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.

Arson claims

Rabbi Moshe Beck, who lives in the building in the town of Monsey – about 30 miles (48km) from New York – was in London when the fire broke out, said Neturei Karta member Rabbi Yisroel Dovid Weiss.

Mr Weiss said the group believes it was targeted by arsonists because it had previously received threats.

“There’s no question that the issue is to stifle the opposition to Zionism,” he said to AP news agency.

Police would not confirm whether they were treating the fire as suspicious.

Neturei Karta opposes the existence of the state of Israel on religious grounds.

Members of the group – whose name means “Guardians of the City” – believe Jews should live under Arab Muslim rule until the Messiah comes.

Last Updated: Monday, 2 April 2007

‘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.

The survey, which was conducted for the Centre Against Racism, also found that

• over 75% of participants did not approve of apartment buildings being shared between Arabs and Jews.
• 60% of participants said they would not allow an Arab to visit their home. Five hundred Jewish men and women participated in the poll, which was published Tuesday.

According to the survey, racism against Arabs in Israel has seen a sharp rise since a similar survey was conducted two years ago.

• In 2006, 247 racist acts against Arabs were reported, as opposed to 225 one year prior.
  
• About 40% of participants agreed that “Arabs should have their right to vote for Knesset revoked”.
• The number was 55% lower in the previous survey. Also,
  
• over half of the participants agreed that Israel should encourage its Arab citizens to immigrate from the country.

Over half of the participants said they would not want to work under the direct management of an Arab, and 55% said

“Arabs and Jews should be separated at entertainment sites”.

‘Arab culture inferior’

Participants were asked what they felt when they overheard someone speaking Arabic.

• 31% said they felt hatred, while

• 50% said they felt fear.

• Over 56% of participants said they believed that Israel’s Arab citizens posed both a security and a demographic threat to the country.
  

When asked what they thought of Arab culture,

• over 37% replied, “The Arab culture is inferior.”

  “The Centre Against Racism has set itself a goal to monitor all racial incidents against Arab citizens, and to fight racism as much as possible under the law through public action,” the centre annual report said.

Bachar Ouda, the center’s director, said the survey’s findings were worrisome, and urged the government to intervene in the situation.

“We call on the education minister to take the gloves off and deal with the issue seriously, because it is dangerous to coexistence. We call on the state prosecutions office, and the attorney general to take action,” Ouda said.

by Roee Nahmias

03.27.07,

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

Clashes on Yoel St., Thursday (Photo: Pini Rosen)

The ultra-Orthodox neighbourhood of Meah Shearim in Jerusalem was shaken up last week following the arrest of three residents suspected of being active in the haredi community’s chastity squad.

Demonstrations in protest of the arrest were held in the neighbourhood’s Shabbat Square every evening in the past week, and on Thursday, protesters clashed with police forces and even flipped over a police car on Yoel Street.

The first person arrested three weeks ago was Elhanan Buzaglo, who was indicted of attacking a woman suspected of improper ties with married men in the capital’s Maalot Dafna neighbourhood. According to the indictment, Buzaglo received $2,000 in return for his involvement in the attack.

Following his arrest, two additional suspects were detained last week. One of them is Shmuel Weisfish, who was allegedly involved in the torching of a store selling MP4 players against a ruling of the Ultra-Orthodox community’s court of justice.

On Wednesday, the police arrested Binyamin Meirovich, a Jerusalem resident suspected of being one of the chastity squad’s leaders, and the person responsible for the organization’s operations. The police were expected to ask the court to extend his remand on Friday.

Battle against MP4 players

The protests against the three men’s arrest were intensified Monday after the court decided to leave Weisfish in custody for seven additional days. The demonstrators directed their anger at a store on the Shabbat Square accused of selling “non-kosher” MP4 players.

On Wednesday evening, a group of yeshiva students demonstrated opposite another store in Meah Shearim, demanding that it stop selling “impure films.”

The haredi community accused the police of “deciding to destroy the chastity squad,” according to a prominent community member, who said that the “modesty guard” had nothing to do with the violent incidents.

“The chastity squad members are doing the work the police should have done. Instead of thanking us for putting things in order, they are acting against us and trying to destroy the guard,” he added.

“Instead of saying thank you, they arrest us”

Jerusalem Police Spokesman Shmulik Ben Ruby said in response that “following a strenuous investigation conducted over the past weeks, three haredi men suspected of hooliganism, attacks and vandalism were arrested and brought before the court for a remand hearing.

“The court extended their remand, and the police plan to recommend that they be charged with severe violations and belonging to an illegal organization harassing some of the haredi community members whose conduct is not to the liking of the chastity squad thugs.”

Murder threats

The indictment filed against Buzaglo unrolls the details of the severe incident.

“On June 1, 2008, at around 10:45 pm, the defendant arrived with six other people at the complainant’s home, armed with a bat and tear gas. The defendant and the others shoved the complainant, dropped her to the floor, beat her, slammed her head against the floor and kicked all parts of her body. The defendant or one of the others sat on her head in a bid to prevent her from seeing what was going on and to prevent her from resisting.

“The defendant and the others also tied a piece of cloth to the complainant’s mouth and warned her that should she open her eyes they would spray tear gas into them. The defendant or one of the others interrogated the complainant on her relations with men and asked for those men’s details. The assailants took two cell phones from the complainant in order to check the names of those who called her.

“At the end of the incident, the defendant or one of the others told the complainant that she must leave her apartment, otherwise ‘this will only be the beginning,’ and that if she remained there she would be murdered.”

Following the incident, the complainant suffered from serious injuries in all parts of her body and was in need of medical care.

According to the indictment, the complainant stated that the threats against her did not cease after the severe incident she described and that had she received continuous threatening phone calls throughout the following week.

A month later, she found a threatening letter in her mailbox and decided to leave her apartment, although her leasing contract would only expire in about a year.

Buzaglo was arrested after the police found his fingerprints in the complainant’s apartment, although he denied the accusations and the complainant said she didn’t know him and had never seen him before.

Judge Nava Ben Or was convinced that Buzaglo was not ideologically affiliated with the chastity squads, but ruled that he appeared to be “a rented fist”.

“A man who is allegedly willing to take part in the cruel beating of a young and helpless woman, ‘suspected’ of socializing with married men, and all this solely for money, is a dangerous, conscienceless person with no inhibitions. His activity in the framework of such an organization makes his dangerousness seven times worse,” the judge added.

The judge explained her decision to leave Buzaglo in custody, saying that the court had a duty to protect the defendant, that there was fear the defendant would attempt to disrupt the investigation and that he was convicted of violent offences in the past, including blackmail.

Buzaglo’s lawyer, Attorney Ariel Atari told Ynet that he would appeal the court’s decision.

Neta Sela

Apart from the Armenian Holocaust, there were never so many to die violently for their religion than the Jews in WW2 in recent history. In human history, more humans have died violently for their BELIEF in a god, gods or none than other cause. Belief in something for which there is no proof, but complete trust. If the Jews that survived the Holocaust have no belief in the right of all to have a belief in a god then those Jews are SPITTING on the dead Jews of the Holocaust. Their deaths can only have meaning if you defend the right of all Jews and OTHERS to believe in their god.

The right to believe in no god is as important a right as those that do. I believe in the equality of ALL. That I don’t believe in any god doesn’t lessen my right to my non-belief or my duty to defend those that do believe in their god. Should I only defend the right of those with a Christian belief, or a Jewish belief, but not a Muslim belief?

• Can the rat pack member truly believe that the tears of Gentiles for the Jewish dead of the Holocaust are but crocodile tears?
• Am I less human because I don’t believe in his god or any god?
• Why is his god special above all other gods?
• Is the god of hate and retribution superior to gods of love?
• I may disagree with his concept of a god but still defend his right to believe in his god. Why must I be for or against but not neutral?

So if I’m no longer a believing Christian then I cannot defend a deliberate insult to the Christian faith, as another rat pack member would argue? They’ve been so used to insulting Islam that insulting Christians and Jesus Christ is but a small step.

@ Cointelproagen says …”Here in the US where I live, we are free to insult anyone’s god. So fuck your god Hitler or whoever you pray to.”

Yet, if you say anything against Jews or their world, the ADL or their ilk are after you with anti-Semitic charges. When was the last anti-Muslin or anti-Christian charge.

It is this extraordinary twisted logic that is the kernel of the difficulties that America faces today. Another rat pack member believes that Islamophobia commenced there after 9/11. I believe that the neoconservatives were working at stirring up hatred of Arabs and Muslims long before 9/11. To be pro-Israel, hatred of its opponents was required and dictated US foreign policy.

If we accept the official version of 9/11, then a tiny band of zealots pulled off the most extraordinary American holocaust under the noses of the entire American security system! And for that the whole Muslim world is to blame?!!! What if the official version is untrue? What if friends of the dancing Zionists did it, or controlled who did it, or could have prevented it?!!! Obviously YOU WOULD INVADE ISRAEL, just like Afghanistan and Iraq!!!

Was the Iraq invasion not a religious war to justify the removal of one man?!!! I keep asking why not a Mossad assassins bullet to “rid me of this meddlesome priest” on this occasion, unless regime change was never the Zionist agenda, ever. Answer?! Think of all those young true Americans – from the Marshall Islands, to the Blacks, to the Latinos, to the poor Whites, on thought to the opposite extreme to the minute number of Zionist – who died for the Zionist agenda abroad in Iraq. How many of the rat pack have served in the US forces? More than served in the IDF?!!!

Yes, I’m the anti-Zionist. Why so fervently if I’m so happy with my own life? Hypocrisy, I guess! The constant denigration of all things Muslim or Arab in the Zionist controlled US media. All part of the Islamophobia agenda. Yet, far odder events happen in Israel that are seldom reported in the US. Why this double standard? To match the double loyalties? Should I continue my mission or cease? Zionist need not respond.

@ Monsieurginger says”Your are not …, your concerns are misplaced. “I am that I am” is a retard. You see, here, I insulted my own god which I don’t believe in. Anyway, I thought jesus wasn’t a god”.

As usual, there’s not much that I understand of the triple-loyalty challenged cretin child, so that I normally just block him but here, not only would he not use Jesus, but he goes much further with his INSULT to Christians with his cheap shot denial of Jesus being god, or the son of god to be accurate. If he chooses to insult his own god is his business, if both childish and stupid but deliberating insulting the Christian god is every Christian’s business. That’s how is constantly if you are Muslim. In America, you are so used to it that you don’t see it.

@ Thenwo says “We have a reason to be concerned about fundamentalist Muslims, …dangerous when compared with the fundamentalist Muslims, who are more interested in death and Sharia.”

He makes some attempt at a rational argument, but it’s of the ‘my dick is bigger that your dick’ style of argument as to the violence of one holy book as against the other. I’ve not read the Qur’an so I cannot compare. I have read the old testament as a child and don’t think I am yet over the trauma of its violence. Not until I read Leon Uris did I encounter such murder and mayhem. Of course it was Arabs doing the dying then too at Zionist hands.

@Dkapuchino says … “As for your absurd claims of genocide, wanna take a guess who’s #10 in the world in population GROWTH? That’s right, the palestinians.”

There may be two reasons for this.

• First is the rate of slow genocide in practice by the population obsessed Zionist is just less than the Palestinian ability to replace the dead children, so check how many dead Palestinian children there are.
• Second is that all humans respond to disasters, man make or natural, by increasing their birth rate. An explanation as to why the Zionist population is not increasing at the rate of import of instant citizens, the dubious settlers to steal Arab land with the convenience of the state, might be a better exercise. How many are making use of the duel citizenship Zionist to escape state-side to bring there hate filled message to unsuspecting Christian Americans? How many of them have Russian criminal backgrounds?

Please cease and desist from SPITTING on the dead Jews of the Holocaust.

on 09/21/2008

An ultra-Orthodox man walks past a sign calling on women to dress modestly in a religious neighbourhood in Jerusalem, Friday, Sept. 12, 2008. In Israel’s ultra-Orthodox Jewish community, where the rule of law takes a back seat to the rule of God, religious zealots are on a crusade to stamp out unchaste behaviour. They hurl stones at women for “sins” as trivial as wearing a red blouse, and attack stores that sell devices that can access the Internet. In recent weeks, modesty enforcers have been accused of breaking into the apartment of a Jerusalem woman and beating her because they suspected she consorted with men. They also torched a store that sells MP4 players, fearing devout Jews would use them to download pornography. (AP Photo/Sebastian Scheiner)

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An ultra orthodox Jewish man blows the Shofar (ram’s horn) during the ?Selichot?, Jewish penitential poems and prayers, at the Western Wall in Jerusalem?s old city on September 21, 2008. 7:10 a.m. ET, 9/21/08

An ultra-Orthodox Jewish boy reaches for a chicken, later to be slaughtered as part of a Kaparot ritual in which it is believed that one transfers one’s sins from the past year into the chicken, in Mea Shearim ultra-orthodox neighborhood in Jerusalem, Monday, Oct. 6, 2008. The ritual is performed before the Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish year which starts at sundown Wednesday. The chicken is then slaughtered and given to charity.
1:42 p.m. ET, 10/6/08

Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad greets Rabbi Moshe Ber Beck of Neturei Karta,

a fringe Ultra-Orthodox movement within the anti-Zionist bloc, during a meeting in New York, September 24, 2008.

Shmuel Rabinovitz removes notes from the cracks of the Western Wall, Judaism’s holiest prayer site, in the Old City of Jerusalem September 23, 2008. As the Jewish New Year draws near, Rabbi Rabinovitz headed the team that cleaned out the cracks and made room for more paper notes that Jews believe are notes to God

JULY 31: Ultra-Orthodox Jews pray over month-old infant Yehoshua Rosenboim, who lies in a silver bowl on the rabbi‘s table, as they perform the Redemption Of The First Born ceremony at the Lalov synagogue July 31, 2008 in Bnei Brak in central Israel. According to Jewish biblical law, every naturally-born first-born child who is male belongs to God, and his parents should “redeem” him by making a symbolic payment to a Cohen, a Jewish man descended from the first Jewish priest Aaron, the brother of the biblical Moses.

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.”

An ultra-Orthodox man walks past a sign calling on women to dress modestly in a religious neighbourhood in Jerusalem.

Many ultra-Orthodox Jews are dismayed by the violence, but the enforcers often enjoy quiet approval from rabbis eager to protect their own reputations as guardians of the faith, community members say. And while some welcome anything that keeps secular culture out of their cloistered world, others feel terrorized, knowing that the mere perception of impropriety could ruin their lives.

“There are eyes and ears all over the place, very similar to what you hear about in countries like Iran,” says Israeli-American novelist Naomi Ragen, an observant Jew who has chronicled the troubles that confront some women living in the ultra-Orthodox world.

The violence has already deepened the antagonism between the 600,000 haredim, or God-fearing, and the secular majority, which resents having religious rules dictated to them.

Religious vigilantes operate in a society that has granted their community influence well beyond its numbers — partly out of a commitment to revive the great centres of Jewish scholarship destroyed in the Holocaust, but also because the Orthodox are perennial king-makers in Israeli coalition politics.

Thus public transport is grounded for the Jewish Sabbath each Saturday, and the rabbis control all Jewish marriage and divorce in Israel.

In recent years, however, the haredim have eased up on their long campaign to impose their rules on secular areas, and nowadays many restaurants and suburban shopping centres are open on the Sabbath.

• These days, most vigilante attacks take place in the zealots’ own neighbourhoods.

‘They can burn in hell’

Israel police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said the modesty police are not an organized phenomenon, just rogue enforcers carrying out isolated attacks. But Israel’s Justice Ministry used the term “modesty patrols” in an indictment against a man accused of assaulting the Jerusalem woman.

• The unidentified, 31-year-old woman had left the ultra-Orthodox fold after getting divorced, according to the indictment filed by the Jerusalem district attorney’s office.
• The indictment said her assailant tried to get her to leave her apartment in a haredi neighbourhood in Jerusalem by gagging, beating and threatening to kill her.
• He was paid $2,000 for the attack, it said.

A 17-year-old who moved to Israel from New York five years ago said she was hospitalized after being attacked with pepper spray by a crowd of men outraged that she was walking down a Jerusalem street with boys.

“They can burn in hell,” said the girl, who would identify herself only as Rivka.

She lives in Beit Shemesh, a town outside Jerusalem where the vigilantism has been particularly violent. Zealots there have thrown rocks and spat at women, and set fire to trash bins to protest impiety. Walls of the neighbourhood are plastered with signs exhorting women to dress modestly — spelled out as closed-necked, long-sleeved blouses and long skirts.

An ultra-Orthodox woman walks past a shop selling long-sleeve shirts and ankle-length skirts.

‘Stupid troublemakers’

The state, catering to religious sensitivities, subsidizes gender-segregated bus routes that service religious neighbourhoods. Ragen and several other women challenged the practice in Israel’s Supreme Court after an Orthodox Canadian woman in her 50s told police she was kicked, slapped, pushed to the floor and spat upon by men for refusing to move to the back of the bus.

Another Beit Shemesh girl, who asked to be identified only as Esther, said zealots threw rocks, cursed and spat at a friend for wearing a red blouse — taboo because the colour attracts attention.

Yitzhak Polack, a 50-year-old Jerusalem teacher, is one of those who deplore such behaviour.

“They are stupid troublemakers who are bringing shame and disgrace on this holy community,” he said.

But the rabbis are afraid to condemn them, says Yehuda Meshi-Zahav, another community member.

“They can’t come out against zealots who champion modesty. Here and there they write against violence, but the militants ultimately set the tone,” he said. Stores are targeted too.

‘This store burns souls’

In August, a Jerusalem man was placed under house arrest on suspicion he set fire to a store in a haredi district of the city that sold MP4 players.

“It started about six months ago. They would come into the store, about 15 of them at a time, screaming, ‘This store burns souls!’ and they would throw merchandise on the floor and threaten customers,” said 31-year-old Aaron Gold, a haredi worker at the Space electronic store.

One Friday night, just before the Sabbath was about to begin, “they smashed a window, doused the place with gasoline and lit a match,” Gold said.

Now, a big sign behind the counter says, “All products sold in this store are under rabbinical  supervision. By order of the rabbis, no MP4s are sold here.”

Clothing stores that sell clothes regarded as provocative have been vandalized, and bleach thrown at merchandise.

Suspicion sparks attack

Girls have been expelled from school after being seen talking to boys, a punishment that ruins their marriage prospects.

“It could be very innocent; she could be talking to her brother,” Ragen said. But once thrown out of school, “no one — NO ONE — will take you in,” she added.

In one case, the violence reached the highest levels of haredi society.

• Three years ago, a son of Israel’s Sephardi chief rabbi, Shlomo Amar, was accused of kidnapping a 17-year-old boy, beating him at knife point and terrorizing him with snarling dogs because he had sought the attentions of the accused’s non-chaperoned sister.

The son was sentenced to two years and eight months in jail. His sister married a different suitor the following year.

An Ultra-orthodox Jewish man performs the Kaparot ceremony in Mea Shearim Ultra Orthodox neighbourhood of Jerusalem on October 6, 2008. According to Jewish beliefs, the ritual is supposed to transfer the sins of the past year to the chicken, and is performed before the Day of Atonement, or Yom Kippur, the most important day in the Jewish calendar, which this year falls October 8.

An ultra orthodox Jewish man blows the Shofar (ram’s horn) during the ?Selichot?, Jewish penitential poems and prayers, at the Western Wall in Jerusalem?s old city on September 21, 2008.
7:10 a.m. ET, 9/21/08

Ultra-orthodox Jewish men perform the Kaparot ceremony in Mea Shearim Ultra Orthodox neighborhood of Jerusalem on October 6, 2008. According to Jewish beliefs, the ritual is supposed to transfer the sins of the past year to the chicken, and is performed before the Day of Atonement, or Yom Kippur, the most important day in the Jewish calendar, which this year falls Oct 8.

1:20 p.m. ET, 10/6/08

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12:08 p.m. ET, 10/6/08

Oct. 4, 2008

Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

My TAGS:-

Orthodox religion Jews Israel modesty zealots against female music pornography :NYT Oct’08 intimidation kidnap

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.

Shas’ spiritual leader Rabbi Ovadia Yosef.

Rauchverger and Kook, both connected to the Degel Hatorah party and adamantly backed by Rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashiv, the supreme halachic authority of the haredi Ashkenazi community, were replaced by two rabbis who do not necessarily adhere to his decisions.

One of them, Rabbi Ya’acov Shapira, is a symbol of religious Zionism. He is the son of former Ashkenazi chief rabbi the late Avraham Shapira, considered the most important halachic authority of religious Zionists until his death a year ago. Shapira inherited from his father the position of head of Mercaz Harav Yeshiva, the flagship educational institute for religious-Zionist rabbis.

The other new face is Ya’acov Ruzah, rabbi of the Tel Aviv Burial Society and the L. Greenberg Institute for Forensic Medicine at Abu Kabir. Ruzah’s halachic decisions permitting autopsies in cases in which foul play is suspected has raised the rancour of more zealous elements of Orthodoxy, who argue that any mutilation of the body is desecration and blasphemy, since man is created in God’s image.

But the major victor in last week’s elections was Shas. The Sephardi-haredi party – led by Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, considered the preeminent halachic authority for Sephardi Jewry – managed to get Yosef’s son, Avraham, into the Chief Rabbinate Council, despite the opposition of the Lithuanian-haredi rabbinic establishment.

In a battle between two rabbinic titans, Yosef won out over Elyashiv.

SINCE ITS founding in the early 1980s, Shas has been deferential to the Lithuanian rabbinic leadership. The very establishment of the party was orchestrated under the tutelage of Rabbi Elazar Shach, the charismatic, fiery leader of Lithuanian-haredi Jewry before the more low-key nonagenarian Elyashiv.

Perhaps the most dramatic example of Shas’s previous deference to Ashkenazi hegemony was a political scheme which later went down in Israeli political annals as the “stinking manoeuvre.”

• In 1990, the national unity government headed by Yitzhak Shamir turned down a US request to begin negotiations with the Palestinians over the fate of Judea, Samaria and Gaza.

• Shimon Peres, who demanded that the government accept the US request, secretly attempted to put together a narrow left-wing coalition to replace the national unity government.
• However, Peres’s political escapade failed after Shas backed out under pressure from Shach.

Shas mentor Yosef could not bear to open up a front against the Lithuanians and against Shach. Yosef, who is a halachic authority in his own right and has revolutionized the field of Halacha, could not single-handedly take on the elite Ashkenazi rabbinic leadership, with its venerable tradition of talmudic erudition and long history of scholarship and educational institutions.

• Shach and Elyashiv claim to represent an impeccable, unbroken rabbinic lineage, reaching back hundreds of years, that can boast of dozens of talmudic luminaries, educated in the most important Torah centres of the modern era.
• Before the Holocaust, Lithuania, Poland, Ukraine and Russia produced the dominant figures of rabbinic authority.

Yosef is aware of the relatively subordinate position held by Sephardi Torah scholarship in the modern era. He is intent on using Shas as a catalyst for boosting the education level. Looking back longingly to the golden era of Sephardi erudition, when men such as Maimonides, Shlomo Aderet and Yosef Karo were the towering halachic authorities of their times, Yosef hoped to “return the crown to its rightful owner” after several hundred years of decline, and rehabilitate Sephardi scholarship. Until that happened, however, Yosef had to cooperate with the Ashkenazi leadership.

Whenever possible, Shas has tried to work with the Lithuanian yeshiva world. For instance, in the vote last year for rabbinical judges, Shas joined forces with Degel Hatorah to control the appointments.

However, in last week’s vote, Shas could not back down to Ashkenazi demands. According to sources close to the rabbinate, Yosef is grooming his son, Avraham, rabbi of Ashdod, for the chief Sephardi rabbi slot in four years. Getting him elected to the Chief Rabbinate Council is an important step in that direction.

MEANWHILE, THE Ashkenazi leadership did everything in its power to block Yosef’s son from getting elected. Elyashiv is ardently opposed to Avraham Yosef’s lenient position on laws governing the shmita year, which rests on his father’s rulings.

Yosef has supported the controversial practice known as heter mechira, which involves the temporary sale of agricultural land to gentiles. This “sale” abrogates the special sanctity of the land of Israel in the sabbatical year, and enables Jews to continue to work the land. If not for the sale, the land would have to be allowed to rest.

Ashkenazi haredi rabbis are particularly irked by what they consider Avraham Yosef’s irreverent style. He has a regular program on the popular Radio Kol Chai station, during which he delineates his halachic decisions in an authoritative, terse manner. Yosef, who answers questions from listeners, regularly attacks dissenting opinions, without mentioning names, including opinions held by Elyashiv.

Shas sees the Ashkenazi attempt to block Yosef’s appointment as a blatantly inappropriate form of intervention. After all, the 10 new appointments to the council are split into two groups – five Ashkenazim and five Sephardim.

Oct 2, 2008 19:23

By MATTHEW WAGNER

Shimon Peres, who demanded that the government accept the US request, secretly attempted to put together a narrow left-wing coalition to replace the national unity government.

practice known as heter mechira, which involves the temporary sale of agricultural land to gentiles

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.

Then there was the shocking bombing in Ariel on Purim, which critically wounded 15-year-old Ami Ortiz, the son of Messianic Christian pastor David Ortiz. A court order prevents detailing the direction of the investigation. What does seem apparent is that the perpetrators were Jewish extremists.

• Messianics insist that one can remain a loyal Jew while professing faith in Jesus as the Son of God and the Messiah.
• In fact, this theology is abhorrent to Jews and Judaism.
• Christians who identify themselves as Jewish have long complained of violent harassment, most recently in Beersheba and Arad. Not a few messianic Jews live among us as “reverse Marranos,” frightened to share their true identity for fear of persecution. Plainly, for those who proselytize – a practice insulting in Jewish eyes – such concerns are not misplaced.

Finally, there is the decree of the chief rabbi of Kiryat Arba, Dov Lior, coming in the wake of the March 7 massacre at Mercaz Harav Yeshiva, which claimed the lives of eight students, that it is “forbidden” to rent homes to Arabs or employ Arabs anywhere in Israel. Other religious Zionist rabbis have also supported a ban on Arab labor.

THERE MAY not be a pattern here, but all these are manifestations of religious extremism seemingly tolerated by the community in which they took place.

Take the deviant deportment of the “Taliban mother.” Anyone who moves around, as this family reportedly did, among the country’s various ultra-Orthodox communities, will almost immediately come into contact with their synagogues, rabbis, communal leaders and teachers. In these communities a fair amount of privacy is willingly sacrificed for a life within the all-embracing collective. Peer pressure is the norm.

That being so, why was there no intervention? After all, had the “Taliban family” made it their practice to drive on Shabbat, their car would quite likely have been stoned by those irate at this desecration of the holy day.

There was at least one attempt by a neighbor to sound the alarm via Internet postings, but did more of the family’s genuinely pious neighbors, who may have suspected something was not right, report their qualms? And if not, what happened to the principle that all Jews are responsible for one another?

Or take the attack on the Ortiz family. We’ve heard Ariel Mayor Ron Nachman condemn the bombing. Likewise, Penina Taylor, of Jews for Judaism, says unequivocally that her anti-missionary group denounces the “atrocity” and prays for “the complete healing of this boy and the arrest and conviction of the perpetrator[s] of this heinous crime.” Amen to that.

But we’d like to hear leading rabbis in the haredi and national religious community explicitly denounce all anti-missionary violence – not just the Ortiz attack, but also the ongoing harassment in Arad and Beersheba.

Let them say what we all know: that in a sovereign Jewish state such violence is immoral, illegal and contemptible. Further, and more broadly, let our spiritual leaders declare that fanaticism - whether that embodied in the Taliban of Beit Shemesh, or in blanket prohibitions on all Arab labour – goes beyond the bounds of Judaism.

It was not only Aristotle who preached the desirability of the golden mean. Authentic Judaism, too, has always sought a balance between “too much and too little.” Clearly, the lesson needs to be taught anew; and it is up to those we turn to for spiritual succour to teach it.

Mar 30, 2008 20:30

Jews for Judaism

Ashkenazi haredim lose majority in Chief Rabbinate membership vote

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.

Run by the Messianic Jewish Alliance of America (MJAA), Operation Tikva is contravening the Israeli government’s attempts over the last year to wind down official aliya operations in Ethiopia, and the project is being viewed in Jerusalem with alarm.

“I don’t believe that we are working against the Israeli government,” MJAA General Secretary Joel Chernoff, told The Jerusalem Post in response Thursday.

“The political situation in Israel can always change and we believe that what has happened to these people is a major injustice,” he said.

• According to Chernoff there are between 50,000-70,000 Ethiopian Messianic Jews who are being discriminated against by the Israeli government based on their beliefs.

Messianic Jews believe that Yeshua (Jesus) is their Messiah, but still consider themselves to be Jewish. Jews of other denominations do not consider Messianic Judaism to be a form of Judaism, but a form of Christianity.

“These people are viewed by the government of Ethiopia and by their neighbors as Jews and are persecuted as such,” argued Chernoff, adding that it all “boils down to the fact that Israel has decided not to accept Jews who believe in Jesus.”

“These people are clearly not Jewish and they are working in areas where none of the people are Jews either; everything they are telling these people are lies,”

said Rabbi Menachem Waldman, a member of the Public Council for Ethiopian Jews, which has successfully persuaded the Israeli government to continue checking the eligibility for immigration of a further 3,000 Falash Mura (Ethiopian Jews whose ancestors converted to Christianity more than a century ago) from the same region of Ethiopia.

“This organization [the MJAA] and the people that it is working with in Ethiopia are in no way associated with the Falash Mura community currently waiting in Gondar for Israeli government approval to immigrate,” said Waldman, adding that missionary activity in the area is not a new phenomenon.

In contrast to the MJAA, the Public Council for Ethiopian Jews, which is made up of Israeli-based Ethiopian community members and politicians, maintains that only 8,700 Jews remain in Ethiopia who must be checked for aliya by Israel’s Interior Ministry.

Currently, the government’s criteria for immigration to Israel is based on a 1999 census known as the Efrati list, as well as a maternal link to Judaism and relatives already living in Israel.

Aveje Manhanei, who runs an Israeli-based Web community dedicated to preserving the traditions and culture of Ethiopian Jewry, told the Post, “If Israel does not put a stop to this activity as soon as possible then there will eventually be another 75 million Ethiopians demanding to make aliya.”

He said that a significant number of Ethiopian Israelis, specifically those who arrived here during Operations Moses (1984-5) and Solomon (1991) and are known as Beta Israel Jews, are “angered” over the activities of this Messianic organization both in Ethiopia and here in Israel.

What has upset Manhanei and other community members the most is several short video clips that have been posted on the Internet – on the MJAA’s official Web site and on YouTube – showing raggedly-dressed and poverty-stricken Ethiopian children who are labeled as Beta Israel Jews by the MJAA and whom the organization claims were left behind by the Israelis in the poor African country.

An official from the movement, visiting a water-well site near Gondar donated by the organization, is seen and heard on the video as asking those gathered, “How many people here want to go home to Israel?”

The following frame shows almost all of those present raising their arms.

The official then adds: “We are doing our best for you here and in Israel.”

In another scene, MJAA representative Kokeb Gedamu, who refers to himself as a rabbi, says:

“With God’s help we can take these people home to Israel.”

“They are filling these people with empty promises,” commented Waldman, who helped compile the Efrati list.

Chernoff denied that his organization was giving these people false hope about a future in Israel, responding that “these people have a lot of hope that in the future it will be different and they will be accepted.”

The Prime Minister’s Office said in a statement that it was not aware of such Jewish Messianic activities in the Gondar area but, following The Jerusalem Post‘s inquiry, it planned to check into the issue.

A spokesman for the Jewish Agency said its role in the African country was not to determine who is eligible for aliya but rather to facilitate the immigration of those approved by the Israeli government.

He said that the feeding centers and health clinics currently in Gondar were not under the Agency’s control.

Sep 28, 2008

By RUTH EGLASH

Jewish Agency for Israel,

Messianic Jewish Alliance of America (MJAA),  Operation Tikva

Operations Moses (1984-5) and Solomon (1991)

Rabbi Menachem Waldman, a member of the Public Council for Ethiopian Jews

My TAGS:-

*7 Messianic Jews law.of.return Rabbi Israel immigrants Ethiopia Jerusalem PM :JPost Sep’08 Christian