MK Gafni demands ombudsman retract attack on Dayan Sherman

De'ah veDeibur reports [helpfully referred by Recipients and Publicity

In a harsh letter to the Commission for Public Grievances Against Judges MK Rabbi Moshe Gafni demanded retired Judge Tova Strasberg-Cohen retract her recommendation to remove from his post Dayan Avrohom Sherman, who headed a ruling by the Rabbinate Beis Din Godol annulling a fictitious conversion performed by Rabbi Chaim Druckman, and expressed his astonishment over the absurd arguments she presents in her recommendation.

The letter opens with Rabbi Druckman's grievance against HaRav Sherman, who serves as a dayan at the Beis Din Godol in Jerusalem, and her conclusion that extreme measures be taken to fire HaRav Sherman. "HaRav Sherman is a prominent talmid chochom and a skilled expert in his field who has been serving as a dayan for 29 years," writes Rabbi Gafni. "He is renowned for his fabulous judicial temperament, listening to the litigants patiently and not rushing them, sitting for long periods beyond the regular hours and writing carefully explicated rulings. My feeling is that the complaints made by Rabbi Druckman, which represent grave acts bordering on criminal conduct calling for such an extreme decision, cannot possibly be correct.

"I read your points and I couldn't believe my eyes. HaRav Sherman's reputation has been spotless throughout the years and never has his character been called into question chas vesholom, and his rulings, like those of his two colleagues on the bench, have been relied on implicitly. The Attorney General, the legal advisor to the rabbinical courts and even the president of the Beis Din Godol all agree that Rabbi Druckman signed conversion certificates in cases where he was not present, and these claims have not been refuted.

"A public debate over conversion is raging in Israel, the fiercest debate since our formation as a people, and it grew more heated in recent years when hundreds of thousands of non-Jews immigrated to Israel, including some from mixed families, creating pressure on the political and judicial systems to alter or "alleviate the burden" of conversion proceedings (I am not referring to the red tape and internal disputes at the Conversion Authority run by the Prime Minister's Office, which needlessly complicates conversion with matters that have nothing to do with halachic issues). The vast majority of dayanim at the regional botei din as well as the Beis Din Godol, including its president, concur that the halachic view of conversion should not be altered, otherwise we lose our uniqueness as the Jewish people, which has preserved itself throughout the annals of our history, which are filled with the blood of our people being spilled, while other larger and mightier have vanished, cast off into the dustbins of history.

"HaRav Sherman and his colleagues faithfully carry out the duty they were charged to perform by the legislature — to hand down halachic rulings based on halacha — particularly in a case of a conversion certificate signed by somebody who was not even on hand. Had this occurred in another judicial framework the individual committing such an act would have been removed from his post, as was the case with the judge at the Haifa Magistrate Court, Hila Cohen."

[...]

Gender confusion - a woman who is a "man" who is pregnant

In the Western world's search for freedom to be and do whatever one desires - the issue of gender and sex roles is surely one of the most active areas of experimentation and flux .The following article describes a well known case of a woman who decided she wanted to be a man. Underwent surgery and hormonal treatment, married a woman and then upon discovery that "his" wife can't have children decided to become pregnant and bear a child.

Something that even the open-minded liberal NY Times entitled "He's pregnant, you're speechless
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by Guy Trebay

WHEN Thomas Beatie gives birth in the next few weeks to a baby girl, the blessed event will mark both a personal milestone and a strange and wondrous crossroads in the evolution of American pop culture.

Mr. Beatie — as anyone who has turned on a television, linked to a blog or picked up a tabloid in the last few months is aware — is a married 34-year-old man, born a woman, who managed to impregnate himself last year using frozen sperm and who went public this spring as the nation’s first “pregnant father.”

That this story attracted attention around the world was hardly surprising. Who, after all, could resist the image of a shirtless Madonna, with a ripe belly on a body lacking breasts and with a square jaw unmistakably fringed by a beard? For a time, clips of Mr. Beatie’s appearance on “Oprah,” where he was filmed undergoing ultrasound, as well as shirtless images of him from an autobiographical feature in the Advocate magazine, were everywhere, and they were impossible to look away from.

Partly a carnival sideshow and partly a glimpse at shifting sexual tectonics, his image and story powered past traditional definitions of gender and exposed a realm that seemed more than passing strange to some observers — and altogether natural to those who inhabit it.

“This is just a neat human-interest story about a particular couple using the reproductive capabilities they have,” said Mara Kiesling, director of the National Center for Transgender Equality in Washington. “There’s really nothing remarkable” about the Beatie pregnancy, she said.

Yet as the first pregnant transman to go public, Mr. Beatie has exposed a mass audience to alterations in the outlines of gender that may be outpacing our comprehension. In the discussions that followed his announcement, what became poignantly clear is that there is no good language yet to discuss his situation, words like an all-purpose pronoun to describe an idea as complex as a pregnant man.

“When there’s a lot of fascination around a figure like Thomas Beatie,” said Judith Halberstam, a professor of English and gender studies at the University of Southern California, “it points to other changes already happening elsewhere in the culture.”

Among the changes Ms. Halberstam noted are medical innovations that have expanded the possibilities for body modification. There are also studies that indicate, as Ms. HalberstamBeatie, who says of himself, “I am transgender, legally male, and legally married to Nancy,” but who might have trouble holding on to some of those assertions if he did something as simple as moving from Oregon.[...] noted, that women respond sexually to the individual, before differentiating by sex. And the broadening legal scope of marriage has also had its effects on people like Mr. who says of himself, “I am transgender, legally male, and legally married to Nancy,” but who might have trouble holding on to some of those assertions if he did something as simple as moving from Oregon.[...]

Issues like these have made Mr. Beatie’s story so compelling; the sense that trans identity in the Webster sense of the prefix signifies some threshold state of being — “across” or “beyond” or “through.”

Ms. Sedgwick said that if you look at postings on Web sites like Oprah Winfrey’s and The Huffington Post, “It seems as though there are lots and lots of comments saying: ‘That’s not a man having a baby. That’s a woman having a baby.’ ”

Partly that reaction results from what Ms. Sedgwick calls a phobic response to changes in identities that for most people seem God-given and settled at birth. Partly it is a matter “of people having to go through the stages of figuring things out,” she said.

As Ms. Kiesling, of the National Center for Transgender Equality, noted: “The long-term benefit of this story is not ‘Pregnant Man Trims Hedge,’ ” referring to a widely circulated photo of a bearded and pregnant Mr. Beatie wielding a power tool. “The Beatie story raises questions we’re all looking at now, in a lot of contexts,” about the welter of new possibilities produced by a landscape in which legalized same-sex partnerships reshape traditional ideas about husband and wife and mom and dad.[...]

By then his story may have served its purpose, Ms. Sedgwick said. It will have showed us that: “People experience gender very differently and some have really individual and imaginative uses to make of it. That’s an important thing for people to wrap their minds around.”

Mystery surrounds leak of names of 150 of Rav Druckman's invalidated converts

Haaretz reports:

Who leaked the list of names of some 150 people converted by Rabbi Haim Druckman to High Rabbinic Court Judge Avraham Sherman, after which Sherman ruled the conversions null and void because Druckman, the head of the conversion court, was out of the country at the time they took place? And who gave Sherman what Judge Tova Strassberg-Cohen, the ombudsman of complaints against judges, called the "mysterious file" against Druckman?

This mystery has been keeping the Knesset Constitution, Law and Justice Committee busy for the past few days, hearing and reading various versions from different rabbis, along with recriminations and defamations.

A reminder of the affair, which has caused a serious rupture between the Orthdox and ultra-Orthodox: At the end of March, a Rabbinical Court of Appeals headed by the staunchly conservative Rabbi Sherman upheld a ruling that an Ashdod woman, whom Druckman converted 15 years ago and sought a divorce, could not be considered Jewish since she had never practiced religious Judaism, effectively invalidating conversions by Druckman's conversion court. Following the ruling, Strassberg-Cohen recommended two weeks ago that Sherman be removed from his post.

On May 26, the Chief Rabbi of Rehovot, Simcha Hacohen Kook told the Knesset Constitution, Law and Justice Committee: "We have a list that Israel Rosen sent the rabbinical court" of invalid conversions and marriages.

Rabbi Rosen, who was head of the Conversion Administration before Druckman, when Druckman was the head of the conversion court, discovered that in 2000, Druckman issued some 150 conversion certificates although he was out of the country when the conversions took place. Rosen brought the matter before the chief rabbis, who censured Druckman but upheld the conversions.

Rosen sent all the members of the Knesset committee an angry letter in which he denied sending a list of names to the rabbinic court, or presenting those on the list as invalid for marriage.

Druckman's deputy in the Conversion Administration, Rabbi Shmuel Klein said: "I assume that Rabbi Sherman is not the Holy Spirit and therefore someone had to bring this information to his door."

Klein wants Justice Minister Daniel Friedmann and the Knesset committee members to find out the identity of that individual: "Who prepared the file, who paid whom and where was this file all these years." Klein wants to find out what role Rosen and the administrator of the rabbinic courts, Rabbi Eli Ben-Dahan, had in the affair. He says he has "had it up to here with people stomping on Rabbi Druckman."

In response, Rosen said: "Rabbi Klein is framing me, as is his custom."

Ben-Dahan told Haaretz that the file on Druckman had been prepared on the orders of Sephardic Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar, following complaints he received. The file states that Druckman had converted foreign workers and illegal aliens in breach of Interior Ministry regulations. But how did the file reach Rabbi Sherman's High Rabbinic Court bench? According to Ben-Dahan, the bench asked for the file, and such a request "cannot avoid being carried out."

Secret conversion course in Tel Aviv high school

Jerusalem Post reports:

Jun. 19, 2008
Matthew Wagner , THE JERUSALEM POST

Shevach Mofet High School on south Tel Aviv's Rehov Hamasger is a living example of what many Israelis perceive to be a danger to the Jewish state's religious-cultural unity.

Perhaps no other high school better embodies the effect of the absorption of hundreds of thousands of non-Jews from the former Soviet Union as part of the waves of immigration in the 1980s and 1990s.

Of the elite math and science school's 1,600-strong student body, hundreds are gentiles by Orthodox Jewish standards.

True, the vast majority of Israelis might not consider themselves Orthodox. But most would grudgingly say Orthodoxy is the most legitimate expression of Judaism.

As a result, the gentile students at Shevach Mofet, part of group of about 300,000 non-Jewish immigrants from the FSU, have to cope with the gnawing feeling that they are not full-fledged citizens of a state that defines itself as both democratic and Jewish - especially the females, since matrilineal descent determines whether the next generation is Jewish or not.

So it comes as no surprise that it was at Shevach Mofet that the Immigrant Absorption Ministry, together with the Education Ministry, the IDF and a few maverick Orthodox rabbis launched a pilot program to instill non-Jewish students with the requisite knowledge and religious experience to prepare for conversion to Judaism.

"The demand came from the students," Avigdor Leviatan, head of the Absorption Ministry's Conversion Division, said on Thursday.

"School psychologists were confronted with dozens of cases of students who were concerned about their lack of Jewishness and how that affected their feeling of belonging to the Jewish people.

"So we decided to set up a curriculum that would prepare high school students for an Orthodox conversion. The first group of seven or eight girls will appear before the conversion court in the coming month."

Participants devote six hours a week for a year to the studies and take part in Shabbatot during which they are immersed in a Orthodox environment on religious kibbutzim.

In the coming year, the program will be expanded to schools in five cities and will include 300 students, Leviatan said.

The program, which was started nearly two years ago, was kept secret to prevent the Ashkenazi haredi establishment from attacking it. Chief Sephardi Rabbi Shlomo Amar, who is in charge of conversions, defers to the Ashkenazi haredi rabbis.

In the past Amar has backed down to haredi pressure. Many Orthodox rabbis, especially in haredi circles, oppose accepting as converts teenage girls enrolled in a totally secular, coed high school and living in an irreligious household.

An integral part of conversion to Judaism is embracing an Orthodox lifestyle, including maintaining a kosher diet, adhering to the restrictions against work on Shabbat and accepting sexual abstinence until marriage.

Conservative-minded rabbis, with a predisposition to being suspect of the purity of potential converts' intentions, doubt young women who are in a totally secular environment can faithfully embrace Orthodoxy.

Perhaps out of concern that the Shevach Mofet program will encounter stiff rabbinic opposition, more moderate rabbis within the National Conversion Authority, the body approved by the Chief Rabbinate to perform conversions, are denying any knowledge of and trying to downplay the issue.

For instance, the deputy head of the Conversion Authority, Rabbi Moshe Klein, told The Jerusalem Post that he was not familiar with the conversion program at Shevach Mofet.

"I know nothing about the program," Klein said. "I don't know how many students are learning in the program. I don't know what the educational content is and I have not set up a panel of judges to convert anyone."

Klein's comments contradicted statements made by Leviatan, who said that both Klein and Rabbi Haim Druckman, the outgoing head of the authority, knew all about the program and wholeheartedly supported it. "They are afraid of hurting the chances of its success," said Leviatan. "That's why they do not want to comment right now."

Leviatan said that several conversion judges have already agreed to cooperate with the program.

One of the judges named by Leviatan is a well respected rabbi who is not considered particularly lenient. The judge denied that he was involved.

Rabbi Sefi Sherman, who heads Tel Aviv's Beit Midrash Tair, an educational program that brings together secular and religious teenagers, is the educational director of the Shevach Mofet initiative.

Beit Midrash Tair provided young, dynamic rabbis who could teach the young women at Shevach Mofet in an interesting, nonthreatening atmosphere.

Sherman, who is also the principal of a high school in Tel Aviv, declined to comment.

Leviatan said that he agreed to an interview with the Post only after the story was revealed by Tel Aviv, a local weekly. Tel Aviv's breaking of the story also led to coverage on Israel Radio.

"Media exposure will only hurt the chances that this program will succeed," Leviatan said.

HaRav Moshe Sternbuch, shlita, denounces the offensive gay parade

This is the text of an announcement that is being put up all over Yerushalayim today.

בס"ד
סיון תשס"ח

קטעים מדרשת מרן שר התורה הראב"ד שליט"א הגאון האדיר רבי משה שטרנבוך שליט"א

חייבים אנו למחות שבעיר הקודש מתכוננים למצעד ולהכריז שאין תורה ואין אלוקים להביא חס ושלום חרון אף ה' על עמו ונחלתו וכמפורש בפסוק "ובתועבות יכעסוהו". האמת היא שאין גבול לפרצות, בעו"ה הביאו כמיליון גוים ורושמים אותם כיהודים או עושים טקס גירות שהוא שחוק, ומוצצים את דמם של הדיינים שלא מסכימים עם הגירות, השבת מחללים ר"ל. אבל כעת הם רוצים לצעוד בירושלים ברחובות ולהכריז שאין אלוקים להרגיז אבינו שבשמים שעליו אנו סומכים וליכנס לתוכינו ממש רח"ל. בושנו מכל דור, חובת השעה לא לשתוק, שלא תהא סכנה לכלל ישראל, ולהשומע יונעם ותבא אליו ברכה וסיעתא דשמיא ונחת

Excerpts from the speech of HaGaon HaRav Moshe Sternbuch, shlita

We must protest because they are preparing a parade in the Holy City to proclaim that there is no Torah and no G‑d. This will bring, chas v’shalom, G‑d’s fierce anger down on His people and His inheritance as is stated in Devarim (32:16): They provoked Him to resentment with strange gods, with abominations they provoked Him to anger.

In fact their licentiousness is unlimited. Unfortunately due to our great sins they have brought almost a million goyim into this country and registered them as Jews or made them go through a fraudulent conversion program. They have viciously attacked those judges who haven’t agreed to their “conversions”. They violate Shabbos, G‑d have mercy.

However now they want to make a parade in the streets of Yerushalayim and to proclaim that there is no G‑d. All this to provoke Our Father in Heaven Who is the sole basis of our existence. They now want to actually enter into our midst and profane our neighborhoods.

We are disgraced. These times require us not to be silent. We must stop this danger to the Jewish People. Those who heed our call will receive blessing, Divine assistance in all matters and many pleasant things.

Godol HaDor suspected by Romans of being a Christian

There has been a ongoing dispute amongst our commentators regarding the influence of Christianity on Judaism. One of the documented cases appears in the gemora regarding R'Eliezar HaGadol - the godol hador. A man who was the ultimate mesora man - who never said anything he hadn't heard from his rebbe. He was also certified by Heaven as knowing the correct halacha. Here are the relevent sources describing how great he was - plus the gemora in Avoda Zara regarding his arrest by the Romans because they suspected him of being a Christian. [I am aware that Rashi has a different explanation]

Sukkah(28a):Our Rabbis have taught: It happened that R. Eliezer passed the Sabbath in Upper Galilee, and they asked him for thirty decisions in the laws of Sukkah. Of twelve of these he said, ‘I heard them [from my teachers]’; of eighteen he said, ‘I have not heard’. R. Jose b. Judah said, Reverse the words: Of eighteen he said, ‘I have heard them’, of twelve he said, ‘I have not heard them’. They said to him,’Are all your words only reproductions of what you have heard?’ He answered them, ‘You wished to force me to say something which I have not heard from my teachers. During all my life [I may tell you] no man was earlier than myself in the college, I never slept or dozed in the college, nor did I ever leave a person in the college when I went out, nor did I ever utter profane speech, nor have I ever in my life said a thing which I did not hear from my teachers’.

Bava Metzia(59b): Concerning the Oven of Aknai… R’ Eliezer presented all possible explanations for his position but his colleagues did not accept them. He then said to them: If the halacha is in accord with my position then the carob tree will support me. Immediately the carob tree uprooted itself and moved either 100 amos or 400 amos. They said to him that the movement of the carob tree was not a relevant proof. He then said to them: If the halacha is in accord with my position than the river will support me. Immediately the river flowed backwards. They said to him that the river was not a relevant proof. Again he said: If the halacha is in accord with my position then the walls of the yeshiva will show support. Immediately the walls of the yeshiva started to fall down. R’ Yehoshua rebuked the walls: If Torah scholars are arguing with each other concerning halacha what is it your concern? Consequently the walls did not fall out of respect for R’ Yehoshua but they did not return to their original position out of respect for R’ Eliezer and they remain in this intermediary position. Again he said: If the halacha is in accord with my position then let Heaven offer support. A Heavenly Voice immediately called out: Why are you arguing with R’ Eliezer since the halacha is always in accord with his views? R’ Yehoshua stood up and said: Torah is not in Heaven! What did he mean by that? R’ Yermiyahu said: Since the Torah has already been given at Sinai we do not pay attention even to a Heavenly Voice concerning halacha—the Torah itself says that halacha is determined by the vote of the majority. R’ Nossan met Eliyahu later and asked him what was G‑d doing during this debate? Eliyahu replied: He smiled and said “My children have defeated Me, My children have defeated Me.” That day that R’ Eliezer was outvoted they brought all that R’ Eliezer had declared ritually and burned it. They also voted to ostracize him…

Avoda Zara(16b): Our Rabbis taught that when R’ Eliezer was arrested because he was suspected of being a Christian they took him to the court to be judged. The governor asked him, “How can a saged like yourself be involved in these worthless activities?” R’ Eliezer replied, “The Judge is right.” The governor thought that R’ Eliezer was referring to him when in fact R’ Eliezer was referring to his Father in Heaven. Because of the governor’s misunderstanding the governor said, “Because you have faith in my judgment I am pardoning you.” When he returned home his students came to console him but he refused to accept their consolation because he was upset that he had been accused of being a Christian. R’ Akiva said to him, “Will you give me permission to say one thing of that which you have taught me?” R’ Eliezer gave him permission. R’ Akiva then said, “Perhaps you were exposed to Chrisitian teachings and it gave you pleasure and that perhaps is the reason that you were arrested?” R’ Eliezer replied that R’ Akiva’s comment caused him to recall an incident. “Once I was walking in the upper market of Tzipori when I met one [of the students of Yeshu] by the name of Yaakov of Kfar Sekaniah. He said to me that it is written in your Torah (Devarim 23:19) that one should not bring money which had been paid to a prostitute into the Temple. Can it be used to build a bathroom for the High Priest? I did not answer him. He then told me that he had been taught by Yeshu that it says in Michah(1:7), For of the hire of a prostitute has she gathered them and unto the hire of a prostitute shall they return. That means that they came from a place of filth so let them go to a place o filth. Because I enjoyed these words I was arrested as a Christian. That is because I transgressed that which was said in the Torah. Mishlei(5:8) says to ‘Remove your way far from her’ – and that is a reference to heresy or Christianity while ‘come not close to the door of her house’ is referring to the ruling power.” Others interpret the end of this verse to be a warning to stay way from a prostitute rather than the ruling power.