1967: Chief Rabbis said Israel should control Temple Mount
Despite the sign above, which stood at the entrance to the Temple Mount for many years (I'm not sure it does anymore), Israel's Chief Rabbinate advocated
Israeli control of the Mount in the aftermath of the 1967 Six Day War.
According to the document, then chief Sephardi Rabbi Yitzhak Nissim
said that Jews should oversee the site – either alone or in cooperation
with other religions – because it belongs to the Jewish people.
Then-chief Ashkenazi Rabbi Isser Yehuda Unterman was quoted as saying,
“the site of the Holy Temple should belong to the rabbinate. As for the
mosque…we will not give up ownership of the land on which the mosque
was built.”
Chief Rabbinical Council member Rabbi Eliezer Goldschmidt suggested
that an honor guard made up of rabbis protect the entrance to the
Temple Mount.
“If supervision of the mosque will be in their [Muslims’] hands, it will mean it belongs to them again,” Goldschmidt said.
The rabbis agreed, however, that the site is too holy for Jews to enter.
What a surprise (not). Too bad Moshe Dayan decided on his own to give control of the Mount to the Wakf. This morning. Israel Radio reports that the Pope was treated to a speech by a Mufti on the Temple Mount who accused 'settlers' of breaking into the mosques and attempting to establish separate prayer times as has been the case in the Machpeila Cave in Hebron for the last 20 years.
Aside from the fact that the Mufti is lying, the hostility toward acknowledging any Jewish claim to the Mount shows that peace is most definitely not at hand.
I wonder if the Pope is sharp enough to realize that if Jews don't have a narrative on the Temple Mount, neither do the Christians (whose narrative presupposes a Jewish Temple on the Mount).
Labels: Chief Rabbinate, Moshe Dayan, Six Day War, Temple Mount
Government nearly falls over conversion spat, then cuts off nose to spite face
The Jewish Home party vented its anger over a bill that would
remove power over conversions from the Chief Rabbinate by having all its non-minister MK's walk out of a no-confidence vote. After the government survived the no-confidence vote by four votes, the coalition chairman removed all of the Jewish Home's bills from the agenda, including party leader Naftali Bennett's bill to
lower food prices.
A Bayit Yehudi spokesman explained that the party's MKs walked out on
Bennett's instructions, after a new article was added to the
controversial conversion bill without the party's prior knowledge.
"The
Bayit Yehudi never learned coalition discipline or commitment to
agreements," Levin said following the walkout. "I will not give in to
extortion."
On Tuesday, a fierce political fight broke out between
Bayit Yehudi and its coalition partners over the bill on reforming the
conversion process, authored by MK Elazar Stern of Hatnua.
The
bill proposes to allow chief municipal rabbis to establish a rabbinical
conversion court in conjunction with one of the centrally appointed
rabbinical conversion judges and any other rabbi ordained by the Chief
Rabbinate.
A senior Bayit Yehudi source said on Tuesday that “if [
Justice Minister Tzipi] Livni was promised that her party’s conversion
bill would pass in exchange for voting for the three major bills
[ultra-Orthodox conscription, electoral reform and referendum on land
concessions], then that was an unfounded promise. We’re sorry someone
made a promise to her, but it’s not our problem.”
The source added that party will vote against the coalition if the Stern conversion bill goes to the plenum.
“A conversion bill will not pass without the support of the Religious Services Ministry,” the source said.
Which paragraph in this bill did the Jewish Home party
not know about?
Labels: Chief Rabbinate, Elazar Stern, Jewish converts, Jewish Home party, Jewish law, Naftali Bennett, Tzipi Livni
Will the 'Jewish Home' party listen to their rabbis?
Last week, I reported that the quid pro quo for the Tzipi Livni party's support for the three bills that were rammed through the Knesset last week (electoral reform, 'equal burden' and referendum) was that the coalition would support a bill introduced by MK Elazar Stern of the Tzipi Livni party that would essentially
strip the Chief Rabbinate of its power over conversions. At the time, I asked:
Given that the 'Jewish Home' party regards itself as the primary
proponent of the idea that the state institutions of the State of Israel
(qua State) [have] religious significance, is the 'Jewish Home' party
actually going to support this bill?
On Wednesday morning, we got part of the answer. Their rabbis definitely will not support the bill. The 'Jewish Home' party's rabbis met this morning with Sephardi Chief Rabbi Yitzchak Yosef (the son of Rav Ovadiah Yosef zt"l, the founder of the Shas party) and agreed that the Chief Rabbinate will not recognize what it's calling "
Stern's conversions" (link in Hebrew). But the bill passed the legislation committee of the Knesset on Wednesday morning.
Rabbi Yosef said that conversion will continue to be decided only based upon halacha (Jewish law) as determined by the Chief Rabbinate. According to Rabbi Yosef, the Knesset has nothing to say about conversion, and they are fooling people by saying otherwise. The result, should this bill pass, would be the administration of
Sifrei Yuchsin (Lineage Books), without which it would be virtually impossible to marry here.
The rabbis signed a joint declaration saying that they would oppose the law. Tens of amendments, mostly introduced by MK Orit Struck (Jewish Home) were rejected. But Struck and MK Moshe Gafni (United Torah Judaism) have demanded a revote, and so a revote must take place.
No word yet on how close the vote was in the Knesset legislation committee or who voted for or against - Israel Radio is on strike.
Will the 'Jewish Home' party listen to its rabbis?
UPDATE 1:23 PM
Reader
Romy L points me to this post on Arutz Sheva's website on Tuesday, which claims that the
'Jewish Home' party is opposed.
The religious-Zionist Jewish Home responded by saying that the move
contradicts the Coalition agreement that stipulated that the Conversion
Law would be coordinated with the Chief Rabbis and the Ministry of
Religions. The Jewish Home is threatening to vote against the
Coalition's position in all of the votes that remain to be held in the
Law, Constitution and Justice Committee until the end of the Knesset's
winter session.
The winter session ends next week, however.
A threat to vote against the coalition for a week seems kind of empty.... But how quickly can we introduce a bill to repeal the 'equal burden' law?
Heh.
Labels: Chief Rabbinate, Elazar Stern, Jewish converts, Jewish Home party, Jewish law, Naftali Bennett, Tzipi Livni
'Jewish Home' party to support bill to strip Chief Rabbinate of powers over conversion?
In an earlier post, I reported on the
pact with the devil made by the main parties in the coalition. Each of Likud/Beiteinu, Yesh Atid and Jewish Home agreed to force every member of its Knesset delegation to support three bills - electoral reform, Haredi draft and referendum. The tactic worked and the last of the bills - the referendum bill -
passed the Knesset on Wednesday.
But there's a fourth party in the coalition - the Tzipi Livni party - which also voted in favor of all three bills. I hope you didn't think they're not getting something too. And indeed they are. The Hebrew daily Maariv is reporting on Thursday that the coalition has agreed to support the Tzipi Livni party's bill to
strip the Chief Rabbinate of its exclusive powers over conversion in Israel.. Et tu Naftali Bennett?
The legislation, put forth by MK Elazar Stern (Hatnua), would allow
city rabbis to conduct conversions, and would allow potential converts
to choose the beit din (rabbinic court) they wish to convert with.
Currently, would-be converts are restricted to conversion via the
rabbinic court in their place of residence.
The bill’s supporters say it will ease the process of conversion to
Judaism while ensuring that state-recognized conversions adhere to the
requirements of halakha (Jewish law). Opponents warn that it could
effectively strip the Chief Rabbinate of its authority
over conversions, and could ultimately lead to rabbis being forced to
accept a definition of Jewishness that contradicts Jewish law.
Stern reportedly received a promise of Coalition support for his
bill, and in exchange, retracted objections he had made to various
clauses in the Enlistment Bill.
Sources in Hatnua and Likud explained, “Hatnua was unhappy that it
was being forced to support three laws, each of which it had some
problems with, without the party getting support for any law associated
with it. That led to the agreement on promoting Stern’s conversion
bill.”
Given
what's currently going on in America over precisely this issue, is this really the direction in which we want to go?
Given that the 'Jewish Home' party regards itself as the primary proponent of the idea that the state institutions of the State of Israel (qua State) has religious significance, is the 'Jewish Home' party actually going to support this bill?
I can name two MK's - one from Jewish Home and one from Likud - who probably won't. Yoni Chetboun from Jewish Home and Moshe Feiglin from Likud. I have to wonder what others will do.
Labels: Chief Rabbinate, Jewish converts, Jewish Home party, Jewish law, Moshe Feiglin, Naftali Bennett, Tzipi Livni, Yoni Chetboun
State Department report on Israel: The conclusions were written before the report
On Friday, I reported that Hillary Clinton's State Department has issued a report castigating
religious freedom in Israel. But it seems that the State Department first decided what it wanted to conclude and then
adjusted the facts to fit the conclusion.
But a number of question marks that arise from the report’s stances on controversial and unsettled matters in Israeli society suggest that disproportionate weight was given to the input of the various NGOs and media reports cited, without presenting the full complexity of the rather complex topics.
One of the many issues touched on in the report is that of Israelis who are not Jews according to Halacha. “Approximately 360,000 citizens who immigrated to the country from the former Soviet Union under the Law of Return but are not considered Jewish by the Orthodox Rabbinate cannot be buried in Jewish cemeteries, divorce or marry within the country,” the report says. But this misses the mark, since such people can divorce in an Israeli civil court so long they are not considered Jewish.
Regarding the Kotel, the report states that “Ultra-Orthodox ‘modesty patrols’ attempted to enforce gender separation and a path designated for ‘men only’ was installed opposite the Western Wall.” Such a path does indeed exist, at the behest of ultra-Orthodox men who wish to reach the inner plaza for prayer with less exposure to the tourists, including women, who abound in the outer plaza. Needless to say, the necessity of such a path is only a result of a mixed plaza.
The further statement that “Mixed-gender ceremonies have been banned in the Western Wall plaza” is inaccurate; among the few nonreligious ceremonies to take place in that plaza are the swearing-in of IDF paratroopers and that on IDF Memorial Day, and neither has gender-separated seating.
The report also presented the state-funded haredi schools under the section dealing with proselytizing.
“Some ultra-Orthodox groups that proselytize secular Jews, encouraging them to adopt ultra-Orthodox practices and beliefs, enjoyed government funding. The Ministry of Education funded a special network of schools aimed at promoting Orthodox Judaism to non-Orthodox Jewish children, and funded other organizations that hold similarly motivated activities,” it states.
This presumably refers first and foremost to Shas’s Ma’ayan Chinuch Torani network, and perhaps to the Ashkenazi-run Independent Education Center. A spokesman for the Ministry of Education strongly rejected the presumed proselytizing nature of those haredi educational networks, if indeed the intention of the report was to refer to those.
Regarding the civil rights of Israelis who are not Jewish by Halacha but entitled to citizenship due to the Law of Return, the report correctly states that under the law “the government grants immigration and residence rights to individuals who meet established criteria defining Jewish identity and also to certain family members. Eligible family members include a child or grandchild of a Jew, the spouse of a Jew, the spouse of a child of a Jew, and the spouse of a grandchild of a Jew.”
However, the report goes on to fuse together “the right to full citizenship” for such people and the “government financial support for immigrants,” which is supposedly denied of those whose Judaism is not recognized by the Chief Rabbinate, with the matters pertaining to “Jewish status for purposes of personal... issues.
“The government uses a separate, more rigorous standard based on Orthodox Jewish criteria to determine the right to full citizenship, entitlement to government financial support for immigrants, the legitimacy of conversions to Judaism performed within the country, and Jewish status for purposes of personal and some civil status issues,” the report states.
There's more - read the whole thing.
The fact is that for most secular Israelis, 'the shul I don't go to' is Orthodox. There is very little Conservative and Reform here because most people aren't interested in them. Yes, there are problems with non-Jewish olim (immigrants) from the former Soviet Union, but non-Jews are able to marry here without the interference of the rabbinical courts. For that matter, so are Jews, although they must nominally marry overseas.
All in all, interfering with the nuances of one religion or another seems completely out of place for a United States government agency, all the more so to go around comparing Israel unfavorably to Iran and Saudi Arabia. It's clear to me that the same crowd of non-affiliated and non-halachically Jewish people that started J Street is exercising its influence in the State Department. That connection needs to be exposed.
Labels: Chief Rabbinate, J Street, religious freedom, US State Department
US State Department makes itself arbiter of Judaism, condemns Israel
For the second year in a row, Hillary Clinton's State Department has issued a report castigating Israel for a lack of religious freedom, placing us in a category with countries like
Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia and Somalia.
The U.S. State Department under Secretary Hillary Clinton claims that Israel violates religious freedom at the same level as Iran, Iraq, Sudan, Afghanistan and China.
“Religious freedom can be restricted in a variety of ways, from the overt to the subtle,” explains the department's annual International Religious Freedom Report on 198 countries and territories surveyed by its foreign service personnel, released Wednesday for the period July 1, 2008 - June 30, 2009. A wide spectrum of efforts are used to undermine such rights, extending to multilateral, regional and global arenas, the report continues.
Part I of the Executive Summary discusses overall conditions during the reporting period in countries where “violations of religious freedom have been noteworthy.” Israel is listed among 30 nations selected for this category -- including Afghanistan, China, Iran, Iraq, Nigeria, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen -- due to the emphasis of the Jewish State on maintaining the status quo with regard to respect for Jewish legal standards.
Israel's adherence to specific Jewish legal (halakhic) strictures are the basis for some of the American claims, though the State Department report does not note that non-adherence to these would violate Jewish religious freedoms. (For last year's State Department denunciation of Israel and responses, click here.)
The report complained, for instance, that three Messianic Jews were denied the right to immigrate to Israel during the reporting period. Other issues of contention included Israel’s unwillingness to recognize conversions performed in the country which do not meet criteria under Torah law, identification cards (Teudot Zehut) that differentiate between Jews and non-Jews, and the authority over marriages and burials exercised by the Chief Rabbinate, which is Orthodox.
All religions have freedom of worship in Israel -- unlike the other countries mentioned above.
What is the State Department trying to tell us? That they know better than the rabbis what Jewish religious law requires? This is the only country in the region in which minority religious rights are protected and where people are free to worship however they choose. And she classifies us with Iran and Saudi Arabia where women are property and cannot go out in the streets without a male escort? Outrageous. Simply outrageous.
Read the whole thing.
Labels: Chief Rabbinate, religious freedom, US State Department
Thursday has been declared a fast day
We've had almost no rain thus far this year and it has been unseasonably warm (in the mid 80's) this week. We've also had less than average rainfall in five of the last six winters, and an incredibly hot summer this year that dried up much of what was left of our water supply.
The Chief Rabbinate has declared Thursday a
fast day to pray for rain.
Labels: Chief Rabbinate, drought, fast day, rainfall
