Bad News for Borat
The Israeli authorities have censored posters of Borat sporting his signature neon-green singlet because they are “indecent.” However, if Shlomo Amar gets his way, that’ll be the least of Sacha Baron Cohen’s worries.
Should Cohen and his bride-to-be, Isla Fisher, choose to make a life for themselves in the Holy Land (yeah, right, who am I kidding?), Fisher, who has recently converted to Judaism, may no longer be eligible for Israeli citizenship under the right of return. Amar has petitioned the government to deny citizenship to Jews who are not considered halakhically Jewish — ie., those whose mothers are not Jewish, or who did not receive an Orthodox conversion.
Luckily for Cohen, a Habonim veteran with an Israeli mother, he already has Israeli citizenship, so Fisher could apply for citizenship as his spouse, bureaucratically-choked a process as that may be. But for those who have made the leap to non-obtuse forms of Jewish observance and have committed to a life in an already inhospitable nation, should Amar succeed, their good deeds shall not go unpunished. That is, of course, unless they can dribble a ball.
Yay, theocracy!
They’re saying that they’re trying to close a loophole that allows apparent undesirable foreign workers, is Israel really that sought-after for work? It also comes off as the Orthodox high-rollers trying to keep a hold on their monopoly. I’m not Israeli, so I have no idea.
mock-theocracy is more like it. Israel’s religious obnoxiousness has less to do with theology and more to do with co-option of religion for the sake of control, and the need to build devotion through suffering. Watch! once you’ve been through the process, having suffered for Israel, nothing will tear you away from it. mwah ha ha !
I think you read the news wrong. Amar is doing much, much worse. He is trying to establish a conversion monopoly of the Israeli chief rabbinate and impose it on the entire Jewish world, via the law of return (which should, since Jews are not persecuted anymore, be abolished, but never mind).
He’s saying that Orthodox conversions- if not conducted by him or his apointees – should be held invalid by the Israeli government. That way, he thinks, he can get around the discrimination between O and non O conversions abroad.
Amit: “via the law of return (which should, since Jews are not persecuted anymore, be abolished,”
This sentence should be declared the most naive statement in all of internet.
This i my wife.
This is my other wife.
This is my Mistress.
This is my sister.
This one I have to pay for. But she is worth it, Wa wa wee wa!
Can Sascha Baron Cohen marry a convert if he is a Cohen? Just wondering.
not if he’s frum! but he’s an observant reconstructionist, so…