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Shefa's Rabbi Blog List
Monday, February 4, 2013
Monday, January 28, 2013
Rabbi Eric Yoffie on #Haaretz: "Dear Prime Minister Netanyahu: U.S. Jews are fed up with not being valued"
-- Dear Prime Minister Netanyahu: U.S. Jews are fed up with not being valued
In your post-election Knesset speech, address directly the Reform and Conservative majority of American Jews - the heart of our Jewish family and the core of Jewish support for Israel – and who are finished being understanding and patient while Israel's official representatives offend them and denigrate their religious practices.
Dear Prime Minister Netanyahu:
American Jews are exceedingly agitated about issues of religious freedom, and there are things that you—acting on your own—can do about it.
I write to you now because after the election, which I am sure that you will win, you will be immersed in the politics of putting together a new coalition. Everyone, including the Orthodox parties, will be making demands of you, and it will be easy to forget that the citizens of Israel are not your only constituency. The Jews of the Diaspora—and of America in particular—also look to you, as the Prime Minister of the Jewish State, for leadership. And what they need right now is your help in creating a new alliance between the Diaspora and Israel built on trust and mutual respect.
And the starting point must be a new approach on Israel's part to issues of religious pluralism. Peace, settlements and the Iranian threat are all matters of deep concern, in the Diaspora as they are in Israel. But the simple fact is that the failure of Israel to offer recognition and support for the streams of Judaism with which the great majority of American Jews identify is nothing less than a disgrace—and an obstacle to engaging fully on all the other issues on Israel's agenda.
Let me say it directly: American Jews are fed up. They have had enough. They are finished being understanding and patient. They will no longer accept that Reform and Conservative Judaism are ostracized by Israel's government bureaucracy; they will no longer tolerate that Reform and Conservative rabbis are scorned and despised in Israel; they will no longer sit silently while Israel's official representatives offend them and denigrate their religious practices. You have seen some of this newly aroused anger in the reaction of Diaspora Jewry to the arrests and detentions at the Western Wall; and this is only the beginning. And make no mistake: The angry voices are not coming from the ranks of the indifferent or the fringe left. They are coming from the heart of American Jewish leadership.
As to what must happen now, American Jews understand your coalition politics; they are not ignorant or naive when it comes to such things. They are fully aware of what it is that you cannot do. But they are furious that Israel's leaders have not done what they can do.
And what you could do, Mr. Prime Minister, is the following: When you present your new government to the Knesset, you could say that the time has come for a new national dialogue in Israel on religious pluralism. You could point out that only 2 million of the 13.5 million Jews in the world are Orthodox, and that the overwhelming majority of American Jews come from the Reform and Conservative streams. You could say that these streams are the heart of our Jewish family and the core of Jewish support for Israel. You could recognize that Orthodox Jewish leaders in Israel and elsewhere profoundly disagree with the positions taken by these streams, but whether one agrees with them or not, it is the intention of the State of Israel to embrace them and draw them near—because it is the right thing to do, our Jewish future depends on it, and it is also serves the vital interests of the Jewish State.
Then you could say that you will use the authority of the Prime Minister's office to assure that allocations will be made available to synagogues and rabbis of the Reform and Conservative streams on the same basis as the Orthodox stream. (Since the two movements are small, the allocations will be modest). You could make it clear that you will no longer wait until you are forced to act by the courts.
You could announce your intention to invite Israeli Reform and Conservative rabbis to participate in state events, and mention that you will personally ask Reform and Conservative rabbis and scholars to teach the Bible study group that you conduct in your home.
And you could ask a prominent member of your Cabinet to chair a Commission intended to study how the Reform and Conservative streams, in Israel and the Diaspora, can be brought into a new relationship with the Jewish State.
You need not sweep away the Orthodox religious bureaucracy. You need not solve the problems of conversion and civil marriage—as welcome as such a solution would be. Such things may not be possible now. But you do need to speak out strongly and publicly in favor of a new initiative by the State of Israel to connect with the non-Orthodox religious movements. And if Shas and United Torah Judaism are unhappy, so be it.
Mr. Prime Minister, this is a time for you to inspire American Jews and to demonstrate that the State of Israel values the religious choices that they make. This is a time for daring, and creating a new partnership that will be an essential element of your legacy.
Sincerely yours,
Rabbi Eric H. Yoffie
Rabbi Eric H. Yoffie served as president of the Union for Reform Judaism from 1996 to 2012. He is now a writer, lecturer, and teacher, and lives with his family in Westfield, New Jersey.
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Rabbi Menachem Creditor
Wednesday, January 23, 2013
Forward.com: Yair Lapid, Israel's Rising Star, Is Still Great Unknown in Washington
Forward.com: Yair Lapid, Israel's Rising Star, Is Still Great Unknown in Washington
Newcomer Lived in L.A., But Has Scant Ties to Establishment
GETTY IMAGES
Fresh Face: Yair Lapid, the man of the moment in Israel, is still widely unknown in Washington policy circles.
By Nathan Guttman
Published January 23, 2013 - http://forward.com/articles/169830/yair-lapid-israels-rising-star-is-still-great-unkn/?p=all#ixzz2IqXQ07Tr
Few in America have a close acquaintance with Yair Lapid, Israel's new political kingmaker and a top contender for the post of foreign minister in a new Israeli government soon to be formed.
Lapid, who emerged as the nation's new political star, winning 19 Knesset seats in the January 22 elections, has spent time working in the United States and has taken on the issue of religious pluralism in Israel, a topic dear to many American Jewish activists. But he is still a great unknown, especially to policymakers and analysts trying to assess his views on the Middle East and the Israeli – Palestinian peace process.
Lapid is no stranger to Washington, although he had little contact on issues relating to foreign policy. He attended the 2012 policy conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, but spoke about his book rather than about policy. Lapid also visited Washington several times when his son spent a semester in the city.
Perhaps his most important point of contact for American politics is Mark Mellman, a top Democratic pollster and political strategist. Mellman worked on Lapid campaign in Israel and was praised in the Israeli press for his contribution to the successful campaign.
In 1997, after leaving a lucrative position as host of a popular entertainment show on Israeli TV, Lapid moved to Los Angeles, where he took on a job as head of New Regency Films' TV division. The offer was made to Lapid by Israeli-born Hollywood producer Arnon Milchan, who was a close friend of Lapid's late father, Yosef (Tommy) Lapid. Milchan had taken on the young Lapid as his protégé and Lapid later credited the time he spent with Milchan for his good English, which could now come in handy as a top Israeli cabinet member.Less than a year moving to Los Angeles, Lapid decided to return to Israel. In his book Memories After my Death, a posthumous biography of his father, he recalls making the decision after hearing of the March 1997 terror attack in a Tel Aviv cafe his father used to frequent. "I remembered this was your coffee shop," he told his father on the phone from Los Angeles. "Yes, I just left before it happened," Yosef Lapid replied. After a short pause his son announced: "I'm coming home."
In 2008, Lapid returned to Los Angeles as a keynote speaker at a star-studded event honoring Milchan. In his speech (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILBc4NTN9GE&feature=player_embedded) he thanked Milchan for "the many things we don't know" about his work for Israel, apparently hinting to the movie producer's rumored ties with Israeli intelligence services.
Yair Lapid's ties with the American Jewish community began to take shape last year, after he announced his intention to enter politics and upon publicly taking on the issue of religious pluralism in Israel. "We saw him as someone who has this issue on his radar and wanted to build a relationship with him early in the game," said Rabbi Julie Schonfeld, executive vice president of the Rabbinical Assembly. The group invited Lapid to speak at their conference last May, and Lapid, though already in full campaign mode, agreed to make a 24 hour visit and attend the Rabbinical Assembly conference in Atlanta. By the time he landed in the U.S., Lapid had learned that Prime Minister Netanyahu, in a last-minute political maneuver, called off the early elections.
In his speech (http://www.rabbinicalassembly.org/story/yair-lapid-rabbinical-assembly-convention) Lapid touched on all the right chords. He told the crowd of Conservative rabbis they are "the last line of defense that believes that Judaism shouldn't be the jailhouse of ideas, but the liberator of ideas," and promised to do all in his power "to make it feasible to women, Conservative or Reform, to pray at the wailing wall, wearing their prayer shawls." Lapid also argued that "the majority of Israelis are actually Conservative, they just don't know it." "We look forward to working with him on these issues," said Rabbi Schonfeld, who described the leader of Yesh Atid party as "a very bright, possibly brilliant charismatic individual."
Ties Lapid forged with members of the American Jewish community throughout the years proved helpful when he embarked on his political career. In just one month in 2012, Lapid raised nearly $30,000 from American Jewish supporters and Israeli expatriates living in the United States. One of the notable donors is leading Jewish philanthropist Michael Steinhardt.
Wednesday, January 16, 2013
A Response to "Re-engineered United Synagogue has made great strides"
A Response to "Re-engineered United Synagogue has made great strides"
Rabbi Steven Wernick's OpEd "Re-engineered United Synagogue has made great strides" (Jan 15) expresses dismay that, despite the USCJ strategic plan adopted three years ago in response to a threatened large-scale revolt of Conservative synagogues, there remains a "narrative of decline" among some in the media and some "critics." But sometimes narratives are true. Wernick correctly points to the considerable re-engineering USCJ has accomplished since the beginning of his tenure. But that's a big part of the problem. Engineering is the design, building, and use of engines, machines, and structures. Engineers are not about purpose - they are experts on efficiency. Just as the most efficient method of animal sacrifice would not resonate with Rabbi Solomon Schechter, the founder of the United Synagogue of America (today the USCJ), so too the centralized institutional model of USCJ does not speak to today's mobile/hyper-local communities that have evolved within Schechter's Movement. Conservative Judaism will continue to thrive and evolve. But that will be more possible when its members and leaders remember that the message of Conservative Judaism is not the same as institutional continuity.
Rabbi Menachem Creditor
Congregation Netivot Shalom
Berkeley, CA
Tuesday, January 15, 2013
From Camp Ramah: Retreats for Married Couples with a Spouse Recently Converted to Judaism
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Monday, December 31, 2012
Rabbi David Lerner on jewishboston.com: "A Shot Heard 'Round the Nation" #CLERGYAGAINSTBULLETS @PICOnetwork
jewishboston.com: "A Shot Heard 'Round the Nation"
Rabbi David Lerner
Rabbi David Lerner
December 30, 2012
Last Friday morning, I was sitting in my study writing a sermon as I heard the unfolding nightmarish news about a school shooting in Newtown, CT. Watching our preschoolers running around the playground, I was overwhelmed by sadness. As a father, I thought of my own children. Silent tears fell on my desk.
Why can we not protect the most vulnerable and the most valuable: our youngest children?
"Do not murder" calls out from the Ten Commandments. That is because every life is precious, created in the divine image and therefore, of infinite value. Judaism frames it as: one who saves one life, saves an entire world and one who destroys one life, destroys an entire world.
The United States excels in many ways. More than most Western democracies, it is country that is infused with religion and spirituality. But, tragically, it is also distinguished by its widespread gun violence.
Even when compared to other countries, like Canada, where there are many guns, we, in the United States, use them more against each other with sprees of mass murder all too often polluting the land – Columbine, Virginia Tech, Tucson, Aurora, and now, most devastatingly, Newtown.
Some of the roots of this may lie in our revolutionary past. Here in Lexington, we take particular pride in our historic role staving off the British Redcoats.
On April 19, 1775, the ragtag militiamen were ill supplied so they had to husband their bullets.
It was that motley band and what eventually became the American Revolutionary Army that defended this land against Britain, helping us attain our independence. The significance of defending ourselves against outside invaders was enthroned in the in the Second Amendment to the Constitution, which gives us the right to bear arms.
In the succeeding centuries, much has changed in our world. While there are still external threats, one of the greatest internal threats we face is Americans with guns and bullets.
Guns have become more and more prevalent in our society, and we have been afraid to challenge the status quo.
After the attack in Newtown, I went online and found that I could easily purchase the same .223 Bushmaster assault rifle that was used to murder children.
Shocking.
Sadly, in our great country, it's much harder to get help for mental illness than to buy semi-automatic weapons.
Guns do not kill people, but people with guns do. The availability of guns and bullets makes it far too easy for people to kill.
Our religious traditions call us to act.
This is a moral and ethical issue that demands a religious response. All clergy – men and women, Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Jews, Buddhists, Baha'is, Sikhs – have to publicly demand change. We must come together as Americans moved by this tragedy to act and to rally for change.
People of faith across the country will do just that on Jan. 5-6, 2013 which has been designated a Sabbath to Stop Gun Violence.
There is no excuse for silencing the shots heard in Newtown.
Thankfully, President Obama spoke out forcefully, calling for action, but he needs to hear our voices as well.
Let us take a page from the Minutemen and husband our bullets by banning high capacity cartridges. Let us reinstate the sensible assault rifle ban. Let us close the loopholes so that all gun purchases require background checks. Right now, 40% of gun sales have no checks!
In 1775, Lexington's "shot heard round the world" freed us from British tyranny; as horrific as the Newtown shots were, let those shots be heard as a call to free us the tyranny of gun violence.
Rabbi David Lerner is the spiritual leader of Temple Emunah in Lexington, MA, past president and treasurer of the Lexington Interfaith Clergy Association, is active in Faiths United Against Gun Violence and is the founder of www.ClergyAgainstBullets.org
JOIN THE GREATER LEXINGTON (AND BEYOND) INTERFAITH COMMUNITY FOR A "SERVICE OF REMEMBRANCE AND RESPONSE" on TUESDAY, JANUARY 1, 2013 at TEMPLE ISAIAH in LEXINGTON from 5-6 PM
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Rabbi Menachem Creditor
Friday, December 28, 2012
Rabbi Bradley Shavit Artson on #HuffPost: "Unity Is Not Uniformity: An Open Letter to Natan Sharansky" #liberatethewall
Rabbi Bradley Shavit Artson on HuffPost: "Unity Is Not Uniformity: An Open Letter to Natan Sharansky"
Dear Mr. Sharansky,
I am writing to ask you to use your new authority to provide real freedom of religion at the Kotel, Jerusalem's Western Wall.
Like many others, I have long been in awe of your heroic fight on behalf of Soviet Jews. Your courage in the face of the full force of Soviet power was a beacon of light that inspired countless others and made possible the repatriation of many Jews to the Land of Israel. We are all in your debt.
Recently, the Prime Minister of Israel turned to you to provide another act of courage and service. Few can ignore the atrocious reality that the most public religious site of Judaism, the Western Wall in Jerusalem, has been a site of constricted bigotry, under the domination of an Orthodox rabbinate intent on maintaining its monopoly and avoiding a real exchange of ideas with other Jewish streams. Those government-sponsored theocrats have succeeded in generating legislation enforcing a monopoly of their version of Judaism as the sole permissible practice at this ancient national landmark. As a result of such repressive legislation, we have witnessed women arrested, harassed, even incarcerated for the "crime" of attempting to hold a Torah service at the Kotel, the Western Wall. They are bullied, shouted down, pushed and attacked for the beautiful egalitarian expression of Judaism as they practice it. Many of them have been charged with a crime simply for wearing a Tallit, a prayer shawl.
This shameful reality makes Israel's official rabbinate look little different than the government funded religious bureaucrats elsewhere who would use their faith to silence and intimidate those who live differently than their parochial views would authorize. Why is it that so many zealots are so threatened by women who refuse to be silent, marginalized or intimidated?
I write to you today as one who loves Israel with her rich diversity of people's faiths and communities. I write to you as one who spends extensive time in Israel every year and whose students live a full year of their program learning in Israel. I write to you as a rabbi affiliated with the Conservative/Masorti stream of Jewish life, insisting that there must be room for the Judaism that I and hundreds of thousands around the globe affirm.
I write because the Torah of Israel demands it, as does the democratic nature of the State of Israel.
One of the greatest contributions of the Hebrew Bible to the cultural heritage of humanity is the most often repeated commandment in the entire Bible: "You shall have one law." That mandated standard of equity in the Torah pertained to Israelites and to non-Israelites dwelling under the Torah's jurisdiction. One equal standard was to pertain to both citizens and resident aliens. That same aspiration of legal equality pertained across the board of Israelite class or status: There was to be one law for all. Indeed the rabbis of the Talmud went so far as to claim that this biblical mandate for one legal standard crossed gender barriers as well: "Scripture equated women and men for all the laws of the Torah" (Bava Kama 15a).
This core biblical aspiration motivated the Enlightenment thinkers to advocate social structures in which all citizens could be free and equal: liberty, brotherhood and equality, in the words of the French slogan. Or, as Thomas Jefferson put it: All men are created equal, and endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights. The ancient mandate of Torah pulsated through their work with an insistence that the purpose of government is to protect human liberty and diversity. Indeed, that very sentiment reverberates in the Declaration of Independence of the State of Israel:
THE STATE OF ISRAEL will be open to the immigration of Jews from all countries of their dispersion; will promote the development of the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants; will be based on the precepts of liberty, justice and peace taught by the Hebrew Prophets; will uphold the full social and political equality of all its citizens, without distinction of race, creed or sex; will guarantee full freedom of conscience, worship, education and culture; will safeguard the sanctity and inviolability of the shrines and Holy Places of all religions...
That this standard was never fully attained in the biblical period runs like a torrent through the condemnation of Israel's prophets. But the ideal remained the goal. That this egalitarian standard was never fully attained by contemporary democracies (Israel among them) has driven the movements for social justice across the last several centuries -- inspiring the anti-slavery movement, the women's movement, the labor movement, the civil rights movement, the gay/lesbian movement and most recently efforts to expand inclusion to those with special needs. Yet here, too, the imperfections and shortcomings of reality could not erase the power and validity of the goal. The goal remains equality, inclusion, diversity.
Included in this litany of struggles to extend equal protection was the long battle for religious freedom: that a citizen could practice or reject the faith of his or her choice without prejudice, exclusion or penalty. The fight for religious equality has been hard fought across the ages and around the world -- for the right of Jews to be citizens, for the ability of Catholics to serve in higher office, for Mormons, or Muslims, or Hindus, or atheists to be able to function as citizens and share in the exercise of power without regard to their metaphysical convictions.
The right to the free exercise of religion is a hallmark of any real democracy, no less than the right to vote freely, to protest publicly, to a court of law and a jury of one's peers. Israel, as one of the few democracies in a region of continuing despotism and religious violence, has both a mandate and an opportunity to demonstrate the vitality of democracy with its embrace of raucous religious freedom. In a Jewish state, it is particularly obscene to favor one sect at the expense of all other expressions of contemporary Jewish vitality.
"You are the man!" a biblical Natan told King David when he violated prophetic ethics. And you, Natan Sharansky, are the man with sufficient stature and courage to restore to Israel the full measure of religious freedom for each stream of Judaism, throughout the Jewish State.
The Kotel is as good a place as any to launch that re-commitment to the Torah's vision of "one law," of unity without uniformity, and to Israel's imperfect but vigorous expression of democracy in action.
Mr. Sharansky, liberate that Wall!
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Rabbi Menachem Creditor
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