 Asking for forgiveness from the convert
When Yom Kippur opens, more than millions of Jews will inaugurate the holiest day of the year with the biblical phrase" ve-nislach le-chol adat bnei yisrael, ve-lager hagar btocham," Loosely translated, we beseech God to forgive the sins of the entire congregation of Israel, and the converts who dwell among them. But this year, as my colleague Aliza Lavie recently wrote, the Orthodox Jewish world might think strongly about begging God for forgiveness for what we have done to the convert among us. In Israel, the shtetl rules
When Y turned to me to help him get his marriage license, I thought he was kidding. Y's story, which appeared in The Jerusalem Post, is another example of how the shtetl continues to trump the metropolis - at least when it comes to Jewish life in Israel. And it is another example of how I often find myself at odds with an orthodox establishment I'm proud to be part of. Y is an immigrant from the former Soviet Union who made aliya based on his father's Jewishness. Y feels the Jewish narrative is compelling, and during his four-and-a-half year stint in the IDF, he underwent conversion through the army rabbinical court. I know the rabbinical court judges who served as Y's "bet din" personally, and they are men of impeccable stature and learning. Two years following his conversion, Y fell in love, with another immigrant from a traditional Jewish family. His fiancé had little difficultly proving her Jewishness to the rabbinate, and the couple were enamored by the treatment they received at the Rishon Lezion marriage bureau. Only following their marriage did the problems begin. New conversion bill a recipe for continued chaos
The new "conversion law" - which passed a first reading in the Knesset this past week - is essentially a political tool which will in no way bring order to the chaos that characterizes conversion in Israel. With 310,000 immigrants from the Former Soviet Union eligible for conversion, it is unpalatable that conversion has become a subject of Pyrrhic political victories. The original law, presented to the Knesset in two variations by Rabbi Michael Melchior and David Rotem, was meant to allow community rabbis to perform conversions. Essentially, this would have allowed for less public scrutiny of conversion judges, and theoretically for those moderate city rabbis to perform conversions and register their converts for marriage. The authors of the bill were clever enough to include a clause that would allow converts the benefit of registering in any region, and not necessarily their own locale. The strength of the bill was that it ensured that conversions would be performed under Orthodox auspices, but understood that within Orthodoxy, there are multiple voices, and converts could choose their approach while still falling within the consensus of the halachic community. Israel no longer nation for Jewish people
Memo to the board members of the Jewish Agency Re: Israel is no longer a nation for the Jewish people The Jewish Agency has fought hard during the last fifteen years to make conversion to Judaism a reality in Israel. You have invested tens of millions of dollars in the conversion authority, and thousands of hours of dialogue and discussion to be inclusive - all in an effort to stem intermarriage and assimilation in Israel. But conversions are down more than 27% in the past year. And while projections for conversion in the Former Soviet Union (FSU) community in 2008 stood at 5000, 933 immigrants from the FSU converted in that year in the civil conversion authority. If this was a business, the board would shut it down immediately. Especially given the fact that 300,000 Israelis can't get married in their own country. Rabbi Lamm's fight for tolerance must be recognized
In his recent, and much talked about interview with The Jerusalem Post, Rabbi Norman Lamm was cited as saying that "...we will soon say Kaddish on the Reform and Conservative movements." This comment can obfuscate the greatness of Rabbi Lamm, as it portrays him as adopting the triumphalism that is so characteristic of ultra-orthodoxy. My colleague Andy Sacks has already sought to counter Rabbi Lamm's claim stating that Conservative Judaism is alive and well. Though my temptation is to question whether the Kaddish [the prayer for the dead] we will be saying will be a Kaddish Yatom [literally, Orphan's Kaddish], memorializing these movements, a Kaddish Titkabel [Complete Kaddish], beseeching God to accept them or a Kaddish D'Rabanan [Rabbi's Kaddish], which would glorify their scholars and scholarship, I prefer instead to correct the imbalance that may have inadvertently developed by this citation of Rabbi Lamm, and highlight instead how Rabbi Lamm has championed a Jewish life that is not only moderate in ethos, but life affirming in practice. Criticizing Israel is hard work
In last week's NY Times, columnist David Brooks noted that Israeli public culture "is one In his essay, he confesses that he finds Israel by turns exhausting, admirable, annoying, impressive and foreign. Finally, he suggests that Israel's argumentative culture nurtures a sense of responsibility. I have recently come under serious criticism for my outspokenness against abuses in the Israeli rabbinate. I have not hesitated to raise my voice against what I perceive to be the injustices being meted out to converts, or the fact that burial authorities capitalize on the vulnerability of mourners in their darkest hour to impose upon them either financial or religious burdens. I am vocal about the way in which new immigrants (and those seeking to emigrate) are treated by the Ministry of Interior and I do not tolerate the inability of the Orthodox community to open its doors to the non-Orthodox. The Chevra Kadisha should lay zealotry to rest
The recent uproar regarding the refusal of an Israeli burial society (Chevra kadisha) to allow a woman to eulogize her relative highlights a broader problem in Israeli Jewish culture. The fact is that too many of those charged with assisting rank-and-file Israelis with their experience of Jewish life have little regard for the values of their clientele. Last week's unpleasant episode, in which a woman who sought to deliver a eulogy was physically withheld from doing so, is not a one-time occurrence. Three years ago, the Petach Tikva Chevra Kadisha was sued in the Israeli Supreme Court over the same issue (and though the Chevra Kadisha lost the case, in practice women are still discouraged from eulogizing there.) Four years ago, a woman who was denied the right to eulogize in a cemetery in the Bet Shemesh region turned to ITIM for help, and after a protracted negotiation, the Chevra Kadisha was convinced not to interfere if women deliver eulogies. However, the practice of discouraging women from eulogizing, or at least not encouraging them to eulogize, continues to this day. Orthodox Jews should support civil marriage in Israel
After years of working within the rabbinate, I'm convinced that Orthodox Jews should support some form civil marriage in Israel. In fact, Orthodox Jews should probably be at the lead of such an initiative. In many ways, the adoption of British Mandatory law within Israeli legal culture has denigrated Judaism in the eyes of the general public. In Israel, Jews can only be married with the approval of the religious leader of their religious group, which is identified with the chief rabbinate. Since the majority of Israelis are not Orthodox, the process of marriage can be humiliating and in some cases impossible, as Orthodoxy limits legal unions. Though the majority of Israelis still marry through the rabbinate, more and more couples are choosing not to marry at all, or to marry in civil ceremonies abroad. Rethinking 'recognized conversions'
Israel's immigration policy needs some serious rethinking, particularly if critical decisions are left in the hands of clerks. While the law of return allows Jews - both those born Jewish and those who converted - to immigrate to Israel and receive citizenship automatically, it does not specify the threshold for proving one's Jewishness. While much has been written about this (see for example the NY Times article from last March), there is little question that the State has to rely on recognized Jewish communities abroad for Jewishness certification. In recent months, I have encountered a new problem - staggering in its implications. It seems that no one is quite sure how to define the term "recognized Jewish community." I know this sounds like a joke, but it isn't. The divorce statistics: What they don't showThis week, the rabbinical courts held their annual press conference which highlighted the growing divorce rate in Israel. Unlike 2007 when 9,765 couples ended their marriages with the issuance of a get [divorce decree] (down from 9,963), in 2008, more than 10,000 gets were given (the actual number is 10,225). In some of the younger cities in Israel like Shoham, divorces increased by more than 100%, while among cities with diverse populations such as Bet Shemesh, divorces were down by more than 22%. All in all, these statistics are worrying. Divorces increase of almost 5% over the past year. |
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