Conservative rabbi crusades for Anusim

Forward

Of all the rabbis ordained at the Jewish Theological Seminary on May 21, few have journeys to the rabbinate quite as unlikely as Juan Mejia.

Raised as a Catholic in Colombia and educated at Christian schools, Mejia was on his way to becoming a monk when he discovered as a teenager that his family had Jewish roots. His grandfather would recall men gathering in darkened corners to place towels on their head and pray from a strange book.

After a torturous journey, which involved his rejection by the tiny Jewish community in Bogota and several years of study in Jerusalem, Mejia converted and began training for the rabbinate. Now Mejia is dedicating his rabbinate to helping Jewish descendants like himself who want to reconnect with their roots.

The plight of descendants of Conversos, those Jews forced to publicly recant their religion under threat of execution by the Inquisition but who continued to practice their religion in secret, has received more attention in recent years. Articles describing stories of Latino immigrants who discover their family’s strange rituals are Jewish in origin have appeared in both the Jewish and mainstream press.

Rabbi Rigoberto Emanuel Vinas, a Cuban-born rabbi who teaches classes in the Bronx for Anusim — as forced converts are known in Hebrew — has been featured in The New York Times.

Mejia promises to take the type of outreach Vinas has pioneered to a new level. With many Conversos shunned when they turn for help to Jewish communities in Latin America — those communities are beset by a “colonial mind-set,” Mejia said, and have contempt for the claims to Jewish ancestry by the locals — Mejia hopes to reach them over the Internet.

“I fight the Inquisatorial frame of mind,” he said. Mejia already runs a Web site that offers online instruction in Jewish topics. And with his rabbinical training now complete, he hopes to relocate with his wife, also ordained in late May at JTS, to the Southwest, where many Conversos are located.

Mejia believes that only in the United States, with its large, secure and welcoming Jewish community, can the Anusim be educated and brought back to their roots.

“The Anusim revolution,” he said, “starts here.” [...]

abuse - 2 pedophiles arrested

Haaretz [this item is in references to Har Nof]

Police remanded two men Wednesday suspected of more than 20 sexual attacks on young boys in an ultra-Orthodox Jerusalem neighborhood. One of the two, a 17-year-old, is suspected of attacking an 11-year-old boy who lives in the neighborhood

The case came to light after the head of the yeshiva where the alleged victim studies told the boy's father six months ago that boy had told him an older boy had accosted him on the bus. The boy said the 17-year-old persuaded him the get off the bus with him, took him to the yeshiva where the older boy studies and molested him in the bathroom.

On the basis of the principal's allegations, the father filed a complaint with the police. On Tuesday, after the boy told his father he saw his alleged attacker on the street, the father called the police, who arrested the suspect. He confessed to nine other attacks on neighborhood boys.

Meanwhile, in the same neighborhood, a 43-year-old man was arrested and remanded Wednesday for molesting boys in recent years. Two teenage boys who complained that the man had molested them said he had attacked at least 10 boys, some of them allegedly friends of his children. [...]

Rav Sternbuch - Finding one's greatness

Rav Sternbuch Shavuos II

Rav Sternbuch & Theory of Evolution

Intermarried Rabbis (revised)

Jewish Week forwarded by RaP

[...]A few weeks ago New Voices, a Jewish student magazine, published “The Coming of the Intermarried Rabbi,” which leads with the story of a Berkeley, Calif., man denied admission to Hebrew College’s rabbinical school because his wife is Christian. Earlier this year InterfaithFamily.com raised the issue as well, with “Why I Am Not a Rabbi,” an essay about being rejected from the Reform movement’s Hebrew Union College because the author’s non-Jewish husband was deemed a “problem” to be “fixed.” Both articles have been magnets for online comments, listserv discussions and blog postings, and in a few weeks the VeAhavta Collaborative, a new group of rabbis, rabbinical students and prospective rabbinical students dedicated to discussing this issue, is holding its first meeting.[...]

R' Klein - Abusers don't threaten society

Regarding my recent posting of Rav Menashe Klein's teshuva regarding child abuse, he accurately notes that the Torah requires two valid witnesses and other restrictions which make it obvious that the Torah can not deal with the plague of child abuse. He is in essence saying since we are halachic Jews - we can not violate the halacha just because we have a problem that can't be dealt with by halacha.

On the other hand Rav Eliashiv (click the link) and many other gedolim note that we are not allowed to let our society be destroyed by following the law of the Torah. There is a second mode of judicial operation called ais la'asos or migder milsa which must be invoked. This approach is clearly stated in the gemora and openly discussed by many rishonim and achronim and is codified in the Shulchan Aruch Choshen Mishpat 2. The Tzitz Eliezer has a long and learned discussion of this in 19:51.

Thus the issue is: 1) is our society threatened by child abuse? 2) who is authorized to prescribe extra legal procedures? Rav Klein clearly doesn't feel that our society is seriously threatened by abuse and he seems to feel that the rabbis who permitted extra legal procedures are a greater danger to Judaism.