A group of religious Zionist rabbis have called for a boycott of this year's International Bible Quiz after discovering that one of the four finalists from Israel is a Messianic Jew who believes Jesus is the true Messiah.
"Messianics are missionaries who proselytize in very sophisticated ways," said Rabbi Shlomo Aviner, one of the rabbis calling to boycott the quiz. "It is forbidden to give them legitimacy by allowing them to take part in the quiz."
Other rabbis that have called to boycott the quiz include Shmuel Eliyahu, chief rabbi of Safed, Ya'acov Yosef, son of Shas mentor Rabbi Ovadia Yosef and Rabbi Tzvi Tau, head of Har Hamor Yeshiva.
The call to boycott the quiz came after Yad L'Achim, a haredi anti-missionary organization, discovered that one of the finalists, Bat-El Levi, an 11th grader from a high school in Pisgat Ze'ev, was a Messianic Jew.
Levi won this year's national bible quiz for state schools and will be one of four finalists from Israel competing for the International Bible Quiz Championship on Independence Day.
The Education Ministry said in response to a query from The Jerusalem Postthat the "Global Bible Quiz for Jewish Youth" was open only to Jewish pupils. Regarding Messianic Jews, the pupil in question was Jewish, and therefore, according to the ministry's legal department, was not disqualified from participating.
Calev Myers, founder and chief counsel of the Jerusalem Institute of Justice, an advocacy group that represents members of the Messianic community, said that the rabbis' call to boycott the quiz was a show of weakness.
"If the participation of a Messianic Jewish lady is enough to shake up those rabbis' world, it shows the weakness of that world," said Myers. "Why should they have a problem with a young woman who knows how to quote from the Bible?
"It is about time that they stop having a monopoly over determining who is a Jew. The beauty of the Jewish world is the diversity. If you can still be considered a Jew even if you believe that the Lubavitch Rebbe [Menachem Mendel Schneerson] is the messiah, the same thing should hold true if you believe Jesus is."
Levi and her parents Ruti and Yitzhak declined to comment on the rabbis' call.
'For the first time, even officers are questioning their commitment to the army because they are referred to as suckers by people who sit in Tel Aviv bars,' Rabbi Metzger says during visit to southern army base
04-08-2008
Kobi Nahshoni
Israel's chief rabbis are expected to declare the Shabbat before Passover "Shabbat of the reserves" and instruct Israel's Jewish leaders to stress the importance of reserve duty to their congregations.
Rabbis Yona Metzger and Shlomo Amar announced these plans on Monday during a visit to the Tze'elim army base in south Israel, where they took part in a special ceremony in which a Torah scroll was placed in the base's synagogue. During the ceremony at the synagogue, dozens of soldiers wearing kippas and berets danced with the Torah scroll and then placed it in the temple's Holy Ark.
Chief rabbis with soldiers in Tze'elim
The rabbis also met with senior army officials, including IDF Personnel Directorate Head Major-General Elazar Stern, who asked that they back the effort to increase the motivation among Israel's soldiers.
'Only one solution'
Stern told the rabbis that the integration of 'Hesder' yeshiva students (program that combines advanced Talmudic studies with military service) into regular army units "would bring religious and secular people closer together."
Rabbi Amar said a special prayer should be written for the safety of citizens who are called up for reserve duty. "A special blessing should be said for those who leave their families and businesses – so they may return to their homes in peace." Rabbi Metzger, for his part, said the statistics indicating a rise in draft-dodging surprised him, and linked the phenomenon to the "erosion of values related to faith, religion and love of the land.
"For the first time, even officers are asking their commanders 'What are we doing here?' because they are referred to as 'suckers' by people who sit in bars in Tel Aviv and other cities," he said.
"There is one solution, and that is to place a great emphasis on religious and educational values."
Chief rabbi addresses child abuse affair in Jerusalem, says 'this is horrifying proof of what unsupervised Kabbalah studies can lead to'
Neta Sela
04-18-2008
The disastrous results of unsupervised Kabbalah studies have reportedly led to a series of child abuse cases, Chief Rabbi Yona Metzger said Saturday.
Speaking during a Great Shabbat (the Shabbat which immediately precedes Passover) sermon in Jerusalem, Rabbi Metzger noted that Kabbalah studies by those who have yet to fully internalize the six books of the Mishnah and have yet to turn 40 years old have not been prohibited for nothing.
Even then, he said, this must only be done under the guidance of a famous rabbi with superior knowledge in mysticism.
"If, as a result of studying practical Kabbalah, this person's mind has been disrupted, and if it is true that this 'rabbi' (Elior Chen) explained this acts of abuse as a repair of the soul, this is horrifying proof of what can happen when Kabbalah is studied without being supervised and guided by the greatest sages of Israel who are known to all as having superior knowledge of Kabbalah's wisdom."
'Court has crushed symbol of freedom'
Rabbi Metzger went on to speak about his visit to the IDF base in Tze'elim last week.
"This week I met IDF regiment commanders who told me painfully about the constant drop in the number of officers and commanders enlisting to reserve duty. When we tried to understand the main cause for this phenomenon, there was an agreement that the reservists' value system is worn out, leading to a drop in the motivation for reserve duty.
"And I tell you, gentlemen, when the court crushes with its own hands a sacred Jewish value like prohibiting leavened food during Passover, this crushes the symbol of Jewish freedom.
"The 'matza' we eat in Pesach has served as a symbol of the Jewish people's freedom for 3,000 years. With it we left Egypt with the goal to immigrate to the fatherland. If we trample the flag of Jewish freedom with our own hands, we are to blame for the results. I was sorry to hear that officers refuse to serve because they don’t want to miss work days…
"When I served in the IDF, an officer would be ashamed to raise such an option, but when he sees that the values sacred to the Jewish people are being crushed, including those symbolizing the hasty Exodus in order to reach the Land of Israel which he is asked to fight for, unfortunately he does not feel the duty."
Metzger added, "I am not a legalist, and it is possible that the ruling includes different arguments explaining it, but I am puzzled by the timing of its delivery, just before the Passover holiday."
Opinion
Don’t politicize child abuse case / Rabbi Levi Brackman
Horrific story of rabbi-inspired abuse must not be used to stigmatize haredi society
On the cover of yesterday's newspaper, Yediot Acharonot, is a photo of hammers, knives, guns, turpentine, and heaters all of which - according to the newspaper -were used to torture small children allegedly at the behest of a so-called Haredi Rabbi, Elior Chen (see photo at http://tinyurl.com/598r78)
According to the article, a four year old is in the hospital with irreversible brain damage from one of Chen's "hassidim", David Kugman. Chen and Kugman have fled the country and are now in Canada, along with at least one family of Chen's "Hassidim," the family of Joseph Fisher. Chen is suspected of leading a cult that believed that torturing children would remove the "devil" from them. The removal of the devil, according to notebooks found in Chen's apartment filled with his instructions, included
force-feeding toddlers drinks of alcohol and turpentine.
Making them eat faeces.
Forcing them against electric heaters until their skin turned black then pouring alcohol on the wounds.
Stuffing their mouths with skullcaps and taping them closed, and then zipping them into suitcases for days.
Leaving stones on the Shabbat "blech" all day and then placing the stones on the tender skin of these babies.
The following is excerpted from an article in Haaretz on April 8 by Uri Blau, Yair Ettinger, Jonathan Lis and Ofra Edelman:
"Chen may be meeting other members of the sect in Canada, where the family of one of the members lives, according to a friend of Chen's who is familiar with the group but doesn't belong to it. The friend said Chen fled with Joseph Fisher, whose name was not mentioned in an indictment filed yesterday against the mother of the children suspected of being abused by Chen's followers.
The remand of the mother was extended Sunday until April 14. Two of the family's eight children, aged 4 and 5, were hospitalized in serious condition two weeks ago, after Chen allegedly ordered two of his followers to discipline the children by beating, burning, pushing and shaking them, and tying them up as a way of "correcting" their behaviour. The 4-year-old remains in a coma.
Police suspect that Chen's supporters also
doused the children in hot and cold water and
broke their bones with hammers and blows. The mother was charged with
forcing the children to eat faeces,
beating them unconscious and
locking them up in a suitcase for three days.
Jerusalem police also arrested an additional suspect in the case, and have issued a gag order regarding his identity. The Magistrate's Court extended his remand by five days.
Chen and three of his supporters allegedly began providing the family with "educational lessons" several months ago. They allegedly kicked the father out of his home and began abusing several of the family's eight children, especially the two youngest. Chen and Fisher left the country legally, and their exit was registered at border control. Afterwards, their wives and children went into hiding.
The Fisher apartment has been cleared out and its contents have been placed in storage. Police said they do not know the location of Chen's and Fisher's families, but Chen's friend said they were hoping to go to Canada as well and may have already left the country. Chen and his supporters chose Canada in part, the source said, because "the extradition law is tough" there. "Only in very exceptional cases does Canada extradite," he said.
All families with children involved in this cult are IN IMMINENT DANGER if even a fraction of these allegations turn out to be true. The people involved all dress as Haredi Jews and are most likely to live in a Haredi neighbourhood. Other members of the cult are still in Israel. Please keep your eyes and ears open and report anything that might be helpful to the authorities. The heart weeps and the heart cannot fathom such cruelty.
As former Chief Rabbi Yisroel Meir Lau said: "Judaism cannot justify the tears of helpless child...I call on every mother in Israel to recognize that not every person who wraps himself in the title of Rabbi is deserving of thie title... Is the terror of a mother towards her children any different from a terrorist who spills innocent blood?" This is the worst case of child abuse in Israeli history. Even the police are in shock.
Naomi Ragen is an American-born novelist and playwright who has lived in Jerusalem since 1971. She has published seven internationally best-selling novels, and is the author of a hit play. Naomi also publishes a regular email column that deals with Jewish subjects, especially Israel,
Israeli Jews are becoming more disparate but also somewhat more tolerant of each other
YARON, as we shall call him, is a secular, left-wing, Jewish resident of Tel Aviv in his mid-30s—intelligent, cosmopolitan, well-connected and clearly destined to be a member of his country's elite. But in about ten years' time, he says, he and his partner might well leave. “By about 2025, Arabs and religious Jews are going to be a majority, people like us will be a minority—and ten years from now is about when all the other people like us are going to start realising it.”
He fears that the religious will gradually force the rest to accept more of their restrictions, such as bans on Sabbath trading and the sale of non-kosher food. The rising cost of supporting ultra-Orthodox yeshivas and unemployed Arabs will push up taxes. The conflict with the Palestinians will grind on. Inter- and intra-ethnic conflicts will intensify. And the secular Jewish elite will trickle abroad, leaving the economy in the dumps.
The divides between religious and secular date back to the foundation of the state, when David Ben-Gurion enlisted the support of the rabbis (who were sceptical of Zionism) by giving them authority over “life-cycle events” such as marriage and burial. Leftists are furious when right-wingers describe Palestinians as “backward”, “dirty” or “fanatical”, but they themselves can be heard saying the same about the ultra-Orthodox. For their part, theharedim do plenty to anger their more moderate co-religionists. Last year a former chief rabbi suggested that the Holocaust was a punishment for Reform Judaism, a liberal stream born in pre-Nazi Germany. It is an old joke that Israel's real troubles will begin only after it has made peace with the Palestinians and has to start making peace among the Jews.
Yet the joke is already less fashionable than it once was. And Yaron's vision of the future is based partly on out-of-date assumptions. First, the demographic balance is not shifting all that fast. Though Arabs and ultra-Orthodox Jews do indeed have more children than the rest, the birth rate even among Jews broadly defined as “secular” is 2.4 children per family, as against less than 1.5 in much of western Europe.
The battle of the bulge
Meanwhile, birth rates among both Arabs and haredim have dropped, particularly in the past few years. There is much argument over whether the abolition in 2003 of child benefits that favoured larger families played a part in this. Studies by Sergio DellaPergola, a demographer at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and colleagues suggest that the availability of things like flexible working hours for mothers, mortgages and child care affect people's family planning much more than do benefit payments. Whatever the reasons, although by 2020 secular Jews are likely to make up only half the population, as Yaron fears, the share of the haredim—who might wish to limit his secular freedoms—will still be just 8%.
Also, haredi society is changing. Rabbi Israel Eichler, a former member of parliament for an ultra-Orthodox party, is keen to dispel what he sees as some slanderous myths.
First, most men leave the yeshiva by about the age of 25; only in certain hardcore sects was a lifelong “society of learners” ever considered the ideal. Secular youth who do army service (most haredim are exempt) and then go to university often take just as long to enter the workforce.
Second, haredi men are not unemployable; although they are barred from most government jobs, supposedly because their spiritual education ill prepares them to work in the real world, they have had no trouble reaching the top tiers of the private sector. Israel's richest man, Lev Leviev, is a haredi businessman. And
third, there are now many employment schemes that take account of religious restrictions, such as women-only software companies and paralegal firms.
Please hold, God will be with you shortly
As haredi society has been forced into contact with modernity it has become more worldly and open, while often finding ingenious ways to impose its own limits. Rabbi Eichler sports a “kosher mobile phone” on which internet access is disabled, stamped with the rabbinical council's seal of approval. There is also a “kosher internet”, which allows people to browse only websites that have been officially vetted.
The rest of society is changing too, says Ruth Calderon, the director of Alma, a Jewish study centre in Tel Aviv aimed at secular Jews. She and Rabbi Eichler, from their different vantage points, both detect a softening in the fervent anti-religionism of the early state. Liturgy has penetrated the work of leading pop musicians. Bible study has become “cool” among a younger generation of show-business personalities and public intellectuals. Israelis who used to channel their spiritual energies into Eastern philosophies they had picked up on their post-army backpacking trips are now returning to the fold of Judaism.
Finally, the growth of the ultra-Orthodox seems to have made them more self-confident and less militant. It has also led many to concentrate in segregated communities, including a couple of big new settlements in the West Bank, where their conservative, tight-knit lifestyles do not clash with anyone else's.
True, this segregation carries costs. The most notable is the decline of Jerusalem. The ancient city that both Israelis and Palestinians claim as their capital is now populated mostly by Palestinians with Israeli residence permits, religious Jews of various kinds, aid workers and foreign journalists, and is one of the country's poorest municipalities. Tel Aviv types like Yaron say they find the atmosphere suffocating.
But the separation of public spaces has also calmed things down. Seas of angry, black-garbed haredim demonstrating against cinemas and Sabbath-breaking are a thing of the past. The annual Jerusalem gay-pride marches have caused riots, but last year they were already more muted. The rabbis, says Kimi Kaplan, a sociologist who studies the haredim, have belatedly realised that the best way to keep their young men from the temptations of homosexuality is not to mention it. For their part, gay activists have debated whether they should insist on marching in Jerusalem or relinquish the holy city and confine themselves to tolerant and open Tel Aviv.
Rejewvenation
Society is fragmented in other ways too. Besides Arab-Israelis, who have always lived mostly separately, the post-Soviet and Ethiopian immigrants have not been absorbed as seamlessly as earlier waves. They hold on to their language and culture and often clump together in their own neighbourhoods. Russian-language radio advertises visiting Russian pop stars and adult circumcision services. Ethiopian teenagers make hip-hop and African roots music. Around 4% of Israelis are immigrants or their children who were given citizenship because they had a Jewish relative, but who are not technically Jewish themselves. These even include home-grown anti-Semites, alienated youth whom the press, with a touch of sensationalism, has labelled “neo-Nazis”.
This is not the uniform collective that the early Zionists dreamed of. But it is culturally richer, and “there's a certain comfort in the fragmentation,” says David Landau, the editor of the daily Haaretz and himself an unusual combination of religious and leftist. “We have a mosaic of minorities, and this gives each of them a certain self-confidence.”
These ethnic boundaries will also slowly blur. Already much reduced is the gulf between Ashkenazi Jews, immigrants from Europe, and Mizrahim, who came from the Middle East. The elitist Europeans looked down their noses at the “Arab Jews”, who watched the state's Holocaust-centred identity erase their own rich cultural history. For years the neglect of the Mizrahim was one of Israel's most burning social issues. Today, says Amnon Rubinstein, a law professor and former government minister, “I have students who can't tell me whether they are Ashkenazi or Mizrahi because each of their grandparents is from a different country.”
Yet like Yaron, Mr Rubinstein still worries about the secular-religious divide. Thanks both to the growing religious population and the widening wealth gap, Shas, a right-wing, populist party with a reputation as the champion of the poor, has been broadening its appeal beyond its traditional base of ultra-Orthodox Mizrahi voters. It is using its weight in the current coalition to demand more benefits for religious Jews and to obstruct the peace talks with the Palestinians.
Another concern is a slow convergence of interests between the ultra-Orthodox and another stream of Israeli Judaism, the religious Zionists, who pioneered the settlements in the occupied territories after 1967. These two groups have traditionally had quite different views of the role of the state. The haredim want it to promote Jewish learning and religious observance. The religious Zionists rely on it to support the settlements, which to the haredim are less important.
But their gradual integration into Israeli society has made some haredim more nationalist. A few of the more extreme younger settlers have adopted a sort of hybrid identity known ashardali (see article). If in future the settlers manage to enlist broader support among the ultra-Orthodox, letting go of the occupied territories will become even harder. And the longer the conflict with the Palestinians stays unsolved, the more it will alienate a group of Israelis known as the “other fifth”.
In recent weeks it seems that a new and noxious wave of domestic violence has come to light. This deplorable phenomenon has existed, no doubt, before the recent media coverage. However, the new cases which were recently revealed have mostly occurred in the Ultra-Orthodox community. In one case, a so-called "Rabbi" encouraged brutal abuse of young children in order to "purify" them and "clear their bodies of demons". The newfound public interest along with the shocking testimonies of the abused children has sparked a public debate on the issue, prompting us to ask ourselves: how can we deal with this?
A review of the law reveals harsh punishment for people who abuse minors. Paragraph 368 of the Israeli Penal Law states that a person who abuses a minor physically, emotionally or sexually is punishable by 7 years in prison. If the abuser is responsible for the minor (such as a parent), the punishment reaches 9 years. This paragraph seems to acknowledge the fact that a large part of these abuses occur within the home, a fact which is well documented in research. Statistics for the year 2006 show that approximately 30% of police files opened for child abuse were for offences committed inside the family.
It seems, however, that the letter of the law is an insufficient deterrent against domestic violence. A report issued in 2007 by the National Council for the Child tells us that the years 1998-2005 marked a shocking increase of 80% in police files opened for domestic violence against children in Israel. I believe that the issue of domestic violence must be dealt with on two levels, both proactively and reactively.
Legislation is indeed an important factor in combating this phenomenon, as is implementing the severe punishments that these laws prescribe in court rulings. Punishment, however, is a measure only suitable for people who have already committed the crime.
Effective punitive measures may serve as a deterrent to some parents who would otherwise harm their children, but I believe that these must come alongside other measures aimed at preventing the violence in the first place. The silence of Israel's chief Rabbis Metzger and Ammar in light of these horrifying occurrences, especially those perpetrated within religious families and often in the name of religion, is deafening. I have recently issued an appeal to the Chief Rabbis calling on them to show responsibility as spiritual leaders and publicly denounce domestic violence.
It is imperative for the Rabbis today, more than ever before, to sound their clear and authoritative voice against this horrible phenomenon. This simple but important declarative measure, along with continuing education against violence, could bring about real improvement in days to come.
Rabbi Shlomo Aviner.
Naomi Ragen is an American-born novelist and playwright who has lived in Jerusalem since 1971. She has published seven internationally best-selling novels, and is the author of a hit play. Naomi also publishes a regular email column that deals with Jewish subjects, especially Israel,
