Rabbi Miri Gold Petition Update
March 24, 2009 by nicola
Quoted from The Pluralist:
Dear Friends of IRAC,
We are happy to announce that the petition will be presented to Israeli President Shimon Peres in just two weeks! This will be an incredibly important moment, as Rabbi Gold’s case will appear once again before the Supreme Court in June.
With over 9,000 signatures, we hope to surpass our goal of 10,000. In the last week alone, we received another 1,000 signatures.
We still need your help; if you have not signed the petition yet, please sign it.
Also, if you have collected signatures in your congregations, please send them to us by e-mail.
Stand Up and Be Counted: www.irac.org
L’Shalom,
Anat Hoffman
Sign the Petition
Take a stand for Reform rabbis in Israel
Click here to support Rabbi Miri’s Gold case in the Supreme Court.
Report on rule tightening for Diaspora converts raises alarm bells among Reform
March 9, 2009 by Steve
The Israeli Reform movement threatened this week to return to the High Court if the Interior Ministry goes ahead with reported plans to implement new and more rigid rules for Diaspora converts who want to immigrate to Israel.Last week, the New York Jewish Week reported it had obtained a copy of secret interior ministry documents outlining a plan to require converts seeking to immigrate to spend at least 350 hours studying Judaism in a “recognized” Jewish community and and spend 18 months in the community in which they are converting - nine of them after the conversion - to prove their sincerity. The new rules are to be approved before the new government is installed, the newspaper said.
“This is an ongoing saga,” said Rabbi Gilad Kariv, head of the local Reform community. “It goes back to [March] 2005, when the High Court deemed illegal the interior ministry’s policy to demand of converts to stay in the communities where they had converted for at least 12 months. But unfortunately, it seems the ministry prefers to set criteria unilaterally, instead of engaging the different religious denominations in an ongoing dialogue. If they will actually make the proposed new guidelines official, we will go back to the Supreme Court.”
According to the Jewish Week report, the new guidelines were designed to “prevent non-Jewish foreign workers who reside in Israel from converting quickly in Jewish communities overseas, and then declare Aliyah,” or immigration to Israel.
The article asserts that the new guidelines are so secret “that even the ministry’s spokeswoman said she was unaware of them.”
In this light, some Jewish community leaders, who asked not to be identified, told Anglo File they were puzzled by the report. “The current interior minister, Meir Sheetrit [of Kadima], is on his way out; I have a hard time believing that he’s working on a plan that would inevitably cause an international uproar. It just doesn’t make sense.”
Interior Ministry spokeswoman Sabine Hadad commented: “There are currently no naturalization criteria for converts, and in accordance with the 2005 court ruling… the Interior Ministry is obliged to implement criteria for reviewing citizenship requests.”
Groups such as Itim, the Jewish Life Information Center, and the Israel Religious Action Center have accused the ministry of not adhering to the court’s decision, and the alleged attempt to institute rules that are even more strict has many in the Jewish world fuming. Hadad says the ministry is still working on compiling the criteria to implement the court’s ruling.
“We respect Israel’s right to protect its borders,” Rabbi Kariv told Anglo File Wednesday, “and it is true that there is an ongoing attempt to abuse the Right of Return by insincere converts. But we need to find the right balance between. Unfortunately, the ministry does not seem to strike the right balance; it is acting in an arrogant way that doesn’t show any respect to the communities of the Diaspora.”
ARZENU seminar
March 5, 2009 by nicola
ARZENU, the International Federation of Reform and Progressive Religious Zionists, in conjunction with the World Union for Progressive Judaism (WUPJ) and the Saltz International Education Center, held a joint seminar on Reform Zionism from December 11th - 18th, 2008; 14 - 21 Kislev 5769. The seminar was formally located at Beit Shmuel in Jerusalem, with a few day trips to other parts of the country.
The goals of the ARZENU Reform Zionism seminar were to acquaint participants with Reform/Progressive Zionist principles and ideals, enrich their Progressive Jewish religious experience, and enhance their leadership skills with tools that will help them develop and strengthen existing ARZENU organizations or help them start ARZENU chapters in their countries or communities.
The Zionist theme to the seminar and the goals stated above, were clearly transmitted through the seminar program. Beginning with an introduction to the History of Zionism by Professor Gideon Shimoni, followed by a variety of educators, settings and text studies, the different theories and models of Zionism were explored. We relived the creation of the State of Israel through our visits to Har Herzl, the Palmach Museum, Sde Boker and Ben Gurion’s hut, and Hechal Atzma’ut (Independence Hall) where the Zionist ideals really came to life.
Our Progressive Jewish experience was enhanced by regular prayer workshops run by Rabbi Levi Weiman-Kelman, which were a combination of shacharit and a detailed study of the prayers contained in that service, as well as Shabbat services at Kehilat Kol Haneshama and the Hebrew Union College.
There were also sessions introducing IRAC, the IMPJ and WUPJ which gave participants the opportunity to understand more about these organisations, the kind of services and projects they operate, and how they are relevant to Progressive Jews around the world.
The ARZENU Reform Zionism seminar was open to anyone affiliated with the Reform/Progressive Movement fluent in English. As a result, there were 16 participants, aged from 18-52 years old from 12 different countries including Australia, Brazil, Canada, Czech Republic, Denmark, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Russia and USA. The three delegates from Australia chosen to participate in the seminar were Claire Cyngler and Ya’akov Legarda from Melbourne, and myself, Nicola Ossher, from Sydney.
Aside from the intense learning side to the seminar, there was ample opportunity to socialise and get to know the other delegates. I came away from the seminar having had a rich Zionist experience, a stronger connection to Progressive Judaism, an enhanced love for Eretz Yisrael and a handful of new friends from around the globe.
Nicola Ossher,
ARZA and TaMaR Co-ordinator
Post Election thoughts from an Israeli progressive perspective
March 5, 2009 by nicola
Lior Zalmanson
At the time I’m writing this article, Bibi Nethanyu, head of right wing Likud party was appointed by Israel’s President Shimon Peres to form a coalition. A coalition with Kadima and Labor seems impossible and Israel is facing one of the most extreme right wing coalitions in its short history. Both Progressive Jews in Israel and the Diaspora are wondering and worrying on the possible outcomes and implications. In this short article, I’ll try to analyze Israel voters behavior on Election Day and predict the influences this behaviour might have on the Reform Movement in Israel.
The first time I’ve heard the election results, I was on a plane heading to visit the progressive congregation of Hong Kong. When people heard from the pilot’s cockpit that Kadima, The Israeli Centralist party, led by Tzipi Livni had beaten by one seat the Likud party, there were some surprised faces and even some random applause. Nobody expected Kadima’s result since the polls had falsely predicted a Likud victory by 3-4 seats. However the polls were right in predicting a majority for right wing parties. This is the reason that given the results, both parties felt like election winners.
Kadima’s “win” of the most seats is the result of Israel’s left wing voters moving from Labour and Meretz to vote for Livni. Most of them would say that they did it to stop Bibi and not because they genuinely liked Kadima. The result was a crash for both Labour and Meretz, the latter dropped down to only 3 seats. I personally would not eulogize the Israeli left yet (like some Israeli journalist have) and I remind you that Likud had just 12 seats in this Knesset and look what happened. That’s exactly why Barak and his Labor Party want to keep out of Likud’s Coalition. That is the only way the Israelis would consider them as an alternative in the next term.
The success of Lieberman’s Israel Beitanu movement, focused mostly on trust and loyalty, and of Shas, the Sephardic ultra-orthodox movement and the possibility of them joining Likud in a coalition must remain quite alarming for the secular and progressive Jews of Israel. While Progressive Jewry agrees that more emphasis on Jewish studies is needed, it is not the kind of education the ultra-orthodox have in mind. The outcome of such a coalition might be devastating.
If I would have been asked to guess, I would say that the most likely option is a government made of by both Shas and Lieberman. The former will control important offices but not the education one while the latter would have to drop the idea of civil marriages and “settle” on controlling major government offices. The result is an extreme right-wing government which will be the opposite of progress and pluralism. A government that talks about liberalism but only focuses on free markets and not on giving strength and freedom to the individual. A government that acknowledges only the orthodoxy as the legitimate Jewish stream. And this should serve as a wake up call to every pluralistic Jew in the world.