FROM OUR ARCHIVES
50 YEARS AGO
November 22, 1967
Muslims from abroad who wished to make a pilgrimage to the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem during Ramadan in December were welcome “in principle,” according to IDF Central Command and the military government. Every application for entry would be judged “on its own merits” though no such applications had yet to be received.
The Jerusalem District Town Planning Commission approved a compromise plan for temporary arrangements at the Western Wall compound. The plan called for leaving the level lower area directly in front of the wall essentially as it was. The raised area 25 meters back would be changed into a gradual slope which would be separated from the lower area by a 60-cm.-high wall of two rows of stones. Two approach passages 10 meters wide would be laid down. The original plan, which was turned down three weeks earlier, called for leaving the raised area at its original 2.5-meter height, as a kind of terrace for people wishing to visit the Wall. No restrictions would be enforced in this section. It was understood that the Ministerial Committee on the Holy Places was considering a proposal that a section of the Wall be open for visitors without any restrictions as to gender.
25 YEARS AGO
November 22, 1992
Army generals and MKs had mixed reactions to prime minister Yitzhak Rabin’s televised interview in which he threatened to order any army officer suspected of talking to the press about the Tze’elim training disaster, in which five soldiers were killed, to take a lie-detector test. Rabin had issued a warning to senior IDF officers a day earlier, calling on them not to take part in the public debate regarding the lethal training mishap and the ongoing dispute over how the military censor handled the incident.
An association of Orthodox rabbis in Los Angeles strongly condemned a mortuary that refused to assist a Muslim family on the grounds that it served only Jewish clients. According to the Albahri family at the center of the case, the Jordanian national and his wife were too distraught after their son was stillborn, and asked relatives to arrange for the transportation and storage of the baby’s body. A mortuary employee allegedly told the relatives, “We don’t pick up Muslim children. We only pick up Jews.” SCI, the largest American funeral corporation and owner of the mortuary, acknowledged that the establishment only performed services for Jews, and that such a restriction was legal as long as other mortuaries were available. However, the Albahris claimed that they made it clear they were asking only for the pick-up, storage and refrigeration of the body, and would later arrange for a Muslim religious service on their own. In a unanimous resolution, the Rabbinical Council of California sharply condemned the action and attitude of the SCI mortuary, saying it wished to clarify “the erroneous impression that Jewish tradition prohibits a Jewish mortuary from assisting in the burial of a non-Jew. In fact,” the statement continued, “the Talmud and subsequent law codes explicitly require that Jews assist in the burial of non-Jews… [an act which] promotes a more peaceful world.”