Effing Rabbi SOBs!

[eumelia]

I'm tired.
I'm never taking a course that requires me to wake up at six AM.
Or alternately I could start going to sleep at reasonable hours...
But fuck that right?

But the fact that I'm tired won't stop me from reporting this shit, that went down in the beginning of last weekend and which may or may not be resolved.
It pissed me off royally.
Beyond the tragic and cruel nature of these invalidated conversions, it spotlights a grave and important matter about the relationship of religion and state in Israel.
That it is rotten.

I got into an argument about what is acceptable involvement of religious establishment in the state.
Personally, I think they can fuck off, since these establishments are chauvinistic, sexist and racist.

There is no civil marriage in Israel, the closest we have is common-law unions which were established so that "un-marriageable" couples could have legal standing.
Who are the "un-marriageable" you ask - they are members of the population that cannot get married through the Rabbanut. The system was initially built for couples who according to Halakha couldn't marry each other: Cohens and divorces mainly. But this also includes Mamzerim (bastards) who cannot marry through the Rabbanut, Jews cannot marry Muslims or Christians, nor can Muslims and Christians marry each other, there is no same-sex marriage either.
This, is of course easily solved by marrying elsewhere; Cyprus, Canada, the USA, Anywhere that allows foreign nationals to marry.

And after marriage (which brings great civil benefits) comes divorce (more and more these days and don't let anyone tell you otherwise).
It's a great invention, Jews are practical that way.
Of course it is the Husband that must grant the Wife the Get (divorce), she can "choose" whether to accept it or not. Not that the man would give a shit, all he needs in order to have a Halachikly legal family (while not divorced to his first wife) is something like a 100 signatures from 100 Rabbis and he can marry and have (halachicly)legal children - bigamy and polygamy are illegal in Israel - so he can ignore with impunity the pleas his Wife makes so that they can be rid of each other. There are sanctions, monetary usually, but go beg a Yeshivah Bochur to pay alimony when he can't sustain himself without a wife, or just a run of the mill asshole who doesn't want to pay alimony and that putting him in jail only postpones the writ of execution of whatever he owes his wife, his lawer and his children should he have any. The wife, due to all this, is now an Aguna - another side effect of the Rabbis revocation of the conversions - there are hundreds, if not thousands, of Agunot women in Israel.

My side of the argument was that we either take the anti-patriarchy hammer and bash the Rabbanut until nothing is left of that racist, sexist establishment, or have the state acknowledge the fact that there is more to Judaism than Orthodoxy so that that the pluralism we pretend to have in Israel have some basis in reality.

A mixture of reform and revolution - I'm more keen on rebuilding from the grassroots, but others kind of like the way things are... or at the very least don't mind the way things are; seeing as the privilege of being born Jewish has the added bonus that no one will be nosing around our private life and checking to see if we're actually being Jewish.

It makes me sick.

I've heard people say it takes time for these things to change, after all blacks in the USA only got civil rights in the 60's of the 20th century and the women only got the vote less than a hundred years ago.
Change is slow but it happens.

Yes, change is slow... when those in power have no incentive to change, when the atrocities that these establishments perpetrate don't touch their lives, then change can be slow.
When the status quo is just fine and dandy to The Man, then change can be slow.

Classical liberal* bullshit.

*No offense to any liberals who may be reading this.

Comments

[schemingreader.livejournal.com]

Excuse me for saying this, but thank God someone in the hierarchy at the rabbanut hasn't lost his mind. Since I'm actually somewhat observant, I couldn't help but notice that this ruling coincided with parashat Kedoshim, which contains the verse that is the basis for the halachic prohibition on hassling converts. YES! The only thing that has made me this angry was learning that the Israeli army was pulling down olive trees (another biblical prohibition that's extremely explicit.) As far as I'm concerned, the State of Israel's rabbinate should sponsor pork weenie roasts and bread on Pesach and, and, and mixed dancing before they have the chutzpah to promulgate a ruling that harasses NINE YEARS OF GOVERNMENT SPONSORED CONVERTS on parashat Kedoshim.

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

I know, when I read the article I felt a kindling of hope reburn, because during this weekend, my faith in the Rabbnut, which was already slim, had been practically blown out completely.

A little OT: if you don't mind me asking (and you obviously don't have to answer) what stream of Judaism do you observe?

[schemingreader.livejournal.com]

I consider myself post-denominational, because my havurah is unaffiliated. Also, if I lived in another place, I could see myself attending an Orthodox, Conservative, Reform or Reconstructionist congregation--depending on how welcoming they were. Before I got married I was leaning further right, but have changed to accommodate my husband. Unfortunately, since of course that violates my belief-system like nothing else! Oh well.

I don't eat treif and I don't do work on Shabbat, and I go to schul usually about once a week, if that gives you a picture.

[hemlock-sholes.livejournal.com]

Remember, the marriage ceremony also has something called a "Ketubah" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ketubah).
This is a pre-nuptial agreement which guarantees the wife a certain sum if the wedding is dissolved for any reason.
Note - the wife, not the wife's father.

A prenuptial dating from over a thousand years ago. Maybe the crazy rabbis who invented this were on to something?
Nah, they're Rabbis - they MUST be wrong ;)

Sometimes the Man, because he/she/they/it are in a position of responsibility, feel that gradual change is better than abrupt change.

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

According to Sharia laws a married woman is entitled to an inheritance of her own, יעני, זכות קניין.
A right of ownership doesn't mean that right is executed. Virginia Woolf said that in order to be independent a woman needs an income of 500 Pounds Sterling (granted this is the 1910', but you get the picture), a woman had the right to divorce her husband for the same reasons a man could (in England) by the 1840's) and etc. etc. etc.
The fact that is it written, doesn't make it so and that is precisely the problem with these kind of "gradual changes" it tries to cure the symptom without targeting the illness which is the inherent sexism and racism of the Israeli Orthodox Rabbanut. A woman a valor a daughter of Israel may be, but what good does that valor do when the system is built against her and that walking in Bnei Brak I'm called עוכרת ישראל and that even though we're a "Jewish Democratic" country, no where is there written in any חוק יסוד an equality clause... under the law I have the right to dignity, honour and respect... not equality.
I suggest you read Orit Kamir's blog, she has a lot to say on that subjct: http://www.notes.co.il/orit/

You can cite the law and tradition as much as you like, it doesn't change the material reality.

[schemingreader.livejournal.com]

Revoking the conversions, if that decision is sustained, won't cause there to be more agunot. The rabbis are actually opposed to making agunot. In the case that precipitated all of this, they said that the invalidation of the conversion also made the original marriage contract invalid.

Most Jewish religious courts do not like to create agunot. The Israel rabbinate is actually better about this than some courts in the US. They throw men in jail! It's more that they are irrational and hypocritical and sexist and have all this power over women's lives that frightens me.

I have been more concerned with the children of converts who are enrolled in state religious schools and could be expelled as non-Jews. It's one thing to know that you can't be buried next to your spouse, or that you might have to get married or remarried in Cyprus, but what do you do if you are a religious child in a national religious school? That's what I thought was cruel about it.

[thecityofdis.livejournal.com]

have the state acknowledge the fact that there is more to Judaism than Orthodoxy so that that the pluralism we pretend to have in Israel have some basis in reality

Yessss.

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

Indeed.

[lotus82.livejournal.com]

Oh, my husband and I [married in Cyprus even though we were "eligible" for Rabanut, but we hate their guts] think that the fact that you have to get divorced through the Rabanut is a ploy to prevent divorces. See, if you've gotten married through them, you know they're assholes, and you don't want to meet them again. And if you skipped them, you already hate them and never want to have anything to do with them, so you wouldn't want to go there. Thus, you would rather work things out with your spouse =)

I've been reading discussions on this issue from the Russian-Israeli part of LJ. I've read suggestions from religious people that if you've gone through giyur, you must be a subject to random, unannounced, any-time-of-day check-ups to see whether you're keeping the mitzvot properly. As in, whenever they feel like it, they can come to your house and go through your kitchen and your stuff, and if something's not kosher enough for them, that's it, there goes your giyur. Big Brother much? Stalinism much?

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

Interesting theory, it does sound logical! :)

I'd like to see how those "religious" people feel if they were, you know, persecuted for actually keeping mitzvot, like in, oh I dunno, practically every country Jews lived in prior to the 1930's and are still are in certain countries.

*headdesk*