by Kol Ra'ash Gadol [➚] · Tuesday, March 29th, 2011
And now we know. The real reason that we are not permitted to change any policy in a way that might discourage violence. I feel at ease, now that I know. It’s because its all part of our mission as the suffering servant of Isaiah.
Gotcher money quote right here:
There is an untold, sad reason for Israel’s ability to offer such help. For the Jewish State, terrorism has always been an involuntary master of speed, precision and caring. There is an amazing quantity of research, inventions and new techniques for helping the disabled and the paralyzed return to normal life after terrorist destruction.
Now we know. It’s for the good of the world. The right wants Israel to continue to be attacked by terrorists so that we can lovingly give of ourselves our scientific inventions that save everyone else. What a bunch of loving people! Generously sacrificing us for the benefit of the world!
*sarcasm off*
by Kol Ra'ash Gadol [➚] · Sunday, March 27th, 2011
Let’s legislate non-orthodoxy out of existence. OTOH I’d like to see what the law actually says. Maybe we could add a friendly amendment that since there are no streams of Judaism, therefore the Orthodox have no right to maintain their hegemony, because the Reform and Masorti are not (now, according to this new bill) streams, but exactly as legit as orthodoxy, since it would now all be “just Judaism”? FTW, right? Or we could counter-propose a bill that there is no such thing as Orthodoxy, and the true heir of Jewish practice is [name your favorite non-Orthodox movement].
Or maybe we could get the government out of the religion business, stop allowing the nuttiest of the nuts to determine who is a Jew, while simultaneously preventing people with good intent from converting (contrary to Jewish law, despite the fact that they keep claiming they’re the true inheritors, just like lots of other odd things they do, such as (my fave) prevent Jewish weddings unless their roster of rabbis is involved, despite the fact that one needs no rabbis at all halachicly speaking).
Hey, maybe we should just do that anyway.
Gene Simmons of KISS on Israel. It’s kinda weird, but I love it when Simmons/Witz tells Israelis to toughen up because Americans criticize everyone. So much for the tough-on-the-outside sabra? Maybe the real reason we don’t have peace in the middle east yet is because despite all the machismo of the Israeli image, Israelis aren’t really all that tough? Or maybe even because they are trying to live up to the image that American Jews on the right desperately want them to be? (Hey does that mean we can blame the occupation on all those kids who beat up Jewish kids in elementary school?)
A very neutral explanation of checkpoints
A piece on autism and inclusion by Jacob Artson (Rabbi Brad Artson’s son)
Rabbi Jill Jacobs touting my line on spirituality, social justice, and prayer
HuffPo on the cost of day schools
by Kol Ra'ash Gadol [➚] · Monday, February 28th, 2011
I’m not going to do an extended post here, but just to put up a few choice quotes.
Yesterday, I sat in on the Knesset roundtable on Israeli Politics and Policy in 2011. The six Knesset panelists from Kadima and Labor are Yoel Hasson (Kadima), Shlomo Molla (Kadima), Amir Peretz (Labor), Nachman Shai (Kadima), Daniel Ben Simon (Labor), Orit Zuaretz (Labor).
They all had a great deal to say worth hearing, including lots of ongoing praise for Tzipi Livni as a courageous leader. The message though, is really this: When we criticize Israeli policies, we are part of the Jewish conversation. Israelis are not afraid of criticism and many of them are aware that change must come.
Here’s a few quotes from one of the speakers – but they were all brave and funny and had lots of pithy things to say:
Daniel Ben Simon:
I don’t share this campaign about delegitimization – I am suspicious about its nature and motivations. I trend to not trust the honesty of politicians in Israel when they say that the main problem is that the world community does not accept us. The problem is Israeli policies. To hear Barak come to our party meeting and say don’t be naïve the problem is Israeli delegitimization – I am suspicious. Israeli government cannot continue with these policies – we must change course. We are back to the old rhetoric of the world is against us. -The world does not like us? What the hell are you talking about? We are a world power. We are not in the Warsaw ghetto, we are a world superpower…. Suddenly coming and saying the world hates us, the world does not accept us, we have to stop the peace process… This is not honest. This is from the paranoia of the right wing politics.
by Kol Ra'ash Gadol [➚] · Saturday, February 26th, 2011
After the ADL gets pissy with him Glenn Beck apologizes (sorta) for his rude comparison of Reform Jews to Islamic extremists but I have to say — I’m not impressed.
First of all, let’s just set aside for a moment the ridiculousness of mentioning Islamic extremists in every other breath – really, I have to say (I never thought I’d defend Beck in any way whatsoever) that really, his comments weren’t about Reform Jews being terrorists. While his comments were completely inane, his point was that Reform Jews are primarily a political organization rather than a religious one. How many ways this is a stupid comment leaves me gasping, but it’s not what most people seem to have taken it as – i.e. a claim that Reform Jews are terrorists.
However, the level of stupidity remains pretty high: More »
by Kol Ra'ash Gadol [➚] · Thursday, February 3rd, 2011
I know everyone wishes that we’d just stop talking about this already and technically, what I’m about to mention isn’t strictly a Jewish matter, but there was an interesting link on BoingBoing this morning regarding reporting on the sexuality of, let us say, well-known figures (since the person mentioned there isn’t precisely what one might think of as a celebrity).
The point being made is that it’s not quite as simple as whether or not one’s sexuality is a private matter – rather that by agreeing to not discuss it, “the press” is actually enforcing the idea that gay sexuality is bad, that the very hint of a partner of the same sex is akin to pornography and is a discussion of sex, rather than simply talking about normal and natural parts of an individual’s life – and in fact, in my opinion, that’s exactly how the conversation about Debbie Friedman shook out: dlevy expressed sadness that she hadn’t been able to live her life in a way that everyone else (straight) does, where she talked about her family (partner) held hands in public, etc, and everyone else started screaming about how she has the right to keep her sex life private and who cares as long as she doesn’t scare the horses in the street,which was precisely missing the point. The original post is here, but IMO BoingBoing sums it up clearly and nicely.
Food for thought.
by Kol Ra'ash Gadol [➚] · Monday, January 31st, 2011
Applications are now online for Selah National Cohort 10!
The Selah Leadership Program is a collaboration between the Nathan Cummings Foundation and Jewish Funds for Justice, in partnership with the Rockwood Leadership Program. Selah trains a cross-section of leaders in Jewish and secular organizations to be effective, sustainable and collaborative agents for change. Selah is the first leadership training designed specifically for Jewish leaders working across the social change field. Since its founding in 2003, we have trained more than 200 leaders from 165 organizations.
The Selah Leadership Program provides unparalleled training for social change leaders, new tools to enhance organizational vision and facilitate change, and the opportunity to learn among some of the Nation’s most innovative and inspiring Jewish social change leaders. This cohort is broadly designed for Jewish leaders across the country who are dedicated to social change and justice and have at least 7 years of experience in their field. We encourage applicants from secular and Jewish organizations that work on social change from multiple approaches including, but not limited, to: community organizing, direct action, social entrepreneurship, advocacy, education, and arts and culture. The application process is highly competitive.
Learn more about Selah, get an application, or recommend someone you know.
Applications are due by Tuesday, March 1st, 2011.
Training dates:
Training 1: Sunday, July 24 – Wednesday, July 27, 2011; (East Coast)
Training 2: Sunday, December 4 – Tuesday, December 6, 2011; (West Coast)
by Kol Ra'ash Gadol [➚] · Thursday, January 6th, 2011
Saudi Arabian security has detained a vulture that was outfitted with a GPS out of concern that it might be being used for spying.
I don’t believe this actually requires any comment – but feel free.
by Kol Ra'ash Gadol [➚] · Wednesday, December 1st, 2010
A short article in the Independent talks about the work of Rabbi Arik Ascherman, director and Co-founder of Rabbis for Human Rights. The organization is perhaps one of a very few which represents rabbis of all branches of Judaism, who together stand up for Human Rights in Israel.
The organization has three main focii: “human rights education, including courses in pre-army colleges; social and economic justice in Israel, which has seen it, with other Israeli groups, win a signal victory in halting the country’s draconian welfare-to-work project; and Palestinian human rights. This last includes a legal initiative which has reversed the takeover of hundreds of acres of Palestinian land by the settlements.”
Of the three, the project which RHR is perhaps most famous for is the protection of the olive harvest in Israel. Despite ostensible legal protection for olive trees in Israel – not to mention the law of the Torah which forbids attacking trees and cutting them down wantonly, even at a time of war, olive trees have been a target of settlers who also may attack Palestinians, settle illegally on Palestinian land or engage in other un-Torah-like behavior.
The inspiration came in 2002, when Noaf abu Ghabia, a Palestinian deeply committed even at the peak of the intifada to co-existence and non-violence, and with whom RHR had joined in various symbolic Jewish-Arab tree plantings, appealed for help against settlers attacking harvesters in the village of Yanoun. RHR began bringing volunteers, and three years later won a crucial High Court ruling ordering the army to protect the harvest.
While it was, as he puts it, a “high maintenance victory”, requiring a constant presence of the volunteers, Ascherman says that this year the army has – despite some exceptions – largely fulfilled the first two requirements of the ruling: protection of access to the land and of Palestinian farmers as they pick the olives. “There are farmers reaching olive trees they haven’t been able to reach for 10 and 15 years,” he says. What the army has been much less good at – so much so that RHR is close to returning to the High Court for a new order – is preventing the destruction of trees and theft of olives by the settlers.
Ascherman has a theory that the settlers’ actions are a response to the nascent peace process, which they see as an “existential threat” to their way of life. He reels off a list of villages where olives have been stolen – sometimes before the harvest – or trees poisoned or cut down. Then he takes us to perhaps the saddest sight of this year’s harvest, the scorched fields within sight of the notably hard-line settlement outpost of Havat Gilad.
Here, between 1,500 and 2,000 trees were burned two weeks ago by settlers – according to some witnesses, with troops looking on – as the “price” for the destruction by the army of two illegal buildings in the outpost earlier in the day
To learn more about RHR in North America and about Jewish values and human rights come to the RHR-NA conference on human rights this weekend Dec. 5-7th.
by Kol Ra'ash Gadol [➚] · Monday, November 29th, 2010
I am honestly not sure what to make of this. Should I consider this the genuine and generous gesture of a small people, themselves a minority, who have come to regret some role that they played in the past in the persecution of the Jews? If so, I can’t help but wonder exactly what they could have done to help – after all, they weren’t exactly a world power with lots of political sway during the Nazi era? What was it they were supposed to have done to help?
Or maybe my first reaction was right – we -the Jews- have gone completely nuts, to the extent that the entire relationship of the world to us is people finding ways to beg our forgiveness for the Holocaust, an important, but hardly defining (at least, I hope not. All the issues of the Holocaust were not new – we dealt with every one of them during the time of the destruction of the Temple – at least theologically speaking), moment in our history. Is this another chapter in the ongoing erasure of Judaism as a religion, to be replaced with the religion of Holocaustism?
What exactly does this all mean? Why did they take the extraordinary step of using modern transportation to fly a delegation to Israel; why now? And why did they decide to meet with “Western Wall Rabbi” Shmuel Rabinovitch?
I guess that, overall, I’m glad the Amish like us -they seem like nice people, and overall, I’d rather have them like us than not- but why does this strike me as somehow completely bizarre?
by Kol Ra'ash Gadol [➚] · Thursday, November 18th, 2010
Aside from all the other amazing leaders and activists ( for those who care abut such things, quite a number of “Forward Fifty” amongst the panelists, including….
Jewschool’s founder Dan Sieradski in a panel (Monday) on using technology and social media to create social change)
This is the third of RHR-NA’s conferences, and they do not disappoint. Unlike many much- ballyhooed or better-known gatherings, RHR-NA’s biannual gatherings feature people who are actually out there doing work to make the world a better place for all, and doing it Jewishly.
Dec 5-7th
Human Rights Under Fire: A Jewish Call to Action
A Conference on Judaism & Human Rights, Rabbis for Human Rights-North America
WHO:
For Rabbis, Cantors, Activists, Students, Journalists, Congregants, Jews, Muslims, Christians, and people of conscience from all backgrounds or faith traditions
WHEN:
Sunday, December 5th through Tuesday, December 7th, 2010
WHERE:
Congregation B’nai Jeshurun (257 West 88th Street, NYC)
& The Conference Center (130 East 59th Street at Lexington Avenue, NYC)
WHY:
To deepen our knowledge, promote discussion, strengthen our advocacy, and support human rights work in North America & Israel through Jewish visions of justice, freedom and equality
HOW:
Click to register for the conference and/or awards event: www.rhr-na.org/
More »
by Kol Ra'ash Gadol [➚] · Thursday, November 4th, 2010
Next Wednesday (11/10) at NYU:
Full details are available on RHR-NA’s blog
The Bronfman Center for Jewish Student Life at NYU, Rabbis for Human Rights-North America and Natan.TV Present:
A Debate on Israel’s Image in New Media:
Perspectives from a Government Insider and from an Activist Outsider
Wednesday, November 10 at 7:30 PM
at NYU Meyer Hall, Room 122
5 Washington Place, between Broadway and Mercer Street in New York City
Open to the Public
Featuring David Saranga (Former Consul for Media & Public Affairs at the Israeli Consulate in NY)
and Noam Sheizaf (Journalist, Blogger and Co-Editor of +972 Magazine)
Moderated by Natan Edelsburg
Do you perceive Israel as a country of social liberalism, technological and scientific advancement and beaches full of sexy men and women or do you see Israel as a country of eroding democracy, militarism and human rights abuses? Hear from two people who play a pivotal role in shaping what we hear and see from Israel in the West. Find out how new media (Twitter, Facebook, blogs and more) are being used to amplify messages and images about Israel and cover controversial topics. Do these tools help or hurt Israel’s image? Do they make it more honest? Difficult and exciting questions will be asked of both panelists.
David Saranga: David Saranga is a career diplomat and a leading figure in the nascent diplomacy and social media arena. He recently ended a four year-term as The Consul for Media and Public Affairs at the Consulate of Israel in New York. In that capacity he was responsible for Israel’s image in the U.S. and was the main Israeli contact person for national American media outlets based in New York. David was the first diplomat to create an official blog of a country, a MySpace page, YouTube channel, Facebook page and press conference via Twitter. He was a key media spokesperson for Israel about International Court of Justice hearings in The Hague, the West Bank barrier, and the 2008 war with Hamas in Gaza. His initiatives to transform Central Park into a Tel Aviv Beach Party for Tel Aviv’s 100th Anniversary, to promote LGBTQ tourism to Israel and to invite Maxim magazine to Israel generated significant debate about the definition of public diplomacy. David is currently leading the Digital Diplomacy initiatives of the Israeli Foreign Ministry, he is a professor at the School of Communications at IDC Herzliya and an Instructor for “New Media, Social Networks and Public Diplomacy” at the USC Center on Public Diplomacy, Annenberg School, University of South California. He is also a Senior Fellow at the Center for International Communication, Bar-Ilan University.
Noam Sheizaf: Noam Sheizaf is an Independent journalist and editor who was born in Ramat-Gan and now lives and works in Tel Aviv. After serving in the IDF for four and a half years, he worked for the Ha-ir local paper in Tel Aviv, for Ynet.co.il and for the Maariv daily paper; his last post with Maariv was as a deputy editor of their weekend magazine. He currently serves as an editor of the new +972 Magazine, runs the Promised Land Blog, and writes for Haaretz, Yedioth Ahronoth and other Israeli papers and magazines.
Moderator – Natan Edelsburg: Natan Edelsburg is a senior in the Department of Media, Culture and Communications at the NYU Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development. He is the the Founder and CEO of Natan.TV. Natan has been an intern, student and entrepreneur in media, technology and entertainment while serving as a contributor to different news sites including Huffington Post, The New York Times’ Local East Village blog,Appmarket.tv, Examiner.com and NYU Local.
by Kol Ra'ash Gadol [➚] · Wednesday, October 20th, 2010
Salon reports that on Tuesday, the Working Group Against the Trafficking of Women pulled a stunt in Tel Aviv intended to jolt people out of their stupor about sex trafficking in Israel, and ultimately to get enough signatures to push forward a measure that would criminalize johns.
Although here in the states, I’m generally inclined to avoid clipboard holders (I’m perfectly capable of finding my own petitions to sign, thank you, and generally opposed to giving out my name and address to random people on the street whom I have no idea if they really represent the organization they state), this would probably grab my attention:
Activists lined up seven women like merchandise in the window of a shop in Tel Aviv’s Dizengoff Center mall. A sign above them read, “Women for sale according to personal taste.” Haaretz reports that some “were made up to appear as if they had been beaten, and all had price tags that listed details such as age, weight, dimensions, and country of birth.”
It hasn’t been a secret for some time now that sex trafficking in Israel is an enormous problem. Way back in 2005, a report was issued by The Parliamentary Inquiry Committee, headed by Knesset member Zehava Galon of the left-wing Yahad party, which commissioned the report in an effort to combat the sex trade in Israel. Findings showed that some 3,000 and 5,000 women were smuggled to Israel annually and sold into the prostitution industry for about $8-10,000 American dollars, where they are constantly subjected to violence and abuse. Two years before that Israel passed a law that would allow the state to confiscate the profits of traffickers, but watchdog groups say it is rarely enforced.
This law would be different. In 1999, Sweden took the same approach advocated by this new measure, and criminalized johns; trafficking has since been significantly reduced. A report in July of this year, published by the government of Sweden evaluated the law’s first ten years and how it has actually worked in practice. It states,
street prostitution has been cut in half; there is no evidence that the reduction in street prostitution has led to an increase in prostitution elsewhere, whether indoors or on the Internet; the bill provides increased services for women to exit prostitution; fewer men state that they purchase sexual services; and the ban has had a chilling effect on traffickers who find Sweden an unattractive market to sell women and children for sex. Following initial criticism of the law, police now confirm it works well and has had a deterrent effect on other organizers and promoters of prostitution. Sweden appears to be the only country in Europe where prostitution and sex trafficking has not increased.
by Kol Ra'ash Gadol [➚] · Friday, October 8th, 2010
On a lighter note, Jewish women in Hollywood are still a topic of discussion. In a recent Slate article Rachel Shukert gushes over the show madmen for its portrayal of… Jewish women.
Although there seems to be some breakthrough in how Jewish women are shown in popular media, somehow, writers – many of them Jewish men, while having no problem casting Jewish women as beautiful, write Jewish women as unpleasant.
On a technical level, this comes as no surprise—there is certainly no shortage of beautiful actresses who happen to be Jewish: Mila Kunis, Rachel Weisz, Mélanie Laurent, Hollywood ur-Jewess Natalie Portman (whose name I can never hear without a preface of “why can’t you be more like …”). But they rarely, if ever, play explicitly Jewish characters—sainted Holocaust victims notwithstanding. Hollywood’s repulsion isn’t directed toward actual Jewish women, but toward its image of the “Jewish Woman” who even in 2010 is still consistently portrayed as bossy, obnoxious, pushy, materialistic, shrewish, gauche, and impossible to please: Mrs. Ari on Entourage, Susie Greene from Curb Your Enthusiasm, Jill Zarin from The Real Housewives of New York (a real person playing a fictional character playing a real person). Real Jewish women can laugh at these depictions, but they can sting, too, not least because they are so often manufactured and promulgated by Jewish men: our brothers and our cousins and our dads. I mean, is that what they really think of us?
by Kol Ra'ash Gadol [➚] · Tuesday, September 14th, 2010
This trip is not just for rabbis (although rabbis are welcome).
ONLY A FEW PLACES LEFT FOR
TEN-DAY HUMAN RIGHTS TRIP TO ISRAEL & THE WEST BANK
with Rabbis for Human Rights-North America
Lead by Rabbis Ellen Lippmann and Tirzah Firestone,
RHR-NA Board Members, and
Rabbi Golan ben Chorin, 3rd Generation Israeli Scholar and Founder of Israel Spiritual Tour
October 18-27, 2010
Join Rabbis for Human Rights for this extraordinary “hands-on” tour of Israel and the West Bank.
Experience for yourself the reality of life on both sides of the Separation Barrier,
& study the critical issues that threaten Israel’s democratic foundation.
PARTICIPATE with RHR-NA and its partners in the work of fulfilling the dream of an Israel
that embodies the prophetic vision of justice, peace& dignity for every human being.
For more information:
office@rhr-na.org or (212) 845-5201
THIS TRIP WILL CHANGE YOUR LIFE!
Participate in the Olive Harvest with Palestinian farmers in the West Bank
Visit Israeli settlements & learn settlers’ viewpoints
Experience history as it unfolds in East Jerusalem
Visit Bedouin Villages in the Negev
Bare witness at Palestinian checkpoints with Machsom Watch
Meet Palestinians in their Homes! Enjoy two nights of Home Hospitality in Bethlehem
Meet with Israeli & Palestinian leaders, political analysts & journalists
Tour Hebron with Israeli Soldiers of Conscience, Breaking the Silence
Daily meditation, prayer, and in-depth study on justice and peace
Celebrate Shabbat in Jerusalem with Jewish Families
Time provided to walk, shop, and visit.
Price: Land cost is $1990 includes lodging, ground transportation and guides.
10 days, 9 nights all breakfasts included plus 5 dinners and 2 lunches
Single Occupancy Supplement Available
Deadline for Payment October 4, 2010
For more information:
office@rhr-na.org, or (212) 845-5201
Rabbis for Human Rights-North America
333 Seventh Avenue, 13th Flr, New York, NY 10001 • (212) 845-5201
by Kol Ra'ash Gadol [➚] · Monday, September 13th, 2010
Well, I have a hard time figuring out how they could meet the requirements (for some of them anyway), but really, who cares? It’s not like I could afford any of them anyway, or even find a place to put them. And they’re lovely.
Enjoy the Jewish equivalent of a unicorn chaser, here.
So, too, is a thicket of rules. The Talmud demands that a sukkah have at least two and a half walls, a roof that allows indwellers to see the stars and feel the rain but nevertheless stay mostly in the shade. The roof must be made of uprooted organic material—twigs or fronds, say—but no food or utensils (no chopstick thatching allowed). Mystifyingly, the rabbis of yore explicitly permitted the carcass of an elephant to be used as one of the walls. (No contestants took advantage of that option, sensing perhaps that the Department of Buildings or peta might not concur.) Neither the DOB nor the Parks Department had a problem with Kyle May and Scott Abrahams’s proposal for a cedar trunk supported on glass walls. The competition’s rabbinic consultant worried that the log might be too solid, though, and required that it be perforated.
The best entries play on a childlike desire to duck inside a mini-structure in search of fantasy. The most alluringly over-the-top, Blo Puff, by the Brooklyn-based team called Bittertang, looks like some soft, curvaceous organism that encloses a walk-in pouch saturated with the smell of eucalyptus. The most theatrically intricate and least hutlike finalist is Repetition Meets Difference, by the German architect Matthias Karch. In this multilayered helix, lengths of wood are knotted together in a system of joinery that can make any structure infinitely extendable. As a secular urban pavilion it would be an ornament, but it is also a showy riff on a holiday about humility, a tour de force of engineering where none is needed.
Vote on your favorite here
by Kol Ra'ash Gadol [➚] · Sunday, September 5th, 2010
Alright, I know I’m kinda behind, as this is last week’s (month’s really) news, but it’s the season of forgiveness, okay?
Over the past month, there’s a been a lot of discussion of intermarriage in the wake (Is that a pun? Sorta) of the Clinton-Mezvinsky wedding. One article that caught my eye is the piece in the Forward last week by Conservative Rabbi Jason Miller,urging the Rabbinical Assembly to rescind the ban on Conservative rabbis participating in or attending intermarriages (of Jews to non-Jews anyhow. I don’t think other pairings are found disturbing).
In theory, violating this ban can have a rabbi expelled from the RA, although in practice, as Miller points out, attendance at interfaith weddings has not – as far as I or he or anyone I’ve queried, knows- actually resulted in said expulsion. I can’t say that I agree with Rabbi Miller, although I have mixed feelings about it: since in fact, there is no consequence for for violating the attendance part of the ban, rabbis who need to go because it is their child or a close family member, can actually attend, while preserving other rabbis’ ability to say that ultimately, intermarriage is not something that they are able to celebrate, if that is their bent, and having the movement stand behind them, which given the ostensible principles of the movement, seems reasonable to expect.
Rabbi Miller seems to view the refusal to attend interfaith weddings as tribalism, rather than as a more complex problem. I suppose in the case where the Jewish member of the couple is Jewish in name only, and doens’t view Judaism as important at all, then tribalism might be a fair description, but for a rabbi in the Conservative movement, who at least in theory views Judaism as having a divine component, and Jews (as a people) as having a particular and holy mission, that strikes me as an unfair description.
In some respects, I view this as a variant of the same discussion that happens about the driving tshuvah. Jews on the more observant end may point out that it was a mistake to allow it, as those who were going to drive would drive anyhow, while the tshuvah givies the appearance that driving is okay to everyone else, halachicly speaking (the problem with the tshuvah appears most especially to be two things: 1. the people who wrote it had only the sketchiest idea of the inner workings of an engine, and 2. there was a deliberate stretching of the way halachah works , in honesty, beyond the breaking point: claiming that the spark of the spark plug is a sort of unintended side effect of the driving is sort of like claiming that the heat on a stove is an unintended side effect of cooking the food) while in fact, it isn’t really, and even the tshuvah sort of admits it. Instead the better solution might have been to simply not address the issue, nor castigate those who chose to drive, and welcome them as one would anyone else, simply not taking note of the matter. However, once the tshuvah is published, it’s very difficult – I would say impossible- to reverse it to that situation, since any change away from a complete acceptance then appears to be a rejection of the people who drive.
Am I advocating hypocrisy? I suppose so. I think that in this case Miss Manners would approve (Miss Martin, if you should happen to read Jewschool please feel free to weigh in). Perhaps I can argue that mipnei darkei shalom, hypocrisy might be our best alternative?
Interested in other peoples’ thoughts on this.
by Kol Ra'ash Gadol [➚] · Sunday, August 8th, 2010
I don’t think I really need to add anything.
Suddenly there came a furious knocking at my front door. Outside stood an ultra-Orthodox rabbi, with a big black hat, a long black beard, and a red canister of gasoline in his hand. Two young yeshiva students were at his side, one holding a clipboard, the other holding a baseball bat. I opened the door.
“Shalom Auslander?” the rabbi asked.
“Yes?”
“Shalom Auslander, the Jew?”
“What an odd question,” I said.
“Yes or no,” he said.
“Yes.”
The yeshiva student with the clipboard checked something off on his sheet of paper, and the rabbi handed me a small wooden box.
“It is my duty to inform you,” he said, “that you are no longer Jewish.”
HT Dan Sieradski via FB.
by Kol Ra'ash Gadol [➚] · Sunday, August 8th, 2010
NEWS ITEM: In a special news report published online by the NEW YORK JEWISH WEEK, a woman was designated by Rabbi Avraham Weiss to lead Kabbalat Shabbat services on Friday night, July 30, for the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale, an Orthodox Union synagogue.
The article goes on to say
In the past year, there has unfolded within American Modern Orthodox Judaism the first major evidences of a pending theological schism, as a small but media-savvy minority of rabbinic activists from the YCT/ IRF camp have begun pushing the MO envelope farther to the Left than mainstream Modern Orthodoxy ever contemplated. At the center of the impending schism is Rabbi Avi Weiss. He is charismatic and dynamic, rabbi of a shul with a large membership where he can introduce any innovation he desires, and he has a rabbinical seminary and rabbinical association in place to give his agenda the aura of a legitimate “movement.” Although Young Israel synagogues do not readily accept YCT graduates as congregational rabbis and the 900-member RCA does not regard YCT ordination as carrying the legitimacy of a RIETS Semikha, Rabbi Weiss has decided that he no longer needs communal approbation to venture on his own because he has the minions.
More »
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