Beilin versus Bigots
Even as the crazies at the top of the Israeli religious pole seek to delegitimize converts, Yossi Beilin is proposing amendments to the law of return with quite the opposite effect. Where the Chief Rabbi's suggestion seeks to humiliate and undermine the identity of Diaspora Jews, Reform and Orthodox alike, Beilin's proposal recognizes the value of hundreds of thousands of emigrants to Israel, who contribute considerably more to Israeli society than the Chief Rabbi, including military service.
The Israeli Chief Rabbis have a long and ignoble history of malicious and stupid public comments. We need state-sponsored religious orthodoxy about as much as we need the legions of Chabad shlichim currently corrupting Jewish minds throughout the Diaspora. The narrow-minded bigotry both promote is anathema to the majority of the Jewish people and should be kept at the margins of Jewish life.
The Israeli Chief Rabbis have a long and ignoble history of malicious and stupid public comments. We need state-sponsored religious orthodoxy about as much as we need the legions of Chabad shlichim currently corrupting Jewish minds throughout the Diaspora. The narrow-minded bigotry both promote is anathema to the majority of the Jewish people and should be kept at the margins of Jewish life.
- sheikh X at 9:06 AM
2 Comments:
Beilin is absolutely right. The idea of having draft-dodger ayatollah-style rabbis like Shlomo Amar tell us anything about who is Jew and who isn't is abhorrent.
No wonder most early Zionists were anti-religious - the rabbis of their time were backward bigots. Many of them - the entire hassidic movement - stayed that way. Having holy men, as their tzaddiks, is completely un-Jewish - that no man is holy is a central tenet of Jewishness. The hassidim violate precisely this tenet. Even more repulsive is how they pray at graves of rabbis - exactly as the Christians do with saints. And these basically Christians want to tell us who is a Jew?
We Jews have no need of saints and holy men. No one - no one - is holy but God.
"Beilin is absolutely right."
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