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Hundreds of U.S. rabbis protest new Israeli government in public letter

cigaretteman

HR King
May 29, 2001
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Hundreds of U.S. rabbis have signed an open letter protesting Israel’s new hard-line government and pledging to block the most extreme Jewish nationalist members of Prime Minister-designate Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet from speaking in their congregations or organizations.

The letter, drafted by two prominent retired rabbis, drew more than 300 signatures from rabbis in the Reform, Conservative, Renewal and Reconstructing movements of Judaism.

“We, the undersigned, who care deeply about the security and well-being of the democratic State of Israel, are signing this letter of protest, pledging to not invite any members of the RZP bloc — including but not limited to Otzma Yehudit leaders — to speak at our congregations and organizations,” the letter said, referring to the nationalist parties that will fill out the new Netanyahu government.







Several far-right Israeli lawmakers will have ministerial roles in what is being called the most hard-right administration in Israel’s history. In advance of taking office, representatives of those coalition parties have made demands intended to limit the powers of the judiciary and curb the independence of the police.
The rabbis’ letter mentions five proposals now being considered by the incoming government, including overriding rulings of the Israeli Supreme Court, eroding LGBTQ rights, expanding the settlement project in the West Bank and refusing to recognize non-Orthodox streams of Judaism.
“This feels like one action to put forward to fight against what I think is a distorted vision of Jewish values and of responsible government and democracy,” said Rabbi Deborah Waxman, the chief executive of Reconstructing Judaism, a small, liberal branch of American Judaism.



Waxman said that at least 70 of her movement’s rabbis were among the signatories.
The letter was drafted by Rabbi David Teutsch, a former executive director of Reconstructing Judaism, and Rabbi John L. Rosove, a former chair of the Association of Reform Zionists of America.
Since many of the far-right lawmakers do not recognize the U.S.-centered liberal Jewish movements and are unlikely to speak to its members, barring them from U.S. synagogues is symbolic.
But the letter is a sign of the rising tensions between the United States and Israel. The Biden administration has indicated that it will hold Netanyahu personally responsible for the actions of his more-extreme cabinet members and avoid any direct contact with those members.

U.S. Jews, who are predominantly liberal, theologically and politically, harbor rising fears of the new Israeli government.


The letter says the implementation of some of the nationalists’ proposed policies “will cause irreparable harm to the Israel-Jewish Diaspora relationship, as they are an affront to the vast majority of American Jews and our values.”
Rabbi Debra Cantor of B’nai Tikvoh-Sholom, a Conservative congregation in Bloomfield, Conn., told Religion News Service that “this particular flavor of Jewish life is coercive, narrow and flies in the face of democracy, rights for LGBTQ folks and protecting minorities.”
Cantor said she had no hesitation about signing the letter, even as she acknowledged that she was speaking for herself and not her congregation.

Not all U.S. Jews are ready to do battle with the incoming Israeli government.
In a news release congratulating Netanyahu, the American Jewish Committee acknowledged “inflammatory rhetoric” by some members of the coalition but said, “We trust that Israel will continue to uphold the values that have allowed it to stand out as a beacon of freedom in the Middle East and as a source of pride and spiritual sustenance for the Jewish people as a whole.”


Although Netanyahu’s party, Likud, is largely secular, the other parties in his coalition are all religious. About 40 percent of Israelis are secular, and 8 percent are Haredi, or strictly Orthodox. The rest fall between, according to a Pew Research study.
Teutsch, one of the drafter’s of the letter, said it was easy to amass the more than 300 signatures.
“What the letter does is help to provide evidence of how strong our objection is,” he said. “Hopefully it will signal to the Israeli and American government that these changes are not acceptable to most American Jews.”

 
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I am having trouble figuring out one thing Netanyahu wants out of a return to power other than using the levers of power to derail the legal efforts against him.
A wish list was put forward today that included new settlements that are sure to inflame the Palestinians. Another proposal is to give more money to the ultra orthodox who are exempt from military service, and seem to spend their days in religious studies. It's a move that is unpopular with the bulk of Israeli society.
If you want a template of why Donald Trump returning to power is a bad idea, Netanyahu's return is it. He's ceded control to every extremist, nut and fool in Israel in order to get back into power.
 
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