JPOST
A mouthpiece for haredi Ashkenazi rabbinic leadership blasted Shas MK Haim Amsalem on Monday for suggesting that conversion criteria for non-Jewish IDF soldiers should be more lenient than for other prospective converts to Judaism.
"Rabbis and rabbinical judges expressed their disgust with MK Haim Amsalem's impetuous and blasphemous declaration to apply leniencies when converting goyim from the former Soviet Union who serve in the IDF," the editors of Yated Ne'eman, a haredi daily representing the Lithuanian haredi rabbinical leadership, wrote in a biting article against the MK.
"Amsalem's claim that military service itself is tantamount to adhering to religious commandments is baseless and ridiculous," they wrote.[...]
Lately there is the problem of every chaim yankel Knesset member getting to sound off on important Halachic matters when it's not in their domain of either Halacha or knowledge. A knesset meber is apolitician and not a sge nor a Halachist. In matters of Halacha he cannot speak unless he is authorized to do so by his rabbinic mentort or rav, like Rav Ovadia Yosef or other poskim.
ReplyDeleteSimilarly, the new ("Deputy")Minister of Health Litzman has said he will appoint all rabbis to hospitals and that he will ban heart transplants in Israel. Is that part of his job description?
As reported on Ynet News (09.13.09): "Litzman challenges Rabbinate's control over hospital rabbis nomination: Deputy health minister sets out to promote religious reform in hospitals; says will pursue it even if it means overriding Chief Rabbinate's authority:...Litzman also referred to the issue of organ donation, one of the most controversial topics in the medicine-Jewish law dynamic and said, "Kidneys are simple and do not cause problems, heart (donation) I won’t allow since there is a problem as long as the heart is beating."
Is he either a medical or Halachic expert in "heart death" versus "brain death" to deceide this on his own without saying who is going to rely and pasken for him and for the klal?
Power tends to corrupt, it certainly corrupts the minds of politicians even if they are haredi ones.
For kanaoyim like r' Eisenstein and Tropper there is no the concept of eilu be'eilu, when someone disagree with their shita they calll him Conservative rabbi.
ReplyDeleteThis is not halachatic issue this is political issue, r' Eisenstein and his employer on the EJF board Tropper want to force their chumras on everybody. When r' Eisenstein says that dayan who wears non-white shirt and believe in ancient universe is possul and Tropper revokes conversion of women who sometimes walk with pants or neglect to put their sheitl on or want to go to college they lost even a pretense that they are leshem shamayim.
Rav Levy z"tl, the chief Rabbi of Tel-Aviv in the 1940's also spoke about those who join the nation of Israel through volunteerism, accepting the yoke of nationhood, etc. This is definitely not a first!!
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