3/1/08

Times Magazine: Israeli Rabbis Gone Wild - Intoxicated With their Gatekeeper Power Over Jews

Israeli rabbis have gone wild. They are intoxicated with their gatekeeper power over Jews.

With a mere 16 million adherents in the world, the Jewish religion and the Jewish people needs more members. Sincere people come before rabbis in Israel and say they are Jewish and want to marry Jews. The rabbis give them a hard time.

I have not read one single narrative of an insincere non-Jew who came to the rabbinate for approval as a Jew in an attempt to deceive them for some illegitimate purpose. Perhaps there are such people. I doubt it. I have never heard of it.

Now the Times publishes such a story about rabbis who drive Jews crazy with their demands. This is a desecration of the reputation of the Jewish State made possible solely by the unholy actions of rabbis gone wild with their own power.

A Jew should not have to prove that he or she is a Jew in order to marry another Jew.
How Do You Prove You’re a Jew?
By GERSHOM GORENBERG

One day last fall, a young Israeli woman named Sharon went with her fiancé to the Tel Aviv Rabbinate to register to marry. They are not religious, but there is no civil marriage in Israel. The rabbinate, a government bureaucracy, has a monopoly on tying the knot between Jews. The last thing Sharon expected to be told that morning was that she would have to prove — before a rabbinic court, no less — that she was Jewish. It made as much sense as someone doubting she was Sharon, telling her that the name written in her blue government-issue ID card was irrelevant, asking her to prove that she was she...more...

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