MAY 13th — Noa Raz, a Conservative Jew in her early thirties who lives and works in Tel Aviv, was physically assaulted early Tuesday morning by an ultra-Orthodox man at the Central Bus Station in Be’er Sheva for having the imprints of tefillin (phylacteries) lines visible on her arms.
She had woken up several hours earlier to pray and wrap tefillin, as is part of her daily routine. “I’m very pale, so the tefillin lines are still visible for hours afterward,” she said. While she was waiting for the bus to arrive, an ultra-Orthodox man in his forties stood next to her and stared at the lines on her arms. He asked her twice if the imprints were from tefillin. She ignored him at first, then admitted they were. At that point he grabbed her hand and began to kick and strangle her while screaming “women are an abomination.” She struggled, then broke free and ran to the bus which had just pulled into the station.
There were several bystanders present, though Noa Raz stated that the assault happened so quickly that none had time to react.
Raz arrived in Tel Aviv and sent out a message about the assault on Twitter. Dozens of people responded urged her to go to police to report what had happened. Raz contacted the police the following day, fearing that a similar incident would happen to another woman.
…
The Israel Religious Action Center (IRAC) has been working with the Be’er Sheva Police and has insisted they treat Raz’s assault as the hate crime that it is. Anat Hoffman, Executive Director of IRAC, stated that the assault on Noa Raz for wrapping tefillin “should not be seen as an isolated incident, but as taking place within an atmosphere of growing violence toward and intimidation of women who seek to pray freely and equally. Too often these acts of violence are tolerated. The fact that this man thought it acceptable to attack a woman for performing a religious act in private is an example of the escalation of violence targeted against women and against religious pluralists in Israel. We at IRAC are pushing the Israeli police to take this investigation seriously.”.
[I have Personal Jesus stuck in my head now. Why did I think that was a good subject line?]
From Failed Messiah comes today’s favourite “those crazy hareidim” story:
Haredi airline passengers are being advised to hang a new type of mehitza – a halachic barrier to separate the sexes – around the top of their airplane seats, to shield their eyes from immodest neighbors and in-flight movies.
The Rabbinical Council for Public Transportation, which is also representing the haredi community on the issue of gender-segregated “mehadrin” buses, is now placing advertisements in haredi newspapers encouraging the community to purchase the traveler mehitzas.
The new mehitzas, made of white nylon, stick onto the fabric of the airplane chair using Velcro and can be arranged to make a protective “shield.” The mehitza goes around the head and is mostly in front of the passenger’s face, protruding only a little to the sides. Its designer, who asked that his name not be published, declined to share pictures and his design details, but said the mehitzas were “airy” and did not bother anybody.
This is ridiculous. I’ve been on El Al flights where flight attendants have asked women to change seats so that haredi men don’t have to, gasp!, sit next to them. Are they really going to sit with their heads in boxes for a full flight? No, they’re going to continue insisting that the women be moved away from them.
On the other hand, I’ve definitely been on flights where I’ve wished I could just block out everyone around me… Hmm… Maybe there is a market for such an item!
Below is an article (tshuvah) by Rabbi David Golinkin of the Schechter Institute in Jerusalem–the seminary that trains Masorti (Conservative) rabbis in Israel. I don’t agree with all of his conclusions (namely, he seems to imply but not state outright that Women of the Wall shouldn’t fight for equal rights to pray at the lower plaza of the Kotel (Western Wall), and I believe strongly that they should indeed continue doing so), but anywhichway there’s some interesting stuff for discussion here.
Question: Since the arrest of Nofrat Frenkel in November 2009 for wearing a tallit and trying to read the Torah at the Kotel, there has been much discussion of the Women at the Wall and the right of women to wear a talit in the women’s section at the Kotel.1 There has not been enough discussion, however, of a much greater problem: In recent years, the Rabbi of the Kotel has expanded the synagogue section of the Kotel plaza and the Kotel Guard now patrol the entire Kotel plaza. They have posted large signs warning people to dress modestly. They tell people how to dress and what to wear, they tell women and girls not to sing, they separate girls from boys and they tell Christians to remove the crosses from their necks. The result is that non-Orthodox Jews have begun to avoid the Kotel entirely and many military ceremonies have been moved to other locations. Indeed, a recent poll (December 23, 2009) shows that 90% of Israelis want less gender-separation at the Kotel.2
Therefore, please answer the following questions: I) Was the area near the Kotel considered a synagogue before 1948 and did it have a mehitzah?
II) Why is the Ministry of Religion in charge of the entire Kotel plaza?
III) What is the halakhic status, as opposed to the legal status, of the Kotel Plaza; is it really a synagogue?
IV) How should the State of Israel deal with the fact that the entire Kotel plaza is slowly but surely becoming a Haredi synagogue? More »
I do not hate orthodox believers. I do not hate Orthodox Judaism. I do not hate the haredi or their Judaism either. I like and dislike them as much as I dislike orthodoxy (lower case “o”) in any stream of Judaism, including Reform and Conservative and (yes even!) havurah hippyness. Which I think is why the vociferous, self-contradictory and abusive comments left by self-identified Orthodox Jews on Eli Valley’s latest comic at The Forward are missing the point. Then again, those commentors always miss the point.
Extremists are bad for Judaism. But the romanticization of those extremists — meaning views that put them at the top of the Jewish authenticity scale — is like admiring Islamic extremists for their “authenticity.” The vastness of religion is always shamed by a minority who will excuse their human desires through theology. Women are barred from leadership and study. Xenophobia is granted a divine rubber stamp. Social contract obligations are ignored. The rule of law is disregarded. I would think we can all agree on this.
Which is why I think anybody should be able read Eli Valley’s comic and see the truth of it without going berserk. No where does Eli say all Orthodox Jews are like this. If you feel defensive, then I recommend a particular course of action: speak up not to Eli but the speakers whose words are quoted. (Citations are here.) But the speakers of these words are not kicked out of communal leadership, shunned or defunded. In fact, quite the opposite.
If these speakers had no authority or little influence, they would remain our crazy uncle. But in Israel, the haredim control the Official Stamp of Judaism. And the Modern Orthodox bloc is the home camp of the settlers. And in America, as Eli rightly points out, starry-eyed and naive Jews leave a boring Judaism for another Judaism that at least has a mission. Because of this, we need to (and are) pulling down the boring Judaism and building something better. But we also need to point out that authenticity is a sham. And that evil is evil, especially if it’s authentic evil.
It is hard to imagine a more embarrassing situation in which to find an exclusive ultra-Orthodox organization – a group that was a standard-bearer in the fight against “breaches in the wall of conversion” and “the penetration of complete gentiles into the vineyard of Israel.”
These breaches pale into insignificance in comparison with the accusations against the man who heads the organization itself: according to the claims, Rabbi Leib Tropper of Rockland County abandoned the apparently stringent Halakhic standards of his Haredi organization and established a conversion process based on his most private impulses.
A report in the New York Post earlier this week revealed a sensational story about “a prominent Orthodox rabbi has been caught on tape discussing his apparent love affair with a shiksa he was converting to Judaism.”
The woman involved is 32-year-old Shannon Orand of Houston, who still seeks to convert from Christianity to Judaism. The bulk of the report deals with embarrassing comments that the rabbi made during a phone call, during which he was recorded demanding the woman perform a number of sexual services for himself and his friends in exchange for granting her a conversion certificate.
…
Rabbi Tropper’s stated goal in founding the Eternal Jewish Family was to “fortify the walls of conversion,” amid an ideological debate between the Haredi and national camps in Israel. …As such, the doors of senior Haredi officals were thrown open to him…. because of his efforts and comments against conversions by the Conversion Authority, against the “infiltration” of gentiles into the people of Israel.
by Aryeh Cohen [➚] · Wednesday, December 9th, 2009
The new Sh’ma is out. It’s got some great articles about the intersection of Judaism and “the law of the land” (i.e. this land), and responses to a wonderful passage from Agnon about Hanukkah — its not what you would think.
A little while back, in addressing recent discussions of minyanim and reacting to Rabbi Elie Kaunfer, BZ posted:
Rabbi Kaunfer writes “New self-proclaimed movements sprung up — Reconstructionism, and the Renewal and Chavurah Movements.” The “Chavurah movement” is not now and has never been a “self-proclaimed movement” parallel to the “big three” or the Reconstructionist movement. Rabbi Kaunfer himself has argued for why the latest wave of independent minyanim do not constitute a “movement” in that mold, and the same is true for earlier waves of havurot.
This has led me to think about the similarities and differences between what people tend to refer to as Chavura, Conservative, Independent Minyan, Orthodox, Reconstructionist, Reform, and Renewal. (note that I alphabetized them rather than forcing them into a spectrum that doesn’t quite fit). Of course these labels have substantial overlap. Some are parallel. Some are not. They all come about because people want quick categories that they can use to label the Jewish approach of themselves and others.
–This next paragraph can be skipped, it defines a few terms and frames the issue, but some might find it needlessly semantic–Some of these labels are (what I’ll call) institutional, ideological, and/or aesthetic. Institutional groupings are based on a subset of Jews being unified based on connection to an institution(s). For instance, The Conservative movement is an institutional grouping since it’s people are connected through camps, schools, youth groups, an other institutions. It is also an ideological grouping since it has positions on many questions that it endorses. Conservative Jews have tendencies to think about Israel in certain ways, egalitarianism, etc. Of course, some differ and there is some diversity, but certainly, you can see what I mean by ideological grouping. By aesthetic, I mean a preference for decision-making model, prayer approach, or something else which is not explicitly Ideological. In many cases these issues are deeply moral, so I don’t mean to imply that this is in any sense superficial. Minyanim, for instance are united by a desire for lay-ledness and thus “Minyan” is an aesthetic grouping. This is a rather arbitrary nuance but there certainly is a nuance between how people think about the world (ideology) and how they prefer their prayer specifically (prayer aesthetic) that while influenced by the former is a slightly different issue.
Now I’ll take a look at a few common groupings and examine what they are, where they come from, and which they are parallel too, and not. More »
The transporation committee found that while the segregation on select bus lines is supposed to be voluntary (women at the back, men at the front), the haredi population “treats them as lines ‘belonging’ to the haredi population.” Haredi groups expect a publicly-funded separate arrangement that contravenes the Basic Laws of freedom of movement and religion, it reported. “This, in turn, led to attempts on their part to force these arrangements on passengers who did not agree to them.” The reports of assaulted women are not pretty.
Women’s rights activists within the haredi and orthodox communities are campaigning Katz to accept the committee’s conclusions. Israeli author Naomi Ragen told JPost that Katz should accept it ”so that we know that we are living in a democratic state and not in Iran and Afghanistan.” In a NIF portrait of orthodox women’s activists, Kolech-Religious Women’s Forum activist Zahava Fisher said, “Whether it is Blacks like Rosa Parks being asked to sit at the back of the bus in the US, or women being asked to sit at the back of the bus in Israel, we cannot accept segregation.”
Apparently there is nothing in halakha mandating segregation of men and women in public places. A ruling by Rabbi Moshe Feinstein even permits mixed seating on public transportation and says that any man who experienced erotic contact in such contexts has problems. (Two points to the first reader who can find it online.)
I’m more than a little uncomfortable with the Iran-Afghanistan-Israel parallel, and I have no problem supporting my like-minded bretheren from out here in the Diaspora. So do our sisters in Israel a favor and let Katz know that the mehadrin buses should end. That kind of religion is below Israel’s dignity.
Katz’s email, office phone and fax below the fold. More »
Nofrat Frenkel, a medical student from Beersheva, was arrested for wearing a tallit at a gathering of Women of the Wall at the Kotel (Western Wall) today. (That’s not a picture of her–that’s some other folks from Women of the Wall.)
The stam (anonymous voice) of Menachot 43a tells us that “Everyone is obligated in tzitzit–Priests, Levites and Israelites, converts, women and minors.” The Rambam tells us that if women want to wrap themselves in tzitzit, we do not protest. The Shulchan Aruch says that women and slaves are exempt from tzitzit, and the commentator the Rema says that, nevertheless, if they wish to wrap themselves and say the blessing, it is permissible as with all positive time-bound commandments. R. Moshe Feinstein says that “women are permitted to perform even mitzvot from which they are exempt by the Torah, and they get a mitzvah and a reward upon performing them…. and if so, also regarding tzitzit it is appropriate for a woman who wants to wear a garment that is different from a man’s clothing but has four corners, that she put on tzitzit and fulfill this mitzvah.”
The theocracy in Israel is not about the love of and service to God.
Who do they think they are, the Rubashkins or something? This story doesn’t end, because BRI NEXT NY’s funding is still intact. Unlike every other Birthright Next program in the world, the New York area’s BRI NEXT programming is under the exclusive control of The JEC, an ultra-Orthodox kiruv group. And while that would irk me and many of us simply because thats not honest or pluralistic, BRI NEXT NY seems to have an ongoing “wardrobe malfunction” that leaves an extreme right-wing political agenda periodically exposed.
First it was that pharmaceutical industry shill “educating” about the ‘dangers’ of health care reform. Now we have what, the Pastor Hagee Homophobic End-Times Dominionist Yid-Using Revival Choir?
Next month in New York, courtesy of The JEC and BRI NEXT NY: Gordon Robertson, CEO of the Christian Broadcasting Network, at an evententitled: “Are Evangelical Christians More Fervent Zionists Than American Jews?”
Because folks who treat Jews like expendable characters in an irresponsible eschatalogical video game are really into the ideas of Jewish self-sovereignty and the flowering of an indepedent Jewish society.
World Vision Report notes this week that the economic recession here in the US has had an unexpected effect – less funding of kollel in Israel. And the result? well, someone’s gotta pay for those 72 pack of diapers. Women who have not worked are going out ot work. They are learning skills which they can turn towards business while their husbands remain in kollel “with a clean heart” studying.
They are learning from women who dress like they do, in places approved by their rabbis.
They are going out to work and saying that they feel needed, that they take pride in their work.
I suppose I don’t need to say….it’ s hard to get women to give up those manufacturing jobs once the men get home from the war and want them back. Oh, oops, wrong country.
But, you know… what are you going to do with all those women, once they think that they matter too….
Marx was right about one thing… equality is all about money.
BTW, I’m going to say… the slideshow only has a few pictures of hareidi women working (although a few of them are of the photographer mentioned in the audio article). Not all that interesting if you’re familiar with the ultra-orthodox of Israel in any way.
Rabbi Elyashiv of the Lithuanian stream of ultra-Orthodoxy has ruled that it is best not to wear Crocs shoes on Yom Kippur even though they are not made out of leather and, therefore, would seemingly be permissible for the holiday. His reasoning behind the ruling is that they are too comfortable, and thus don’t provide the level of suffering one should feel on the holiday.
Do with this what you will. (Haven’t Crocs’ 15 minutes expired, even in Israel?)
How Jews Pray, the third in MyJewishLearning’s “How Jews…” series, checks out what Jews are talking about — from an Australian Jew in New York to an Argentinian Jew in Los Angeles, and other folks in the woods, the cities, and some places in between. What do people who don’t believe in God think about praying?
When I was young, a secular Jewish kid living down the street from Hasidim — a weird remix of The Chosen — I thought it was mysterious how all the long-black-coated, hair-covered Jews was that they seemed to have their own way of talking to God. They didn’t just go to synagogue and pray like normal people — they would pray in living rooms, or in backyards, and they muttered to themselves walking down the street. Plus, they wore those funny clothes. Was God telling them something that God wasn’t telling the rest of us?
I guess I just felt disenfranchised.
This was before I met Jewish Renewalists who meditate and pray. And musicians like Chana Rothman and Jeremiah Lockwood, who pray by singing their hearts out. And before I learned how to pray myself, wherever I was and whatever was on my mind, sometimes in a “thank you” way, and sometimes in an “I need to save myself” way.
A few weeks ago, in introducing his new prayerbook, Rabbi Jonathan Sacks said, “We have a problem with prayer” — and proceeded to detail how, in this world where we’re obsessed with talking about ourselves and eavesdropping on other people, we’ve forgotten what it’s like to speak to God. Whatever each of us think of God, and even, in one person’s case, whether or not we believe in God.
I think that’s my favorite thing about this video, above all the others we’ve done so far. It helps us remember.
For those of us who live in the U.S. and who, at least in this country, are committed to the ideal of separation of church and state- it is odd to see our own religion so deeply intertwined in the workings of a Democratic Jewish state. In her first documentary, Amy Beth Oppenheimer explores the role of the Rabbinate in Israeli life, mostly in terms of what it means for marriage. Her Film, Faces of Israel raises provocotive questions- What is the role of the Rabbinate? Who should be included in it? What are the alternatives to it? Should Israel allow Same-sex or secular Civil Unions? Her presentation, in the form of a series of interviews, is surprisingly evenhanded, and broad in scope. She allows her subjects, who range from rabbinic leaders to average Israeli citizens, to speak for themselves. That even-handedness is the strength of this movie, and I hope it will inspire viewers to hear the many disparate voices in this conversation.
Faces of Israel opens Tues. March 24th at the Riverdale Y and will be followed by a panel discussion. Tickets can be purchased in advance at www.facesthemovie.com, or at the door.
We have, for many years now, heard of the various excesses of the Israeli rabbinical courts. Orthodoxy in Israel is not loved by the average Israeli, and in fact, is probably one of the greatest causes of people moving away from Judaism.
How are we to show the good parts of Judaism to a community that has to suffer under things like this:
OKay, so in this case, we simply have a more famous person (the son of Fackenheim) having doubts cast on his conversion. This is just one of perhaps hundreds or even thousands of people affected by the Israeli rabbanut’s hysterical – and by the way, not-halachic- refusal to recognize conversions if the person doens’t live according to the mostly cultural, and not necessarily halachic requirements of the hareidi community. Failed Messiah pointed out this article last month and offered his own translation. In fact, halacha states that once a person is converted, they can’t undo the conversion- the hareidi community has for years been innovating all kinds of halachot (while denying that any such thing is going on) whether rules of marriage or conversion or dress or which side of the street or seat on the bus one may use – and all sorts of other actually social control details, which have nothing to do with God’s demands of us.
Why, oh why haven’t we done anything about this chilul hashem? Politically, it’s pretty clear that the original reason for giving in to ridiculous hareidi demands is not going to happen – the hareidim aren’t going to disappear on their own and be relegated to a foot note of history. To the contrary the more power we give them, the stronger they get. The modern reasons for giving them power are less straightforward. Israeli’s complicated political structure means that many politicians hold their nose and give them what they want to that they can achieve other political ends – this is not an excellent strategy either, as in the long term it undermines civil society and fragments Israel, not to mention the chilul hashem that drives Jews away from Judaism – and for good measure feeds the bile of anti-Semites.
It is interesting to see that someone is actually thinking about maybe possibly doing something. The Rabbinical Assembly, currently having its yearly convention in Jerusalem, will today consider a call to dissolve Israel’s Chief Rabbinate.
According to JTA The Rabbinical Assembly has noted that “the Chief Rabbinate has had an ‘unfortunate impact on Israeli society,” which often associates it with “corruption, favoritism and cronyism.’ and that the rabbinate ‘misrepresents the nature of Judaism to the world at large’.”
O RLY?
Why even the moderate Orthodox haven’t yet joined for calling for this is a mystery, after all, the Hareidim don’t like them either – or for that matter pretty much anyone but a few select members of themselves.After all, the rabbanut has tried to get many Orthodox rabbis excluded from being able to perform conversions, as well. That was as far back as 2006.
But don’t worry, nothing is going to happen. After all, a bunch of Conservative rabbis aren’t really going to have any impact on Israel’s politics as usual. Never mind that not doing something about the growing absurdity of the the Jewish right may ultimately undermine Israel more than any number of other matters After all, what difference does it make to argue about whether or not to have a Jewish state, if the Jews themselves can’t stand what represents Judaism in that state, and turn away from it? I just hope God doesn’t turn away as well because the rest of us didn’t do anything to save Judaism.
In a couple of days, I’ll be heading over to the annual Y.U. Seforim Sale – one of the biggest Judaica book sales in the world, and one of my favorite events of the year- a sort of cultural pilgrimage involving something like 10,000 books and at least as many people. The sale draws Jews from different rabbinical schools, academic institutions, shuls and neighborhoods and offers mostly traditional texts, – but a few cookbooks, childrens books, CD’s and modern and academic works are thrown into the mix.
The sale runs from Feb. 1 to 22 in Belfer Hall, 2495 Amsterdam Ave., on Yeshiva University ’s Wilf Campus in Manhattan . For those outside of New York- they also have an on-line catalog.
According to the Jerusalem Post, El Al is in talks with “representatives of the haredi community” about the establishment of mehadrin flights, with gender-segregated seating, strictly Glatt kosher food, and no secular in-flight movies.
While no final decision has yet been made, Rabbi Yitzhak Goldknopf, of the Council for the Sanctity of the Shabbat and one of the main haredi negotiators, is optimistic, saying the meeting with El Al had been “very positive.”
Interestingly, in 2006 the same Jerusalem Post reporter covered a story about haredim in Israel establishing an entire mehadrin airline. Which makes the current news sound a little bit like the mehadrin recession special.
Below is an article (tshuvah) by Rabbi David Golinkin of the Schechter Institute in Jerusalem–the seminary that trains Masorti (Conservative) rabbis in Israel. I don’t agree with all of his conclusions (namely, he seems to imply but not state outright that 
Women arrested at the Kotel
Nofrat Frenkel, a medical student from Beersheva, was arrested for wearing a 
Who do they think they are, the Rubashkins or something? 
Ynet 
follow us on Twitter
follow us on Facebook
subscribe to our email