Groundbreaking in Jerusalem
A groundbreaking ceremony was held June 29 for Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion’s new Taube Family Campus in Jerusalem. On hand to celebrate were (from left) Rabbi Naamah Kelman, dean of the college’s Jerusalem campus; Shana Penn, executive director of Bay Area-based Taube Philanthropies; HUC-JIR President Rabbi Aaron Panken; and Tad Taube, founder and chair of Taube Philanthropies. Taube Philanthropies’ $15 million gift to HUC-JIR is the foundation’s largest grant ever to a Jewish organization.
Israel authorizes 1,400 new homes for West Bank
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu authorized the construction of new housing for Jewish citizens in the West Bank and eastern Jerusalem.
An Israeli official confirmed Netanyahu gave the green light to build 1,400 homes, the Associated Press reported on July 5, primarily in response to the rash of Palestinian attacks on Israelis and visiting Americans since September 2015.
Nearly 600 units will be built inside the Ma’ale Adumim settlements, a suburb near Jerusalem that Israel claims as indisputable territory, with 200 more homes built inside Jerusalem itself. The projected plan also calls for over 600 units to rise in an Arab neighborhood in east Jerusalem.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon criticized Israel for the impact of the new settlements on peace agreements and urged Israel to reverse the decision.
“This raises legitimate questions about Israel’s long-term intentions, which are compounded by continuing statements of some Israeli ministers calling for the annexation of the West Bank,” a Ban spokesman said.
Palestinian official Hanan Ashrawi decried the initiative as evidence Israel is bent on “destroying the viability, integrity and territorial contiguity of a future Palestinian state.”
Peace Now, the Israeli organization that tracks settlement expansion, addressed both the increasing violence of Palestinians against Jews, and the potential problems with placing more housing on land Palestinians hope to claim for their state.
“There is no justification for violence, and the recent deadly attacks on Israelis must be condemned in the strongest possible terms, but settlement construction in the heart of the future of the Palestinian state is endangering both the possibility for peace and two states and the security of Israeli citizens,” the organization said in a statement. — jta
Noisy protest greets rabbinical court on conversion fracas
About 200 demonstrators protested next to the offices of the Israeli Chief Rabbinate during a hearing into the legitimacy of a conversion conducted by American Orthodox Rabbi Haskel Lookstein.
On July 6, the Supreme Rabbinical Court heard the appeal of a case in which a rabbinical court in Petah Tikva rejected the conversion of a woman converted by Lookstein when she applied in April for marriage registration with her Israeli fiancé. The decision was not announced following the hearing.
Lookstein, 84, is the former rabbi of Kehilath Jeshurun, a Modern Orthodox synagogue on Manhattan’s Upper East Side that counts Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner, as members. Trump, a daughter of the presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, converted under Lookstein’s auspices in 2009.
The demonstration was organized by Itim, an organization that helps Israelis navigate Israeli religious bureaucracy, as well as by alumni of the Ramaz School, an elite Manhattan Modern Orthodox preparatory school that Lookstein formerly headed, and Natan Sharansky, chairman of the Jewish Agency for Israel.
“Rabbi Lookstein is an industrious and revered figure. His reputation goes before him and he does not need my defense,” Sharansky told the protesters. “Therefore I am not here to protect him, but protect the State of Israel’s good name.”
Several Israeli lawmakers also attended the demonstration. Likud lawmaker Rabbi Yehuda Glick called on the Chief Rabbinate to serve “the whole of Israel.”
Rabbi Seth Farber, the head of Itim, said there is no religious reason to reject Lookstein. “This is a particular and painful case that exemplifies the abnormal behavior of the entire system,” Farber said. “This extremism will eventually bring about the alienation of the rabbinate from am Yisrael. We all lose in this case.”
Meanwhile, on July 6 in New York, Rabbi David Stav, head of the Tzohar rabbinical organization, met with Lookstein and offered his support.
“This decision further deepens the already troubling divide between Israel and the diaspora,” Stav said following the meeting. “When we have a situation where well-intentioned converts are being disregarded simply because their conversion was officiated by a nationalist and Modern Orthodox rabbi, what message does this send to those interested in converting according to halachah [Jewish law]?” — jta
Israeli security pol: Mark Zuckerberg has terror victims ‘blood’ on his hands
Israel’s minister of public security said Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has the “blood” of recent Israeli terrorism victims on his hands for allowing Palestinian incitement and hate speech to appear on the social media site.
Gilad Erdan on July 2 charged that Facebook impedes Israeli police in their efforts to catch terrorists and sets too high a bar for removing material that incites.
Erdan noted that the Palestinian teenager who murdered Hallel Yaffa Ariel, a 13-year-old Israeli girl, in her bed last week declared his desire to die a martyr to the Palestinian cause in a number of Facebook posts in recent months.
“Facebook, which has brought a positive revolution to the world, since the rise of Islamic State and the wave of terror, has become a monster,” Erdan told Israel’s Channel 2 TV, according to the Times of Israel. “The dialogue, the incitement, the lies of the young Palestinian generation are happening on the Facebook platform.”
On July 2, Facebook issued a Hebrew-language statement refuting Erdan’s charges. The statement said Facebook works “on a regular basis with security organizations and policymakers throughout the world, including in Israel, in order to ensure that people know how to use Facebook safely.”
“There is no room on our platform for content that encourages violence, direct threats, terror or verbal abuse. We … call on people to make use of our reporting tools if they come across content that they believe violates these guidelines, so that we can evaluate each incident and take swift action,” the Facebook statement said. — jta