All Blog Posts Tagged 'Rabbi' (25)

Last week IRAC send out a newsletter encouraging you to email American Friends of Magen David Adom (AFMDA) in protest of their appointment of Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu to a new MDA advisory committee. The Rabbi is infamous for his racist remarks.

AFMDA has received thousands of letters since. You can read their reply here.

This…

Yesterday, Israel Religious Action Center (IRAC) launched a campaign to stop Magen David Adom, Israel’s renowned emergency service, from appointing Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu, chief Rabbi of Safed, as head of their new rabbinical committee.

The committee will be setting religious guidelines on gender relations and issues of Tsniut (modesty) for volunteers in MDA. This appointment…

The Rabbinate has come up with a new idea – kosher ratings of hotels in Israel. The concept of kosher hotels is not new in itself. However, the Rabbinate wants to take it even further than kashrut.

In the new rabbinical rating system employing a non-Jew in the kitchen, not having a gender segregated swimming pool or allowing people to talk on cell phones during Shabbat can result in a poor rating.

Help us prevent the Rabbinate’s attempt to, yet again, abuse…

Today, the Attorney-General’s office announced that the state has decided to follow the advice of the High Court of Justice to start paying the wages of non-Orthodox rabbis in Israel serving their communities, just as it is paying the wages of 4000 Orthodox rabbis. So far, non-Orthodox rabbis in Israel have been paid by their congregations through membership dues.

The decision is based on a petition filed in 2005 by Rabbi Miri Gold of…

Negotiations Stalemate; Supreme Court schedules new hearing regarding the status of non-Orthodox rabbis and their rights to state funding.

The Supreme Court has set May 9 as the date when they will hear arguments regarding the status of non-Orthodox rabbis and their rights to state funding. The original petition was brought by the Israel Religious Action Center (IRAC) which is the legal arm of the Israel…

This week, Anat Hoffman, executive director of the Israel Religious Action Center (IRAC), celebrated her 10-year anniversary with the organization. Rabbi David Saperstein, director of the Religious Action Center (RAC) of Reform Judaism in the US, and Rabbi Rick Jacobs, president of Union for Reform Judaism (URJ), offered…

The ARZENU family joins the Reform movement in mourning the passing of Rabbi W. Gunther Plaut in Canada last week.

Rabbi Plaut, who died at 99, published a volume of commentary on the Torah and Haftarah, which has become the standard Chumash used by the Reform movement world-wide.

“God is not the author of the text,” Rabbi Plaut wrote in the volume’s introduction, “the people are; but God’s voice may be heard through theirs if we listen with…

Rabbi Richard G. Hirsch’s new book, For the Sake of Zion, Reform Zionism: A Personal Mission, was launched in Jerusalem on Monday, June 27. Gil Troy, a professor of history at McGill University in Montreal and the author of numerous books, who currently lives in Israel, wrote an article for The Jewish Week about Rabbi Hirsch and his latest book.

At a time when we read constantly about the crises of Liberal Zionism and Reform Zionism, Rabbi Hirsch, at…

Rabbis Eric Yoffie, Gilad Kariv and Danny Allen, Arzenu’s Joan Garson and IRAC’s Anat Hoffman join together in opposing dangerous new legislation passed in Israel

In response to legislation passed Tuesday by the Knesset, which will allow for civil proceedings against individuals or organizations found to be instigators of anti-Israel boycotts and bars companies from bidding for Israeli government tenders if they participate in boycotts, including in the West…

On June 16, 14 young adults between 18 and 35 from Canada, Australia, South Africa, UK, France, Denmark, Germany, Czech Republic and Israel met in Jerusalem for a five-day seminar on Reform Zionism sponsored by the WUPJ, Arzenu and TaMaR, and with the support of the World Zionist Organization. The focus of the seminar was to discuss and define the challenges facing Reform Zionism today in Israel, the Diaspora and among young people. …

I read with great sadness and considerable anger the editorial in the May 4 Jewish Ledger by Carol Greenwald, Ph.D., about the selection of Rabbi Richard Jacobs as President of the …

The following correspondence between Les Rothschild, president, ARZA Canada, Gilad Kariv, chief executive, IMPJ, and Rabbi Tamar Kolberg, Kehilat Ra'anan, are just a few of the letters and messages received by the Kehilat Ra'anan community after the most recent desecration of its synagogue.

Dear Gilad,

On behalf of ARZA Canada I want to express our shock and sadness about the desecration of our congregation in Ra'anana. As…

Natan Sharansky, chair of the Jewish Agency and former Soviet Union Refusenik, recently spoke to students and faculty members of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion (HUC-JIR). The event, which was sponsored by ARZA, ARZENU, the Israel Movement for Progressive Judaism (IMPJ), the College…

Dear Friends

Eight years ago, I traveled to Brisbane to serve the UPJ local congregation on the High Holy Days. I’m looking at the pictures from the city and the rest of Queensland on the TV screen and it is hard to capture the might of the water and the tragedy. We share with you the grief for the life that was taken. I hope your congregants are safe and that this is also the situation of the synagogues in the city and on the coast. Please let us know if there is any type of support…

Once again, the Rotem Conversion Bill has become a subject of concern. And once again, our colleagues in Israel, led by Rabbi Gilad Kariv and counsel at IRAC, in cooperation with ARZA USA, the Conservative Movement and the Federations of North America, and with the support of Natan Sharansky, Chair of the Jewish Agency, have addressed the issues.

There is a moratorium to which the Government has agreed, to permit a negotiated solution to the problem, now extending until July 2011.…