Theocratic Israel

The document above caught a friend’s eye on an Orthodox Jewish website. It is a rabbinical court ruling six days ago in Jerusalem — apparently affirming that a Jewish woman who had intercourse with a non-Jew is fit again to be married to a Jew. It’s impossible to even begin to imagine of a similar ruling in Washington or New York.

Of course, there is no such thing as civil marriage in Israel: marriage and divorce for Jews goes through these courts. In a rabbinical court, elderly long bearded rabbis sit under the seal of the State of Israel and act with the authority of the State. Their rulings are enforced by the police. And these male judges surely lack higher education.

Here’s a translation of the document:

The State of Israel
The Regional Rabbinical Court – Jerusalem
With God’s Help
Rabbi Eliahu Aberjil – Chief Rabbinical Judge

Ruling
After hearing the plaintiff and hearing testimony that the plaintiff currently observes the Torah and commandments and she desires to establish a kosher home, the Rabbinical Court affirms the plaintiff’s return to Judaism, and she is kosher to marry under Jewish law with the exception of kohanim (descendants of priests)

11/11/15

My friend notes that in the comments section at the Orthodox site, there is a discussion about why priests are off limits. One comment replies: “because once a Jewish woman has been with a non-Jew she is considered to be a prostitute and unfit for a priest.” (About 5 percent of Jews are said to be kohanim.)

The power of such courts over Jews’ private lives is often criticized by liberal Zionists who want Israel to become a secular state; but anyone who talks about the influence of Sharia law in Muslim societies ought to be concerned with these courts, too.

And there is a lot of politics here. The reason Israel panders to the ultra-Orthodox is because they produce large families that keeps the Jewish population of Israel big enough to make the fiction of being “a democracy” plausible to the outside world. Just as David Ben-Gurion pandered to the Orthodox for related reasons when the state was founded.

But the ruling of this so-called court illustrates how foreign Israel should be to American Jews.

 

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Without a formally adopted written constitution, the implication is that Israeli civil authorities exist by virtue of a (not-necessarily-public) grant of right from the high priests, which would make them revocable by the religious authorities, also. I also understand that the Chief Priests, one for the Sephardim, one for the Ashkenazim, are elected, and one imagines that only the Sephardim and Ashkenazim are entitled to vote? So religious law defines who is a citizen, who is a Jew, for what purposes, and who votes.

I understand that the US constitution was the first to be written down, that the very idea of writing a form of government into existence was new. Prohibition against laws respecting an establishment of religion, or restricting the free exercise thereof, are the first of the First Amendment rights.

As Sixty Minutes examined the human impact of the Paris terrorist attacks last night, I couldn’t help but wonder how the American public would feel watching a similar interview of victims of Settler aggression, showing the human impact.

Is it not Netanyahu’s mission to continue to escalate hostility between the Israeli and Palestinian people, as justification for greater security measures, greater expansion of settlements, greater oppression? With the effectiveness of Zionist loyalists within governments and media throughout the world, not to mention Mossad agents, his power to prosecute the escalating clash of civilizations as cover for his own mission is formidable. Can this escalation be stopped prior to Netanyahu being ousted from power in Israel?

Other things that a cohen must avoid in order to remain pure are marriage to a divorced woman and contact with a corpse. Only pure cohanim will be able to serve as priests in the Temple when it is restored. For more on the subject see the Facebook page of “Cohanim International Congress”.

PHIL- “But the ruling of this so-called court illustrates how foreign Israel should be to American Jews.”

True enough, and something which I have brought up in the past. However, with Israel being over there and American Jews being over here, Israel has taken on a certain metaphysical aura not subject to empirical scrutiny.

And yet, the Glen Weyl and other “liberals” who are far-left in domestic American politics nevertheless show up in full armor and ready to defend this theocracy.

After all, he even admits he cares far more for them than for the people living in the land of his birth. He’s not alone.

The upshot of this post in the aftermath of Paris: Sure, Muslims shoot up and kill people in the streets of Paris, but don’t forget that Israel has religious courts ruling marriage.

Another case of Phil Weiss preaching to American Jews: you should feel no kinship with the Jews living in Israel.

The first paragraph of the post has absolutely no basis in the text of the letter that is visible. It seems to me that the context is a woman who has converted to Judaism and whose conversion is under question. That seems the most likely explanation of what this refers to. And the first paragraph is something that Phil’s friend informed him about but is not alluded to in any way in the actual visible text of the letter.