Mishegaas, Misc.
- This merits a post of its own, but briefly, a new bill has decided to fly in the face of halakha and distinguish converts from those born of Jewish parents vis a vis Israeli citizenship, and to hand the Rabbinate more power over conversions, which would be a disaster on many levels.
- A site called Vidui Variations is starting up, offering a space for a variety of ways to think about Jewish approaches to death and dying. Lots of amazing stuff (and I’m not just saying that because its name is a wink to my own Kiddushin Variations).
- The Jewish Women’s Archive has started a very cool interactive Jewish women’s mapping project. Ch-ch-check it out.
- A small scuffle around a Holocaust musical.
- This piece on one group’s attempts to cast aspersions at the kashrut status of lox has quite the comments section.
- New York State earmarked nearly $1 million a year ago to tackle sex abuse in New York’s ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities; evidently none of it has been spent yet.
- There’s a new Ethiopian Jewish haggadah out.
a new bill has decided to fly in the face of halakha
How does the bill do that? It doesn’t make any new judgments about who can be considered a Jew. It only arbitrates who can be considered for citizenship via the Law of Return. Or is there something about the bill that I’m missing?
NB: personally, I don’t see this as a huge deal. I mean, I guess the bill is a bad idea, but insofar as it’s really just part of a rotten system altogether, I can’t get that excited about this particular manifestation of injustice.
Anyone know where to get the Ethiopian Haggad from online?
Miri– citizenship under the Law of Return is based on whether you meet their criteria as Jewish, or at least 25% Jewish descent. So yes, this is making a judgment on who is a Jew.
I know the Law of Return makes it citizenship very easy (if you make the cut). But what do people know about the process of getting citizenship if you aren’t eligible under the Law of Return?
Sorry, Rebecca, the question still remains how it violates Halacha. I agree that it’s a crappy law, though.
Josh writes:
Sorry, Rebecca, the question still remains how it violates Halacha.
Discriminating against converts is an issur d’oraita.
Still, I think this talking point (that the bill violates halachah) coming from the Masorti movement is highly counterproductive. Given the current power structure in Israel, it’s not in the liberal movements’ long-term interest to promote the idea that proposed policies should be evaluated based on whether they adhere to halachah (even if that’s a winning argument for this particular issue). As liberal Jews, we may believe that our interpretations of halachah are correct and legitimate, but most Israelis (whether Orthodox or secular) would disagree.
citizenship under the Law of Return is based on whether you meet their criteria as Jewish, or at least 25% Jewish descent. So yes, this is making a judgment on who is a Jew.
Yes, I’m familiar with the Law of Return, but I still don’t see how the proposed bill changes the definition of Jew. Again, the bill doesn’t make any claims about who is a Jew, it only makes a claim about who’s eligible for citizenship under the LoR. What they’re attempting to change is the criteria for aliyah, not the criteria of who is a Jew. Those aren’t the same thing.
On another subject, BZ’s point about discrimination against converts is interesting, but again, the issue in the bill (as I understand it) isn’t about converts per se, but people who convert while in Israel and who wouldn’t have previously been eligible for aliyah. This whole thing is driven by xenophobia – it’s meant to try to crack down on foreign workers (i.e. Thais, Philippinos, etc) who decide to convert in Israel in order to gain citizenship. Someone associated with the bill said this explicitly.
Again, I have pretty much nothing at stake with regards to this bill, but the knee-jerk responses to the bill (including Danya’s) have been really irritating to me. Maybe because it seems like we’re talking about a state which is based on exclusion and discrimination, and has been since the beginning, and yet everyone is flipping out about this one bill attempting to legislate – you guessed it – exclusion and discrimination.
Maybe because it seems like we’re talking about a state which is based on exclusion and discrimination, and has been since the beginning, and yet everyone is flipping out about this one bill attempting to legislate – you guessed it – exclusion and discrimination.
It’s because some suffer from a delusional belief in the viability of a schizophrenic Israel (ie, it can be a pure liberal Western democracy and a “Jewish” state, at the same time.)
Btw., for those of us who don’t have a problem with the idea that the state of Israel, primarily, is inteded to be a country for Jews, the Gavison-Medan document gives some interesting ideas for citizenship.
http://www.gavison-medan.org.il/english/faq/
BZ,
First off, the state (i.e. religious courts) don’t consider them actually converts but that’s besides the point. Understand, BTW, that my wife is a convert and I’m deeply distressed by all of this. But let’s keep halacha out of this.
Also, FWIW, there are certain things that halacha says converts can never do, so there is some discrimination that occurs within halacha. But that’s another conversation.
On the flip side, check this out :
http://cgis.jpost.com/Blogs/conservative/
Ovadia Yosef held up a conservative conversion.