Shavei Israel:The "Hidden Jews" in Poland

Haaretz

The Shavei Israel organization released on Monday the first Polish-language guide to the holiday of Hannukah geared toward Poles who have only recently discovered their Jewish roots.

Lights for Polish Jewry will be circulated for free during the week of the Jewish holiday throughout Poland.

According to Michael Freund, chairman and founder of the outreach organization,the reason for the sudden publication of the guide is due to the fact that many Poles have of late leared that they are "hidden Jews" and wish to reconnect with the traditions they know little about.

"In recent years, an increasing number of Poles have rediscovered their Jewish ancestry, seeking to reclaim the precious heritage that was so brutally taken from them and their forebears," he said.[...]

EJF's backer's legal battles

OSUN.org

Chareidi leaders challenge conversion policy of Chief Rabbi

JPost

Rabbis representing the Ashkenazi haredi rabbinical leadership were poised on Tuesday to send a letter to Chief Ashkenazi Rabbi Yona Metzger demanding that he "clarify" his stance on city rabbis who refuse to recognize conversions performed by the Chief Rabbinate of Israel.

"We want nothing less than a written statement from the chief rabbi detailing his position regarding conversions that a city rabbi deems to be invalid because the convert did not embrace an Orthodox lifestyle," said Rabbi Nahum Eisenstein, who has close ties with Rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashiv, the preeminent halachic authority for Ashkenazi haredim.

"The chief rabbi needs to clarify that in no way was the letter [sent to the Knesset Immigration and Absorption committee] meant to convey a message that contradicts Halacha."[...]

Israeli journalist ordered to pay for slander

YNet

Veteran journalist Ilana Dayan and Telad Television, a former Channel 2 franchisee, were ordered to pay NIS 300,000 (about $79,000) in damages to IDF Captain R. Tuesday, some five years after airing a show which he was the focus of.
 
In 2004, R. was charged with obstruction of justice and dead-checking in a case involving his brigade killing 13-year-old Iman al-Hams during an operation which took place near Gaza Strip's Philadelphi Route.
 
About six weeks after the incident, on the same day R. was indicted, Ilana Dayan's show, "Uvda" ("Fact") aired a special featuring evidence related to the case. R. was acquitted of all charges a year later and then-IDF Spokesperson Ruth Yaron accused Dayan of doctoring the tape heard on the show.[...]

Bank holds men-only business conference

JPost

Bank Poalei Agudat Israel, which caters primarily to the haredi community, has prohibited women from attending a business conference it is sponsoring Tuesday in Ramat Gan that will deal with a wide range of economic issues including employment, construction, investments and haredi institutions.

An invitation that was sent to the bank's customers states that attendance at the economic conference will be permitted to men only, due to customer demand.

Several women from the haredi sector have expressed anger over the decision, according to Army Radio which first broke the story, saying that it constitutes gender discrimination and perpetuates the inferior status of women in haredi society. [...]

Battle of European rabbis concerning conversion

Haredim

מלחמת הרבנים האירופית: הגראי"ל תומך ברב ערנטרוי

בועידת רבני אירופה הביע המנכ"ל הרב אבא דונר את הסתייגותו מהסמינרים למתגיירים של "נצח משפחת ישראל". בארגון טוענים: מדובר בהתנכלות על רקע חשיפת שחיתות. הרב שטיינמן הביע תמיכה בארגון

Religious vs gay rights:Supreme Court takes appeal

NYTImes

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Monday agreed to hear an appeal from a Christian student group that had been denied recognition by a public law school in California for excluding homosexuals and nonbelievers. The case pits anti-discrimination principles against religious freedom.

The group, the Christian Legal Society, says it welcomes all students to participate in its activities. But it does not allow students to become voting members or to assume leadership positions unless they affirm what the group calls orthodox Christian beliefs and disavow "unrepentant participation in or advocacy of a sexually immoral lifestyle." Such a lifestyle, the group says, includes "sexual conduct outside of marriage between a man and a woman."

The law school, Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco, part of the University of California, allows some 60 recognized student groups to use meeting space, bulletin boards and the like so long as they agree to a policy that forbids discrimination on various grounds, including religion and sexual orientation. The school withdrew recognition from the Christian group after it refused to comply with the policy.[...]

Minchas Yitzchok Shidduch for former sinner 6 139

Justice Minister:Halacha shoud be law of Israel

Haaretz

Justice Minister Ya'akov Ne'eman on Monday said he believes Halakha (Jewish law) should be the binding law in Israel, Army Radio reported.

"Step by step, we will bestow upon the citizens of Israel the laws of the Torah and we will turn Halakha into the binding law of the nation," said Ne'eman at a Jewish law convention at the Regency hotel in Jerusalem, in the presence of many rabbis and rabbinical judges. [...]

YNet Clarification of what was meant

R Moshe Shapiro addresses kiruv organizations

Matzav

Nearly 50 participants from such organizations as Arachim, Lev L'achim, Nefesh Yehudi, and Hidabroot participated in the 2-day event (December 1-3) that included an electrifying address by Hagaon Harav Moshe Schapiro. Following his one-hour address that was a call to action to intensify efforts to be "mekarev levavos," Harav Schapiro fielded questions on kiruv for nearly two hours. Menachem Lubinsky, who represented Horizons/EJF called the conference "an unprecedented show of unity amongst all the major kiruv organizations." Prior to Dr. Abdi's address, the group saw a riveting video on a woman saved from a brutal life in an Arab village by Lev L'Achim. The woman, whose child was also saved, was taken to a shelter operated by the organization and she is now well on the way towards becoming an Orthodox Jewess. Thanks to a grant from EJF, Lev L'Achim has stepped up its efforts to extricate the Jewish women from a horrific life with their Arab husbands. Dozens of women have already been rescued.[...]

The missing mothers

Kikar Shabbat

במשפחה שלנו, במקום אמא ואבא, יש אבא ואבא.

לא תמיד זה היה כך. עד לאחרונה גם אצלינו היו אבא ואמא, כמו לכל המשפחות. אבל אז הכל השתנה.

Prof. Neusner returns to Reform Judaism

Forward

Once upon a time, there was a young man, a third-generation American who was raised in a classical Reform temple, who in the Reform manner celebrated becoming a bar mitzvah and who was confirmed in the Reform rite. He was inspired by his temple's rabbi to himself become a Reform rabbi. He held national office in the National Federation of Temple Youth, and he was admitted to the Reform movement's Hebrew Union College.

Then, on the very day this young man was supposed to begin studies at Hebrew Union College, he instead entered the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, the intellectual citadel of Conservative Judaism. He agreed to give up the lobster dinners, the veal parmigiana and the BLT sandwiches that he had loved, and even to quit smoking on the Sabbath, as admission to JTS demanded.

The decision was not the result of a dramatic change of convictions. He simply thought he would get a better Jewish education at JTS than at HUC. To that goal everything else was secondary. Six years later, he was ordained by JTS as a Conservative rabbi.[...]

R' Metzger deviates from chareidi view on converts

Haaretz

In an unusual departure from the ultra-Orthodox stance, Israel's Ashkenazi chief rabbi has declared that anyone holding a conversion certificate issued by the State of Israel can register to be married in his place of residence. Yona Metzger's declaration, contained in a letter to the Knesset's Committee for Immigration, Absorption and Diaspora Affairs, comes on the heels of converts' complaints that local rabbis were refusing to recognize them as Jews according to Jewish law and to register them for marriage.

In recent weeks, the organization ITIM (The Jewish Life Information Center), which represents conversion candidates in their dealings with the authorities, prepared to file a petition to the High Court of Justice on the matter.

In response to the complaints, Rabbi Metzger said that in instances in which rabbis refuse to register converts to be married, he would "authorize a substitute marriage registrar that would carry out what the law requires."
 
This is the latest development in a controversy which surfaced about a year and a half ago, after ultra-Orthodox rabbis in official positions announced there was no validity under Jewish law regarding conversions performed through religious conversion courts. Rabbi Avraham Sherman, for example, who is a judge on the Rabbinical High Court, ruled that thousands of conversions performed by the special religious conversion court (under official state sponsorship) were invalid.[...]

Pharmacy is not kosher enough for Bnei Brak

JPost

You cannot please all of the people all of the time, especially when dealing with the religious sensibilities of the residents of Bnei Brak, a town with the nation's highest population density, little crime and some of the most zealously Orthodox Jews in the world.

That is what New-Pharm, a drugstore chain owned by Rami Shavit, discovered this weekend.

On Saturday night, dozens of Bnei Brak residents converged on the store, which opened six months ago, and demanded that it close its doors due to the negative influence the store's cosmetics and perfume departments might have on the town's young people.[...]