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It is important to emphasize that despite the sense of deep crisis and political tension surrounding security, economic, and social issues, religion & state issues have not magically disappeared. To a large extent, it is, in fact, exactly the opposite: The Corona crisis has provided a pretext for new layers of religiom & state battles.
Following demands by Or Yehudah municipal inspectors to local residents to remove a Chabad "Messiah Flag" from their home windows, threatening them with fines if not removed, Hiddush demanded that the municipality retract the illegal demand and ensure that similar measures be avoided in the future.
Israel and the Jewish World have entered the national fast day of Tisha b’Av, symbolizing the destruction of the First and Second Temples, as well as many other difficult events in Jewish people’s history.
The Jerusalem Municipality deleted the list of synagogues in the city from the municipality's website in order to avoid publicizing non-Orthodox synagogues and non-Jewish houses of worship – Hiddush launching a worldwide petition drive and planning further legal action.
The world is definitely changing, but one thing does not seem to change: The battle for religious freedom and equality in Israel is continuing as if there were no pandemic… clearly and adversely impacting Israelis, as well as American and world Jewry.
It has not been long since the establishment of Israel’s new government, and issues of religion and state have come to the fore. These explosive issues have toppled governments in the past, and even the last three elections were largely due to the demands of the ultra-Orthodox parties in regards to the drafting of yeshiva students and the matter of “Who is a Jew”.
Together with many in the United States and Israel, we are watching with dread and pain the increasing devaluation of human life. The killing of George Floyd and Iyad El Halek has hit us all. We also cannot turn a blind eye to the connection they bear to the plague of racism, which intensifies the moral and social wounds.
The 35th government has begun its term. Up until the last minute, there was no certainty of that. Israel could very well have been dragged into a fourth round of elections. In fact, disputes over cooperation between the Likud and the remnants of ‘Blue & White’ remain.
This week, the Supreme Court unanimously rejected all of the petitions against Benjamin Netanyahu's continued tenure as prime minister due to the pending criminal charges against him, as well as those against the coalition agreement between the Likud and Blue & White.
This week marked ‘Holocaust and Heroism Remembrance Day’, which was established by the Knesset in 1951. This day and ‘Memorial Day for the Fallen Soldiers of Israel and Victims of Terrorism’ (next week) are the only two official memorial days of the State of Israel by law.
We are living in a calamitous time, a period of uncertainty that not only threatens the lives and safety of millions of people, but that has already caused the economic and social dislocation of so many and changed the world around us overnight.
The formula for success in Israel’s March ’20 elections: Declare your party’s commitment to the fight for religious freedom & equality. 54% of the Israeli Jewish public responded that such a commitment by the parties running for election would increase the likelihood of their voting for those parties.
February 17, 2020: Channel 12 exposes the greatly esteemed Rabbi Meir Mazuz attacking the Israeli Supreme Court. This is the very same rabbi that PM Netanyahu courted for support before the Likud primaries!
The Israeli ultra-Orthodox media’s reaction to Hiddush’s petition to the Israeli Supreme Court on the matter of the State’s failure to ensure that upwards of 40,000 children in Jerusalem receive educations at legal, state recognized schools was predictably full of vitriol.
The outrageous attack on Russian Jews and Russian converts to Judaism by the Sephardic Chief Rabbi of Israel, Yitzchak Yosef, requires a strong rebuke. This kind of hurtful and heartless outburst characterizes the all too frequent statements by Israeli rabbinic figures with state-backed power to use their positions as a bully pulpit.