Rav Soloveitchik and Religious Zionism Today

This is the second part of this article. I apologize for the choppy style. The editor couldn't publish 1900 words. If anyone wants the full typescript, write me at woolfj@gmail.com.

[Update: Now the published article is available online, here.]

Ignorance and Hillul HaShem

I have to admit that I never really thought I'd see this. A Dayyan in Israel retroactively revoked a conversion that was done 15 YEARS AGO!!!! As a result, her children were deemed not Jewish, and she and they were blacklisted. Who did the conversion? Rabbi Haim Druckman, a talmid hakham and Rosh Yeshiva.

But never mind that. Who appointed this so-called Dayyan? Well, whoever it was, this incompentent never learned Halakhah. The law is absolutely clear. If a Bes Din converts someone, even if they go out and worship idols (never mind if he maintains a less than Orthodox lifestyle), that person is still Jewish. Period. Otherwise, as the posqim say: אם כן, במה מצינו כח בית דין יפה? And why did this מתלבש באיצטלא דאינו שלו do so? According to the Rabbinical Pleader involved in the case:

The judge in fact ruled that all conversions signed by the special conversion court were invalid, because the court was headed by "heretics" and "criminals". This ruling implies that the thousands of conversions conducted by such courts were unacceptable.

(And people were surprised that the Rabbanut backtracked on its agreement with the RCA.)

Want to hear about hypocrisy? When Rav Goren זצ"ל tried to resolve the Langer case by voiding the conversio of the mother's first husband, based on the consideration that the man never stopped goingto Church, the Haredim railed in protest. None other than Rav Elyashiv resigned from the Supreme rabbinical court in protest.

Now, conversion is a very serious matter. It should only be undertaken by those qualified to do so. We cannot let it become a farce. At the same time, it is absolutely forbidden to call the acts of an established, legitimate Bes Din into question!

תורה תורה חיגרי שק! And Erev Shavuot, to boot.

(Thanks to Yael for the heads up.)

O Jerusalem!

On this, the eve of the fortieth anniversary of the liberation of the Holy City, there is no better reflection on the challenges facing us and it, than that of the indefatigably correct, Caroline Glick.

Our World: Tolerating hypocrisy in Jerusalem

Caroline Glick, THE JERUSALEM POST May. 14, 2007

Last week the EU-financed Peace Now organization held an "Alternative Jerusalem Day" ceremony in which it called for Israel to renounce its sovereignty over half of the city in the interests of peace. Why anyone would believe that an Israeli surrender of the eternal capital of the Jewish people to Hamas will lead to peace is anyone's guess. It seems particularly fatuous in light of the blatantly unpeaceful results of Israel's 2005 Peace Now-supported surrender of Gaza to Hamas, its 2000 Peace Now-supported surrender of south Lebanon to Hizbullah, and the Peace Now-supported Barak government's offer to surrender the Temple Mount and other parts of Jerusalem to Yasser Arafat in 2000.

Also last week, the EU-financed Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies published a survey claiming that if current trends continue, the prevailing two-thirds Jewish majority in Israel's capital city will be reduced to a 60-percent majority by 2020.Why there is any reason to believe the doom and gloom numbers is also anyone's guess. It seems a particularly hard sell given that the Jewish and Arab fertility rates in the city (3.8 and 4.1 respectively) are nearly identical, and economic trends that now stifle Jewish population growth are reversible.This week, the EU supplemented its NGOs' work to divide the capital by announcing its boycott of Wednesday's Knesset ceremony celebrating Jerusalem's liberation. The US also loudly absented itself from the ceremony.

For its part, the Olmert-Livni-Peretz government could not hide its befuddlement. After Jerusalem mayor Uri Lupolianski attacked the US and EU boycott, arguing, "Whoever does not recognize Jerusalem as the capital of the State of Israel also does not recognize the State of Israel," the government stammered out a couple of bromides.With her characteristic weakness, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni stuttered that Israel's connection to Jerusalem is "indivisible." Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said nothing.

IN THEIR attack against Israeli sovereignty over the eternal capital of the Jewish people in the name of peace, the Left, the EU and the Americans were nothing if not consistent. So too was the government consistent in its stuttered response to the onslaught against Jerusalem.

Over the past 14 years the policies of Israel's governments, the Israeli Left, the EU and the US have consistently been predicated on hypocrisy. The Left claims to be working for the civil rights of Arabs, whom it claims are being discriminated against by Israel and the Jerusalem municipality. The EU claims to seek a repartition of the city along the 1949 armistice lines to advance the cause of peace. The US claims to oppose any action that would prejudice the outcome of final status negotiations toward peace between Israel and the Palestinians. Israel's governments claim that they are committed to Israeli sovereignty throughout the city and to the upholding of the rule of law.

The fact that all of these purported objectives are false was copiously documented in a report published last year by the Office for Public Inquiries for East Jerusalem. The organization, headed by Arieh King, is funded by private Jewish donors.

Entitled "Illegal building in East Jerusalem as a strategic tool of the Palestinian Authority in its struggle for the future of Jerusalem," the 61-page report and its several hundred pages of attached documents provide a neighborhood-by-neighborhood survey of illegal Arab building in the city. Contrary to the Left's repeated contention that Jerusalem's Arabs are forced to build illegally because the municipality refuses to grant them construction permits, the city approved a planning scheme that provides for the construction of 32,500 new housing units in Arab neighborhoods. This is on top of 24,000 units already in various stages of the licensing process, and another 20,000 illegal structures built by Jerusalem Arabs in the past 20 years.

The political aim of the illegal construction is made clear by its financing sources. Since the establishment of the Palestinian Authority in 1994, the PA, Saudi Arabia and the EU have spent millions of dollars in financing illegal construction in Arab neighborhoods of Jerusalem, often on state and privately owned lands.IN AN EFFORT to degrade the Jewish character of the city, for instance, Arabs have built homes on state-owned lands adjacent to the Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives that are earmarked for future cemetery expansion.The strategic aim of the building is apparent from its location. Much of the building has been carried out meters from strategic traffic arteries including Highways 60, 1, 4 and 443. Additionally, illegal construction has rendered the Atarot airport insecure. Israel has done next to nothing to destroy the illegal structures constructed adjacent to the only airport east of Ben-Gurion International Airport.

The illegal Arab construction, which has placed most neighborhoods in Jerusalem and the highway approaches to the city within rifle range of hostile gunmen, has been met with indifference by the Israeli governing bureaucracy. Successive governments have hypocritically announced their commitment to Jerusalem. But the King report shows that government decisions passed in 1998, 2002 and 2003 ordering government agencies to stem illegal Arab construction were never effectively implemented.

King sent his report to dozens of government offices and Knesset committees. Aside from a meeting with one official from the Justice Ministry, no one responded to his work.

AS KING'S report notes, the Left plays a key role in enabling illegal Arab building in Jerusalem employing organizations like Peace Now, Bimkom and the International Coalition against House Demolitions. The leftists claim that they are committed to civil rights and peace, yet their work undermines the civil rights of Israeli landowners and undermines peace by empowering a regime that is openly opposed to all the ideals they claim to stand for.The PA insists that its land be empty of Jews. So too, the first law it promulgated made it a capital offense for Arabs to sell land to Jews. Dozens of Arab Jerusalemites have been murdered by the PA since 1994 for their "crime" of selling their land to Jews.

For its part, Israel keeps the city open to all faiths and facilitates Arab building.THE EU claims that its support for the repartition of the city stems from its commitment to a peace where Israel will have secure and recognized borders. Yet, in funding pressure organizations and illegal construction, not only does the EU undermine Israel's control of its capital city, it undermines Israel's security by enabling construction along strategic traffic arteries and in sniper range of neighborhoods within the 1949 armistice lines like Sanhedria, Romema and Har Nof.

For its part, the US claims to object to any move by either Israel or the Palestinians that would prejudice the deliberations toward a final peace settlement. Yet by refusing to recognize Israel's right to its capital city, in breach of US law which does so, the Bush Administration, like its predecessors is prejudicing the outcome of those future deliberations against Israel.The US loudly demands that legal Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria, like Migron, be destroyed, and objects to legal Israeli building in Ma'aleh Adumim. All the while, it actively supports illegal Palestinian building in Jerusalem by opposing any Israeli assertion of sovereignty through the unprejudiced enforcement of its laws.

THE HYPOCRISY of all these parties is of course dwarfed by the hypocrisy of successive Israeli governments. With the exception of the Netanyahu government, every Israeli government since 1993 has enabled the Arabs to undermine the state's control of Jerusalem. While paying lip service to the city's unity, by errors of commission and omission, Israel's governments have failed to defend the property rights of public and private land owners in Jerusalem. They have allowed the PA, enemy states like Saudi Arabia and the EU to openly abet illegal building projects in the city.

Moreover, while they have used the letter of the law to justify expelling Jews from their communities in Judea and Samaria, successive governments have ignored both the letter and the spirit of the law in refusing to take concerted action to enforce the laws of the state by blocking illegal building in the capital.So this week, as the government conducts its hollow celebrations of the reunification of eternal capital of the Jewish people which it does so little to defend, and the Left, the EU and the US emptily speak of their "peace policies," the Jewish people must stop tolerating this dirty game.

When Barak offered Arafat the Temple Mount at Camp David in 2000, Ariel Sharon reacted by stating that Jerusalem is an eternal trust given to the Jewish people and no one has the right to breach that trust.

FORTY YEARS after the city's reunification, it is the responsibility of Jews in Israel and throughout the world to stand up for Jerusalem. We must work to expose that in its support for the city's division, the Left seeks to empower a racist regime that embodies everything the Left claims to oppose, against Israel, which embodies the very rule of law and civil rights the Left purports to care about.

Similarly, Jews must call our so-called friends in Washington and Brussels to task for their malevolent, discriminatory support for the human-rights-abusing, racial supremacists in the PA over the human-rights-respecting Jews who keep Jerusalem open to all faiths and all peoples.Finally, we must demand that the leaders of the State of Israel fulfill their duty to posterity by upholding and strengthening Zion. If they are unwilling to do so, the Jewish people as a whole must stand up and demand they resign to make room for a government that will defend our eternal capital.

In Search of the Rav (My Latest Article)

I have an article in the new BaDad, entitled:

In Search of the Rav: The Life and Thought of Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik in Recent Scholarship

Anyone wishing an offprint is invited to write (woolfj@gmail.com) and I'll be happy to provide one.

My Review of Haim Navon's Book on the Rav זצ"ל

(Double Click on the image and it will become large enough to read and print.)
The review is now on line, here.

On Last Night's Rally

ANALYSIS: May 3 rally stands apart in historical significance
By Ari Shavit, Haaretz Correspondent

On Zeitlin Street there was more room but on Bloch it was crowded. In Rabin Square itself it was hot and sticky, it was difficult to breathe and move. A hundred thousand? A hundred and fifty thousand? Two hundred thousand? It doesn't really matter.

The May 3 demonstration was different from all other protests in Rabin Square. It was the first inter-tribal demonstration. A demonstration of Meretz-NRP, of Yossi Beilin and Uzi Landau, of Uri Avnery and the Yesha Council. A demonstration of settlers praying in the corner and those from the northern quarters of Tel Aviv, with the tight T-shirts and the "Let the Animals Live" slogans.

The demonstration of May 3 was the demonstration of those Israelis with different beliefs who came to the square not to protest each other but to demonstrate against those without beliefs. To protest against the hollow. To protest against the cynics. To protest against those without conscience and compass.

It was not easy to stand together. The shared songs to connect the various tribes were missing. The code words, the shared calls to battle were missing. The shared ceremonies were missing. And still, there was a quiet elevation of spirit in the air. There was the sense that "it is happening." That honest Israelis from the entire spectrum could defeat the mutual alienation, the indifference and come to the square to voice their protest. To say what a nation whose leadership turned its back on them says.

For Ehud Olmert the significance of the demonstration last night is obvious: Now he is not an elected prime minister, he is an appointed prime minister.

If Olmert wants to renew his legitimacy, he should bring his own supporters to the square. There will be 10 billion, 10 reporters and 10 PR mercenaries. Around them will be those from Kadima who lack a backbone, and which on Thursday began the roll toward the fate of Shinui. How appropriate that the good friend of Tommy Lapid is now leading the supporters of opportunism to the same political future to which Lapid led his own opportunistic backers.

The May 3 demonstration had much broader and deeper significance. It was the start of the uprising of the Israeli public against the unworthy elites. Now the ball is back in the court of the politicians. If Tzipi Livni and Shimon Peres do not brace themselves quickly, Kadima will not survive.

חוצפה יסגא

Historians have the luxury of living in multiple time zones, without feeling overly taxed. Today, for example, I spent a ten, almost uninterrupted, hours in 11th and 12th Century Ashkenaz (for my book for them). At the same time, I was listening to (what emerged as) the political farce of the year. All day long, all we heard was how Olmert was going down and the press was ready to crown Tzippy Livni Prime Minister (God Forbid!). Amir Peretz was going to resign. We were going to reshuffle. Perhaps, we might even get to vote....

Forget it. Livni wimped out (at least she's discredited now). Peretz is sticking it out. And the munchkins called Kadima, more interested in their seats than their country, are almost all rallying around Olmert. Thus, this corrupt, arrogant incompetent gets a reprieve.

Who's enjoying the spectacle? Nasrallah.

Who's getting away with treason, because people feel that noone cares and that the goverment is too corrupt to protect us? Azmi Bashara.

It's really incredible. Check that. It's not incredible, and that's what's so sad.
Time to again ponder the last Mishnah in Sotah (49b):

IN THE TIME OF THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE MESSIAH INSOLENCE WILL INCREASE AND HONOUR DWINDLE; THE VINE WILL YIELD ITS FRUIT ABUNDANTLY BUT WINE WILL BE DEAR; THE GOVERNMENT WILL TURN TO HERESY AND THERE WILL BE NONE TO OFFER THEM REPROOF; THE MEETING-PLACE [OF SCHOLARS] WILL BE USED FOR IMMORALITY; GALILEE WILL BE DESTROYED, GABLAN DESOLATED, AND THE DWELLERS ON THE FRONTIER WILL GO ABOUT BEGGING FROM PLACE TO PLACE WITHOUT ANYONE TO TAKE PITY ON THEM; THE WISDOM OF THE LEARNED WILL DEGENERATE, FEARERS OF SIN WILL BE DESPISED, AND THE TRUTH WILL BE LACKING; YOUTHS WILL PUT OLD MEN TO SHAME, THE OLD WILL STAND UP IN THE PRESENCE OF THE YOUNG, A SON WILL REVILE HIS FATHER, A DAUGHTER WILL RISE AGAINST HER MOTHER, A DAUGHTER-IN-LAW AGAINST HER MOTHER-IN-LAW, AND A MAN'S ENEMIES WILL BE THE MEMBERS OF HIS HOUSEHOLD; THE FACE OF THE GENERATION WILL BE LIKE THE FACE OF A DOG, A SON WILL NOT FEEL ASHAMED BEFORE HIS FATHER. SO UPON WHOM IS IT FOR US TO RELY? UPON OUR FATHER WHO IS IN HEAVEN.

They Must All Go

The Interim Report of the Winograd Commission of Inquiry is the talk of the town. In a sense, it only expressed what we knew all along. Olmert is a corrupt, slick political opportunist who should never have become Prime Minister. Amir Peretz is a sad joke. Dan Halutz was a great fighter pilot who had no business commanding ground troops. We all know that he only received the job, because he agreed to carry out the destruction of Gush Qatif.

They must all go, but not they alone.

Tzippi Livni, who's an incompetent, ideological leftist cannot be allowed to become Prime Minister. In fact, as Nadav Haetzni said in today's Maqor Rishon, she would be worse that Olmert (mirabile dictu). She must go.

The corrupt ministers in the cabinet must go.

The people want elections. The only reason the Knesset is still here is because the apparatchiks that Olmert brought into power haven't a prayer of being reelected. So they hold us hostage to their egos.

Time to clean the Augean Stables. acting otherwise would be a gift to Hamas and Hizbullah.