Gedolim oppose R' Amar's new organization

Dei'ah veDibur: [forwarded by RaP]

December 18, 2008

Gedolei Yisroel shlita voiced their staunch opposition to Merkaz Rabbanei Eretz Yisroel, noting it poses a dire threat to the conceptual and halachic independence of rabbonim in Israel and could herald a takeover attempt that would foist certain opinions on all rabbonim and the entire public in Israel.

A short time ago Sephardic Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar founded and became president of an organization called Merkaz Rabbanei Eretz Yisroel, which seeks to unite all rabbis in Israel. The aim of the organization is to serve as a supreme rabbinical body in the State of Israel and it threatens to place itself in a position to determine halacha and hashkofoh in every area for the entire public, including kashrus, mikvehs, conversion, etc.

Letters sent to all rabbonim in Israel intended to persuade them to join the organization listed the names of prominent rabbonim supposedly slated to serve on the presidential board without first seeking their consent.

Many rabbonim, including prominent rabbonim, declined to join whereas others have joined the new organization, which ostensibly seeks to uphold the Torah and the rabbinate without any ulterior motives. Others joined because they were concerned they might be targeted if they refused.[...]

Russian immigrants attack Chareidim in Haifa

YNet reports:

The ultra Orthodox community has recently expressed concerns that the crime rate in the Hadar area of the northern Israeli city of Haifa is on the rise. Those concerns have been compounded by several violent attacks on residents of the area's religious neighborhoods.

Avi Weizmann, head of the Shas faction in the Haifa Municipality warned Thursday that unless the police crack down on crime in the area, local community members will have no choice but to take matters into their own hands. We will take to the streets and establish our own Orthodox patrols," he said. "We've come to a point where dozens of people have been brutally attacked in the Hadar Neighborhood. We cannot accept this violence and if the police won't take care of it, we will."

Most of the violent incidents have reportedly taken place in the area's Shtrug Park, which is frequented by the local Orthodox community, as well as the secular one, which is made up of many Russian immigrants. "The park is the center of a violent turf war, between the haredim, who are an innately closed society, and the immigrants, some of whom are not Jewish, who view them as the enemy," said a local resident. [...]

Anusim - Ashenazim more accepting

Aryeh wrote:

I am a Bnai Anusim, and it's been a struggle not only for my ancestors, but for me too. We faced hundreds of years of persecution by Catholics, only to have many modern day Jews reject us. There is a story of Moroccan Sephardi Jews coming back to Portugal in the 20th century and establishing a Sephardi synagogue. When the Anusim hiding in Portugal for hundreds of years came out and reached out to their Sephardic brothers they were rejected.

The Moroccan Jews felt remorseful that the Anusim's ancestors stayed behind in Portugal during the expulsion. When Polish Jews established an Ashkenazi synagogue in the same place, they accepted the Anusim. When the Ashkenazi Jews went out of their way to teach the Anusim about their unique Sephardi minhag, the Anusim wanted to learn only Ashkenazi traditions because it was the Sephardi Jews that rejected them.

Rabbi's in Israel estimate that there are up to 60 million people of Jewish descent in Latin America. They also estimate that 10% of the Portuguese population is of Jewish descent. These are people that want to be religiously Jewish, and I feel can be an answer to the problem of a declining world Jewish population.

My family left Portugal in the late 1700's/early 1800's. They kept Shabbat, they refused to eat blood, they would cover the mirror when someone dies, they were extremely weary of the evil eye, they would light candles every day instead of just on Friday nights to throw off the inquisitors and they would get together every thursday at sunset and pray in the basement, purposefully not praying on Friday at sunset so they wouldn't get caught.

Although I am a male, I have a purely matralineal line going back to these Portuguese ancestors yet I would be hard pressed to find any Orthodox Rabbi in the world willing to say I'm Jewish. Despite how hard we fought to remain so.

Chanuka - Jewish Christmas? /Aish HaTorah

http://www.aish.com/movies/TwasChanukahNight.asp

EJF - revised video

Videos -Eternal Jewish Family - Preservation Of The Jewish Culture

Video about EJF's dedication to promote the concept of universally accepted conversions in intermarriage as a way of preserving the Jewish family.

Rav Soloveitchik's lectures III - Commensurability

Rav Meir Triebitz writes:

We have already hinted that the Rav views halacha as the central basis for a philosophy of Judaism. This theme appears over and over again in the Rav’s writings, and in particular in lecture XII where he declares:

Whether an idea is typically Jewish can best be judged by the halacha – not the Aggadah – to understand any work as the authority meant to convey and you must have lived in the same social environment and cultural forces as the author. Mankind is changeable in its cognitive adventures, and to say that I understand Aristotle means in the tradition of Aristotle, which, of course, has been subject to change. In halacha there is a masoret, a tradition as to method, but if I give an interpretation to Maimonides, it does not necessarily mean that Maimonides meant just that. If measured by halachic standards it is correct. That suffices. But as to Aggadah, there is no tradition, nor in philosophy do we have a tradition. In halacha there is a certain kabballah without any missing links, while in Aggada and certainly philosophy there are many such missing links.

It appears to me that the Rav’s remarks concerning evolution are an attempt to achieve what I would call ‘halachic commensurability’ and not, merely, ‘scientific commensurability’. While Judaism views man as the “bearer of a divine image” and therefore endowed with the capacity for transcendence, this transcendence, in the Rav’s words, “was always seen against the background of naturalness. The canvas was man’s immanence; transcendence was just projected on it as a display of colors” (Emergence of Ethical Man p. 9). The Rav is clearly speaking from the standpoint of the halachah. In contradistinction, “Christianity succeeded in isolating them and reducing the element of naturalness to a state of corruption” (ibid.). This has to be seen as a consequence of Christianity’s rejection of the halacha.

Bernard Madoff II - Impact on Jews

JPost reports: ---- [See previous post]

At least $600 million in Jewish charitable funds have been wiped out by the collapse of Bernard Madoff's Wall Street investment firm, a partial review by The Jerusalem Post revealed Monday.

Yet much is still hidden about what may amount to the most spectacular financial disaster to hit Jewish life since the Great Depression, with unconfirmed losses totaling up to $1.5 billion.

Furthermore, the Post's figures do not include billions of dollars lost to individual and family investors, many of whom were the primary donors to Jewish schools, synagogues and communal charities.[...]

For the worldwide Jewish community, the fact that the man at the heart of what may be Wall Street's worst-ever fraud was an active member of the community could be the worst news yet in a bad recession period.

Not only could Madoff's alleged dishonesty increase anti-Semitic feeling in a time of worldwide economic downturn, said many Jewish leaders, but his close involvement with the Jewish community has exposed vast amounts of Jewish communal assets to his scheme.[...]

"This is a tidal wave, a tsunami," said a veteran advisor to Jewish nonprofits, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "You can live with a downturn in the economy, because there will be an upturn. But now we're talking about foundations that have been wiped out completely, money that's not recoverable."[...]

T.V. & the Israeli "soul"

YNET reports:

A school in central Israel decided to postpone an educational trip scheduled for Tuesday evening because the date clashes with the final episode of the hugely popular reality show "Big Brother."

The show provides viewers with 24/7 access to the lives of a group of participants locked up in a house monitored by multiple TV cameras and completely isolated from the outside world.

In the three months it has been broadcast, "Big Brother" has swept large audiences in Israel, with a substantial proportion being glued to the screen most hours of the day. The show has also been the focus of much controversy lately, due to its blatant content and its allegedly negative influence on teenagers and TV culture in Israel. [...]

Reality - Israeli-American gap of perception

JPost - R' Jonathan Rosenblum writes:

No subject so divides the Jews of Israel and America as that which once bound them most closely: Israel itself. To appreciate the gap, try telling an American Jew that George W. Bush was the president who best understood Israel's predicament and watch his jaw drop.

American Jewry is lining up behind a return to the hyperactive American peacemaking of the Clinton years. The Jewish Alliance for Peace and Justice, according to an article in New York's Jewish Week, recently obtained the signatures of 800 rabbis on a petition to President-elect Barack Obama urging him to make the Israeli-Palestinian peace process an early priority, beginning with the appointment of a high-level envoy to the region. And the new left-wing group, J Street, contacted the Obama transition team to argue that American Jews want a more active peace process and that large Democratic majorities in Congress provide the incoming administration with the power to push an aggressive peacemaking agenda.

J Street is likely right. For many American Jews, Israel has become a drag. If they were to wake up tomorrow and find that Israel had bloodlessly disappeared and its Jews had found safe haven elsewhere, they would be relieved. That includes the 50 percent of American Jews under 35 who told sociologists Steven Cohen and Ari Kelman that they would not view the destruction of Israel as a personal tragedy.

Others, such the Jewish Alliance for Peace and Justice and Americans for Peace Now, are intensely concerned with events in Israel. But it is their cherished image of the Jew as the bearer of universal justice, not concern with the lives of Jews of Israel, that primarily drives their Middle East agenda. So long as Israel does not have peace with its neighbors and is the subject of widespread obloquy, that image is tarnished.

Even among the 3% of Reform Jews and 6% of Conservative Jews for whom Israel is the crucial issue driving their voting choices (according to a May study conducted by the American Jewish Committee), there are many who would not protest intense American pressure on Israel, as long as known "pro-Israel" figures like incoming secretary of state Hillary Clinton, and prominent American Jews such as Dan Kurtzer, Martin Indyk and Rahm Emmanuel, are the ones turning the screws.

And who can blame them, when Israel's prime minister himself says Israel's future depends on the speedy achievement of a peace agreement with the Palestinians? For all Ehud Olmert's venality, nothing so reveals his soul-deep corruption as having deliberately handed any future American president the club to pressure Israel without doffing the mantle of "a true friend."

THOSE AMERICAN Jews who still fret about the safety of their brethren in Israel should at least ask themselves: Why do the majority of Israel's Jews view matters so differently? Why are they poised to elect as their next prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu, the bete-noire of the Clinton administration in the heady days of Oslo? Is it that Israelis are an anomaly in Jewish history - fanatic warriors craving permanent warfare? Or is it rather that they learned something over the
past 15 years?[...]

$50 Billion rip off - Bernard Madoff

NYTimes reports: [See Time Magazine link]

The zoning lawyer in Miami trusted him because his father had dealt profitably with him for decades. The officers of a little charity in Massachusetts respected him and relied on his advice.

Wealthy men like J. Ezra Merkin, the chairman of GMAC; Fred Wilpon, the principal owner of the New York Mets; and Norman Braman, who owned the Philadelphia Eagles, simply appreciated the steady returns he produced, regardless of market conditions.

But these clients of Bernard L. Madoff had this in common: They chose him to oversee much of their personal wealth.

And now, they fear, they have lost it.

While Mr. Madoff is facing federal criminal charges, accused by federal prosecutors of operating a vast $50 billion Ponzi scheme, many of his clients are facing an abrupt reversal of fortune that is the stuff of nightmares.

“There are people who were very, very well off a few days ago who are now virtually destitute,” said Brad Friedman, a lawyer with the Milberg firm in Manhattan. “They have nothing left but their apartments or homes — which they are going to have to sell to get money to live on.”

From New York to Palm Beach, business associates of Mr. Madoff spent Friday assessing the damage, the extent of which will not be known for some time. Many invested with Mr. Madoff through other funds and may not know that their money is at risk.[...]

Mr. Madoff has resigned from his positions at Yeshiva University, where he was treasurer for the university’s board and deeply involved in the business school.

“Our lawyers and accountants are investigating all aspects of his relationship to Yeshiva University,” said Hedy Shulman, a spokeswoman for the university.

The most recent tax filings for the university show that its endowment fund, a separate charity, was heavily invested in hedge funds and other nontraditional alternatives at the end of its fiscal year in 2006.

The school paper, the Yeshiva Commentator, recently reported that its endowment’s value had dropped to $1.4 billion from $1.8 billion — before the scandal broke.

Kastner - unresolved controversy

Haaretz reports:

More than 50 years after the murder of Israel (Rudolf) Kastner, the de facto head of the Jewish Aid and Rescue Committee in Budapest, the controversy surrounding him is being rekindled.

Kastner, who made a deal with Adolph Eichmann in 1944 to allow between 1,600 and 1,700 Hungarian Jews to leave for Switzerland in exchange for money, gold and diamonds, was convicted in Israel in 1955 for collaboration with the Nazis. The court ruled that Kastner had indeed "sold his soul to the devil."

Two years later he was murdered outside his home in Tel Aviv.

The affair has spawned more than 10 books, a theater play and a television film. Now a storm has been raised again after the documentary "Killing Kastner" by the American director Gaylen Ross was screened at the Haifa International Film Festival two months ago.

Gideon Levy wrote in Haaretz about the movie that it was time to beg for Kastner's forgiveness. Ten letters to the newspaper in response helped rekindle the 50-year-old controversy. Even today, five decades later, Baruch Tzahor refuses to forget the injustice that was caused to Kastner, who, as Levy wrote, saved more Jews by negotiations than the partisans, Warsaw ghetto rebels or other heroes. At the age of 83, Tzahor, who lives with his wife in moshav Zofit, is still troubled by the affair that shook the young Israeli state.

"All the accusations against Kastner were lies," he says. "I know because he tried to save me." [...]