Editor's Comment: To the great delight of "Globes", we have been flooded with readers' letters. We will post all of these on the Web in the coming days. To those readers waiting to see their responses here - please be patient.
Check Your Facts
The statement in today’s article, that money from the United Jewish Appeal goes to the state and the Jewish Agency is grossly misleading. It should be immediately corrected. The Israeli government is financed by its tax-payers, and by some US-government funds. I am sorry, that your magazine does not check the facts first.
Franz T Cohn
Editor-in-chief, Menorah Magazine
Member of Board of Governors committees, Jewish Agency.
Inevitable Civil War
Being an Israeli, non-conservative, Law Student and a concerned
citizen of this country, I must say that this is only the symptom of the
bigger illness - the minority that tried to force their opinion on the
majority by using political-coalition powers. This law might harm us in
several ways:
First, Jewish people around the world might be angry (that might affect
us financially)
Second, and most important, it's another step towards
inevitable civil war - which will eventually occur here in
Israel.
On the other hand - it might help us get rid of the current government -
or more important - our local prime minister.
Well that's my opinion. Thanks.
Dan Alster
Israel
Why the Temple Was Destroyed
The current controversy is most unfortunate, yet also very important, because it speaks to the very core of Israel's democratic character. Business thrives when markets are open, and open markets require open minds.
It is sad but true that the continued disenfranchisement of non-orthodox Jews is having an increasingly negative effect on the feelings that those Jews have towards Israel itself. I would hate to see the time when American Jewish support for Israel wanes -- but this is the kind of issue that could do it.
There is also the spiritual concern -- namely, that every person, including every "Jewish" Israeli, has a spiritual side, and that part of our life needs nurturing. Jewish orthodoxy simply cannot do that nurturing for the vast majority of Jews -- as they have proven "with their feet" over the past 200 years.
And if Israelis cannot turn to viable JEWISH alternative, they will turn to non-Jewish ones. Witness the concern over conversions to other religions in Israel. Why does that happen, if not because Judaism is not fulfilling for some who were born "Jews"?
Two thousand years ago there was a struggle for the Jewish soul waged
by the "modernist" Pharisees against the "old-fashioned" Sadducees. At
least once, it led to a kind of civil war. We face a similar struggle once again, one in which the some of the descendants of the old "rebels" are now the "old guard." I would like to think we could avoid another war.
The temple, the rabbis told us, was destroyed because of unwarranted strife between Jewish groups. Let's not have that happen again. Let's not have Israel's fate once again in the balance -- with outsiders ready to pounce.
Every viable theology and philosophy, if it touches the human soul, can grow on its own. It needs no coercion. Those that require coercion ultimately fail. The free market place of ideas is the best place for determining such failure or success.
George Stern
Valley Cottage, NY
Let’s Do it Right Like the Orthodox
This is not a fight about religious purity. This is a political fight over who gets to allocate hundreds of millions of shekels annually.
When the Orthodox community claims that the progressive community does not know how to perform a conversion properly, I think they may have a point. The unseemly spectacle of a pair of Orthodox Rabbis offering to sell a conversion for $15,000 broadcast on Israeli TV a month ago makes the point clear. The progressives have never figured out how to get that much money for their conversions. Maybe we need to learn how to do it "RIGHT".
For the Orthodox to claim exclusive knowledge of the mind of G-d is blasphemy. By so doing, they have limited G-d to their own narrow concept. My G-d is much more infinite than that. And the lashon hara emanating from their mouths should preclude their right to speak for anyone who claims to live a life based on Torah.
Cliff Fiedler
Nashville, TN
What US Legislation Can Do
It is time to look into the status of religious freedom in Israel or the lack of such freedom! With the right legislation in the US, the effect on the state of Israel can be devastating.
RGN
Houston, Texas
Israel Resembles Iranian Fundamentalism
I became a Jew before a beyt din convened by a Reconstructionist rabbi in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. I understand that the State of Israel would still consider me Jewish under the proposed legislation concerning conversion.
Should I consider myself fortunate I did not convert in Eretz Yisrael?
Why should I care whether I would be allowed to make aliyah if once I got to HaAretz I would have to live in an Ultra-Orthodox theocracy? Let's
face it, in the absence of secular family law the status of religious freedom in Medinat Yisrael more closely resembles that in Iran than any (other?) Western country. Where else are secular and progressive religious people forced to submit to the authority of a fundamentalist religious sect in order to divorce or marry?
Zionists may decry diaspora assimilation, but from a progressive diaspora point of view politics in Medinat Yisrael are beginning to look a lot like those among her Arab neighbors.
Today it is the conversion law. What next? Women's equality? The Ultra-Orthodox are already pushing to have the Kotel declared an
Ultra-Orthodox synagogue, so that women can be forced to "behave themselves" at the Western Wall.
We've seen how they try to deny building and zoning permits for non-Orthodox synagogues. You can't drive to shul on shabbat without
plotting your course to avoid stone-throwing thugs.
Medinat Yisrael is a sovereign state. It can do as it pleases in its internal affairs. I am not an Israeli citizen, though Israeli law does consider me a Jewish national, a potential citizen. But all of that is irrelevant, because
if Germany or Russia treated (Reconstructionist) Judaism the way Medinat Yisrael treats it I would not sit still for it.
Imagine how I must feel about the world's only self-described Jewish state withholding basic legal recognition from authentic (Reconstructionist) Judaism, the intellectual underpinning of modern religious Zionism? Why on Earth should I send it money, spend my tourist dollars there, or lobby the US government to support a political entity that denies Jews the most basic Zionist rights?
From where I sit the question is not whether I am Jewish. It's whether Medinat Yisrael allows Jews to live as a free people b'Eretz Tzion
Virushalayim.
Jonathan David Makepeace
Baton Rouge, Louisiana
Does ‘Who is a Jew?’ Matter?
I think that the question on who is a Jew is never answerable to the point
that it would satisfy any majority opinion! it simply want work, as we all know the old cliche, you got 3 Jews together and you have at least 15 opinions on how to do things, so just imagine with barley 13m Jews world wide we must have at least 1.3 billion opinions, and there are about 1.3 billion Muslims in the world and they all have one opinion, get ride of Israel & the Jews.
So as we know freedom of thought is the corner stone of our people, I think that most of our people would rather have a billion opinions, than be monolithic in thinking. A true free people have a divers opinions!
So, if anyone wants to become Jewish and accept that "Shema Israel Adonai Elohinu Adonai Echad", in my opinion this sentence in itself is enough to become Jewish, the rest is open to many interpretations.
Of course a sense of humor is required but not mandatory. If this issue wouldn't be so serious and so divisive it would make a good comedy routine that would make you fall of your chair! So let us embrace with open heart & open arms all our fellow Jews by choice and draw strength from them, since you must remember, we are all descendants of converts, if you go by the bible than Abraham was the first Jew and he was a convert himself
When we look in the mirror, do you think that we look like the people that stood at mount Sinai??? when we got the 10 commandments??? Come on be serious! Who has the right to say to you who is or isn't a Jew? No one! your Jewish SOUL is your inner guidance more so than all the rabbis in the world!
In answer to the big question who is a Jew? the answer is YOU ARE!!! and you know it!
Thanks, a regular Jew ( why don't we start a whole new debate what's a regular Jew and what's not a regular Jew! Oy Vey that would take another million years, so I'm just kidding, no new debate please)
Zevika Salles
San Francisco, Ca
Democracy or Theocracy?
My comment only concerns the quality of the Israeli democracy. I visit Israel 3-4 times a year and on many occasions discuss what democracy means. Generally I am left with the feeling that to Israelis democracy is the right of the majority to decide, if necessary with the help of an often orthodox minority.
In the general Western understanding, there is an additional element which is essential, namely that in a true democracy, much attention is paid to the protection of the rights of minorities.
In the case under discussion, of the rights of the Reform and Conservative movements in Israel, the argument is always used: "there are not enough of you here. Come and live and vote in Israel and you will get your rights!"
If I were to use the same thinking here in Holland, where we Jews are only a very small minority, on the basis of numbers we would have no rights or recognition at all. But we do have full recognition and rights like any other religious denomination, with no difference whatever being made between Orthodox or Liberal Jews.
If Israel really wants to be a democracy and not a theocracy, the same basic rule should apply in the Jewish State. As long as that is not the case, we are really talking about the "tyranny of the majority" and not about real democracy.
No wonder we can see so many examples of "absolute power corrupting absolutely" and that is becoming so difficult to be proud of "our (?) Jewish state".
Rabbi David Lilienthal
Amsterdam, Holland
Israel’s So-called Religious Freedom
For as long as I remember I have been a "lover of Israel." I visit yearly, I contribute whatever funds available to me, and, most important, I have taught my students that Israel matters and that she deserves our support.
Of course, my love of Israel has been predicated on a belief that I am loved in return, that no matter how I may decide to practice my Judaism, Israel will accept me and respect me. Well, I have been deceiving myself all of these years. The attempt to pass a Conversion Bill, as well as the vituperative statements issued by Israel's religious leaders, convince me that second-class Jewish status is all that Israel will afford me. How can I feel the good about a 'Jewish state' which is the only democracy in the world that does not grant full religious rights to every Jew?
I have been told, "Move to Israel and things will be different." Why in the world should any non-Orthodox Jew want to settle in a place that will not grant him or her complete religious freedom?
Rabbi Robert Orkand
Westport, Ct
Macro-economic Religious View
The conversion law is another example of the threat of not separating
church and state. The Orthodox parties in Israel have the power to affect
our democracy and way of life although they are a true minority.
The fact that we're the only Jewish state, doesn’t mean we should be an
Orthodox society. And who's to say who's Orthodox? Again, the same parties.
Most Israelis will consider themselves "traditional" or closer to
Reform Jews or Conservative.
Since Globes is an economic newspaper, and since economists claim that
"everything’s economy" (and they are right), I’d like, with your
permission, to examine this situation from the Macro point of view:
Monopoly vs. Free Market Economy.
When the Church had the political power in the middle ages, it was
considered corrupt. It was hated and feared by many. The church made the
rules, enforced them and tried people for breaking them. They had no real
competition. They were a monopoly. After the French revolution, when it
slowly lost it's power, it became nicer to people. They had to compete. The
heads of church had to solicit and "attract customers". People had
freedom to choose other ways, so the church gave in and changed.
Sure, even
today you’ll find fanatic cults, but the majority is much more adaptive than
what it used to be when it was a monopoly.
The opposite is now happening in Israel: religion is dictated and enforced
by law, so the religious establishment doesn't have to chase new clientele.
On the contrary, they have no real competition. They are a monopoly!
The result is that Israelis are running away from religion. In the
economic school I went to (Baruch College NYC), I remember clearly a phrase
from my economics class: "Monopoly Corrupts". This is exactly the case.
Instead of changing with time and modernizing Judaism, instead of bringing
more and more people to "use the product", the management is not engaged in
marketing at all. They are busy distributing the dividends to the board.
The monopoly’s nature is to keep things as they were, not change since
change is bad.
So to conclude, what we have is a religious monopoly that became corrupt
and a majority that suffers. However, the nature of monopolies is to reach
a point of becoming so big as to become blind to new competition and this
is where they fall. I just hope that the hatred (Yes, you can speak in
those terms. Many Israelis feel that emotion towards the religious
establishment.) that this monopoly generates, will backfire and as a
result, a new constitution will emerge, stating that Israel may be the only
Jewish state in the world, but it’s not Orthodox Jewish. It’s as Jewish as
its people want it to be. It is a FREE Market Economy.
Erez Miller
Tel Aviv