Ajax Football Club promotes Chillul Shabbos!

Guest post from "A Frum sports-lover"

So now it is not only the AJN that encourages and sponsors Chillul Shabbos but also the Ajax Football Club together with the help of a bunch of sponsors who shamelessly advertise a "Community Day" where boys and girls, young and old get together and desecrate the holy Shabbos.

This outrageous and disgraceful violation must be condemned by not only observant Jews but even those who may not label themselves as such - but hold dear the traditional way of life of our people.

And to my friend Sam Lipski, what were you thinking? You are, as we all know, a warm-hearted Jew who knows far more about genuine Yiddishkeit than most of the community. How could you in your role as head of the Pratt Foundation approve such a sponsorship? (And really, do you really think that you are doing any favours for the Neshama of the late Dick Pratt, by spending his money and using his name to promote Shabbos desecration!?  Avu iz dein seichel? Why not get the AJN to headline a report on this event with "Chillul Shabbat in memory of Dick Pratt"?)

 

And where are you, RCV, COSV and our choshuveh Rabbonim? I have yet to hear that any of you has publicly condemned this Chillul Shabbos bifresiya. With the Yamim Noraim upon us, you have opportunity to beמוחה  with a צעקה גדולה ומרה.

Please don't take this lightly. Remember what Chazal say: (שבת נד ב):

 מי שיש בידו למחות על אנשי בתו, ואינו מוחה – נתפס על אנשי ביתו; באנשי עירו, ואינו מוחה – נתפס על אנשי עירו; בכל העולם כולו, ואינו מוחה – נתפס על כל העולם כולו

And as most of the Australian Rabbinate identifies with Chabad, let me quote the Alteh Rebbe זצ''ל in his Tanya:  ! מי שיש בידו למחות ואינו מוחה נקרא רשע

RCV - on Shuls and alcohol

We'd like to take some credit for this most recent statement by the RCV - which follows on to our recent post:

However we notice that they haven't considered Kashrut matters - something raised by readers of this blog.



Christians adopting Jewish culture and traditions - but what about our rabbis?

Astounding article in the NY Times.

While locally we are getting reports that some of Melbourne's orthodox rabbis are permitting deviations from traditional Chuppah ceremonies, it seems that non-Jews, davka, are adopting some of our minhagim!

A little bird told us that at the recent meeting of the RCV the majority of attendees, despite agreeing that it is unacceptable, couldn't bring themselves to officially condemn one of their members who has incorporated a 'double-ring' ceremony under the Chuppah.

 While our rabbis these days have wider, blacker hats and longer beards than those of the post-war years, they seem far less ‘allergic’ to reforms than their predecessors. Whilst our research revealed that the 'double-ring' thing was invented by the American jewellery industry in the late 19th century it has been adopted by many churches as well as Reform clergy.

Hopefully the rabbi/s permitting this type of deviation will not go all the way and use the procedure and ritual for such ceremonies composed by L. Ron Hubbard the founder of the "Church" of Scientology.

But seriously, seeing that most of the rabbis are deeply orthodox and Chabad they should seriously consider the words of one of their colleagues, Rabbi Yosf Resnick on Chabad.org, who states that such a ceremony 'cancel's out' the Halachicly required ring-giving by the groom to the bride.

To quote: "...When a woman gives a man a ring in return, they are simply exchanging articles of value. They could exchange blenders, too. Now they have just made a trade, and not effected a change of her status, to a married woman. The legal transaction implied by the groom giving the bride a ring has now been matched one for one, and thereby cancelled. Her status remains unchanged. It is as if the bride has not received anything at all, or as if she has given back the gift..."

It would be wise of our rabbis to take urgent action and heed the words of Chazal: יפה שעה אחת קודם

 

The Austins’ was not an interfaith marriage. Nor was their ceremony some sort of multicultural mashup. Both Sally and Mark are evangelical Christians, members of Oak Hills Church, a nationally known megachurch. They were using the ketubah as a way of affirming the Jewish roots of their faith.

In so doing, the Austins are part of a growing phenomenon of non-Jews incorporating the ketubah, a document with millennia-old origins and a rich artistic history, into their weddings. Mrs. Austin, in fact, first learned about the ketubah from her older sister, also an evangelical Christian, who had been married five years earlier with not only a ketubah but the Judaic wedding canopy, the huppah.

 “Embracing this Jewish tradition just brings a richness that we miss out on sometimes as Christians when we don’t know the history,” said Mrs. Austin, 28, a business manager for AT&T. “Jesus was Jewish, and we appreciate his culture, where he came from.”

Beyond its specific basis in Judaism, the ketubah represented to the Austins a broader concept of holiness, of consecration. “We wanted a permanent reminder of the covenant we made with God,” Mrs. Austin said. “We see this document superseding the marriage license of a state or a court.”

Such sentiments have been reshaping the market for ketubot (the plural in Hebrew) in the past decade. Michael Shapiro, an observant Jew from Toronto who sells artistic ketubot through the Web site ketubah.com, said he had seen the non-Jewish share of his customers rise from zero to about 10 percent. He is forming a spinoff site, artvows.com, that concentrates on non-Jewish consumers.

While evangelical Christians like the Austins make up part of that niche, Mr. Shapiro said, the concept of marital sanctity they expressed is one he hears from many gentile buyers. “There’s an idea of this being significant and lasting, a nod to something greater at work in a couple having come together,” he said in a telephone interview. “For some, it’s about God and faith. For others, it’s almost a sense of a miracle. In Jewish terms, we have the Yiddish word bashert, for ‘meant to be, intended for each other.’ ”

The decade of non-Jews discovering the ketubah coincides with three relevant social trends: the rise of Christian Zionism, the growth of interfaith marriage, and the mainstreaming of the New Age movement with its search for spirituality in multiple faith traditions. As a result, an increasing number of gentiles have taken up Judaic practices: holding a Passover Seder, eating kosher food and studying kabbalah, the Jewish mystical movement.

“A lot of these things are grass-rootsy,” said Prof. Jenna Weissman Joselit, a historian at George Washington University, who has written extensively on Jewish popular culture. “They have to do with the growing popularity of intermarriage — openness, pluralism, cultural improvisation. And for those who are more religiously literate, they add another level of authenticity or legitimacy.”

What makes the ketubah boom among non-Jews more striking is that even for Jews the present concept of a ketubah — simultaneously a work of fine art and a religious document — took centuries to develop and spread.

The earliest known version of a Jewish marriage contract dates to the fifth century B.C. in Egypt. Roughly 1,000 years later, during the Talmudic period in Palestine and Babylon, a formally codified version of the ketubah emerged.

Ketubah from 1942 in the Sydney Jewish Museum

And in its original form, far from declaring marriage as an everlasting bond, the ketubah largely served to protect a wife’s right to financial support in the event of a divorce, which under traditional Jewish law is entirely a husband’s decision. To this day, the standard Orthodox ketubah still contains language requiring a divorced man to pay his ex-wife “200 silver zuz.”

 Sephardic Jews, though, wrote ketubot with specific provisions for each marriage. And, of more enduring aesthetic importance, they began to illustrate the documents elaborately with images and calligraphy. With the expulsion of Jews from Spain in 1492, refugees carried that artistic tradition to Italy, Germany and Holland, where the decorative ketubah began to seep into Ashkenazi culture.

 But the style never reached into the Eastern European heartland of Jewry — which itself was the source of most of America’s Jewish immigrants — and by the mid-20th century the ketubah was back to where it had started as a document of religious law to be signed and stowed away.

All that suddenly changed with the “Jewish counterculture” of the 1960s, a movement by young Jews to participate in worship actively rather than just follow a rabbi, and to create their own prayers, liturgies, ceremonies and ritual objects, very much including ketubot.
By now, the ketubah is such a standard part of American Jewish life that even the new National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia exhibits and sells them. Next month the Jewish Museum in New York will mount a major show of ketubot.

 “You have an interest in a beautifying ritual and you have disposable income,” said Sharon Liberman Mintz of the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York, who is curating the Jewish Museum exhibit. “There’s both the wherewithal and the interest. Now you’d hang your ketubah on the wall. In the past, you’d just keep it in a safe or something like that.”

As for Sally and Mark Austin, they Googled their way to ketubah.com, selected a version with the image of a flowing river, and chose one of several texts from the Reform Jewish movement. After their wedding day, they hung it over their bed.

 “One of the characteristics of a covenant,” as Mrs. Austin put it, “is a tangible sign. And this piece of paper, this beautiful piece of art, is the sign of our covenant.”

Thank you RCV - but why now?

Can anyone explain why the RCV has released this statement at this time?

Have there recently been abuse issues in our community? Or is this simply the RCV catching up with what has happened in the past?

Whatever the reason, it is commendable that the rabbis have publicly ruled on the necessity of reporting such matters to the authorities and clearly stating that there are no Mesirah concerns when doing so. The welfare of our children comes first, second and last and we must do everything to protect them. The wording, though, in our humble opinion, could have been a bit less confounding - without all those “whereas”es.

"Kosher aware" - a new term for deception

Seems that the fraudulent “Kosher-friendly” and “Kosher-style” terms (see here) are old hat. Now we find the AJN advertising staff have come up with a new description for a treif locale: “Kosher aware”.

Well, if they are aware about Kashrut, they well know that what they are serving is 100% treif! What a disgrace.

Meawhile has anyone heard a complaint or protest from the ORA or RCV or indeed from our rabbis about this continuing shameless deceit? And why doesn’t it concern our rabbis enough to have mentioned this disgraceful and misleading advertising ploy in their submission to the government on labelling laws?

Why aren’t they engaging with the Jewish News demanding that they stop promoting treif – or at the very least ban misleading advertisements that easily take in naïve and unsophisticated people?

We know that many rabbis are followers of our blog. We ask them specifically “When will you take this issue seriously?”

And what about the Kashrut organisations? Shouldn’t they be battling the endorsement of treif with the same vigour that they promote Kosher?

AJN report on Kosher veYosher

Took them an extra week, but the AJN finally catches up with AJNWatch...