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Don't Let Me Catch You Praying: UTJ upset Barak may visit Reform synagogue (JPost)
"Just as the prime minister doesn't travel on Shabbat, he can't visit a Reform [synagogue] if he wants to preserve our coalition agreement, which talks about maintaining the status quo," Porush said.
Don't Worry, Rabbi! Barak's priorities: Peace comes first, then the status quo
"Prime Minister Barak managed to avoid being trapped by the "which synagogue to attend" issue by not attending any Shabbat services at all, saying that he was tired and wanted to rest."Related Reform Responsum: Can a Reform synagogue let an Orthodox minyan use its space? (Central Conference of American Rabbis)
"This she'elah ...involves a fundamental tension between two important Reform Jewish principles... "Jewish pluralism" and "Reform Jewish integrity."
Hasty Move? Knesset to consider cancelling 51-year state of emergency (Ha'aretz)
"It is inappropriate that today... laws still exist that may be convenient for the government, but have no justification for still being on the books," Justice Minister Yossi Beilin said.Unless the Knesset extends it, the state of emergency will expire automatically on February 1, 2000."
Fast day debate: Should we continue celebrating Yom Hashoah or reinvigorate our observance of Tisha b'Av? (JTS Magazine)
Ismar Schorsch: The nature of Jewish history keeps the Order of Lamentations from ever being finished. How incredibly shortsighted of us, if understandable, not to have incorporated the commemoration of the Holocaust into that cathartic ritual.David Roskies: To encompass the entirety of our historical experience, even while cutting the enormity of Auschwitz down to manageable size, there must be a day set aside for the night, so that on the morrow, our fractured lives may be sanctified anew.
So Long Monica, Here Comes Tisha B'Av: The Holocaust in American Life Reviewed (Slate)
Philip Gourevitch (author of We Wish To Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families: Stories From Rwanda) and James Young (author of The Texture of Memory) discuss The Holocaust in American Life, by Peter Novick.
Related cool site: Jewish Labor and the Holocaust (NYU Library)
Hello, Goodbye? First photos of rarest rhino (BBC)
"Even if she loses the race, she will, merely by running for office, win her separateness from her husband as a viable political entity."
Yudel's Line: I just don't get this. Hillary is zagging right, pandering to the Orthodox Union and the Upstate dairy farmers. I understand her political motives, but to me, a NYC resident, it stinks as badly as the past two years of Guliani's regime, wherein every move was designed to win votes in Buffalo and New Hampshire. Given that Hillary is the one person less likely to be collegial in the Senate than Rudy, why on earth should I prefer her? Personally, I'm hoping to be in New Jersey well before election day.
Double Dipping?Bubble baths (Ha'aretz)
"Dozens of non-profit organizations that operate ritual baths for men have in recent years been receiving allocations of millions of shekels from the inter-ministerial committee for the development of religious structures, as if they were operating ritual baths for women.Is there any justification for changing the criteria to permit the allocation of funds for ritual baths for men? According to senior figure in United Torah Judaism (UTJ), there is no reason ritual baths for men should not be funded like secular cultural institutions."
The C Word: Haredim, seculars reach compromise in Rehovot (Ha'aretz)
A conflict arose between the two communities after the Chabad community obtained permission to build a 10-dunam educational complex, including schools, yeshivot and a dormitory, in the heart of the secular neighborhood of Kiryat Hayovel.
Howzabout E-mail? Ordinations by mail blasphemous, some clergy say (Las Vegas Sun)
The issue has turned into a dispute in the Las Vegas Jewish community, where several local rabbis received their ordination through correspondence with a rabbinical school in New York -- much to the dismay of their more lengthily educated colleagues.
Editor's Note: Ha'aretz is apparently putting into place a pay-per-view system for its archives. Links starred into today's issue are no longer available at press time.
National Institutions (1) From the mouths of babes (Ha'aretz)
"Professor Bar-Gal's book, "An Agent of Zionist Propaganda: The Jewish National Fund 1924-1947," questions how the JNF became so involved in our culture, and also examines the less savory aspects of its activities."
National Institutions (2) JNF to block PA's purchase of Tel Aviv landmark *(Ha'aretz)
"The Jewish National Fund will do everything to buy Beit Ussishkin, a landmark building in Tel Aviv, in order to prevent its sale to the Palestinian Authority, which has expressed interest in buying the building in order to eventually turn it into the Palestinian Embassy in Tel Aviv."National Institutions (3) The Jewish Agency for Palestine * (Danny Rubinstein, Ha'aretz)
"In the wake of the establishment of the Palestinian Authority, PLO institutions have gradually ceased to function. Yasser Arafat, however, does not want to eliminate the PLO, because his position as its chairman gives him the right to represent Palestinians abroad "National Institutions (4) A new look for the Jewish Agency * (Ha'aretz)
MKs Ruby Rivlin (Likud) and Yossi Beilin (One Israel) have placed separate motions on the Knesset agenda for the necessity of dismantling the existing Jewish Agency structure. The motions, tabled on Thursday, were their gift to the annual Jewish Agency for Israel (JAFI) gathering this week in Tiberias. JAFI received only around $200 million this year - a 10 percent drop compared to what it received 10 years ago, and an even bigger drop (close to 40 percent) in real terms.School Daze: The Scandal of Special-Ed: It wastes money and hurts the poor (Washington Monthly)
"Twenty five years after the passage of the nation's special ed law, the Individuals with Disabilites Education Act (IDEA), the real scandal is not simply that we spend too much to educate handicapped kids. It's the inequity in the way the law is applied. At an estimated $35 billion a year, special education is like a huge regressive tax--helpful to those wealthy enough to take advantage of it, and often harmful to those who are not. Furthermore, in order to pay for special ed's enormous, ineffectual bureaucracy and skyrocketing enrollments, school districts are being forced to cheat their conventional students."
Do the Left Thing: Learning from Shas (Shlomo Avineri in Ha'aretz)
"While the Left was preoccupied (and justly so) with the rights of the Palestinians on the one hand and the question of Reform conversion on the other hand, Shas succeeded, at times using underhanded methods, in giving part of Israel's distressed population what it needed: education, medical aid, welfare relief and housing assistance. It reaped the fruits on election day. If the Left does not grasp this and continues to see only the unsympathetic aspect of Shas, an absurd situation will emerge in which the Labor Party and Meretz will become the preserve of the educated, bourgeois, "enlightened" classes, while Shas will represent what the Left should stand for: The demand for a solution to the distress of society's weak groups."
"What is the meaning of the deal transacted between two naked men, so very different from one another, at a fleeting moment born of passion in the midst of the rushing currents of the Jordan?"
When talking about her son, she is like any mother chatting over coffee and cake: "He went out and had a wonderful family, five wonderful children. He came to Minnesota for the summers, bought a small piece of property, brought his children."And the grandchildren? Zimmerman is equally proud: "There's Maria, who's an attorney and is married with four children; Jesse does videos and commercials and has a little boy; Anna is an artist, she's 30; Sam is 31, is a photographer and writer; and Jakob, he's in the Wallflowers, he's an exquisite boy, has two little children and is very busy."
Of the extended Zimmerman family, she says, "We live a very, very beautiful, wonderful life. We celebrate Christmas, Thanksgiving; we get to see them all the time."
Gotta Serve Something: Beatty Zimmerman's banana-bread recipe (Knight-Ridder)
The Roads Must Roil: Haredim, secular protest on Rehov Bar-Ilan (JPost)
"Following last Shabbat's disturbances, when haredim sprayed tear gas at vehicles on the road, a heavy police presence was on hand yesterday to prevent the haredi demonstrators from blocking the road."
Finding Her Voice: International conference of Orthodox Jewish women meets this week (Ha'aretz)
"One debate will center on a question raised a year ago in an academic article: How can we pray to our God when He has no relationship with women?This issue indeed stirred up a heated controversy about a year ago when it was first presented by Dr. Tamar Ross of the Hebrew University - herself an observant woman who covers her hair - at a conference organized by Yeshiva University, the greatest bastion of modern Orthodoxy in the United States. Rabbi Aharon Lichtenstein, the head of the Har Etzion hesder yeshiva (a program that combines army service with yeshiva studies), launched a scathing attack on Ross. According to Kehat, he even pointed out that "Rabbi Soloveitchik would certainly be turning over in his grave if he were to hear these things." The irony is that Ross will not be able to present her thesis at the conference because she has not been given time off by the same Yeshiva University, where she is currently teaching."
Space Jew: Barak asks U.S. for launch date of Israeli astronaut (Ha'aretz)
"The plan to send an Israeli into space was first discussed during the Washington visit of former Prime Minister Shimon Peres in December 1995, when the U.S. government was seeking ways to demonstrate solidarity with Israel in the wake of the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin."
Space Bay: Space collision helped create Chesapeake Bay, leaves drinking water salty (ExploreZone)
Space Eulogy: The Story of a Tragedy That Was Not to Be (LA Times)
It turns out that officials at the White House and NASA quietly made contingency plans for what President Richard Nixon would do if Armstrong and Aldrin got stuck on the moon and were doomed to die there.
Ehud Barak was sworn in as the 10th Prime Minister of Israel on Tuesday. Regional peacemaking is his stated top priority.
Heat Rave: Naysayers, Thriving in the Heat (NYTimes OpEd)
What is more, global warming is accelerating. The 1970's were warmer than the 1960's, the 1980's were warmer than the 1970's, and the 1990's have been warmer still. Last year was the warmest in recorded history, and -- as this recent record heat wave seems to bear out -- the temperature continues to rise.
Dancing Jews (1): Troupe brings Jewish culture and history to traditional ballet (JTA)
"After a visit to Israel, Julian Fisher became actively interested in combining his love of dance with his Jewish heritage. The pursuit of his goal -- ``to really add diversity" to ballet -- led him to found the American Jewish Ballet two years ago. "
Dancing Jews (2) Brutal Theme, Brilliant Dance (NY Daily News)
"A Selection," Pilobolus' newest dance, which opened the company's month-long season at the Joyce Theater this week. It is about the Holocaust, and I can pay it no higher praise than to say it is worthy of its terrible theme."
See for yourself: The Joyce Theater: Pilobolus
Kids these days (1): Birthday parties are out of hand. Whatever happened to cake, ice cream and pin the tail on the donkey? (Salon)
Kids these days (2): The secret world of Pokémon With a TV show, video game and trading cards, the pocket monsters have come for your children. (Salon)
Kids these days (3): How the parents rear the child has no long-term effects on the child's personality, intelligence, or mental health. (Interview with Judith Rich Harris in Edge.org)
"As I show in my book The Nurture Assumption, the strategies children work out at home for getting along with their parents and siblings are likely to be useless in the world outside their home. That is why children's behavior differs systematically in different social contexts."
Religion good? Is
religion good for your health? (Gregg Easterbrook
in The New Republic)
Dr. Herbert Benson of Harvard Medical School has proposed that one reason faith may be linked to better health--indeed, a reason faith and society are historically linked--is that natural selection favors religion. In Benson's theory, during prehistory those clans or groups that possessed the stirrings of religious belief would have developed better health habits and recognized a responsibility to care for family and neighbors
Religion bad? If teen violence is the question, religion isn't the answer (Slate)
"Within the 50 states, there is no evidence that a God-fearing populace equals a law-abiding populace. Louisiana has the highest churchgoing rate in the country, but its murder rate is more than twice the national average. Tom DeLay's Bible-toting state of Texas has a murder rate triple that of Massachusetts, which is "ungodly" enough to have elected two openly gay members of Congress."Making Book: An unorthodox Orthodox view of the Bible (Ha'aretz reviews "Pirqe Bereishit" (Chapters on Genesis) by Mordechai Breuer.)
"Rabbi Mordechai Breuer, this year's Israel Prize laureate for literature, is the great-grandson of Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, the founder of Neo or Modern Orthodoxy. Breuer is an eminent scholar and authority on Bible texts (referred to in biblical science as "low criticism," which deals exclusively with the text of the Scriptures). In this new book about the book of Genesis, however, he contends with mainly Protestant biblical criticism of the "higher" type as well (that is, with literary analysis of the texts)."A Bridge to Election 2000: How Clinton's Medicare plan helps today's aging voters -- while shafting future generations, again. (The New Republic)
Parshat PinchasYudel's Learning: How the Talmud (Sanhedrin 82) understands the story of Pinchas as a repudiation of the wrath of God.
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Today's adoptions force new thinking in Jewish community (JTA)
Liberal mikvahs spring up in response to growing need (JTA)
"Non-Orthodox rabbis who once had access to ritual baths are increasingly being shut out. In response, an unprecedented number of Conservative and Reform synagogues are building their own."Multiracial adoptions change the face and color of Jewish life (JTA)
"The personal experience of Tobin and his wife, Diane, led them to initiate the Ethnic and Racial Diversity Study of the Jewish Community, which recently got under way and is being partially funded by Spielberg's Righteous Persons Foundation.``I know that when one of my children who is white goes across the street to the store he will be treated differently than my son who is black," Tobin says. ``He will be a minority within a minority wherever he goes -- as a black being raised in a white family, as a black within the Jewish community." "
Missionary Passions: Chabad
chasidism is booming. It’s changing the Jewish community. It’s also changing
chasidism. (J.J. Goldberg)
"One-fourth to one-half of all Lubavitch chasidim now live outside the cloistered framework of the traditional chasidic community, interacting daily with non-Orthodox Jews rather than with their fellow chasidim. Put differently, one-fourth to one-half of all Lubavitch adult males now serve as rabbis in congregations whose members mostly drive to services on Saturday."
At the core: Scientists: Milky Way contains 24 black holes (Daily Yomiuri)
Scientists at Tohoku University said Friday that there are 24 black holes in the center of the Milky Way, a conclusion that conflicts with the conventional theories that between one and three exist in the galaxy.
Eclipsed: Thirty years ago, the Soviets lost the race to the moon. They might have won -- if only they had acted like good Communists. (NYTimes Magazine)
Psik Reisha: Mike the Headless Chicken Day on Sunday will honor a 1940s rooster who for 4 years strutted around, fattened up on grain and preened for hens - all without a head. (Denver Post)
Throw off those chains, doc! The oppressive power of HMOs has finally forced physicians to do the unthinkable -- organize a union. (Salon)
Now the most important organization of American medical professionals is seeking solidarity for its members. Some of our most educated citizens have finally figured out what workers around the world have known for centuries: That it doesn't necessarily matter whether the boss is called a commissar or a CEO. Either way, the advancement of human values sometimes requires collective action.
Barak does Shas: Shas aboard, Barak ready to present 69-MK gov't and Barak signs agreement with Shas
"Control of the Israel Lands Authority will allow Shas to grant religious institutions and Haredi schools discount prices on plots of land...The agreement also includes a section on pirate radio stations, according to which "the government will work to find a solution to allow radio and television stations for the Haredi population to operate legally, with municipal supervision."
Unlike One Israel's agreement with United Torah Judaism, which does not mention the controversial conversion issue, the Shas agreement has a section which reads, "A ministerial committee on conversion will present the government with recommendations on a resolution of the issue, whether by legal means or otherwise, which will take into consideration the Ne'eman Committee recommendations and the status quo."
Barak triumphant? Deri's boomerang Ha'aretz reporter Shahar Ilan analyzes Barak's negotiating table victory over Shas.
"Prime Minister-elect Ehud Barak not only came out of the dealings with Shas with the upper hand, he gave them a lesson in civics. "
Barak capitulated? Israel Harel attacks Barak's draft deal with the haredim
"Barak came to an agreement with the ultra-Orthodox, the main element of which, the security service law, will effectively grant a legal exemption from national service to yeshiva students over the age of 24. Both events are welcomed as creative and flexible policy-making. Had Netanyahu done the same, he would have been depicted as someone who had deceived the public and damaged security and the principle of equality before the law.Yet it is a discriminatory law and, therefore, unacceptable. For 50 years, a problematic de facto exemption was in effect and the public revolted against it. Then comes Barak and instead of correcting this ongoing injustice, grants the ultra-Orthodox, de jure, status as a privileged group legally exempt from the burden of the supreme obligation in Israeli-Jewish society."
Not unrelated: Sephardim flock to yeshivas since Shas (Ha'aretz)
"The proportion of ultra-Orthodox Sephardi men who study in yeshiva has risen from 38 percent to 54 percent since the establishment of Shas in 1984, according to a study performed by Boston University Professor Eli Berman, an expert on Haredi economics. The average childbirth rate among ultra-Orthodox Sephardim has risen by an astounding two children per family during the same period, to 6.6.According to an earlier study of Berman's, the average birth rate for Haredi women stood at 6.5 in the early eighties - and rose to 7.6 by the mid-nineties. Meanwhile, among non-Haredi Jews, the birth rate fell from 2.6 to 2.3."
More yeshiva news: Investigation of Itri funds stepped up (Ha'aretz)
"Two weeks ago the Jerusalem District Fraud Division began investigating the accusations published by Ha'aretz, regarding the theft of large sums of money from the yeshiva. Since then investigators have arrested Rabbi Haim Weiss, the director of the yeshiva, after he refused to cooperate with police."
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