Gabrielle Giffords' synagogue
For those wondering about Gabrielle Giffords' connection to her synagogue: If the shooting in Tucson on Saturday of 20 people, including Ms. Giffords, shook the entire nation, it hit this city’s Jewish community especially hard, most of all those who belonged to Ms. Gifford’s small reform temple , hidden among tall cactuses on a quiet suburban street.Read the whole thing.
Ms. Giffords was the first Jewish congresswoman from Arizona, a point of pride for many at Congregation Chaverim
She did not attend services every week, and she only rediscovered her Jewish faith about a decade ago. But she is described as a dedicated member of the temple whose work and compassion embodied the best of Jewish practice.
“My Jewish heritage has really instilled in me the importance of education and caring for the community,” she said in a 2006 interview with The Jewish News of Greater Phoenix. “I consider myself Jewish without any equivocation.”
She called a 2001 visit to Israel a turning point in her life that sparked a fresh interest in Judaism. Her faith never became a major issue in her political campaigns, which, most recently, focused more on her opposition of Arizona’s hard-line immigration law and her support of President Obama’s health care overhaul.
She strongly backed Israel, writing in 2006 that “the United States must do everything possible to secure Israel’s long-term security.”
I wonder if that trip in 2001 was Birthright.
Labels: Gabrielle Giffords, synagogues
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 7:32 AM
15 Comments:
I can understand why the Reform synagogue accepted her as Jewish but, as an Orthodox blogger, why are you running an article about her being Jewish if her mother is a Christian?
Not only are gentiles Jews, now reform "temples" are synagogues.
Great going, Carl!
Devorah,
Because the goyim don't know the difference. As far as they are concerned, she is Jewish (under Jewish law, unless she has undergone a conversion, she is clearly not Jewish - JTA did a piece with her 'yichus' yesterday that I did not publish), and she was targeted for being Jewish. The next Loughner isn't going to know the difference either. So we all need to be vigilant.
And NO, I am NOT suggesting that is a reason for Israel to grant anyone rights under the Law of Return.
Then write a disclaimer, Carl. Maybe eventually people will understand if you inform them.
she believes herself to be jewish
the shooter thought she is jewish
she is a supporter of israel
she is fighting for her life
and at least those who belong and attend the temple are doing something...think of all the jews who are totally disconnected
some of you people need to gain some compassion
who knows...maybe someday...if g-d wills it and she survives....she will do a full conversion
tell you one thing...she is more jewish than capo dickstein, max blumenthal, phillip weiss, or self proclaimed frum anti israel blogger jerry haber, who, on his last day in the aretz before returning to the states to teach a course at u of m, made a pilgrimage to bellin and hung with terrorists and terrorist sympathizers
there is hope for congressperson giffords....there is no hope for those that i listed above
Any one with a Jewish ancestor already has rights under the Law Of Return - and this includes lots of Russians in Israel who are not Jews by the strict halachic definition of the term.
Ironically enough, the people who blocked their conversion to Judaism where none other the Reform movement!
Shy Guy,
I wrote in a previous post: "Somehow, I feel even worse about this than I felt last night. And yes, I know that people have posted comments questioning whether she is Jewish according to strict Jewish law, but that's not the point. The anti-Semites don't know the difference. Giffords declared openly that she is Jewish. That declaration may yet cost her life."
Do I need to repeat it every time? Anyone who reads this blog regularly and anyone who clicks on my bio knows that I would not consider her Jewish without a full conversion (her mother is or was - I don't know if she's still alive - a Christian Scientist) and that I would not - God forbid - allow her children to marry mine without a full conversion under the Orthodox rabbinate.
So what are you harping on? That I called her house of worship a synagogue rather than a temple? That's what the New York Times called it and the distinction between the two words has long since lost the significance it had 40 years ago when "synagogue" meant Orthodox and "temple" meant anyone else, and when you could look in a US phone book and be pretty sure that any listing that started "Congregation" was Orthodox.
bacci, at best the Reform are like the Noahides - non-Jewish monotheists. Apart from the fact they have patrilineal conversion and have a lax attitude about keeping kosher and on Shabbat observance, the Reform still worship the G-d of Israel.
There's hope for them yet. There's none for Avrum Burg, who has no problem with the notion of his children marrying outside of the Jewish people.
I think what Carl means is the Reform leadership have drifted away from taking Jewish law and tradition seriously. This is not an aspersion on those who take their faith with conviction. Rank and file Reform Jews are fellow brethren and there's no need to inquire if they've kept all the mitzvah. One can only hope their children will be encouraged to return to Orthodox Judaism. And my comments are in no way to be construed as an endorsement of current Reform movement policies.
Shy Guy, not every Reform Jew is a gentile... don't be so quick to generalize. The main problem is the Reform adoption of patrilineal conversion. If her father was a Jew, then by Reform standards, yes she is a Jew and incidentally so I am but normative Judaism as you correctly point out, would consider us to be non-Jewish.
Still, one doesn't have to be a Jew to worship the G-d of Israel and accept the moral instructions contained in the Torah. People who don't are little better than pagans, if they lack the presence of G-d in their lives.
From that viewpoint, Giffords' faith is praiseworthy, even if you doubt her halachic status. No good person on earth deserves to be murdered by a wicked person.
Two misassumptions are being made here about my posts:
1. This is a terrible tragic event, no matter what Ms. Giffords' religious allegiances. I explicitly wrote so yesterday. Here I write it again.
2. Norman, I know very well that there are reform Jews and reform gentiles and I know just as well what reform claims to "legitamcy" are verses what the Torah teaches otherwise.
Norman, do NOT insult Noahides by equating them with reform Jews. The former do Hashem's will, the latter rebel against Hashem.
Carl, it was the reform movement which originally insisted on dropping the term "synagogue" and replace it with "Temple", in order to show how assimilated and distant they wanted to be from Judaism and pull themselves closer to christian churches, on which many a reform temple were fashioned after in various ways.
I don't care if the reform movement's PR efforts backfired half a century ago and now they want to disguise themselves as something Jewish. Forgive me for not being in synch with the NYTimes (yuck). I'll continue to call a spade a spade. Baruch Hamavdil Bein Tahor l'Tameh.
The shooter was apparently mentally ill. He may have fixated Giffords without knowing she was Jewish. I think he had had casual contact with her. Yes, anti-Semites also have pathological views of jews and are capable of killing Jews out of twisted fantasies and delusions, but this guy's delusions were probably more general--he was disassociatiive and prone to threats etc.
Carl'
You are also forgetting one other important issue. We all know that she is not Jewish (although she self identifies) but she married a goy.
There is no better litmus test for Jewish commitment than marriage.
That being said, I'd rather have her than many real Jews
Ugh. Lucky for Israel, there are Israelis out doing high tech and working in summers as shlihim who are making friends for Israel out in the diaspora. They are urging Shy Guy's "rejectable Jews" to come spend time and consider living in Israel. Reform has moved much further along the observance trail over the last two decades. Regarding Gabrielle, the issue we aren't discussing is that the URJ is somewhat behind Israel in jettisoning socialist leanings... URJ will probably have supported the new age progressive education programs that Jared was soaked in throughout his educational years. Aaron Klein described the trail on his podcast/WABC radio show yesterday.
If she isn't Jewish by blood, she is by heart. To me that makes her more Jewish than all the self haters put together.
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