What Unqualifies a Chief Rabbi?

I had a disturbing discussion with some Chareidi relatives the other day.

I innocently (sure) asked what they thought of the results of the vote for Chief Rabbi and of Rav Stav.

As I expected, as Chareidim, they were very happy with the results, and I wasn't taken aback by their vitriol of disgust towards Rabbi Stav, I expected that too. But what did surprise me was the example they used to vilify him.

The example they used to prove that Rav Stav was unqualified to be Chief Rabbi, is that he had at some point answered a question from a young man, a yeshiva student, who wanted to know what to do at the movies when they showed a bad scene.

The specific answer he gave is unimportant, nor did they bother to mention it.

The problem in their eyes, is that he answered a question like that at all.

You see, their argument was that the young man was obviously not a yeshiva student, or even religious, because religious people don't go to movies.

And someone who isn't religious (because he goes to movies), obviously doesn't care about Halacha (you're following the logic I presume), and therefore, any Rabbi who answers a question like that, can't represent Judaism or Rabbis - but, not because the only answer is, "Don't go to movies".

Here's the kicker.

They said that since Rav Stav was providing answers to religious questions to "non-religious" people, he clearly wasn't qualified to be chief rabbi, as the chief rabbi is only supposed to deal with religious issues for religious people, and non-religious people don't have religious issues, as they don't care about Halacha!

I asked them where they heard this insane argument they were making, that they apparently completely believed.

They all said they heard it on Radio Kol Chai (a Shas-controlled radio station), which is  apparently the only radio station a "religous" person is allowed to listen to.

To make a long story short, the argument they've been told to believe, by Shas controlled radio, is that only religious people have real religious questions, and rabbis should only provide answers to real religious questions to real religous people, and any rabbi that bothers to provide an answer to a religious question to a non-religious person is clearly not qualified to be a chief rabbi in Israel.

Is that messed up, or what?

I didn't bother to ask them the next question, because I already know the answer. But if you were to ask them if they'll eat food certified as kosher by our two new, chareidi chief rabbis, whom they're so happy with, the answer will be "no", because their certification isn't kosher (enough?).

It makes you wonder who exactly do they think a chief rabbi is supposed to be the chief rabbi of.


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Israel's Rabbinate, Religious Coercion, Weddings and Tzohar

Last week, Israel's "Tzohar" organization announced they were going to stop marrying Israelis because Israel's rabbinate wasn't providing them with marriage certificates.

Tzohar is an organization of Orthodox rabbis who perform Jewish marriage ceremonies according to Halacha, but in a manner than non-religious Israelis can appreciate, and without feeling that an archaic ceremony is being imposed on them. Many Israelis request "one stop shopping" at Tzohar, without any interaction with the State of Israel rabbinic authority, so that Tzohar handles marriage registration and the actual wedding ceremony.

Having personally gotten married in Israel, I was shocked at the insensitivity of the official "rabbinate" clerks who processed our request. I always thought that had I not been religious to begin with, I would have become vehemently anti-religious as a result of the process. Tzohar came about offer a friendlier, less bureaucratic, less imposing alternative.

Rabbi Riskin from Efrat wrote the following op-ed piece in the JPOST. I highly recommend you read it.

Has the Chief Rabbinate outlived its usefulness?
By SHLOMO RISKIN 11/12/2011 23:26

There is a profound distinction between the national and religious covenants: citizens of a nation-state are bound by laws promulgated by the legislative, judiciary bodies of that polity.

A number of weeks ago I read with great anguish that the renowned author Yoram Kaniuk wished to remain a citizen of Israel, but was resigning as a member of the Jewish religion. Two days after that a couple came to see me, requesting that I marry them in a religious ceremony, but insisting that their wedding not be officially registered within the Israeli rabbinic establishment.

Ironically, the very next day I was informed by Rabbi David Stav of the religious Zionist Tzohar organization that the Ministry of Religious Affairs would no longer allow couples to choose Tzohar rabbis to marry them, but was rather insisting that a couple can only be married by the rabbis of the community in which they live.

What are the origins of an official religious establishment in Israel, and what is causing the negative feelings towards the Chief Rabbinate and its judiciary system? The frustrating conundrum of Israel, as well as the secret of our eternity, lies in our hybrid personality as both a nationality and a religion. Our status as a nation was formed in the Biblical covenant between the parts when Abraham, the first Hebrew, was guaranteed eternal seed and was granted the geographical borders of a national homeland. It was forged in the Biblical insistence that every human being is created in the Divine Image, thereby guaranteeing the inalienable rights of human freedom and human inviolability. Hence our national narrative enjoins us to re-experience our formative servitude in and freedom from totalitarian Egypt, so that our national mission has been informed with spreading the ideals of loving the stranger, compassionate righteousness, and moral justice throughout the world.

Our status as a religion was formed at the covenant of Sinai. This gave concrete expression to our national mission in the form of ethical, moral and ritual laws, which would hopefully shape a God-fearing, sacred nation and kingdom of priest-teachers. Hence, our Torah and our Hebrew calendar – replete with panoply of feast and fast days with both historical and spiritual significance – serve as national as well as religious expressions. This is what makes a simplistic separation between “synagogue and state” in Israel a near impossibility, but this is what also gave us our ability to survive and recreate our national status after almost 2000 years of exile.

Our national covenant kept alive the dream of our return to Zion despite the destruction of our Temples and our worldwide persecution; and our complex legal system provided our nation with boundaries even though we had no geographical area to call our own.

There is, however, a profound distinction between the national and religious covenants: the citizens of a nation-state are bound by laws promulgated by the legislative and judiciary bodies of that polity, to which they must comply as long as they are residents within that nation-state. Religious law, on the other hand, which its adherents believe has its origins in Divine Revelation and its legal system interpreted by religious legal authorities in every generation, is dependent for compliance upon the free choice of the individual. As my revered teacher, Rabbi J.B.

Soloveitchik, was wont to say, the term religious coercion is an oxymoron; no truly religious act for the sake of heaven can be legislated by legal force and still retain religious significance for the one who performs it.

I BELIEVE with all my heart and mind that the State of Israel ought to feature a Chief Rabbinate as an official and revered representative of Israel before world Jewry and before humanity – for all the historical and existential reasons relating to our miraculous survival for the past 4,000 years. According to recent surveys, fully two-thirds of Israeli Jewry consider themselves to be on the spectrum of “traditional” Judaism.

Most Israelis have profound respect for and even personal involvement in our time-honored rituals of life-cycle passages such as circumcision, marriage under a nuptial canopy, burial in the ground and shiva, and festive occasions such as Friday evening familial kiddush and meal, Passover Seder, Shavuot Torah study and Chanukah menorah lighting. I do not believe that most Israelis are ready to join Yoram Kaniuk in adopting the Jewish nation but resigning from the Jewish religion.

They are not yet ready to join Yoram Kaniuk, that is, but the establishment rabbinate is doing everything in its power to bring them to the brink of doing just that. Once upon a time even so-called secular Israelis were proud of chief rabbis, men like Rabbis A.Y. HaKohen Kook, Isaac Halevi Herzog and Shlomo Goren (all of blessed memory) because these rabbis were inclusive rather than exclusive; they sought to embrace every Jew and bring him or her closer to tradition. These mighty individuals looked to halachah to solve questions of personal status, not to complicate them.

At a time when an unfriendly and inflexible Chief Rabbinate and its courts of law are driving young couples to Cyprus so as not to get married “in accordance with the laws of Moses and Israel,” thankfully the rabbis of the Tzohar organization have been finding user-friendly and welcoming halachic solutions to include them under the Jewish marriage canopy.

Now, in their infinite wisdom, the Chief Rabbinate and Ministry of Religious Affairs have closed yet another door (in addition to the doors of meaningful Jewish divorce and conversion) – the door of Jewish marriage – to a confused and disgruntled Israeli public. All “for the sake of heaven.”

I understand that the present controversy between Tzohar and the Ministry of Religious Affairs is on the road to resolution. But the general and underlying problem still remains in full force. Local religious councils are still setting up difficult roadblocks before well-meaning secular couples who have never heard of Tzohar but who want to be married by a rabbi – if it isn’t too much of a hassle to do so. The rabbinic courts remain extremely reluctant to force husbands to divorce their wives in accordance with halacha no matter the difficulties of their marital situations, and no matter how unreasonable the husband’s demands may be as his price for the giving the get.

Furthermore, close to 350,000 Israeli citizens from the former Soviet Union – “Kanukian” Israelis under the right of return but not halachically Jewish – are still awaiting the establishment of user-friendly ulpanim and courts for conversion devoid of small-minded bureaucracy and whose conversions will not be nullified later on by one of the Chief Rabbis’ court judges.

Our sacred Talmud and the Responsa of Jewish law have loving solutions for the overwhelming majority of problems engendered by these situations; “It din” the law is flexible, but “let dayan,” many of the judges are not, as the Talmudic saying goes. Let us only pray that until the proper changes in the system are put into effect, a disgruntled Israeli populace will not throw out the baby with the bathwater.

Postscript
The story is told of Rabbi Aryeh Levin, the famed tzaddik of Jerusalem, who once spotted a young soldier on a short furlough from the army. The rabbi knew the young man from the neighborhood in Geula, and so he crossed the street in order to extend his hand in greeting. “Shalom Aleichem,” said the venerable sage. “Please come to my home. I would very much like to drink tea with you and hear about your activities.”

The young soldier seemed uncomfortable.

“I don’t think it’s right for me to come visit you,” he said. “I don’t wear a kippa anymore.”

Rabbi Levin, in his black hat and black kaftan, smiled warmly at the young man and took his hand in his own.

“Don’t you see?,” he said, “I’m a very short man. I see you, but I cannot look up so high as to notice as to whether you are wearing a kippa. But I can see your heart – and your heart is big and kind, and that’s what counts.

You are also a soldier placing your life at risk for all of us in Israel. Please drink tea with me; your kippa is probably bigger than mine.”


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Telling it like it is: Why American Jews should support the Rotem bill

by Lurker

This column by David Breakstone in the JPost has got to be the most completely moronic article I have seen to date on the subject of the Rotem bill:

"Keep Dreaming: When Chelsea wed Marc"

I don't know which part of it I find most offensive:

• Breakstone's nauseating celebration of the Clinton intermarriage as a glorious, shining example of American Jewish assimilation -- a phenomenon that he seems to advocate as an ideal to which we should all aspire.
  
• His thinly veiled threat in the name of American Reform and Conservative Jewry that they will end their support for Israel unless Israel's democratically elected representatives learn to kowtow to American Jewish demands (instead of serving the needs of their own constituencies).
  
• His exasperatingly idiotic presentation of "Veronica", his own son's girlfriend, as a case study with which to bash the Rotem bill: "Veronica" -- a halakhicly non-Jewish daughter of Russian olim -- is, in fact, a classic, prototypical type of case which Rotem's bill was directly aimed at solving. Breakstone makes an utter fool of himself by gloating over the defeat of the very bill that would have enabled "Veronica" to convert, and his son to marry her.

What a nincompoop.

After reading that, I almost ignored this other column by Amotz Asa-el that appeared in the same paper a week later. From its title, it sounded like it was going to be yet more of the exact same stupidity. (And to be completely honest, having read other things in the past by Mr. Asa-el, that is what I tended to expect.):

"When Chelsea Clinton met David Rotem"

To my surprise, though, it would appear that Asa-el is one of the few journalists to have written on the subject of the Rotem bill, who took the time to actually read the bill and understand what it is, rather than allowing himself to become caught up in the tsunami of disinformation emanating from the Reform and Conservative movements -- as nearly everyone else (e.g., David Breakstone) has.

A couple of caveats: I am certainly not endorsing all of what Asa-el says in this column. Like Breakstone, he, too, tries to argue that there is a silver lining in the phenomenon of American Jewish intermarriage -- although his argument is not nearly as idiotic and offensive as Breakstone's. And unlike Breakstone, Asa-el certainly doesn't present intermarriage as some sort of messianic ideal that Jews ought to aspire to.

What very much surprised me, though, was that Asa-el explains what the Rotem bill would actually do, rather than regurgitating the ubiquitous nonsense being spouted by American Reform and Conservative Jews, which not only misrepresents the bill, but in fact presents it as the very opposite of what it is.

And he goes even further than that: He argues that the Right Thing To Do for the 300,000 non-Jewish Russian Israelis who wish to convert, is to support the cause of Israeli Modern Orthodoxy against the the haredim who currently control the conversion system in Israel. He explicitly calls upon the Reform and Conservative movements to set aside their petty, selfish politics, and to actively support the Rotem bill:

"American Jews should be equally humble before decrying Israel's handling of its own semi-Jews.
...
"The anguish of some 300,000 partial Jews –- who arrived here voluntarily and have served in the IDF, often gallantly, only to learn they couldn't marry here because of rabbinical nitpicking –- must end.
...
"...Knesset Law Committee Chairman David Rotem last month introduced a bill that would disabuse prospective converts of the current obligation to convert through the local rabbi [more precisely, the rabbinical courts -- Lurker], no matter how narrow minded he may be, and allow converts instead to shop around the country for lenient rabbis, provided they are part of the Chief Rabbinate. The downside of this [for the non-Orthodox] is that it means formally ruling out Conservative and Reform conversions as options for Israel's semi-Jews; hence the American Jewish outcry.

"The way America's Reform and Conservative movements see it, the battle over conversion in Israel is between Orthodoxy and non-Orthodoxy. Well it isn't. Rather, it's between ultra-Orthodoxy and modern Orthodoxy, and to join this battle, American Jewry must set aside its longer-term agendas and help Israel's modern-Orthodoxy win this battle."
...
"...ours is... a historically unique moment, one in which thousands who survived a 70-year-long attack on Judaism arrived in our midst. To come to them now with magnifying glasses and make their conversion process a nightmare is not only absurd, inhumane and anti-Israeli, it is also dubious as far as Jewish law itself is concerned, since historically a convert's observance was not reviewed once he converted.

"Here, however, ultra-Orthodox rabbis have revoked modern-Orthodox conversions retroactively, evidently serving ultra-Orthodoxy's sectarian interests, rather than serve the general Jewish interest...
...
"It would have been nice if Israeli non-Orthodoxy were sizable enough to confront ultra-Orthodoxy’s effort to make 300,000 Israelis Gentile, but the fact is it’s too small. Modern Orthodoxy, by contrast, is sizable, organically planted within the Israeli system, and eager to help Israel's semi-Jews become Jews. What stands in their way is Binyamin Netanyahu's strategic alliance with ultra-Orthodoxy.

"It follows, that on conversion the Jewish nation right now needs a strategic alliance between modern Orthodoxy and non-Orthodoxy. For this to happen, [the] Conservative and Reform movements [must] humbly concede that to reshape the Israeli conversion system they must first get more of their flock to live here. Until then, they would do well to let others handle Igor and Svetlana, while the rest of us leave it for them to handle Chelsea and Marc."

Again, I can't say that I support all of what Asa-el has to say here. But I do think that he deserves kudos for having the intellectual honesty and the guts to oppose the pervasive, mindlessly politically-correct groupthink and lies regarding the Rotem bill, and to present it for what it actually is.

UPDATE:

In a letter appearing in this past Friday's New York Times, Israel's Sephardic Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar chides the American Reform and Conservative movements for their interference in Israel's democratic legislative process, and counters their torrent of canards and disinformation by succinctly describing exactly what the Rotem bill is, and why he supports it:

"The bill, within the framework of Jewish law, would expand the ambit of conversion, prevent the application of unjustified stringencies, and provide more leniency and flexibility in administration. Many Russian Israelis would benefit substantially. In fact, this legislation was proposed by Yisrael Beiteinu -- a secular party -- representing more than a million Russian Israelis."

In other words, the Chief Rabbi of Israel is desperately seeking a way to reform and liberalize the existing conversion system -- which is currently controlled solely by the haredi-run rabbinical courts. He wants to wrest control away from those courts, and to thereby allow thousands of secular Russian Israelis to finally convert -- and he is practically pleading with the Reform and Conservative movements to allow this to happen. But the Reform and Conservative movements seem inexplicably hellbent on preventing any such liberalization, and are instead fighting tooth and nail to keep Israeli conversion in the exclusive hands of the haredim.

The irony is practically beyond description.

---

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The Rotem Conversion Law

This post was written by an anonymous member of the Muqata Think-Tank with some assistance from the rest of us. The author felt it is an important issue to discuss.

The link to the actual bill that the brouhaha is based on is here: http://www.knesset.gov.il/Laws/Data/BillKnesset/342/342.pdf

There are specific minor modifications to the proposal that we don't have available online at the moment, that are referenced in the post. (Thank you to Rabbi/Dr. Jeffrey Woolf and Yisrael Medad for those documents).

The Rotem Conversion Bill, an important bill, which should have been passed without any problem, has instead has become a political knife that is being used to promote various agendas and attack various people.

Unfortunately, certain people and organizations with very specific religious and political agendas are disingenuously trying to manufacture a storm by upsetting US Jewry with an issue that (a) doesn't affect them, and (b) might actually be better for them - if they moved to Israel and needed to deal with a conversion issue.

The bill was created to resolve some very specific internal Israeli issues – bureaucratic, political, and religious.

As Israel is a Jewish state, issues of Jewish law are important and central to a functioning society, as they are part of our legal system and they also prevent a permanent schism in the nation.

This law is a domestically-applied procedural law that shifts control and certification of who may perform recognized conversions in Israel – and only in Israel.

It does not change the status quo that Israel recognizes non-Orthodox conversions in the Diaspora for the purpose of the Right of Return. It does not have any affect on American Jewry or for that matter have any connection to Diaspora Jewry.

In Israel, two groups are coupled in the conversion process (1) The (State’s) Office of the Chief Rabbinate, and (2) the Religious Courts - the official religious court system in Israel.

The problem arose that due to Israeli domestic politics, the Religious Courts have become mostly populated with Ultra-Orthodox (Chareidi) judges, as opposed to “religious-Zionist” (Orthodox) judges and Rabbis, who better represent the country’s religious needs and character.

Consequently, recently there have been cases where the Chareidi-controlled Religious Courts attempted to annul, retroactively annul, or not accept the conversion of some non-Chareidi Rabbis (a halachically questionable act in of itself), and have made it difficult, if not impossible for the non-Chareidi Rabbis to perform conversions if they don’t base it on the various criteria set by the Ultra-Orthodox (a combination of religious philosophy, and strict interpretation and application of certain safeguards - Chumrot - built into halacha).


This bill proposes to decentralize the conversion process and remove direct oversight and control from the Religious Courts, while decentralizing and localizing the process down to the community level.

It places the conversion process into the hands of Chief Rabbinate-appointed community leaders - the officially appointed and recognized local Rabbi of Israel’s towns and cities.

These Rabbis will be trained and certified in Conversion law, and will create special local courts trained and certified to handle conversions at the local level.

These local conversions will automatically be recognized by the Chief Rabbinate, the official Rabbinate of the State of Israel, and thus the State of Israel for all relevant matters.

The concept is that local Rabbis are more likely to know and have a relationship with the potential convert living in their community - perhaps even being involved with the conversion studies of the applicant, than a Chareidi Religious Court’s Rabbi in Jerusalem, and will hence be in a better position to assist the potential convert in the Conversion process, as well as better equipped to decide if a potential convert should or should not be accepted into the Jewish nation - it is not, nor should it be an automatic process.

Furthermore, the bill does not limit the certified Rabbis and Courts to their own community members. If any Israeli citizen, permanent resident (similar to a US Green Card holder), and according to one version of the bill, a foreign citizen who gives explicit permission, wants to go to a specific community’s authorized Rabbi and Court for conversion, they will be allowed to.

This decentralization bill should actually make it easier and perhaps faster for more people to convert. It will be particularly helpful to segments of Israel’s large Russian population who are not Jewish, but want to officially join the Jewish nation.

The law also creates a special Conversion Oversight/Appeals Court whose sole responsibility is to oversee and decide on questionable or problematic cases of the local Rabbis, should any such problems arise. It specifically requires that the Oversight/Appeals court make all decisions within 30 days, so that no case will drag on for months or even years – a problem that can exist today.

This is a reform (not Reform) bill that should help improve, smoothen and perhaps even speed up the conversion process in Israel.

The opposition to the bill is coming from two quarters.

The bill was introduced by the Yisrael Beiteinu party. This party primarily represents the secular, Russian, Zionist population in Israel. They would be among the primary beneficiaries of this bill. The bill happened to have been introduced by a religious member of the party, with full support and backing of his party.

On the political side, in the Knesset, a number of MKs and parties want Yisrael Beiteinu out of the coalition or at least knocked down a few notches. This currently includes Prime Minister Netanyahu and the Likud party who are seriously fighting with their coalition partner over a number of issues. Other parties outside the coalition are involved too, as they want the current coalition government to collapse, which it could as a result.

Furthermore, this bill is a two-prong bill. The second part that Yisrael Beiteinu is working on is a Civil Marriage bill for those who cannot marry under Jewish law. If the first bill falls, the second will certainly never be introduced or passed.

On the religious side, IRAC (an organization which receives funding from the NIF), the activist arm of the Reform Movement in Israel, is leading the fight. The Reform movement does not have much in the way of a significant number of constituents or followers in Israel, just a lot of money from various funds.

Just like the bill will prevent the Religious High Court from interfering with conversions, it will also make it harder for Israel's judicially activist secular Supreme Court to bypass the government, and overturn long-existing laws regarding conversion in Israel. A key project IRAC has been working on for years.

IRAC has been trying for a while to destroy the carefully balanced status quo, ensconced in law, not by convincing the public (which they’ve failed to do over the past 2 decades), but rather by attempting to bypass the government and the people, by going through the Supreme Court, which happens to share a similar world view to them on this matter.

So to reiterate, this bill is primarily being introduced to help resolve the issue of the many non-Jewish Russians in Israel who want to join the Jewish nation, generally ease the conversion process, and resolve the problem of potential intermarriage that could otherwise split the nation.

The bill's opponents oppose it due to coalition politics, or because it blocks their attempts to destroy the religious status quo that would otherwise split our one nation in Israel apart.

The opponents are trying (in a very organized fashion) to obfuscate and inflame the discussion to promote very specific agendas (both religious and political) through hysterical polemics, half truths, and false insinuations.

But when it comes to facts on the ground, this is a very good bill that will help resolve some serious issues in Israel.

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Kashrut Alerts (in Israel)

How interesting... The Israeli Chief Rabbinate Kashrut division has issued the following Kashrut update.

1. Champaign Mushroom Pieces under the name "Kafri uBayti", barcode 7290003285129, imported to Israel by "Euro Standard" has an OU and Chief Rabbinate Hashgacha. This product does NOT have Chief Rabbinate hashgacha, and should be removed from all shelves and returned to the importer.

2. The "Neve Midbar" restaurant at the Dead Sea has a Kashrut Certificate (Teudat Kashrut) from the Badatz "NEzer HaHidur" organization, but no local rabbinate certification. In a check we performed, there were meats which were not Chalak, and meats with no certification at all. Be advised!

3. Iberian Airlines serves kosher meals from the "Mespool" company in Poland, which carries the Kashrut certification of the Badatz Johannesberg and "Nussbaum-Atlas Kosher". In a check with Rav Moshe Kurztag, head of the Johannesberg Beit Din, that this company in Poland is not under their certification since 2005. Be advised!

4. Imported Haagen Daaz ice cream products do not have the Chief Rabbinate Hashgacha because of "Cholov Akum". Mashgichim: Do not let these products onto premises you are responsible for.

5. Mentos fruit sucking candies, imported by "Parfetti Van Mila, Holand", importer license 4002-0722 claims to be "Kosher Lemehadrin" under the supervision of Rabbi Moshe Alon of France. Our investigation revealed that he did not give the hashgacha, nor is he authorized by the Chief Rabbinate to give Kashrut certification...

6. "Ginger" brand spices in Israel, claim to be under the supervision of the Rabbinical Municipal Council of Gan Rave, yet they are not.

7. After receving many complaints that the Isrotel hotel chain forces guests to leave on Shabbat, at 16:00. Be advised and check with the local Mashgiach that the Hotel respects the Shabbat; ie, mechanical locks, shabbat elevators, no electric eyes in bathrooms, etc.

8. Coffeeks instant coffee, barcode 7290003098996, claims to be Koshe under the hasgacha of R' Avraham Hochwald. It does not have his hasgacha. Be warned!

Also included is a list of restaurants in Israel that claim to be Kosher, but do not have certification...see the Hebrew document for all the details.

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