|
|
- 1 jan 2011
Rabbi arrested on molestation charges
Israeli rabbis, file photo
A rabbi, from a community in the north of Israel, has been charged with at least three counts of child molestation, but his name and community remains under gag order.
The rabbi, in one case, is accused of sodomizing a fourteen-year-old girl three years ago. He is also charged with molesting other minors, both male and female, over the course of this past year.
The case came to light on Friday after a gag order was lifted. Police have been investigating the case for months.
The rabbi, 60, was arrested on Thursday after he requested to leave the country for a celebration of a famous rabbi. However, his name and other details remain secret, Ha'aretz reported.
Police superintendent Ariyeh Alkobi, who is heading the investigation, said that there have been three charges of molestation uncovered so far.
There are other minors who were also molested, but they have not yet filed formal complaints with police, he further explained.
The rabbi's remand was extended by a week on Friday morning.
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/158092.html
5 jan 2012, 14:25 , Respect -
Maria 4 jan 2011
Rabbi Bans Jewish Women from Driving
Ahram Online reported that a chief Jewish rabbi issued an order banning Jewish women from driving unless absolutely necessary.
The religious decree by Rabbi Avraham Yosef prohibits women to drive, particularly in Israeli cities predominantly inhabited by ultra-orthodox Jews, Press TV Ahram News Website reported.
The prominent rabbi from Holon city, the son of Rabbi Afodia Yosef, declared the decree on the grounds that driving for women does not reflect modesty or chastity, especially in cities where the largest population is made up by religious Jews.
Prior to Yosef's decree, Rabbi Shmuel Halevi had issued a similar order explaining that the seductive appearance of women distracted male drivers causing several traffic accidents.
Tzipi Hotovely, a member of Knesset and head of the House Committee on the Status of Women, condemned the decree arguing that it negatively affects the assimilation of Israeli women into Israeli society. Hotovely also said that a woman must be able to perform a daily necessary routine such as driving, given that religious Jewish families have a large number of children.
http://www.imemc.org/article/60338
Israeli rabbi bans women from driving
Rabbi Avraham Yosef
A prominent Israeli rabbi has issued a religious decree forbidding Jewish women from driving or learning to drive unless absolutely necessary.
The order by Rabbi Avraham Yosef prohibits women from driving, especially in Israeli cities predominantly inhabited by ultraorthodox Jews, Ahram Online news website reported.
Yosef is the chief rabbi in the city of Holon and is the son of Rabbi Afodia Yosef -- Shas' spiritual leader.
The Jewish figure justified the decree by saying that driving for women does not reflect modesty or chastity, especially in cities mostly inhabited by religious people.
Yosef is reportedly not the first Jewish rabbi to issue such an order.
Rabbi Shmuel Halevi issued a similar prohibition forbidding women from driving, arguing seductive appearance of women distracted men drivers and thus resulted in a large number of traffic accidents.
Member of Knesset and head of the house's committee on the status of women Tzipi Hotovely criticized the order, saying it negatively affects the assimilation of Israeli women and described driving as a daily routine a woman must perform.
Hotovely said that taking into consideration religious Jewish families have a large number of children, driving becomes a necessity.
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/158562.html 5 jan 2012, 14:25 , Respect -
Rabbi Josef Antebi exposing Zionists, even after being tortured by them! -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DIT9sLz29iQ
Maria 12 jan 2011
Rabbi: Sins led to woman's murder
Murder victim Sarit Zikri-Benit
Rabbi raises ire at funeral after saying woman murdered because of sins against God.
A Jerusalem rabbi raised the ire of funeral goers Wednesday after charging that the deceased was murdered because of the many sinners who live in her neighborhood.
Sarit Zikri-Benit from Jerusalem's Gilo neighborhood was murdered by her partner and hidden in the balcony for five days. The local rabbi who conducted the funeral service used the occasion to preach the need to become newly religious.
"People of Gilo, we need to ask ourselves why it happen in our neighborhood of all places. Just like the entire people of Israel needs to ask why do we have troubles in Israel? Why is there drought and no rain?" the rabbi said. "all of us aren't behaving well, we have many people who are committing crimes and sinning against God Of course, not everyone is like that, but the solution is to become newly religious."
Many of those in attendance were infuriated by the rabbi's remarks.
"In our view this was out of line," one of the attendants, Galit, told Ynet. "It wasn't coordinated with anyone and it did not honor the event or the woman."
Zikri-Benit's body was found around 5 am Tuesday with severe indications of violence on it. Police investigators believe she was chocked to death several days ago and have detained her partner on suspicion of murder.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4012807,00.html
5 jan 2012, 14:25 , Respect -
Maria 12 jan 2011
'Gentile sperm leads to barbaric offspring'
Rabbi Dov Lior rules that Jewish Law prohibits sterile couples from getting pregnant using non-Jewish man's sperm, as it causes adverse traits. On subject of single mothers he says, 'Child cannot be 100% normal'.
Rabbi Dov Lior, a senior authority on Jewish law in the Religious Zionism movement, asserted recently that a Jewish woman should never get pregnant using sperm donated by a non-Jewish man even if it is the last option available.
According to Lior, a baby born through such an insemination will have the "negative genetic traits that characterize non-Jews." Instead, he advised sterile couples to adopt.
Lior addressed the issue during a women's health conference held recently at the Puah Institute, a fertility clinic. His conservative stance negated a ruling widely accepted by rabbis, which states that sperm donated by a non-Jew is preferable to that of an anonymous Jew, who might pose a genealogical risk.
"Sefer HaChinuch (a book of Jewish law) states that the character traits of the father pass on to the son," he said in the lecture. "If the father in not Jewish, what character traits could he have? Traits of cruelty, of barbarism! These are not traits that characterize the people of Israel."
Lior added identified Jews as merciful, shy and charitable qualities that he claimed could be inherited. "A person born to Jewish parents, even if they weren't raised on the Torah there are things that are passed on (to him) in the blood, it's genetic," he explained. "If the father is a gentile, then the child is deprived of these things.
"I even read in books that sometimes the crime, the difficult traits, the bitterness a child that comes from these traits, it's no surprise that he won't have the qualities that characterize the people of Israel," he added.
'Kids born to single moms become criminals'
Lior condemned artificial insemination and sperm donation in general, saying that they lead to waste of sperm, unclear genealogy and other Jewish law offenses. He warned against undergoing intrauterine insemination at hospitals, where the workers may mix sperm samples for one reason or another - a major halachic violation.
On the subject of women who freeze their eggs to use at a later date, the rabbi asserted that instead they should concentrate their efforts on getting married younger.
"Our public has been influenced by a part of the Western culture in which every woman, instead of becoming a mother, needs to get a Masters Degree," he lamented. "The role of women child rearing is not less important than an academic degree." Lior noted that there is nothing wrong with attaining a profession, but it should not be a priority.
Moreover, the rabbi spoke against single women getting pregnant. http://bit.ly/i73X3Q
"We can understand the desire of every woman to have a child, but according to our Torah it is impossible to address the demand of a certain woman when it can cause someone else suffering," he said.
"If a child is born without a father, he cannot be 100% normal." He stated that rabbinical literature defines these kids as "criminals and subjects of other negative phenomena."
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4006385,00.html 5 jan 2012, 14:25 , Respect -
Maria 13 jan 2011
Israel's Orthodox Rabbis: Palestinians to the Ovens!
Back in the days of the Shoah, one of the slogans of the Jew haters was: “Jews to the Ovens.” Now, it causes me anguish to say, we have Israeli Orthodox rabbis saying the same about the Palestinians.
Thanks to Cicero for pointing me to a shocking passage [PDF] in an Israeli Orthodox “family magazine,” Fountains of Salvation, which suggests that Israel will create death camps for Palestinians in order to wipe them out like Amalek. The article attacks Israeli rabbis who dispute the letter recently circulated from pro-settler extremist rabbis which urged that no Israeli Jew rent apartments or homes to Israeli Palestinians. It chided them for being “politically correct” and refusing to do their jobs and educate the populace in the true path of Torah (which is presumably to hate Palestinians).
The last paragraph (page 4 of the original) though is the whopper:
It will be interesting to see whether they leave the assembly of the Amalekites [Palestinians] in extermination camps to others, or whether they will declare that wiping out Amalek is no longer [historically] relevant. Only time will tell…
A few words of explanation. There is a Biblical command for Jews to wipe out Amalek because of the viciousness with which that people attacked Israelites. Essentially, this is a Jewish call to commit genocide against Amalek. We should note that the Bible records such Jewish campaigns against other tribes as well (Moabites, Jebusites) and no doubt others did the same to their enemies.
Rabbis throughout the ages have allegorized the reference to Amalek to connote any sworn enemy of the Jewish people from Hitler to Barack Obama (yes, prominent American Orthodox Jews wrote such garbage before the last election). But this is the first time I’ve ever read any Orthodox publication calling for committing genocide against Palestinians.
As Cicero pointed out to me, the articulation of this passage doesn’t only refer to Palestinians (though most likely this was specifically who the writer had in mind given the context). It can refer to any enemy of the Jewish people including you or me.
Now a word on who is behind this publication: it is the cream of the crop of the radical right-wing Israeli Orthodox rabbinate. It was founded by the former chief rabbi of Safed, whose son currently holds that position and who circulated the letter I refer to above. Another is the chief rabbi of Ramat Gan and finally Rabbi Avinar, suspected of sexually abusing a troubled woman who approached him for spiritual advice. Each of them holds paid government sinecures, allowing them to spew hate on the dime of the Israeli taxpayer.
This raises the important question: why does the U.S. government allow tax-deductible contributions to Israeli charities like Chabad given their propagation of such genocidal rhetoric?
Cicero first learned about the Chabad article from Udi Aloni’s Ynet column, which pointed it out. He points out that it has been his custom in criticizing Israelis who support the Occupation to attack the liberal elite which is characterized by the slogan “shooting and crying.” Instead, he says he now will have to pay closer attention to the radical Orthodox who “shoot and laugh.” Aloni imagines the young Orthodox boy reading this publication in his synagogue where it’s distributed, who conjures to himself with a smile on his face the picture of Palestinians standing behind barbed wire in such a camp. This is the legacy these rabbis are bequeathing to their young followers.
Finally, since I know people of all ideological stripes may read into this story what they wish, I want to make clear that this is not Judaism. These wicked men may be Jews and rabbis, but they don’t represent normative Judaism any more than Osama bin Laden represents normative Islam. Do not make the mistake of conflating this idiocy with all of Israel or all of Judaism. Yes, these men are dangerous, they are hateful, and they must be challenged. But there is another face of Judaism and another face of Israel (though that is becoming increasingly difficult to see I concede).
Maria 15 jan 2011
Orthodox publication openly calls for death camps
Where they burn bread, there they shall burn people?
Orthodox rabbis long for the day when they'll wipe out Amalekites, and two more notes
Rabbis for Death Camps: One of the popular genres of media generally unfamiliar to the Israeli secular public is that of synagogue pamphlets. There are quite a few of them, and they are distributed on Fridays to thousands of synagogue. Almost every sect has its own pamphlet, mostly of rather inferior quality.
One of the most successful ones is Ma'yanei Ha'yeshua (Fonts of Salvation), which is well-made and recently expanded to 16 pages, instead of the usual four. It is published by the Ma'yanei Ha'yeshua movement, among whose founders we find the recently-expired Mordechai Aviner; his son, Shmuel Eliyahu, is a frequent contributor, as is Shlomo Aviner, one of the most important settler rabbis. In short, it is one of the pillars of the media of the Emunnit movement, i.e. those national-Orthodox whose goal is a religious takeover of Israel.
The 117th pamphlet of Ma'yanei Ha'yeshua, published some three weeks ago (careful, Hebrew PDF) http://bit.ly/fgeRz3 contains an unsigned editorial, protesting against those rabbis who attacked the rabbis letter. http://bit.ly/hMWx2l It bemoans the possibility that the Torah would be put in a private, religious, small corner, and will not direct our public, general, national life [ ] Yes, there also such [rabbis], clerkish, who don't want to cause trouble, who explain this is not precisely the Halachic law in short, those for whom political correctness is their daily bread, we wonder whether they will leave the concentration of Amalekites in death camps to others, or may decide that the wiping out of Amalek is no longer relevant. Time will tell. My emphasis.
In other words, a central religious media outlet announces, to all it may concern, that in time we will have death camps for Amalekites. The Amalekites were a people who bothered the Sons of Israel as they left Egypt, and God ordered their destruction. King Saul came close, but his clemency prevented him from finishing the job, for which he was punished by God. Jewish law contains a mitzvh to wipe out Amalek, which is supposed to take place sometime at the end of days. It is unclear how one recognizes Amalekites but many believers, especially those who make Kaballah a mainstay of their beliefs, think even Jews may be Amalekites. It is a good place to note that Kaballah is the most virulent of Jewish literature in its loathing of non-Jews. So, the pamphlet most identified with the instigator of the rabbis letter, Shmuel Eliahu, insists on its right to create death camps, and that people who will not participate in this Final Solution are cowardly and unworthy of the title of rabbis.
Of course, this is direct Nazi influence. Without Himmler, Heidrich and the rest, one doubts the rabbis would come up with the idea of a death camp. They would have to make do with the rather disorganized ethnic cleansing carried out by Saul though, of course, without making his error of showing pity. It turns out that sixty and more years after never again, there are rabbis publicly funded rabbis, at that who think it's time for another round, only this time good Jews should do the killing. And like the murderers in black and silver, they openly claim that unlike some wusses, they would have no problem bashing the skull of a baby at a rock, and they will be tough enough to watch a hundred, or five hundred, or a thousand bodies side by side.
It's not particularly surprising; Orthodox Judaism always contained proto-Nazi elements. It's just that they're no longer hiding. They think their time has come. And the frightening thing is, they may be right.
Hei Liberman: One always suspected that the assault of the Foreign Czar on the human rights NGOs, which was followed this week with an assault on Haaret, is not derived only of the Stalinism he grew on. Liberman, after all, is one of the most accomplished performers of the art of tight-rope walking between the legal and criminal. We're talking about someone who managed to plant a mole in the police's investigative unit, who brought about the firing of the chief of the police's investigative arm, and used his power to install an ambassador who would open sealed police envelopes for him (Hebrew), http://bit.ly/i8F3xk who magically made millions show up in his daughter's bank account; a person who 15 years ago learned to hold discussions in underground parking lots, to avoid wiretapping; the good friend of the oligarchs Gregory Lerner, Michael Chernoy and Martin Schlaff.
Yesterday Liberman blurted out what is the incentive behind his attacks: in an interview with Shimon Schiffer, in Yediot's Saturday Supplement, Liberman claimed that his vitriolic campaign goes against his interests, because the left has connections with the prosecution, and that he is aware that he may have to pay a price for his words, but he's unafraid.
Yisrael Hayom published yesterday a report saying that the decision whether Liberman is to be indicted the slowness of the decision taking process in his case is indeed a scandal will be taken in two weeks. Skepticism is warranted; we've heard about those deadlines time and time again. But if a decision will indeed be made, one shouldn't be surprised if Liberman who appointed the Minister of Justice and the Minister of Interior Security would be aware of it in advance. If so, his interview with Schiffer will be the opening shot of the new elections campaign. Liberman will take us back to the 1999 campaign, in which Aryeh Der'i, convicted of bribery, inflamed the country claiming his conviction was a setup. Liberman will say that, as he saw in advance, he was hunted by the left. He will be disqualified from serving as a minister, but will continue to serve as his party's puppet=master. In short, we ain't seen nothing yet.
And the Lord opened the Mouth of the Ass: Sarah Palin found itself stuck in a mess of her own doing after the Tucson shooting. So, after a few days of shock and Headless Chicken Drill i.e., running around in circles in Camp Palin, she came out with a petulant speech.
And immediately stepped on a landmine. Being a complete ignoramus, she described the media claims against her as blood libel. OOPS! Nobody told her this is a registered sign of self-victimized Jews! She wandered onto the wrong turf. Hence, Jewish leaders opened fire. Even Abe Foxman, always merciful when in comes to conservatives and Republicans, had no choice but to slap her lightly. http://bit.ly/e8Obth
So, Sara, here are the new ground rules: Sitting quietly during a sermon in which a pastor describes suicide bombing against Israelis as God's wrath for rejecting Christianity fine and dandy; Trespassing on Jewish monopoly on victimhood, not so much. And if you can't understand this basic rule, you have no business being in politics. http://politi.co/fbd0nH
http://ygurvitz.net/?p=102
http://972mag.com/orthodox-publication-openly-calls-for-death-camps/
In rise of Ultra Orthodox, challenges for Israel
JERUSALEM: Dramatic changes may be coming in Israel: Demographers now estimate about a third of last year's Jewish babies were born into the ultra-Orthodox community, an insular and devout minority that has long been at loggerheads with the rest of the increasingly modern and prosperous country. Ultra-Orthodox Jews, known in Hebrew as "Haredim," or "those who tremble" before God, have a birthrate far higher than that of other Israeli Jews, with 10 children in a single family not uncommon. They seem poised to become far more numerous and influential.
Relations between Haredim and other Israelis have never been smooth. Critics have long complained that they shun work in large numbers in favor of religious study, rejecting mainstream Israel even as they rely on that mainstream for financial support.
But increasingly, even some Haredim share a sense that things cannot continue as they are. "The Haredim have set up a state within a state and have a long conflict with the state of Israel, which is now on the eve of an explosion," said Kobi Arieli, a popular radio host and author from the liberal edge of the Haredi community. "There is no chance that this situation will continue." Many community leaders chafe at change, and are especially sensitive to secular concerns about their growing population.
What does society want us to do, kill ourselves? Our community is a fact and everybody needs to understand that we exist and are not going anywhere," said Rabbi Shmuel Pappenheim, a spokesman for the Eida Haredit, an umbrella group of ultra-Orthodox factions. "This community will continue to thrive and nobody can change it." Part of the issue is the community's poverty: About half of ultra-Orthodox adults do not work, and many men are full-time Torah students with government stipends that anger the secular majority but are nonetheless quite meager. Of the estimated 700,000 Haredim in Israel, around 9 percent of the population , just under 60 percent live below the poverty line.
If Haredim don't begin working in larger numbers, the financial daily The Marker posited this week, "this threatens Israel's future." Perhaps the most corrosive issue is the military draft. Israel's early leaders agreed to support seminaries and issued several hundred draft exemptions, but over the decades, as the number of ultra-Orthodox Jews ballooned, so did the number of full-time students with exemptions. Today there are around 50,000. The law that exempts them requires them not to work, lest they lose their exemptions. The arrangement that has resulted is unique to Israel; abroad, ultra-Orthodox Jews work and their communities support themselves.
Last week, in unusually strong language, Israel's military chief, Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi, criticized Israelis who do not serve in the army, including the masses of young Haredi men. Those who do not serve should be "ashamed," Ashkenazi said.
That feeling is widely shared, and pressure is growing to find ways to draft Haredi youth. But the community's strong political parties have foiled attempts to reduce the draft exemptions, cut funding, or force ultra-Orthodox schools to teach basic subjects like English, math and science. Socially and politically conservative, the ultra-Orthodox parties prefer to align with rightist coalitions that have pursued more hardline policies. Although they have supported left-leaning governments as well, generally when these had majorities without them anyway , Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has described them as his natural allies.
The Haredi lifestyle is inspired by the Jewish world of eastern Europe that was destroyed in the Holocaust. Comprising a mosaic of sects and factions of varying shades and beliefs, they share a tendency to reject a secular society they see as morally corrupt and to sanctify religious study, modesty and charity. In Israel's early days, the precursors of today's Haredim rejected Zionism and pioneered what they called the "learning society," which meant that all young men, and not just a small intellectual elite, as had been the case in Europe, were to devote themselves to religious study instead of work.
This was meant to restore the world of Torah scholarship that had been destroyed by Nazi Germany. Over the years, many Jews who emigrated to Israel from the Arab world also have joined this camp. They mostly live in separate neighborhoods and study in separate schools, with little interaction with a majority that has largely come to view them as a burden. The interactions that do exist are charged, with secular Israelis often resenting what they see as attempts to impose Haredi religious mores on others.
This month, for example, saw tiffs over gender segregation on some bus lines in Haredi neighborhoods, and over similar segregation at a concert in a secular area to be attended by Haredim.
Because it is difficult to precisely define who is Haredi and who is not, exact figures on the community's population and birthrates are difficult to come by. A November 2010 report by two demographers at Haifa University, Arnon Soffer and Evgenia Bystrov, estimated that 30 percent of the Jewish newborns are now Haredi. Government statistics predict that by 2025 the Haredim will have jumped from 9 percent of the population to 15 percent.
We are not yet seeing the full strength of the process of ultra-Orthodox growth," the demographers wrote, this "will be felt when the young generation reaches the age of military service and work." The demographers warned that the economy would not be able to support a bigger Haredi population. Alongside those concerns is a nascent feeling that change is slowly coming.
everything."-- AP
http://www.kuwaittimes.net/read_news.php?newsid=NzYzNDU4MTU3
5 jan 2012, 14:25 , Respect -
Maria 16 jan 2011
Rabbis call Palestinian presence in '48- occupied territory "a terrorist act"
Rabbi Zalman Melamed, a prominent Jewish religious leader in Israel, called Palestinian keenness to reside in "Jewish cities" in occupied Palestine a "terrorist attempt to crush two thousand year old Jewish dreams" and a stab at Arabizing Jewish neighborhoods.
Dozens of rabbis, touring northern Palestine, announced that Arabs living in 1948- occupied territory are no more than guests. They warned that Arabs there are trying to infringe on Israel's Jewish identity through calls to make Israel a state for all its citizens.
The rabbis, accompanied by several Knesset members, showed support for an advisory opinion forbidding selling or renting homes to Arabs in "Israeli" cities.
Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu said the overwhelming majority of Jews in Israel support the opinion, saying: "The opinion does not express racism, but love for Israel. The Arabs must know that they are only guests here. If one of them conspires against this state, he has no place here."
http://bit.ly/fvSAFN
Rabbis Call for Extermination Camps- An article in the Israeli Jewish Orthodox publication "Fountains of Salvation", which purports to be a 'family magazine', suggests that Israel will create death camps for Palestinians in order to wipe them out like Amalek.
The terms Amalek or Amalekites is code for the Palestinians (and other perceived enemies of the Jewish people) and originates in the Old Testament. It amounts to a call for genocide.
The article attacks Israeli rabbis who dispute the letter recently circulated by pro-settler extremist rabbis which urged that no Israeli Jew should rent apartments or houses to Israeli Palestinians. It chided them for being 'politically correct' and refusing to do their jobs and educate the populace in the true path of Torah.
In the last paragraph of the piece, the attack continues with the following remark, "It will be interesting to see whether they (the politically correct rabbis) leave the assembly of the Amalekites (Palestinians) in extermination camps to others, or whether they will declare that wiping out Amalek is no longer (historically ) relevant. Only time will tell……."
Those behind this publication belong to the radical right-wing Israeli Orthodox rabbinate. The grouping was founded by the former chief rabbi of Safed, whose son currently holds that position and who circulated the letter referred to above. Another is the chief rabbi of Ramat Gan, as is Rabbi Avinar, suspected of sexually abusing a troubled woman who approached him for spiritual advice. Each of them holds paid government sinecures
- Israeli rabbis call for establishment of extermination camps for Palestinians
A Zionist magazine, apparently reflecting popular Israeli opinion, promoted the idea of extermination camps for the Palestinians.
The weekly magazine distributed in synagogues throughout the country published an advisory opinion undersigned by major rabbis calling the establishment of those camps a "legitimate duty", the Israeli e-newspaper YNet reported Saturday.
The statement attacked rabbis who had reservations on signing the document, calling the Palestinians the "giants" who religious texts say the Lord commanded the Israelites to slaughter them, their children, their women, their elders, and even their beasts more than two thousand years ago.
According to those rabbis, the Torah requires the Jews to wipe out any trace of those giants in this era, in reference to the Palestinians.
Jewish thinker Audi Aloni said calls to eliminate the Palestinians are openly made in the synagogues as the genocidal idea has become a practical option.
"No one objected to Rabbi Shlomo Eliahu, chief rabbi of Safed, and Rabbi Shlomo Avner, Chief Rabbi of Beit El, who undersigned the advisory opinion, which suggests approval of their opinion," Aloni said.
18 jan 2011
Elior Chen hassidic rabbi tortured Jewish children - Chabad Mafia
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3X95Y2d8rOI
Elior Chen Extradited Lands In Israel
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lqYTa2WSfjc
Jerusalem - Elior Chen, the self-styled rabbi who allegedly influenced some of his followers to abuse their children in order to "correct their corrupt souls," was being interrogated by the Jerusalem District Police on Wednesday afternoon after landing at Ben Gurion Airport following his extradition from Brazil.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JyNg6Dq292I - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxZaNt3WDkA
Maria 18 jan 2011
Rabbi: Lower marriage age to 15
Initiator of new bill says legislation would financially help large families, curtail sexual offenses. 'Girls who do not want to study or work are a burden to the household,' says Rabbi Asher Idan.
The Lobby for Jewish Values and Director of Jerusalem-based Kol HaNa'ar Rabbi Asher Idan has presented a new initiative to lower the marriage age allowed by law.
In the past few days, Chairman of the Lobby for Jewish Values Ofer Cohen has approached several members of Knesset from religious factions in order to garner support for the new bill.
Currently the age of marriage allowed by law is 17, and according to the initiators of the bill, lowering it by even one year would pose a significant difference.
"There are many Hasidic communities that are interested in lowering the marriageable age, namely Vizhnitz and Breslov," explained Rabbi Idan.
"Some Hasidic communities are already violating the law by marrying at the age of 15-16. Parents of large families who cannot financially support all their children would be able to marry off their daughter earlier so that she can move into her husband's house," he added.
"Girls who do not want to study or work are a burden to the household," Rabbi Idan noted, "In my opinion, these young people will contribute more to the State because they won't go to nightclubs or waste their time looking for nonsense someplace else."
'Haredi press guilty'
Rabbi Idan said that lawyers are currently examining the legislative aspect of the bill, "We will curtail rape cases and violation of the law by allowing marriage a year earlier.
"This one year is significant. Nowadays boys and girls cannot have relations, and we will allow this by letting them marry, while encouraging and guiding them," he said.
The Kol HaNa'ar director is a colorful and renowned figure among the ultra-Orthodox community. Last February, he lashed out against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after the latter stayed at a Tiberius hotel that did not have a kosher certificate.
In the past, Idan also bickered with the mayor of Tiberius after the municipality accused him of trying to disrupt the status quo between religious and secular residents by promoting an initiative to separate between males and females on city bus lines and place Shabbat sirens on the boardwalk.
The purpose of changing the marriage age, according to a haredi source, is "to change the haredi view that has been prevailing in recent years, according to which girls must acquire an occupation before getting married. This approach is mainly held by interested persons such as directors of seminaries and different school who want as many girls to join their institution.
"The haredi press is also guilty," the source added, "Because it promotes an agenda that says women must be educated. This is very unfortunate and is promoted not by rabbis, but by businessmen that control the education apparatus."
'Peer pressure creates crisis'
According to the source, in recent years the haredi public has been aligning itself with the secular one, in an effort to encourage haredi girls to study more and develop their careers.
"This creates terrible competitiveness. Peer pressure leads every girl to jump on the trend and study the most sought-after occupation at the most respected institution. This competitiveness creates crisis and tension, and estranges them from the values of the family and the home," noted the source.
"Let us restore things to the way they were and stop trying to upgrade the haredi doctrine," added the source, "The key is to give them an opportunity to marry early and this way save them from the pressure and the feeling that they must pursue an academic track, because many are not interested in studies."
"At the moment we are feeling the pulse, and it seems that certain members of Knesset are showing interest. Some will be willing to take up the gauntlet," claimed Cohen.
"Sexual intercourse is forbidden until the age of 16, but after the age of 16 it is allowed if it is consensual, and we want it to be conducted in the framework of marriage. As soon as there is consent of the boys and the families, we don't want to have any limitation," he added.
Rabbi Idan does not think that the age of marriage he is proposing is too young: "The Talmud says that you can get married at the age of 14. The Baba Sali married at the age of 13 and the Shulchan Aruch states that you conduct the Bar Mitzva ceremony and get married on the same day You say Mazal Tov and bring out the bride.
"The woman is not the reason, she is the emotions. A woman isn't reasonable; she is emotional and the man possesses the reason. They are two opposites that the creator of the universe brings together," he noted.
Idan is certain the bill will be passed by the Knesset: "No one will oppose the halacha. The Knesset has witnessed the recent wave of crimes and sexual offenses in both secular and religious families with many children, and this will solve our problems."
MK Nissim Zeev (Shas) does not see a reason to change the age of marriage. "Even if the bill is passed, it will not change things significantly and I don't see women rushing to get married earlier. I also don't think parents are going to want their daughters to Marry so young, except for special circumstances," he said, adding "furthermore, I believe that studies help strengthen the family."
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4013584,00.html
18 jan 2011
Israeli Banks Finance Newspaper calling for Genocide
Major Israeli banks, credit institutions, and communication companies are among the advertisers in an extreme right wing weekly magazine that called for building concentration camps.
An Israeli Jewish orthodox magazine "Ma'ayanei Hayeshua" (Fountains of Salvation) that is distributed freely in hundreds of synagogues all across the country has been the center of attention after calling in its editorial for the concentration of Arabs in extermination camps. In the article, published on 25 of December 2010, the editors attack rabbis who refused to support the call against renting apartments to Palestinians and accuse them of being too cowardly to follow the biblical commend of wiping out the people of Amalek ( who through the context of the article clearly means Palestinians). In the last segment of the editorial the editors wrote "It will be interesting to see whether they (the moderate Rabbis) leave the concentration of the Amalekites [Palestinians] in extermination camps to others, or whether they will declare that wiping out Amalek is no longer relevant".
This blunt call for a genocide against Palestinians is not new in publications of the Israeli extreme right, but this is the first time it appears in a family magazine with prominent advertisers. Among the companies advertising in the website of of Maayanei Hayeshua there are three major banks in Israel: Bank Hapo'alim, Bank Le'umi and Bank Discount, along with the Isracard Group that is working together with Visa, Europay and Mastercard. The national phone company, Bezeq, also advertises their international call service on the website. Even an academic institution, the Jerusalem College of Technology, published its advertisement inside the print version of the magazine.
22 jan 2011
The rabbis of the devil
Imagine, just imagine, the outcry that would follow an imagined call by a European Muslim or Christian religious leader suggesting sending hundreds of thousands of Jews to concentration camps. The Sheikh or priest or bishop would be lambasted beyond imagination, and his denomination or church would immediately distance itself from his foolish remarks.
Political authorities would also declare that Nazi-minded Sheikh or bishop has no place in modern Europe and that governments would nip the hateful and racist elements in the bud. In short, he would be looked upon as a pariah, to say the very least. He even might be forced to commit suicide under public pressure.
As to Jewish circles, their protests would be clarion and omnipresent.
But how would things look like if such a call took place in Israel and was made by a popular rabbi, with hundreds of thousands of followers?
According to a weekly Hebrew magazine, several rabbis, including the rabbi of Safad, Shmuel Eliyahu, recently proposed the establishment of death camps for the Palestinians.
The magazine indicated that the creation of these camps would be the duty of all devout Jews.
The Yedeot Ahronot’s YNet on Saturday, 15 January quoted the rabbis as stating that the Torah requires Jews to wipe out any trace of the so-called Amalek in Palestine . Many religious Jews refer to their perceived or real enemies as Amalek.
The YNet quoted Jewish intellectual Audi Aloni as saying that calls for the extermination of Palestinians are openly made in the synagogues as the genocidal idea has become a practical option.
“No one objected to Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu, chief rabbi of Safad and Rabbi Shlomo Aviner, Chief Rabbi of Beit El, who undersigned the advisory opinion, which suggested approval for their opinion.”
I realize that these evil men don’t represent Jews everywhere, nor do they even represent the entire rabbinic community. There are many esteemed rabbis who reject outright the satanic mindset permeating through the landscape of the sick minds of people like Elyahu, his cohorts and evil colleagues.
The Torah, after all, was supposed to be a light upon humanity. But when it becomes, thanks to those rabbis of Satan, a tool for genocide, there is obviously a huge catch-22 hanging over Judaism’s conscience.
Again, the fact that these nefarious rabbis don’t represent the entirety of Judaism is no guarantee that their damage will be limited. A fool man’s fire could frustrate a thousand wise men who wouldn’t know how to put it off.
Isn’t this the way the holocaust started? It didn’t start with concentration camps, or even with Kristalnacht. Such death camps as Auschwitz , Treblinka, Mauthauzen and Bergen Belsen became only known much later.
The purpose of this small piece is not to vilify or demonize Jews. Nor am I particularly enthusiastic about hurling Nazi epithets at Jews. However, nothing should be further from truth.
The call for sending millions of Palestinians to concentration camps means that a sizeable segment of the Israeli Jewish society is capable, at least mentally, of embarking on the unthinkable. It means that a real Jewish holocaust against the Palestinian people is not outside the realm of imagination.
This matter is well known, even known too well for us who live in this part of the world. After all, Israel demonstrated two years ago, during its Nazi-like onslaught on the Gaza Strip, that it could do the unthinkable.
And that was not the first time Israel behaved manifestly nefariously. In 2006, during the Israeli aggression on Lebanon , the Israeli air force dropped more than 2,000,000 cluster bomblets on South Lebanon civilian areas, arguably enough to kill or maim at least 2 million Lebanese children.
The scant media coverage of the latest diabolic statements by the rabbis of evil in no way lessens their gravity and seriousness. After all, these are not marginal or isolated figures in society.
In fact, paying not sufficient attention to this phenomenon is tantamount to encouraging it. If Germans and others had not kept silence in the late 1920s and early 1930s, many things wouldn’t have occurred.
I would want to be cautious drawing historical analogy between every thing happening in Israel today and everything that happened in Europe several decades ago. However, there are certain parallels that shouldn’t escape our attention, and the latest outrageous statements by these diabolical rabbis are one of them.
Let no one say that words are innocuous and can’t kill; nay, words can kill and do kill. A few years ago, a Jewish immigrant from France decapitated a Palestinian cabby from East Jerusalem after the taxi-driver gave the killer a ride to his home north of Tel Aviv. And when the murderer was eventually arrested and interrogated by the police, he said he heard his neighborhood synagogue rabbi say that the lives of non-Jews had no sanctity.
More to the point, it is abundantly clear that thousands of Israeli soldiers would rather heed and obey their respective rabbis’ homilies than their army superiors’ instructions when it comes to treating Palestinians. This fact was revealed during the Israeli onslaught on Gaza two years ago when Israeli soldiers knowingly and deliberately murdered innocent civilians, including children, by the hundreds.
But this is not the time for demonization; it is rather the time for action. Jewish leaders of all orientations should speak up as strongly as possible against those who are besmirching the good name of their religion.
The likes of Shmuel Eliyahu must be told that there is no place in Judaism for those who advocate genocide for non-Jews. In the final analysis, when Jews or anybody else think or behave or act like the Nazis acted, they simply become Nazis themselves.
Finally, Jews shouldn’t keep silent in the face of these abominations just because the media and public opinion in the West are more or less keeping silent. Well, since when a moral stance was decided by other people’s apathy or silence? In fact, the immoral silence of much of the west toward what is happening in Israel these days is bad and dangerous for Jews and their future.
Anything that causes moral desensitization to occur is definitely bad. This is to put it extremely mildly.
http://fwd4.me/05pE
Woman behind the curtain
Op-ed: Religious exclusion of women may not be a crime, but it is certainly a sin
On some of the “strictly kosher” buses, a shower curtain, the cheap plastic variety, attached to a pole with plain white rings, separates the front of the bus reserved for the men from the back of the bus designated for women. The curtain hides the women. We can only guess what goes on in the mind of a young yeshiva student who wants to know what is concealed behind the divider. It is difficult to imagine a more sexual image than female voices emanating from behind a drawn shower curtain.
Just a few days ago, the judges of the High Court of Justice adopted the conclusions of the committee set up by the Ministry of Transportation and determined that the sex-segregated “mehadrin” (strictly kosher) bus lines are illegal, while leaving room, nonetheless, for consideration to be given to passengers who wish to have “voluntary separation.”
This is not an ideal decision, but it is one of the classic cases in which the principles established by the judicial decision are more important than the bottom line. And this declaration was loud and clear. If it had not been proclaimed, the “mehadrin” buses would have taken the State of Israel, at the price of a bus ticket, out of the democratic sphere and put it into another one altogether.
We have to tear away, once and for all, the veil of lies around the widespread contention that the exclusion of women from the public sphere must be honored in the name of “multiculturalism,” a principle which maintains that the culture of the majority threatens to weaken that of minorities and, therefore, the state must create conditions that allow minorities to maintain their way of life. Whereas classic liberal theory contends that the state should refrain from intervening in religion and culture, multicultural theory claims that the state must actively help minority communities safeguard their culture; otherwise the culture of the minority will be engulfed by that of the dominant majority.
This is a nice theory, which may be justified in many cases, but not when putting it into practice means the demeaning of another group. What is more, the equation of “separate but equal” is, in general, indefensible. When the bus is divided between the front and the back, the men will always sit in the front. When a divider is placed in an auditorium, the best seats will be given to the men. Sometimes the women will not even be able to see the speaker. Let them listen, why do they need to see anyway?
Facing a new era
This is true not only in ultra-Orthodox spaces. In many cemeteries in Israel, a woman cannot deliver a eulogy. They are also forbidden from accompanying the pall bearers, and can only walk behind the last male mourner. These are humiliating practices that have nothing to do with multiculturalism. It is not just women being excluded here; it is human dignity that is being demeaned.
If we are not vigilant, the public sphere will change. It has already begun to change. We may not have noticed it, but the voice of women is already being heard less, not metaphorically, but in reality. If cadets at the main officers training base, albeit only a handful, left the auditorium when an army entertainment troop (which included women) was singing, then we are facing a new era.
What seems absurd to us today is liable to become a commonplace occurrence tomorrow. Sex-segregated health fund clinics? Government subsidized conferences with women sitting in the back? Sidewalks for women only? All of these things have happened somewhere in Israel.
It is depressing to think how many years of wisdom humanity has lost by excluding women from positions of leadership, in the academic world, medicine, politics, philosophy, religion. Double the number of great books and important discoveries from all of these disciplines and you can see the great difference this would have made for mankind. The exclusion of women may not be a crime, but it is certainly a sin.