JewsByChoice.org

I just received an email from Rabbi Menachem Creditor of Netivot Shalom and the Shefa Network regarding a Conversion Bill that’s about to be presented to the Knesset. I’ve already posted about it here but I thought I should pass along Rabbi Creditors request on the main blog.

Despite my own burnout and apathy on this subject, I would urge everyone to take a couple of minutes and make your voices heard on this. It is our future that’s being decided here after all. I know I’m going to fly off an email, I hope you will to.

UPDATE: Rabbi Ginsberg has uploaded a YouTube video sharing his thoughts on the issue . Also the Jpost has a great editorial up on the subject.  Here is a copy from a forum thread I started this evening.

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URGENT ACTION REQUESTED regarding Knesset Conversion Bill

Dear Friends,

We need your help on a matter of urgency concerning a bill that will come before the Knesset. We have received word from our colleagues in Israel that a bill may be put forward for passage as soon as tomorrow which affects conversion and we need as many of us and our congregants to forward the following letter to Prime Minister Netanyahu and to your Israeli Ambassador.

The bill sponsored by MK David Rotem of Yisrael Beitenu, deals with both the authority of the Chief Rabbinate and matters of Conversion. The Rotem Bill concerns three matters:

1. It grants legal authority to the Chief Rabbinate for Conversions (while until now there was de facto recognition this gives legal recognition to the role of the Chief Rabbinate in this area) and would make it much more difficult for conversions to be performed by our Movement, by more “open-minded” Orthodox rabbis, and by Reform rabbis.

2. It provides for the ability of local rabbis in Israel to establish conversion courts. This is a good part of the bill of which we are supportive because it will potentially permit the establishment of more forward looking conversion courts. However, the first part of the bill passes, the Chief Rabbinate may declare these courts null and void, which would obviate any cause for our support.

3. Section 3 of this bill is highly problematic. Here is the summary of Section 3 by our teacher, Rabbi Reuven Hammer:

“Section 3 of the proposed conversion bill that we strongly oppose states that anyone that who entered Israel as a non-Jew and then converted to Judaism-either in Israel or the Diaspora would not be eligible for citizenship under the Law of Return. First of all this is exactly the case that we now have before the Supreme Court, asking that our conversions in Israel be recognized and citizenship rights granted to our converts. This is an attempt to go around the Supreme Court. Secondly, the wording is so vague that it could mean that if such a person had visited Israel at any time, no matter when, their conversion would not be recognized for citizenship in the future. Thirdly this would be the first time that Israel is officially making a distinction between one who is born a Jew and a righteous convert, something that we find deplorable and unsupportable in Jewish Law. Since our movement is the movement that is most involved in conversion in America and elsewhere, we and our congregants are the primary target of the bill. We urge everyone to make their protest known immediately to the Israeli government.”

WE STRONGLY URGE THAT YOU CALL UPON YOUR COMMUNITIES TONIGHT TO FORWARD THE FOLLOWING LETTER OR ITS EQUIVALENT TO THE PRIME MINISTER AND YOUR AMBASSADOR.

The Honorable Benjamin Netanyahu

Prime Minister of Israel
Office of the Prime Minister

Jerusalem, Israel

Dear Prime Minister Netanyahu,

We write to request your immediate intervention to prevent passage of the legislation being brought forward by MK David Rotem (‫הצעת חוק הרבנות הראשית תיקון- סמכות בעניני גיור)

Passage of this bill in its present form especially section 3, will have the effect of providing for a path to alter the Law of Return or, at the least, cause undue hardship to anyone in Israel who has come from Diaspora communities and seeks conversion in Israel.

Sadly, this is reminiscent of those attempts in 1997 to enact similar legislation which ultimately led to the establishment of the Ne’eman Commission.

While we are supportive of your efforts to create greater accessibility to conversion courts in Israel and have done all we can to aid in this effort, the overall impact of the Rotem Bill will set back these efforts. Moreover this legislation will adversely impact the work of our Masorti movement and its members in Israel. This we cannot abide.

Even more regrettably, should this bill be enacted, it will exacerbate a widening gap between Diaspora and Israel communities, which we are all working very hard to avoid.

Therefore, we believe it is imperative that you, Israel’s leader, who cares so deeply about the well-being of our people, intervene and urge withdrawal of this bill.

The email for Prime Minister Netanyahu is:

Prime.Minister’sOffice@it.pmo.gov.il

For Amb. Oren’s office:

info@washington.mfa.gov.il

For a list of other Ambassadors click here

This just came to me via email and I thought it was worth mentioning.

This evening the  NewCAJE is hosting a webinar featuring one of my very favorite rabbis. I’m going to try to make this if I can as it’s sure to be some good learning and proceeds are going to support and important organization. Hope some of you can join me. Also please feel free to pass on this information to anyone you think may be interested.

Oh and if you are interested in getting a taste of what Rav Artson is like check this out.

NEWCAJE LehrhausOnLine

PRESENTS:

Rabbi Bradley Shavit Artson

Almighty? No way!

Learning to Love the God you Actually Believe In

LIVE AND INTERACTIVE MARCH 3rd

6pm Pacific/9pm Eastern

also recorded for learning at your convenience

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In his youth, Brad Artson grew up struggling with the notion of a God.  Later, when he became a rabbi and took his first pulpit, he noticed that many congregants struggle with concepts of God  that reflect what they believe are the dominant theology of Judaism.Holding these ideas about God, did not seem to serve people well when they experienced the most difficult moments of their lives. In this webinar, Artson will suggest that there are problems with the dominant notions of theology. He will explain that he believes that many, many Jews have rejected these ideas which leave them in a qandry about their religious beliefs. His approach, called “process theology” articulates the ideas that are actually held by many Jews into a theological language that everyone can understand.

Rabbi Artson will raise many questions in his presentation including:

What is the nature of God that most people have been taught?

How does our concept of God affect how we feel about the things that happen to us in our lives

How does a personal God relate to human beings?

How can each of us find the God that we can believe in?

This teaching will give you a new perspective on HOW to think about God. You may wonder…

• Why no one ever told you this information before?
• Whether the God Artson describes is really the God of the Bible and the prayerbook?
• Whether this God still demands prayer or good works or mitzvot from you?

Click here for info and to register!

Wow it’s already been close to a month since my last post and I’m happy to report that in that time we’ve made a lot of progress regarding the new website design.  As I’m sure you can see by the new layout and new features now available here at JewsByChoice.org, we are trying to move in a fresh direction with the revamped site.  Basically, we’d like to be a little bit less of a one trick pony then we were in our first incarnation.  Since day one hour aim has always been to provide an online space, where Jews by choice can network with other JBCs as well as, explore and engage with Jewish identity, culture and tradition, in short more of a social networking site.

Unfortunately our first attempt never really panned out when we started this site back in 2007.  I think part of the problem is that the technology just wasn’t there yet.  Also I suppose I’m partly to blame because I didn’t have the skills to pull off what it is we were trying to accomplish.  Lastly, I don’t think that we had all of the right people involved to make things work as well as it could have.  That’s not to suggest that our contributors weren’t great because they all gave 110%.  It’s more that we (meaning me) probably needed to have some professional/paraprofessional advice and help in terms of management in project planning.  You know taking the vision and breaking it down into specific and attainable steps.  Fortunately, I now have a little bit more support from people working in the Jewish professional community and this should make things a little smoother this time round.

Anyhow, let me try to rein in this rant a little bit and get to the point.

Basically I just wanted to let everyone know that after a month of closed beta testing  we are now ready to open up registration to anyone who’s interested in participating as part of our (hopefully) growing community of engaged JBCs.  So to the people who have been e-mailing me regarding helping out, as well as anyone else who is interested in participating, I’d like to invite you to head over to our registration page and sign up for a member account.

Again please keep in mind that we are still very much in a beta phase, so the site is going to be changing (probably a fair amount) over the next few months.  Also there is bound to be bugs and glitches so please be patient with us as we continue to refine things here on the site.

With that I would like to say goodnight and thank you to everyone who’s been e-mailing and/or showing support in other ways as we work on getting the new version of the site up and running.

Be well
Avi M

After an extended hiatus it’s time for JewsByChoice.org  to kick back into gear.  While it’s true that our forum has continued (albeit slowly) to generate some discussion over the last year or so, our blog has been pretty much dead in the water.  We have not had any serious contributor generated content, including news, opinion or resource sharing for a year and a half if not two.  Anyhow all of that is about to change because the site is currently in the process of being overhauled and relaunched.

It’s still too early for me to say exactly how things are going to pan out in terms of what’s going to be staying the same and what will be changing but suffice it to say, my goal is to make this site much more interactive and community driven than the first version was. I’m currently in the process of sorting out how to best proceed so that we can keep as much old content as possible while still allowing things to evolve in a fresh and new direction.

Some of you (assuming anyone still reads this, while I know people do, because we’re still getting anywhere from 100 to 200 unique visits a day but anyhow,) may have noticed that our content from the original blog is currently not available.  Not to worry, all of the databases have been backed up and I hope to get that content back online in the not-too-distant future.  Whether this content ends up being integrated into the new website or archived somewhere else online still needs to be sorted out but if everything goes according to plan it will all be available again.

Anyhow, stay tuned for more updates and in the meantime if anyone is interested in discussing issues related to JBCness feel free to check out our (old) discussion forum which is still online and open for business.

Looking forward to seeing you all on the new website soon

Avi Montigny