Judy Maltz (Haaretz)
By Judy Maltz (Haaretz)
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Fast Forward Ezra Schwartz Was Going to Illegal West Bank Outpost When Murdered
An American student killed in a terror attack last month was on his way to do community service at an illegal West Bank outpost, Haaretz has found, adding to the mounting questions about what precautions are taken by study abroad programs in Israel when their participants travel to particularly dangerous areas. An investigation by Haaretz…
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News Will Jerusalem Violence Kill Egalitarian Prayer Plan for Western Wall?
The proposed egalitarian prayer space at the Western Wall, which was meant to serve non-Orthodox Jews worldwide, looks like the latest casualty of the terror wave hitting Israel. Progress on the initiative – supported both by the Israeli government and Jewish organizations – had been slow in coming, even before tensions over Jerusalem’s holy sites…
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Fast Forward Jews Say Bye-Bye Brazil as Economy and Crime Bite
Fruit smoothie and juice bars come a dime a dozen in Tel Aviv. But this is probably the only one that sells fresh-squeezed sugarcane juice mixed with pineapple – a Brazilian classic. It is definitely the only such establishment that bakes its own Brazilian cheese rolls, otherwise known as pao de queijo, and serves them…
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Israel News Orthodox Conversion Rebels Challenge Rabbinate on Marriage
In the latest challenge to Israel’s supreme religious authority, several Orthodox rabbis have begun to perform weddings for converts who are not recognized by the Chief Rabbinate. In recent months, Haaretz has learned, these rabbis officiated at three such weddings involving Israelis converted by a new alternative rabbinical court. Their names cannot be published, however,…
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Fast Forward Jewish Agency Will Aid Conservative and Reform Conversions
As part of a major new initiative it is launching, the Jewish Agency plans to provide conversion services abroad not only to Orthodox communities – but also to Conservative and Reform communities. Speaking with Haaretz, Jewish Agency Chairman Natan Sharansky said: “We have no intention of discriminating between one stream of Judaism and another.” Last…
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Life A Single Mother Takes On the Chief Rabbinate
Martina Ragacova had never planned to become the symbol of a growing uprising against Israel’s draconian conversion laws. All this Czech-born woman wanted was to have her conversion recognized so that she could live and work in Israel like any other Jew. Neither did Ragacova have any intention of challenging the Orthodox-run establishment that controls…
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Life The Rosa Parks of Israeli Cemeteries
Susan Ahyed’s long fight for justice, culminating in an Supreme Court victory last week, began with a rather morbid thought. A former New Yorker, Ahyed had been attending an old friend’s funeral in her hometown of Netanya in early 2011, when she suddenly noticed the signs pointing women in one direction and men in the…
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Fast Forward Women of Wall Splinter Group Reads Torah Scroll at Kotel
For the second time in less than two months, a feminist prayer group has succeeded in bringing a Torah scroll into the women’s section of the Western Wall, in defiance of existing regulations at the Jewish holy site in Jerusalem. This morning, an organization known as Original Women of the Wall held a prayer service…
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