(JTA) — Leaders of the Reform movement in the United States called on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to “issue a swift and clear denunciation” of the demeaning body searches of four female rabbinic students at the Western Wall. The students from the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, on Wednesday were asked to lift…
JERUSALEM (JTA) — Four female students from Hebrew Union College, including two Americans, were asked to lift their shirts and skirts for security before being allowed to enter the Western Wall plaza. The women were part of a group of 15 rabbinical, cantorial and Jewish education students from North America and Australia who joined about…
JERUSALEM (JTA) — Israel’s Chief Rabbinate said the country’s Supreme Court lacks the jurisdiction to rule on the “intrareligious” struggle involving egalitarian prayer at the Western Wall. In a 166-page brief filed Tuesday with the Supreme Court, the Chief Rabbinate said in part, “The courts are not the appropriate tribunal to decide if Jewish law…
When the Israeli government announced its decision last month to halt the construction and planning of a pluralistic prayer space near the Western Wall, the outcry from the Diaspora Jewish community was enormous. The proposed plan didn’t even offer a shared space at the Western Wall; it referred to an area further south by Robinson’s…
JERUSALEM (JTA) — The government of Israel told the nation’s Supreme Court that it plans to expand and upgrade a space for non-Orthodox prayer at the southern section of the Western Wall near Robinson’s Arch. The government made the declaration in documents submitted to the court in response to a petition filed by the non-Orthodox…
NEW YORK (JTA) – The Israeli Chief Rabbinate’s so-called “blacklist” of Diaspora rabbis runs the denominational gamut. The rabbis on the list, who got there by writing letters confirming the Jewish identities of immigrants that were rejected by the Chief Rabbinate in 2016, are Orthodox, Conservative, Reform — and even from the smaller Reconstructionist and…
(JTA) — Leaders of British and French Jews issued divergent statements about the controversy over egalitarian prayer at the Western Wall. In London, the president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, Jonathan Arkush, recently condemned the decision of the Israeli government not to implement a plan to expand separate spaces for mixed prayer at the Western Wall. The…
On the morning of July 12, I read a piece in the Opinion Page of the New York Times titled “Israel to American Jews: You Just Don’t Matter” by Thomas L. Friedman. In this piece, Friedman states that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin (Bibi) Netanyahu has yielded to the whims of the Orthodox and has basically…
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