Supreme Court rejects appeal to stop offensive gay parade

YNET writes:

Efrat Weiss

The High Court of Justice rejected Monday afternoon a petition filed by right-wing activists Itamar Ben-Gvir and Baruch Marzel against holding a gay pride parade in Jerusalem.

As a result, the parade will take place as scheduled this coming Thursday.
In their ruling the judges said they took the parade's route into consideration, as well as a statement issued by the Open House organization according to which the marchers do not plan on provoking the capital's residents in any way.

The plan to hold the gay parade in Jerusalem has drawn the ire of several religious bodies. A few days ago Shas Chairman Eli Yishai, Knesset Member Uri Ariel (National Union-NRP), the United Torah Judaism party and Israel's chief rabbis demanded that the parade be called off or held in a closed venue.

This year's parade will begin in Jerusalem's Independence Park at 4 pm on June 26, and end in Liberty Bell Park with a ceremony presenting the gay community's call for equal rights, with the hope of promoting love and tolerance in the country's capital.

Mayor Uri Lupolianski recently urged the High Court to accept Ben-Gvir's petition prohibit the gay community from holding the parade in Jerusalem and described it as a "severe provocation".

In a letter to the court the mayor said, "Past experience shows that the parade greatly offends, deliberately and unnecessarily, the feelings of Jews, Muslims and Christians, who view its sheer existence, and the blatant manner in which it takes place, as a desecration of the holy city and of the values with which they were raised."

Religious parties call for offensive gay parade to be moved indoors

Yeshiva World News reports:

June 20, 2008

A letter was sent to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Attorney General Menachem Mazuz and the chief of police, calling upon them to move Thursday’s scheduled to’eva parade in Yerushalayim to an indoor venue.

The Shas, National Religious Party, United Torah Judaism and National Union Parties have joined forces in their effort, along with Israel’s chief rabbis, seeking to compel authorities to move the event to an indoor venue to prevent the chilul Hashem associated with such a happening in the streets of Yerushalayim.

(Yechiel Spira – YWN Israel)

Do protests corrupt our society - or strengthen it?

The following response raises an important issue. I do agree that demonstrations have to be done in a reasonable and dignified way and that there have been responses in the past which were totally unacceptable. However I don't think that if a person protests one issue that of necessity he loses his ability to respond differently in other situations.

There is nothing inherently wrong with protesting - though it does need clear guidelines. Rav Yaakov Kaminetsky (Emes L'Yaakov Bereishis 49:7) - who was never accused of being a fanatic - asserted that the educational system must be in the hands of zealots. As the Chazon Ish has stated, religion which lacks passion is doomed.

The examples of beating up a woman on a bus or pouring acid - are obviously totally unacceptable - but don't mean that protests are invalid. There obviously needs to be an alternative to the extremes of violent protest and the attitude of passively accepting everything.

Do you also disapprove of the civil rights demonstrations in America or the demonstrations of the labor unions which brought about radical improvements of working conditions? What about the demonstrations for freeing Russian Jews? Demonstrations have a needed place in any society - but the question is how to do it to address the concerns you raise. Ignoring offense or injustice leaves you a different person then if you protested. This is a standard point of Chazal. See Ramban to Vayikra (19:17): "You shall not hate your brother in your heart; you shall chastise your neighbor, and not allow sin on his account." Do you believe in simply turning the other cheek?

However all this is probably a moot point since Rav Sternbuch told me that the police have prohibited counter demonstrations under threat of violent beatings.

=================================
R' Josh Waxman said...

Aside from concerns I have aired on other posts, one *principle* reason I believe this approach of protest is misguided is as follows: The parade will come and go, whether you protest or not. But the encouragement to protest, and the rhetoric used, trains people to be kannaim. After you train people to react radically in *one* instance, they are more prone to act radically in other situations.

Do you really want your fellow Jews to be kannaim, to be Pinchases, in other situations? Even *if* this present situation merits it, you have to live with these people throughout the rest of the year.

The fellow who beat up the woman for daring to sit on the mehadrin bus -- he *also* was upset that such a terrible thing was being done in his holy Yerushalayim, on his holy mehadrin bus. The fellow who poured acid on that poor girl in Beitar Illit was horrified that a temptress would go about dressed like this in Israel. The same for those who pour bleach on clothing they deem non-tzniusdik. And the chareidim who protested the showing of a nature film on a flight to Uman. And so on and so forth. Perhaps you agree to one or two cases, but I would guess not to all of them.

However, the rhetoric used is equally applicable to all those other cases. And training people to react in this way will lead to an environment in which masses of people are kannaim.

Do you think that this is a positive direction for chareidi Judaism in Israel to take?

Understanding why the offensive gay parade - in challenging G-d and His Torah - is life threatening.

I have posted a number of times already, I, II, III, IV, V VI concerning the fact that most Jews - especially in Jerusalem - are strongly offended by the gay parade which is scheduled this week. Jerusalem is the center of holiness, the heart of the Jewish nation. Because of this holiness, the gay parade was deliberately scheduled in Jerusalem.

They claim that they are enlightened harbinger's of openness and acceptance. That they are offended by what the Torah says about them. They want to correct the hatred and divisiveness that they feel has resulted from the traditional Jewish views - views which have spread to Christianity and Islam. They want to uproot what they claim is the false belief of the Jews and other religions that G-d does not approve of their behavior and in fact views it as an abomination. They have portrayed it as a simple campaign against primitive beliefs which must give way to the superior ideas of the secular Western world. They sincerely want to educate religious Jews in what they view as advanced morality and ethics. They want to show us that peace will result from discarding outdated religious ideas and that if we accept their views -- peace is just around the corner. They sincerely believe that if Jews were just more tolerate and could accept that the Bible mistakenly proscribed their behaviors as deviate - then there would be genuine peace - not only in Israel but in the whole world. They think it is that simple.

Thus the confrontation revolves around a single question. which side is right and which is wrong. There is nothing in the middle. Either the Torah was given by G-d and we must keep it because G-d demands it of us - under threat of severe punishment - or it is an ancient superstition which is an impediment to the happiness of Mankind. Either the Torah is G-d given or it is an outdated superstition. Which is it?

It is important to understand that this is not a simple debate of philosophy, an argument between intellectuals in some ivory tower. We are located in the center of the Middle East. A powder keg that can explode at any second. Beside the traditional Arab enemies with the huge armies - we also face the nuclear threat of Iran. Iran has threatened to annihilate us if we try to defend ourselves. Even without the Bomb - we face daily bombardments from Hamas as well as threats from the Hezbollah and Syria. Please read this assessment in the New York Times. Israel in the Season of Dread. There is no need to be melodramatic and exaggerate. Reality is frightening as it is.

The Torah is very clear that if we don't live lives of purity and holiness - we will be punished and expelled from Israel. As Rav Moshe Sternbuch, shlita mentiioned to me last Shabbos - Israel has a paradoxical nature - it either encourages the ultimate holiness or the greatest perversion.. The organizers of the offensive parade - think that the idea of G-d telling us what is holy is a joke. Make love not war. Engage in every type of perversion and encourage others - not only to tolerate it - but also to join them.

We are literally clinging by our fingernails to the edge of a cliff. We are this moment literally in a life and death situation. The Torah is called the Tree of Life to those who cling to it. To those who are too weak to hold it tightly - they fall to their deaths. The gemora in Shabbos (55a) relates how the great saints of the Jewish people were condemned to death - not because they sinned. But because they didn't protest the sins of the people. Even though if they had protested it would not have helped. The Torah requires us to protest against every affront to G-d and the holy Torah - or suffer the consequences.

This Thursday there will be a choice for all of us - either to pretend that nothing is happening when the parade marchers openly challenge G-d and His Torah - or to protest in a dignified manner against this spiriutal poison. It is an opportunity for sanctification of holiness in sincere yet urgent protest - or the opposite. The consequences are literally those of life and death.

Missionaries, Messianic Jews & Christian Theology - from Aish HaTorah

Aish HaTorah published:

Evangelizing the Jews: The New Techniques
by Rabbi Tovia Singer

To bring about the Second Coming, fundamentalist Christians believe they must convert the Jews. Having failed in the past, they are now armed with a new arsenal of deceptive techniques.

No Sunday services take place here; this congregation meets only on Friday evenings and Saturday mornings. You will never see a cross or an altar; there is an Aaron Hakodesh (holy ark) with a star of David adorning its velvet cover, and a Bimah (stage for prayer services) in the center of the sanctuary. The majority of the men who worship here wear kipot, and their tzitzit hang down the sides of their pants. This congregation's rabbi, among many other functions, reads from the Torah and makes Kiddush every Shabbat. Most of the women are modestly dressed. Joyous shouts of "Shabbat Shalom" and "Baruch Hashem" can be heard as young couples greet each other. The sanctuary pulsates to a modern Israeli musical beat.

If this sounds like a description of a traditional Jewish house of worship, think again. The above is actually a description of any one of the hundreds of Messianic "synagogues" which flourish throughout the world.

Confused? Many are.

Such congregations are designed to appear Jewish, but they are actually fundamentalist Christian churches which use traditional Jewish symbols to lure the most vulnerable of our Jewish people into their ranks. Messianic "rabbis," many of whom are Jewish by birth, are committed to bringing the Jewish people to know Jesus. Their agenda is to make Christianity more palatable to the uneducated Jew, and to the astonishment and horror of the Jewish community, their marketing ploys are proving to be successful.

Twenty-two years ago, twelve Messianic congregations existed in the United States. Today, more than 300 actively attract and recruit Jews who, because they lack a sound Jewish education and support system, are buying the manipulative rhetoric and persuasive techniques of the Hebrew-Christian missionary movement.

Additionally, there are over 600 Christian missions dedicated to converting the Jewish people. It is estimated that there are more than 200,000 Hebrew-Christians in North America and Israel. As an exit-counselor who works with families to reclaim their Jewish family members from these churches, I can testify that the cost in terms of Jewish souls is dear.

WHO ARE THESE MISSIONARIES?

In order to understand the dynamics of the missionary problem, we must first understand who exactly these missionaries are.

To the Jewish community, the word "missionary" is a charged word, with a multitude of misconceptions attached to it. Typically, the word "missionary" is associated with those people who stand on street corners, annoyingly and ubiquitously distributing literature that tries to persuade individuals to believe in Jesus.

When we think of missionaries we might think of an organization with members, mailing lists, secretaries, and buildings to which we can point and say, "You see that building on 31st street, between Lexington and Park (New York headquarters of Jews For Jesus)? They are the missionaries."

This is merely one of a variety of misconceptions we have about missionaries and how they operate.

A number of years ago I lectured at a large university campus in Ohio. In my conversation with a dean we began to discuss the work I do. He immediately reassured me that at his university, they did not have a missionary problem. He recalled how years earlier there were indeed missionaries on his campus who distributed pamphlets and misused traditional Jewish symbols for the purpose of evangelizing. "But we don't have that here anymore," he insisted.

"Tell me, are there any fundamentalist born-again Christians on your campus?" I asked.

He quickly snapped, "What? Are you kidding? This is the Midwest! We're packed with them!" I then told him that indeed he had a serious missionary problem on his campus because, in reality, fundamentalist, born-again Christians are dedicated to the idea of bringing every Jew to a belief in Jesus.

Our second mistake is that we tend to view the Christian world as a monolithic group of gentiles who all essentially believe the same thing. In fact, the Christian world -- with hundreds of variant denominations that differ on numerous fundamental theological issues -- is far more diverse than the Jewish world. At a baseball game, it is sometimes difficult to know who the players are without a scorecard. Let's break down the Christian world for a moment so that we know precisely to whom we are referring.

THE COMPLEX CHRISTIAN WORLD

The Roman Catholic Church is by far the largest denomination in Christendom. Yet despite its past often-bitter relationship with the Jewish people, today Catholics are for the most part not interested in converting Jews. I need not worry that a Catholic priest is going to evangelize any of my patients at a hospital. If anything, he is one of the people who will show me where I can secure a kosher meal.

Another significant segment of the Christian world, especially in North America, is the Protestant community. For our purposes, we will over generalize and divide the Protestant world into two groups.

One group, the mainline or liberal Protestants (Methodist, Unitarian, etc.), is not at all interested in converting Jews. Liberal leaning Protestant denominations tend to shy away from any form of Jewish evangelism. It is, however, the other highly motivated and vocal segment within the Protestant community -- the fundamentalist, born-again Christians -- who are unyielding in their staunch commitment to convert the Jews.

There are two rules about Jewish evangelism that must always be kept in mind.

• The first rule is that the Christian who makes the very first critical and successful contact with the Jew is never a professional missionary. It will not be a paid staff member of Jews for Jesus or Chosen People Ministries. Rather, it is almost always a layperson -- perhaps a secretary at the office, a roommate in college or someone on the same swim team -- who makes that initial connection. Only after the lay evangelical Christian has made this preliminary contact will the professional missionaries step in to the conversion process.

Secondly, the Christian layperson who makes that all-important first contact with the Jew is invariably a gentile. It is extremely rare for a "Hebrew-Christian" to successfully make that initial contact with a Jew. The perceived betrayal of the Jewish people by the Hebrew-Christian's apostasy sullies his message in the mind of a Jew. Only after the lay gentile born-again Christian has made that first crucial and successful encounter with a Jew will the Hebrew-Christian missionaries step in to finalize the conversion.

In essence, the central role that Christian missions like Jews for Jesus plays is to act as a clearinghouse and support system for evangelical churches around the world. As a result, these "Jewish missions" spend much of their resources and manpower teaching lay missionaries in gentile churches.

How serious a problem are these Protestant fundamentalist Christians? How many born-again Christians are there in the United States?

Their numbers are not small. According to most estimates, there are well over 50 million Americans who identify themselves as born-again Christians. That is, approximately one in five Americans is part of this army of lay people dedicated to "share" their faith with a Jew. When I spoke in Nashville a number of years ago, an Assemblies of God minister bluntly told me that he would rather convert one Jew than 50,000 gentiles.

WHY THE JEWS?

A question that naturally comes to mind is: Why the Jews? Why are these fundamentalist Christians so consumed with bringing the Jewish people to "know Jesus?" Why has the largest Protestant denomination in the United States, the Southern Baptist Convention, passed numerous resolutions encouraging more than 15 million American members to target and evangelize the Jewish people?

[...]

Why are these at-risk Jews so desperately susceptible to this current missionary assault? Why do evangelicals cull our Jewish youth with relative ease? The answers to these questions will be discussed in Part 2 of this article.

HaRav Elyashiv, shlita asks for protests against offensive gay parade

The Yated Ne'eman reports that HaRav Eliyashiv has called for protests against the parade. Wall posters have also been put up around Yerushalayim calling for protests in his name. An item also appeared in Yeshiva World News.

MK Gafni demands ombudsman retract attack on Dayan Sherman

De'ah veDeibur reports [helpfully referred by Recipients and Publicity

In a harsh letter to the Commission for Public Grievances Against Judges MK Rabbi Moshe Gafni demanded retired Judge Tova Strasberg-Cohen retract her recommendation to remove from his post Dayan Avrohom Sherman, who headed a ruling by the Rabbinate Beis Din Godol annulling a fictitious conversion performed by Rabbi Chaim Druckman, and expressed his astonishment over the absurd arguments she presents in her recommendation.

The letter opens with Rabbi Druckman's grievance against HaRav Sherman, who serves as a dayan at the Beis Din Godol in Jerusalem, and her conclusion that extreme measures be taken to fire HaRav Sherman. "HaRav Sherman is a prominent talmid chochom and a skilled expert in his field who has been serving as a dayan for 29 years," writes Rabbi Gafni. "He is renowned for his fabulous judicial temperament, listening to the litigants patiently and not rushing them, sitting for long periods beyond the regular hours and writing carefully explicated rulings. My feeling is that the complaints made by Rabbi Druckman, which represent grave acts bordering on criminal conduct calling for such an extreme decision, cannot possibly be correct.

"I read your points and I couldn't believe my eyes. HaRav Sherman's reputation has been spotless throughout the years and never has his character been called into question chas vesholom, and his rulings, like those of his two colleagues on the bench, have been relied on implicitly. The Attorney General, the legal advisor to the rabbinical courts and even the president of the Beis Din Godol all agree that Rabbi Druckman signed conversion certificates in cases where he was not present, and these claims have not been refuted.

"A public debate over conversion is raging in Israel, the fiercest debate since our formation as a people, and it grew more heated in recent years when hundreds of thousands of non-Jews immigrated to Israel, including some from mixed families, creating pressure on the political and judicial systems to alter or "alleviate the burden" of conversion proceedings (I am not referring to the red tape and internal disputes at the Conversion Authority run by the Prime Minister's Office, which needlessly complicates conversion with matters that have nothing to do with halachic issues). The vast majority of dayanim at the regional botei din as well as the Beis Din Godol, including its president, concur that the halachic view of conversion should not be altered, otherwise we lose our uniqueness as the Jewish people, which has preserved itself throughout the annals of our history, which are filled with the blood of our people being spilled, while other larger and mightier have vanished, cast off into the dustbins of history.

"HaRav Sherman and his colleagues faithfully carry out the duty they were charged to perform by the legislature — to hand down halachic rulings based on halacha — particularly in a case of a conversion certificate signed by somebody who was not even on hand. Had this occurred in another judicial framework the individual committing such an act would have been removed from his post, as was the case with the judge at the Haifa Magistrate Court, Hila Cohen."

[...]

Gender confusion - a woman who is a "man" who is pregnant

In the Western world's search for freedom to be and do whatever one desires - the issue of gender and sex roles is surely one of the most active areas of experimentation and flux .The following article describes a well known case of a woman who decided she wanted to be a man. Underwent surgery and hormonal treatment, married a woman and then upon discovery that "his" wife can't have children decided to become pregnant and bear a child.

Something that even the open-minded liberal NY Times entitled "He's pregnant, you're speechless
============
by Guy Trebay

WHEN Thomas Beatie gives birth in the next few weeks to a baby girl, the blessed event will mark both a personal milestone and a strange and wondrous crossroads in the evolution of American pop culture.

Mr. Beatie — as anyone who has turned on a television, linked to a blog or picked up a tabloid in the last few months is aware — is a married 34-year-old man, born a woman, who managed to impregnate himself last year using frozen sperm and who went public this spring as the nation’s first “pregnant father.”

That this story attracted attention around the world was hardly surprising. Who, after all, could resist the image of a shirtless Madonna, with a ripe belly on a body lacking breasts and with a square jaw unmistakably fringed by a beard? For a time, clips of Mr. Beatie’s appearance on “Oprah,” where he was filmed undergoing ultrasound, as well as shirtless images of him from an autobiographical feature in the Advocate magazine, were everywhere, and they were impossible to look away from.

Partly a carnival sideshow and partly a glimpse at shifting sexual tectonics, his image and story powered past traditional definitions of gender and exposed a realm that seemed more than passing strange to some observers — and altogether natural to those who inhabit it.

“This is just a neat human-interest story about a particular couple using the reproductive capabilities they have,” said Mara Kiesling, director of the National Center for Transgender Equality in Washington. “There’s really nothing remarkable” about the Beatie pregnancy, she said.

Yet as the first pregnant transman to go public, Mr. Beatie has exposed a mass audience to alterations in the outlines of gender that may be outpacing our comprehension. In the discussions that followed his announcement, what became poignantly clear is that there is no good language yet to discuss his situation, words like an all-purpose pronoun to describe an idea as complex as a pregnant man.

“When there’s a lot of fascination around a figure like Thomas Beatie,” said Judith Halberstam, a professor of English and gender studies at the University of Southern California, “it points to other changes already happening elsewhere in the culture.”

Among the changes Ms. Halberstam noted are medical innovations that have expanded the possibilities for body modification. There are also studies that indicate, as Ms. HalberstamBeatie, who says of himself, “I am transgender, legally male, and legally married to Nancy,” but who might have trouble holding on to some of those assertions if he did something as simple as moving from Oregon.[...] noted, that women respond sexually to the individual, before differentiating by sex. And the broadening legal scope of marriage has also had its effects on people like Mr. who says of himself, “I am transgender, legally male, and legally married to Nancy,” but who might have trouble holding on to some of those assertions if he did something as simple as moving from Oregon.[...]

Issues like these have made Mr. Beatie’s story so compelling; the sense that trans identity in the Webster sense of the prefix signifies some threshold state of being — “across” or “beyond” or “through.”

Ms. Sedgwick said that if you look at postings on Web sites like Oprah Winfrey’s and The Huffington Post, “It seems as though there are lots and lots of comments saying: ‘That’s not a man having a baby. That’s a woman having a baby.’ ”

Partly that reaction results from what Ms. Sedgwick calls a phobic response to changes in identities that for most people seem God-given and settled at birth. Partly it is a matter “of people having to go through the stages of figuring things out,” she said.

As Ms. Kiesling, of the National Center for Transgender Equality, noted: “The long-term benefit of this story is not ‘Pregnant Man Trims Hedge,’ ” referring to a widely circulated photo of a bearded and pregnant Mr. Beatie wielding a power tool. “The Beatie story raises questions we’re all looking at now, in a lot of contexts,” about the welter of new possibilities produced by a landscape in which legalized same-sex partnerships reshape traditional ideas about husband and wife and mom and dad.[...]

By then his story may have served its purpose, Ms. Sedgwick said. It will have showed us that: “People experience gender very differently and some have really individual and imaginative uses to make of it. That’s an important thing for people to wrap their minds around.”

Mystery surrounds leak of names of 150 of Rav Druckman's invalidated converts

Haaretz reports:

Who leaked the list of names of some 150 people converted by Rabbi Haim Druckman to High Rabbinic Court Judge Avraham Sherman, after which Sherman ruled the conversions null and void because Druckman, the head of the conversion court, was out of the country at the time they took place? And who gave Sherman what Judge Tova Strassberg-Cohen, the ombudsman of complaints against judges, called the "mysterious file" against Druckman?

This mystery has been keeping the Knesset Constitution, Law and Justice Committee busy for the past few days, hearing and reading various versions from different rabbis, along with recriminations and defamations.

A reminder of the affair, which has caused a serious rupture between the Orthdox and ultra-Orthodox: At the end of March, a Rabbinical Court of Appeals headed by the staunchly conservative Rabbi Sherman upheld a ruling that an Ashdod woman, whom Druckman converted 15 years ago and sought a divorce, could not be considered Jewish since she had never practiced religious Judaism, effectively invalidating conversions by Druckman's conversion court. Following the ruling, Strassberg-Cohen recommended two weeks ago that Sherman be removed from his post.

On May 26, the Chief Rabbi of Rehovot, Simcha Hacohen Kook told the Knesset Constitution, Law and Justice Committee: "We have a list that Israel Rosen sent the rabbinical court" of invalid conversions and marriages.

Rabbi Rosen, who was head of the Conversion Administration before Druckman, when Druckman was the head of the conversion court, discovered that in 2000, Druckman issued some 150 conversion certificates although he was out of the country when the conversions took place. Rosen brought the matter before the chief rabbis, who censured Druckman but upheld the conversions.

Rosen sent all the members of the Knesset committee an angry letter in which he denied sending a list of names to the rabbinic court, or presenting those on the list as invalid for marriage.

Druckman's deputy in the Conversion Administration, Rabbi Shmuel Klein said: "I assume that Rabbi Sherman is not the Holy Spirit and therefore someone had to bring this information to his door."

Klein wants Justice Minister Daniel Friedmann and the Knesset committee members to find out the identity of that individual: "Who prepared the file, who paid whom and where was this file all these years." Klein wants to find out what role Rosen and the administrator of the rabbinic courts, Rabbi Eli Ben-Dahan, had in the affair. He says he has "had it up to here with people stomping on Rabbi Druckman."

In response, Rosen said: "Rabbi Klein is framing me, as is his custom."

Ben-Dahan told Haaretz that the file on Druckman had been prepared on the orders of Sephardic Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar, following complaints he received. The file states that Druckman had converted foreign workers and illegal aliens in breach of Interior Ministry regulations. But how did the file reach Rabbi Sherman's High Rabbinic Court bench? According to Ben-Dahan, the bench asked for the file, and such a request "cannot avoid being carried out."

Secret conversion course in Tel Aviv high school

Jerusalem Post reports:

Jun. 19, 2008
Matthew Wagner , THE JERUSALEM POST

Shevach Mofet High School on south Tel Aviv's Rehov Hamasger is a living example of what many Israelis perceive to be a danger to the Jewish state's religious-cultural unity.

Perhaps no other high school better embodies the effect of the absorption of hundreds of thousands of non-Jews from the former Soviet Union as part of the waves of immigration in the 1980s and 1990s.

Of the elite math and science school's 1,600-strong student body, hundreds are gentiles by Orthodox Jewish standards.

True, the vast majority of Israelis might not consider themselves Orthodox. But most would grudgingly say Orthodoxy is the most legitimate expression of Judaism.

As a result, the gentile students at Shevach Mofet, part of group of about 300,000 non-Jewish immigrants from the FSU, have to cope with the gnawing feeling that they are not full-fledged citizens of a state that defines itself as both democratic and Jewish - especially the females, since matrilineal descent determines whether the next generation is Jewish or not.

So it comes as no surprise that it was at Shevach Mofet that the Immigrant Absorption Ministry, together with the Education Ministry, the IDF and a few maverick Orthodox rabbis launched a pilot program to instill non-Jewish students with the requisite knowledge and religious experience to prepare for conversion to Judaism.

"The demand came from the students," Avigdor Leviatan, head of the Absorption Ministry's Conversion Division, said on Thursday.

"School psychologists were confronted with dozens of cases of students who were concerned about their lack of Jewishness and how that affected their feeling of belonging to the Jewish people.

"So we decided to set up a curriculum that would prepare high school students for an Orthodox conversion. The first group of seven or eight girls will appear before the conversion court in the coming month."

Participants devote six hours a week for a year to the studies and take part in Shabbatot during which they are immersed in a Orthodox environment on religious kibbutzim.

In the coming year, the program will be expanded to schools in five cities and will include 300 students, Leviatan said.

The program, which was started nearly two years ago, was kept secret to prevent the Ashkenazi haredi establishment from attacking it. Chief Sephardi Rabbi Shlomo Amar, who is in charge of conversions, defers to the Ashkenazi haredi rabbis.

In the past Amar has backed down to haredi pressure. Many Orthodox rabbis, especially in haredi circles, oppose accepting as converts teenage girls enrolled in a totally secular, coed high school and living in an irreligious household.

An integral part of conversion to Judaism is embracing an Orthodox lifestyle, including maintaining a kosher diet, adhering to the restrictions against work on Shabbat and accepting sexual abstinence until marriage.

Conservative-minded rabbis, with a predisposition to being suspect of the purity of potential converts' intentions, doubt young women who are in a totally secular environment can faithfully embrace Orthodoxy.

Perhaps out of concern that the Shevach Mofet program will encounter stiff rabbinic opposition, more moderate rabbis within the National Conversion Authority, the body approved by the Chief Rabbinate to perform conversions, are denying any knowledge of and trying to downplay the issue.

For instance, the deputy head of the Conversion Authority, Rabbi Moshe Klein, told The Jerusalem Post that he was not familiar with the conversion program at Shevach Mofet.

"I know nothing about the program," Klein said. "I don't know how many students are learning in the program. I don't know what the educational content is and I have not set up a panel of judges to convert anyone."

Klein's comments contradicted statements made by Leviatan, who said that both Klein and Rabbi Haim Druckman, the outgoing head of the authority, knew all about the program and wholeheartedly supported it. "They are afraid of hurting the chances of its success," said Leviatan. "That's why they do not want to comment right now."

Leviatan said that several conversion judges have already agreed to cooperate with the program.

One of the judges named by Leviatan is a well respected rabbi who is not considered particularly lenient. The judge denied that he was involved.

Rabbi Sefi Sherman, who heads Tel Aviv's Beit Midrash Tair, an educational program that brings together secular and religious teenagers, is the educational director of the Shevach Mofet initiative.

Beit Midrash Tair provided young, dynamic rabbis who could teach the young women at Shevach Mofet in an interesting, nonthreatening atmosphere.

Sherman, who is also the principal of a high school in Tel Aviv, declined to comment.

Leviatan said that he agreed to an interview with the Post only after the story was revealed by Tel Aviv, a local weekly. Tel Aviv's breaking of the story also led to coverage on Israel Radio.

"Media exposure will only hurt the chances that this program will succeed," Leviatan said.

HaRav Moshe Sternbuch, shlita, denounces the offensive gay parade

This is the text of an announcement that is being put up all over Yerushalayim today.

בס"ד
סיון תשס"ח

קטעים מדרשת מרן שר התורה הראב"ד שליט"א הגאון האדיר רבי משה שטרנבוך שליט"א

חייבים אנו למחות שבעיר הקודש מתכוננים למצעד ולהכריז שאין תורה ואין אלוקים להביא חס ושלום חרון אף ה' על עמו ונחלתו וכמפורש בפסוק "ובתועבות יכעסוהו". האמת היא שאין גבול לפרצות, בעו"ה הביאו כמיליון גוים ורושמים אותם כיהודים או עושים טקס גירות שהוא שחוק, ומוצצים את דמם של הדיינים שלא מסכימים עם הגירות, השבת מחללים ר"ל. אבל כעת הם רוצים לצעוד בירושלים ברחובות ולהכריז שאין אלוקים להרגיז אבינו שבשמים שעליו אנו סומכים וליכנס לתוכינו ממש רח"ל. בושנו מכל דור, חובת השעה לא לשתוק, שלא תהא סכנה לכלל ישראל, ולהשומע יונעם ותבא אליו ברכה וסיעתא דשמיא ונחת

Excerpts from the speech of HaGaon HaRav Moshe Sternbuch, shlita

We must protest because they are preparing a parade in the Holy City to proclaim that there is no Torah and no G‑d. This will bring, chas v’shalom, G‑d’s fierce anger down on His people and His inheritance as is stated in Devarim (32:16): They provoked Him to resentment with strange gods, with abominations they provoked Him to anger.

In fact their licentiousness is unlimited. Unfortunately due to our great sins they have brought almost a million goyim into this country and registered them as Jews or made them go through a fraudulent conversion program. They have viciously attacked those judges who haven’t agreed to their “conversions”. They violate Shabbos, G‑d have mercy.

However now they want to make a parade in the streets of Yerushalayim and to proclaim that there is no G‑d. All this to provoke Our Father in Heaven Who is the sole basis of our existence. They now want to actually enter into our midst and profane our neighborhoods.

We are disgraced. These times require us not to be silent. We must stop this danger to the Jewish People. Those who heed our call will receive blessing, Divine assistance in all matters and many pleasant things.