Editor – Joel Katz
The Haredi leadership
is even more narrow-minded and, out of concern for its own weakening hold on an
increasingly independent-minded constituency, is emphasizing obscure chumrot
under the bogus banners of modesty and purity as never before in Jewish
history.
By Jay
Michaelson Opinion www.forward.com
January 6, 2012
How many
wake-up calls do we need?
… We do not have to sit by passively while the
Jewish people devolves. There is much we can do to welcome Haredi Jews into the
Jewish family, precisely by actively opposing Haredi values and culture.
By Prof. Shaul Magid Opinion
www.religiondispatches.org January 5, 2012
The same Modern Orthodox now protesting for religious freedom
and tolerance did very little when the increasingly ultra-Orthodox Israeli
Rabbinate and political establishment marginalized non-Orthodox Judaisms,
including Conservative, Reform, and Reconstructionist.
...The modern
religious community claims the haredi readings are antiquated. That may be
true. But they fail to see the ways in which the Judaism they defend is
structurally, albeit not always practically, identical to the Judaism they
criticize.
...The Modern Orthodox
protesters’ cause in Beit Shemesh is legitimate. Their critique should not,
however, be limited to the egregious acts of the haredim, but to the injustices
embedded in the very religious system they live by and defend.
By Amnon
Levy Opinion www.ynetnews.com January 3, 2012
We need a new social covenant. The old status-quo
may have secured political calm, yet caused a flare-up in secular-haredi
relations.
Both sides must be brave and go for a new covenant premised on a
simple principle: Life in the country will be secular in every way. The haredim
will let go of their need to care for our secular souls. This means buses on
Shabbat, civil marriage and everything associated with a modern state.
On the other hand, the secular majority would
allow the haredim to have full cultural autonomy within their neighborhoods.
By Gil
Troy Opinion www.jpost.com January 3, 2012
Using the
power of the purse, and exploiting the hierarchical nature of ultra-Orthodox
society, Netanyahu should call a summit of leading Haredi rabbis.
He should
threaten their precious Yeshiva subsidies and other government goodies if they
don’t start policing their hooligan extremists.
He should also demand a new
social contract between Haredim and the Jewish state, detailing
responsibilities not just rights, and imposing some core courses in basic
skills into their educational curriculum. If Netanyahu plays this right,
even if this coalition falls, he could settle in for a long spell as prime
minister.
By Rabbi
Natan Slifkin Opinion www.jpost.com
January 3, 2012
The events in Beit Shemesh had little, if
anything, to do with the oppression of women. The haredi extremists did not
object to Banot Orot because it was a girl’s school; they objected to it
because it was national-religious.
… The more
general problem is that at many levels in haredi society, there is
inappropriate behavior towards nonharedim, which is felt particularly strongly
in the mixed city of Beit Shemesh.
By Jeremy Sharon
www.jpost.com January 9, 2012
The Beit
Shemesh branch of Partnership
2gether, run by a joint steering committee of representatives from
communities in South Africa, the greater Washington, DC, area, the Mateh Yehuda
region in Israel and Beit Shemesh itself, has issued a public call in the Beit
Shemesh press for ideas for intercommunal projects to promote dialogue and
“social entrepreneurship.”
Gideon Vennor, director of the Beit Shemesh Partnership 2gether:“We’ve been the flashpoint of inter-societal conflicts of late, but it’s a wider issue than just Beit Shemesh.
The importance of secular and haredi communities living together in harmony is going to come up around the country and we want to make Beit Shemesh a model for how to address these problems.”
By Rabbi Shaul Robinson Opinion http://voicesoflss.wordpress.com January 1, 2012
I
understand. But I don’t agree.
Because
I don’t believe that the Orthodox world can say “these people are nothing to do
with us”.
It’s not
credible any longer.
...Let
the greatest Rabbis in the Jewish world go to Bet Shemesh. Let each walk a
little second grader to school. Let their rebbetzins hold a girl’s hand and
say, “Come my dear, don’t be afraid, I will walk you to school.”
Let them, our Gedolim,
our Torah giants, look in the face of the Chasidim yelling “Nazi”
at little girls and Jewish policemen and tell them to be silent.
Jerusalem's
public transport system is a perfect metaphor for the situation in which
Israeli society finds itself at the beginning of 2012. The city's three
communities are trying to keep their distance from each other.
As
Haaretz's religious affairs correspondent wrote last week, the real segregation
on the "mehadrin" bus-lines are not between men and women. Instead
they are between the Haredi passengers who use them and the
secular/masorati/dati Jerusalemites who are discouraged from doing so.
By Allyn Fisher-Ilan
http://af.reuters.com January 4, 2012
[Minister of Religious Affairs Shas MK Yaakov Margi]: "Every morning I go to look at the window and check whether I see some pro-Khomeini protest at my doorstep," he said referring to the religious leader who led the 1979 Iranian revolution.
"All I see are green fields, a good atmosphere and good neighbours."
Many
leading ultra-Orthodox figures say the reason is not only the anti-Haredi
political parties that are on the way, but what is spawning them - the fact
that party activists have gone too far in their arrogant extremism and brutal
abuse of the public purse.
Interior Minister Eli Yishai recently declared
with surprising honesty that a Haredi-only city will have no income, and since
it won't collect local taxes it can't survive. Yes, it's nice to feel needed
every now and then.
By Laurie
Kossowsky www.jpost.com January 2, 2012
The writer
is an Orthodox resident of Beit Shemesh and the moderator of Digital
Eve Israel,
Israel's largest women's professional network.
On a
different occasion, my son asked why the haredi residents of a particular
building hated his friend’s family – the national-religious family of 10 was
continually harassed and threatened, their home was broken into and they were
eventually forced to leave the area.
Rabbis in extremist
Haredi circles, fearing a loss of control over their followers, are angered by
the change.
The resignation from
Shahar of Ravad, who as IAF chief rabbi ostensibly represents officialdom, adds
to a series of extreme separatist declarations, most notably the one last week
by Rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashiv against Haredi participation in the military and
higher (nonreligious) education.
As we
speak, Beit Shemesh is planning a new neighborhood with 25,000 apartments, but
the government is marketing those apartments at Haredim at cost price.
In other
words, despite the recommendations of the Trajtenberg Committee, the Haredim
are the ones who will get land at half price, in addition to large discounts on
taxes. All this comes on the backs of the religious and secular taxpayers.
These groups are outside the Israeli consensus
and constitute a minority in the population, but to describe them as a
"small minority" is wrong and misleading.
We are dealing with large
minorities, who in view of the state's incompetence and unwillingness to
enforce its authority on all its citizens, are growing apace.
By Joshua
Hersh www.huffingtonpost.com January 9, 2012
"The Haredim love to say that they're a minority," said Shahar Ilan, a former religion correspondent for the Israeli daily Haaretz.
"But they have been part of our political majority for 35 years -- and a brutal part. This is how they have to be understood."
By Jacob Kirsch Opinion www.ynetnews.com
January 3, 2012
The proper
reaction is not to get on a segregated bus in a bikini and sit at the front.
That is incitement, and it is stooping to their low level.
The ultimate
solution to this problem is to stop the funds. This is the only problem we can
solve by not throwing money at it. In fact, it is one of the few problems that
we can solve and make money from.
In a
conversation with the Post last week, MK Yisrael Eichler, chairman of the United
Torah Judaism faction in the Knesset, rejected claims that the ultra-Orthodox
world was becoming more extreme.
“There is no radicalization in the haredi sector,” he said. “What’s happening is that there is radicalization in the secular world against our community, and it’s simply got worse in recent years.”
Eichler also denied that there was widespread coercion of women to sit at the back of buses, saying that haredi men and women voluntarily segregated themselves.
An
11-year-old ultra-Orthodox boy was assaulted at a Jerusalem bus stop on
Tuesday. This is apparently the second hate crime in three days by
non-religious Jews targeting Haredi children.
By Rabbi
Shmuley Boteach Opinion www.huffingtonpost.com
January 3, 2012
Religious
extremism festers when decent lay people are cowed into submission by fanatics
whom they falsely believe to be more religious than them. But there is nothing
holy about Rabbis refusing to teach 2500 young Jews who are pining for Jewish
knowledge.
More importantly, it is an abomination to faith for men to treat
women abusively. A black coat will never redeem a dark heart and a long beard
is poor compensation for a shriveled soul.
By Rabbi Shalom
Hammer Opinion www.jpost.com January 6, 2012
The writer
teaches at Yeshiva Hesder Kiryat Gat and serves as a lecturer under the Harel
Division for the Rabbanut of the IDF. He is also an author and lecturer on
Israel, religious Zionism and Jewish education.
So long as
a majority of the haredi world does not recognize the right of our government
and judiciary system to exist, they will continue to breach what are considered
the rudiments of citizenship in what they consider a non-existent entity.
Interview
with MK Rabbi Chaim Amsallem
They fear Amsallem because he sees himself as the
real Shas; they denigrate him because he speaks directly and exposes the truth
behind the lies; they're wary of him because he clearly points to ultra-Orthodox
hoodlums from Beit Shemesh and Mea Shearim as the ones police must target now.
"The strong arm of the law must weed out these radical
ultra-Orthodox," he says.
How is
it that people who consider it so important to have a Jewish state do not like
it when Judaism shows its face?
...They,
the ultra-Orthodox, really want this state to be Jewish, with side curls and
shtreimels. The last thing the knights of "the Jewish character" of
the state want is for it to really have a Jewish character. That is the last
thing they need.
Two prominent Haredi women are boldly, and
publicly, speaking out against ultra-Orthodox extremists, who advocate extreme
gender segregation, and who, in recent days, have rioted against police in Beit
Shemesh and protested in Jerusalem the “exclusion of Haredim” by donning yellow
stars and concentration camp uniforms.
By Elana Sztokman Opinion
http://blogs.forward.com January 2, 2012
This idea of women’s arrogance, like women’s
provocation, is a way of hammering in the image of the correct female: She does
not think for herself, she does not speak out of turn, and most importantly,
she does not try to encroach upon men’s lives by acting in ways that are
acceptable for men.
Like the man in the Channel Two video who justified
spitting on the woman hailing a taxi said: A woman’s role in in the home,
period, “raising the next generation of Jews.” That’s it. All else, according
to this way of thinking, is “provocative”.
www.irac.org November 2011
In recent years, we have
observed with alarm the marked escalation in the quantity and virulence of
racist statements made in the name of Judaism by rabbis and public leaders.
These statements spread hatred against the Arab citizens of Israel, migrant
workers and refugees solely because they are goyim (gentiles), and call for the
exclusion of Arab citizens due to their national origins.
By Aviad Glickman
www.ynetnews.com January 8, 2012
The
Jerusalem District Prosecutor's Office on Sunday filed sexual harassment
charges with the city's Magistrate's Court against Ze'ev Frank, a 29-year-old
ultra-Orthodox man.
Frank is accused of calling a woman a
"slut" and spitting on her in the Mea Shearim neighborhood.
When three
police officers who were already in the area proceeded to arrest Frank, a group
of haredim attacked the officers, throwing rocks and iron poles at their
vehicle.
By Eli Senyor
www.ynetnews.com January 4, 2012
Two
ultra-Orthodox men from Beit Shemesh were arrested Wednesday morning on
suspicion of distributing flyers depicting Jerusalem police chief Niso Shaham
as Adolf Hitler.
By Lia
Tarachansky http://therealnews.com
January 3, 2012
Rabbi Uri Regev, Hiddush: “When you ask, are you satisfied with the way the government is handling matters of religion and state, 80 percent say we're dissatisfied.
When we go to the nitty-gritty, do you support introducing civil marriages, do you support public transportation on Shabbat, do you support equality to the non-Orthodox streams, you find consistently about two-thirds of the Israeli Jewish public responding in the affirmative."
By Yair Altman
www.ynetnews.com January 6, 2012
Two haredi men were detained in Beit Shemesh
Thursday evening on suspicion of hurling stones at non-segregated buses and
hurting a police officer.
The ultra-Orthodox men were protesting the
detention of their friends in recent days.
By Amy Teibel AP
www.salon.com January 6, 2012
Daniel Shechtman, the Nobel laureate, proposed
that state funding be withheld from schools that don’t offer a strong
curriculum of basics.
“You can pray for God’s providence, but it won’t put bread on the table,” he said.
“You can pray for God’s providence, but it won’t put bread on the table,” he said.
Rabbi
Yaakov Deutsch, a prominent rabbi from the city of Afula in northern Israel,
was indicted on Sunday for committing sexual offenses against four minors, two
boys and two girls.
By Ahiya Raved
www.ynetnews.com January 8, 2012
According
to the indictment, he had consensual intercourse, sodomized and committed
indecent acts on a 15-year-old girl. Deutsch denied the allegations against
him, claiming they are false.
By Kobi Nahshoni
www.ynetnews.com January 8, 2012
Rabbi
Yosef Shalom Elyashiv, leader of the Lithuanian Orthodox public, has been
hospitalized at the Shaare Zedek Medical Center after experiencing shortness of
breath.
By Melanie
Lidman
www.jpost.com January 8, 2012
Police
arrested on Sunday three additional suspects in Jerusalem who are allegedly
part of a large group of men suspected of pedophilia in the Jerusalem
neighborhood of Nachlaot, in what police are calling the largest pedophilia
case in the capital's recent history.
Police
have questioned almost 70 children and believe that nearly 50 of them were
victimized by the group. The matter involved one of the most serious cases of
pedophilia the police had every encountered, police sources said.
By Amiram
Barket
www.globes.co.il January 3, 2012
Deputy
Minister of Finance Yitzhak Cohen of Shas is continuing to push the kosher
electricity law, even though it has been ruled as religious legislation that
harms secular-religious relations.
By Jeremy
Sharon
www.jpost.com January 3, 2012
The
nine-year saga of electing chief rabbis for Jerusalem took another turn this
week, allowing the process to begin anew.
On Sunday,
the committee for the election of the chief rabbis came to an agreement as to
which synagogues would be represented on the selection board that will
eventually choose the next chief rabbis.
“The integration of Jerusalem synagogues in the selection of the chief rabbis is a milestone in the lengthy process that I have led to ensure that there will be a national-religious chief rabbi. I see in this decision a significant achievement for the pluralistic population of the city,” city councilor Rachel Azaria (Yerushalmim) said on Monday.
By Alex
Joffe Opinion www.jewishideasdaily.com
January 3, 2012
This is an
old pattern; the Mughrabi Bridge agitation is merely the latest iteration.
...Holy
sites have become not simply religious or national symbols but a species of
property outside of state control.
The need
to possess and control them becomes a cosmic zero-sum game that pits all
against all; principled concessions are met with hysterical accusations.
If this is the pursuit of holiness, perhaps temporary fixes are best
after all, while we await more sensible lovers of Jerusalem.
[Prof. Shlomo Naeh of the Hebrew University's Talmud
department] also believes the object is related to Temple worship and purity,
but reads the inscription differently, as "Dakar a Leyehoyariv."
Dakar in Aramaic means ram and a stands for aleph, the first
day of the week, when the priestly order of Yehoyariv was on duty in the
Temple.
By David A.
Schwartz
http://articles.sun-sentinel.com
December 13, 2012
During an interview with the Jewish Journal,
Shalom, who was the visiting weekend scholar at Boca Raton Synagogue, said he is trying to find
ways for second generation Ethiopians to keep their tradition and to integrate
into the Jewish world. "It's not easy," he said, explaining that
Ethiopian Jewish tradition is grounded in the Bible.
There is no Talmud in the Ethiopian community and no oral
tradition, Shalom said. So he is writing a code of Jewish law for the Ethiopian
community.
A quiet
drama is taking place among Haredi Holocaust survivors. The Haredi sector,
which is often under attack, and even more so recently, includes, like every
sector, survivors who talk and those who remain silent, each with his or her
own story.
But the
group of Haredi women who run Misgav Lakashish, headed by Tamar Shif,
understood that Haredi survivors are unique.
Some of them feel that they have
limited legitimacy for telling the story, and the majority are unaware of their
rights, after many years during which government authorities barely worked with
Haredi survivors.
Editor – Joel Katz
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