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 the past year, the momentum has shifted. Though the Torah insists on protecting the convert, on making him or her a full member of the community, and on never reminding a convert of his or her past, institutional orthodoxy has condemned converts to a never-ending set of tests and examinations, to assessments and evaluations, and ultimately to a level of scrutiny unprecedented in Jewish history.

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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.

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Criticizing Israel is hard work

In last week's NY Times, columnist David Brooks noted that Israeli public culture "is one
long cacophony of criticism. The politicians go at each other with a fury we can't even fathom in the US. At news conferences, Israeli journalists ridicule and abuse their national leaders. Subordinates in companies feel free to correct their superiors."

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.

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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.

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