Netanyahu Criticizes American Jewish Leaders Over Western Wall Protest

JERUSALEM — In a sign of a growing rift, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu criticized American Jewish leaders on Wednesday as a struggle over a stalled plan for equal prayer rights for both sexes at a Jerusalem holy site erupted with mutual recriminations and a tumultuous protest led by liberal rabbis wielding Torah scrolls.

.. The Western Wall, the holiest place where Jews can pray, has become the crucible of a fight over rituals and a sense of belonging. Together with their Israeli counterparts, North American Jews, who overwhelmingly identify with the liberal, non-Orthodox Reform and Conservative streams of Judaism, have challenged the strictly Orthodox authorities who enforce the traditional practice at the site, in which scores of Torah scrolls are restricted for male use.

.. Liberal Jews hailed the decision as historic at the time, but the government has failed to advance the plan because of opposition from the ultra-Orthodox parties that Mr. Netanyahu relies on for his governing coalition.

Frustrated by the lack of progress, and with a petition pending before Israel’s Supreme Court, non-Orthodox rabbis and lay leaders defied traditional convention by marching to the Western Wall holding 14 Torah scrolls. Despite some violent pushing and shoving by orderlies and ultra-Orthodox counterdemonstrators, they broke through the security barriers.

Why American Jews Eat Chinese Food on Christmas

“Chinese restaurants were the easiest place to trick yourself into thinking you were eating Kosher food,” Ed Schoenfeld, the owner of RedFarm, one of themost laureled Chinese restaurants in New York, said. Indeed, it was something of a perfect match. Jewish law famously prohibits the mixing of milk and meat just as Chinese food traditionally excludes dairy from its dishes. Lee added:

If you look at the two other main ethnic cuisines in America, which are Italian and Mexican, both of those combine milk and meat to a significant extent. Chinese food allowed Jews to eat foreign cuisines in a safe way.

.. Schoenfeld, whose restaurant features an egg roll made with pastrami from Katz’s Deli, shrugs off the idea that Americanized Chinese food is somehow an affront to cultural virtue. “Adaptation has been a signature part of the Chinese food experience,” he said. “If you went to Italy, you’d see a Chinese restaurant trying to make an Italian customer happy.”

.. “I would argue that Chinese food is the ethnic cuisine of American Jews. That, in fact, they identify with it more than they do gefilte fish or all kinds of the Eastern Europe dishes of yore.”

Michael Wyschogrod, Dean of Orthodox Jewish Theologians, Dies at 87

God’s preferential love for Israel was the great theme of Wyschogrod’s own writing. Jewish history begins with an act of inexplicable love: God fell passionately in love with Abraham and for his sake loved his descendants. Wyschogrod’s most-read book,The Body of Faith, asserts that “Judaism is a religion of the body,” whose purpose is to sanctify the real, physical Jewish people so that it can be a fit vessel for God’s Indwelling (Shekhinah) in this world. His study of Kierkegaard and other Christian philosophers strengthened his argument that Judaism is an incarnational religion: The divine is physically present in the Jewish people.

.. Even if Christianity is wrong to worship a man-god, he argued, the Christian idea of Incarnation sheds light on a fundamental Jewish concept: that God’s Indwelling is present in the physical Jewish people. As the sages of antiquity said, the Shekhinah went into exile with the Jewish people after the destruction of the Temple.

.. Unlike Christian theologians, who characterize Judaic particularism in contrast to Christian universalism, Wyschogrod asserted that God’s first love for Israel did not exclude love for all humankind. On the contrary, “When we grasp that the election of Israel flows from the fatherhood that extends to all created in God’s image, we find ourselves tied to all men in brotherhood, as Joseph, favored by his human father, ultimately found himself tied to his brothers. And when man contemplates this mystery, that the Eternal One, the creator of heaven and earth, chose to become the father of his creatures instead of remaining self-sufficient unto himself, as is the Absolute of the philosophers, there wells up in man that praise that has become so rare yet remains so natural.”