New York Regents Give Religious Schools Conscience Exemption To Teaching Tolerance:

“Last year, New York enacted the Dignity for All Students Act, effective July 1, 2012. (See prior posting.) In addition to prohibiting bullying, the law (Educ. Law Sec. 801-a) requires schools to include in their K-12 curriculum instruction in tolerance and respect for others of  different  races,  weights, national origins, ethnic  groups,  religions,  religious  practices,  mental  or  physical   abilities, sexual orientations, genders, and sexes. According to Yeshiva World, on Monday the New York Board of Regents voted to exempt yeshivas and parochial schools from this requirement to the extent that the school has a religious or moral objection to the requirement. Assemblyman Steven Cymbrowitz said that parents of students in such schools "may now feel secure that … their children will not be subjected to lessons that are inconsistent with their religious doctrines."

(Via Religion Clause.)

Ynet has an article (Hebrew) about Roni Weinstein’s new book, Shavru et ha-Keilim (“They Broke the Vessels”). Weinstein’s book is subtitled “The Kabbalah and Jewish Modernity.” In this book Weinstein claims that modern religious Judaism cannot be understand without reference to the Kabbalah. He is quoted as saying:

The Kabbalah is like a bomb that was dropped hundreds of years ago, but its aftershocks just keep expanding with the passing of the years.

Kabbalah emphasized the eternity of the moment.

According to Weinstein, [the Kabbalistic belief that man's actions have an immediate affect on God] created a new idea-that every single moment of a person’s life is unique (חד-פעמי): Every mitzvah that you perform has its uniqueness, such that if you don’t pray mincha as you should-you missed the moment. The meaning of this is a life of urgency, since a person can never do enough, a feeling of sin and guilt accompanies him wherever he turns.

The table of contents can be found here, and the first chapter can be found here.

Jews, unlike Moslems, have a millennia-long history of living as a despised minority. Minority status has also imbued us with an appreciation of prudence. Satmar Chassidim in Williamsburg, for instance, do not post dress code advisories in the elevators of buildings they share with Puerto Ricans.

I would like to draw Rosenblum’s attention to the following news report (hat tip) about protests against a hair salon in Williamsburg. Am I sure that the protestors are Satmar Hasidim? No, but Rosenblum’s description of ultra-orthodox behavior seems to be in need of fixing. On a related matter, here is a report about ultra-orthodox protests against bike lanes in Brooklyn. I guess that prudence is hard to come by these days.

דְּמוּת צוּרוֹת לְבָנוֹת הָיוּ לוֹ לְרַבָּן גַּמְלִיאֵל בַּטַּבְלָא וּבַכֹּתֶל בַּעֲלִיָּתוֹ, שֶׁבָּהֶן מַרְאֶה אֶת הַהֶדְיוֹטוֹת וְאוֹמֵר, הֲכָזֶה רָאִיתָ אוֹ כָזֶה.

A picture of the shapes of the moon did Rabban Gamaliel have on a tablet and on the wall of his upper room, which he would show ordinary folk, saying, “Did you see it like this or like that?”

The Rabbis long ago changed from a witness-based calendar to one based on astronomical calculation, but it seems that in Saudi Arabia they are still old school. According to this article, the following recently happened. (hat tip)

This year, officials in Saudi Arabia announced a sighting on Monday 29 August. Since then, however, astronomers have presented evidence to show that the moon was not visible at the time, and suggested that the Saudi officials may have actually been looking at Saturn.

Maged Abou Zahra, president of the Jeddah Astronomical Society, told the Egyptian paper al-Shorouk: “The sighting of a new moon would have simply been impossible.”

If true, the mistake would mean that millions of Muslims around the world stopped fasting a day too early. When the new moon rises, it is not visible as it is completely in the shadow of the earth and astronomers claim that it usually takes around 15 hours before it is visible to the naked eye.

Recently, the NY Post had an article titled Too Cool for Shul.

A man in a crisp black suit stands outside the plate-glass doors on Crosby Street, checking off the names of the chosen on a clipboard. Young women with tousled hair and fashionable heels slip inside, followed by men in sharp suits or dark jeans. This is SoHo’s latest hot spot, but you don’t have to be a Hollywood actress or star athlete to get in. You just have to be Jewish.

The SoHo Synagogue, which opened last month where a Gucci store once stood, may be the hottest thing to happen to Jews since Bar Refaeli graced the cover of Sports Illustrated. Rabbi Dovi Scheiner and his wife, Esty, hop[e to attract yioung, unaffiliated Jewish New Yorkers to their congregation. Eilon Paz Rabbi Dovi Scheiner and his wife, Esty, hop[e to attract yioung, unaffiliated Jewish New Yorkers to their congregation.

“I thought it was a club at first,” says attendee Yoni Zanger, 28, of the sleek new space. “There’s a bouncer outside!”

Rabbi Dovi Scheiner and his wife, Esty, both barely in their 30s, wanted the space to echo a hotel lobby or chic boutique, so that young, mostly lapsed New York Jews, who probably haven’t set foot inside a temple since their bar or bat mitzvahs, would feel at home.

“We had to offer a space they were comfortable with,” says the rabbi, who answers to Dovi and wears Converse sneakers and jeans most days, his tzitzis tassels peeking out from beneath his polo shirt. “People don’t go to temple because it’s not relevant or exciting or engaging or social. So we’ve made it all of those things. If we offer them a place that looks like the synagogue they were dragged to by their parents, they’re going to have a nervous breakdown and never come back.”

The article describes how innovation and creativity can sometimes be successful in getting people into synagogue, and why am I not surprised that the rabbi and his wife have Chabad roots.

If you had to make a list of places that were somewhat different from SoHo, Nazareth Illit (Upper Nazareth) might very well be on it. Apparently a synagogue in Nazareth Illit was on the verge of closing, when some innovation, creativity, and tolerance, brought it back to life. Walla! has a news story (Hebrew) that describes how a gabbai, who is a lawyer by training, decided to go for broke.

He set up a Facebook page for the synagogue, had the ḥazzan start using tunes from popular music for prayers (e.g. Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah for Lecha Dodi), made the starting time of Shabbat morning services a little later, promoted a tolerant atmosphere, and guess what, more people started to attend synagogue. Luckily the ḥazzan and rabbi were on board with what he was trying to do.

The gabbai said that all are welcome, with or without cellphones or wallets in their pocket, even women. While that may sound chauvinistic to many, being that many Israeli Orthodox synagogues don’t even have a section for women, or if they do, it is only a little bit bigger than a closet, this is welcoming.

A pagan ritual took place last Shabbat at the Binyamin park in the Hadar neighborhood of Haifa. The ultra-orthodox community was astonished and offended that workers from Sudan, India and Nepal were allowed to counduct pagan services near their homes.

The Haifa municipality explains that the Sri-Lankan community had a holiday and wanted a place for worship. Due to their lack of funds, the municipality allotted the Binyamin park for this purpose without intending to offend any local Jewish residents, and was merely allowing freedom of religious worship.

I wonder what the reaction was to this (Hebrew) symposium. Also, who needs to single out foreign workers when you have some home grown pagans and shamans.

Paganism actually has quite a long association with the area around Haifa. See this article for details.

I have been arguing the main points of both authors as you describe them. But I cannot read these articles because they are in Hebrew. Is there anyway for them to be translated- lets say to English?

The question of language aside, I want to claim that on an ideological level these two articles are largely irrelevant to Diaspora Jews who live in a Western democratic society and not in a ghetto.

Beyond the desire to stay abreast of what is happening in the cultural and religious scene in Israel, both Avi Picard and Yoav Sorek are describing trends and hopes for a sovereign Jewish society. Diaspora Judaism can be full of meaning and purpose, but it will always be a minority religious culture whose main avenues of expression will be within the frameworks of communal institutions, events, and the homes of its members.

There may be a seder in the White House, but that doesn’t make the possibility of a dynamic Jewish religious culture outside of the Jewish community’s four cubits any more possible.

The first article was by Ariel Picard, On the Place of Halakhah in Modern Judaism. In this article Picard calls for a different understanding of the Jewish law and tradition. Halakhah as a legal system backed by divine command is no longer operative. In its place is a Jewish-Israeli culture that is informed by, and based on, Jewish law, tradition, and customs, as they have developed over the past two thousand years.

התפיסה המוצעת כאן מבקשת לכונן רצף תרבותי בין העבר להווה. המהפכה הקופרניקאית של המודרניות היא בעיקרה מהפכה של התודעה האנושית. שינוי תודעתי הוא דבר מהותי ובעל משמעות רבה אך הוא אינו מחייב שינוי נורמטיבי מן הקצה אל הקצה. במילים אחרות, רבים מן הערכים שייחסנו לציווי הא-לוהי אנו מייחסים היום לתבונה האנושית. כך, מתוך תהליך של בחירה, אנו שואבים השראה מן המסורת התרבותית ומבקשים להתאימה לקיום האנושי המודרני. בשונה מן הגישה המודרניסטית הנוקשה, המבקשת ליצור חיץ בין היצירה המודרנית לבין המסורת הדתית הקדם מודרנית, בתפיסה המוצעת כאן יש הכרה בחשיבותה של הרציפות התרבותית האנושית. המסורת התרבותית היא משאב יקר ומעורר השראה גם למי שחי בעולם המודרני שנדמה כי הוא שונה לגמרי מן העולם שבו מסורת עתיקה זו תפקדה. התבוננות מעמיקה מראה שבתחומים רבים הצרכים האנושיים, הדאגות והרגשות אינם כה שונים. המורכבות של יחסי האדם עם חברו ועם החברה שבה הוא חי דומה מאוד לעבר. משום כך ניתן לשאוב רעיונות, עקרונות, אורחות חיים ונורמות חברתיות ואישיות מן העבר אל ההווה.

The second article is by Yoav Sorek, The Challenge: The Dismantling of Religious Society.

If I understand Sorek correctly, he is calling for a restructuring of how religiosity and a religious lifestyle is understood by Israeli society. No longer is there to be a line of demarcation between a religiously observant lifestyle and one that isn’t, rather, Jewish life, study, and observance will be present on a continuum of legitimate behavior and lifestyles. Sorek is calling for a dismantling of the compartmentalization, both structurally and theologically, between religious and secular society. It is his hope that this reconfiguration will help Judaism, and especially, Jewish law, confront the reality of a sovereign Jewish state.

I am sure that future issues of Musaf Shabbat will contain many reactions to both of these important pieces.

A NJ Priest has been accused of extreme rudeness by two of his congregants who claim that he interrupted and rushed them through their grandmother’s funeral service. Sisters Laurie Treene and Robyn Nini say that Reverend Bartley P. Baker, of St. Leo’s Roman Catholic Church in Elmwood Park, ruined their 96-year-old grandmother’s funeral, cuing the proverbial awards show music at points: ‘I got about halfway through [my eulogy] and he ran up to the podium and said, ‘Wrap it up! Wrap it up!’ I was just flabbergasted,’ said Treene. [ more ]

(Via Gothamist.)