that intermarriage is a direct threat to the very continuity of the Jewish people. But that does not change the fact that those who have chosen to marry out are still Jewish, should still be encouraged to go to synagogue, should still be encouraged to put on tefillin and keep Shabbat, should still have mezuzot on their doors, and should still be encouraged to devote their lives and resources to the welfare of the Jewish people and the security of the State of Israel.

And as far as their non-Jewish spouses are concerned, do we really believe that by showing the most unfriendly behavior we are living up to our biblically-mandated role of serving as a light unto the nations? Is there any possibility that a non-Jew married to a Jew will look favorably at the possibility of becoming halachically Jewish if he or she witnesses Orthodox Jews treating their husbands or wives as pariahs?

I am proud today to call Noah my friend. I do my best to reiterate to him the message that even with his marrying out, we are proud of his achievements and need his participation in Jewish organizational life. And it is my fervent hope that given the love and respect we show him, he will choose to show his wife and two children the glories of the tradition he knows so well with a view toward impressing upon them a desire to have them join in our eternal faith.

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Does Noah Feldman deserve to be hated?

By SHMULEY BOTEACH

The Jerusalem Post
Jul. 29, 2007 Updated Jul. 30, 2007
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1185379033599&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

The writer is currently filming his new television program 'Shalom on the Road' in Alaska. His most recent book is Shalom in the Home ( http://www.shmuley.com/ ).

A torrent of criticism greeted my column last week on the subject of Noah Feldman and my argument that we should not ostracize those who have intermarried. I was taken aback by the level of hatred shown to Prof. Feldman, and by the number of people who are personally offended by his action in marrying a non-Jew. Some went so far as to suggest that Feldman deserved the fate of Zimri in the book of Numbers who was gored to death for having relations with a non-Jew.

I will ignore such embarrassing idiocy in this column and respond instead to my intelligent critics who believe that, first, those who marry out are traitors to Judaism, and second, that going soft on those who marry out will open the floodgates of intermarriage.

The first mistake they make is to totally misunderstand intermarriage. For the overwhelming majority of Jews who marry non-Jews, there was no conscious effort to betray a tradition. They simply fell in love.

My critics fail to distinguish between an immoral sin and an irreligious act. To steal, to lie, to murder is deeply immoral. But would we say the same of someone who desecrates the Sabbath? Does driving on Shabbat make you a bad person, or a nonobservant one? Does failure to attend synagogue make you into an irreligious Jew or a flawed human being? To be sure, if you practice no religious ritual you could hardly call yourself religious. But are you wicked?

THE SAME applies to those who marry outside the community. What immoral or evil act have they perpetrated that we should treat them with such venom? Whom did they murder? You will say that their action spells death to Jewish continuity. I will respond that our ostracization does far worse. It consciously cuts off from our community those who are still and forever Jews.

The greatness of the Lubavitcher Rebbe was his genius in distinguishing between religious and moral sin. Before the Rebbe those who ate non-kosher were treated as though they themselves were unkosher.

The Rebbe understood that these were not bad people. They were simply irreligious people. And they had to be shown love and respect. Not just in order to bring them back to the fold, but because it was righteous and Jewish to do so. Why should those who marry out be treated any differently?

I spent the past Shabbat in Anchorage as guest speaker of Rabbi and Mrs. Yoske Greenberg, a heroic Chabad couple who have brought Judaism to the wilds of Alaska for the past 16 years. There is no sign on their door that bars those who have married outside the community, and indeed in most Chabad outposts around the world a significant percentage of those attending have married out. Thanks to the Rebbe, they have somewhere to go that is warm and inviting and reconnects them with their people.

YET I DETECT a growing trend in observant Jewish circles to dismiss and condemn those whose lifestyles contradict Torah living. Foremost on this list are gays and intermarrieds, both groups being treated as pariahs and abominations. But which orthodox Rabbi would have the nerve to ever tell a gay man or an intermarried man that he should not come to synagogue, that he should no longer keep kosher, that he should stop putting on tefillin, and that he should take the mezuza off his door? If there is such a rabbi, let him come forward now.

Unlike Christianity, which is based on a single precept - faith in Christ - Judaism is based on 613 separate and autonomous commandments. Our umbilical cord with God consists of these 613 strands. To be sure, the more we keep, the stronger the connection. But the key is to remain connected with even a single strand, even a single mitzva, and that is the power of the Chabad mitzva campaign: to give even the most distant Jews a single chord of connection.

It is disgraceful that men and women who marry out are not encouraged to keep the rest of the Torah's commandments. It is disgraceful that they are treated as if they consciously rebelled against the Jewish tradition when, in their minds, they simply followed the dictates of the heart.

The Jewish community's policy should be precisely the opposite. We should tell all Jews, in no uncertain terms, that the Jewish community is always their home. That just because they make choices that are profoundly injurious to Jewish continuity does not mean we do not love and cherish them. We are not only a religion, but a people. Not only a faith, but a family. And a family's members are forever.

MANY HAVE written to me that Prof. Feldman's circumstances are different, seeing that he was raised in an Orthodox home and went to an Orthodox Jewish day school. He should have known better.

I know something of this matter. The award I was honored to receive last year from the American Jewish Press Association for Excellence in Commentary came from an article I wrote which designated Jewish day school education as the single greatest bulwark against assimilation and intermarriage. But that does not mean it is foolproof. And not just for the Prof. Feldmans of this world, but for all of us.

How many who have written to me critical of Feldman are themselves guilty of lapses in Jewish observance? I know scores of Orthodox Jewish businessmen who take their yarmulkes off at their Wall Street and legal offices, even though they are stalwartly Orthodox in all other practices. But they still feel a need to make an accommodation with the world. And do they really want to be dismissed as goyim because they do so, or do they want their communities to be just a little bit understanding of the challenges they face?

In the final analysis, God's Torah in its entirety is what should be practiced. There are no excuses for our failures, save the fact that we are all human and try our best to navigate the vicissitudes of life. But how we respond to those who lapse will dictate the kind of community we become.

We can employ the iron rod and show that Judaism is a religious of fear and intimidation. Or we can employ the outstretched hand of love and demonstrate that Judaism is a religion of understanding and inspiration.

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On Feldman and Boteach

By AVI SHAFRAN

The Jerusalem Post
Jul. 30, 2007 Updated Jul. 31, 2007
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1185789792020&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

The writer is director of public affairs for Agudath Israel of America.

One can't help but feel sad for Noah Feldman. In spite of his considerable professional accomplishments - a law professorship at Harvard, three books, a slew of well-received essays and a fellowship at the Council on Foreign Relations, to name a few - the young Jew is clearly stewing. A bubble of his own imagining has burst in his face.

What he imagined was that, in its embrace of both Judaism and elements of contemporary culture, the "Modern Orthodoxy" of his youth granted Jews license to abandon as much of Jewish religious observance as they deem appropriate. Expressing his anger - coolly, to be sure, but the hurt seeps thickly through the poised prose - in a recent New York Times Magazine piece, "Orthodox Paradox," Professor Feldman describes how the Boston Jewish school he attended as a child and teenager went so far as to crop a class reunion photograph to omit him and his non-Jewish Korean-American fiancée, whom he later married.

But the Photoshopped portrait is only the professor's anecdotal hook. What he really resents is that his erstwhile school, along with some of his mentors and friends, spurn him for his decision to marry outside his faith.

No one, he admits, is rude to him. None of his former teachers or friends, he writes, would refuse to shake his hand. But he knows that they deride him for the life-path he has chosen. And that offends and perplexes him.

Does not "Modern Orthodoxy," after all, embrace the "reconcil[iation of] Jewish faith with scholarship and engagement in the public sphere"? Should it not, therefore, regard his intermarriage as an expression, if somewhat extreme, of his effort at such reconciliation? Were he and his classmates not taught to see themselves as "reasonable, modern people, not fanatics or cult members"? Leaving aside whether un-"Modern" Orthodox Jews are in fact disengaged from the public sphere (a visit to any of a number of financial firms, law offices and hi-tech retail businesses in New York or other places with large ultra-Orthodox populations might yield evidence to the contrary), much less whether they are fanatical or cultist, Feldman's umbrage is misplaced.

There is a reason why, to Orthodox Jews (and many non-Orthodox no less), no matter how embracing they may be of the larger world, intermarriage represents a deep betrayal. It is more than a violation of Jewish religious law. It is an abandonment of the Jewish past and an undermining of the Jewish future.

Because marriage, arguably the most important choice in a Jewish life, is not a partnership but rather a fusing - "and they shall be as one flesh," in Genesis' words. Since a spouse is part of oneself, the personal consequences of intermarriage are profound. As, in Feldman's case, are the communal ones; his children are not Jewish.

JUDAISM views the Jewish People as a special and hallowed entity. Members of the nation are to care for all - "we are to support the poor of the nations along with the Jewish poor," as the Talmud directs. And the righteous among the other nations, the Talmud goes on to teach, will receive their eternal reward. But the Jewish faith is clear about the ultimate redemption of the world: It is dependent on the Jewish People's remaining a nation apart in fundamental ways. One way is in our basic beliefs - for instance, that God gave our ancestors His law, and never subsequently changed it. Another is in our commitment to the integrity of the Jewish people qua people. Our commitment, in other words, to marry other Jews.

A celebrated Orthodox television personality and pundit reacted to Feldman's article in a Jerusalem Post opinion piece with words of welcome. While he considers intermarriage "a direct threat to the very continuity of the Jewish people," he nevertheless considers Feldman "a prince of the Jewish nation"; and suggests that intermarrieds be treated no differently from the in-married, that they be offered our "love and respect." His suggestion stems from his Jewish heart but his Jewish head should have been more carefully consulted.

Yes, there is ample reason to feel sympathy for Jews who intermarry. Transgressions performed from desire, Jewish tradition teaches, do not reach the level of those intended to be transgressive. And on a personal level, there are reasons to not cut off connections to intermarried friends or relatives. (It is not unheard of for non-Jews married to Jews to actually guide their spouses back to Judaism and to themselves convert; precisely such a couple is the subject of Migrant Soul, a biography I was privileged to write.)

At the same time, though, there is simply no way - not in the real world - to warmly welcome intermarrieds without welcoming intermarriage. No way to make Feldmans feel accepted for who they are without making potential Feldmans view intermarriage as innocuous. No way to "devalue" the gravity of intermarriage without dulling the truth that every Jew is an invaluable link in the Jewish chain of generations.

If one begins with the premise that intermarriage is dangerous to the Jewish people and the Jewish mission, the intermarried cannot enjoy our acceptance. There may be quibbles about the means by which we express our rejection of their choice. But the absence of any communal expression of reproach is nothing less than an invitation to intermarriage.

TO MY lights, it doesn't seem extreme in the least for a Jewish school to make clear to an intermarried alumnus that, despite his secular accomplishments, it feels no pride in him for his choice to intermarry. I wouldn't expect an American Cancer Society gathering to smile politely at a chain smoking attendee either.

It is painful, no doubt, to be spurned by one's community. It is painful, too, for a community to feel compelled to express its censure. Sometimes, though, in personal and communal life no less than in weightlifting, only pain can offer - in the larger, longer picture - hope of gain.

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From some letters to the editor on the online Jerusalem Post:

*1. Poor Noah
Shmuel
07/31/2007 00:36

Both Noah Feldman and Jeannie Suk met as law clerks for Justice Souter, and this academically brilliant Jewish fellow ended up married to Ms. Suk. That was their private business. However, not satisfied with a perceived slight, Feldman used a magazine article in the NY Times to defame traditional Jews and misrepresent orthodox Judaism. Why such revenge? He is apparently upset that he cannot have his unkosher cake and eat it, too. Poor Noah. And to top it off, he has Shmuley Boteach using him.

*2. Shafran correct
SL
07/31/2007 04:54

Rabbi Shafran is correct, of course: every group has its rules, and wanton violation of the basic rule of marriage by this academic genius but practical idiot does not warrant acceptance. Boteach's cynical use of the late Lubavitcher Rebbe's innovative tactics is but another distortion--alas, he was booted out of the Lubavitch movement, so there is no one who can counsel him, and he worships the limelight, jumping into the fray whenever a celebrity has been spotted. Feldman & Boteach have issues

*3. Boteach the Apologist
Joe Goldberg - USA
07/31/2007 06:33

What is Boteach smoking? What an apologist! A Chamberline. He is simply looking for publicity. Maybe he should stay with his clients Michael Jackson and Madonna. There is a difference between not observing a particular Mitzvah for a period of time and intermarrying which breaks the bonds of the Jewish People in eternity.

*10. Noah Feldman - the Boorish Self Indulgent Imp and Tool of International Anti-Semites
Evan Stone
07/31/2007 12:36

Noah Feldman is accomplished - and he is probably smart. But he is also a boorish, pathetic and self obsessed bully. He attempts to use the rules of civility to oppress the rights of others and avoid his own responsibilities. I pray he does tshuva. But, his path is difficult - because he has chosen to attack and endanger the entire Jewish community. He should be ostracized and abandoned. But, I do not relish considering the ultimate punishment which he will face before G-d.

*40. Feldman Bringing His Goy Wife to the Reunion Was Like Bringing Scotch to an Alcoholics Anonymous Reunion
AJew in the US - USA
07/31/2007 22:34

By marrying a goy Feldman cut himself and his goy offspring out of the yiddishkeit he learned at school, such as shabbos (how can he keep shabbos with a goy in the house-- she is going to make a shabbos meal for instance?) he cut out of teaching his kids Judaism (can't- they are goyim) , he cut out of kashrus, etc. Also, bringing her was an "in your face" affront. He cut out Judaism for himself and offspring. All the school did is cut him out of a meaningless photo.

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Don't Turn Your Back On Your Community And Then Badmouth It In The New York Times

By Gil Student
Monday, July 23, 2007
http://hirhurim.blogspot.com/2007/07/dont-turn-your-back-on-us-and-then.html

Look, you're not stupid. After thirteen years in yeshiva, you knew very well that by marrying outside of the Jewish faith that you were committing the ultimate slap-in-the-faith to the community in which you were raised. It was and remains your choice. This is a free country and it's your life to live. But be a man and take responsibility for your choices. Don't for a minute act surprised and pretend that you don't understand the profound insult that your decision represents to the community that raised you and on which you turned your back.

The community in general does not want to completely cut off ties with you. But certainly a smart man like you knows that it can no longer hold you high as an example of one of theirs who succeeded. You didn't. Sadly, to everyone's great dismay, like many others before you, you failed.

Modern Orthodoxy is all about nuance; it's about combining Orthodoxy with modernity. But the key is that God always comes first. You don't go to school on Yom Kippur, even if it means failing a final exam. You don't eat non-kosher, even if it means that your department head gets offended and thinks that you are not qualified for a tenured position. And you don't marry outside of the religion. No one is perfect, and there are plenty of people who violate Jewish rules but are still accepted in our community. However, intermarriage is more than a mere violation of a technical law. It is more than failing to wear tzitzis or wearing a jacket that has not been checked for sha'atnez. Marriage is a life choice, one of the most important decisions you ever make. You alone made your choice and it was to exclude Judaism in a very public way and to hit the community in a place where it is already severely hurting. And you know this.

The door is still open. I am sure that there are plenty of people from your past who are more than willing to maintain relationships with you on a personal level. We want you to come to synagogue and participate fully in Judaism. But don't expect to be treated like a superstar by the community on which you turned your back.

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Modern Orthodoxy Under Attack

Noah Feldman's intimate critique in the Times seen as raising the question of how to deal with Jews who marry out

Gary Rosenblatt - Editor And Publisher
The Jewish Week
Wednesday, August 1, 2007 / 17 Av 5767
http://www.thejewishweek.com/news/newscontent.php3?artid=14347

However tempting, it would be a mistake to dismiss Harvard Law professor Noah Feldman’s personal and pointed critique of Modern Orthodoxy in The New York Times Magazine last Sunday (“Orthodox Paradox”) as merely The Big Kvetch.

His essay, sure to provide fodder for numerous sermons this Shabbat, is a long and bitter complaint that despite his numerous and remarkable professional accomplishments, he has been snubbed by the Brookline, Mass., yeshiva high school from which he graduated with honors in the 1980s.

Despite the fact that Feldman was valedictorian of his class at Harvard, a Rhodes Scholar and Truman Scholar who completed his doctorate at Oxford in record time and went on to help craft the Iraqi constitution, he and his then-girlfriend were literally cropped out of a reunion picture of Maimonides School graduates published in the alumni newsletter some years ago, and none of the personal updates he has sent in since have been published. Why? Because the girlfriend — now wife — is Korean-American. Not Jewish.

And Feldman, who aptly describes the yeshiva’s goals of “reconciling the vastly disparate values of tradition and modernity” as seeking to combine “Slobodka and St. Paul’s,” maintains that he has been rejected by his community despite the fact that he has “tried in my own imperfect way to live up to values that the school taught me, expressing my respect and love for the wisdom of the tradition while trying to reconcile Jewish faith with scholarship and engagement in the public sphere.”

Poor Noah, one may think on first read. How primitive and unfair for his former yeshiva to refuse to publicly acknowledge his successes.

But as one continues to read Feldman’s essay, we see that it is he who is unfair in expecting to be lauded by a community whose values he has rejected and in crafting an intellectually dishonest case for himself.

Still, the implicit and more lasting question raised by the essay is how should the Jewish community in general, and the Orthodox community in particular, deal with Jews who have married out?

Sending a message to our children that we deeply value in-marriage for social, religious and communal reasons is all well and good, but what do we do after the fact, once they’ve chosen a non-Jewish partner and conversion is not a part of the conversation?

Unfair Arguments

As for Feldman’s arguments, in insisting that Maimonides himself, the 12th century rabbinic scholar and philosopher, believed that knowing the world was the best way to know God, he ignores the fact that it was Maimonides who codified Jewish law, established the 13 principles of faith, and insisted on adherence to halacha.

Feldman then goes on at some length to cite Jewish law’s tensions over violating the Sabbath to save the life of a non-Jew. But he fails to mention that the dispute is Talmudic, not practical; no Modern Orthodox doctor would hesitate to treat a non-Jew on the Sabbath.

Perhaps most upsetting, and unjust, the only allegedly Modern Orthodox Jews Feldman describes in his essay besides Sen. Joseph Lieberman are Yigal Amir, the assassin of Yitzchak Rabin, and Baruch Goldstein, the American-born physician who murdered 29 Arabs in Hebron in 1994. The two are cited as examples of men who took Jewish imperatives to their logical conclusion by committing murder.

“That’s like judging the peacock by its feces,” noted Rabbi Saul Berman, a scholar and former head of Edah, an organization that promoted Modern Orthodox values.

Indeed, no serious Modern Orthodox Jew is unaware of the tensions between upholding the Torah law and recognizing the values and benefits of Western democratic ideals. Rabbi Berman credits Feldman with pointing out the need to explore such tensions, which when unrecognized or out of balance can produce an Amir of Goldstein, “but it’s not fair to judge the system” by such aberrations, he maintains.

Psychic Pain

In the end, Feldman’s essay is less about Modern Orthodoxy than about his own psychic pain over being rejected. He wants it all: to be embraced if not applauded by the Jewish community whose values he has discarded by marrying out.

As Rabbi Jacob J. Schacter, senior scholar at Yeshiva University’s Center for the Jewish Future, noted in a letter sent to The Times, “fealty to Jewish tradition requires more than a ‘mind-set’ expressing ‘respect and love’ for its teachings; it presupposes certain fundamental normative behaviors. America is a country of choices, but choices have consequences and not every choice is equal. It is unrealistic for Mr. Feldman to expect to maintain good standing in a community whose core foundational behavioral — as well as value — system he has chosen to reject.”

Judaism is not alone in this attitude. Witness, for example, the Catholic Church’s discomfort with former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, a divorced Catholic who favors abortion rights, or any religious faith’s attitudes toward members who publicly violate its tenets.

But Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, author and television personality (“Shalom in the Home”), cautions against alienating some of our best and brightest Jews who marry out. Rabbi Boteach has been a friend of Feldman’s since he served as a rabbi at Oxford University where Feldman studied for two years in the early 1990s. In an essay in the Jerusalem Post this week, Rabbi Boteach says that in addition to the “ethical and humanitarian considerations” regarding ostracizing those who intermarry, the approach is ineffective, with intermarriage rates so high.

He argues that the community has a far better chance of winning over the non-Jewish spouse and the Jewish partner through welcoming behavior rather than shunning the couple.

This inreach vs. outreach debate has been part of the American Jewish landscape for a number of years, but there are those who suggest a more nuanced approach.

“There is a difference between a personal and a communal response to intermarrieds,” noted one Jewish educator who knows Feldman from Maimonides School. It’s one thing, he said, to have a personal relationship (and one wonders if Feldman would have felt less hurt if someone from the alumni office had explained the decision not to print his picture). “But for the school not to crow about a graduate who married out — how could he think otherwise?”

Cropping Feldman and his wife out of the photo was “unconscionable,” according to Steven Bayme, national director of contemporary Jewish life at the American Jewish Committee and a graduate of Maimonides School. But he noted that even Feldman acknowledged every minority group requires boundaries to maintain and preserve its own identity and that marrying out is viewed with disfavor by every denomination of Judaism.

“The price for the individual may be tragic,” Bayme said, “but the loss is far more destructive for the community in terms of cultural distinctions and communal cohesion if you remove the boundaries.”

Irreconcilable Issue

What Feldman’s essay points up is that intermarriage is the irreconcilable issue for those who argue that American and Jewish values are compatible. “We’ve sold a lot of Jews a bill of goods when we’ve told them there are no contradictions between being a good Jew and an American,” noted Jonathan Sarna, a professor of American Jewish history at Brandeis University. “In America you are taught you can marry anyone you fall in love with, but Judaism argues that we are a minority culture and will only survive if Jews marry other Jews.”

Sarna chairs an American Jewish Committee task force on attitudes toward non-Jews in the community, and asserts that with an estimated 1.7 million non-Jews living in Jewish households — to put it another way, about 23 percent of those living in Jewish households are not Jewish — this is “a very important debate” for the community to engage in.

Citing the “magnitude” of the issue and the “bitterness that drips out” of Feldman’s essay, Sarna suggests that perhaps it is time for the community to reconsider ways to draw people in rather than ignore or shun them, especially when there are indications that many non-Jews are supportive of raising their children as Jews.

Others would argue that the community already has tilted so far toward outreach and acceptance of non-Jews that there is little incentive left for them to convert to Judaism.

What Noah Feldman has done, consciously or not, is raise some important issues, less about his old yeshiva and Modern Orthodoxy per se than about dealing with Jews who do not see marrying out as leaving the fold.

Conversion is the most obvious and desired solution, but for those who eschew that option, we need to explore ways to encourage their positive exposure to Jewish life.

Feldman would argue that just because he intermarried does not mean he chose to separate himself from his heritage. But being Jewish means not only incorporating the values and traditions, but also remaining part of a community.

For all of Feldman’s candor in the essay, he has nothing to say about where he fits into the community, if at all; whether he wanted his wife to convert; whether they are raising their children as Jews or not; or his feelings about all this. He only owes us such information if he wants our understanding and empathy, which clearly he does.

He does owe Modern Orthodoxy an apology for pinning it with his anger over rejection, knowing full well the rules of engagement. But we in turn owe him a sense of gratitude for a wake-up call, however unpleasant, about the need to struggle more deeply and honestly with the moral and religious tensions and contradictions in Modern Orthodoxy that can never be reconciled, and about learning how to deal more sensitively with those on the outside who may be calling out — in anger and loneliness — for a way back in.

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Noah Feldman, Intermarriage and the Eternal Mission

Wednesday, July 25, 2007
http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/2007/07/noah-feldman-intermarriage-and-eternal.html

Orthodox Paradox , Noah Feldman's whiny New York Times piece is getting a lot of attention. Orthodox Paradox is at its root several pages of repetitive whining in which Noah Feldman dishonestly bashes Judaism and the Bible while endlessly displaying his childish frustration because his school failed to include his accomplishments in school bulletins and his girlfriend in reunion photos.

In an age where everyone is the victim, Noah Feldman creates a narrative of being victimized, excluded and shunned. Like most secularists who reject the absolute beliefs of a religion, he has no clue that those beliefs are more than a multiplication of values that can be infinitely recombined in any combination. Rather than understanding that he has made the choice to reject Judaism, he instead complains about being rejected.

"For me, having exercised my choices differently, there is no such risk. With no danger of feeling owned, I haven’t lost the wish to be treated like any other old member. From the standpoint of the religious community, of course, the preservation of collective mores requires sanctioning someone who chooses a different way of living."

What Noah Feldman simply fails to grasp that by sanitizing his departure from the Jewish people under the guise of "choices" and "lifestyles" he is ignoring the facts of the matter. By intermarrying Noah Feldman made a decision. A decision to leave the Jewish people. It is the consequences of that decision that have isolated him and set him apart. From a functional standpoint he is no longer Jewish. His children will not be Jewish. He may have an emotional wish to be treated like any old member but that is the same egotistical self-centered need for emotional realization that prevents him from understanding and accepting the meaning of his own choices.

By his own testimony, people at his old school have been more than cordial to him. But at the same time if you give up United States citizenship for French citizenship and then pay a visit to the United States, you will find that things have changed. Like most self-indulgent egotists, Noah Feldman feels the right to demand that he be allowed to make his own choices while demanding that he not have to deal with any of the consequences of those choices.

I have tried in my own imperfect way to live up to values that the school taught me, expressing my respect and love for the wisdom of the tradition while trying to reconcile Jewish faith with scholarship and engagement in the public sphere. As a result, I have not felt myself to have rejected my upbringing, even when some others imagine me to have done so by virtue of my marriage.

Noah Feldman's deliberate clueless is rooted in refusing to understand that Judaism is more than just a set of values, it is an absolute system of beliefs of divine origin. If you do not believe that, you do not believe in Judaism. Vague and nebulous statements about respecting and loving 'the wisdom of the tradition' are meaningless. A Jewish upbringing is not merely a means of passing on some general traditions. It is a devoted commitment to G-d and a people. Without those it has no meaning. By "virtue of his marriage", Noah Feldman had departed from G-d and his people. That forms his utter rejection of both G-d and the Jewish people.

Some like Shmuley Boteach, who is forever willing to serve as the enabler to people who have made bad choices in life, are happy to blame Judaism for "driving him away" by not accepting him, but you cannot drive away someone who has chosen to leave.

Although Jews of many denominations are uncomfortable with marriage between Jews and people of other religions, modern Orthodox condemnation is especially definitive.The reason for the resistance to such marriages derives from Jewish law but also from the challenge of defining the borders of the modern Orthodox community in the liberal modern state.

Again Noah Feldman seems determined to continue the same clueless refusal to recognize what is at stake. All Jews who believe in biblical literalism, that the Torah is the actual word of G-d reject intermarriage. Not because it defines some social borders or because it's some detail of Jewish law. The Jewish mission is not an individual lifestyle as the modern self-indulgent brats like Noah Feldman tend to see it as. It is a generational journey beginning with Jacob and on down to the latest baby born today. The resistance to intermarriage is not some antiquated Jewish prejudice. It is the definition of being Jewish, the passing of the legacy of one generation to the next, the binding chain of thousands of years. When you sever that chain, nothing is left.

The Jewish rejection of intermarriage is not a rejection of others, it is an acceptance of our mission. A mission that has continued on for much of the history of the world. Noah Feldman chose self-indulgence and his indignation at his community's refusal to accept him despite his departure from the Jewish people is hollow and self-serving as are his irrelevant excursions into sliming Judaism with ramblings about Baruch Goldstein and Yigal Amir which serve only to vent his spite and lay claim to his moral superiority. It is only fitting that Noah Feldman has ended up in the Council on Foreign Relations. Morally that is exactly where he belongs.

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Professor Noah Feldman and Cognitive Dissonance

Sunday, July 22, 2007
http://havolim.blogspot.com/2007/07/professor-noah-feldman-and-cognitive.html

We need to be grateful that Noah Feldman. Usually, when one’s life-choices are dissonant with one’s religious inculcation, the transgressor rationalizes his decisions by vilifying his religion. This is a natural form of denial, and is common to many instances of cognitive dissonance. Professor Feldman, happily, has been able to create a psychic niche, a safe harbor, for his self-esteem, without wholesale derogation of his religious education. Apparently, he is by nature a good soul, a man of deep and abiding honesty, and he is unwilling to fall prey to the bitterness so common to people in his position. His chiddush, his novelty, is to limit his patronizing bemusement to his hidebound or religiously constrained teachers and erstwhile society, while re-imagining what Judaism would be if it were more truly understood and fairer to people like, for example, him.

Having said this, it is interesting to point out what fools our hearts make of us. I am not interested in discussing whether his article skews to the disingenuous or to the subversive. But Professor Feldman is a bona fide illui, and even rarer, a disciplined illui with a solid and encyclopedic education. It is therefore instructive, indeed amazing, to see how knowing misrepresentations and failures of thought and imagination are pressed into the service of his need for validation.

Phylacteries. Do they have anything to do with instruments of torment? Is it the fact that both are made of leather? Assuming that the comparison was intended as a bit of humor, anyone with some respect for Jewish tradition would have to agree that it is in extremely poor taste. Mashal le’mah hadavar domeh: on that basis, burning chametz before Pesach is very much like Suttee. How remarkable that we share so much with the Hindus!

Professor Feldman’s remarks that our kashrut constraints mandate that we avoid eating with non-Jews, just as we avoid eating with Jews that do not adhere to the Kosher laws. He finds this to be divisive and dehumanizing. He does not mention that we are not constrained in any way from eating with anyone we want to at our own homes and in our own restaurants. There are a few minor restrictions that do pertain even to eating kosher food that was prepared by non-kosher-food-eaters. Ironically, one of the reasons for those proscriptions is to lessen the possibility of intermarriage.

Professor Feldman mentions that we are only allowed to desecrate the Sabbath on behalf of non-Jews in order to maintain cordial relations with the society we live in. This is an example of a half truth that a man with his intellect, if he had given it some thought, should have realized is utterly false and misleading. First of all, we cannot desecrate the Sabbath to save Jews either. The only reason that in practical Halacha we do so, is because one can desecrate the Sabbath in defense of the Sabbath. We desecrate the Sabbath to save the lives of those who themselves keep the Sabbath– not because of the primacy of the Jewish life, but because of the primacy of the Sabbath. Furthermore, his dialectic of universalism/particularism creates a false universe of options. What he calls ‘particularism’ is just another way of describing secular humanism, or selfish altruism. We desecrate the Sabbath in order to create a society in which human life is paramount, both for us and for the gentile world.

Rav Moshe Feinstein is accused of a failure of romantic imagination. Why? Because Rav Moshe recognized the inevitable metamorphosis of innocent friendship into sexual infatuation and its concomitant proscribed behavior. Having blithely disparaged Rav Moshe's warnings, Feldman demonstrates the honesty and truth of those warnings by reading into the Rambam-- the supreme rationalist to whom sexual relations were no more than an unfortunate, though necessary, nuisance-- the most absurd double entendre. His reaction to the Rambam, indeed his life choices, give resonance and credence to Rabbi Feinstein’s teshuva.

A massive intellect like Professor Feldman in entitled to look with derision upon the weak-kneed rationalizations of the evidence of an ancient world which were presented by his teachers. But he should not have stopped there. To a mind like his, informed by Einstein’s perspective of the connection between time and matter, would it have been that difficult to realize that, that the story of Genesis involved a bilateral temporal creation, the creation of a true past which, nunc pro tunc, actually occurred, along with a present and a future, all of which creation occurred at one specific moment in subjective time?

Professor Feldman refers to the Amalek commandment as explicitly genocidal. How convenient it is for a twenty-first century man to look back and misunderstand. It is also lazy. It wouldn’t take much effort to realize that in the ancient world, any survivor of a war would be duty and honor-bound to take revenge for the killing of his relatives, whether the war was justified by self-defense or not. Leaving an Amalekite alive was the equivalent of sending baby Hitler to an orphanage. And despite this imperative, Feldman’s beloved Rambam states that even an Amalekite who accepts the Jewish moral code is spared. To me, that is the surprising element in the commandment.

It takes very little sleuthing to prise out the sensual drives that hide behind and motivate the Professor’s allegedly thoughtful and reasoned j’accuse. Although I would, if there was a need for categorization, be placed with the ultra-orthodox, I am relatively cognizant of secular literature. Professor Feldman calls to mind Ishmael, in Moby Dick, as he skinned and rendered the whale. The two of them wear the same habiliment. The difference is that Ishmael didn’t decide that his hat had earned him a pulpit. Quite the contrary; in that position, it is more honestly said to "have no conscience."

I don’t know what the future holds for Professor Feldman. He is practically sui generis, a strange creature of the Modern-Orthodox movement, whose massive intellect and superb education has allowed to make peace between utterly incompatible feelings and concepts without too much damage to his psyche and his native character traits. He is indeed a treasure to the Jewish people and to humanity as a whole. He has my best wishes that God help him find his way home.

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Do as I Say, Not as I Do
Noah Feldman's puzzling compromise between religion and secularism.

BY STEVEN I. WEISS
The Wall Street Journal
Friday, September 2, 2005
http://www.opinionjournal.com/taste/?id=110007200

If Roy Moore is to be allowed to place a 3,200-pound granite monument in front of a courthouse, why shouldn't Orthodox Jews be allowed to stick some small strips of plastic on telephone poles?
That's a question that could puzzle readers of "Divided by God," the latest volume from Noah Feldman. In the book, Mr. Feldman--the 33-year-old legal rock star and New York University professor who was chief adviser for the Iraqi constitution--proposes a Solomonic compromise. He urges legal secularists to abandon their fight against religious symbols on public grounds and asks "values evangelicals" to stop pushing for public funding of their programming. To take a couple of real-life examples where such a compromise might play a part: Even though some folks in Cleveland have won their battle to gain public funding for local Catholic schools, they shouldn't take the money. And the secularists who just managed to get the Supreme Court to throw the Ten Commandments monument out of a courthouse in Kentucky should let it stay.

Mr. Feldman's is a strange proposal, not only because there is no reason to believe that either side will make the concessions he calls for but also because of the fact that, not too long ago, Mr. Feldman offered his services pro bono to the city of Tenafly, N.J., in its fight against Orthodox Jews who wanted to have an eruv, or Jewish ritual boundary, placed around the town. (On the Sabbath, Talmudic law prohibits carrying objects outside a dwelling, but it is allowed if a boundary is placed around a number of dwellings.) In most modern urban landscapes, barely distinguishable pieces of plastic and string are added to telephone poles to create the eruv.

The Tenafly eruv went up in late 1999, but when the mayor found out about it a year later the borough council demanded that it be taken down, prompting the Orthodox community to file a lawsuit claiming religious discrimination. Eventually the Third U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the borough had indeed violated the Orthodox community's right to free exercise of religion. The key to the decision was the court's finding that the city had pursued an anti-Orthodox agenda, using for the purpose a semi-enforced local ordinance aimed at keeping telephone polls clean.

Wasn't the eruv a perfect example of a religious symbol on public grounds? To judge by his own thesis, shouldn't Mr. Feldman have helped the Orthodox community in their lawsuit instead of Tenafly in its effort to ban the eruv?

It was the neutrality of the local ordinance, Mr. Feldman told me in a recent interview, that was the basis of his defense of the city and that led him to get involved "when almost no one else would touch the case." Mr. Feldman contributed what borough officials estimate to be $75,000 worth of his time. The Tenafly dispute, Mr. Feldman argues, had nothing to do with the Establishment or Free Exercise clauses of the Constitution and everything to do with the fact that "there is a neutral, generally applicable law in place."

But Mr. Feldman says he was especially "bothered to see what was essentially an intra-Jewish community problem . . . treated as a federal lawsuit." He wished that the eruv association had found a more civil resolution to their problem than "suing the Borough council members in their individual capacities and accus[ing] them--including the Jews on the council, a majority--in open court of being anti-Semites." He believes "the whole issue arose out of miscommunication and misunderstanding."

That may be. But it seems disingenuous of Mr. Feldman to write in support of greater freedom for religious displays in his book while using a technicality to argue against it in northern New Jersey. There is another inconsistency here as well. The argument of "Divided by God" is more political than legal. Mr. Feldman hopes to persuade activists on both sides of the church-state debate to rest their cases not on the outcome of litigation over the meaning of the First Amendment but on a sense of what is proper for American society.

If Mr. Feldman is so loath to use the legal process to sort out these issues, it is reasonable to wonder why he pushed a rather dubious case through multiple levels of appeals, pro bono, when, as he himself boasts, almost no one would take money to argue on the council's behalf. He could have offered instead to mediate between the two sides.

After Mr. Feldman's loss in court, he went on to write a book telling everyone else why they should forget their victories. It's not exactly a winning argument.

Mr. Weiss writes the religion blog Canonist.com and is editor and publisher of CampusJ.com.

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Who is Noah Feldman?

http://www.mentalblog.com/2007/07/who-is-noah-feldman.html
Tuesday, July 24, 2007

On the subject: mentalblog.com: At once a Lithuanian yeshiva and a New England prep school:

Luke Ford points to the two year old article in the WSJ by Steven I. Weiss ‘Noah Feldman’s puzzling compromise between religion and secularism’ "…Mr. Feldman offered his services pro bono to the city of Tenafly, N.J., in its fight against Orthodox Jews who wanted to have an eruv..."

For many Jews who lack intellectual curiosity liberalism is the new religion. And strangely enough Maimonides is the school that cultivates these characters in spades. So in some way he is attacking the school that is the very embodiment of his own credo.

Ben Chorin I was planning to write some reflections on Jews in America but that disingenuous article by Noah Feldman has set me off in another direction.

My Obiter Dicta: Noah Feldman: Second Take (Tisha B'Av 7:40 PM)

Hirhurim: Don't Turn Your Back On Your Community And Then Badmouth It In The New York Times.

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Q&A With the Author of “Orthodox Paradox”

Joey Kurtzman,
http://www.jewcy.com/daily_shvitz/questions_for_the_author_of_orthodox_paradox
July 23, 2007

Noah Feldman’s “Orthodox Paradox,” an article published in Sunday’s New York Times Magazine, is a shanda fer da goyim, a skewed and distasteful takedown that invites non-Jews to gawk at the internal problems of a modern Orthodox Jewish community. Or maybe it’s a poignant and brave discussion of the challenges of bringing a traditional faith into modern life, written by a man who cherishes his people. Either way, it’s kicked up a storm of impassioned chatter throughout the interweb, where you can find both these judgments and many more.

“Orthodox Paradox” hits on themes close to Jewcy's editorial heart, what with Feldman trying to figure out what a cosmopolitan Jew’s to do with this bewildering, antiquated faith that we just can't seem to leave behind. So we had to pick his brain a bit. Feldman, a professor at Harvard Law School who was raised modern Orthodox, agreed to answer my questions via e-mail.

In the hot seat: Noah Feldman

Why did you write this article?

These are issues I've been thinking about for a long time, and that have recurred again and again in my work on the U.S. and the Muslim world. My thinking on those topics is influenced by my education in the modern Orthodox world, and I came to think that others might be engaged with similar issues.

You were surprised when Maimonides—the yeshiva from which you graduated—airbrushed out you and your (non-Jewish) wife from a photo published in the alumni newsletter. Your surprise struck many readers as rather strange, since the community makes no secret of its rejection of intermarriage. It’s a bit as if you’d pulled out a bag of pork rinds, devoured them with relish throughout the evening, and then expressed bewilderment when someone asked you if you'd set them aside until later. What are your critics missing here?

My classmates are great. As it happens, the reunion was lots of fun and we were all warm towards one another, as one would hope. What is troubling about the view you describe—which I never sensed from my classmates—is its implication that somehow modern Orthodox people should be protected from my living my life as I choose. As if choice of life partner were as trivial as a snack. Going to a reunion is a perfectly normal part of life, and choosing not to attend, in order to shield people from my life, would be absurd. People who are comfortable with their own life choices don't get "offended" when others choose differently.

Along with some areas of the African-American community, Jews seem to be one of the only groups in America that can raise holy hell about intermarriage and get away with it. Why do you think this is? And if this aversion to intermarriage is harmful to our community, do you think we would benefit from more external criticism for it?

The comparison to the African American context is intriguing and complex—see Randall Kennedy's book Interracial Intimacies. I do think we need some serious reflection on how best to achieve the goal of continuity. Chabad certainly pursues this goal through practices of inclusion, and I think the rest of the Jewish world could learn a lot from them in this regard. As for criticism, from within or without, I think honesty is the best course.

A teacher of yours argued that Jews should only break Shabbat to save the life of a non-Jew if doing so protects the wellbeing of the Jewish community. He later apologized—but only because he’d said it in front of non-Jews. The idea is that we must watch our words around non-Jews, lest we reveal something about our traditions that will cause them to hate us or harm us. I’m struck by how similar this seems to the controversial Islamic concept of taqiya (utilized by Shia and Druze); that is, the deception of outsiders to protect the community. Is this an accurate comparison? Do Orthodox Jews essentially practice taqiya?

All oppressed communities must surely share the impulse to dissimulation. It includes taqiya but also, for example, casuistical texts allowing Catholics and Protestant to dissimulate when tortured by each other in early modern Europe. But in today's world of readily accessible information, little religious doctrine can remain secret. Anyone with a search engine could find plenty of texts dealing with the issues I discuss in the article—see for example, David Berger's scholarly article "Jews, Gentiles, and the Modern Egalitarian Ethos: Some Tentative Thoughts." What I find unconvincing is the argument that we are better off being silent about these lest they come into common currency or debate. They are already out there, and have been for centuries.

Throughout the piece you identify some very stark contradictions between what you call the "moral substructures" of traditional Judaism and modern life. For example, this debate about saving the life of a non-Jew on Shabbat conflicts drastically with the idea that all lives are of equal value. But then, after laying out these troubling contradictions, you finish the article by throwing your hands in the air and asking "Isn't everyone's life a mass of contradictions?" Isn't that a cop-out? If Judaism is anything, it's the refusal to live incoherently. If we’re serious about the business of adapting the tradition to modern life, don't we need to make tough decisions about what to do with these contradictions, and which aspects of the tradition ought to be deemphasized or reinterpreted? Is it really enough to say, "Gosh, life is so complicated!" and leave it at that?

By writing this piece I am precisely not "leaving it at that." Nor, I suspect, are the most thoughtful among the modern Orthodox and other streams of Judaism, who really are trying to live coherent lives, as I am.

Should Jews take a strong stand against the rules for breaking Shabbat to save a life of a non-Jew? Should religious leaders simply say that this teaching is obsolete and irrelevant, and that today we break Shabbat to save the life of a non-Jew for the simple reason that, as the Jewish doctor in your story said, "a human being is a human being"? And are Orthodox rabbis capable of saying such a thing?

I think my own ethical view is pretty clear. There are various positions in this debate, but the doctor's view could certainly have been expressed by someone with rabbinical ordination.

In your discussion of Baruch Goldstein’s 1994 massacre of 29 Palestinians at the Tomb of the Patriarchs, you write that "It would be a mistake to blame messianic modern Orthodoxy for ultranationalist terror." But you also describe how Goldstein attended services in which he heard the Biblical commandment to "erase the memory of [the Amalekites] from beneath the heavens," and would have been taught that the Amalekites rise again in every generation as the Jewish people’s enemies of the day. So it seems fairly straightforward for Goldstein to have concluded, based on things he’d heard in synagogue, that the Palestinians were today’s Amalekites and that he ought to kill as many as possible.

So my question is this: There is much talk these days about the responsibility of Muslim scholars and holy men to promote a kindly, magnanimous version of their faith, one which will not incite violence against nonbelievers. Do you believe that the Goldstein affair indicates that the Jewish community also ought to examine our faith and teachings to ensure that we are promoting no hatred or violence toward non-Jews?

The Islamic ethics of violence are undergoing a rapid and worrisome transformation for the worse. Muslim scholars—and all Muslims—have a duty to examine their own tradition. Jews have an analogous responsibility. It is easy to let ourselves off the hook and think of Baruch Goldstein and Yigal Amir as isolated figures. But we need to reflect on how their actions were connected to the ultranationalist messianic settler movement and its ties to mainstream Judaism. And these actions have had global consequences. What would the Mideast look like today if Rabin had lived?

Do you think Mitt Romney's Mormonism is kookier than other traditional belief systems? Are there any traditional communities in the United States whose practices you would find worthy of scrutiny if one of their members were running for President?

There is nothing wrong with scrutinizing the beliefs of candidates who say their religion influences their political judgments, but there is also no reason not to vote for someone just because he is a Latter Day Saint. There is nothing inherently less convincing about ascribing prophecy to Joseph Smith than to Moses or Muhammad. It always requires faith—whether a leap or some other acrobatic movement—to enter into the full consciousness of the religious person.

Many blog posts have already been written about your article. Are there any that you found particularly insightful? Any that led you to rethink something you'd written in the article?

I spent the weekend playing with my kids and haven't read blogs.

I asked the senior writer of the Jewess blog, Rebecca Honig Friedman, if she had any questions for Feldman. The following three questions are hers.

In the article, you mention your rabbi's rather ridiculous reaction to your holding hands with a girl. How would you have the modern Orthodox world deal with the issue of teen sex? Are you familiar with the OU's http://www.negiah.org/ website, and what do you make of it?

I hadn't seen the site until just now. It is obviously reminiscent of the broader national abstinence movement, and another interesting piece of evidence on the cultural interplay between modern orthodoxy and contemporary Christian evangelicalism. The problem is more challenging with respect to gay and lesbian Orthodox Jews: it remains to be seen whether orthodox Judaism can avoid the cultural trend of the evangelical movement and be accepting and welcoming within the bounds of halakha. As for the question of teen sex, honesty is crucial here. The halakha is what it is, and it will inevitably create tensions with sociocultural reality.

How, in your observation, does the role of women play out differently in modern Orthodoxy versus ultra-Orthodoxy or more liberal forms of Judaism?

Books have been written on this, and more need to be. I think modern Orthodox women in some ways face the greatest challenge with respect to modernity and tradition. I don't want to speak on anyone's behalf, but I will say that much of the most creative Jewish engagement with tradition today is coming from women working within a halakhic framework.

Why write this article in the NYT Magazine? What relevance do you hope it will have to not-specifically-Jewish readers?

What community—religious, ethnic, racial, or otherwise—doesn't engage with similar issues of belonging and membership, tradition and modernity?

* This article (Q&A With the Author of “Orthodox Paradox”) was edited (by Joey Kurtzman) for concision since publication.

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Labels: intermarriage, Jewish assimilation, Modern Orthodox Judaism

- posted by Izak @ 1:44 PM (0) comments

 
Skeletons in the Lubavitch closet
One brother became secular, the other was mentally ill

By Yair Sheleg
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/864748.html
Wed., May 30, 2007 Sivan 13, 5767

In the early 1990s, Prof. Menachem Friedman, a leading researcher of ultra-Orthodox society in Israel, decided to write a comprehensive study on Chabad Hassidism that would include a biography of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson. Friedman labored for almost a decade and traced every detail of the Rebbe's past, but in the end decided not to publish his book. Among other places, he searched through the archives of universities in Paris and Berlin to understand what precisely the Rebbe studied there during the 1920s and 1930s. His search yielded information about the so-called "King Messiah" that differs considerably from that publicized by his followers.

Friedman also uncovered interesting information about the Schneerson family: In order to preserve the family's distinguished lineage, there were many marriages within the family; these often led to the birth of mentally and physically handicapped children. The Rebbe himself had a mentally ill brother, Dov Ber, who was murdered by the Nazis in the Ukrainian hospital where he was hospitalized, and his memory has been obliterated from the history of Chabad Hassidism. Another brother of the Rebbe's, Aryeh Leib, turned secular, but Chabad followers tend to portray him as a very pious and righteous man.

The Hassidimim relate that Rabbi Menachem Mendel studied at the University of Berlin, but only after lengthy research was the Rebbe's name found in a list of people auditing classes at the university. It turns out that during his six years in Berlin (1926-1932), the Rebbe studied philosophy and mathematics for a semester and a half.

A similar search in Paris revealed the legend that the Rebbe had studied medicine and engineering at the Sorbonne was also far from the truth. In fact, he studied electrical engineering at Ecole Speciale des Travaux Publics, du Batiment et de l'Industrie (ESTP). As the younger son-in-law of the previous Rebbe, he was not the designated successor, and was allowed therefore to acquire a "secular" profession like electrical engineering.

Blocked archives

Despite the considerable effort invested, Friedman has yet to publish the book. "There were all kinds of excuses I told myself," he says, "such as, I have more pressing and important studies to work on, but the truth is that I didn't feel sure enough to publish the book. The Hassidim blocked access to several of their important archives, and I felt that without those archives, the work wouldn't be accurate. I had excellent material and I felt that I had indeed found the story of this life, and still I was concerned."

Instead of a book, Friedman published a lengthy article analyzing the messianism of the Rebbe, who was perceived by some as the Messiah starting from the early 1980s. According to Friedman, the messianic idea started back in the tenure of his father-in-law, the Admor (rabbi and leader) Rabbi Yosef Yitzchok, known by the Hebrew acronym, Riyatz. The Riyatz was convinced that his era was a messianic era because all the Lithuanian rabbis fled Russia during the period of the Communist revolution, and the Orthodox Jewish community in Russia was left under the control of Chabad, which became the leader of Orthodox Jewry in Russia.

But then Stalin started cracking down on Chabad activities, and the Riyatz was forced to flee, first to Poland and later on, with the Nazi invasion, to the United States. "He had to explain to himself the failure of his predictions, and therefore explained that everything that was happening in Europe was essentially intended to serve as a warning to American Jews to repent to be saved from a similar danger. He himself was saved to be a kind of prophet like Jonah, who warns them of the danger and brings them to repent," says Friedman.

The Lubavitcher Rebbe stayed in France at the start of the Second World War. He was saved thanks to an American visa he obtained through the concerted efforts of Chabad members in the U.S. When he arrived in the U.S., he was not in line to become the Admor. The "natural" candidate was his older brother-in-law, Shmaryahu Gourarie, who had the added advantage of a son - the Rebbe was childless. According to one version Friedman heard, the Rebbe himself was afraid to bring children into this world because of the "precedent" of his brother; according to a rumor among Chabad Hassidim, the Rebbe had a child who died young.

By the time of the Riyatz's death in 1950, things had changed, and he decided to make his young son-in-law, who turned out to be much more talented and charismatic than his older brother-in-law, the leader of the movement to bring people back to religion and "win over hearts" that he had begun to nurture. In addition, the fact that Gourarie had an heir was transformed from an asset to an impediment, because the son renounced religion and became a secular computer businessman, Barry Gourarie (later on, he even demanded the vast Chabad library for himself, in a scandal that created a storm within the movement for years). Friedman spoke at length with Gourarie and heard fascinating details from him about what goes on behind the scenes in the Chabad movement.

Schneerson was named the Admor, but not before there was a sharp clash between the two camps in the year following the Riyatz's death. Even after his selection, the widow of the previous rabbi did not accept the choice and "did not allow the Rebbe to set foot in her house and also did not agree to give him the Riyatz's shtreimel [fur hat]. That is how the custom began of the Rebbe wearing a fedora instead of a shtreimel." Retroactively, as happens with the Hassidim, Schneerson's perceived shortcoming in his childlessness was actually seen as proof of his being the messiah: "An entire doctrine was conceived, which the Rebbe developed already in his first speech as the Admor, around the fact that he is the seventh Admor of Chabad," relates Friedman. Because the number seven has mystical significance, the idea that it was not coincidental that he had no heir began to circulate - he was the seventh and last Admor and redemption would come through him anyway.

To mark Friedman's 70th birthday, Bar-Ilan University will be hosting an international conference in his honor in another two weeks.

He began to research the ultra-Orthodox world completely by chance: "I was taking a seminar with Prof. Shmuel Eisenstadt (the sage of Israeli sociologists - Y.S.), and every student had to write a paper on one of the parties in Israel. Because I worked hard to earn a living, I arrived late when the topics were assigned and Eisenstadt's assistant informed me that 'all the parties had already been taken.' In the end she said: 'Well, there is one party left that doesn't interest anyone.' It was Agudat Yisrael."

Out of that paper, Friedman created a new discipline, the study of modern ultra-Orthodox society from the end of the 19th century to the contemporary era.

Friedman was familiar with the ultra-Orthodox since his childhood. He grew up in Bnei Brak and his parents were both raised in hassidic homes and left them as young adults. In the wake of the Holocaust and the absorption crises he experienced in Israel, his father started moving back to the hassidic world he had left. "I think the encounter with modernity was so traumatic for him that he just went back to his father's house, to the shtibel [small synagogue], to Hassidism. He grew a beard again and went back to wearing a capote [caftan], which prompted very heated arguments with my mother, and he also sent me to an ultra-Orthodox Talmud Torah," recalls Friedman.

As far back as the 1980s, Friedman was the first to coin the term hevrat halomdim (society of the learners) as the primary characteristic of ultra-Orthodox society in Israel, a society where in an unnatural way, most of the men do not work, but learn. He was the one who long ago predicted its collapse, based on the assumption that a time would come when Israeli society would be unwilling, or unable, to finance an entire sector in which most of the men are unemployed by choice.

Ostensibly, Friedman erred in his analysis: Members of the ultra-Orthodox community suffered in recent years from the burden of cuts in child allowances, so many entered the labor market. Meanwhile, the community is not showing any signs of collapse. Moreover, in addition to the graph showing a decline in their economic situation, there is a graph showing the community's growing political power, which enables the ultra-Orthodox political parties to continue to force Israeli society to finance the "society of learners." But Friedman stands by his forecast and even argues that the stability of Israeli society at large is threatened.

A secular child in every family

Friedman says, "True, there is some entry into the labor market, but opposite this, there are two difficult questions: First, is the degree of economic crisis not more intense than the pace of entry into the labor market? Second, the requirements demanded by the labor market today are much stricter, and whoever did not learn any general knowledge until he became an adult will have a hard time closing the gap. I don't see Israelis being able to withstand the sight of Jews starving for bread, even if they are ultra-Orthodox. So the society will be tempted to continue supporting them, at least on a basic level, and then two things will happen: Many in the middle class will be fed up by the situation and they will leave the country, so the ones who stay will be in an even worse financial situation."

Friedman believes the financial collapse will also alter the religious character of ultra-Orthodox society. The mere necessity of entering the labor market will make the ultra-Orthodox increasingly resemble the religious Zionists: less separatism, and with a much higher percentage of people becoming nonreligious, something like "a secular child in every family." This fact will compel them to also change their perception of secularism, because it will become a widespread phenomenon in their midst. He speaks of the model of Eastern European Jewry in the wake of the crisis caused by the Enlightenment, when many families split up into ultra-Orthodox, Zionist and completely secular groups.

Other experts on ultra-Orthodox society present the American model as proof that the ultra-Orthodox's entry into the labor market need not alter the religious character of society - they will be able to maintain a model where a clear line is drawn between being a part of the labor market and maintaining cultural isolationism. Friedman responds, "whoever reviews the American ultra-Orthodox model in depth sees that it, too, is split, mainly between Lithuanians and Hassidim. The Lithuanians did in fact enter the prestigious job market, but they also acquire a high level of general knowledge during their high school years, something that I still don't see happening in Israeli ultra-Orthodoxy. The Hassidim for the most part live in dire poverty, similar to the Israeli ultra-Orthodox."

Given his pessimistic forecasts, Friedman suggests making the entry of the ultra-Orthodox into the job market a key goal for the ultra-Orthodox sector, including totally waiving the demand to do military service, even in the framework of the compromise in the Tal Law. "If we concede to them completely on military service, many of them will leave the yeshivas and enter the labor force. I'm aware of the intense inequality in this proposal, but it is preferable to the existing situation," he says.

Friedman himself sat on the Tal Commission and presented this suggestion to its members, but he says, "Judge Tal told me that his colleagues, the High Court of Justice judges, would for the sake of the principle of equality not let such a proposal pass. Unfortunately, it is possible that he is correct. At the time, I felt that the security situation allowed for the transformation of the entire IDF into a small, professional army. But the Second Lebanon War proved we still need a large people's army, and in the current situation I don't see who will concede in a sweeping and official way to the ultra-Orthodox on the need to do military service."

He concludes with a sigh, "political correctness, not just in this area, has become the curse of this generation. People cling to the slogans of 'correctness' even if they know that in the long term it will lead to greater damage and perhaps endanger their own world."

Labels: Haredi Judaism, Israeli society, Lubavitcher Rebbe, Messianism

- posted by Izak @ 10:10 AM (0) comments

 
World takes note of 2000 year old burial spot of controversial Judean king
Herod: The Bible's biggest villain

As archaeologists announce they have discovered Herod the Great's burial site, Eric Silver looks at the life of the Jewish king who killed three of his sons, executed one of his wives and ordered the massacre of the innocents

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article2524437.ece
Published: 09 May 2007

Under a brain-numbing sun, the mountain gradually gave up its secrets to the archaeologists' trowels. A flight of stairs - part of the route of the elaborate funeral procession planned by the tyrannical ruler - leads to the very place where the notorious king of Judea was buried.

Yesterday, on the powdery grey flank of an artificial mountain overlooking the Arab villages and Jewish settlements scattered across the Judean Wilderness, Israeli scholars presented their answer to one of the great mysteries of biblical archaeology: the tomb of Herod the Great, a Roman client king who ruled the Jews with the ruthless paranoia of a Stalin or Saddam Hussein from 37BC until his death in 4BC.

For Ehud Netzer, professor of archaeology at the Hebrew University, the find was the culmination of a 30-year search. Herod was known to have been buried at Herodium, the towering desert fortress he built for that purpose a day's march south of Jerusalem.

The Roman historian Josephus Flavius described the lavish funeral procession in his book The Jewish Wars, the unchallenged source book of the Second Temple era. He told how the body was attended by members of the family richly dressed in silks and jewels, how soldiers from across the ancient world paraded in their armour, as for war, accompanied by hundreds of attendants carrying spices such as frankincense. He said the king's body was covered in a purple shroud and carried on a bier.

"The bier," wrote Josephus, "was of solid gold, studded with precious stones, and had a covering of purple, embroidered with various colours. On this lay the body enveloped in purple robe, a diadem encircling the head and surmounted by a crown of gold, the sceptre beside his right hand."

The sarcophagus, with its triangular cover decorated on all sides, was indeed a unique specimen, Professor Netzer said. Its remains were still clearly identifiable although it had been smashed into pieces, probably, he said, by Jewish rebels fighting between the years 66 to 72AD, decades after the king's death.

Jews who had rebelled against Roman rule in 66AD and took refuge at Herodium were the most likely suspects. "The rebels," explained Professor Netzer, "were known for their hatred of Herod and all that he stood for as a puppet ruler of the Romans."

Herodium was one of Herod's many architectural masterpieces in the Holy Land, and according to some, his finest work. A man of great ego and architectural vision, this was the place he had chosen to be not only his burial place but also his memorial.

Herod was also responsible for the rebuilding and expansion of the Second Temple in Jerusalem, and the desert fortress of Masada, as well as building up the port city of Caesarea and other major projects.

Herod's tomb is no 21st-century Tutankhamen treasury. There are no bones, let alone a mummified body. What Professor Netzer unearthed on the West Bank three weeks ago were dozens of fragments of finely dressed pale-pink limestone, elegantly carved with rosettes, decorated stone urns and the remains of a stone podium 10 metres square on which the mausoleum is believed to have stood.

All that is left of Herod is his notoriety - which in the view of many people, was well-earned. To Christians, he was the king who ordered the massacre of the innocents, described in St Matthew's Gospel (though in no other source). St Matthew tells how, soon after the birth of Jesus, three wise men from the east came to Herod and asked where they could find "the one having been born the king of the Jews". Herod, who feared the rise of a a rival for his kingdom, ordered the slaughter of all boys up to the age of two in Bethlehem.

Joseph, who had been warned in a dream that Herod intended to kill Jesus, fled with his family to Egypt, where they stayed until after Herod's death.

To his Jewish subjects Herod was at once a benefactor and a scourge. Kenneth Spiro, a modern American rabbi, defined him as "a madman who murdered his own family and a great many rabbis", but acknowledged that he was "also the greatest builder in Jewish history".

Jona Lendering, a Dutch historian of the Holy Land, summed him up thus: "With building projects, the expansion of his territories, the establishment of a sound bureaucracy, and the development of economic resources, he did much for his country. However, many of his projects won him the bitter hatred of the orthodox Jews, who disliked Herod's Greek tastes - tastes he showed not only in his building projects, but also in several transgressions of the Mosaic Law."

Not the least of these was the erection of a golden eagle, the symbol of the Roman Empire, at the gate of the Jerusalem Temple, which was torn down by Jewish students just before his death.

Herod, the son of an Idumean father and Arab mother, encouraged the Jews to practise their faith, however. He married Mariamne, a princess of the deposed Hasmonean royal family, to buttress his legitimacy (having put aside his first wife, Doris, in order to do so). Above all, he rebuilt and greatly expanded the Temple. It is said to have taken 10,000 men 10 years to build the retaining wall of the massive man-made platform on which Al Aqsa mosque now stands. One face is the Western Wall, the holiest of Jewish sites.

"The sanctuary," Josephus wrote, "had everything that could amaze either mind or eye. Overlaid all round with stout plates of gold, in the first rays of the sun it reflected so fierce a blaze of fire that those who endeavoured to look at it were forced to turn away as if they had looked straight at the sun."

Herod brought prosperity and a measure of stability to the land. He skilfully played off the rivals among his Roman masters. He commanded his troops to victory over local foes. But, like tyrants throughout history, he feared plotters, real or imagined, and liquidated anyone he thought might challenge his supremacy. These included two high priests - one his father-in-law Hyrcanus, the other his brother-in-law Aristobulus - who were drowned in a bathing pool, as well as 46 judges of the Sanhedrin, the rabbinical court.

Not even those who Herod supposedly loved passionately were spared the paranoid monarch's wrath. Convinced by his sister Salome that his beloved Mariamne was being unfaithful, he planned to have her murdered. According to Josephus, once Mariamne found out about the plot to have her killed she stopped sleeping with her husband but this simply convinced Herod that he was right to suspect his favourite wife in the first place and he swiftly had her put on trial for adultery. "As soon as his passion [anger] was over," Josephus wrote, "he repented of what he had done and his affections were kindled again." But it was too late. Mariamne had been executed.

Mariamne's mother, Alexandra, who had colluded in her trial, was also executed after she accused Herod of being unfit to rule in a bid to seize power.

Nor did he spare his sons. "It is better to be Herod's dog than one of his children," the Roman emperor Augustus is said to have drily remarked. (Augustus should know; he gave permission for their executions.)

Herod's two sons by Mariamne, Alexandros and Aristobulus, were strangled on their father's orders after being found guilty of high treason. (Herod's heir, Herod Antipas, the king who ordered the beheading of John the Baptist, is alleged to have incited his father's anger against his half-brothers.)

Antipater, his son by his discarded first wife, was also executed, accused of involvement in the insurrection that led to the smashing of the golden eagle.

Of Herod's monuments, many can still be seen: the Temple platform and the Citadel near Jaffa Gate in Jerusalem; Herodium, the only one to carry his name, and its sister fortress Masada, overlooking the Dead Sea; the massive structure erected over the traditional burial place of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in Hebron; the ruined Mediterranean port city of Caesarea; and a winter palace complex excavated by Professor Netzer near Jericho in the 1970s.

The professor still has to prove to some scholars that he has indeed found Herod's tomb. An official of the Palestinian antiquities authority, visiting the site yesterday, noted that the Israelis had found no inscription. Stephen Pfann, a Christian textual scholar at the University of the Holy Land, hailed the find as "a major discovery by all means," but cautioned that more research was needed."We're moving in the right direction," he said. "It will be clinched once we have an inscription that bears his name."

Professor Netzer, who learned his trade under the celebrated Yigael Yadin at Masada, is confident of his attribution, however. "The location and the unique nature of the findings, as well as the historical record, leave no doubt that this was Herod's burial site," he insisted.

The stones bore all the marks of majesty, he said, and the sarcophagus was similar to those found at the Tomb of the Kings in Salah ed-Din Street in East Jerusalem. "It's not every rich Jew or citizen of this time that could afford this royal sarcophagus," he argued. "This podium, this base, is a well-executed monument. The stone work is very different from any we know elsewhere in Herodium." The location was right, he added. Pottery and coins found on the site showed that so was the date.

But the work is not over. Excavation began as recently as August 2006. Professor Netzer will keep on looking for the clincher.

----
For more articles about this topic, see:
Israeli scientists discover King Herod’s tomb (Article search by Google)

Labels: archaeology, Herod, Israel, Jewish history, Judea

- posted by Izak @ 9:46 PM (0) comments

 
Insemination among single Orthodox females
A single religious woman with 3 children

They waited patiently, put their faith in the Lord, but when they turned 40 the time had come to decide between life without a family or defying the norms

Yael Shuraki-Elfasi
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3324371,00.html
Published: 11.07.06, 15:01

Biological clocks tick the same for religious and non-religious women. There comes a moment when a religious woman who could not find her match made in heaven must choose between a life alone and having children out of wedlock. The Halacha does not ban this explicitly, but the social ban is tough. Still, an increasing number of Orthodox women chose not to give up on their personal joy.

They waited patiently, put their faith in the Lord, but when they turned 40, they started to lose hope that the knight in shining armor would show up. Their biological clock was ticking and the time has come to decide between life without a family and defying the norms and realizing their dreams of motherhood. In recent years, the phenomenon has been expanding: Orthodox women choose to become single mothers - a daring act, particularly in the religious sector.

'Schedule change'

Naama Eilat (41), an accountant, was the only woman who was willing to be identified in name. "I've got nothing to hide," she smiled. "I believe it is important for religious women to gain strength and hear clear things."

She did it twice and today raises Alon (3) and twins Tamar and Shlomit (1).

"The main problem of religious women who wants to have children without a partner is fear of their surroundings and that it may not be entirely kosher. I am not authorized to speak about the Halakic view and, to my regret, the rabbis are not expected to issue an authorization for single mothers any time soon. On the other hand, Halakah does not really have a problem with that. The rabbis do not have a Halakic problem. They worry about the social aspect, fearing this might impair on the matrimonial institution and create a situation where people think lightly of marriage.

"I believe they fear too much because starting a family alone is not an easy decision to make. Most women would rather have a male partner - it is the natural way for the women and for the children. I think of choice the choice I made as a mere change of schedule. That is, normally you would choose a spouse and than start a family, but I - for lack of a better choice - reversed the order of things. I still believe paring up is important. I am not breaking the rules. I was forced to go this way.

"It is very hard to decide to start a family on your own. It takes courage, mental strength, and giving up on many things. I care a lot about my immediate surrounding, and I was blessed with a supporting family and support from the place where my children are raised and educated."

Now or Never

A., a religious lawyer from central Israel, decided to bring a child into this world when she was 40-something. "Regrettably, I did not find my knight in shining armor. I felt that if I waited another moment, I would never have a family or children. Biological constraints made it all too clear - it was now or never.

"When I decided to start the process, my family and friends, most of whom are religious, greatly supported me, including some elderly and observant women that I did not expect to support such a dramatic decision." A. has three children today: a boy (6) and twins (1).

Where do the children go to school?

"My children found a place in a regular religious kindergarten - neither Reformist nor Conservative. The teachers and the other children treat them and me very well."

Do the children ask about their father?

A. paused before she spoke about this sensitive issue. "Look," she said, "one day I heard children asking my boy, 'What? You don’t have a father?' I said, 'Yes, we don’t.' 'Then who says the Kiddush?' they asked. 'In our home, mom does,' I said.

How do you explain this to your children?

"When my eldest was 3, I told him that when I could not find a partner, I went to the doctor and he helped me bring a child. He is not bothered with more. I sometime hear him react very naturally to his friends: 'You don’t know that in our family we don’t have a father? You are such a joker.'"

From the Halakah point of view, there could be two main problems: The donor might be a bastard (momzer) - a child born to a married Jewish woman from a Jewish man who is not her husband. If this is the case, his child is a bastard too and cannot marry a Jew. Many single mothers, therefore, choose non-Jewish donors. The other problem is that if a donor's sperm was used to impregnate several women, hypothetically there might be a situation where children from the same father - namely, siblings - may wish to marry each other, unknowingly.

How did you deal with these problems?

"I did not think about momzers. I wanted my children to have a Jewish father, with a whole Jewish soul."

Could this be a problem for your children when they want to marry?

"I very much hope not. I expect the rabbis to come up with a solution. Sperm banks could provide the Rabbinate with several digits from the donor's ID to make sure that children of the same father never marry each other. This could also solve the momzer problem."

Willing to Pay the Price

S., an ultra-Orthodox woman whose modest dress follows Jerusalem's Lithuanian neighborhood codes, is 40 and has tried a few inseminations. "I will keep trying until I succeed," she said with determination.

When did you decide to start?

"I always thought that if I am not married by the time I am 30, I would do something, but the truth is that I did not dare. Some 18 months ago, my sister told me she was pregnant, and then it hit me. I realized I was already 40 years old. I did not know where to start at first, but I found a forum of single religious mothers on the Internet and received initial information from them."

How did your family react?

"My family is secular, though my mother had some reservations. I believe, however, that once I have that child, she would support me all the way."

How do your ultra-Orthodox friends react?

"In various ways. For example, I have a friend who does not approve, to say the least, but in the meantime she still invites me for Sabbath. I am not sure this will go on once my pregnancy starts showing. I have taken this under consideration and I am willing to pay the price. Another ultra-Orthodox friend correctly said that even if a child born to a couple of parents, there is no guarantee he would be happier."

S. made two unusual decisions: to get inseminated, and to find a partner and not go to the sperm bank.

Why did you choose not to go to the sperm bank, like other religious single women?

"I considered both options for insemination, the bank or a partner. I asked at the Pua Center, a religious institute with a team of rabbis and doctors who specialize in fertility issues, whether a single woman can be inseminated according to Halacha. They told me that a Jewish donor could be a problem. I started asking around about a non-Jewish donor, but it was not simple because there was none where I lived. Then I started thinking about a partner. I worried about the child's future, knowing he will ask about his father one day. I felt it is important for the child to have a father figure he could be in touch with."

How do you find a partner like that?

"Simple. I found one on the Net."

What did you find out about him?

"First of all, he is Jewish. I saw him, and he looks good. He is very reliable, has a steady job, showed up for every insemination we scheduled, and has been fully cooperative."

Are you considering a parental agreement?

"No. I trust him fully. We agreed on everything, and it is all going easy and with a fantastic emotional match. I am not afraid this would change. We both have a strong desire to have a child, so this is clean between us. Incidentally, he is not religious."

Recommending Adoption

Rabbi Shlomo Aviner, a religious-Zionist leader, is known for his special sensitivity and is one of the most important Halakic rulers of our generation.

How does the Halakah view insemination from a non-Jewish donor?

"Certain rulers maintain that if a girl is born, she may not marry a Cohen, but most of them have ruled against this. This is even easier than conversion, where a non-Jewish child converts to Judaism. In this case, the child is born Jewish because his mother is.

"The other issue is waste of sperm. Halakah rules against wasting sperm, that is - men are not allowed to release sperm for purposes other than procreation. The thing is that single women are not obligated to procreate; only married men have that duty. Still, certain rulers allowed that, stating that in this case, sperm is used for procreation, hence it is not considered wasted.

"The main problem is a moral one. Some rulers feared that artificial insemination of single women is immoral, since there is fear that a woman might fornicate, become pregnant, and claim the child is from insemination. There is an even greater fear - that the positive, healthy family structure of a mother, a father, and children might be ruined. A fatherless child grows with frustrations and complexes."

How does the Halacah view such a child?

"The Jewish Halacah calls such a child a 'silenced child' because when he asks his mother about his father, she silences him. A couple of parents give a child the stability he needs, like standing on two feet. A silenced child stands on one foot and is actually an orphan. The Torah pities orphans and the Lord is the father of all orphans. Still, here we create an orphan with our own hands. It is even worse than an orphan because an orphan had a father, a figure he could identify with and refer to, while here he only has a void."

What about the pain of single women, their freedom, their right to have a good and satisfying life?

"Obviously, having a child is not only an egoistic need of the single woman. It is also grace, but such a grace should be seen through in a way that does not create problems to begin with. The leading Halachic principle in this case looks at what is best for the child. A child is not his parents' property. There is no denying that single women have a problem, but you do not solve one problem by creating another. You do not do the right thing while doing something wrong, while sinning. I would recommend that single women adopt a child. This would be an act of grace for a lonely child who already lives and needs someone to look after him."

----

Non-Jewish sperm 'legitimate'

Woman seeks Goy sperm, so offspring is not considered 'illegitimate' according to Jewish law

David Regev
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3299953,00.html
Published: 09.05.06, 15:49

A 43-year-old woman whose husband refuses to give her a divorce is asking for a sperm donation from a non-Jewish man so that her offspring will not be considered illegitimate according to Jewish law.

"I want to have offspring without worrying about them being illegitimate," she says.

The woman is due to petition the Israel Family Court via the New Family organization in the hope that it will permit her to receive the donation. New Family is an organization that provides moral and legal support to assure that all forms of the family unit are eligible for rights.

Until just three years ago the woman led an ordinary life, she had been married for six years and had been undergoing fertility treatments. Meanwhile, she discovered her husband was cheating on her, after which he informed her that he no longer wished to have children with her.

As fertility treatments require the consent of both parents, the health clinic refused to continue treatments although the woman still had several frozen eggs.

Bypass halacha

After her husband left her, refusing to give her a divorce while at the same time fathering a child from another woman, the woman became concerned that her biological clock was ticking and that she would remain alone.

The woman contacted the New Family organization and decided to try and bypass the Jewish halachic laws by being artificially inseminated by the sperm donation of a non-Jew, so that the baby would not be considered 'illegitimate.'

Irit Rosenblum, the woman's attorney said she had contacted the Health Ministry and the organization is currently waiting for its response, but that she will simultaneously file a petition to the Family Court.

"I hope the court will help solve the problem, allowing me to realize my dream of having my own child," the woman said.

Labels: Artificial insemination, Halachah, Jewish singles

- posted by Izak @ 11:20 AM (2) comments

 
Fading Jewish Italian identity not helped by Israel
From prosciutto in Florence to hummus in Abu Ghosh - And back

A young Italian Jew comes to Israel, picks up the language, witnesses a terror attack, meets a sabra girl, enlists in the army - and stops worrying about being a Jew

By Shulim Vogelmann
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/851695.html
Mon., April 23, 2007 Iyyar 5, 5767

I open my eyes and the hot sun is flooding the room, as a lovely spring day wishes me good morning. I get out of bed and walk over to open the window. A crisp breeze washes my face and the view warms my heart.

I lean on the windowsill and take up the position of a lecturer. It is no lecture that emerges from my mouth, though, but a satisfied sigh and deep breaths. Across from me is the greenish dome of the synagogue, standing like a mosque in the middle of the quarter. A Sunday of reading and lounging on the sofa awaits, seasoned with a light meal and a short walk to get some air. On my way to the shower, I press the play button on the stereo and a clear female voice takes over the entire apartment. The words penetrate my veins, my soul, and under the flowing water I sing with her: "I lived among you like a wild plant."

From Florence, I fly 10 years back, and longer still, on the wings of my longings. I was born on September 20, 1978, in a hospital in Florence. A few more children came into the world in the same place on that day, but I was almost certainly the only Jew born in the city. I was apparently the only one whose picture was published in the paper, just because he was born. True, it was an insignificant newspaper of the 900-member Jewish community, but all the same - a picture in the paper.

I studied at a Jewish school only until age 10, and then they decided to shut it down because of a shortage of students. We, the students of the sole, and last, class of the school, numbered eight in total. There were only three girls among us. At the gate of my new school, a public school, a stream of girls my age, smiling, passed before me. I couldn't believe my eyes. And as soon as I walked through the gate after them, I left the world in which I had previously been imprisoned, the world of the Jewish community, and found myself surrounded by non-Jewish friends.

At that point, Judaism was a private matter that I tried to keep to myself. I had no desire to reveal it, because I didn't want to feel different from the others, and I really didn't want to find myself the center of attention. And I certainly did not want to become entangled in a thicket of questions, which would inevitably end up with my being forced to talk about my grandfather and the Holocaust.

But you can't stay hidden in Italy with a name like Shulim Vogelmann. I simply had no choice. Every time a question on the subject came up, I would answer the following way, in the hope that my response would not lead to additional inquiries: "I'm Italian just like you, but just as you're Christian, my religion is Judaism." And between the words, images of the Holocaust appeared in my imagination, along with thoughts of my grandfather who survived, and from whom all I have left is his name.

This is what my life as a Jew in the Diaspora was like: a lot of thoughts about the Holocaust, which did not find their way out. I felt that the subject was personal and that there was no one for me to talk to about it, no one who would respond, no one among my friends who would identify. What remained was the nagging presence of one thought: Stay Jewish, because few Jews are left.

But beyond this aspiration of survival, elementary and existential, I didn't know how to explain to myself why it was so important for me to be concerned about my Jewishness. Aside from the meaningless prayers on Yom Kippur and the exhausting Passover seder, I had no decisive reason to cling to our forefathers Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (and our foremothers, of course). On the contrary, there were reasons to feel dispirited - like the prohibition on eating pig products, the last trace of religious observance that remained in my family. It wasn't easy seeing my friends fill up on prosciutto while my stomach stayed empty.

One bag and a lot of curiosity

Only once did I manage to taste what was then the secret fantasy of my palate. At the birthday party of a Jewish friend I saw a roll with pink meat peeking out. I couldn't imagine that in a Jewish home it would be permissible to eat pig products. It must be salmon, I said to myself. After one bite I realized that something wasn't right here, but as a fervent Jew I saw fit to eat another eight sandwiches, in order to judge whether they really contained non-kosher meat. I strayed from the path that one time, but an incomprehensible, yet utterly clear, thought had clung on all along: I am like others, but also a little bit different.

When I finished high school, I was overtaken by a strong desire to go on a trip instead of heading straight to university. But where? It seemed that the huge picture of the Western Wall that hung in the hallway of my parents' home had influenced me more than I imagined. Certainly it was accompanied by many other signs, sentences that were said and forgotten, and dormant aspirations waiting to rise. All these contributed to the fact that my direction was marked; the writing was on the wall. All that was left for me to do was to decide yes or no. I went on my way.

I landed at Ben-Gurion International Airport in August 1997 with one bag and an invigorated curiosity to discover what it was all about: a Jewish state with outstanding weather. A rude taxi driver dropped me off at the entrance to beginner's ulpan (Hebrew study program), and I plunged right into the alphabet and invested a few good years in learning the language. I met a nice sabra girl, planted a tree on a hilltop while wearing a kova tembel (a bucket hat), embraced good friends, and enjoyed sitting in a living room immersed in smoke and speaking Hebrew all night long.

On Holocaust Remembrance Day I stood during the siren, and for the first time in my life I didn't feel alone with the pain of memory, closed off in sadness within a private, tender ceremony. I was among my own people.

I went to university, witnessed a terror attack, and started to think about death. A few months later, I was already used to such thoughts. At night I drank beer and realized that there are also Palestinians and that we're not just victims, but also know how to shoot, for defensive and offensive needs, for good or for bad. Moreover, I internalized the concept that the state is Jewish but that it does not belong to Jews, because Arabs also live in it.

I saw the Israeli movies "Halfon Hill Doesn't Answer" and "Late Summer Blues," I read Sami Michael and Yehoshua Kenaz, I listened to Matti Caspi and Meir Ariel, I pasted a bumper sticker on my car that read "War is gross," and I traveled in the Galilee and became more and more attached to the scenery that hadn't been part of me but is now mine. On Saturdays I drove to Abu Ghosh to eat hummus and felt secular. I also traveled to the Sinai, stepped on a sea urchin, and felt bad.

I wandered around my neighborhood in clogs and joined the army, because without that I won't really be what I want to be. I fired a few bullets and went on weekend leave. The three yellow letters on my uniform shirt did me good, because I knew that my grandfather would have been proud of me. Sometimes I felt that it was a little pathetic, and all the symbols and ideology weighed heavily on me, didn't suit my personality. But I also knew that this was a transition period, that I was young and would have plenty more time to become more moderate or criticize things.

And finally, I ran up to the third flight of the Interior Ministry building. My heart beat with excitement, but the clerk was indifferent. I realized that here I'm not the only one, and no one will put my picture in the paper just because I moved to Israel. Nonetheless, the feeling was one of rebirth. I left the Interior Ministry with a blue identification card whose number I immediately memorized. I felt complete.

Six years had passed since I landed here, and the world that came before is as distant as the memory of childhood. Now I have friends I can speak to about the Jew within me. Now, when I think of Judaism, I no longer see just the Holocaust. I have a language, I have new music, I have new literature, culture, a country with a lot of problems, but also with a future. I even have a soccer team (Hapoel Jerusalem). My old identity has broken off like a dry twig; a new identity was born, and the noise is that of an egg being cracked open.

By the time Hebrew began rolling off my tongue, I finally understood that there was no need to worry about being a Jew as I did then, in the Diaspora, in Florence. There is one place where my Jewish identity and culture are well-preserved, and even though the most active institution in our community is the nursing home, and even though my grandfather was a Holocaust survivor and it was always made clear to me that my fate was to continue the tradition, there's no need to worry too much, because Israel exists. There is a home for Jewish culture and for Jews themselves. It's something that's self-evident and not always appreciated by those born in it - an astonishing fact, and the most precious of all, for those who come from the outside.

After six years of discovery, self-formation and a lot of fun, I returned to Italy. I decided to go back and work in my family's publishing house, which brings out books on Jewish topics. I didn't want this enterprise, a wellspring of Jewish culture, to stop carrying out its important mission. I chose - and the decision was not easy - to be near the publishing and far from Israel. At least, I tell myself, we are also a Zionist enterprise. True, it's a small publishing house, but it will always be home to Jewish books. In order to retain a tighter connection with Israel and with Hebrew, I am editing a series of Israeli books and translating some of them.

Upon my return to Italy, I felt the need to put all the experiences I underwent in Israel into a book. Through writing, I wanted to organize everything within myself, and perhaps explain to others what the State of Israel is and its significance to the Jews. The book is called "Mentre la citta bruciava" ("While the City Burned"). That is a sentence from my grandfather, whom I never knew. But according to my father's stories, every night at dinner, my grandfather would say: "When I write my autobiography, I'll begin it like this: 'I was born on a train while the city burned.'" He never got the chance to write it.

Now I present the book at all kinds of events and in schools. Through my own personal experience, I try to transmit to young people my perspective on Israel's importance as a Jewish state, the only place in which the future of the Jews is assured.

Do they understand? Do they identify and immediately turn into supporters of Israel, despite all the defamation of the state that they have heard from all sides? I have my methods. Readers have asked me many times: Do you feel more Israeli or more Italian? I respond that that's not the right question. Just as man is one, so, too, his identity is one and cannot be divided into parts or weighed.

Think of a blender that is always turning, grinding and whirling. That is what identity is like. It is made of many components that we throw into it day after day, and each of them contributes to the identity, enriches it and turns a person into who he is. In my case, I am an Italian, a Diaspora Jew, an Israeli and many other things. All these contribute to my identity, and I am a mixture; it's that simple.

Other times they ask me: Why did you return to Italy if you had it so good in Israel? And I respond that ideas are in the head, not on the ground. I tell them that now, now that Israel has freed me from the problematic nature of being a Jew and now that I have become convinced that there is no more need to worry about my survival as a Jew, now I feel like a citizen of the world, and only circumstances determine my location.

But inside, something is screeching and I hear a whisper: You little liar! If you didn't love your books so much, you would now be sitting in a garden beneath the Jerusalem sun.

What can you do? Life is luck and choice. Apparently, they won't let me light a torch on Independence Day. I come out of the shower, towel myself down and sing: "I want to go back to my best days..." - in Israel.

The author is a publisher from Florence.

Labels: Aliyah, Assimilation, Italian Jews

- posted by Izak @ 12:54 AM (0) comments

 
When nobodies choose the "top" so-called rabbis, this is what happens...
The Top 50 Rabbis in America

In their spare time, three good friends got together over a labor of love: ranking the country's rabbis.

WEB EXCLUSIVE
Newsweek
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17721005/site/newsweek/

April 2, 2007 issue - Last fall, Sony Pictures CEO and Chairman Michael Lynton got together with his good friends and fellow power brokers Gary Ginsberg, of Newscorp., and Jay Sanderson, of JTN Productions and started working on a list of the 50 most influential rabbis in America. They had a scoring system: Are the rabbis known nationally/internationally? (20 points.) Do they have a media presence? (10 points.) Are they leaders within their communities? (10 points.) Are they considered leaders in Judaism or their movements? (10 points.) Size of their constituency? (10 points.) Do they have political/social influence? (20 points.) Have they made an impact on Judaism in their career? (10 points.) Have they made a "greater" impact? (10 points.) This system, though helpful, is far from scientific; the men revised and rejiggered their list for months, and all three concede that the result is subjective. Here, then, published for the first time, the top 50 rabbis in America:


The List: Choosing the Chosen

1. Marvin Hier (Orthordox)
Hier is one phone call away from almost every world leader, journalist and Hollywood studio head. He is the dean and founder of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, the Museum of Tolerance and Moriah Films.

2. Yehuda Krinsky (Lubavitch)
Krinsky has truly built a shul on every corner and brought the Chabad movement mainstream prominence. He is the leader of Chabad and its CEO.

3. Uri D. Herscher (Reform)
Herscher has built arguably America’s most culturally relevant Jewish institution and his passion has already touched hundreds of thousands of Jews and non-Jews of all ages. He is the founding president and CEO of the Skirball Cultural Center.

4. Yehuda Berg (Orthordox)
Berg has made wearing the red string a popular phenomena in America and around the world and turned on everyone from Madonna to club-hopping young Jews to the power of the Kabbalah. He is an author and spiritual adviser at the Kabbalah Centre.

5. Harold Kushner (Conservative)
Kushner has written nine inspirational books including the international best seller that helped millions grapple with "When Bad Things Happen to Good People." He is one of America’s truly gifted speakers and teachers.

6. David Ellenson (Reform)
Ellenson is a trailblazer committed to bringing this generation’s Reform Jewish rabbis and teachers closer to traditional Judaism. He is the president of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion.

7. Robert Wexler (Conservative)
Wexler has re-envisioned Jewish education and created the largest Jewish continuing-education program in America while building a premier rabbinical school and liberal arts college. He is the president of the University of Judaism.

8. Irwin Kula (Conservative)
Kula is committed to “taking Jewish public” and reshaping America’s spiritual landscape. He is the copresident of CLAL, a public television host and the author of "Yearnings: Embracing the Sacred Messiness of Life."

9. Shmuley Boteach (Orthordox)
Boteach has been called “the most famous rabbi in America” and his 17 books, TLC television series and celebrity friends help make that case. His book "Kosher Sex " introduced this Hasidic rabbi as a cultural phenomena.

10. M. Bruce Lustig (Reform)
Each year on Yom Kippur, Lustig has an audience that even the president of the United States would envy. He is the rabbi of Washington Hebrew Congregation, the largest congregation in Washington, D.C.

11.Peter J. Rubinstein (Reform)
Rubinstein is the spiritual leader of New York’s Central Synagogue.

12. Eric Yoffie (Reform)
Yoffie is the president of the Union of Reform Judaism.

13. Harold M. Schulweis (Conservative)
Schulweis is considered the leading Conservative rabbi of his generation.

14. Saul J. Berman (Orthordox)
Berman is considered one of the most forward thinking Jewish scholars of his generation.

15. Zalman Teitelbaum (Hasidim)
Berman is considered one of the most forward thinking Jewish scholars of his generation.

16. David Saperstein (Reform)
Saperstein is the director of the Religious Action Center and a leading Washington lobbyist.

17. J. Rolando Matalon (Conservative)
Matalon is the spiritual leader of Congregation B’nai Jeshurun.

18. David Wolpe (Conservative)
Wolpe is now considered one of the most dynamic pulpit rabbis in America (also an author).

19. Sharon Kleinbaum (Reform)
Kleinbaum is the senior rabbi of the world’s largest synagogue for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Jews.

20. Dan Ehrenkrantz (Reconstructionist)
Ehrenkrantz is the president of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College.

21. Joseph Telushkin (Orthordox)
Telushkin is a best-selling author and speaker.

22. Zalman Schachter-Shalomi (Renewal)
Schacter-Shalomi founded the Jewish renewal movement in America.

23. David M. Posner (Reform)
Posner is the spiritual leader for New York’s Temple Emanuel, the largest congregation in America.

24. Ephraim Buchwald (Orthordox)
Buchwald is the founder of the National Jewish Outreach Program.

25. Avraham Weiss (Orthordox)
Weiss is known as the Orthodox’s leading activist and leader of the Modern Orthodox community.

26. Irving Greenberg (Orthordox)
Greenberg is the president of Jewish Life Network/Steinhardt Foundation and the founder of CLAL.

27. Kerry M. Olitzky (Reform)
Olitzky is one of the leading rabbinical advocates for outreach to interfaith and unaffiliated families in America.

28. Michael Lerner (Reform)
Lerner is the editor of Tikkun and a leading progressive political activist.

29. Abraham Cooper (Orthordox)
Cooper is the associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center.

30. Elliot Dorff (Conservative)
Dorff is the leader of the top lawmaking body in Conservative Judaism.

31. Marc Gellman (Reform)
Gellman is an author and television personality.

32. Rachel B. Cowan (Reform)
Cowan is the director of the Institute for Jewish Spirituality.

33. Marc Schneier (Orthordox)
Schneier is the president and founder of the Foundation for Ethnic Understanding and Chairman of the World Jewish Congress.

34. Janet Marder (Reform)
Marder is the first woman to ever head the Central Conference of American Rabbis.

35. Arthur Waskow (Renewal)
Controversial activist, author and founder of the Shalom Center.

36. Nachum Braverman (Orthordox)
Braverman is Aish Hatorah’s leading American leader.

37. Bradley Hirschfield (Orthordox)
Hirschfeld is the copresident of CLAL and an outspoken proponent of interfaith dialogue.

38. Hayim Herring (Conservative)
Herring is executive director of STAR (Synagogues: Transformation and Renewal).

39. Daniel Lapin (Orthordox)
Lapin is a radio host, conservative commentator and cochair of the American Alliance of Jews and Christians.

40. Lawrence A. Hoffman (Reform)
Hoffman is the Reform movement’s leader in spirituality and prayer.

41. Sidney Schwarz (Reconstructionist)
Schwarz is the founder and President of panim: The Institute for Jewish Leadership and Values.

42. Naomi Levy (Conservative)
Levy is a popular author and a leading woman in the Conservative movement.

43. Lawrence Kushner (Reform)
Kushner is a leading teacher, writer and the innovator behind the Havurah movement.

44. Norman Lamm (Orthordox)
Lamm is the chancellor of Yeshiva University.

45. Nosson Scherman (Orthordox)
Scherman is the general editor for ArtScroll/Mesorah Publications, one of the largest publishers and sellers of Jewish books in the world.

46. Stephen Pearce (Reform)
Pearce is the leader of San Francisco’s largest congregation with 2,700 families.

47. Harold Loss (Reform)
Loss is the leader of the largest synagogue in the Midwest (Detroit, 3,200 families).

48. Toba Spitzer (Reconstructionist)
Spitzer became the first openly lesbian rabbi to head a national Rabbinic Association in March 2007.

49. Michael Paley (Conservative)
Paley is the scholar in residence and director of the Jewish Resource Center of the UJA-Federation of New York.

50. Mordecai Finley (Reform)
Finley is the founder and Co-CEO of Ohr HaTorah, an innovative and progressive synagogue.

Labels: Rabbis

- posted by Izak @ 9:40 PM (0) comments

 
Vanishing Jews in the USA
Will Your Grandchildren Be Jews?

The disintegration of the American Jewish community and how to reverse it.

by Antony Gordon and Richard Horowitz

In the Fall of 1996, the Jewish Spectator1 published our analysis of the data collected during the National Jewish Population Survey ("NJPS") of 1990. In October 1996, Moment magazine2 published the Demographic Chart which captured the text of our research with a graphic illustration.

Within only a few years after the Moment debut, the Demographic Chart (and the essence of our analysis culminating in our findings) had been translated into seven languages and had appeared in numerous publications including The New York Times3 and The Vanishing American Jew by Professor Alan M. Dershowitz.4 The Demographic Chart has been publicly cited by many notable Jewish personalities including, but not limited to the former Chief Rabbi of Israel, Rabbi Israel Meir Lau, former Chief Rabbi of England, Lord Immanuel Jacobovitz, Senator Joseph Lieberman and former Prime Minister of Israel Bibi Netanyahu.

It became clear that the main reasons for the multiple appearances of our analysis as well as the high profile that it developed, was the powerful impact of the Demographic Chart which we have now, almost a decade after its first appearance, revisited in this article.

For the sake of clarity and to appreciate how the Jewish demographic landscape has evolved over the past decade, we have utilized a similar format in this article to its namesake published after the culmination of the NJPS 1990.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

With all the controversy surrounding the announcement of the result of the NJPS 2000 - 2001 (hereinafter referred to as the NJPS 2000), the bottom line consensus from a non-denominational perspective is aptly captured by Michael Steinhardt:

"... All would agree that Jews in America are demographically endangered. In addition to the usual suspects of assimilation and intermarriage, the survey revealed that Jews in America are getting married later and having fewer children -- so few that we are experiencing negative population growth ... When we remove the Orthodox from the statistical equation, the picture becomes that much bleaker for those American Jews who are most at risk. In the wake of the study, one would have hoped to find a leadership galvanized to change. The NJPS (2000), after all, revealed palpable evidence of a crisis. But the community largely ignored the bad news, justifying its complacency by disputing the study's methodology ..." 5

Mr. Steinhardt's summation is correct.

Based upon the data and the various population studies that are now available, it appears that an extraordinary disintegration of the American Jewish community is in process. There was a time when every Jew could take it for granted that he or she would have Jewish grandchildren with whom to share Seders, Sabbath and other Jewish moments. However, the clear data indicates that this expectation is no longer well founded. Indeed, our studies show that within a short period of time the entire complexion of the American Jewish community will be altered inexorably.

As was the case with the NJPS 1990, the NJPS 2000 targeted four key quantifiable elements of Jewish survival: marriage rates, intermarriage rates, birth rates, and levels of Jewish education. When all of these factors are tabulated and correlated, a troubling picture emerges of the future of American Jewry. Skyrocketing intermarriage rates, declining birth rates, and inadequate Jewish education continue to decimate the American Jewish people.

METHODOLOGY

The information presented here is drawn from the findings of the United Jewish Communities (formerly the Council of Jewish Federations) National Jewish Population Survey (NJPS) of 2000; the American Jewish Identification Survey (2001), a replica study of the 1990 NJPS; numerous data runs from the North American Jewish Data Bank ("NAJDB") a plethora of articles based on the NJPS 2000 and several conference calls with leading academicians and demographers closely involved with the NJPS 2000.

The intermarriage rate for the various denominations was obtained from the North American Jewish Data Bank from data extrapolated from the NJPS 2000. In order to obtain a sufficient number of cases for the data to be statistically significant, the age cohort from 18 to 39 were used for all the denominations. As for average number of children per women, the information was also obtained from the NAJDB for all denominations. Since the NJPS 2000 did not differentiate between Centrist Orthodox and Yeshiva and Chasidic Orthodox, the data for this sub-category was obtained from the seminal study coordinated by Dr. Marvin Schick6 (hereinafter referred to as "the Schick Study").

The Schick Study seemed to indicate a significant (but not huge) undercount of Orthodox family size in the NJPS 2000. Nevertheless, we have essentially conservatively used the NJPS 2000 for the assumptions made in the Demographic Chart.

How Many Jews Are There in America?

According to the NJPS 2000, 5.2 million people in America today constitute the core Jewish population. Of these, approximately one million persons classified themselves as having been born Jewish, but having no identification with any religious group; 185,000 identified themselves as Jews by Choice, i.e., converts. (For the purpose of this article, all Jews by Choice have been considered Jewish, regardless of the denomination recognizing the conversion.) Thus, affiliated Jews numbered approximately 4.2 million in 2000, and constituted about four-fifths of all identified Jews.

Intermarriage Rates and the Dwindling Jewish Population

The NJPS 2000 found that 47% of Jews who married in the past five years had wed non-Jews, up from a readjusted intermarriage figure of 43% a decade ago. The rate of intermarriage has risen dramatically in the past 30 years, from an average of 9% before 1965 to 52% in 1990.

The 1990 NJPS indicated that Secular, Reform and Conservative Jews are far more likely to intermarry than Orthodox Jews. Secular Jews have doubled their intermarriage rate, while Reform and Conservative Jews have tripled theirs. Secular Jews in the 18 to 39 year age group have an intermarriage rate of 72%, while those over age 39 have an intermarriage rate of 35%. Younger Reform Jews now at a 53% rate, compared to a 16% rate for the older group. Among younger Conservative Jews, the intermarriage rate has increased to 37%, compared to 10% for those over age 39. Only Orthodox Jews have reversed this trend: Their intermarriage rate has fallen from 10% among those over 39 to 3% of the 18-39 group today.

The unadjusted intermarriage rate actually increased in the 18 to 39 year age group between NJPS 1990 and NJPS 2000. This research study as well as the Demographic Chart conservatively utilizes the 47% figure.

Jewish women between the ages of 60-69 have had an average of 2.12 children, whether they were Orthodox, Conservative, Reform or secular. However, among women aged 40 to 49, there is a drastic inter-denominational difference in estimated completed family size. Among those who married, estimated final birth rates have dropped an average of 32% among Conservative, Reform, and secular Jews, who now have a little over 1.45 children per family. At the same time, the estimated final birth rate among the Orthodox aged 40-49 has increased 106% to 4.4 children today. The independent research report done by Professor Alvin I. Schiff and Professor Marelyn Schneider7 concluded that the actual increase was 167% to 5.7 children. For purposes of this research study and the Demographic Chart, we have once again utilized conservatively low numbers just as conservatively low numbers were utilized in our first research article published almost ten years ago. Those numbers are consistent with NJPS 2000.

The NJPS 1990 found that mixed married households contained 770,000 children less than 18 years of age. According to the NJPS 1990, only 28% of these children were being raised as Jews; 41% were being raised in another religion; and 31% were being raised with no religion at all. Moreover, while 28% of children of intermarriage are being raised as Jews, only between 10% to 15% of this entire group ultimately marries Jews themselves. Thus, it is clear that nearly all the children of intermarriage are lost to the Jewish people.

With respect to mixed marriage households, the NJPS 2000 appears to be consistent with the findings of NJPS 1990.

The Connection between Intermarriage, Orthodox Observance and Jewish Education

Just as the decision to intermarry is the product of countless previous decisions about how to live one's life, so too the decision not to intermarry seems to be the product of a lifetime of Jewish living and learning. The research indicates that a stronger commitment to a higher level of Jewish education and observance leads to a lower likelihood of intermarriage and assimilation. The combination of Jewish commitment and having experienced a complete K-12 Orthodox Jewish Day School education results in an intermarriage rate of not greater than 3%. All the research indicates that it is essentially the Orthodox who are committed to such a complete Day School education.

The longer children are in Orthodox Day School, the fewer parents are likely to face the "Guess who's coming to Seder?" issue. Almost all Orthodox families today give their children the greatest number of years of Jewish education. This seems to be crucial to their exceptionally low intermarriage rate. Contemporary Orthodox children generally have at least twelve years of Jewish Day School education, while the peak number of years of Jewish education in the Conservative and Reform movements is generally from four to eight years of Hebrew School, much of it being part-time.

Intensive Jewish education impacts adults as well as children. Indeed, the recent growth in the Orthodox movement has come from five sources: higher marriage rates, increased family size, low intermarriage rates, propensity of those raised Orthodox to remain within the fold, and the influx of baalei tshuvah, or returnees to Jewish life. During the past thirty years, tens of thousands of American Jews who were raised in non-observant homes have committed themselves to an Orthodox lifestyle. Each young adult who "returns" brings along the likelihood of an entire family remaining within the Jewish People.

In summary, the most recent analyses of Jewish population indicate two distinct trends in American Jewry. During the period from 1945-2000 -- and particularly from 1960 to 2000 -- the Orthodox have steadily increased the duration and intensity of their children's education, their birth rate, and the percentage of those raised Orthodox and remaining Orthodox. At the same time, their intermarriage rate has been reduced (see above). Also, for the first time in American history, significant number of Jews who were not raised Orthodox are becoming so. During the same period (1960-2000), intermarriage among other denominations of Judaism has evidenced different trends. The level of education among Secular, Reform and Conservative Jews has (with a few notable exceptions), remained about the same; their birth rate has declined, and their rate of intermarriage has multiplied. Once a Jew intermarries, he or she as an individual remains Jewish, of course, but the likelihood of that person having any Jewish descendants is close to nil (see Demographic Chart).

Long-Range Implications for Today's Jews

As the Chinese proverb says, "If we don't change our direction, we will end up where we're headed." Elihu Bergman, Assistant Director of the Harvard Center for Population Studies, in a controversial yet disturbing report, had projected in 1975 that unless current trends were reversed, the American Jewish community would decrease by 85% - 98% by the year 2076. This prognosis now seems to apply to descendants of Secular, Reform and Conservative Jews. As far as the Orthodox is concerned, the opposite trend has become apparent. As illustrated in the Demographic Chart, multiple research studies have come to the same conclusion: Within three generations there will be almost no trace of young American Jews who are currently not being raised in Orthodox homes with a complete Jewish Day School education. Clearly, this is discomforting news for all of us to whom Jewish survival is of deep concern. There seems to be no hope that the less traditional approaches will have the same results as the more intensively traditional approach.

The Impact of the Jewish Orthodox Day School

The strongest counter-assimilation effect is exerted by Orthodox Day Schools; the less time-intensive forms of Jewish education have almost no effect on intermarriage. Since most Orthodox families now send their children to Orthodox Day School (usually for at least 12 years), the graduates of today's Orthodox Day Schools will probably be the forbearers of most of the Jews who will exist in this country in the future. This prediction is already beginning to come true: While only 7.8% of Jews aged over 70 are Orthodox, 9.7% of those aged 30-69 are Orthodox and between the ages of 18-29, the Orthodox percentage is 19.5%. Furthermore, approximately 27% of all Jewish children under the age of 18 are being raised in Orthodox families. It is also interesting to note that according to the NJPS 2000, although only 46% of US Jews belong to synagogues, that minority divides up 39% Reform, 33% Conservative, 21% Orthodox and 7% Other. If synagogue affiliation continues to be an important "bell weather" of the denominational forecast for the years ahead, Orthodoxy is capturing a growing market. More specifically, between the ages of 18-34, 34% of Jewish adults who are synagogue members have chosen to belong to an Orthodox synagogue8.

As stated earlier, long-term Jewish survival depends on four choices that each individual Jew makes: the level of personal observance; the choice to marry another Jew; the desire to have two or more children if possible; and the absolute priority of providing maximal Jewish education for oneself and one's children. The relationship among these factors is plain in the data. Choosing Jewish observance is a result of parents having chosen a Jewish education, which in turn is likely to lead to choosing a Jewish spouse. Choosing a Jewish spouse is likely to lead to providing a stronger educational and ritual base for one's children, who then perpetuate the cycle.

Of course, it is never too late for any Jew to enter, or re-enter the cycle of Jewish tradition. During the past 30 years, an enormous outreach movement has developed throughout the world, offering a variety of programs designed to reach out to disaffected Jews. Such outreach programs have been launched by all the major denominations.

Jewish survival depends on religious observance and education because only a long-term, intellectually and spiritually challenging process of Jewish practice and education can provide Jews with the reasons and the commitment not to marry the attractive, friendly Gentile in the office or apartment next door.

Potential solutions for Non-Orthodox Jews

These studies, and their implications, present non-Orthodox Jews with a dilemma. They may not want to become Torah observant -- but they don't want their grandchildren drinking eggnog around the Yule log nor running to prayer at the local Mosque either. What can they do? Without necessarily completely adopting the Orthodox lifestyle themselves, they may still be able to identify what the Orthodox are doing which is successful, and try to apply what they learn.

The data does not comment on whether Orthodox Jews are better as people, or as Jews, than anyone else. It does indicate, however, that they are the one denomination successfully transmitting Jewish tradition. As a group, the Orthodox is demonstrably succeeding at passing on the tradition and at inspiring their children to sustain and perpetuate their own Judaism.

Orthodox parents and Orthodox Day Schools seem to give their children enough good reasons for staying Jewish that even when the children are grown and have the option to intermarry and disappear from Jewish life, virtually none of them do. Somehow, they reach adulthood with solid answers to the question of "Why be Jewish?" Perhaps parents whose children are enrolled in schools of other denominations might analyze why their children's schools are not doing the same for their charges.

Parents who are not Orthodox Day School educated -- or who may even already be intermarried -- may feel uncomfortable at the prospect of providing their children an Orthodox education. Notwithstanding this unease, during the last two decades, tens of thousands of parents ranging from totally unaffiliated on the one hand to an affiliation to the Conservative denomination on the other, have their children enrolled in Orthodox Day Schools.

Although less effective, parents might want to begin by increasing their own Jewish education by enrolling in a class for adults, and then sharing with their children what they have learned. Couples for whom Jewish education is a charged issue can still work together to find ways to provide more Jewish education and exposure for their children than they are currently receiving. For those who find the thought of entering a place of worship an overwhelming task, or who simply live too far from a Jewish place of study or prayer, the past ten years has witnessed the birth of a litany of very user-friendly and voluminous web sites.

After all the trend lines have been drawn and graphs have been analyzed, population studies point to a single conclusion: Regardless of their own personal denominational affiliation, the most important choice that can be made by anyone who cares about the survival of the Jewish people is the choice to support increased religious observance and a full Orthodox Day School education for the maximum number of children.

CONCLUSION

The American Jewish community is now at a critical crossroads. There is finally a dawning recognition that Jewish continuity and survival cannot be sustained in what has been an American lifestyle devoid of serious Jewish education and Jewish living. One might have believed in the 1950's or 1960's that it was sufficient to have minimal Jewish exposure. Examples of such exposure includes simply to be a member of a Temple, have Jewish friends, play basketball at the Jewish Center and live in a generally Jewish neighborhood to ensure that one's children would be Jewish.

However, we now have the data and studies to know that children who are left without an education leading to deep Jewish beliefs and practices have little chance of having Jewish descendants. This is a critical moment for every American Jew and Jewish organization. The American Jewish community needs to radically alter its approach to Jewish life. The first step toward this change is to understand that the present approach is incompatible with Jewish survival, and must be dramatically changed.

http://www.aish.com/jewishissues/jewishsociety/Will_Your_Grandchildren_Be_Jews$.asp

1. "Jewish Spectator," Fall, 1996 pp 36-38
2. "Be Fruitful Indeed," October, 1996, p26
3. Tuesday, March 3rd, 1998
4. 1997, Published by Little Brown & Co, page 26
5. "Contact", Journal of Jewish Life Network, Volume 5, number 3, page 9 by Michael H. Steinhardt
6. January 2000, "A Census of Jewish Day Schools in the United States" (Published by the Avi Chai Foundation,)
7. Yeshiva University Research Report, July 1994.
8. UJC - Presentation of Findings, February 2004, based on the NJPS 2000-1

Author Biography:

Antony (Chanan) Gordon is a Sir Abe Bailey Fellow (1988) and Fulbright Scholar (1989) who graduated with a Masters in Law from Harvard Law School (1990). Mr. Gordon was a Senior Vice President at Morgan Stanley until the beginning of 2001 when he left to launch his own firm and hedge fund.

Richard Horowitz M. Horowitz received his MBA from Pepperdine University in California. Mr. is the President of Management Brokers Insurance Agency, and Chairman of Dial 800 L.P. Mr. Horowitz also serves on the Board of Triotech (OTC) as well as numerous non-profit organizations.

Labels: American Jews, interfaith intermarriage, Jewish assimilation, Jewish history

- posted by Izak @ 3:19 PM (2) comments

 
Frustrated Jewish feminist resents that students want normal Judaism
Girls Just Wanna Be ‘Frum’

JOFA conference speaker says feminism lags at Talmud study programs in Israel.

Gary Rosenblatt - Editor And Publisher
http://www.thejewishweek.com/news/newscontent.php3?artid=13679
Friday, February 23, 2007 / 5 AdarI 5767

Emily Shapiro Katz says that for young American women studying in Modern Orthodox yeshivot in Israel post-high school, unlike for their male counterparts, “intellectual rigor and religious fervor” don’t really mix.

While many of the young men aspire to become proficient in Talmud studies, “many of the girls come to Israel with their ultimate goal to stop wearing pants” and only wear long skirts, observed Shapiro Katz, 31, who was both a student and teacher in several Modern Orthodox yeshivot for American women in Jerusalem.

The primary goal of the Judaic studies teachers was to make the young women more observant, Shapiro Katz told a workshop on “The Year In Israel: Expanding Horizons or Narrowing Scope?” at the JOFA (Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance) conference here Feb. 11. And the students themselves were far more interested in laws pertaining to the trappings of modesty — covering one’s hair when married, skirt lengths, wearing pants, etc. — than in the academic pursuit of Talmud study.

More than 40 people attended the session, almost all female and about half high school students, no doubt eager to hear more about a rite of passage that has become increasingly common in Modern Orthodox circles: attending a yeshiva in Israel full-time for a year, and sometimes two, before starting college in the U.S.

The phenomenon of young men arriving in Israel and becoming rapidly and intensely observant, known as “flipping out,” has been much discussed in the Orthodox community in recent years, with some students giving up planned spaces in Ivy League colleges for yeshiva life on return to the U.S. But what of the girls?

Shapiro Katz offered a cautionary tale for a Modern Orthodox community that may believe that it has made more progress in terms of gender equality than it actually has.

A graduate of Stern College, Shapiro Katz studied at Midreshet Lindenbaum’s Talmud program and later taught at Midreshet Moriah, Machon Gold and several other learning programs for visiting American young women. The teaching experience she described was of young women wanting to be told how to act, particularly from the young rabbis who taught them rather than from the women instructors.

The female students “preferred Mussar to Gemara, shmooze to chavruta and psak to debate,” she said, using “yeshiva” terms to describe how students sought the less thorough forms of academic inquiry and were more interested in answers than questions.

As for showing more respect for the male teachers who were rabbis, rather than the female instructors of the same age who were addressed by their first names, Shapiro Katz spoke of a “religious/erotic fusion” — with the girls often having innocent “crushes” on the rabbis, who were only a few years older than them, a situation heightened by the fact that the students were separated from boys their own age.

The female students said they wanted more men as teachers, prompting one woman teacher to despair that “these girls only trust male knowledge,” Shapiro Katz recalled.

An engaging speaker and careful listener whose presentation conveyed a clear gift for teaching as well as a frustration with the way things are, Shapiro Katz described her six years of personal experience in Israel as a student and later an instructor, and the research she conducted at Hebrew University’s senior educators program on the tensions female faculty members felt between their personal beliefs and what they taught. All of which led her to conclude that “any practices construed as feminist are considered dangerous” in even the most enlightened of Israeli yeshivot for American young women.

These schools are considered examples of “women’s progress” in that they are devoted to rigorous Talmud study, as well as other Judaic subjects. But Shapiro Katz asserted that the atmosphere and administrative aspirations of these schools “raise questions” about the compatibility of feminism and Orthodoxy.

Shapiro Katz cited, and had the conference workshop participants discuss, a number of direct quotes culled from interviews she conducted with seven female instructors between the ages of 25 and 33 at several women’s yeshivot. All of them expressed the sense that they had no one with whom to discuss issues of inner conflict between teaching both tzniyut, or modesty, and independent thinking, and between religious practice and personal empowerment.

“I never imagined how afraid these girls have been of feminism,” one of the women instructors told Shapiro Katz, adding: “I know beyond any shadow of a doubt that if the girls were to perceive me as a feminist or if I would ever introduce myself as a feminist … many of them would not take my class. I would immediately become pasul (disallowed). I would immediately become disqualified in their eyes as somebody who could possibly take halacha (Jewish law) seriously.”

While some of the women teachers may have worn pants in their private lives or participated in women’s Megillah reading, they said they never discussed such things with their students.

Shapiro Katz also noted that being single was a distinct disadvantage for a woman teacher, becoming the object of pity of many of the students who are at an age when they worry about whether they themselves will marry.

“At some level they’re thinking,‘I don’t want to be like her,’ even if she is my total role model,” one teacher told Shapiro Katz for her study.

Several young women who attended Modern Orthodox study programs in Jerusalem in the last several years took issue with Shapiro Katz’s views, saying perhaps the best known institution in Israel for women’s Talmud study, Midreshet Lindenbaum, was a clear exception, and that several new schools founded recently are catering to more intellectually curious and open-minded students.

Emily Steinberger, a student at Columbia University who last year attended Midreshet Lindenbaum, said the students she knew were very serious about their learning and about growing spiritually and that is why they chose the program. She also said the women faculty members were treated with great respect.

“I was in awe of these women who were so learned and so qualified,” she said, adding: “We had as much respect for them” as for their rabbinic counterparts.

After four years of teaching in several Israeli programs for American young women, Shapiro Katz, who has since married, returned to the U.S. and is now on the faculty of an adult education program of a large Reform temple in San Francisco.

“I’m a pluralist educator now and I feel liberated, but I no longer have influence over the Orthodox world,” she said, which saddens her. “I wear pants so I’m pasul.”

What the Orthodox community needs, said Shapiro Katz, is to create new yeshivot in Israel that are “proudly feminist” so that girls will no longer point out that they attend one of the existing yeshivot and then qualify the remark with “but I’m not a feminist,” as she says is common now.

“We need places where the teachers can be themselves” and where the students can be themselves. Until parents speak up, primarily through their checkbooks — as in not sending their children to programs that do not espouse their values — the situation will remain as it is, she said.

Labels: Feminism, Jewish women, Modern Orthodox Judaism

- posted by Izak @ 2:54 AM (2) comments

 
Lubavitch's ghosts - past and present
Messiah Flesh and Blood

By Avirama Golan
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=824394
Tue., February 13, 2007 Shvat 25, 5767

I. Piecing Together the Rebbe's Secret Years

Professor Menachem Friedman was certain that he was only taking a short detour from the study of the Chabad movement and its rabbinical dynasty which has occupied his time for the past few years. "Must check out some of the more obscure biographical data," he jotted in his notes, in reference to the years shrouded in mystery which the late Lubavitcher rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson, spent in Berlin and Paris. In our day and age, reasoned Friedman, a careful scholar for whom details are practically an obsession, there are no black holes: everything can be tracked down and investigated. Friedman decided that he must go to Berlin and Paris to find out what the rebbe did there. How and why did he leave Russia, Friedman wondered, rather than .devoting himself to his studies at the Tomekhei Temimim yeshiva in Otwock, a small town near Warsaw, or joining his father-in-law's court in Riga?

Friedman's inquiry commenced in the summer of 1991, but his fascination with the Lubavitcher rebbe actually began many years earlier, when he was a yeshiva student at the Yishuv Hehadash yeshiva in Tel-Aviv. The stories about the charismatic rabbi with a handful of scientific doctorates from important universities in the West fired his imagination and inspired him to pursue his own desire for secular knowledge. "There was something in it that gave a young religious person like myself the confidence to venture into the academic world," Friedman says.

Later, when Friedman was already immersed in his studies, the astonishing growth of the Chabad movement aroused his curiosity. Owing to me unique power of the rebbe, Chabad went from being a relatively marginal group, carrying little influence with ultra-Orthodox Jewry and the Israeli government, to a major phenomenon. Friedman was especially fascinated by Schneerson's ability to rally Israeli politicians to his cause.

Beginning in the 1980s, Friedman began to collect every snippet of information he could find about the rebbe's personality. He listened intently to the moving accounts of those who had met with the rebbe in private. Everyone spoke about his eyes: so blue, so piercing. About his attentiveness and impressive erudition. About his winning personality. In 1991, Mordechai Menashe Laufer began to put together a collection of oral and written testimony about Schneerson called "The Days of the King: Excerpts from the Life and Work of the Renowned Leader of our Generation: Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson of Lubavitch." Laufer never claimed to have written an official biography; his introduction makes it quite clear that he has merely compiled data from many different sources. In the first volume, he calls the rebbe a "hidden tzaddik [righteous man]" who appears in changing disguises, a modest, unassuming man in the full sense of the phrase, which is why many people who have met him have trouble remembering details.

This typical Hasidic approach may explain some of the mystery surrounding the figure of the rebbe. Anything is possible. Those who met the rebbe may not remember exactly what occurred; those who remember may not understand; those who saw one thing may have understood it to mean something else; those who did not see may have been unable to comprehend what they were seeing.

Friedman's quest began in 1991, as he peered intently into one of the pictures from Schneerson's Berlin days which appears in "The Days of the King." Schneerson had gone to study in Berlin before his marriage to Hayah Mushka, the daughter of his predecessor, Rabbi Yosef Yitzhak Schneerson, and he returned there immediately after the wedding. As a Jew who left Soviet Russia in 1927, headed for Riga, and then ended up in Berlin several months later, one would have expected every police force in the world, not to mention the German police, to sit up and take notice.

When Friedman reached Berlin, he found that some of the archives had been destroyed when the Allies bombed the city during World War II. "From my perspective, the research is incomplete," he says, "although there is always the possibility that documents showing when exactly he arrived and where he was coming from will still materialize." Under the circumstances, Friedman started off his search at the university. According to Laufer, Rabbi Joseph'Dov Halevi Soloveichik of Boston was also studying at the university in Berlin at the time, and he lived nearby. Whenever he had a question about an academic or religious text, he would stop over at Schneerson's house and consult with him. Laufer (citing one of the rabbis who heard it from Soloveichik himself and a Kfar Chabad rabbi who heard it from associates of Soloveichik) says that even though Schneerson did not spend much time at his studies, his marks were always higher than Soloveichik's. Moreover, "the rebbe was known to have received several advanced degrees in Berlin, and then later in Paris." Another witness, a resident of Tel Aviv, claimed that everyone knew the rebbe was attending university, and that despite his low-key presence, "everyone knew that a unique personality was in town."

Friedman walked into the archives of the von Humbolt University in Berlin, formerly known as the Frederick Wilhelm University, and asked to see the student registration lists for all faculties from 1926. Although he knew that Schneerson had left for Paris in 1932, he checked the lists up to 1935 just to be sure. The archive director, Dr. Winifred Schultze, placed several fat volumes on a table, and Friedman began to leaf through them. There were thousands of names on the lists, complete with addresses, changes of address, countries of origin, birth dates and passport numbers. He found Rabbi Joseph Dov Halevi Soloveichik of Boston, who was studying theosophy. His eyes lit up once more to find Rabbi Professor Alexander Altaian. "This was a very important academic institution," Friedman says. "People came here from all over the world. There were Jews from Palestine, too. I have their names. From Hadera, Tel Aviv. It is not possible that [Schneerson] was omitted inadvertently."

Hour after hour, day after day, Friedman pored over the lists and discovered nothing. He was frustrated and tired. Sometimes he would try other sources: lists of tenants living in rented .apartments; water, electricity and telephone bills at the municipality. How could it be that Chabad literature claimed the rebbe had lived there for six years and everyone knew about it, whereas Friedman could find no trace of him? Friedman called Professor Menachern Ben Sasson of the Hebrew University. Had Dr. Yosef Burg, his father-in-law, who had studied at the Hildesheimer rabbinical seminary and visited all the shteibels and rabbinical courts to satisfy his insatiable cultural curiosity, ever spotted the rebbe in Berlin? Burg, known for his razor-sharp memory, had neither seen nor heard. Soloveichik' s son, Professor Haim Soloveichik, also denied that his father had met Schneerson in Berlin. Friedman became anxious. "Where could this man have been?" he asked himself in despair one night. "It seems that he was never here, and if he was, no one saw him."

A small, thin man with a pointy beard and a knitted black yarmulke sat in his hotel room in Berlin, gazing out the window at the crowd below. He felt like he was being buffeted by the wind. Suddenly his wife blurted out: "You're telling me that Schneerson's wife, Hayah Mushka, was with him in Berlin . They had no children. So what did she do all day? Maybe you should try looking for her?" Friedman rushed to the archives. Were women permitted to study in those days? he asked. "If not at the university, then perhaps at the school for overseas students," the archivist replied. "You know, they studied German there. A little history. Geography. They even put out a student newspaper." "Do you have any records?" asked Friedman. The archivist replied, "Here we have records for everything." He pulled out a small book and opened it to 1927. Friedman turned the pages. Nothing. 1928 - still nothing, although he did find some familiar-sounding names: Zohara Wilbush of Haifa, Hayah Berski of Tel Aviv, Alexander Barash of Tel Aviv. Yehudit Margolin, Menachem Zulai, even Yemima Cernowitz. But then he saw it. He could barely believe his eyes: Schneerson, Hayah Mushka. Citizenship: Soviet Union . Address: Oranienburgstr 33, at Braun. Registration date: January 23,1929. Course no. 57 and 45. Hayah Mushka had also completed two other courses. Friedman was walking on air. "They were here!" he cried. "The rebbe was here, and I've got to find him!" "Well," said the archivist, "I've just thought of one last way to do it.", Tomorrow: The Missing Brother-in-Law, Where is Rose Street and Who Was the Rebbe's Talmud Partner?

Missing Brother-in-Law Found in Paris

Prof. Menachem Friedman looked wearily at the chief archivist. "Here," said Dr. Winifred Schultze. "This is a record of the students who audited courses at the university without receiving academic credit." Friedman flipped through the pages and there it was at long last: Menachem Mendel Schneerson, a.k.a the Lubavitcher rebbe, had attended philosophy and mathematics courses at a Berlin university for one and a half semesters. Two addresses were given: the Hildesheimer rabbinical seminary, and then a working-class neighborhood not far from Berlin's old Jewish quarter.

Little by little, the pieces began to fall into place. The rebbe's wife, Hayah Mushka, had attended the Deutsche Institute, and the rebbe had audited university courses for at least a year. The rebbe's name appeared in the auditing records on April 27,1928, and then again on November 21, 1929. But where had he been before that? Schneerson was known to have spent time in Germany prior to his marriage. And what about afterwards? The couple had resided in Berlin for six years, from 1927-1933. What could Schneerson have been doing all that time? Friedman has no doubt that the rebbe, self-taught, intellectually curious, and capable of absorbing vast amounts of material, spent his days reading. "He was a loner," says Friedman. "Books were always his closest friends. I am sure that he sat in the library reading everything in sight."

Why the rebbe chose such a "goyish" center of Western culture is a question for which the people at Chabad have no definite answer. Some speculate that it has to do with the mystical theory of "klippot" (husks) and "nitzotzot" (sparks). Throughout their lives, Hasidim are commanded to seek out sparks of faith an extremely difficult mission requiring one to aspire to the highest dimensions of spirituality. Tzaddikim, or righteous men, are capable of finding sparks even where crudity prevails. The true tzaddik can extract the purest of sparks from what appears to be the thickest husk. When asked about his secular studies, the rebbe advised young people not to follow in his footsteps. It was true that he had studied in Russia, Berlin and Paris, he said on one occasion, but he had come to realize that 95 percent of the students were not genuinely interested in the material and ended up learning nothing. Attending university was something that he, the rebbe, could do, but everyone else was best off at yeshiva.

According to Chabad lore, the young Menachem Mendel Schneerson, son of the Kabbalist rabbi Levi Yitzhak (and great-grandson of Zemach Zedek, the third Admor of Chabad), left Soviet Russia together with his future father-in-law, Rabbi Yosef Yitzhak Schneerson. They spent a short time in Riga, where Rabbi Yosef Yitzhak tried to set up court, before moving to Otwock in 1935 (after the outbreak of World War II, he fled to the United States). All this time, Menachem Mendel was engaged to marry the rabbi's daughter, Hayah Mushka. A booklet published after Hayah Mushka's death explains that "owing to the hardship in those days, it was not possible to hold the wedding soon after the engagement," and even after their departure from Russia, "there were delays."

Friedman would rather not advance any theories in this regard, lest he end up distorting the facts. Nevertheless, there is evidence that Rabbi Yosef Yitzhak's two young daughters, Hayah Mushka and Shayne, were not in a hurry to marry. Hayah Mushka was 27, and her sister, 26, when they stood under the wedding canopy. A family relative claims that when the young Schneerson first came to the rebbe's court in 1925, he was interested not in Hayah Mushka but in her younger sister. However, this is difficult to prove and remains mere speculation. One way or another, Schneerson arrived in Berlin alone, apparently in 1926, and his betrothed, Hayah Mushka, stayed home with her father. The wedding took place only two years later, in November 1928 not in Riga, where the family lived, but in Warsaw where Rabbi Yosef Yitzhak headed a yeshiva. On December 2, 1928, the local Jewish paper reported that the groom wore European clothing (which was not the custom among Polish Hasidim), that he held several academic degrees, and that the bride was educated, too. In the Chabad community, weddings are important events, generally celebrated in grand style. In this case, the guests left with a bad taste in their mouths: Thieves and pickpockets took advantage of the festivities to work the crowd, and even the rebbe admitted, years later, that his wedding had been a "very disorganized affair." For this reason, he said, Shayne and her husband were married in a modest ceremony, in an out-of-the-way town near Vilna.

Who was Shayne's husband? Where did this couple disappear to after their marriage in 1932, which is barely mentioned in Chabad literature? Chabad sources claim that the two perished in the Holocaust, and that the rebbe recited the mourner's kaddish for them every year. These sources also state that the rebbe studied nautical engineering at the Paris Sorbonne. If this is so, where did he live? In the Jewish Quarter? Photographs and other evidence point to Rue de Rosier, near the central synagogue.

Friedman called his, friend, Jules Cappell, a comparative religions scholar with connections in the intelligence community. Perhaps he went to a private university, said Cappell. They checked, but came up empty-handed. An old Jew spoke to them over the phone. He said he knew where the rebbe had studied. Then he got scared and claimed to have forgotten. He was just a feeble old man, he declared. Friedman begged him to reconsider. "All right," he said. "It's called ESTP, a technological college for construction and industrial engineering on Boulevard St. Germain in Montparnasse."

"A lot of baloney," thought Friedman. "I'm sure Jules will tell me there is no such place." He took his wife and went to sit in a local cafe. At three o'clock, he returned to the hotel. An urgent message was waiting for him. "Yes!" shouted Cappell. "He did study there! Tomorrow at nine we'll go down and check the records."

Friedman could not sleep all night. At eight thirty in the morning, he was at the school office. A file lay on the table. "Finally I met the rebbe," he said. "I saw his picture attached to the top of the file. I was so excited I nearly lost my mind." He begged the secretary for permission to take a photograph. She said no, but eventually gave in. He pulled out his pocket camera and snapped page after page. Then he dragged the whole file over to the photocopy machine. Here he is! The rebbe himself! In flesh and blood! Mendel Schneerson. Soviet citizen. Grades: Not outstanding, but not bad. Diploma: Licensed to practice electrical engineering. Address: Aha! 9 Rue de Boulard, 14th arr. No wonder he was nowhere to be found in the Jewish Quarter. Friedman raced from the school to Rue de Boulard. Quite a way, he thought to himself. I wonder how the rebbe walked all this way every Shabbat. In the wintertime, he asked to leave early on Friday afternoon. A note was appended: permission granted, on condition that all tests are passed.

In February 1996, Friedman returned to Paris to check out the building on Rue de Boulard. At the Paris archives, he obtained a full list of tenants from the 1930s: Tchi Que, Chinese. Bruno Rani, Italian. Alexander Muzamin, Russian artist. Another russian. A journalist. A French waiter. And Menachem Mendel, Russian student. Immediately following, Hayah Schneerson. Friedman put the list down. These are the neighbors the rebbe studied Talmud with? Never mind, he consoled himself. At least I've found him. Then, towards the bottom of the list, he made out two familiar names: Mendel Hornstein and Shayne Hornstein. The missing brother- and sister-in-law! Friedman went back over the documents. How could he have missed it, he wondered. There in the engineering school file, below the note granting the rebbe permission to leave early on Friday, was another note: "Permission also granted to Mendel Hornstein."

Friedman raced back to the school office. Yes. Mendel Hornstein studied here. This is his student card. You want to photograph it? No, really. This is going too far. You can look at it and that's all. Friedman copied down all the data: Mendel Hornstein. Polish citizen. Previous studies: Faculty of Philosophy in Warsaw. Born: 1905. Years of study: 1933-1937. Examined on July 24, 1937. Failed. The two couples apparently lived together in Paris, in a neighborhood far from the Jewish community. Right after their marriage in 1932, Shayne and Mendel joined the rebbe and his wife, and the move was clearly planned in advance.

Friedman displays a photograph of the young Mendel Hornstein. No beard or sidelocks. Not even a hat. A fascinating character, says Friedman. His mother was the aunt of Rabbi Yosef Yitzhak Schneerson and the daughter of Rabbi Shalom Dober, the-fifth Admor of Chabad. He is almost never mentioned in Chabad sources, apart from his having joined the rebbe's "shlihot" prayers in Paris. His picture is never shown. Why has Mendel Hornstein, such a close and intimate member of Rabbi Yosef Yitzhak Schneerson's family, been erased from the collective memory of the Chabad movement? In 1997, Friedman set off to Warsaw to find out.

Warsaw and Tales of Chabad

One of the publications put out by Chabad contains a rare photograph of Shayne, the youngest daughter of Rabbi Yosef Yitzhak Schneerson. Shayne, dressed in a wedding gown, sits stiffly on a table or a high stool, her face toward the camera and her body turned dramatically to one side a pose common at the time. With a determined look on her face, and only the barest hint of a smile, Shayne makes for a very attractive portrait indeed. It is a photograph that makes us curious to know more about these sisters, who postponed marriage and spent years living in one of the more colorful, "goyish" neighborhoods of Paris, far from the crowded warmth of the Hasidic court and their father's home. What made their husbands choose a technical career like electrical engineering? One theory, now corroborated by Chabad, is that Rabbi Yosef Yitzhak put his sons-in-law through school to ensure that they had a source of livelihood. According to Chabad, Menachem Mendel even found a job upon arrival in the United States. This week, Chabad denied having written about Mendel Hornstein's death in the Holocaust and the fact that he never became a rabbi. "Actually," they said, "he is not that interesting." For Professor Menachem Friedman, Hornstein is not just interesting,,' he is fascinating. When Friedman arrived in Poland, he asked a Polish journalist to assist him in his research at Warsaw University.

To his surprise, things proceeded smoothly this time. He found the file, opened it and gasped in amazement. There was the young Mendel Hornstein, gazing back at him with beautiful, soulful eyes and a clean-shaven face. Now he understood why Rabbi Yosef Yitzhak had preferred to hold his daughter's wedding in some outlying town and not in Warsaw, where hordes of Hasidim from different courts would be looking and watching. Friedman easily found records for the whole family - Moshe and Mussia Hornstein and their children. Mendel Hornstein's name also appeared on a long list of Jewish and Polish youngsters who had received a discount on their tuition. Poring over Hornstein's photograph, Friedman addressed him as if he were alive: You are the Mendel who lived alongside the rebbe in Paris for nine years, who married the beautiful Shayne, who failed your engineering exams and went back to Poland. For some reason, Friedman felt a special need to document the life of this young man.

Mendel Hornstein was born in Annopol, Volhynia on April 23, 1905. He went to school there for four years. In 1922, he moved to Warsaw with his parents and attended high school in Otwock. In 1926, he applied to Warsaw University. After being turned down by the mechanical engineering department, he studied philosophy and mathematics, but never received his degree. In 1932, he married Shayne Schneerson, born in the town of Lubavitch in 1904. The wedding took place on June 14, as soon as the academic year was over, and in January 1933, the couple joined Menachem Mendel and his wife Hayah Muskha in Paris. Both couples were childless. In 1942, on the second day of Rosh Hashanah, Shayne died in Treblinka. Her husband was murdered soon afterward, on November 5, 1942. Hornstein arrived in Paris with his Warsaw University records, but he had trouble gaining admission to the technical college in Montparnasse. "The Days of the King," a collection of stories about the Lubavitcher rebbe, goes into great length about these difficulties, but in reference to his brother-in-law, Menachem Mendel. The sentimental tale is told by Dr. Meir Shochetman, "who had the privilege of studying with the rebbe at university in Paris [the Sorbonne] and helping the rebbe and his wife in their early days in the French capital."

Shochetman goes into a long, winding story about the anti-Semitism of the admissions committee and an "unexpected" problem which came up: It was the custom to sit in the lecture halls bare-headed. Shochetman solved the problem by wearing a beret. He says the rebbe studied nautical engineering and mathematics, and possibly psychology. Friedman claims to have proof that the bulk of Shochetman's testimony is fabricated and that he has embellished the facts in true Chabad style. This week, Shochetman's son, Professor Eliav Shochetman of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, doubted that fact could be effectively separated from fiction when there ere no living witnesses to ask.

One can be fairly certain that the elder Shochetman's testimony has undergone cosmetic changes at a minimum. "The Days of the King" is considered rather archaic today among the younger adherents of Chabad, but even the most educated and modern Chabadniks live comfortably with the Hasidic narrative. After all, such stories are like a tribal campfire which burns bright, supplying fuel for the sociological, cultural and ideological foundations of Hasidism as a whole, and the Chabad movement, in particular. A quick glance at any Hasidic work, from the popular Baal Shem Tov tales to the rarest anthologies of forgotten tzaddikim, reveals an almost uniform tendency to glorify reality using the same literary tools we are familiar with from the world of ancient folk tales. When a tzaddik is born, a great light fills the room. When he is four years old, he makes a wise comment that excites the rabbis, who predict a great future for him.

He is so engrossed in his books that his mother may call him to dinner six times before he hears her. And then there are other wonders and miracles which are not even worth trying to interpret logically. Professor Israel Bartal, a historian at the Hebrew University, has coined the phrase "Orthodox historiography." Chabad, he says, is particularly interesting because it specializes hi writing history that may have a certain scientific value, and has actually been writing its own chronicles since the 19th century. One of the earliest collections of Hasidic stories, "Shivhei ha-Besht" ("Praises of the Baal Shem Tov"), was compiled by Chabad and brought to press by the same printer who produced the Chabad classic, the "Tanya."

Traditional Jewish society was not of a historical mindset. Historical awareness really began to evolve in the wake of early 19th-century Romantics. Chabad, however, was a forerunner in this sphere. Bartal is also fascinated by how each generation produces a Chabad of its own while preserving a heterogeneous character within that generation. An appreciation of history, Bartal says, is part of the process of modernization, and Chabad has been particularly adept at exploiting modern tools for traditional purposes. Contemporary examples are their mitzvah tanks and the Chabad Internet site. "The writings of Rabbi Yosef Yitzhak are a wonderful blend of irrational legend and 19th-century archival references," he says. "The Chabad story is so much easier to absorb than a serious academic study."

Chabad historiography is designed, of course, to transmit a clear message and address man's inner world. But if the inner world of the traditional religious community is in such good shape, why do Chabad historiographers need the justification of history? Bartal sees this as a desperate battle against modernity. Secular historians are perceived as liars who use scientific tools to disparage Judaism. If that is the case, the Chabadniks say, then we are against enlightenment, but if there is anyone who is enlightened, it is us.

Rabbi Yosef Yitzhak Schneerson left Europe for the United States feeling that the natural world of Europe had been destroyed as the result of demonic trends directly connected to enlightenment. In his eyes, enlightenment became the direct opposite of Hasidism. Borrowing metaphors from the Russian Revolution, he was convinced that the Haskala movement was an international organization with a network of mysterious spies. In his own essays on Hasidism, he used images derived from the historical writings of Dubnow. But he went further than that. He began to build up a cadre of history writers to provide an alternative to Dubnow.

The result, Bartal says, is a "fascinating dialogue of mirror images." Yet it is an anachronistic view of history which views the 18th century through 20th-century lenses. Since World War II, one of the most significant tools in Orthodox historiography in general, and of Chabad in particular, is nostalgia: the image of a completely religious world in which theology occupies center stage. Or, in short, the return to an earthly Garden of Eden, the very opposite of the miserable, gloom-filled Jewish world which the Zionists invented for their own purposes.

When Friedman's book comes out, curious Chabadniks will stampede the bookstores. They will look for errors and argue with a passion they rarely display to the outside world. This week, members of Kfar Chabad were saying that the time had come for "one of our own" to take the plunge and write a real biography of the rebbe. Chabad spokesman Menachem Brod denied feeling threatened by Friedman's study. On the contrary, he said, any document or factual discovery about the life of the rebbe is welcome. "We ourselves are collecting material and intend to publish it on an official basis," Brod noted. "But I cannot say that personal speculations by Friedman or any other researcher are appreciated."

And yesterday, as if to prove Bartal right, a Chabadnik expressed himself this way: "The moment the facts are in our hands, they become our history. What other people write doesn't matter."

----

The Lubavitcher Rebbe as a god

By Saul Sadka
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=824393
Tue., February 13, 2007 Shvat 25, 5767

"Joy to the world the Lord has come."

This misquote from Isaac Watts, along with a link to a Chabad Web site, appears on a billboard. Not a real billboard, but a Photoshopped one that appears on the Web site of a Chabad activist in the U.S.

Rabbi Ariel Sokolovsky is a Moldova-born Chabad rabbi in Portland, Oregon, and a more amiable soul would be hard to find.

Yet Sokolovsky maintains a blog he entitled "Rebbegod" and refers to Schneerson as "Rebbe-Almighty" among other adulatory sobriquets.

Drawing on rabbinical sources, he attempts to show that this is not as revolutionary as it sounds. He concedes that there are few people like him who will openly call the Rebbe God. He claims, however, that many people believe it, but do not say so openly for fear of scaring people away from Chabad altogether.

While he argues that the Rebbe and God are not the same thing exactly, he says that he does not object to people thinking that they are the same thing.

He recounts an incident in which he confronted his teacher - a senior Chabad rabbi from the former USSR - as to why he would not openly declare the Rebbe to be God. According to Sokolowsky, the senior rabbi jokingly warned him: "there can be many gods but only one Moshiach."

Menachem Mendel Schneerson has by most accounts been dead for 12 years. Yet the details of Schneerson's life and death are mired in controversy, with wide discrepancies between the hagiographic account perpetuated by his followers and the scholarly research.

Chabad accounts of his early life tell of a brilliant student who excelled at the great universities of Berlin and the Sorbonne. After gaining degrees in subjects including nautical engineering, he subsequently fled to New York during World War II, where he worked on top secret military work.

But according to research by Professor Menachem Friedman, after he married a distant cousin, the daughter of his predecessor as "Rebbe," they lived far from any Jewish life during much of the 1930s - residing along with her sister and brother-in-law in a non-Jewish suburb of Paris. Eyewitnesses who knew them reported that she was often seen in modern dress and he bareheaded.

While in Paris he acquired his only formal education: he took a two year vocational course in electrical engineering at a Montparnase Vocational College where he achieved mediocre grades. He left for New York, where he spent the war as a worker at the Brooklyn Naval Yard.

Following the death of his father-in-law, Schneerson took up the reins as the grand rabbi or "Rebbe" of Lubavitch. Lubavitch was founded by Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi, a venerated figure who founded his sect on the principles of "Wisdom, Understanding and Knowledge" (the Hebrew acronym of which is "Chabad"), as a response to criticism of the new Hasidic movement for its obscurantism and superstition. The modern movement that is Chabad-Lubavitch is a far cry from that noble dream.

The Chabad headquarters in the Crown Heights district of New York has become a battleground of different factions within the movement.

The voice of moderates who believe the Rebbe is in fact dead (though most of this group still adhere to his belief of his ultimate resurrection and coronation as messiah) is increasingly cowed, with violent brawls breaking out and spilling on the streets on a regular basis leading to scores of hospitalizations and arrests.

Even the installment of a memorial plaque can cause a riot; as one rioter told the press: "He's alive - they are writing that the Rebbe is dead!"

At the front of the main room at Chabad headquarters in Crown Heights sits the Rebbe's empty chair - its cushions unruffled for more than 12 years. The chair is kept as it was during his lifetime.

Before the daily afternoon prayers, a number of the men perform the ritual of unfurling a Persian rug, moving the Rebbe's chair out from under a desk, fiddling with his prayer shawls and books as if he were about to walk in and take his seat.

The prayers conclude as normal, but the service is followed by singing and chanting with Hora dancing around the central podium. "Long live our Master, our Rebbe, King Messiah," sing the dancing men and boys as they form conga lines - a routine part of this thrice-daily ritual.

The dancing suddenly stops and a sudden hush silences the room. Four young boys each brandishing a large yellow flag bearing the Rebbe's crest part the dancers and move alongside the platform that supports the Rebbe's chair and desk.

Raising the flags high they chant in unison: "We want Moshiach now! We want Moshiach now! WE WANT MOSHIACH NOW!"

A man of about 40 years of age carefully reverses the rituals that had prepared the Rebbe's chair for prayers as the rapt crowd watches. The service terminated, the men stand at ease. Many are wearing yellow lapel-pins, signifying commitment to extremist messianism.

Members of the congregation were happy to explain:

What do the pins signify?"It symbolizes our dedication to the Rebbe above all else."

Above all else? Above God? "As far as we are concerned, we can pray to the Rebbe and he can deal with God for us."

Is that not turning the Rebbe into a god himself, an idol of your own creation? "The Rebbe was not created; the Rebbe has always been around and always will be."

If one believes in God but leaves the Rebbe aside, is one still Jewish? "When the messiah reveals himself, those who didn't see him won't be saved, so you should work on..." He is interrupted. "Look, what you need to do is start with God and work your way up to the Rebbe."

While it may seem bizarre to describe electrician-cum-rabbi M. M. Schneerson in this way, many of the people seen as messianist view Schneerson as a demigod. They are loathe to state this explicitly, but they will assign him characteristics of God, pray to him and, when pressed, suggest that there is really no difference between him and God. Since the Rebbe was perfection personified, he is greater than any man that ever lived; ergo he is godly - omnipotent, omniscient and unlimited.

Virtually no one within the movement today is willing to deny that Schneerson was the greatest man that ever lived nor that he was perfect.

None have a problem with praying to Schneerson, using his books for divination in place of the Bible. Even amongst those viewed as moderates, "the Rebbe" is often substituted for God in normal conversation, sprinkling their remarks with comments such as "may the Rebbe help you" or "the Rebbe is watching over us."

Even among the moderate minority, the distinction between Schneerson and God is decidedly blurred. Asking adherents whether Schneerson will return as the Messiah is unlikely to yield a directly negative response.

Along a tight passageway and up an uneven stone staircase in a Safed building is the library that sits at the heart of Lubavitch. In this ancient city can be found one of the movement's pre-eminent institutions.

A few hundred students are grouped around desks in a cavernous library, in a scene identical to those in hundreds of Yeshivas around the world. The din produced by the animated discussions contrasts with the silence of non-theological academic libraries.

While some of the students, who come from all over the world, are learning traditional Jewish texts, many are studying the works of M.M. Schneerson.

A list of monthly award recipients (the prize is a set of Schneerson's complete works) reveals that of the 10 scholars who will receive prizes this month, four are named "Menachem Mendel," as is the rabbi who chose the recipients. This is not due to the rabbi favoring a namesake, for around one third of the Yeshiva's 400 students are so named.

Massive posters bearing Schneerson's image adorn every wall. A sign instructing the students to keep their dormitories tidy concludes by invoking the "Living" Rebbe.

Schneerson wrote of his father-in-law as the messiah, though the previous rebbe had recently died. Adherents believe that when the Rebbe referred to his father-in-law, this was code for the Rebbe himself.

Why do they think that Schneerson is alive? "The Rebbe was no normal human being," is the response. He was a polymath who "studied under Einstein in Berlin" before "inventing the atom bomb."

How do they view the connection between Schneerson and God? "The Rebbe is not something different from God - the Rebbe is a part of God," says a British teenaged student.

Does this not 'idolize' Schneerson, in the literal sense? "We cannot connect to God directly - we need the Rebbe to take our prayers from here to there and to help us in this world. We are told by our rabbis that a great man is like God and the Rebbe was the greatest man ever. That is how we know he is the messiah, because how could life continue without him? No existence is possible without the Rebbe."

Would they go so far as to describe the Rebbe and God as one and the same, as some extreme Messianists have done? "No, some people have gone too far and described the Rebbe as the creator.

"They say that God was born in 1902 and is now 105 years old. You can pray to the Rebbe and he will answer, and he was around since the beginning of time. But you must be careful to pray only to the Rebbe as a spiritual entity and not the body that was born in 1902."

Does the Rebbe have a will of his own? What if the Rebbe and God disagree? "That is a ridiculous question! They are not separate in any way."

So the Rebbe is a part of God. "Yes, but it is more complex than that. There is no clear place where the Rebbe ends and God begins."

Does that mean the Rebbe is infinite omnipotent and omniscient? "Yes of course," an Argentine student says in Hebrew. "God chose to imbue this world with life through a body. So that's how we know the Rebbe can't have died, and that his actual physical body must be alive. The Rebbe is the conjunction of God and human. The Rebbe is God, but he is also physical."

Chabad members have become irrecovably fixated on their dead leader. If the seemingly inexorable rise of the vocal yellow pin brigade progresses apace, the movement founded to bring rigor and intellectualism to Hasidic Judaism may well face a benighted future.

Labels: Chabad Lubavitch, Messianism, Rebbe, Schneerson

- posted by Izak @ 1:26 PM (0) comments

 
Conservative Judaism starts to worry about what it eats while it welcomes gays as rabbis
Warning To Conservative Jews: Don’t Eat That Pizza!

Movement’s top kashrut cop wants to reverse practice of eating hot dairy food in non-kosher eateries.

Stewart Ain - Staff Writer
http://www.thejewishweek.com/news/newscontent.php3?artid=13647
Friday, February 9, 2007 / 21 Shevat 5767

A survey of Conservative clergy released last week found that more than 80 percent eat warmed fish in non-kosher restaurants, prompting the chairman of the movement’s rabbinic kosher subcommittee to begin writing a legal opinion that will likely restrict what Conservative Jews may or may not eat in non-kosher restaurants.

Such a sweeping opinion, if approved by the movement’s Committee on Jewish Law and Standards, would radically change Conservative practice that has been in place for more than a generation. And it would also set Rabbi Paul Plotkin, the subcommittee chairman and a recognized expert in kashrut for the Conservative movement, on a collision course with more liberal Conservative rabbis who argue that halacha must change with the times.

“It’s been disappointing to me and a matter of personal consternation for a long period of time,” Rabbi Plotkin said of the Conservative movement’s widespread practice of eating hot dairy food in non-kosher restaurants.

“I’ve been toying with writing a responsum on the issue,” he said. “Not only do I want to see this issue revisited [by the Law Committee] but there is a misconception in the Conservative movement that Conservative Jews are permitted to eat hot food in non-kosher restaurants. That is not true.”

Rabbi Plotkin, spiritual leader of Temple Beth Am in Margate, Fla., said he expects to submit his paper by the end of the year. He said the current practice of Conservative Jews was based on a misunderstood legal opinion written in 1940 by Rabbi Max Arzt that focused on the eating of grilled fish and cooked vegetables in non-kosher restaurants in communities that lacked kosher restaurants.

“It was limited in scope and rooted in the reality of its time,” Rabbi Plotkin said. “Many of the reasons he permits grilled fish are no longer valid. ... And that teshuvah [Jewish legal opinion] does not cover how you can eat pizza from a non-kosher restaurant. I certainly do not eat, nor can I find any foundation religiously, for allowing it — even if one presumes that all cheese is kosher.”

The e-mail survey — which was conducted in January by the Jewish Theological Seminary primarily to gauge views on its Law Committee’s decision to permit gay and lesbian ordination and same-sex commitment ceremonies — was answered by 919 rabbis and 211 cantors. Although their acceptance of gays and lesbians was widely reported last week, little attention was paid to the section of the survey that dealt with patterns of observance and belief.

Rabbi Plotkin said his responsum would present an “intellectually honest and halachically valid opinion to guide Conservative Jews as to what they may and may not eat in a non-kosher restaurant.”

He said he realizes that a “more stringent position may evolve” as a result of his paper “because that is the intellectually honest position. ... The Conservative movement should not be about how many leniencies the movement can find.”

But Rabbi Barry Leff, of Toledo, Ohio, said that although he agrees with Rabbi Plotkin’s conclusion, he believes halacha, or Jewish law, has to adapt to the times. Making it stricter, as Rabbi Plotkin suggests, “would reduce the relevancy of halacha in the eyes of many.”

“Every once in a while we have to bring halacha into line with what people are doing or we lose respect for the system,” he explained. “Don’t impose something on the community unless they will abide by it,” and a change in halacha now would not be accepted by the people.

“Halacha gets determined by the people, and the rabbis follow,” Rabbi Leff pointed out, citing the case of turkey, which was unknown in the Old World.

“The rabbis wanted to ban it, but the people said it was like a chicken and had to be kosher,” he said. “The rabbis followed and had to adapt halacha.”

The same holds true for eating in non-kosher establishments, said Rabbi Leff, spiritual leader of Congregation B’nai Israel. He said he found in his own non-scientific survey of 110 Conservative rabbis in the fall of 2003 that 71 percent ate hot dairy meals in non-kosher restaurants and that 92 percent ate hot dairy meals in vegetarian restaurants that lacked rabbinic supervision.

Similarly, he said, he found that a “substantial majority” of observant Conservative Jews ate hot dairy meals in non-kosher restaurants. Last week’s survey found that 90 percent of Conservative Jewish professional leaders (educators and executives) and 97 percent of Conservative lay leaders such as synagogue presidents and board members said they eat warmed food such as fish at non-kosher restaurants. (About one-third of Jewish professional leaders do not keep kosher; 57 percent of lay leaders do not keep kosher outside of the home, the seminary survey found.)

On his own blog, Rabbi Leff argued that the danger in changing halacha in this instance “seems small compared with the benefit that will accrue from our committed people seeing that halakhah can adapt to the changing times and practices.

“The time for wrestling with this issue is long overdue, and this responsum is offered in an attempt to reconcile practice and halakhah. We believe that a seemingly-radical change in halakhah is preferable to allowing the current dissonance between law and practice to continue indefinitely.”

Rabbi Leff said he submitted this teshuvah to the Law Committee in May 2004 and that it still has not been considered. But were it considered, he said he believes it would receive the six votes necessary to be adopted. Rabbi Plotkin, however, said he rejected the paper’s arguments, saying, “If tomorrow everyone is eating pig, do you change the rules? Where does that end?”

Rabbi Kassel Abelson, chairman of the Law Committee, said his committee has left it up to “individual rabbis to make the decision about where to eat.”

“I would assume that even the Orthodox or very Orthodox would eat cold food like salads [at non-kosher restaurants],” he said. “Warm food brings another level of observance in terms of the plates it was prepared on. I presume that most restaurants are clean and the question is whether you accept it or insist [that the plates] be ritually cleansed.”

The seminary survey found also that more than one-third of Conservative rabbis and cantors believe the Torah was “written by people and not by God or by Divine inspiration.” And it found that about one-third turn lights on during Shabbat.

The poll found that 36 percent of Conservative clergy said they believe man wrote the Torah, and that 39 percent of Conservative professionals and 42 percent of lay leaders believe it. In addition, 37 percent of clergy, 17 percent of professional leaders and 6 percent of lay leaders refrain from turning on lights on Shabbat.

There are great divisions between clergy and laity on other practices as well. For instance, 64 percent of clergy refrain from driving on Shabbat, compared with 27 percent of professionals and 11 percent of lay leaders. And although 94 percent of clergy refrain from shopping on Shabbat, that is true of only 60 percent of professionals and 43 percent of lay leaders. In addition, while 83 percent of clergy pray at least three times a week, that is a practice followed by only 40 percent of professionals and 33 percent of lay leaders.

Asked about the poll results, Rabbi Joel Meyers, executive vice president of the Conservative movement’s Rabbinical Assembly, took issue with the wording of the questions. Thus, he said, the results might not indicate the true behavior of the respondents.

Rabbi Abelson said the turning on of lights on the Sabbath is in keeping with a Law Committee decision from the 1950s. What was a surprise, he said, was their response to the question about the origins of the Torah.

“I have always thought that the overwhelming majority [of rabbis] would say that even if the words were put down by human beings, they were still divinely inspired,” he said

Labels: Conservative Judaism, Kashrut, Kosher food

- posted by Izak @ 8:14 AM (0) comments

 
Chinese want to make money so they dream of the Jews
Sold on a Stereotype
In China, a genre of self-help books purports to tell the secrets of making money 'the Jewish way.'

By Ariana Eunjung Cha
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, February 7, 2007; D01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/06/AR2007020601713.html

SHANGHAI -- Showcased in bookstores between biographies of Andrew Carnegie and the newest treatise by China's president are stacks of works built on a stereotype.

One promises "The Eight Most Valuable Business Secrets of the Jewish."

Another title teases readers with "The Legend of Jewish Wealth." A third provides a look at "Jewish People and Business: The Bible of How to Live Their Lives."

In the United States, where making broad generalizations about races, cultures or religions has become unacceptable in most circles, the titles of some of these books might make people cringe. Throughout history and around the world, even outwardly innocuous and broadly accepted characterizations of Jews have sometimes formed the basis for eventual campaigns of violent anti-Semitism.

In Shanghai, which prides itself on having provided a safe haven for Jewish refugees fleeing Europe since the 1930s, some members of the city's small Jewish community are uneasy about the books' message.

These Jewish success books are "very dangerous," said Audrie Ohana, 30, who works at her family's import-export company and attended China's prestigious Fudan University. "What they say -- it's not true. In our community, it's not everybody that succeeds. We're like everyone else. Some are rich, but there are others that are very, very poor."

Nonetheless, in China, a country where glossy pictures of new billionaires have become as common as images of Mao Zedong, aspiring Chinese entrepreneurs are obsessed with getting their hands on anything they think can help them get an edge on the competition.

In the past few years, sales of "success" books have skyrocketed, publishers say, and now make up nearly a third of the works published in China, and perhaps no type of success book has been as well marketed or well received as those that purport to unveil the secrets of Jewish entrepreneurs. Many of these tomes sell upward of 30,000 copies a year and are thought of in the same inspirational way as many Americans view the "Chicken Soup for the Soul" series.

Among this booming genre's most popular books is William Hampton's "Jewish Entrepreneurial Experience and Business Wisdom." It comes packaged in a red-and-gold cover, and a banner along the top brags that it was a "gold list" bestseller in the United States. Among Hampton's credentials, according to his biography: "Business Week editor," part of the "pioneer batch of Harvard DBAs," "professor in business strategy and philosophy" with "many years of experience in Jewish studies."

More on that set of claims in a moment.

China is the fastest-growing book market in the world, with 130,000 new titles published in 2005. Sales that year reached $8.3 billion, a 50 percent jump from 2003, according to China National Publications Import and Export's data research arm.

The business success books provide idealized notions of what Chinese people should strive to become and serve as templates for teaching people who have been working at communist, state-owned enterprises for a generation how to transform themselves as capitalists.

Several of the books, despite their covers, focus on basic business acumen that has little to do with religion or culture. But others focus on explaining how Judaism has ostensibly helped Jewish people's success, even quoting extensively from the Talmud.

Practically every book features one or more case studies of the success of the Lehman brothers, the Rothschilds and other Jewish "titans of industry and captains of finance," as one author put it.

Some works incorrectly refer to J.P. Morgan (an influential Episcopalian leader) and John D. Rockefeller (a devout Baptist) as Jewish businessmen.

Yin Ri Shuai, a 29-year-old from Henan province, west of Shanghai, who is opening a cosmetics franchise, has purchased and read two such success books. Recently, he was back at the Shanghai City of Books, flipping through some recent titles.

"I feel they are interesting not only because they teach about business but because they teach about family and education and other values," Yin said.

Most Chinese people have never met a Jew -- they number fewer than 10,000 in a country of 1.3 billion people. But several of the most successful businessmen in the nation's financial capital, Shanghai, have been Jewish. The Sassoon brothers, for instance, were real-estate moguls of British descent from Baghdad who constructed the landmark Peace Hotel.

Today, one of the deans of the Jewish community in Shanghai is Ohana's father, Maurice, 57, who has lived in China for more than 10 years.

Maurice Ohana has mixed feelings about the Jewish business books. On the one hand, he believes that the books' assertions that many Jewish people value punctuality and never go back on their promises are "absolutely correct."

But the books' tendency to mix religious scripture with business lessons makes him uncomfortable. "I know very well the Talmud," he said. "They don't talk about business."

Positive stereotypes about Jews and their supposed business prowess have given the Jewish community iconic status in the eyes of the Chinese public.

The cover of January's Shanghai and Hong Kong Economy magazine wonders, "Where does Jewish people's wisdom come from?"

Jewish entrepreneurs say they are bombarded with invitations to give seminars on how to make money "the Jewish way."

Last year, a Jewish businessman's family was featured on a popular TV show. As the husband and wife gave viewers an introduction to the Jewish faith, the cameramen went around filming the family in action as they performed mundane household tasks. Reporters asked them what they ate.

Zhou Guojian, deputy dean of the Center for Jewish Studies at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, said people in China may be so fascinated by Jews because they feel both cultures share a strong entrepreneurial spirit.

In his opinion, though, there is one big difference. Many Chinese businessmen have "Chinese restaurant syndrome," Zhou said. "They are content with small-scale enterprises; they are happy just to make a living. But Jewish people want to be the best and make a huge company."

Wang Zhen, a researcher at the Center for Jewish Studies, also says he recognizes that the stereotypes can be considered anti-Semitic but thinks it's important that "even if people in China have the wrong impressions of Jewish people, the Chinese are very kind to them."

One puzzling phenomenon about the Jewish business books is that it's often unclear who wrote them. More than 50 titles are sold in China's bookstores, chain stores and other outlets.

He Xiong Fe, a visiting professor in Nankai University's literature department, estimates that more than half of the books are fakes, written by people who are not familiar with Judaism or Jewish history and who have made up their qualifications.

"There are only a few books that have value," said He, who has lectured on such topics as "Why are Jewish people so smart?" and "The mystery of the Jews."

When asked for contact information for William Hampton, author of "Jewish Entrepreneurial Experience and Business Wisdom," a representative for the book's publisher, Harbin Press, said the company obtained the manuscript from a translator and had never met the author. Several days later, the publisher said she had trouble reaching the translator so she could not provide more details about the origin of the book.

A search of international ISBNs -- the 10-digit codes that identify books published in the United States and other countries -- pulled up no hits for books by a William Hampton with a title similar to "Jewish Entrepreneurial Experience and Business Wisdom."

Harvard Business School has no record of a William Hampton in the first class of its doctorate of business administration program. Officials at Business Week magazine said there was a former employee with that name. William Hampton publishes an automobile newsletter.

Reached at his home near Detroit, Hampton said he was a former bureau chief and auto writer for the magazine, working there from 1977 to 1984, but had never served as an editor.

Moreover, he said he had no idea where the book came from. "I can confidently tell you that this is not something that I did," he said. "This would not be a topic I would be knowledgeable about in any way. It would be helpful to be Jewish, for one thing."

Staff researcher Ai Ghee Ong contributed to this report.

Labels: China, economics, Jewish business

- posted by Izak @ 5:08 AM (0) comments

 
"Poll" tells Conservative Judaism to go with the gays (what will the next poll dictate?)
Support For Gay Clergy, But Concern Over Liberal Drift

New Conservative movement poll finds wide support for gay ordination despite doubts about consistency with Jewish law.

Stewart Ain - Staff Writer
http://www.thejewishweek.com/news/newscontent.php3?artid=13612
Friday, February 2, 2007 / 14 Shevat 5767

As widely expected, a large majority of Conservative rabbis, cantors, professionals and lay leaders support gays and lesbians becoming rabbis and cantors, although about half have their doubts as to whether it is compatible with Jewish law. And a majority of professional and lay leaders admitted to being “confused” and “somewhat embarrassed” by a rabbinic law committee’s decision in December to both accept and reject gay ordination.

The findings, the most complete portrait of the thinking and practice of Conservative Jewish clergy and leaders, came from a national survey commissioned by the movement’s Jewish Theological Seminary.

The survey of more than 5,000 Conservative Jewish leaders, released this week, concluded that they are committed to halacha or Jewish law, as well as to supporting women in the clergy and in favor of same-sex commitment ceremonies. But, the study said, “It cannot be denied that about half the rabbis, cantors and JTS students have some doubts as to whether the liberalizing stance [permitting homosexual ordination] is compatible with Jewish law.”

In addition, while 69 percent of American Jewish Conservative clergy supported gay and lesbian ordination, 82 percent of their counterparts in Canada were opposed. There was an even split among Conservative clergy in Israel and other countries.

Also, the survey said that “a substantial minority — about one-third with a clear opinion on the matter — oppose the move to greater liberalization” in the movement. As many as 42 percent of Conservative clergy believe the decisions of the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards “blur the boundary between Conservative and Reform Judaism.” In addition, 83 percent of the clergy and rabbinical students believe the committee’s decisions “widen the gap between Conservatism and Orthodoxy.”

“Thus, the decisions clearly raise the possibility among many that the Conservative movement has taken a move to the theological left, further parting company with the Orthodox, and further approaching the Reform movement,” the study said.

The survey’s release came just two days after Daniel Nevins, the senior rabbi of Adat Shalom Synagogue in Farmington Hills, Mich., was chosen to replace Rabbi William Lebeau as dean of the JTS rabbinical school, effective July 1. The seminary’s incoming chancellor, Arnold Eisen, made the selection. Rabbi Nevins was co-author of the most liberal paper approved in December by the movement’s Committee on Jewish Law and Standards that favored homosexual ordination and same-sex commitment ceremonies.

The survey found widespread opposition to rabbis officiating at mixed marriages and to recognizing as a Jew the child of a non-Jewish mother and a Jewish father. The Reform movement follows patrilineal descent; Conservative and Orthodox Judaism do not.

“The consensus around these issues speaks to the underlying unity and distinctiveness of the Conservative movement,” said Steven M. Cohen, the sociologist who conducted the e-mail survey of 18,676 persons and received responses from 4,861, plus another 722 who answered the questionnaire on a public Web site.

Most accepting of homosexuals as clergy were the professional leaders of the movement, with 76 percent in favor. Fifty-eight percent of rabbinical students favored the move, as did 65 percent of rabbis and 67 percent of cantors.

Cohen said he found that Conservative Jewish support for women clergy “implied” their support for gay and lesbian clergy.

“Those who had hesitations about women as leaders were associated with those who opposed [ordination of] gays and lesbians,” he said. “If you had a problem with women, you had a problem with gays. And since women themselves are more likely to accept women as cantors and rabbis, they are more likely than men” to support homosexual ordination.

The survey found that 86 percent of women favored gay and lesbian ordination, compared with 60 percent of men who held that view.

Cohen explained that “women are more pro-women” than men and that “women tend to be younger than men and younger people tend to be more pro-ordination.”

The survey found also what Cohen said was a “strong relationship between self-defined traditional” Jews and their ideology, with more traditional Conservative Jews opposing homosexual ordination and liberal Conservative Jews favoring it.

In addition, Cohen said he found “the more sacred the position [in the Conservative movement], the greater the hesitation about accepting gays.” Thus, there was a greater hesitation in accepting gays as clergy than as educators or synagogue presidents.

“Our intent was and is to know what Conservative Jews — rabbis and cantors, educators and executives, board members and students — think about this important matter: admitting and ordaining/investing openly gay and lesbian students in our rabbinical and cantorial schools,” Arnold Eisen, the seminary’s chancellor-elect, said.

The results will be used to assist seminary faculty, synagogue leaders and rabbis in determining policy as a result of a recent decision by the movement’s Committee on Jewish Law and Standards to permit the ordination of gays and lesbians. The heads of the movement’s other seminaries have already discussed the issue with Eisen. He is also receiving feedback during his nationwide “listening tour,” his meetings with students, and through the seminary’s Web site. Faculty discussions are also ongoing.

“Of particular note,” Eisen said in a prepared statement, “is the remarkable unity of Conservative Jews nationwide in their support of the centrality of halacha as a key principle of Conservative Judaism. The survey gives us data on this score as one factor among many to bear in mind as we consider a complex and controversial decision that will undoubtedly have a major impact on the future direction of JTS and the Conservative Movement. A final decision on this matter is expected this spring.”

The survey found that slightly more than half of the professional and lay leaders admitted to being “confused” by the law committee’s split decision, and 67 percent of clergy and 58 percent of professional and lay leaders admitted to being “somewhat embarrassed” by it.

The survey found that rabbis favored admitting gays and lesbians to the seminary’s rabbinical and cantorial schools 65-28 percent. Cantors approved the move by a similar margin (67-27 percent), while lay leaders were split 68-22 percent.

Rabbinical students voted 58-32 in favor of admitting gays and lesbians to the rabbinical school. Cantorial students approved it 58-21 percent and other JTS students favored it 40-21 percent.

Among Conservative educators, executive directors, and other professionals, the vote in favor was 76-16 percent. Lay leaders favored it by 68-22 percent, and students and others —primarily public access respondents — favored the move by 70-20 percent.

Labels: Conservative Judaism, female rabbis, Gay clergy

- posted by Izak @ 1:44 AM (0) comments

 
When a kiss is not (just) a kiss, it gets the Israeli justice minister fired and sentenced and...
Three-judge panel delivers unanimous verdict

Former justice minister Haim Ramon found guilty in indecent behavior trial

By Mazal Mualem and Nir Hasson, Haaretz Correspondents, Haaretz Service and Agencies
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/819881.html
Wed., January 31, 2007 Shvat 12, 5767

Former justice minister Haim Ramon was found guilty of indecent behavior at Tel Aviv Magistrate's Court on Wednesday afternoon, for having kissed a young woman soldier against her will. The three-judge panel delivered a unanimous verdict.

"The complainant's account is the absolute truth," wrote judges Hayuta Kochan, Daniela Cherizli and Daniel Beeri. "Ramon, however, did not stick to the truth, exaggerated the part played by the complainant and distorted the facts in a sophisticated and savvy way."

They said that, "The version that he presented did not stand up to the tests of reason and common sense, nor were they supported by evidence."

"There are some lines that cannot be crossed," said Kochan, who read out the verdict. "This was not a kiss of affection. This has all the elements of sexual crime."

Ramon came under heavy criticism from the judges, who wrote that his behavior was not "an honest mistake, rather indifference to the wishes of the complainant." The reliability of his accuser, however, "was never in question."

The judges said that Ramon "tried to distance himself from the event and from anything that could have embroiled him" in the affair. "He had no qualms about slandering the complainant... The defense produced witnesses whose sole target was to blacken the complainant's name."

The panel expressed the hope that the trial and the accusations hurled against the complainant would not discourage other victims of sexual crimes from coming forward.

Ramon, who could face up to three years in prison, left the courthouse without commenting to reporters. He is expected to appeal. The hearing on his sentencing will take place on February 21, Channel 2 television said.

Ramon was charged last August with indecent behavior for having kissed H., the complainant, on July 12, the day the second Lebanon war began.

Journalists were prevented from taking cell phones and beepers into the courtroom. Instead, a court spokesman emerged to announce the verdict to the waiting press.

Both sides agreed that H., who was finishing her army service, asked to be photographed hugging Ramon. According to the indictment, she then tried to leave, but "the defendant continued to embrace her body with one hand and drew her near. With the other hand, he grasped her cheeks, turned her face toward him and pressed his lips to her lips, while inserting his tongue into her mouth, all without her consent."

Ramon admitted to the kiss, but claimed that it was the natural outcome of a lengthy flirtation that H. conducted with him. He also claimed that the kiss was mutual, not something he forced upon the complainant.

The prosecution had argued that the two had no prior acquaintance and that nothing in H.'s behavior implied that she wanted Ramon to kiss her. It also claimed that a kiss between a young woman and a 56-year-old minister, minutes before a cabinet vote to go to war, is normatively problematic.

During the trial, there was a factual disagreement over when the kiss occurred: H. claimed that it happened immediately after the photograph, before they left the room, while Ramon said that it took place a few minutes later, after the two had left the room and then returned to it. The judges will have to decide on this issue.

The most important question facing the judges, however, was whether Ramon could or should have known that H. did not want to be kissed. The prosecution claimed that Ramon never even asked himself what she wanted.

Ramon argued that the conversation that preceded the photograph and the hug that H. gave him during the photograph led him to believe that she wanted him to kiss her, and therefore, the kiss was not a crime.

Labels: Israel, politics, sexual harrasment

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