Kerry, Abbas discuss framework deal in Ramallah
Report says ‘declarations’ may be released to the media on Saturday, after an additional scheduled meeting between the two
January 3, 2014, 7:18 pm
2
US Secretary of State John Kerry
met with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah
Friday evening to discuss a framework agreement that will address the
outlines of a final peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians.Abbas
and Kerry, who arrived in the region Thursday, are expected to meet
again Saturday morning. At the end of that scheduled meeting, some
“declarations” may be released to the media, reported Israel Radio.Kerry has said Israel and the Palestinians
will have to face tough choices in the coming week. Speaking Thursday at
a joint press conference — before the first of several planned meetings
between him and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — Kerry said leaders
on both sides already knew what would be contained in a US-drafted
framework agreement, and added that an agreement was not “mission
impossible.”Netanyahu is reportedly ready to continue
talks on the basis of the framework deal, which has not been made
public, even if it references a Palestinian state based on the pre-1967
lines — provided he is not required to sign it.But a framework accord may not be enough to
secure a subsequent face-to-face meeting between Netanyahu and Abbas, an
indication of the wide gaps that remain.Kerry’s proposals, which reportedly provide
for the presence of IDF troops to secure the West Bank-Jordanian border
after a permanent deal is reached, have reportedly been rejected by
Abbas. The sides also differ widely on possible land-swap arrangements,
and are reportedly deadlocked on some core issues, including Jerusalem
and the repatriation of refugees and their descendants.Kerry’s arrived in Israel amid reported plans
by Netanyahu to authorize the construction of 1,400 homes over the
pre-1967 Green Line — 600 in East Jerusalem and 800 in nearby West Bank
settlements. Abbas has urged the US to block the plans and on Tuesday
threatened to rally the UN against Israel’s settlements, which he termed
a “cancer.”Israeli officials decided to delay announcing plans for new settlement construction until after Kerry leaves the region.
Earlier Friday, during a meeting with the US
secretary, Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman stressed that, although
dialogue between Israel and the Palestinians was “important,” any
preliminary accord would leave many issues unresolved.Liberman cited the Palestinian refugees as an
example of such an issue, and said nearly three million refugees would
need to be integrated into the Palestinian state, a scenario that could
lead to unrest.“It is likely that, after an agreement is
reached, some other countries in the region will want to transfer the
Palestinian refugees who currently reside in their territory,” he said,
according to Channel 2 News.“That would mean that, to the 800,000
Palestinians who live in the Palestinian Authority today, about three
million refugees will be added, and this may make the humanitarian
situation there very difficult. This will bring frustration, violence
and a security deterioration.”The foreign minister suggested that issues
such as refugees be addressed sooner rather than later, before the
signing of an interim agreement.Yifa Yaakov and Raphael Ahren contributed to this report
Avi Weiss not the only US Orthodox rabbi rejected by Israel’s rabbinate’
Critics see a growing trend in Israeli chief rabbinate to question legitimacy of overseas rabbis, and warn of divisive repercussions
January 3, 2014, 3:17 pm
28-The times of Israel
True story: Two young women
entered the Jerusalem municipal rabbinate within a month of each other
seeking to begin the process of registering for their upcoming weddings.
The first, Liat, had attended Jewish day school, belonged to a Jewish
youth group, and brought in her parents’ ketuba, or ritual marriage
contract, from a wedding that had been performed by an Orthodox rabbi in
the United States.The
second, Ahuva, didn’t grow up in a religiously observant home, had a
patch-work Jewish education and little documentation proving her
Jewishness. But she was able to produce a letter written by an Israeli
rabbi who knew her long-lost cousins from an ultra-Orthodox settlement
outside of Jerusalem stating she shared the same yichus (lineage) as
that family, and was therefore Jewish.With a healthy boost of Vitamin P — a
euphemism for the Hebrew “protekzia,” also described as “it’s not what
you know, but who you know” — Ahuva sailed through the registration
process. Liat, meanwhile, spent months jumping through hoops in an
effort to produce documentation proving her Jewishness and bachelorhood.That was ten years ago. Recently things have
gotten a lot worse for Jews from abroad who wish to be married through
the Israeli rabbinate.
This October, in a widely publicized case, the
Israeli rabbinate rejected the halachic authority of prominent New York
Rabbi Avi Weiss when a couple from his congregation who had made aliyah
sought to be married in Israel.A third party was handling the couple’s case
with the rabbinate and succeeded in finding an alternative route to
vouch for their Jewishness, enabling them to marry. Neither the couple
nor Weiss were notified of the incident until several months later.ITIM,
an Israeli nonprofit that helps Jews, mostly immigrants, navigate the
country’s religious bureaucracy, deals with such tough cases.This isn’t the first (nor is it likely to be
the last) time ITIM has heard of the Israeli rabbinate’s refusal to
accept testimony from American Orthodox rabbis. According to the group’s
director, Rabbi Seth Farber, who has helped 750 immigrant couples wed
in the past six years, there have been six additional cases of rejected
testimony from Orthodox rabbis since October. In all instances solutions
were found and the weddings held without delay.“This story is not just about Rabbi Avi Weiss,” says Farber, though Weiss and his congregation are certainly victims.
Head of the non-profit religious-Zionist organization Ne’emanei Torah Va’Avodah that represents Weiss in Israel, also believes “Rabbi Avi Weiss is just a symptom of the problem.”In a letter released this week, the
rabbinate’s legal adviser wrote that Weiss’s testimony was dismissed
because complaints had reached the Israeli rabbinate of his lax
“halachic commitment.” Weiss is the famous founder of Open Orthodoxy’s
Yeshivat Chovevei Hatorah, is involved with the new Yeshivat Maharat program for women, and has controversially ordained women in the past.“If the rabbinate would say Weiss’s testimony
was excluded because he is doing a, b, or c, then okay, but everything
is hidden and there are no criteria,” says Shetah.
A lawyer for the organization, Assaf Benmelch,
adds, “This is a scandal. The rabbinate is legally hurting him, without
telling him and without [granting him] a hearing. Even to take away a
driver’s license there is a hearing.”Farber says ITIM identified this trend a year
ago, when he began noticing the threshold of religious observance
demanded of overseas rabbis going up considerably, he says. He cites two
reasons for the change: “the objective factor:” there is no central
body of Orthodoxy in America; and the “subjective” one: growing distrust
of the American Jewish community within the ranks of the Israeli
rabbinate.
Chief
Ashkenazi Rabbi David Lau (left) and Sephardi Chief Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef
attend a meeting of the Rabbinate Council in Jerusalem on November 04,
2013. (photo credit: Flash90)
“We’ve reached a point of critical mass, like
in the case of conversion in 2006, where the rabbinate is saying, ‘We’re
going to assume everybody is not ok,’” says Farber.Since the Weiss scandal broke there have been whispers of a “blacklist” of US rabbis in the Israeli rabbinate.And, according to Farber, there is now a list
of “kosher” rabbis, started about two and a half years ago by mid-level
rabbinate bureaucrats with little understanding of American Jewry. The
officials had gone through the rabbinate’s files for the past 20 years
and compiled a list of all the American rabbis the rabbinate had worked
with.Farber stresses this list is “as capricious as
it comes,” and not binding, but is nevertheless used as a basis of
acceptability in the rabbinate today. Weiss should have appeared on such
a list, and probably was, says Farber, until factional politics
intervened.“The rabbinate is a public institution and can’t continue operating like a shtetl, on the basis of who you know.”But in a letter to MK Elazar Stern this week,
the rabbinate wrote it is familiar with the different streams of Judaism
in the US, and the lack of regulation in who is called “Orthodox.”
Stating that it is not enough to rely on a rabbi’s personal testimony
for an assessment of his religious observance, the rabbinate letter
asks, “How can we suggest criteria for rabbis who are themselves elected
without criteria?”
Farber is not the only Orthodox voice calling
for greater transparency and the publicizing of the Israeli rabbinate’s
criteria for accepting testimony from overseas rabbis.Ne’emanei Torah Va’Avodah is working towards
a democratization of religious services in Israel and a separation of
religion and politics. The group still sees the state acting as a
regulating body for religious services, but would enable Israeli Jewish
communities to choose their own rabbis, rather than be forced to accept
government-appointed rabbis in communities and neighborhoods throughout
the country.In Ne’emanei Torah Va’Avodah’s model, “all the
denominations can play on our field. We want to open up religious
services and put as many players as possible in there, from Israel and
the world.”In practice, the group’s proposal would see
non-Orthodox movements and representatives from the Diaspora weighing in
on personal status and life-cycle issues such as conversion and
marriage.Today, however, there is neither transparency
nor inclusion. The rabbinate’s role as the sole arbiter of Jewish
life-cycle events gives it an almost papal status in the lives of many
Israelis.
The religiously observant world has become
used to insults being hurled at Reform or Conservative Jews, says
Benmelech. Now, he says, the rabbinate is insulting all Modern Orthodox
in Israel and the Diaspora.
“Today it is Avi Weiss, tomorrow it could be
any rabbi. Every rabbi who hears this story should be shocked and speak
his mind,” says Benmelech.Though the Shulhan Aruch states any Jew who
affirms he is Jewish should be believed unless there is reason to doubt
him, the practice in Israel has been to get additional confirmation to
remove all doubt, says Farber. “According to halacha, we can trust”
people beyond the narrow circles of “Orthodox rabbis of a certain
ideological posture.”Even 25 years ago, he says, no one would have questioned a rabbi’s testimony.“Right now the rabbinate is exporting its
isolationist postures to the Jewish world at large, and that has to be
curtailed, because it’s not just bad for the rabbinate, it’s bad for the
Jewish people and Israel,” he warns.
