"This is a war... we cannot afford to lose. The rebellious Haredim must be put in their place, so that we, too, have a place in which to live."

At least some of the ultra-Orthodox community withheld their support from yesterday's demonstrations. Rabbi Yuval Sherlo, who heads the army's religious programme in Petah Tikva, called on religious Jews not to take part in the march.

"I cannot take part in the racism and discrimination that is taking place, which is just the tip of the iceberg," said Mr Sherlo, Ha'aretz quoted him as saying. "It's impossible to claim that this is Jewish law or that it is sanctifying the name of God."

The question of “who is a Jew?” is as old as the State of Israel. The more liberal forms of Jewish practice advocated by the Reform and Conservative movements, with which most American Jews are affiliated, have never taken root here. Israel has left liturgy in the hands of the Orthodox, with most Israeli Jews leading almost completely secular lives, seeking out rabbis only at birth, marriage and death.

The idea is that helping to build the Jewish state is their central means of expressing their ethnic identity. By contrast, Jews abroad seek one another out in synagogues, and have come up with ways to integrate spirituality with identity, forging rituals that respect tradition while adjusting to careers and life in a non-Jewish world.

The two approaches to Jewish identity have coexisted, and while there have been tensions they rarely came to blows.

But several developments of recent years have altered that. First, the arrival of hundreds of thousands of Russian-speaking immigrants not considered Jewish has created an acute need in the eyes of Israeli leaders to find a way to integrate them in keeping with rabbinic tradition. Otherwise, they will not be able to marry, divorce or be buried here within Jewish tradition, and their children will feel deeply alienated. Mr. Rotem calls them “a ticking bomb.”

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Sorry Mr New York Times... Let me argue the question as to who is a Jew goes much further than the State of Israel... It goes as far back as the Abrahamic nebulous times... Sure there are some old books and scrolls that tell us things but, as we know a lot of what is known from these is often fudged, interpretated, masticated, distilled, corrupted and invented by the scribes in order to achieve a purpose... A purpose still fudged, interpretated, masticated, distilled, corrupted and invented today...

It is the time of the year when school is out for Israel's ultraorthodox students. But this year, a Jewish morality police is patrolling in force to make sure they do not have too much fun.

Leading rabbis and heads of religious colleges, or the yeshivas, have warned students to continue their studies of the Torah, dress appropriately and avoid "the great danger, spiritually and concretely, of hitchhiking". The ultraorthodox, who make up roughly 10 per cent of all Israelis, live a closeted life. They voluntarily choose not to own a television or radio, and are barred from using the internet.

But Rabbi Mordechai Blau, leader of the group, Guardians of Sanctity and Education, feared that some temptations would simply prove too much, and deployed an army of snoopers to photograph members of the ultra-orthodox community, also known as Haredi, at a mixed-sex pop concert.

Revellers who ignored warnings to shun ultra-orthodox popstars from Brooklyn, New York, now face being slung out of their yeshivas, or having their children barred from attending the religious schools of their choice.

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see toon at top...

BEIT SHEMESH, Israel — A sign outside a row of synagogues directing women to walk on the other side of the street has turned this town near Jerusalem into a front line of a raging national debate about the imposition of strict social codes by ultra-Orthodox zealots.

A community of 86,000 about a half-hour’s drive from Jerusalem, Beit Shemesh has a growing ultra-Orthodox population. The town has become a cauldron of tension in recent days, with crowds of black-cloaked men assaulting television crews and facing off with police, pelting them with rocks and eggs.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/religious-limits-on-women-spur-controversy-in-israel/2011/12/27/gIQAg8INLP_story.html?tid=pm_pop

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JERUSALEM — In the three months since the Israeli Health Ministry awarded a prize to a pediatrics professor for her book on hereditary diseases common to Jews, her experience at the awards ceremony has become a rallying cry.

The professor, Channa Maayan, knew that the acting health minister, who is ultra-Orthodox, and other religious people would be in attendance.  So she wore a long-sleeve top and a long skirt. But that was hardly enough.

Not only did Dr. Maayan and her husband have to sit separately, as men and women were segregated at the event, but she was instructed that a male colleague would have to accept the award for her because women were not permitted on stage.

Though shocked that this was happening at a government ceremony, Dr. Maayan bit her tongue. But others have not, and her story is entering the pantheon of secular anger building as a battle rages in Israel for control of the public space between the strictly religious and everyone else.

At a time when there is no progress on the Palestinian dispute, Israelis are turning inward and discovering that an issue they had neglected — the place of the ultra-Orthodox Jews — has erupted into a crisis.

And it is centered on women.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/15/world/middleeast/israel-faces-crisis-over-role-of-ultra-orthodox-in-society.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=print

See toon at top...

‘The Lord is a man of war; Yahweh is his name.’

– Exodus 15.3.

This is not a problem unique to Judaism. But the Talmud, the basis for Jewish law, offers a perhaps surprising answer: It places the responsibility for controlling men’s licentious thoughts about women squarely on the men.

Put more plainly, the Talmud says: It’s your problem, sir; not hers.

The ultra-Orthodox men in Israel who are exerting control over women claim that they are honoring women. In effect they are saying: We do not treat women as sex objects as you in Western society do. Our women are about more than their bodies, and that is why their bodies must be fully covered.

In fact, though, their actions objectify and hyper-sexualize women. Think about it: By saying that all women must hide their bodies, they are saying that every woman is an object who can stir a man’s sexual thoughts. Thus, every woman who passes their field of vision is sized up on the basis of how much of her body is covered. She is not seen as a complete person, only as a potential inducement to sin.

Of course, once you judge a female human being only through a man’s sexualized imagination, you can turn even a modest 8-year-old girl into a seductress and a prostitute.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/20/opinion/ultra-orthodox-jews-and-the-modesty-fight.html?src=ISMR_AP_LO_MST_FB

The Death of Marie Sophie Hingst

Why It Was Right to Report on Her Lies

In June, I wrote an article exposing fabrications in Marie Sophie Hingst's blog about Jewish family members who allegedly died in the Holocaust. In mid-July, she was found dead in her apartment. Now, I am grappling with the question of whether my reporting was necessary.

By Martin Doerry

The death of historian Marie Sophie Hingst, who was found lifeless in her apartment in mid-July, bothers me by day and keeps me awake at night. I find myself occupied by the same question that others are also asking in the wake of this dramatic event: Was it right and necessary to report about the young woman and her lies?

My article, which was published on June 1 in DER SPIEGEL, had a prehistory. Her lies were first noticed by a handful of researchers who came together by chance. A historian, a lawyer, an archivist and a genealogist specializing in Jewish families all independently noticed inconsistencies in the blog "Read On My Dear, Read On," written by Hingst. The group corresponded via Facebook and email, and discovered the Jewish family biographies she had written about on her blog were false, and that she had falsely registered 22 alleged Holocaust victims at Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial center in Israel, to support her claims.

When Hingst reacted aggressively and angrily to numerous calls for her to stop spreading her stories and for her to withdraw the Yad Vashem entries, two renowned German historians were asked to intervene, but they never did. I was ultimately informed because, together with Moritz Gerlach, I had brought a similar case to light the previous year: the story of Wolfgang Seibert, a con man who had added fictional Holocaust victims to his family history on his way to becoming chairman of the Jewish community in Pinneberg, a town near Hamburg.

After further research, I asked Hingst for a meeting in Dublin. The conversation, which took place in May, centered on her recently published book "Kunstgeschichte als Brotbelag," a coffee-table book depicting replicas of well-known paintings in the form of open-face sandwiches, and on her supposed Jewish family history. Her responses to my criticisms of her biographical fabrications were both focused and confident and she was rhetorically skillful in her defense. At the end of the conversation, I gave her a detailed list of questions to give her the opportunity to take more time with her answers should she so desire. But she chose not to. If Hingst had offered a public correction of her false stories during or after our conversation, the article never would have been published in the form it was. Eight days separated our conversation on May 23 from the publication of the story and they passed without any action taken on her part.

The Berlin correspondent of the Irish Times, Derek Scally, met with Marie Sophie Hingst about a week after the article's publication and he painted a very different picture of her. His profile portrayed her as a confused, helpless person desperately clinging to her Jewish family legend. He claims that I failed to notice the catastrophic psychological state that Hingst had been in. But when I met her, she did not seem in any way frustrated or depressed. Rather, she came across as confident, combative and determined. He only encountered her after the collapse of her fictional identity. We may have met the same person, but in two completely different states.

Scally's article triggered a powerful response across social media. Many of the comments viewed her claim quoted in the Irish Times that she had felt "skinned alive" by DER SPIEGEL as proof of emotional cruelty. The fact that Marie Sophie Hingst had systematically spread lies about relatives whom she claimed had died in the Holocaust -- not only on her popular and award-winning blog, but also in public talks in front of large audiences -- is instead treated as a permissible sin, or isn't even mentioned.

Hingst's lies, however, should be seen by real Holocaust survivors and their families as a mockery of the victims. Furthermore, these fabrications provide Holocaust deniers with ammunition. If -- as in the Hingst case -- some victims were invented, then perhaps many more victims were invented as well. It bothers me that this point must still be made. And it also bothers me that some comments refer obliquely to the fact that my grandmother Lilli was murdered in Auschwitz, the suggestion being that I am a bit oversensitive on this topic. Perhaps, though, it is those Germans who didn't lose any relatives in the Holocaust who should be especially sensitive in cases like these.

Read all:

https://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/why-i-was-right-to-report-on...

Read from top. 

See also:

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/europe/the-life-and-tragic-death-o...