I’m an American rabbi. Israel no longer recognizes my religious authority.
“And so everything in this world depends on the mitzvos we do,” he was saying, using the Yiddish pronunciation of “mitzvot,” the Hebrew word for “religious commandments.” “There are no exceptions. You do the mitzvos, and your life will be well and the world will have peace, and we will bring on — God willing — the messiah. But if the Jewish people aren’t doing their mitzvos, this brings on calamity upon our people.”
.. “Wait a minute,” another kid chimed in. “What about the Holocaust? Are you saying the Holocaust . . .”
“I am absolutely saying the Holocaust!” the bearded man interrupted. “Everything you learned about the Holocaust is wrong. The Nazis were nothing but an instrument of Hashem [God]! Hashem brought the Holocaust on the Jewish people, and do you know why? It’s because the Jews of Europe fell away from a life of piety. They were abandoning their kashrus, they were desecrating the Sabbath!”
.. The blacklist really encompasses all rabbis who don’t subscribe to the narrow worldview of the Rabbanut, which holds that the only valid form of Judaism is one that adheres solely to the strictest interpretations of Jewish law and the most traditionalist social values.
.. grieve for the way those authorities undermine Jewish unity in the interest of their political power.
.. Israel has no separation of synagogue and state, and since 1948, ultra-Orthodox Jews have had the sole authority over personal-status issues in Israeli law. Moreover, ultra-Orthodox groups wield considerable power in the Israeli parliament and exert great influence over legislation. This lethal mixture of politics and religion is tearing apart the Jewish world through this list and similar exclusionary tactics