29 January 2010
27 January 2010
Post to Maskil_Activity 01/27/2010
Comment / Israel's religious system will bring to its demise (Haaretz Israel News)
The religious public was the first to fall into the cistern, but the state itself will follow shortly after. In its weakness, Israel has developed an autonomous, competing religious apparatus, one operating in stark opposition to the promises of Israel's Declaration of Independence for civil equality. Israel has passed racist legislation like the Citizenship Law, which prohibits Palestinians married to Israeli citizens from becoming naturalized citizens, and has brought the consequences of such legislation upon itself. It is no coincidence that the country now has a justice minister who calls for the legal system to be informed by Jewish juridical codes, as well as an interior minister driven by transparent racism and a foreign minister with a racist platform. As such, most Jewish first-graders in Israel receive a religious education explaining that the goyim are not human beings, that women are inferior and that the secular are deficient.
A similar process is taking hold across the Middle East and beyond. In Afghanistan, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, the world of the madrassa has swallowed the national-secular order completely.
This pattern is anything but coincidental. When the secular system allows religion to create a messianic bubble within it, it creates a hothouse that converts religion into reality and fosters the growth of violent sentiment with no room for those who are both pragmatic and religious.
Unless democratic, non-messianic forces in Israel unite, they will find that the existential threat to Israel is the religious-messianic threat both within and without. They must dismantle the religious-messianic autonomy, step by step, and restore equality, democracy and openness in Israeli society, or Israel will be no more.
Free the Kotel a 2nd time - Israel Opinion, Ynetnews
- Do you want to know how the Orthodox establishment in Israel bolsters its status? How it succeeds in creating institutions and functions, which are seemingly for the benefit of the public but which in practice deepen the systematic exclusion of non-Orthodox trends in Judaism and the alienation of world Jewry? The Kotel is a good example. More than 20 million shekels were given to the Western Wall Heritage Foundation in the course of one year, while the Masorati movement must provide all of its own equipment - Torah scrolls, Siddurs, and ushers - in order to enjoy a few hours a day in a certain section - I almost wrote “second-class section” - of the Western Wall.
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
25 January 2010
Post to Maskil_Activity 01/25/2010
In short, Middle East peacemaking efforts will continue to fail, and the
possibility of a two-state solution will disappear, if US policy
continues to ignore developments on the ground in the occupied
territories and within Israel, which now can be reversed only through
outside intervention. President Obama is uniquely positioned to help
Israel reclaim Jewish and democratic ideals on which the state was
founded--if he does not continue "politics as usual." But was it not his
promise to reject just such a politics that swept Obama into the
presidency and captured the amazement and respect of the entire world?
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
23 January 2010
Post to Maskil_Activity 01/23/2010
Hitler's pope was no saint (Columnists Jerusalem Post)
Pius, who as Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli, was the papal nuncio in Germany in the 1920s, the Vatican's secretary of state in the 1930s and became pontiff in 1939. He drew the Church "into complicity with the darkest forces of the era," Cornwell wrote. Pius "was the ideal pope for Hitler's unspeakable plan. He was Hitler's pawn. He was Hitler's pope... [He was] not only an ideal pope for the Nazis' Final Solution, but a hypocrite... to his everlasting shame and to the shame of the Catholic Church."
Tad Szulc, Pope John Paul II's biographer, called Pacelli "the Fuhrer's best imaginable ally." Pacelli even betrayed Catholic leaders who might have challenged Hitler and his extermination policies. "He prevented Catholic protest in defense of Jews, even if they'd converted to Christianity," Cornwell wrote. Pius also rebuffed a personal plea from president Franklin D. Roosevelt in late 1942 to publicly condemn Hitler's extermination of the Jews and refused to meet the chief rabbi of Jerusalem, Isaac Herzog, who came to appeal for his help in saving Jewish lives.
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
15 January 2010
Post to Maskil_Activity 01/15/2010
The big bang of 2010 (Haaretz - Israel News)
The new idea is an old one - it's the Zionist idea. At a time when the legitimacy of the Jewish state is coming under unbridled global attack, there is an urgent need to revitalize the Zionist idea. When the Israeli elites turn their backs on the national ethos, there is an immediate need to revitalize the Zionist idea. When most of the children in the first through fifth grades are ultra-Orthodox or Arab, it's a matter of survival to revitalize the Zionist idea. When the State of Israel is becoming the state of Tel Aviv, there's a strategic need to revitalize the Zionist idea. The challenge is one that Israel has not faced since its establishment: that of redefining the Israeli republic.
The silent Israeli majority feels that Zionism is under siege. The threat is posed not only by Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas. The threat lies within ourselves: our moral eclipse, our obtuseness, our lack of feeling, our stupidity. Our loss of faith in our rightness.
So all Zionist parties must come to their senses, come together and take action. If Netanyahu proves he can lead the Zionist coalition and unite the Israeli majority, his leadership will have meaning. But to do so he must make sure that the big bang of 2010 is a Zionist one, not a cynical one.
At the edge of the abyss (Haaretz - Israel News)
- Since the Haredi community will not change voluntarily, there is no option but to make some tough decisions: The introduction of English, math and science studies must become a condition for receiving state school funding, and quotas must be set for the number of yeshiva students exempted from the draft. The cut in child allowances and other government support a few years ago increased Haredi participation in the workforce, but not sufficiently. For that to happen, assistance to large families must be made conditional on joining the labor market.
These decisions must be made immediately, for two reasons. First, because if they are delayed for a decade it could be too late to prevent the plunge into the abyss. Second, because the political power of the Haredim is increasing, and any delay will make it harder to legislate these decisions, which are critical for the state and the Haredim themselves.
Learning Curve (HADASSAH MAGAZINE)
Here’s a more contemporary error about haredi society: I once attended a meeting at my daughter’s high school in preparation for the standard 12th-grade tour of Poland. The headmistress told me that the students wouldn’t just learn about death camps. Before their trip, she said, they’d visit Meah She’arim, to see what Jewish life was like in Poland before the Holocaust.
Her nostalgic view of Meah She’arim is a common one, but mistaken. It’s not just that prewar Jewish Warsaw, with its Yiddish secularists, Zionists and assimilationists didn’t match Jerusalem’s haredi belt. Even Eastern European ultra-Orthodoxy did not look the same as today’s.
Despite ultra-Orthodoxy’s opposition to Zionism, Israel’s version of haredi Judaism is a creation of the Jewish state. Both the common view at the time of Israel’s establishment that religious Judaism was fading away and nostalgia for Eastern Europe helped promote this new form of Judaism. So did some successful steps taken by haredi leaders to revive a community that was first shrunken by modernity, then devastated by the Holocaust.
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
14 January 2010
Post to Maskil_Activity 01/14/2010
Obsessive Segregation Is About Misogyny — Not Modesty – Sisterhood Blog (Forward.com)
We need to recognize that the ultra-Orthodox obsession with removing women
from public spaces is in fact an act of systemic violence that is often
accompanied by pointed violence (cursing, spitting, pushing, beating up,
throwing acid and stealing babies, to name a few incidences from the past
2–3 years). This communal compulsion is a threat to women’s physical and
emotional well-being, and goes against the basic tenets of democracy,
humanity, and even Torah.
Yes, the Torah tells us that all human beings (men
AND women) were created in His Divine image and deserve dignity and respect.
What really irritates me, though, is the language used to defend the
segregation. I would like to see the media and others stop referring to
gender segregation as an act “for purposes of religious modesty”, as the
Jerusalem
Post did this week, for example. The idea that a woman sitting at the front bus is “immodest” implies that a woman who dares to be seen in public is acting sexually, intentionally trying to arouse the men around her. This issue is not about “modesty,” but about misogyny. Obsessive segregation is an agenda created by men who see all women — young or old, rich or poor, fat or thin, educated or uneducated — as ineligible for a place in the front of the bus by virtue of their sex. This obsession is not religiousness. It is, in fact, an abomination.
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
13 January 2010
Not Netanyahu, but the man in the street
While Netanyahu has betrayed his constituency - the still mainly secular Israeli voter and taxpayer - he has done so because that same voter and taxpayer has permitted him to do so. Unless and until the Israeli citizens take to the streets and demand and end to these filthy little coalition deals, Netanyahu (and all the other Netanyahus waiting in the wings) will continue to sell out their constituencies for the sake of short-term political gains.
The Israeli voter needs to consistently and absolutely demand coalition governments that exclude the ultra-Orthodox parties as a matter of policy and principle. That is the only way to stop this abuse and corruption, at least until such time as the Israeli electoral system is reformed.
"Therefore, the real criticism must be aimed at the one who gave Shas this power, the one who capitulates to it on every issue, the one who gave it control over all the civilian ministries that determine the public's quality of life - the Interior Ministry, the Housing Ministry and the Religious Services Ministry (along with giving the Health Ministry to UTJ) - and thereby enabled it to extort even more, increase its power and harm the nonreligious majority. For as the Talmudic saying goes, "it's not the mouse that's the thief, but the hole [where he hides his cheese]." And Netanyahu is the one who gave Shas the biggest hole it ever had."
- Like a bird that can't fly backward - Haaretz - Israel News (view on Google Sidewiki)
11 January 2010
Post to Maskil_Activity 01/11/2010
Pluralism wars reignite, U.S. Jews join fight (JTA - Jewish & Israel News)
"People are saying enough is enough," said Andrew Sacks, director of the Israel branch of the Conservative movement’s Rabbinical Assembly. "You have a segment of the American Jewish community that cares deeply enough to want to change it, but you have a second less desirable effect, among younger people especially, that says if that's what Israel is all about, I don't want any part of it.”
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
10 January 2010
Michael Livni, The Reform Option: Another Zionism
I searched for the title on Amazon (Michael Livni, The Reform Option: Another Zionism), but drew a blank. The only match was to an older title of his, 'Reform Zionism: Twenty Years - An Educator's...' by Michael Livni (Hardcover - ... for $24.95 http://bit.ly/8k4Kmg
in reference to:"The president met with kibbutz members at the center’s solar tea house, where one of Lotan’s founders, Mike Nitzan, related the history of the kibbutz and its Reform Zionist vision. Michael Livni, the Israeli Progressive movement’s first shaliah (emissary) to the North American Reform movement, presented Peres with a copy of his book, The Reform Option: Another Zionism."
- The World Union for Progressive Judaism | Our Newsletter (view on Google Sidewiki)
Google Sidewiki entry by Russell
I notice that your Home Page (http://pretoria.mfa.gov.il/) doesn't appear to have been updated since 2007.
Also, on the left of the page, there is a link to something called "Weekly Updates", but which relates to an archive not updated since 2005! (http://www.mfa.gov.il/mfa/
At a time when Israel is under pressure as never before to provide timely, reliable information and updates, should we not be paying more attention to refreshing pages such as this?
01 January 2010
Post to Maskil_Activity 01/01/2010
Column: Can Israel be both Jewish and democratic? (Columnists Jerusalem Post)
Which interpretation and which rabbinic authorities would be put in charge? The revolution that the Western world underwent in the last few centuries was a revolution in which religion and state were separated, in which power was given to the people and not to religious authorities, in which individualism and pluralism were recognized as legitimate. Israel was founded on those principles as well, but unfortunately they were not carried out fully regarding the religious establishment and religious freedom.
THE SOLUTION to these problems is also well known but has been successfully avoided by all the governments because of political pressures and lack of resolve. It requires as a first step the enactment of civil partnership legislation which would then permit people to be registered as partners with all the civil privileges thereof, while any religious marriage would become a private decision, a religious ceremony to be conducted by whatever religious authority the couple would choose. Such legislation has already been prepared, but has always been put aside at the critical moment. It is time for it to be tabled and passed.
The second step is the abolishment of the monopoly of the current Chief Rabbinate - not the abolishment of the Chief Rabbinate but the change of its status from a governmental monopoly into a privatized NGO which would exist alongside other rabbinates. These would be funded in part by tax money on the basis of the number of those who adhere to them. Individuals would have the right to choose their own religious affiliation.
Shooting the Jewish Press (Jewschool)
Okay, I admit that for me, Jewish continuity isn’t worth fundamentalism and literalism of narratives.
“Look for Vos iz Neias to take over the Jewish Week’s offices…”
I’d rather have Unitarian grandchildren than Monsey chassidim. You know why, ck? Because they are closer to the paradigm of my ancestors than these fundies. And that’s something you will never admit to understanding. Keeping kosher, a strict shabbos, taharas mishpacha are less important to many of us than the deeper, universal messages within Judaism. And frankly, those deeper messages appear to be utterly lost in today’s black hole of fahfrumpt.
If Bait Shammai is set to utterly take over Judaism — and that could be the case — then the path of Hillel must be adhered to outside the tents of Jacob.
So be it.
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
