Serious threat
I agree with Douglas Altabef, but the road to overcoming baseless hatred is a two-way street. While praying, frequently and fervently, for a return to Zion, the Jews of the Diaspora also contributed to the societies which gave them (temporary) asylum, rebuilding their lives in new places of refuge until the next expulsion came.
I cannot believe that all haredim would desert the kollels and yeshivot if students were given a secular education in addition to their religious studies. Indeed, I believe it is a sin to deny boys the education they need to become men able to support the large families haredi men are encouraged to father.
Resentment against the haredim does not come solely from people irked over the absence of haredi men from the ranks of the IDF and from the workforce. Much of the resentment arises from the fact that all Israelis need to deal with haredi officials or members of the state rabbinate when seeking to get married or needing to arrange a funeral for a deceased loved one.
Woe to the person who does not want a strictly Orthodox ceremony (perhaps the bride wants to give the groom a wedding ring or a daughter wants to walk with her brothers in escorting their father’s body to the grave site). Or consider the plight of hundreds of thousands of olim from the former Soviet Union who entered Israel, legally, under the Law of Return, whose mothers weren’t Jewish or who can’t prove that their mothers were Jewish.
These unfortunate souls are unable to marry Jews in Israel because the state rabbinate put barriers in their path to conversion, expecting them to convince their entire families to convert or expecting converts to move immediately from totally secular lifestyles to Jewish observance on a fervently Orthodox level.
What about the prospective bride or groom who is informed that she or he is not actually Jewish because a converted mother has not maintained a totally observant lifestyle? What of the Western oleh or olah who has been active in his or her Conservative or Reform synagogue who fears making aliyah because he or she might not be considered Jewish (if a female forebear was converted by a non-Orthodox rabbi) or because an adopted child might not be considered Jewish in Israel if the parents’ non-Orthodox rabbi converted the child?
Israel is the nation-state of the Jews, not the nationstate of only one type of Jew. The state should be giving the answer to the question of “Who is a Jew” and setting the criteria that must be met for the recognition of conversions made under the supervision of rabbis ordained by the seminaries and yeshivot of the various branches of Judaism worldwide.
TOBY F. BLOCK
Regarding “How much will Israel spend on the environment this year?” (May 29), it is urgent that far more be spent, since climate change is such a serious threat to Israel. Climate experts have projected that temperatures here could reach 49 degrees Celsius (120 degrees Fahrenheit) several times this summer and the Mediterranean Sea could rise 2.5 meters by mid-century, inundating the coastal plain which contains most of our population and infrastructure.
The Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) warned in 2018 that “unprecedented changes” are essential by 2030 in efforts to avert a global climate catastrophe. However, atmospheric CO2 has continued to increase since then.
In order to have a chance to leave a habitable, healthy, environmental sustainable world for future generations, it is essential that averting a climate catastrophe become a central focus with a very significant increase in funding allotted to meet that goal.
RICHARD H. SCHWARTZ