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.

Silencing dissent, hushing up scandal.

Silencing dissent, hushing up scandal Rabbi Benzion Twerski had resigned from a task force in formation being brought together to deal with sexual abuse in the Orthodox community

Two items recently crossed my desk. The first was an article that appeared in The Jerusalem Post written by Matthew Wagner entitled “Haredim move to silence ‘treif’ music”. It was about a movement to ban musicians who produce or perform any music which the Guardians of Sanctity and Education deem inappropriate. Musicians playing such music would be banned from playing in wedding halls, their CDs would be banned and their concerts disallowed.

The other item was a breaking news piece from JTA indicating that Rabbi Benzion Twerski had resigned from a task force in formation being brought together to deal with sexual abuse in the Orthodox community. New York State Assemblyman Dov Hikind, also an Orthodox Jew, is establishing the task force to deal with this scourge. Twerski resigned because of the many threats against him and his family made by several individuals from his community.

Racism in the name of religion

Racism in the name of religion “There are moments when I find myself truly ashamed to be part of Israeli society.”

There are moments when I find myself truly ashamed to be part of Israeli society. I had a moment like that recently as I stood outside the Supreme Court with women from Ahoti, a Sephardi feminist organization, waiting for a ruling on the religious girls’ school in Emanuel where racism is so entrenched that parents will do all it takes to keep antiquated Jim Crow-like separations in place.

What is happening in the Beit Ya’acov school is nothing less than the formalization of racism. Here the school implements a policy in which Sephardi girls are not allowed to be in a class with Ashkenazi or hassidic girls, and they have different teachers, different classes and even different recess times and a fence between their yards just to ensure that the two groups do not mingle during the breaks.