South Jerusalem Podcast

Haim Watzman The International Relations and Security Network, a Zurich-based information service for international relations and security professionals, interviewed me for its current special report on Israel. Hear me talk about Israeli democracy and Judaism, and please come back here to comment, object, question–and perhaps even concur–with my views. Just don’t be confused–the picture on … Read more

The IDF Rabbinate Has Failed. Replace It.

Gershom Gorenberg

My new column on the failure of the IDF rabbinate is up at Ha’aretz in Hebrew and in English translation:

The news in brief: A woman soldier asked to say kaddish, the mourner’s prayer, in an army synagogue. The rabbi of the base refused to let her. Again the army rabbinate showed narrow-mindedness that offended its legitimate target audience – soldiers with religious needs.

And for the news in full: In mid-May, a woman soldier serving at a Nahal base learned that her grandmother had died and received the standard one-week furlough to be with her family. The next day, her parents flew to America, where the funeral and shiva were to be held. The soldier – a member of a Nahal group from Noam, the youth movement of the Masorti (Conservative) Movement – returned to her base. There she got a call from her father, who said that he was unable to say kaddish where he was, for lack of a minyan. He asked her to say kaddish in his place.

The soldier spoke with the rabbi of her base and suggested that she organize a minyan of women in the synagogue at the base. At first, the rabbi agreed. But another religious woman soldier objected to such openness. Her own rabbi, she told the rabbi of the base, forbade such a practice. The army rabbi consulted his commanders in the Israel Defense Forces rabbinate. Then he informed the soldier from Noam that if she liked, she could organize a minyan in a classroom on the base. But she could not say kaddish in the IDF synagogue. The soldier was deeply offended. A representative of the Masorti Movement contacted the office of IDF Chief Rabbi Avihai Ronski – who supported the base rabbi’s “solution.”

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People’s Committe for a Free Seder: Alternative Agendas

Gershom Gorenberg

More suggestions for Seder discussion:

We are, of course, the most free people in history. We can live where we want (even if the cars, streets, and shop signs make a thousand neighborhoods look the same); we can do what we want (though some days the choice seems to be between which brand of peanut butter to buy); we can believe what we want (even if few people believe anything with a passion that grips their lives, and those few, we know, are eccentrics).

“In every generation, a person is obligated to see himself as if he went out from Egypt,” says the Haggadah, “as is written, ‘for the sake of this, the Lord acted for me when I went out from Egypt.'” It’s easy to read on quickly, thinking of the historical Egypt and even of a metaphorical one, a country or a time in which our parents or grandparents did not have our freedoms.

Read more slowly:

In every generation, a person is obligated to see himself… To find yourself in the retold story, to relive it, you have first to see yourself. In the grand metaphors Egypt as the Pale of Settlement, Egypt as the days of Jew-badge and ghetto we see history, but can forget ourselves. “Where are you?” God asked Adam (Genesis 3:9), knowing well the answer, knowing well that Adam did not; the Haggadah repeats the question.

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Our Uncharacteristic Silence

Gershom is in the U.S., I’ve got the flu, and on top of that my hard disk died. On top of that, my parents are coming from the U.S. for a visit tomorrow. So my apologies, and my thanks to those of you who have kept the discussions going in the meantime. I hope to … Read more

A Note to Our Readers

We do our best to post high-quality material, and we’re grateful to our readers for the generally high level of discussion that takes place in the comments to our posts. If we don’t always respond ourselves, it’s because we’re busy working on the next post. Recently, however, we’ve had several cases in which readers have … Read more

“Waltz With Bashir” on South Jerusalem

We’re pleased that “Waltz With Bashir” has been named top film of the year by the National Society of Film Critics and would like to refer South Jerusalem’s readers to our posts on this important movie: Ari Folman’s “Waltz with Bashir” (1) – A National Nightmare on Film Ari Folman’s “Waltz with Bashir” (2) — … Read more

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Our site was down on Friday due to a snafu in a server upgrade. We apologize to those who visited and got weird messages.

Ultra-Orthodoxy Cancels Conversion, Sends Modern Orthodox for Reeducation

Gershom Gorenberg

The divide between the ultra-Orthodox and other Jews over who is Jewish continues to widen. In the latest developments, ultra-Orthodox rabbis in both Israel and the U.S. have asserted that conversion is reversible — that a convert can cease to be Jewish if she or he does not live according to halakhah, Jewish law, as most strictly and constrictingly interpreted. The immense irony is that regarding conversion as conditional is itself a radical break from halakhic tradition.

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