At last there is outrage, even within their own circles, at the extreme ultra-Orthodox fanatics who think they can bully to achieve their aims. This kind of crude, religious anti-social behavior has been tolerated for too long. Let us hope now the line has been drawn. Some background. Fifty years ago in Israel there were only two ultra-Orthodox enclaves, Bnei Brak…
Author: Jeremy Rosen
Chanukah Then and Now
The story of Chanukah we hear year in and year out is about the triumph of the gallant few Maccabee rebels against the might of the Syrian Greek Empire. There’s a political narrative and a religious narrative that seems as vivid, as relevant, and as disturbing now as it was then. The political narrative includes several elements. A small determined…
Hillary Clinton & Modesty
Hillary Clinton, bless her, chose to berate Israel at a closed conference recently for its attitudes towards women. She specifically mentioned segregated seating on buses serving Charedi neighborhoods and recent decisions limiting the role of women in the armed forces in combat. I’m not sure if her objection to recent moves that permit male soldiers to opt out of mixed…
Can Mir survive?
The Mir Yeshivah that I went to in the 1960s was an intimate place, as indeed was Jerusalem itself–still divided, and small enough so that everyone seemed to know everyone else. After the Six Day War it all changed. Suddenly Jerusalem opened up and the Old City was like a magnet that drew everyone into its secret passages and ancient…
The Passing of Mir – Part 1
Mir Yeshivah today is probably the largest and most famous yeshivah in the world, with some 6,000 students scattered over numerous campuses and buildings. Its head, Rabbi Natan Tzvi Finkel, died recently, and tens of thousands turned out for his funeral. Yet most of the Jewish world, and certainly the non-Jewish world, have no idea who he or Mir is.…
The Chosen
I cannot begin to tell you how much I dislike the expression “The Chosen People”. It is not that I have any problem with what the Bible says. To me it is the most essential text (and also its Talmudic expansion). But the fact is that some of its ideas and laws have fallen by the wayside, even as it…