Rabbis for Religious Freedom and Equality in Israel
A trans-denominational rabbinical network
Featuring: Rabbi Michael Chernick Responses by: Rabbi Elliot Dorff Rabba Sara Hurwitz Rabbi Daniel Siegel Rabbi Mark Washofsky Rabbi Deborah Waxman Dear Friends, This special series of RRFEI articles features an original work by Orthodox Rabbi Michael Chernick, Professor Emeritus of Rabbinic Literature at HUC-JIR, New York, with responses from Rabbis Mark Washofsky, Elliot …
Continue reading “RRFEI Special Edition: Articles on Halakhic prenuptial agreements”
The vision of Hiddush and the Rabbis for Religious Freedom and Equality in Israel opens with these words: Imagine an Israel where Judaism blossoms in all its nuanced shades and colors; where religious and secular movements flourish side-by-side and those who explore beyond Judaism in search of meaning are able to forge new spiritual paths …
Eric Goldstein, CEO of UJA-Federation of New York, wrote in last week’s Jerusalem Post [link] about the nature of Israeli society. Is Israel the homeland of all the Jewish people, in which all of us can live according to our understandings of Judaism, or is there one recognized Jewish stream and the others have little …
Continue reading “Marriage freedom advocacy: our most united effort”
I shuddered in the late 60s when I read Simon Herman’s prediction that Israeli and American Jewish societies were growing apart. Now I am watching the fruition of his prediction. Narratives matter. This weekend’s Haaretz contained an article [click here] about how the informal education system under the Natanyahu regime is purposefully teaching their right-wing …
Continue reading “Now or never – the need for political pressure”
It’s reported by Leonard Baker that Mahatma Gandhi advised Rabbi Leo Baeck around 1938 that “All of the Jews of Germany at a given moment should commit suicide.” Gandhi thought the collective action would shock the conscience of the world. Gandhi clearly did not understand the Jewish nature. Baeck himself once commented that Judaism is …
In his monumental work on Jewish law, Menachem Elon writes: “… Nahmanides coined an apt and pointed term that illuminates the meaning of ‘doing what is right and good;’ A person who acts according to the technical and formal sense of the Torah’s laws, i.e.: who carefully follows only the explicit rules but not those …
Continue reading “Hateful comments expressed in Israel regarding liberal Jews”
A Conservative colleague once told me that the auspicious Rabbi Max Kiddushin told her that if a person says that s/he wants to convert a rabbi should convert that person immediately and teach the person later. Little did I know at the time that Rabbi Chuck Davidson’s research, found in our newsletter of January 18th, …
Continue reading “On Orthodox Conversion in the Twenty-First Century”
For more than a century Jews have debated how to guide the Jewish character of a sovereign Jewish State. Until recently, few thought seriously in terms of national halakhic standards. The Founders envisioned a Jewish ethic, not ritual Jewish practice. In Anita Shapira’s 2014 book, Ben-Gurion: Father of Modern Israel, she writes: Just before the …
Continue reading “Judaism can marry modernity to traditional life”
The Chief Rabbinate under Rabbi David Lau has instructed all the public mikvahs in Israel to not permit any conversions from any movement [link in Hebrew], and in that manner to prevent Reform conversions to Judaism. This in the aftermath of the Israeli Supreme Court decision two weeks ago permitting conversions in public mikvahs by …
Continue reading “The right of Jews to control our own religious lives”
The so-called compromise over prayer access to the Kotel has turned been attacked as giving away too much, as irrelevant to the real religious dispute in Israel, and as exclusionary of Orthodox women who refuse to give up their praying place. It has been lauded as a great advance, as a first in the legal …