London Jewish School Crisis

The JFS lesson

The decision earlier this month by a British appeals court, holding that the admissions policy of the country's largest Jewish school was illegal, underscores a schism within the Jewish world over identity, conversion and the nature of our civilization.

The school, JFS, was chartered in 1732 under Orthodox auspices but had long maintained an enlightened approach toward all segments of the community. The litigation came about because JFS now admits only converts who meet the standards of the haredi-oriented London Beth Din, which is out of touch with the majority of Britain's 260,000 Jewish people.

It's doubtful that most of JFS's 1,900 students lead Orthodox lifestyles, though the court decision does not affect those students already at the school.

The case at hand resulted from the school's refusal to admit a new boy whose mother had been converted by the Liberal stream. His parents divorced; she left the fold, and the boy is being brought up by his halachically Jewish father. Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks's office refused to certify the child as Jewish - a necessary step for JFS admission - because his mother did not have an Orthodox conversion. The father challenged the rejection in court.

He was supported by the Lightman family, whose children were also barred from JFS. Kate Lightman was converted by an Orthodox Bet Din in Israel and does lead an Orthodox life. She was married by an Orthodox rabbi in New York to a kohen - a member of the priestly class which brought animal sacrifices during Temple times. A strict constructionist interpretation of Halacha would, arguably, bar a kohen from marrying a convert. Hence Sacks held that Lightman's conversion was insincere and that the couple's children were not Jewish; and thus ineligible to attend JFS.

In a third case, unrelated to the litigation, JFS barred the children of Helen Sagal, though she too was converted by an Orthodox Beit Din in Israel, on the grounds that the family no longer leads an Orthodox lifestyle.

THE COURT of Appeal found that using ethnicity or race of the mother as the criterion for entry rather than faith, however defined, breached the Race Relations Act. Without taking sides on the JFS case, the Board of Deputies opposes this decision because of its ramifications for all Jewish schools.

JFS tried to appeal the case to the House of Lords, but the court denied permission. The school is likely to pursue a direct petition to the Lords, but this could take time, and there is no guarantee of victory even if the case is heard.

As Simon Rocker of The Jewish Chronicle reported, JFS will now have to rewrite its entry rules; instead of being based on the lineage of an applicant's mother, admission will be based on religious observance - such as synagogue attendance.

But as Prof. Geoffrey Alderman points out, the school has painted itself into a corner. If it produces narrow Orthodox criteria to measure observance, it will transform itself into a haredi institution; and if they are very broad, what's the point?

Yet is JFS even capable of setting middle-of-the-road faith criteria? How will it respond to families that are observant but affiliated, say, with the Conservative or Reform movements?

It's a pity that a school which played so pivotal a role in British Jewish life now finds itself in the clutches of haredi obduracy. Fortunately, a new cross-denominational school is scheduled to open in 2010.

THE JFS controversy is a larger dilemma in microcosm. Those who favor greater insularity and artificially enforced homogeneity, who insist uncompromisingly that they alone are privy to God's purpose, will continue to advocate for a Judaism that is unwelcoming.

The Jewish majority in the Diaspora as well as in Israel - running the gamut from neo-Orthodox to progressive, yet also embracing the affiliated secular - need to develop sensible answers, rooted in Jewish law and tradition, to the issues of identity and conversion.

In so doing they will be hammering home the point that Judaism is a thriving and evolving civilization rooted in sacred history, religious ritual, a shared past and the sense of a common destiny.

It is not synonymous with haredism.

To the Moon

And that's the way it was...


On July 20, 1969, at 10:18 p.m. Israel time - 40 years ago today - Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin became the first humans to walk on the moon.

President Barack Obama will have to weigh the advice of a panel of experts due to report in August and decide whether to spend an estimated $100 billion so that Americans can return to the moon on the 50th anniversary of the first landing.

Lunar colonies could serve as a stepping-stone for an eventual manned mission to Mars. From the moon, astronauts might travel into deep space to the asteroid Apophis, when it passes near Earth in 2021. Later they might reach Mars' moon, Phobos. Some experts hope that humans could journey to Mars as soon as 2031.

Or should space exploration be relegated to cheaper robotic proxies? It's a tough decision.

America finds itself $11 trillion dollars in debt. This year's budget deficit alone is $482 billion. With a wobbly economy, rising unemployment, wars in Afghanistan-Pakistan and Iraq, and millions of Americans without health insurance, can Obama afford to be extravagant on space?

THE NIGHT of that moon landing, Americans were mesmerized by a grainy black-and-white simulation of the Eagle approaching the moon. Millions were tuned to CBS, where Walter Cronkite was anchoring coverage of the descent to the lunar surface. Mission control called off the numbers until there were none left - and Cronkite exclaimed: "Man on the Moon!"

A moment later came word from the astronauts: "Houston, Tranquility base here; the eagle has landed."

Cronkite, who died on Friday at 92, recalled that despite years of preparation, he was nearly speechless with joy. On earth, the War in Vietnam was taking its toll; campus unrest and racial tension roiled. But all that was placed in abeyance as eyes turned heavenward - via the miracle of television - to see Armstrong step onto the surface of the moon, with the words: "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind."

This week, the Endeavour space shuttle with its seven-member crew docked with the International Space Station, a structure now as large as a four-bedroom house, presently home to 12 men and a woman - seven Americans, two Russians and two Canadians. When this mission is over, the station will contain an "outdoor" observatory. Only seven missions remain before the shuttle fleet is retired, NASA says.

ISRAELIS COULD not view the live telecast of the first moon landing - our technology was not that advanced. Israel Radio instead broadcast the news in real time, translating each milestone into Hebrew.

The country tried to put aside its reality to share in the excitement. In Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, the US Cultural Center was screening NASA films every 30 minutes.

Israel's victory in the Six Day War notwithstanding, a war of attrition raged on with Egypt. And as Michael Collins, Armstrong and Aldrin were orbiting the moon, the IAF shot down five Egyptian planes over Suez. Around the time the Eagle rejoined Columbia in orbit, Jordanian artillery was shelling Beit She'an.

Israel's Sephardi Chief Rabbi, Yitzhak Nissan, prayed that the moon walk would not deepen man's hubris, but that instead people would better appreciate the act of Creation.

Both Egypt and Jordan devoted more news coverage to the moon landing than to their war against Israel; not so Syria. Palestinian Arab terrorism continued unabated: an attack in Hebron on Israelis making a pilgrimage to the Cave of the Machpelah; the murder of a man waiting for a bus in Tel Aviv by an exploding parcel.

As the astronauts splashed down safely, the IAF downed seven more Egyptian planes after 40 enemy aircraft crossed the Suez Canal. In Haifa's outdoor market, three bombs planted in watermelons detonated, injuring shoppers.

LOOKING back, it is heartening that Israel is now at peace with Egypt and Jordan, though endlessly disquieting that Palestinian intransigence has stalemated reconciliation on that front.

The exploration of space, meanwhile, is a constant reminder that all of us are denizens of the third planet from the sun, and part of something far bigger than meets the eye.

Haredi intifada

Gevalt!

An innocent and devoted mother sits in jail because Zionist authorities want to make an example of her to intimidate God-fearing haredim struggling to preserve the sanctity of Jerusalem. The trumped-up charge that keeps this selfless (pregnant) lady behind bars is that for two years she starved her little boy almost to death.

They claim she is suffering from a psychiatric disorder, Munchausen syndrome-by-proxy, which caused her to harm her son to win attention for herself. What nonsense! Everyone knows she is perfectly normal.

Why isn't the media reporting the truth? The child suffered from cancer and had undergone chemotherapy. The doctors told his mother not to allow him food by mouth - which is why the three-year-old became so emaciated, requiring multiple hospitalizations, and ended up weighing seven kilograms. Everyone in the Hadassah oncology department knows this to be true; they saw how she stayed with the child from early morning until late at night.

Then one day she said something that offended some big-shot doctor, because they were doing experiments on the child. Naturally, our community is in an uproar over her unjust arrest…

THIS IS a composite of the conspiracy theories circulating not just on the streets of Mea She'arim and Ramat Beit Shemesh, where the extremist, anti-Zionist Toldot Aharon hassidic sect - to which the troubled family adheres - and its fanatical Naturei Karta allies hold sway, but also in other ultra-Orthodox areas such as Jerusalem's Har Nof, where denizens lead considerably less insular lives. There is sympathy in the wider haredi world for the grievances of the rioters, who have vandalized traffic lights, burned garbage dumpsters and thrown projectiles at police, city workers and passing vehicles.

Haredi women have conducted special prayer meetings for the mother's release. Hassidic politicos have denounced as "collective punishment" Mayor Nir Barkat's decision to suspend municipal services in the affected areas after city social services and sanitation workers came under attack. (Only Lithuanian haredi rabbis have urged their followers not to participate in the rioting.)

For the record, Dr. Yair Birnbaum, deputy director of Hadassah hospital, has confirmed that the abused child never had cancer, and was never treated with chemotherapy. Also that since the boy's separation from his mother, he has been gaining weight and his physical condition has improved.

THAT THE haredi world - particularly Ashkenazi hassidim - finds it enormously difficult to grapple with child, sexual and spousal abuse comes to light when community members turn to the state for vital medical and social services. That's how we learned about Rabbi Elior Chen, who instructed a gullible mother to cleanse her child of "satanic possession." And about Yisrael Walz, who shook his son to death - that became known when the infant was brought to hospital. Some haredim, fearing the diabolical designs of Zionist authorities, say they now hesitate to take their children to hospital.

There are dysfunctional families among all strata of Israeli society. But the only stratum that reacts with collective violence when abuse is exposed is the most insular subdivision of the haredi world.

Why is such antisocial behavior tacitly countenanced by the more conventional hassidim? Because they share values which hold that men should be gainfully unemployed, women socialized to believe that the back of the bus is where God wants them, and youths reared to be clueless about the outside world.

Violence - stopping archeological digs (which might unearth Jewish graves) and protesting the opening on Shabbat of cinemas, 24/7 mini-markets, and parking garages outside their neighborhoods - has become a default, communally sanctioned response.

THIS impulse is emblematic of an alienation which, because it is ripping Israeli society apart, begs to be better understood. Haredim, like Arab citizens of Israel, want to be accepted as different, yet feel shunned.

The Kerner Commission was established to examine the causes of rioting in America's inner cities; in Britain and France, commissions have examined Muslim unrest. Here in Israel, the Orr Commission investigated Arab rioting.

Perhaps we need a state commission to tell us not only why a volatile minority of hassidic sects periodically runs amok - but also how to discourage the culture of extreme insularity that lies at the root of their self-perpetuated estrangement.

Obama meets US Jewish leaders

Whenever American Jewish leaders are invited to the White House to talk
about Israel --­ as 16 were on Monday evening ­-- rest assured that the purpose
of the invitation is not to give the machers an opportunity to sway the leader of the free world, but for the administration to diminish any prospect of them lobbying against the president's policies.

White House aides Rahm Emanuel, David Axelrod and Dan Shapiro sought to
exclude anyone who was likely to strike a discordant note.

None of Israel's leading Christian supporters were invited. And just to be on the safe side, the heads of marginal groups lobbying for an American-imposed solution to
the conflict were invited, and put on a par with the leaders of mainstream
political, religious, fraternal and philanthropic organizations.

It's one thing to criticize Israel's policies; another to advocate
approaches that endanger our security.

Jewish personalities have been legitimately criticizing this or that Israeli
policy since the 1950s, long before the "occupation" and settlements.

When the settlement enterprise got under way after the 1967 war, American Jewish
leaders were not enamored. But so long as the Arabs were perceived to be in
a zero-sum conflict with Israel, Diaspora discomfiture over settlements was
mostly muted. That changed when the perception became one of an emerging
moderate Palestinian Arab leadership genuinely committed to a two-state
solution.

Various administrations have since found it easier to pressure Israel into
concessions by dissociating the pro-Israel community from Israeli West Bank
policies, and by promoting American pressure as being in Israel¹s own best
interest.

Today, we are witnessing a "perfect storm" of diffuse US pressure on Israel.
Begin with the unyielding opposition to the settlement enterprise of every
administration since Richard Nixon's. Add the growing sense among
establishment figures that non-strategic settlements really are an obstacle
to peace. Consider that the overwhelming majority of American Jews have
never once visited this country and have no understanding of the topography
of the West Bank, or of Israel's legitimate security needs. Then throw in
the emergence of self-proclaimed pro-Israel groups ­ stridently ideological,
highly mobilized and well-funded ­ advocating an American-imposed solution
to the conflict.

Never has criticism of Israel been less nuanced and more unhelpful to
fostering peace.

Who can blame Barack Obama for exploiting this political environment to put
the screws on Israel?

Answer: Those who realize that the settlement-freeze
issue is a red herring; that the non-zero-sum nature of Palestinian
intentions is far from assured; and that it is the Palestinians, not Israel,
who are inhibiting progress on a two-state solution.

AT MONDAY¹S meeting, according to The Los Angeles Times, Obama told the Jewish leaders that public disagreements between the US government and Israel were useful leverage in the pursuit of peace. The AP synopsized
Obama¹s position this way: Eight years of demanding Palestinian concessions
produced no results; it was time to try a different tack.

Assuming these accounts are accurate, it is depressing that Obama's words
did not elicit respectful dissent. Rather, as one rabbinical attendee -- a leader of the Conservative movement -- told reporters, he was keen to let the president have a go.

Obama claimed that the media tended to play up disagreements with Israel
while ignoring his demands of the Arabs. If so, that's probably because the
administration's calls on Israel are public and strident, while those on the
Arabs are hushed and diplomatic.

I'm not suggesting that Obama is substantively less pro-Israel than most
of his predecessors. But I am concerned over his refusal to explicitly
embrace the 1967-plus strategy enunciated by his predecessor. The furthest
he seems willing to go is to hint that changes which have occurred since
1967 will inevitably influence final-status negotiations.

IF THE administration feels it faces no countervailing pressure, it will go
on maintaining that settlements are the obstacle to peace. This alienates
Israel's majority, which is willing to make painful territorial concessions,
yet believes that ill-tempered calls for an unconditional freeze everywhere
only encourage Palestinian intransigence.

Pro-Israel Americans should caution Obama not to lose the Israeli "street"
as he seeks favor with the Arab one.

They need to say --­ loud and clear --­ that the principles enunciated by Prime
Minister Binyamin Netanyahu at Bar-Ilan deserve strong the administration's
backing.