https://www.newsweek.com/qanon-followers-believe-donald-trump-used-body-double-arizona-rally-1669936
FBI Special Agent Matthew DeSarno was not speaking off the cuff on Saturday evening when he commented on the motive of the gunman who initiated an 11-hour hostage crisis at Congregation Beth Israel in Colleyville, Texas, earlier that day.
“We do believe from our engagement with this subject that he was singularly focused on one issue, and it was not specifically related to the Jewish community,” he said at a briefing near the US synagogue from which the final three of four hostages managed to exit unharmed roughly an hour earlier.
The remark surprised some of the reporters present, who again inquired about the attacker’s motive later on in the press conference.
But DeSarno held his ground — this time more assertively.
“I’m not ready to add any more about the demands set [by the hostage taker], except that they were specifically focused on one issue that was not specifically threatening to the Jewish community,” he said.
https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-692661
https://edition.cnn.com/2022/01/16/europe/europe-covid-unvaccinated-society-cmd-intl/index.html
https://www.jpost.com/breaking-news/article-692626
https://en.idi.org.il/articles/26963
The key question lies in defining the essence of conversion. Is it about adopting a new religion, or joining a new nation? If the former, it is perfectly natural to require a convert to observe the precepts of religion as a precondition for acceptance as a Jew. This was the opinion, for example, of Saadiah Gaon in the tenth century. He held that “our nation is a nation only by virtue of its religious laws”: Religion is the core component of the national identity. But there is also a halakhic tradition that Jewishness is a “people,” a primordial natural entity, and that a person is obligated to observe Jewish precepts only after joining the people. This is hinted at in the declaration by Ruth the Moabite, the paradigmatic convert whose descendants include King David and the messiah, “Your people shall be my people and your God my God”: First you join the Jewish people, and only after doing so—do you take on a religious commitment.
The debate continues to the present day. The ultra-Orthodox and most rabbis of the Religious Zionist movement hold to the stringent approach, making it difficult to realize the potential for conversion in Israel. On the other hand, a significant group of rabbis (including three who served as Israel’s Chief Rabbi—Bakshi-Doron, Goren, and Uziel) held the view that conversion means joining the Jewish people, and that observance of the Jewish precepts is not a precondition for conversion. The rabbinic courts in Israel should consider adopting this more lenient stance.
Israel’s Chief Rabbis II: Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, Rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu
R’ Mordechai Torczyner - torczyner@torontotorah.com
On November 15, exactly one month after their election, Harav Ovadia felt that he had no choice but to report to the press that his Ashkenazi counterpart had issued an ultimatum four days earlier: If Harav Ovadia would not join him on a new three-man beit din, Chief Rabbi Goren would cut off all contact with him and refuse to participate in a joint inaugural ceremony. Chief Rabbi Goren denied issuing the ultimatum, but Harav Ovadia Yosef repeated the charge in an interview published in the Jerusalem Post.
https://mida.org.il/2015/02/06/rav-goren-matters-legacy-langers/
Few embodied the idea that Jewish Law and the State of Israel can and should be one than Rabbi Shlomo Goren · What Haredi lawmakers saw the famous “Status Quo” agreement as a pragmatic arrangement, Rabbi Goren and his Religious Zionist allies saw potential for a true welding of religion and state · The result was the shambles that was the Langer case and the present impasse on personal status · A plea for true religious freedom – for everyone’s sake
Rabbi Goren’s vision was programmatic, consisting of distinct elements necessary to making it a reality. For one thing, religious Jews would have to see themselves not as a separate group but as an integral part of the whole Jewish people. When he was appointed the first chief rabbi of the Israel Defense Forces, many in the religious community and the military brass would have been perfectly content for religious soldiers to be segregated into their own “ghettoes” where their religious needs would be met. However, he insisted that the entire military become kosher, that training exercises be minimized on Shabbat, and that there be a synagogue on every base, so that religious soldiers could be fully integrated. Prime Minister Ben-Gurion, whose mamlakhti (state-centered) outlook dictated that the military be a melting pot that effaced sectoral, communal, religious, or ethnic allegiances, backed him on this, against opposition within the military. However, for Rabbi Goren, a completely kosher army was goal in itself, whereas for Ben-Gurion it was the price to pay for a “people’s army.”
Next, Halakha would have to be substantially revised in order to seamlessly integrate with the governing of the Jewish state. To that end, Rabbi Goren would offer unprecedented halakhic rulings, arguing that the Jewish state is a sui generis situation in which prior accepted rulings do not apply. For instance, though Halakha long forbade autopsies on Jewish corpses, Rabbi Goren permitted them on the grounds that:
It is inconceivable that the Jewish state would base its health system, which is vital for the nation and the state, on gentile corpses… It is inconceivable that we cannot find a halakhic way to maintain a high level of modern medicine by conducting autopsies on corpses of our own, as is done throughout the world.
Finally, in order to implement his vision, Rabbi Goren would need power—not merely the rabbinic authority accumulated by great rabbis in every generation, but the enforcing power of the state. To this end, the Chief Rabbinate was of paramount importance as a rabbinic body with state-sanctioned power. This is the body that would gradually revise and adapt Halakha to the realities of a modern state. And it was thus crucial to assess and forestall any political threat to the Chief Rabbinate’s power.
https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/temple-mount-what-our-rabbis-really-say-598372
The issue of whether or not it is permitted to go up to the Temple Mount today is hotly debated. The majority of leading rabbis say it is outright forbidden or at least practically not advisable.
