By now I am sure you have all heard of Shaindy.com, which is a website catering to Orthodox Jews who want to meet other Orthodox Jews for extra-marital affairs. I am also sure you have browsed through - and laughed at - the Chassidic sex ads in the casual encounters section of Craigslist. Many of you may have even seen the Tefillin Date blog or tried to search for frum porn yourselves, either because you are truly interested in finding some hot women wearing nothing but sheitels, or you are a serious porn fan who likes to find new and exciting varieties of smut online.

I personally am fascinated with the whole subject of frum porn, purely from a statistical perspective (girls in long skirts just don't do it for me even if they are showing a little more ankle than normal). You see, I run a popular Orthodox blog that makes fun of Orthodoxy. Due to Google's search engine algorithms, many people who come to my site are searching for frum porn. Not just frum porn, but everything from "naked Lubavitch girls" to "Chassidic gang bangs", and much more. I have wondered for years what exactly they expected to find, who these people were, and what exactly would constitute frum porn.

By definition frum porn would be oxymoronic - that would mean that the porn stars would have to be dressed modestly and this would defeat the entire purpose of porn in the first place. Maybe it would mean that all products used in the video were certified kosher, and before licking any cream products off of each other the porn star would make the required blessing. Maybe all of the male stars had to be circumcised, or the women had to keep their hair covered during the video. 

"Bais Yaakov Girls Gone Wild" has been in my imagination since I was 15. I never thought there were any other sick yeshiva guys like myself, but I have been surprised again and again by the search traffic to my site and the random emails from horny Chassidim in Brooklyn who think that I hold the key to their frum porn adventures.

Several months ago I wrote about the Hot Chani phenomena sweeping through religious neighborhoods in the New York metro area. "Hot Chanis" are religious women who wear wigs but dress very scandalous with tight short skirts, hooker boots and lots of makeup. I posted an example and was flooded with emails from people seeking more pictures. I told them I was not in the porn business - but that they should take s stroll down any street in Flatbush if they wanted some Hot Chani action.

I have been rethinking this whole comedy thing, seems I could make a killing in the frum or Chassidic porn industry.

This awesome article first appeared on April 1, 2009 and has been republished as part of the series JEWCYEST WEEK EVER.

When I listen to Moshiach Oi, I feel like I am eighteen again, hanging out with my friends at the skate park, watching DIY punk bands break their gear, pour through power chords with sweat and blood on their fingers, and feeling like the world is already healed, we just need to look around!

Moshiach Oi! blows me away with their new album "Better Get Ready." It's a blistering punk rock siddurim that effortlessly ties together Black Flag and Rambam, 7 Seconds and the Rebbe, The Casualties and the Kabballists.

The opening track "Baruch Hashem" gets my fist in the air, ready to mosh. Two and three minute hardcore anthems to Moshiach, Avodah, and the yeshiva system tear through me like a hurricane and leave me weak and on my knees, like Moses with his face in the sand.

It's a damn good feeling when you fall in love with a record.

It's also a great example of something I have always believed in: there is nothing that separates our artistic love from our emotional love of Hashem. Punk, hip hop, spoken word, visual art: these are the tools that G_d gives us to create the World To Come.

I pray that 5770 is the year of Moshiach Oi! But from the looks of it, and the sound of it, they don't need any help at all.

I bid goodbye to my friend Josh at Kikar Shabbat. We had expected some riots, but there were none and we both turned toward home, let down by the seemingly non-violence of the Charedim. I walked toward the Beis Yisroel neighborhood and he towards Nachlaot. When I got to the alleyway I had memorized as my turnoff (based on the Tuna Beigel bumper sticker plastered across the street sign), I noticed a throng of Charedi boys walking quickly down the block seeming excited about something, but I decided to continue down the block. It was only 11:30 at night and I was planning on going to bed early, but my curiosity got the best of me.

I continued down Mea Shearim street until it narrowed and the garbage seemed to come out of nowhere, piles of filth everywhere cemented into the ground by an awful lot of water. I wondered if this was the quality of street cleaning in Charedi neighborhoods, merely to pour water on the street in hopes of some miracle on par with the splitting of the red sea and all of the sudden the garbage would wash itself away.

Then I saw them, at first it was clusters of younger streimel-wearing fellows, in groups of three or four gesturing towards the end of the street. I smelled smoke and saw plumes of it in the streetlights and then at this random intersection was a full-out throng of kids pushing a burning mini-dumpster down the street towards the flashing lights of police cars.

I watched these kids cheering and gesturing wildly and pushing the dumpster to the police waiting at the end of the street, then everyone started running and so, like any normal guy with a huge Jewfro and a 30-pound backpack would do, I started running with the boys away from whatever unseen horrors would be taking place if I had stayed still. Suddenly I found myself alone and noticed the throng which was so scared a moment ago was moving back in. More people had joined in and I once again cursed myself for not speaking Yiddish.

Then I heard a rumble and before I could understand what was flying, besides for peyos, this truck started moving down the street and kids of all ages started throwing bottles and whatever they could their hands on at it, while others ran like mad. I figured the big ugly truck was going to stop and a bunch of Israeli police officers would jump out. I hid behind a wall in the entrance of a building just in time to see and mighty strong jet of water squirt down the street, small tidal waves complete with last night's suppers, random cardboard boxes and plastic bags floating along in the stream of water gurgling back down the street. Then I saw them spraying the balconies and roofs, I wondered about all the people trying to sleep.

Continue reading...

In a move to expand right-wing ultra-Orthodox (haredi, specifically the B'nai Torah) outreach on college campuses, two fundamentalist institutions have joined forces to support Ohr Somayach's two-year program, Ohr Lagolah, accredited by the State of Israel.

The program is based on JET, a haredi program that disguises its fundamentalism under platitudes such as Holocaust remembrance.

JET brings students to Ohr Somayach, Jerusalem on subsidized trips, and attempts to indoctrinate them and ideally, seeks to convince them to drop out of college.

These are not people Hillel should be cooperating with. But according to Ohr Somayach and Rabbi Kahn, Hillel is "actually" doing just that.

Rabbi Tropper, who is notorious for "uncoverting" Jewish married female converts who appeared in pants or without a hair covering, and for lobbying for a haredi-only bar for traditional Jewish conversion, has joined with Rabbi Mendel Weinbach and Rabbi Nota Schiller to support Ohr Lagolah.

What are the problems with Ohr Somayach? Plenty, at least to those of us who do not share the perspective of the haredi followers.

While much of the fundamentalist nonsense of Ohr Somayach is not printed online, enough has been published to get the gist of their ideology, both in terms of its rabid anti-western fundamentalism, and how their followers are encouraged to embrace fantasy as history.

Ohr Somayach's Rabbi Weinbach has claimed that a prayer to a dead tzaddik in Tzfat turned black chickens into white ones. He claimed a famous Israeli rabbi's ancestor experienced a "miraculous crossing of the sea from Jaffa to Constantinople on a mat." He credited a rabbi's blessing for ending the Russo-Georgian war, a full five weeks after the story was proven a forgery. To be fair, Weinbach does offer important halachic discussions, such as if a golem may be counted for a minyan, or if you may free a slave to fulfill the quorum. Faced with increasing revelations about the level of abuse tolerated and enabled in the ultra-Orthodox communities, Rabbi Weinbach did speak out - against the abuse in Israel's secular schools. Weinbach has called for an end to Israel's democracy, in favor or a theocracy ruled by "The Gedolim," Israel's haredi rabbinical leaders. Weinbach has also excoriated Jews who "are tempted to imitate the non-Jewish world in matters of dress, entertainment and general culture." Weinbach has warned that fingernail clippings induce miscarriages. Weinbach has lashed out at Israel for not providing even more funds to its ever-increasing welfare/Kollel rolls.  As violence was used against female (often American Modern Orthodox women) resisting the women-in-the-back policy on select lines of Israel's nationalized bus company, Weinbach lashed out at the "unrestrained interaction of the sexes."

Ohr Somayach's other much less prolific Rosh Yeshiva, Rabbi Schiller, claimed there was no written record of Chanukah, despite the existence of Maccabees I and II.

Other Ohr Somayach rabbis have also said strange things. Rabbi Gottlieb explains the usual haredi drivel about how God is tricking us with false evidence when the world is literally 6,000 years old.  If you wonder why he would do that, it might help to understand that Rabbi Gottlieb has compared God to a mafia boss.

 

Twenty years ago today, on December 1, 1988, for the first time in history, 70 Jewish women prayed together out loud as a group at the Western Wall (or "Kotel") in Jerusalem. Women have always prayed at the Kotel, often silently, and alone. What made this service radically different, certainly transcendent, was that we not only prayed aloud but we also chanted from the Torah.

What we did was the equivalent to nuns conducting an all-female prayer service--but at the Vatican. As important: The participants came from Israel, the United States, Europe, South America, and Australia; represented every religious denomination of Jewry, (Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, Reconstructionist, meta-denominational); and every political persuasion (left-wing, centrist, right-wing). Some of us donned tallesim (prayer shawls) and head coverings, many of us did not. We were radiant, overwhelmed, humbled, united.

However, once the ultra-orthodox men and women understood that Jewish women were chanting from a Torah, they began hurling unholy and terrifying curses at us which fouled the very air. Threats of physical violence quickly followed. We made it out safely: this time, the first time.

That is where I first met the woman whose idea this all was: Over an open Torah, under the early morning skies. Rivka Haut, who has since become my beloved chevrutah, or Torah study partner, was, at the time, already a long-time Orthodox feminist pioneer of womens' halachic prayer groups. After the service had started, Rivka turned to me, and offered me the honor of opening the Torah for the women. This single, "accidental" honor wedded me most fatefully to the struggle that was to come.

For years, I did not know why Rivka, with whom I would go on to co-author a book about this struggle, Women of the Wall: Claiming Sacred Ground at Judaism's Holy Site, had picked me. There were so many scholars and rabbis amongst us. Only recently, Rivka told me that she chose me because I had "an otherworldly look on my face" while I was praying.

We left Israel, high as kites.

The Jerusalem-based women, initially led by Bonna Haberman, Miriam Benson, Shulamit Magnus and Anat Hoffman, a.k.a. the Women of the Wall (WOW). continued to pray. They were mainly "nice Jewish girls." With one exception, the group was not involved with politics of any kind.

Nevertheless, beginning early in 1989, WOW was met with serious and continuous violence. Ultra-orthodox (haredi) men threw heavy metal chairs at them over the high barrier that separated men from women. One young girl was hit and had to be hospitalized. Canisters of tear gas were thrown into the womens' section.

Ultra-orthodox women, often following male orders, sometimes on their own, uttered terrible curses, and tried to silence the quietly praying women in every way possible. They shrieked, circled, raged, and made awful faces. They pushed and shoved a pregnant Bonna Haberman who was holding onto the Torah with all her might. At one point, the government of Israel actually hired women to physically remove the women-- not for disturbing the peace but for praying.

At first, we organized solidarity prayer services for the women under siege in America. We were on the phone to Jerusalem almost constantly. We founded a not-for-profit International Committee for the Women of the Wall (ICWOW). At the time, there was no law which prohibited what the women were doing. But the violence escalated and the women decided to go to the Israeli Supreme Court to demand protection for their peaceful, religiously lawful prayer services. The Court took the case but prohibited the women from praying at the Kotel with a Torah until the court rendered its decision. The women continued to pray at the Kotel but went to the Archeological Gardens, Hulda's Gate, or to a site overlooking the Kotel plaza, for their Torah service.

And so, we decided to raise the money, acquire a Torah, dedicate it in the streets of Jerusalem, donate it to the women of Jerusalem, and pray with it at the Kotel, according to our custom, as we had done the previous year and as many of us routinely do in our synagogues all across America. We were prevented from doing so--and were thus able to join WOW's lawsuit in the Israeli Supreme Court.

After much discussion and many disagreements, we petitioned the court for only eleven hours a year, on Rosh Chodesh, the new month, a holiday expressly given to Jewish women. (In the month of Tishrei, Rosh Chodesh is actually Rosh HaShanah). On other holidays, where non-Torah scrolls are read, (as on Purim or Shavuot), WOW continued to pray there, reading aloud from the megilla of Esther and Ruth.

We understood that even a modest demand was revolutionary. The opposition saw us coming, they saw the future in us, and they knew that if they yielded even a little, that the future would instantly be upon them. In upholding tradition, they not only continued to uphold misogyny, they also sought to hold back and sully the inevitable tradition-honoring changes that Jewish women, (and men), living in a feminist era, were obligated to bring to our tradition.

WOW has never stopped. WOW has prayed at the worst moments of this most recent, endless Intifada. According to Rivka Haut, "WOW has maintained a group presence that is welcoming to every Jewish woman, teaching bat mitzvah girls as well as elderly women who never heard women leading prayers and never saw women reading from a Torah scroll, that they can actively participate in prayer. The women have persevered despite the rocks thrown over the mehitsa at them by haredim, despite the rocks raining down upon the Kotel area from the mosque above."

WOW became "legendary" and was written up everywhere--and uproariously misunderstood by almost everyone. Some reporters thought we wanted to pray on the men's side of the mehitza or together with men. Others thought that we had "feminized" the prayer service and were counting ourselves as a minyan (Prayer quorum). None of this was true. It took us awhile to understand that people visited their own longings upon us; we were a "projective" test.

Artists created tallesim (prayer shawls) and tambourines in our honor. We were included in feminist Passover Hagadot. Two films have already been made about this struggle. The most recent film, by Yael Katzir, a secular Tel Avivian and a professor of film, is a powerful, haunting, soulful, heartbreaking, and enraging film. It is called "Praying in her own Voice." You may both read about it and order it here and see clips of it here.

This film shows WOW's inspiring and steadfast women, both at home and under siege. It is a searing film. It cries out to heaven for justice. It also shows WOW's last visit to the Israeli Supreme Court; hope dashed; and it shows the archeological dig/prayer site the government has prepared for them.

Katzir, whose film was recently showcased at the Israeli Film Festival, managed to catch on film a great deal of WOW's hope and joy, as well as several particularly ugly instances in which ultra-orthodox women, led by one Shira Leibowitz Schmidt, may be seen cursing, surrounding, and creating a riot against WOW. Schmidt is seen on camera trying to steal their Torah away. (I have been told that Schmidt has begun to tell people that she had been "paid to be an actor in the film." This is a bald-faced lie.)

Katzir's film now includes opening comments from prominent American woman rabbis but it also includes deeper portraits of WOW's core of long-timers: Danielle Bernstein, Batya Cohn-Kallus, Anat Hoffman, Rahel Jaskow, Haviva Ner-David, Peggy Sidor, and lawyer Frances Raday at their most heroic.

How ironic! All over the world, including in Israel, Conservative, Reform, and Reconstructionist Jewish women are rabbis and lead their congregations, both male and female, in prayer. Orthodox women in Israel, the United States, Europe, and Australia, pray together in women's prayer groups in which they chant from the Torah. More recently, orthodox women began to pray together with orthodox men in partnership minyanim (prayer quorums). This has included both women and men chanting from the Torah and receiving previously male-only honors.

Only in Israel, and at the site most holy to Jews, at a site where soldiers are sworn in, and national celebrations are held--at that place, Jewish women were, (and still are), prohibited from praying aloud in a group with a Torah.

Although I care deeply about Jewish womens' religious rights in Israel and of course, about all womens' right to both practice their religion--and to not be coerced into doing so--the struggle in Jerusalem is an intra-tribal matter and important in its own right.

However, as the Intifada of 2000 continued to rage against Israel, as did the United Nations, Muslim terrorists, and Western academics everywhere, I did not have the heart to join the jackal chorus against the Jewish state. Rivka and I decided to dedicate our book to the state of Israel and to refrain from writing articles or giving interviews to the non-Jewish media on this subject.

But such silence is not possible forever. Is Israel head and shoulders above Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia in terms of womens' rights? Absolutely. But our struggle also proves that justice for Jewish women is quite imperfect in the only Western-style democracy in the Middle East.

The Israeli Supreme Court would ultimately render three decisions. The first decision, in 1994, sent us to the Knesset where, I kid you not, the guys tried to banish our prayer group to rubble-strewn Arab areas of Jerusalem. We returned to court and, in 2000, rejoiced over a unanimous three judge decision in our favor. The state immediately appealed this decision. We then faced nine judges. In 2002, four judges were in our favor, four opposed us--and the fifth and decisive vote against us was cast by none other than the great liberal and humanitarian, Chief Justice Aharon Barak, a man who has been able to find justice for Palestinian Arabs, both Christians and Muslims but not for Jewish women.

This 2002 decision ordered the government to build a prayer site for us at Robinson's Arch which is mainly an archeological and tourist site. They have done so, at great cost. You may see it all in Katzir's moving film.
When I asked Rivka for her comments, here is what she said:

"Looking back 20 years after having organized the first halakhic women's group prayer at the Kotel, complete with prayer leader singing aloud and Torah reading, I have mixed emotions. I was 20 years younger, my husband was alive and with me then, and I felt exhilarated and proud at having begun a great spiritual adventure. Since then, however, the brave and pious Israeli women who have doggedly continued, coming every month, despite the narrowness and hatred they experienced emanating from our own tribe, have endured much, and have not succeeded in the Israeli Court. They have been banished, exiled, to Robinson's Arch, an archeological site they do not want and did not choose as a place of group prayer. What we all wanted to accomplish has not happened. We are still journeying towards our dream, towards women's freedom to pray, halakhically, and read torah, at our holy site."

This struggle empowered me to study Torah something which gives me much joy. It taught me that one should not try to change tradition if you have no intention of practicing it and without re-interpreting it smartly, humbly, carefully. WOW symbolizes the extraordinary learning in which Jewish women have been engaged and, as important, prides itself on finding ways to include all Jewish women in its prayer service. WOW does not separate from women of any denomination and is willing to sacrifice in order to do this.

From the outside, it may appear that our struggle has been legally defeated by ultra-orthodox fanatics. To some extent that is true--but we have also had orthodox supporters, both male and female, as well as orthodox detractors; feminist supporters as well as feminist detractors; Israeli supporters and Israelis who have such negative views of the Orthodox rabbinate that they will have nothing to do with religion--and they have viewed WOW negatively, as yet another religious group. Please remember that, as I've noted, it was a liberal, progressive, highly esteemed man, the President of the Israeli Supreme Court, who refused to grant justice to Jewish women in this era.

To WOW: Happy 20th Anniversary! We only have 20 more years to go before we reach the Promised Land in the promised land.

To Jewcy's readers: Please see Katzir's film, read our book, and go and pray with WOW when you are in Jerusalem.

This was not a slip of the tongue. Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, speaking at the GA (that is the boring annual gathering of the Jewish Federations no reader of Jewcy’s cares about), chose her words carefully, and got the cheers she expected:

"Israel is not a monopoly of rabbis," the Kadima chairwoman noted. "Israel is a Jewish state, but a Jewish state is not a religious state but mainly a nation-state."

The crowd was quite happy, quite impressed. Is this the beginning of a new era? Look at recent developments concerning conversion:

Cabinet Secretary Ovad Yehezkel, Diaspora Affairs Minister Isaac Herzog and Jewish Agency chairman Ze'ev Bielski, all outgoing as the country goes to elections and Bielski takes a leave of absence to compete in the Kadima primary, said the conversion process was too inflexible and harmed aliya and society.

And this happens as the Jewish Agency has passed a somewhat revolutionary resolution calling on the Israeli government to establish “an independent conversion authority which will facilitate and assist in the conversion process”. No, it will not be an institution free of Orthodox influence. But it will be much more tolerant than its predecessors. And it will be one lead by people who understand the urgent need to reform (even if not Reform) the conversion process.

Why is all this happening now?

Here’s the cynic’s explanation: Livni, for one, is angry with the Haredi Shas Party for refusing to join her coalition and forcing new elections. “Not a monopoly of rabbis” is her way of saying: if I’m Prime Minister, you’re going to lose influence. It’s also her way of telling Israelis: vote for me if you want Haredi influence reduced (implying that a vote for Netanyahu will have the opposite outcome).

But here’s the more profound explanation: Israeli leaders have heard many times that Israel’s conversion process is unacceptable and intolerable as far as the US community is concerned. Heard – and ignored. As often happens, a crisis was needed for the attention to be drawn to the broken conversion system, and this came last May when “High Rabbinical Court of Israel severely censured the head of the country's Conversion Authority for performing” what they thought was “conversion in a non-kosher way”:

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert wasn’t happy with the court’s decision: “Conversion in Israel is a national priority”, he said. “I am determined to resolve the current conversion crisis and improve the process of conversion in Israel.” This was a moment in which the truth about conversion crystallized: it’s not the rabbis, but rather the politicians, who make the important decisions. Olmert can’t hide behind a rabbi’s back. Livni can’t. Netanyahu – the leading candidate (by far) to be the next Prime Minister – can’t.

Israel has no civil marriage or divorce, which means that every Jewish Israeli is at the mercy of the state’s rabbinic courts. During the past decade, ultra-Orthodox rabbis have wrested control of those state rabbinic courts from their more moderate Religious Zionist and Modern Orthodox peers. Now securely in control, they have begun to use this new power to de-legitimize those who came before them. What weapon are they using to do this? Conversion to Judaism. If a rabbi’s conversions are not recognized by the state, he is stripped of the authority needed to function and is essentially no longer a rabbi.

Last month, Israel’s ultra-Orthodox rabbinic judges voided hundreds, perhaps thousands of Religious Zionist conversions, creating a nightmare scenario where converts woke up one day—often years after their conversions—to find that they and their children had been ruled “goyyim.” The impact has not stopped at the Mediterranean. Converts in Europe, the Americas, and Australia now find their Jewishness under question. Even converts who have lived strictly Orthodox lives now must consider undergoing a second conversion procedure administered by ultra-Orthodox rabbis to clear up the “doubt”—“doubt” created by the ultra-Orthodox themselves. Many other converts, now less religious then at their conversion, or whose lives are not up to ultra-Orthodox standards, have nowhere to turn.

What follows is a brief list of the most involved ultra-Orthodox rabbis behind this mayhem—a rogues gallery, if you will, of ultra-Orthodox malfeasance.

Name: Rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashiv Age: 98 Last Seen: Attacking Religious Zionist and Modern Orthodox rabbis

The leader (“Gadol Hador”) of non-hasidic ultra-Orthodox Jews (haredim). A life-long Jerusalemite, Elyashiv has waged a long, personal, and bitter war against Religious Zionism and the Chief Rabbinate. In 2003, Elyashiv propelled Rabbi Yona Metzger to the position of Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi, in a backroom deal arguably worthy of the worst days of Chicago politics. Metzger’s ethical problems and his lack of advanced rabbinical training have considerably weakened the Chief Rabbinate, giving Elyashiv near-complete control of the state-funded Rabbinate’s infrastructure. Elyashiv uses that control to attack the Religious Zionist and Modern Orthodox rabbis while simultaneously filling state-funded rabbinic positions with his cronies. All the ultra-Orthodox rabbis behind the conversion crisis call Elyashiv their leader.

Name: Rabbi Yona Metzger Age: 55 Last Seen: Dealing with allegations of sexual harassment and charges of graft and ethics violations.

As the Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of Israel, it's not Metzger’s active presence in the conversion crisis that matters—it is his absence. A Religious Zionist who has moved to the right, Metzger—who was put in office by Rabbi Elyashiv—lacks the advanced rabbinic qualifications necessary to serve as Chief Rabbi. He is not trained as a dayan (religious judge), and therefore cannot hold the position of President of Israel’s rabbinic court system—a key part of the job description of chief rabbi—or sit as a judge on a religious court. While he was the sitting rabbi of North Tel Aviv in the 1990s, Metzger was credibly accused of extortion. In a judicial proceeding convened by the Chief Rabbinate to deal with those allegations, Metzger agreed not to run for Chief Rabbi of Tel Aviv as part of plea deal. At the time of his election as Chief Rabbi in 2003, Metzger was also under the cloud of several sexual harassment allegations made against him – allegations made by both by females and males. When Metzger took office, I asked Rabbi Jonathan Rosenblum, Jerusalem Post columnist and haredi spokesperson, if Elyashiv knew about Metzger’s legal and ethical problems before backing him for Chief Rabbi. If Elyashiv did know, I asked, why did Elyashiv back Metzger anyway? Rosenblum checked with Elyashiv’s right hand, Rabbi Yosef Efrati. The answer he came back with was strikingly unabashed: Elyashiv knew about the extortion and the alleged sexual harassment before the election, but he backed Metzger anyway. Why? “To restore the glory to the Chief Rabbinate,” Efrati told Rosenblum. Metzger spent much of his first years in office dealing with those sexual harassment allegations, and with new charges of graft and ethics violations raised after he took illegal gifts from at least one business. Metzger is now supposed to succeed Sefardic Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar as President of the High Rabbinic Court. (Amar held the position for the first half of the duo’s ten year term of office.) But because Metzger lacks the necessary qualifications, Amar continues to serve as High Rabbinic Court president while Metzger presses his case in Israel’s civil courts. Metzger’s plight has weakened the Chief Rabbinate while at the same time increasing the influence of Rabbi Elyashiv, whose cronies now dominate state rabbinic courts.

Name: Rabbi Avraham Sherman Age: ? Last Seen: Voiding the conversions of thousands of converts to Judaism

A former Israeli Army rabbi who once spent a sabbatical at Yeshiva University in New York, Sherman moved to the religious right and is now a follower of Rabbi Elyashiv and a Judge on the High Rabbinic Court. Sherman wrote the High Rabbinic Court decision voiding the conversions of thousands of people who converted to Judaism by under Rabbi Haim Druckman, a leading Religious Zionist rabbi. One of the legal maneuvers used to void said conversions was based on a technicality—Druckman had signed state documents stating conversions were done in his presence, and that the three judges, including Druckman, “sat together as one.” That was true for almost every conversion he performed—except for a handful performed for converts in Europe. Along with his duties as head of Israel’s Conversion Courts, Druckman served as a Member of Knesset, Israel’s parliament. Due to unexpected Knesset business, occasionally Druckman was unable to leave the country to oversee a planned conversion. To deal with problem and avoid disappointing these converts, Druckman relied on three European rabbis to perform the actual conversions, then signed the state document to allow the convert to be registered as a Jew in Israel. But the document still contained the same wording, and Druckman was not actually physically present when the conversions were performed. Druckman relied on a halakhic (Jewish legal) principle with Biblical precedent allowing a person to appoint an agent or agents to function on his behalf. (Think of Abraham sending Eliezer to find a wife for Isaac.) The Chief Rabbis at the time, Mordechai Eliyahu and Avraham Kahana-Shapira, ruled those conversions valid, but asked Druckman to stop using proxies. Druckman agreed. Flash forward almost ten years: Rabbi Sherman reopened the these “forged” conversion documents and based some of his ruling voiding Druckman’s conversions on this issue. Yet Sherman himself apparently did what Druckman did—except when Sherman did it, the mandatory three judges did not “sit together as one.” They couldn’t, because there were only two of them. Sherman, the third judge on that panel, was not in the court at the time actual testimony was heard in a divorce case. And Sherman did not appoint a proxy. Yet Sherman ruled on that case anyway, and signed a state document regarding it, to boot. Sherman also ruled that people with serious hearing and/or speech impairments cannot convert to Judaism and that any conversion performed for these people in the past are invalid. In Sherman’s eyes, conversion depends on acceptance of all the commandments. Since the “deaf” and “dumb” are considered exempt from observing commandments, they have no way to convert. Sherman believes that no matter how much a “deaf” or “dumb” person loves God and the Jewish people, he must forever remain an outsider. Any conversion performed for him will not change his spiritual status as a “goy.” Reacting to Sherman’s treatment of Druckman and the belittling, obnoxious language Sherman used in his decision, Israel’s official ombudsman for judges and court procedures recently recommended Sherman’s dismissal.

Name: Rabbi Nochum Eisenstein Age: ? Last Seen: Pushing for a ban on Modern Orthodox and Religious Zionist conversions

Eisenstein is a close follower of Rabbi Elyashiv and a leading figure in the push to ban Modern Orthodox and Religious Zionist conversions. The rabbi of the Ma’alot Dafna neighborhood of Jerusalem, he also heads the Vaad HaRabbonim Haolami LeInyonei Giyur, an international haredi organization whose goal is to make stricter conversion standards worldwide. Eisenstein is a long-time enemy of Modern Orthodoxy and Religious Zionism, and is also an early backer of the Monsey, New York-based Eternal Jewish Family (EJF) and its founder, Rabbi Leib Tropper. Speaking at an EJF convention late last year, Rabbi Eisenstein said anyone believing the universe to be older than 5768 years is a heretic who is unfit to serve on a beit din (religious court). This would make any conversions done by that rabbi or beit din invalid. Eisenstein’s source for this ruling? Rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashiv.

Name: Rabbi Leib Tropper Age: 57 or 58 Last Seen: Revoking his own conversions.

A follower of Elyashiv, Tropper heads EJF, which seeks to convert non-Jewish spouses of mixed marriages to ultra-Orthodox Judaism—while at the same time marginalizing Orthodox rabbis who don’t march to Rabbi Elyashiv’s tune. Originally a North American organization, EJF is slated to have a couples seminar this November in Israel. Tropper told potential converts already in the conversion process with Modern Orthodox rabbis that they should move their conversions to EJF to “ensure” acceptance by Israel’s state rabbinate. Like Elyashiv’s Israeli acolytes, Tropper has also revoked at least one conversion. Tropper (together with another haredi rabbi, Leib Pinter, who is now on trial for his alleged role in a $44 million mortgage fraud) is said to have spearheaded the 2004 ban against the Zoo Rabbi, Natan Slifkin, and his books. Slifkin’s “crimes”? Following the lead of medieval rabbis and modern savants like Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan, Slifkin wrote that the scientific and medical opinions of ancient Jewish sages may have been in error. He also attempted to show that the opening chapters of Genesis can jibe with a universe far older than the 5768 years Orthodoxy commonly holds. Both positions are frequently held by Modern Orthodox rabbis, and were—before the ban—a mainstay of the ultra-Orthodox kiruv movement. (The kiruv movement is, in effect, made up of ultra-Orthodox missionaries out to “convert” Jews to ultra-Orthodoxy. Its main players internationally are Aish HaTorah and Ohr Somayach. Chabad functions in a similar fashion, but has been opposed to anything but a literal understanding of Genesis from the get go.) The ban against Slifkin was signed by dozens of ultra-Orthodox rabbis. Who was the lead signatory? The Gadol Hador, Rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashiv.

Rabbi Leib Tropper: says who's who IN JUNE 2006, ultra-Orthodox Rabbi Leib Tropper nullified a conversion over a year after supervising it himself. He decided that the convert, whom we will call “Sarah,” had become a Jew under “false Pretext [sic].” Rabbi Tropper informed Sarah’s husband, “Avraham,” that his wife’s conversion had been registered as nullified with the Chief Rabbinate of Israel, and that the child produced by their marriage would not be regarded as Jewish, either. Finally, Rabbi Tropper declared that it was “forbidden” for Avraham to be married to Sarah. “Even if she decides to become observant,” Rabbi Tropper wrote via email, “she will need a new conversion,” and the couple would require a “new halachic marriage.”

What happens if despite a rabbi’s best due diligence, a convert to Orthodox Judaism doesn't keep Jewish law for the long haul? If that convert begins eating cheeseburgers and driving on Shabbat? Does the conversion remain valid? Is a convert 100% Jewish no matter what? Historically, a lapsed convert was still considered a Jew unless those lapses were immediate to the conversion, public, and intentional. The convert had to know what he was about to do was wrong, and then had to do it anyway. (Before the 19th century and the advent of ultra-Orthodoxy, according to Zvi Zohar, an Israeli scholar who studies this issue, there is no evidence a rabbi ever revoked a conversion for any reason.)

Times have changed. That’s because haredi (ultra-Orthodox) Jews like Leib Tropper, founder and director of Eternal Jewish Family—an organization dedicated to converting non-Jewish spouses of intermarried Jews—represent the most rapidly growing demographic in Judaism. Tropper also founded and runs a yeshiva in Monsey, New York, and travels regularly to Israel, where he frequents the halls of haredi power and hobnobs with its leaders. People like him are the Jewish future. They’re at the center of a seemingly irrevocable schism between Orthodoxy and every other denomination of Judaism. They're determined to restrict and to monitor all Orthodox conversions as part of their spiritual war against non-haredi Judaism, and they want nothing less than ultimately to define who is a Jew.

Tropper did not revoke Sarah’s conversion because she bowed down to idols, accepted Jesus as her Lord and Savior, or identified with the atheist philosophies of Christopher Hitchens. She didn’t renounce any universally accepted tenet of Judaism. Sarah’s conversion was ruled invalid because she did what many Modern Orthodox women do every day: get dressed and go out of the house. Sarah’s conversion was reversed because Tropper heard that she had worn pants, and occasionally—only when shopping outside the Jewish neighborhood—she had left her hair uncovered.

Sarah and Avraham live hundreds of miles from Tropper, who is based in the ultra-Orthodox enclave of Monsey, New York. How did Tropper find out about Sarah’s clothing? Easy: Her husband told him.

A “baal teshuva,” Avraham was as new to ultra-Orthodoxy as Sarah was to Judaism. Like many people who become Orthodox as adults, he had questions. Orthodox Jewish law mandates how to put on and tie one’s shoes; when, how, and even if to have sex; what and when to eat, and hundreds of other daily minutiae. Was it a major transgression for Sarah occasionally not to cover her hair? What about wearing pants?

Avraham didn’t know, so he asked Tropper, who said that her behavior showed a flagrant disregard for Judaism, and that she was taking Jewish law lightly. He questioned Sarah’s original intent in converting, and contacted her for an explanation. Shocked that her husband had gone behind her back, Sarah refused to talk, and Tropper revoked her conversion.

In an email to Avraham, Tropper wrote, “We must keep our word. [Sarah] ACCEPTED on herself to OBSERVE ALL of the torah & rabbinical commanments [sic]. She never did. You know that & you told me that.”

These: could get your conversion revoked IN LEXINGTON, KENTUCKY, Tropper wreaked havoc on another family of seekers. Leah Bourne's maternal grandmother was Jewish, so according to Jewish law she was as well, but she hadn’t been raised that way. Her husband Peter wasn’t Jewish at all. After marrying and having children, the Bournes became involved with a Reform synagogue, but they wanted more. Along with their 16-year-old son Jonathan, they attended an EJF information seminar in their town.

Raised in the Bible Belt, the Bournes were attracted to Tropper’s Jewish fundamentalism. They invested in the expensive process of koshering their home, kept the Sabbath, and studied Torah. They were a model family—so much so that EJF featured them in its promotional video. Tropper even convinced Jonathan, then a junior in high school, to forsake his senior year and enroll at Kol Yaakov, Topper’s Monsey-based yeshiva for Baal Teshuva students.

Though at first his parents didn't agree with their son missing his senior year of high school, Tropper assured them that Jonathan would be able to learn Torah and get his GED at the same time. As they delved deeper into ultra-Orthodoxy, the Bournes were intrigued by the idea of their son becoming a learned Jew, and perhaps even a rabbi.

Jonathan moved to Monsey, where he spent his days studying. Peter, meanwhile, worked toward converting by learning Torah over the phone with a Monsey rabbi. Peter’s teacher happened to work at Tropper’s yeshiva, and kept the proud father informed about Jonathan’s progress. The reports were very good: Jonathan was a diligent, budding scholar.

Tropper promised the Bourne family that he’d send a rabbi to open a synagogue and build a mikvah in Lexington. Having an Orthodox synagogue and mikvah in their town was essential because EJF will not authorize conversions for people who live in areas without an acceptable Orthodox infrastructure. Unable to relocate, the Bournes depended on Tropper’s guarantees.

Eventually, Leah and Peter traveled to Monsey for an EJF seminar. Leah, who has an architecture degree, was shocked by what she found. In her words, Kol Yaakov was “unfit for human habitation.” It was dirty, unkempt, and unsafe. She saw students living in overcrowded basement rooms without egress windows or other safe exits.

According to Leah, “What pathetic stuff they had down in that basement to serve as a kitchen and dining room were disgustingly filthy, neglected, and inadequate for the number of boys living there.…They were not provided with breakfast (except maybe some day-old or stale pastries from a local bakery) or lunch, and for dinner they were divided up and sent around to other people’s homes every night—not just for Shabbat.”

Leah was amazed that in light of all this, Tropper had helped find Jonathan a black hat and suit. “Clearly, the clothes were far more important to Tropper than making sure they had food.”

Hungry?: eat your hat Just as Sarah’s clothes were more important to Tropper than the radical life change she’d made in embracing Orthodox Judaism, and just as her uncovered hair was more important to Tropper than her relationship with her husband, Jonathan Bourne’s black hat was prioritized over his health, his personal safety—and his education. There was no GED program available at Kol Yaakov, and when Jonathan began to ask questions, Tropper’s response was to chastise him for not finding an outside program to enroll in.

As Peter was completing the requirements for his conversion, Tropper presented the family with a major setback: There would be no synagogue or mikvah in Lexington. Peter was instructed to abandon his job and future pension, and move his family to Monsey. When Tropper’s nebulous offers to help Peter find a job there weren’t enough to quell the Bournes’ anger and disappointment, Tropper—who refused to comment for this story—expelled Jonathan from Kol Yaakov without notice, dumping him on the street.

IN ISRAEL, THE ONLY government recognized conversions are Orthodox. Last year, Israeli Rabbi Avraham Atia—a government-empowered haredi rabbinic judge based in Ashdod—retroactively annulled a woman’s conversion to Judaism that had been performed by Conversion Authority head Rabbi Haim Druckman fifteen years before. The nine-page legal decision by Atia could be understood to invalidate thousands of conversions performed by Druckman, a Religious Zionist rabbi, and the rabbis with whom he’s worked over the years.

This reading of Rabbi Atia’s ruling was adopted by the Chief Rabbinate’s High Rabbinic Court, which heard the Atia case on appeal. In a fifty-five page ruling released in early May of this year, the lead rabbinic judge—another haredi rabbi, Avraham Sherman—ruled every conversion performed by Rabbi Druckman from 1999 onward invalid. Thousands of converts and their children are now deemed “goyyim,” their marriages void, their relationships with their spouses now “illicit.”

While Israel’s Modern Orthodox and National Religious rabbis invested their energy, time, and money into settling the West Bank and creating an ever-greater Israel, haredim used their resources to become the dominant Orthodox political force in the country—even as they remain ambivalent about the validity of a Jewish state. They took control of the country’s Chief Rabbinate and its entire bureaucracy, whose authority they now wield as a weapon to attack and delegitimize more moderate Orthodox rabbis in Israel and abroad.

America’s largest rabbinic group, the Rabbinical Council of America (RCA) which represents “Centrist” and Modern Orthodox rabbis, was negotiating with Israel’s Chief Rabbinate over the conversion issue when we spoke with its executive vice president, Rabbi Basil Herring, in January. The Chief Rabbinate wanted the RCA to set up formal “conversion courts” with American judges approved by the Chief Rabbinate, who would first travel to Israel to be “trained” by the Chief Rabbinate to “properly” supervise conversions. Herring described the RCA’s relationship with Israel’s Chief Rabbinate as “very warm and positive.” “And that includes [the subject of] conversion,” Rabbi Herring emphasized.

He was unwilling to comment on specific cases that might disturb that idyll—such as Rabbi Atia’s conversion revocation—because, he claimed, he was not privy to the specific details of the case.

But privy he would soon be. This spring, the RCA reached an agreement (labeled “capitulation” by critics, including at least one former RCA president) with Israel’s Chief Rabbinate ensuring that American conversions will be much stricter from now on, and will be done only through formal, pre-approved “conversion courts." On May 6, the RCA reacted with outrage to the High Rabbinic Court’s revocation of thousands of Modern Orthodox conversions:

“T]he RCA finds it necessary to state for the record that in our view the ruling itself, as well as the language and tone thereof, are entirely beyond the pale of acceptable halachic practice, violate numerous Torah laws regarding converts and their families, create a massive desecration of God's name, insult outstanding rabbinic leaders and halachic scholars in Israel, and are a reprehensible cause of widespread conflict and animosity within the Jewish people in Israel and beyond. The RCA is appalled that such a ruling has been issued…

The RCA also claimed it had been “assured” by Sephardic Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar, the haredi president of the rabbinic court system, that the High Rabbinic Court ruling “directly countermanded his instructions and policies” and had “no legal standing at this time.” Reports in the Israeli media noted that Rabbi Amar was “trying” to annul the ruling.

How Many Kids: do you have? On May 11, the Jerusalem Post reported that many of Israel’s marriage registrars—all Orthodox—are refusing to register marriages of converts until Amar clarifies the status of Sherman’s ruling. In a country without civil marriage and with no other recognized Jewish options, this leaves converts in a limbo that could continue indefinitely. Amar says he wants to have the Chief Rabbinate's governing council discuss the issue, but the council is not seated. Therefore, Amar plans to wait for elections to the council to be held. His spokesman claims to be unsure how long this might take.

HAREDIM SEE ULTRA-ORTHODOXY as the only true Judaism. They don’t view non-Orthodox Judaism as a theological threat, because in their minds Reform, Conservative, and post-denominational Jews are only a few years from irrelevance. In the US, for every 1.36 children a Reform Jewish couple have, haredim have 6.72, and Modern Orthodox have 3.39.

Although they still have Modern Orthodoxy to contend with, the reality is that haredim now control Israel’s Chief Rabbinate and rabbinic courts. They provide teachers for Modern Orthodox day schools, dominate Jewish outreach, and serve as rabbis in Modern Orthodox synagogues.

Through control of the conversion process, haredim can determine who is a Jew, who is an Orthodox rabbi, and therefore what traditional Judaism is. The pawns in this haredi power play are the thousands of Orthodox Jewish converts who, just like Sarah, woke up one day to find they are no longer Jewish, their marriages are null and void, and their children are forbidden to marry Jews.

It's sort of like the Abraham Lincoln Brigade in the Spanish Civil War; it recruits Americans for volunteer military service abroad. The difference? You don't have to be a dupe of Stalinism, but you do have to be male, haredi, and evidently well-spoken (and forget about republican notions of fraternity):

Nahal Haredi faced considerable skepticism from haredim and army generals when it was established in 1999. Few recruits applied, and many who did were not haredi; some had police records. At the same time, many haredi rabbis saw the concept as a plot to keep young men from studying in yeshiva.

Regular army officers said the unit's soldiers had a tendency toward insubordination and excess violence toward Palestinians.

In the last few years, though, standards have been tightened and the problems largely have been overcome.

What kind of men is Nahal Haredi looking for? According to its Web site, www.nahalharedi.org, the basic requirements are "Shabbat observance, wearing a kippah and a refined speech."

Theoretically, any man -- no women, of course -- who meets these basic criteria can join the battalion, but in practice some 70 percent come from fervently Orthodox homes in Bnei Brak and other haredi enclaves.

I don't like the idea of ultra-Orthodox soldiers from other countries being recruited to bear arms even in a remote Jordan Valley outpost that, by the IDF's own definition, is tantamount to a sinecure. For one thing, this is a dogmatically self-isolating battalion in a "people's" army that still operates on egalitarian-socialist principle. (Can you imagine haredi personnel being deployed to, say, rescue a captured female private from the West Bank?) For another, Nahal Haredi soldiers are licensed to divide their time between service and Torah study in a way that can't be beneficial to either, as plenty of haredi rabbis have pointed out.

When Nahal Haredi was established in 1999, recruiters were so desperate that they admitted kids with police records and Zionist tendencies alarming to most native-born Israelis. Unsurprisingly, the battalion had a higher index of aggravated assaults on Palestinians. And American telecom honcho Howard Jonas's well-publicized promise to reward all veterans of Nahal Haredi with lucrative private sector jobs strikes me as exactly the sort of mercenary messianism that does the Jewish state's international reputation, or the playing down of accusations of the dire concatenation between American and Israeli foreign policies, absolutely no good.

Whatever you may think of the late Israel Shahak, one of his least polemical long-standing complaints against the IDF was that it wasn't disciplined enough because of its tolerance of ancient religious chauvinisms that repulsed conventional standards for human rights. What happens when Gush Emunim is allowed to dictate behavior in the barracks? Insubordination by any other name and on which conservative defenders of a state's military establishment would typically look askance.

Stated in a slightly different way, how do you feel about the influx of evangelicals describing themselves as "soldiers of God" in the U.S. Armed Forces? Should they signal an allegiance to a covenant higher than the Constitution in the execution of their duty, would you rest easier at night?

Apparently, the Netzah Yehuda Battalion (as Nahal Haredi is also known) is in fitter form these days. Nevertheless, isn't the trouble with a monolithic military unit -- one comprised of a sectarian religious minority at that -- that its conduct will become increasingly less transparent and resistant to external review? The pressures of comraderie are strong, but they are not necessarily checks on individual conscience or organizational self-criticism, especially in a well integrated -- indeed, sexually integrated -- army. Brotherhood on the battlefield shall suffer if the bond is a shared metaphysics and not a shared country.

Haredi: Means what, exactly?Did anyone else catch that All Things Considered story this morning about the Haredi guy who joined the IDF?  (It isn't online yet, so I can't link it, but if you check HERE after 4 pm, you should find it) It really got me thinking about some things.

First of all, while I knew that the Haredim were often exempt from serving in the military, I didn't know there was such a stigma attached to it.  I didn't know people got shunned (like, Amish shunned) for it. This story followed a soldier for an afternoon, as he revisited his old Haredi neighborhood in Tel Aviv, and was forced to meet a friend in secret. So that the stigma surrounding him wouldn't hurt his friend.  He seemed like a nice guy, and didn't regret his choice, but it made me sad, thinking about his family, and how much he missed them all.  Only one sister would see him, and then only in secret.

And so I looked online, to find an "official Haredi stance" on military service.  And I couldn't find what I was looking for.  But I know many of you have spent more time than I have in Israel, and some of you have likely served in the IDF.  So I thought I'd ask if anyone knows any more than I can find online.

But then, after I admitted defeat on that, I got to thinking about something else.  I got to thinking about the fact that I don't really even know what the word "Haredi" means, though I've linked it here before.  Sure, I can use it in a sentence, but I can't really define it.  Which is, I think, the case with a lot of Jewishy words (for me).  That I only have a vague sense of what things mean: 

Haredi= black hat, lots of babies, beards, see also people who think I'm naughty.

So then I went back online and looked it up.

Continue reading...

Stereotypes Are JewcyIsraelinsider did a piece on young Israel and the various cliques that have developed in a country divided between young secular Jews (most of whom live in Tel Aviv) and the growing Haredi community, comprised of Ultra-Orthodox Jews.

At the bottom of the secular evolutionary totem pole are the arsim. These men strut around the street looking for any excuse to blow off their anger (usually directed at unassuming, defenseless old people) and are endearingly referred to as, "pimps." Most often, arsim are accompanied by their arm candy aka frechot. These women usually adorn the token high heels, acryillic nails, and a ton of make-up to go with their mile-high hair.

In case you're wondering these stereotypes aren't limited to simply secular Jews. Orthodox Jews have a few too, depending on their country of origin. They are usually lumped together under the tem dosim however.

So while on the subject of superficially classifying people, I'd like to give a shout out to Noam and Lior (an oleh hadash) because they make secular Judaism look so very appealing.

So now comes the real explanation as to why the Haredi are moving to the West Bank and the inspiration behind their populating the area so.

Photographs of a haredi couple engaging in sexual acts were distributed over the internet in February.

The 11 photographs, which were taken by the young man seen in them, have caused quite a controversy in the hardei community. The photos show a young haredi woman performing oral sex on her partner while exposing her private parts.

The couple in the pictures was identified as haredi by their clothing. The pictures show the young woman wearing a Bet Yaakov Seminary top, while the man wore a typical Hasidic sweater.

“It has become the talk of the town in the haredi community. Everyone sees the pictures, is shocked by them, passes them along, and erases them. A haredi girl needs a lot of guts to be photographed in this way,” a haredi journalist said.

According to Ynet, Israeli settlers in the West Bank are producing three times the amount of offspring as those on the other side of the green line. As the Israeli government has taken action to decrease the number of outposts, the number of caravans in the area has increased to accomodate for the growing population.

Peace Now, an organization committed to establishing peace in the Middle East, compiled the statistics, which also attributed the growing birth rate to the number of Orthodox families moving to haredi communities in the West Bank.

The Haredi have waged their own war on immodest clothing in an attempt to rid Israel of all their problems. The extremists have been collecting clothes in Jerusalem door-to-door for months and finally set their collection on fire on Thursday.

The following is a rundown of inappropriate clothing, girls. Be sure to check your closets and start packing.

Tricot shirts
Lycra shirts and skirts
Open-collared shirts
Short and tight skirts
Skirts with a slit
Skirts with a straight cut
Long or bulky earrings
Clothes and bags in loud, flashy colors
Wigs that are too exclusive
Transparent or colorful stockings
Clunky shoes

No wonder they didn't want me anywhere near The Western Wall.

A religious Jew has chosen jail over house arrest because he says the house arrest ankle bracelet violates Shabbat. I think this particular case illustrates what I've thought for years: If Gentiles left us alone, our own infighting would tear us apart. Case in point: The Haredi riots.

A haredi activist arrested for allegedly pummeling opponents during a violent turf war demanded an exemption this week from wearing a house-arrest monitor on Shabbat.

But a Jerusalem Magistrate's Court judge ruled that if the man does not wear the ankle bracelet monitor at all times, he must go to jail. As a result, Avraham Zarbiv, 24, who first made a name for himself in haredi circles by spearheading an angry and sometimes violent offensive against attempts to enlist yeshiva students in the IDF, was removed this week from house arrest and imprisoned because of his punctilious observance of the Jewish day of rest.

This man is definitely no angel. And yet, the Haredi are threatening riots if he goes to jail this weekend. This would be on top of the riot they threw when a security company arrived after he took the bracelet off.

Various rabbis have given their opinion on the legality of wearing a house arrest bracelet on Shabbat.

Rabbi Haim Kanyevsky, one of the most respected in the Lithuanian community, ruled by proxy that use of the monitoring system on Shabbat was prohibited.

Metzger, quoting Kanyevsky, Rabbi Moshe Yehuda Leib Landau, and Rabbi Tuvia Weiss, head of the Edah Haredit's Rabbinic Court, joined the opposition against the monitoring system. However, none of the rabbis explained why the Zomet Institute's halachic opinion was wrong.

In contrast, Zomet's Rosen explained why he permitted the use of the bracelet. "In the prisoner's house there is an electronic receiver that constantly receives broadcasts from the ankle bracelet," explained Rosen.

"The prisoner's movements do not activate anything. As long as the prisoner does not leave the perimeters of the house he remains within broadcast range of the electronic receiver and no alarm is activated. There is no difference between the ankle bracelet and any conventional battery-powered wrist watch."

I am far from an expert on Halacha, but it seems to me that in this respect, the Haredi don't have a leg to stand on. So to speak.