US anti-Zionist synagogue gutted

Neturei Karta members believe in the abolition of the state of Israel

A synagogue of an anti-Zionist Jewish group has been destroyed in a fire.

The blaze tore through a synagogue of Neturei Karta near New York and the residence of a senior rabbi. Police have established a crime scene and are investigating the cause of the fire. The ultra-orthodox group has recently been the target of threats.

Last year, five members of the group attended a Tehran conference questioning the Holocaust and met Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

‘Marriage to an Arab is national treason’

Recent poll reveals steep rise in racist views against Arabs in Israel; many participants feel hatred, fear when overhearing Arabic, 75% don’t approve of shared apartment buildings

Over half of the Jewish population in Israel believes the marriage of a Jewish woman to an Arab man is equal to national treason, according to a recent survey by the Geocartography Institute.

Jerusalem Police against chastity squad

Jerusalem Police against chastity squad

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Meah Shearim residents agitated following wave of arrests of ‘modesty guard’ activists. In one of demonstrations held every evening, youngsters flip over police car in capital.

‘The chastity squad activists are doing what the police should be doing,’ senior community

member says

‘Modesty patrols’ sow fear

Jewish ‘modesty patrols’ sow fear in Israel

Some terrified that mere perception of impropriety could ruin their lives

JERUSALEM – In Israel’s ultra-Orthodox Jewish community, where the rule of law sometimes takes a back seat to the rule of God, zealots are on a campaign to stamp out behaviour they consider unchaste.

• They hurl stones at women for such “sins” as wearing a red blouse and attack stores selling devices that can access the Internet.

• In recent weeks, self-styled “modesty patrols” have been accused of breaking into the apartment of a Jerusalem woman and beating her for allegedly consorting with men.
• They have torched a store that sells MP4 players, fearing devout Jews would use them to download pornography.

“These breaches of purity and modesty endanger our community,” said 38-year-old Elchanan Blau, defending the bearded, black-robed zealots. “If it takes fire to get them to stop, then so be it.”

Honour, haredi-style

Religious Affairs: Honour, haredi-style

Which restaurants and food products are kosher and which are not? Who is allowed to get married and who is not? Who can be a rabbi and who cannot?

Last week, elections took place to choose the state-empowered body – the Chief Rabbinate Council – that is supposed to answer these questions. The elections were an upset. The non-hassidic, Lithuanian-haredi rabbinic leadership, which gradually has been gaining more power within the Chief Rabbinate, suffered a major setback. Two of its veteran members, Rabbi of Rehovot Simcha Hakohen Kook and chairman of the Neighbourhood Rabbis Council Moshe Rauchverger, who is also a neighbourhood rabbi in the Haifa area, were voted out of the council.

Judaism’s golden mean

An ultra-Orthodox couple from Beit Shemesh are under arrest for allegedly assaulting at least some of their 12 children. Sadly, that’s not earth-shattering news in a country where child abuse seems to be on the rise. That some of the couple’s children may have engaged in incest only adds to the grotesque revelations.

Yet what makes this story truly bizarre is that the 54-year-old wife and mother involved also heads a sect of several dozen women who maintain a Taliban-like dress code requiring them to cover their faces and wear multiple layers of clothing.

Meanwhile, in Jerusalem, in another ultra-Orthodox household, several people are under police investigation for abusing two toddlers. The youngest remains hospitalized and in a coma. The mother allegedly “corrected” the children’s behaviour by whipping them. Police insinuate she may be part of a sect which adheres to violent child-rearing practices.

Ashkenazi haredim lose majority

Ashkenazi haredim lose majority in Chief Rabbinate membership vote

The leaders of Ashkenazi haredim suffered a blow to their hegemony in the Chief Rabbinate on Tuesday night while Shas and the national religious camp scored significant victories.

In a vote for 10 new members of the Chief Rabbinate’s Rabbinical Council, a large number of religious Zionist and Shas-backed rabbis were voted in. Rabbis Ya’acov Shapira, head of Jerusalem’s Zionist flagship Mercaz Harav Yeshiva, was chosen along with Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu, chief rabbi of Safed. Both Eliyahu and Shapira are sons of former chief rabbis and both are considered national religious.

Messianic Jews promote Ethiopian aliya

Under Operation Tikva, through which thousands of people in Ethiopia are provided with clean water, money for food and educational services, they are also reminded often that they are Jews and that the people of Israel are waiting for them.

What makes Operation Tikva different than other Jewish aid programs in Ethiopia, however, is that neither the Israeli government, the Jewish Agency for Israel, nor any other recognized aliya organization is involved in it. In fact, The Jerusalem Post has learned it is a program run by Messianic Jewish missionaries, and very few people in Israel even know about it.

It seems that while Israel has officially stopped encouraging the immigration of thousands of Ethiopians either via the Law of Return or the Law of Entry, other groups have taken up the task.

These Messianic Jewish missionaries continue to be active in far-flung villages of northern Ethiopia, telling local farming communities there that God, Israel and the Jewish people are rooting for them, even though their ancestral link to Judaism is tenuous at best.

Future foreigners’ conversions in doubt

Out of concern that Israel will be labelled a proselytizing nation, the Justice Ministry this week asked Chief Sephardi Rabbi Shlomo Amar to stop converting citizens of foreign countries. But Amar is proving reluctant to do so.

In a meeting on Sunday, attorney Harel Goldberg of the Consultation and Legislation Department in the Justice Ministry requested that Amar halt these conversions. Goldberg had sent a letter to Amar more than a month ago warning of the legal problems involved with the practice.

But an aide to Amar who deals with the conversions said that, together with the ministry, they still hoped to find a way to continue the practice.

Legal experts in the ministry and in the Attorney-General’s Office have opposed drafting any regulations that would give a religious authority the power to convert citizens of foreign countries.

Violence against non-Jews

US report:   Rise in violence against Messianic Jews and Christians

Violence against Christian evangelical and Messianic Jewish communities in Israel increased significantly during the period between July 1, 2007 and June 30, 2008, according to the US State Department’s Annual Report on International Religious Freedom.

The report, released last week, put blame for the “tensions” on “certain Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities.”

But except in one case, the report, which noted numerous incidents of discrimination or violence against Christian or Messianic Jewish communities or individuals, failed to prove that the perpetrators were Orthodox or ultra-Orthodox.

According to the US State Department, Jehovah’s Witnesses representatives reported a significant increase in assaults and other crimes against their members over the past 12-month period. Violent incidents were up from one to two a month in early 2007 to eight to nine a month in early 2008.

On October 23, 2007, suspected arsonists set fire to the Narkiss Street Baptist Church in Jerusalem. The pastor of a Russian Messianic Jewish congregation that meets in the church said that Yad L’Achim , a haredi anti-missionary organization, had threatened him and his congregation over the few years leading up to the attack.