Reform converts more acceptable to Israel than Orthodox ones

Haaretz

According to a High Court decision, the civil registry must grant Reform and Conservative converts to Judaism the status of new Jewish immigrants, but paradoxically, the court determined that the Israeli rabbinate would retain jurisdiction over conversions conducted by Orthodox rabbis in the Diaspora.

At the meeting, Horowitz pointed out the irony: The Orthodox rabbinate is thus actually pushing prospective immigrants to opt for Conservative or Reform conversions instead. [....]

Dry Bones: Obama & the Itamar Massacre

What are Talmudic disputes - if halacha is learned from Tradition?

from Daas Torah - translation copyrighted

Malbim (Introduction Toras Cohanim): There has been much confusion and concern of scholars throughout the generations about the origin of what we call the Oral Torah. It is clear to all who are familiar with the Jewish texts that the Oral Torah is constantly connected with verses and interpretation from verses. This is the obvious pattern that is found in such works as the Sifre, Sifra and Mechilta as well as the Babylonian Talmud and the Yerushalmi Talmud. However when the meaning of the verses are examined and compared to the lessons that are drawn from them it often seems as if there is no clear and necessary connection between the two. In fact we find in most cases that not only is there no obvious justification for the halachic interpretation which is learned from the verse but that there are times when the verse actually contradicts and opposes the halachic conclusion. In addition in most cases we find strong and sweeping conclusions built upon minor and far-fetched justification. Thus we find major halachic concepts which are established because of a single word or even a single letter – which despite great effort and thorough analysis no necessary justification for these conclusions can be found. And even if you accept that the word or letter is the basis for the halachic understanding, the question arises why other instances of the word or letter are not viewed as having the same significance for other Halachos? In addition we find at times that a particular analysis of a verse is done in one place but in other places that the word is interpreted to imply just the opposite. Thus it seems to be that the interpretations are totally dependent on the whim of the moment and that matters of substance are justified by trivialities. When we ask how this issue was understood by the scholars of the ancient times we see that they said that the words of the verse which are brought as proof for the halacha are simply arbitrary signs and mnemonic devices which were selected in order to aid recall of the halacha. In fact these ancient Torah scholars claimed that halacha was not learned from textual analyses but were known from oral tradition. However this answer seems very far-fetched because we see that Chazal were always asking where a particular halacha was learned from and they always answered with specific Torah verses. And there often was a dispute with one saying that verse was incorrect and a different one was the source. The typical interchange involved attempts by all parties to justify their verse and to show that the verse and proofs chosen by others was wrong. It makes no sense that Chazal would engage in such intensive arguments concerning something which was merely an allusion or mnemonic device!.. It is clear therefore that the verses are in fact the sources of the halacha and are not mere mnemonic devices. In fact the Rambam (Introduction to Mishna) distinguishes between those Halachos which are not derived from verses which he calls Halacha LeMoshe and between those halacha which are derived from verses. These two categories are different from each other for a number of reasons… The Rambam counts the halachos which are Halacha LeMoshe and shows that they are few. The vast majority of Halachos are in fact learned from Torah verses and grounded in them. Thus these two explanations of halacha being learned from Tradition and being learned from verses are simply incompatible. This matter is not only astonishing to the masses but Jewish heretics utilize this contradiction to cause difficulties and to undermine the validity of our Tradition. However even amongst scholars it causes severe difficulties because they end up with two opposing paradigms which they are constantly switching between. Sometimes they focus on the language of the verses and the interpretation of drash is viewed as external and artificial. But other times they are drawn after the drash and Tradition and argue with those who focus on the rules of syntax and understanding of the verses. Thus there is a constant fight of the brothers - the meaning of the verse and the drash. Both sides murmur in their tents and there is no reconciliation….

Dr. Lynn Margulis: Symbiotic evolution

Third Culture excerpt

Symbiosis is a physical association between organisms, the living together of organisms of different species in the same place at the same time. My work in symbiosis comes out of cytoplasmic genetic systems. We were all taught that the genes were in the nucleus and that the nucleus is the central control of the cell. Early in my study of genetics, I became aware that other genetic systems with different inheritance patterns exist. From the beginning, I was curious about these unruly genes that weren't in the nucleus. The most famous of them was a cytoplasmic gene called "killer," which, in the protist Paramecium aurelia, followed certain rules of inheritance. The killer gene, after twenty years of intense work and shifting paradigmatic ideas, turns out to be in a virus inside a symbiotic bacterium. Nearly all extranuclear genes are derived from bacteria or other sorts of microbes. In the search for what genes outside the nucleus really are, I became more and more aware that they're cohabiting entities, live beings. Live small cells reside inside the larger cells. Understanding that led me and others to study modern symbioses.

Symbiosis has nothing to do with cost or benefit. The benefit/cost people have perverted the science with invidious economic analogies. The contention is not over modern symbioses, simply the living together of unlike organisms, but over whether "symbiogenesis" — long-term symbioses that lead to new forms of life — has occurred and is still occurring. The importance of symbiogenesis as a major source of evolutionary change is what is debated. I contend that symbiogenesis is the result of long-term living together — staying together, especially involving microbes- -and that it's the major evolutionary innovator in all lineages of larger nonbacterial organisms.

First senior church official in court for charges of abuse cover up

NYTimes

In what is believed to be the first time in the history of the Roman Catholic priest sexual abuse scandal in the United States, a senior church official is to appear in court Monday on charges of covering up the activities of predator priests.

Several priests have been tried and jailed over the years on charges of sexually abusing minors. But Msgr. William J. Lynn, a pastor who headed the Archdiocese of Philadelphia’s office of clergy from 1992 to 2004, is believed to be the first managerial-level official in the country to be charged not with abusing minors himself but with protecting those who did.[...]

Zero Tolerance, Zero Sense

Time

Two good kids. Two broken rules. Two parables of justice, except one offers a bracing lesson in honor and the other just leaves you heartsick at the latest evidence that zero tolerance often makes zero sense.

One kid made headlines: Brandon Davies, star Brigham Young basketball player whose team was heading toward its first Final Four ever — until it emerged that he had violated the Mormon school's strict honor code, with its injunction to "live a chaste and virtuous life." He had apparently slept with his girlfriend, an act that would barely register on most campuses, where athletes' failing grades, drunken sprees and loutish behavior are ignored as long as the players keep putting points on the board. BYU could have let Davies keep playing while the honor-code office "investigated," but school officials were steadfast. Davies' teammates, whose hopes were also crushed, said they bore him no malice and considered him a brother. The crowd roared in ovation when he returned to the arena, in street clothes, to cheer on his team. (Is the BYU controversy good for college sports?)

It would have been so easy to excuse him just this once — win a championship, reap the glory. But the players did the hard work that true forgiveness requires, offered it even as they lost their next game by 18 points, saw their championship hopes fade, knew potential recruits would surely pause. "BYU knows all this stuff, and it suspended the kid anyway," noted Los Angeles Times sportswriter Bill Plaschke, "and if you don't believe in its code, you have to love its honor." [...]

Earthquakes in America: Should you worry about potential megadisasters?

NYTimes

Mr. Wong noted that the Pacific Northwest is at considerable risk of a strong earthquake from the Cascadia fault, which lies off the coast under the seabed. And while the coastal zone of the Northwest does not have as much residential and business development as that slammed by the Japanese tsunami, the earthquake risks farther inland along the Pacific Northwest could well end up sustaining severe damage, he said. Nearly a thousand Oregon schools built in the last century have poor earthquake resilience, and many vulnerable dams protect urban areas in the region. Oregon is moving to shore up its schools, but the program is not slated for completion until 2032. The federal government is working to address dam issues, but the pace is deliberate, he said.

“Steps are being taken, but there’s a lot of dams, there’s a lot of fixing that needs to be done,” Mr. Wong said. “We’re decades away from being able to fix all our dams.”

The sobering fact is that megadisasters like the Japanese earthquake can overcome the best efforts of our species to protect against them. No matter how high the levee or how flexible the foundation, disaster experts say, nature bats last. Dr. Irwin Redlener, director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University, warned that an earthquake in the United States along the New Madrid fault, which caused strong earthquakes early in the 19th century, could kill tens, or even hundreds of thousands of people in the more densely populated cities surrounding the Mississippi River.