Over 300,000 Israelis from Russia are not Jews, so some think that Jewish law should negate itself to make them "happy"...
"We need a Zionist halakha"

By Yair Sheleg
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/440001.html

The non-Jewish wave of immigration has brought the issue of relations between religion and state - chiefly regarding marriage and conversion - to a moment of truth. Even those who favor continued Orthodox monopoly on marriage will not be able to accept a situation in which hundreds of thousands of immigrants are unable to marry in Israel. This is what led former chief rabbi Eliyahu Bakshi-Doron to propose a sweeping annulment of the monopoly.

Bakshi-Doron's proposal, seemingly coming from liberal provinces, actually stems from the isolationist Haredi answer to the challenge set by the immigrants. This says let them and the rest of the secular Israelis marry any way they please, and leave the Haredim alone to safeguard the halakhic (religious) laws of marriage and keep them pure and pristine. Of course what is caught in the divide between the challenge of the immigrants and distaste for the isolationist view is religious Zionism and its spiritual leaders.

Religious Zionism would not have found itself in this state of tension had not its rabbis failed the paramount challenge they faced - translating into practical form the fundamental ideological decision they took on themselves when they identified with and integrated into the Zionist movement. In the halakhic realm, the reference group on which the spiritual leaders of religious Zionism base their decisions is not the public to which they belong, but the Torah-based establishment of halakha authorities - mainly Haredi.

This generates absurd situations in which even a superb Zionist rabbi such as Yaakov Arieli from Ramat Gan refers to the Israeli judicial system as a legal tribunal of the non-Jews.

This is in blatant contrast to the instinctive way his own public relates to the Israeli judiciary, seeing it as one of the quintessential expressions of Jewish sovereignty and national interests, even if the courts don't issue rulings based on Torah laws. But one must admit that the High Court of Justice ruling on the sale of pork is liable to dull this sense of solidarity.

Ever since the Enlightenment period, even before Zionism, Jews have not belonged to a mitzvah-observant people. Halakhic rulings, including those of the Haredim, recognized this fact, and did not strip the secular public of its Jewish belonging, unlike the halakhic views that prevailed in the pre-secular era.

Zionism added another stratum by creating a national renewal enterprise shared by religious and secular and whose basic essence requires mutual responsibility and assurance. Therefore, the definition of Jewish identity adopted by the state cannot be conditioned on mitzvah observance, but is a national definition.

In any case conversion, unlike halakha, must be accepted by the state and cannot be conditioned on observance of the 613 Torah mitzvahs. Anyone who has accepted Zionism should be able to accept this conclusion, too.

The moment of truth faced by the rabbis of religious Zionism in the wake of the non-Jewish immigration compels them to implement that which deterred them from the outset - adoption of a "Zionist halakhic code" that would inevitably differ from the Haredi halakhic perspective.

To tell the truth, the isolationist-Haredi option does not really exist for them. Even if they tried to choose it, they would find that the overwhelming majority of their public would not follow them. For this public the notion of integration in the Israeli corpus is an indivisible part of their identity and existence, and not just as "ideology."

Just as the mass of Israelis who subscribe to the tenets of religious Zionism did not accept the halakhic rulings that called for refusing orders to evacuate settlement outposts, it is reasonable to assume that they will not readily obey halakhic rulings that do not affirm the Jewishness of people who are not prepared to commit to all 613 mitzvahs. And just as they do not need rabbis to decide which cultural interests they will pursue, it is reasonable to assume that most would prefer to define for themselves whom they would "kosher" as a spouse.

The combination of evacuating settlements, the majority of which are religious, and the eradication of symbols that strongly express the Jewish character of the state - bustling commerce on the Sabbath, or permission to sell pork - could push many upstanding religious Zionists toward the isolationist view.

The political and judicial establishments should be aware of this danger. One may assume, however, that adopting this approach will not come from any rulings by the religious establishment, which is not revered by religious Zionists, either."

Anyhow, that's just one of the dumbest and most dangerous things that the above journalist could say...as if he cares...
- posted by Izak @ 2:00 PM