Editor – Joel Katz
By
Melanie Lidman www.jpost.com December
18, 2011
The Jerusalem
Municipality was forced to disqualify the local election for community council in the ultra-Orthodox Mea She’arim
neighborhood on Tuesday, after extremists stormed into the counting room and
destroyed some of the ballots.
…Election organizers in the Bukharim Quarter told The
Jerusalem Post on Tuesday that both of the female candidates had dropped out of
the election due to concern over the “lack of
modesty” involved in campaigning.
They called on the
municipality to find an alternative way to allow women to take part in the
community council leadership.
AP www.washingtonpost.com
December
14, 2011
Israel’s Channel 2 TV video showed the men
screaming at a few dozen women, demanding that they leave a voting station
Wednesday. Then the men pushed them away.
The incident happened soon after Jerusalem’s
secular mayor, Nir Barkat, left the station after speaking out against gender
discrimination.
The writer
is a member of the Ra’anana city council and director of the Jewish Outreach
Center of Ra’anana.
In its
most extreme manifestation, halachic terrorism uses violence to force others to
bend to its decree and follow its demands.
But in more subtle scenarios, it
employs peer pressure, intimidation and fear of being ostracized to compel the
well-meaning observant Jew to forgo independent thought and deed in order to
toe “the party line.”
All in the name of God and Jewish purity, of course.
The Beit Orot elementary girls’ school in Beit
Shemesh was again the focus of tension on Monday when a group of about 15
haredi extremists arrived at the school during the afternoon and reportedly
shouted insults at the classrooms and attacked an activist photographing the
incident.
According
to DK, as he was taking photos of the event, two of the extremists attacked him
and threw him to the ground, before a second activist intervened and the men
fled to the adjacent neighborhood of Ramat Beit Shemesh Bet.
www.ynetnews.com December 14, 2011
[Dov] said
that as he was photographing the incident, in which the haredim called the
girls "prostitutes" and "shiksas" he was attacked by two of
the protestors, who shoved him and then grabbed him and threw him on the ground
until he was rescued by a friend.
As Tamar
Rotem wrote in Haaretz, “It is hard to ignore the sense that part of the
impetus for the Badatz condemnation of the group... derived from men’s feeling
of intimidation by these women.”
...Let’s
be clear: the veil wearers are cuckoo. But they didn’t lose their marbles all
by themselves. A whole society was pushing them down this path, the same
society that now seems so shocked that they have finally gone over the edge.
In
addition to standing in the road, the protesters overturned a baby carriage -
with a baby in it - in front of the bus.
Israel needs to "more forcefully"
ensure the quality of ultra-Orthodox schools teaching core subjects and that
the community's younger members are acquiring vocational skills, the OECD
states in its first comprehensive report on Israel, released yesterday.
...Haredi
girls did particularly poorly, it notes with concern. Math and science scores
fell for Arab students. Likewise, math scores fell for ultra-Orthodox girls;
they did not take the science test. Not enough ultra-Orthodox boys took the
tests in order to generate reliable statistics, it adds.
The Safed
Academic College opened a track for haredi women in the 2011-2012 academic
year.
Dozens of
women began their studies last month, mostly in the field of social work. The
track was specially designed to allow full participation of religious women by
holding classes during specific hours and separating male and female students.
The
college is offering full tuition assistance and stipends to those eligible.
The haredi (ultra-Orthodox) sector is giving up
its shame about its physically and disabled children and will no longer sweep
those with special needs under the carpet, United Torah Judaism MK Moshe Gafni
said Monday.
By Ari Galahar www.ynetnews.com December
13, 2011
Ultra-Orthodox Internet surfers who visited the
Behadrei Haredim website one night last week were surprised to discover porn
films instead of pictures of rabbis and articles about the haredi sector.
As the editor of an ultra-Orthodox women's
newspaper, I engage in exclusion all day long. I exclude socialites who chatter
themselves to death; I make gaunt models who encourage eating disorders
disappear; I erase paparazzi pictures of celebrities. Or viewed from another
angle - there are no pictures of women in my paper.
Nevertheless, in the unsolved equation between
a cover picture of the current starlet and a picture of a little boy, I prefer
the censored option.
AP www.ynetnews.com
December
16, 2011
In new research, Israel's Central Bureau of
Statistics is predicting that the fast-growing ultra-Orthodox Jewish community
will make up nearly a third of the country's population within 50 years.
Religious
freedom is a problematic concept for those who are sure that they, and only
they, have the absolute Truth. Such people tend to be extreme and intolerant.
Since only
they have the Truth, they have no patience for those who have other beliefs;
indeed, they don’t see the need to grant rights to others. They feel compelled
to crush the “opposition”, either by converting them, by coercing them, by
oppressing them, or even by murdering them.
For the
single-minded bigots, religious freedom exists only to serve their interests
and to guarantee their freedoms; but it doesn’t involve a mutual commitment to
religious freedom for others.
An estimated 20,000 Haredi teens study at the
exempt schools. All other Haredi schools are supposed to teach the core
subjects, and theoretically, their budgets depend on it.
But the Education Ministry doesn't have the
staff to inspect the schools and make sure they do teach these subjects at a
satisfactory level.
The survey found that in fact, only 41% of
Haredi high schools teach math, 39% teach English, 30% teach civics and
geography, 41% teach Hebrew literature and 43% teach Hebrew grammar.
The requisite conclusion is that while Haredi
girls get some form of core education, the boys get almost none because of the
legal exemption.
Parents of
soldiers who recently completed an IDF medics' course were shocked to discover that in the invitation to the
graduation ceremony they were instructed to arrive in "modest
clothing."
...on the
back of the invitation, below a list of driving instructions and other details,
it was written in bold letters: "(Guests must) arrive in modest
clothing."
"Halachic
considerations cannot override the considerations of army commanders," the
head of the IDF's Human Resources Directorate said Wednesday, in response to
demands to excuse religious soldiers from events in which women sing.
MK Nissim
Zeev of Shas proposed that "those who do not wish to hear women singing
should not listen," and said that a rabbi he had spoken with suggested
earplugs as a solution to the dilemma.
It’s
clear to me the rabbinate should go back to its core responsibility of
providing IDF units with religious services, much like the Military Advocate
General’s Corps, in which I served, provides the IDF with legal services.
As
for values, leave them to the Education Corps. It runs courses and workshops
exposing military personnel to divergent opinions on many of the complex issues
faced by soldiers and Israelis in general.
These programs broaden knowledge
without towing particular political or religious ideologies, something that can
no longer be said about the rabbinate’s course of action.
It seems to me that religious soldiers should not be compelled to listen to women's singing if they feel offended by this....Nonreligious soldiers should be allowed to absent themselves from events at which there is Jewish missionary activity.Dr. Alon Ribak, Haifa
We can see where this is leading. Either women,
facing discrimination, will avoid the military, or Israel will end up with two
separate armies, one for Orthodox soldiers and one for everyone else.
...What we need now are Orthodox rabbis who
understand two things: a) That women will serve in the army on a completely
equal basis with men; and, b) That the task of the rabbis is to help religious
soldiers to serve in such an army, while remaining loyal both to their
tradition and their country.
Israeli
religious leaders fear that a civil war is only a matter of time, following
Monday night's settler violence in the West Bank.Israel's Chief Rabbi Yona
Metzger on Tuesday strongly condemned the attack on the Ephraim Brigade
commander near the outpost of Ramat Gilad, which left him and his deputy
injured.
According to [Former Military Chief Rabbi Avichai
Ronsky], "Although we do not support such activity in any way, the State
must work to lower the flames, as this may eventually lead to a brothers'
war."
National
Infrastructure Minister Uzi Landau backtracked Sunday on the so-called kosher
electricity law he promoted, which would have given state rabbinic authorities
oversight over electric power production.
The bill
had garnered large opposition over the weekend, with an online petition against
it gathering over 13,000 signatures, and dozens of protesters rallying outside
Landau's house on Friday.
According to the ministry's statement, Landau decided to withdraw
the amendment because of the fear that it would represent a change in the
status quo on relations between religion and the state.
Landau admitted that he may have been mistaken
in the drafting of the proposal. “We intend to check and correct,” the minister
said.
Mickey Gitzin, executive director of Be Free
Israel, told Ynet: "It won't be a country with a Rabbinate, but a
Rabbinate with a country. If we subject the IEC to the Rabbinate and want to
subject the army to the Rabbinate too, why not subject the infrastructure
minister and the prime minister to the Rabbinate as well?
"Someone
there can't find the brakes and doesn't understand the place of religion within
a state. It makes no sense to have the Rabbinate supervise electricity systems.
Have you ever heard of such a thing?"
A Facebook
page has been opened calling for a demonstration opposite the Knesset on
Wednesday next week (the last day of Hannuka), while an Internet petition has
attracted 15,000 signatures in less than two days.
The NGO
Yisrael Hofshit (Free Israel) which opposes religious coercion organized a
demonstration outside Landau's home in Ra'anana on Friday.
Allah’s Safe Haven? The Controversy Surrounding the Mamilla Cemetery and the Museum of Tolerance: Contesting Domination over the Symbolic and Physical Landscapes, by Yitzhak Reiter, The Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies (Hebrew)
The legal and public discussions of the matter
give rise to such questions as: How long are graves sacrosanct and who is
qualified to remove them from this category?
How much
authority does the Muslim community have over its sacred properties and
cemetery?
Does the
sharia court have judicial autonomy?
Torah
Tidbits is a popular English-language
newsletter on the weekly Torah portion – but what about “Torah Tibi?”
Chakima, the Knesset’s weekly Torah newsletter, printed
a Bible lesson by MK Ahmed Tibi (United Arab List-Ta’al) on Tuesday, the first
by a Muslim MK.
Writers
for Chakima come from all over the religious spectrum – from haredi to
secular – but until this week, the contributing politicians have all been
Jewish
Religious Zionist leaders’ reactions to the
Tuesday morning attack on an IDF base in the West Bank were mixed, with some
rabbis expressing vehement criticism, and others, while decrying the attack,
nevertheless blaming the government for the growing number of such incidents.
“We’re in
shock,” said Rabbi Ya’acov Medan, co-head of Yeshivat Har Etzion in the
settlement of Alon Shvut, one of the largest religious Zionist yeshivot in the
country.
Former IDF Chief Rabbi Avichai Ronsky, current
head of the Itamar settlement, said on Tuesday that if violence such as the
earlier rightist attack on an IDF base in the West Bank continues, he will
consider leaving the Itamar settlement.
Three senior religious-Zionist rabbis sent a
letter on Tuesday to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister
Ehud Barak, requesting that the IDF change its rules of engagement toward stone
throwers participating in riots in the West Bank.
Chief
Rabbi of Kiryat Arba and Hebron Dov Lior; Chief Rabbi of the Samaria region
Rabbi Elyakim Levanin; and Rabbi Eliezer Nahum Rabinovitch, head of the Birkat
Moshe yeshiva in Ma’aleh Adumim stated in their letter that according to Jewish
law, and all law, it is permitted to protect oneself by all means available.
By Rabbi
Shlomo Riskin Opinion www.haaretz.com December
19, 2011
The
writer is the rabbi of Efrat.
I am telling you that you are making a
fundamental mistake. If a country can be sacred, if there is sanctity in earth
and stones, then isn't it clear that a fortiori there is sanctity in man -
whether Arab or Jew - who was created in God's image?
The United
Synagogue of the UK has denied that any offer was made to Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi
Yona Metzger to fill the position of UK chief rabbi, which will open up when
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks steps down next year.
Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi Yona Metzger was offered
to replace Lord Jonathan Sacks as the United Kingdom's chief rabbi, Metzger's
office confirmed this week.
Foxman
told Haaretz it still holds the Rabbinate has not done enough. Foxman further
demanded the Rabbinate "needs to institute an educational program of
respect, so that there is a greater understanding in the ultra-Orthodox
community of why this conduct is so offensive and inimical to Jewish
values."
Thousands of haredim took part in a demonstration
in Jerusalem's Shabbat Square Sunday night to protest a decision to establish a
state authority which will be responsible for the tomb of Simeon bar Yochai in
Mount Meron. Among the protesters were prominent ultra-Orthodox rabbis and
leaders.
Earlier
this month, the government received a bill by the Tourism Ministry for the
establishment of a new governmental authority which will be in charge of Simeon
bar Yochai's tomb. Members of the Eda Haredit are opposed to what they describe
as a "Zionist takeover" of the holy site.
Editor – Joel Katz
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