| Site links | Being a Secular Jew in Israel - Prof. Dan Mahler |
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Atheist parent - church school Where religious power comes from The celibacy of priests and nuns Tricks of the
trade
E-mail think@writeme.com Also see this essay on atheism by Prof Dan Mahler
"Was there no reason for the Holocaust? We believe in God, and isn't it true that such a killing did not happen for hundreds of years? But here God had gathered and collected all the sins that Jews had committed over the years, so the holocaust was inevitable"… Rabbi Shach, the leader of the Ashkenasi UltraOrthodox Jews, 1991
"The
declaration which says that God visits the sins of the fathers upon
the children is contrary to every principle of moral justice." Thomas Paine, 'The Age of Reason'
"Any body of men who believe in hell will persecute whenever they have the power." Joseph McCabe, 'What Gods Cost Men'
"Secular women in Jerusalem are again being attacked by Orthodox men and women because of their unorthodox (secular) clothing. The Orthodox men spat on them, threw stones, hit them and cursed them. This phenomenon is repeated every summer near the parts of Jerusalem inhabited by Orthodox Jews. Female students report that they find garbage strewn over their cars." MAARIV newspaper June 22 1999
"What is Secular Education if not emptiness? Look at the scales, where on their side stand their half a million drugged victims, and on our scales half a million new HOZRIM BITSHUVA (secular Jewish converts) converted to religion". Rabbi
David Yosef, Ultra-Orthodox Shas party, son of Rabbi Ovadia Yosef
"The Supreme High Court (of Israel) is the real enemy of religious society, and rules over the state in an illegal way…" Rabbi
David Yosef, Ultra-Orthodox Shas party
"The media is the Devil. It acts against Shas - the political party of the Holy." Rabbi
David Yosef, Ultra-Orthodox Shas party
"The real wolf is here. His name is Ehud Barak". "HAMODIA"
- Ultra-Orthodox daily newspaper
And finally another quotation from Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, the "holy" leader of Shas party, on the Judges of Israel Supreme court (February 11, 1999) "They are evil, crooks, what do they know? A child of 6-7 years old knows better than them to learn Thora… Who made them Judges? The Minister of Justice? He is an Enemy! Those Judges are nasty people, they are 'BO'A'LEY NIDOT' - they have no rules no religion". 'BO'A'LEY NIDOT" means to have sexual intercourse with a woman who has not cleaned herself in the MIQVE after menstruation. For more see right. Unsurprisingly, for secular Jews such comments suggest a primitive and backward mentality. Their frustration is intensified by the strong position such groups have in government. Ovadia Yosef is the leader of 17 PMs in the new parliament and participates in Ehud Barak's government.
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Atheism, and the discussion about the "Non-existence of God" is a universal issue, no matter what religion or society an atheist person comes from. This is true for all nations except the Jewish one. On the face of it there is an antagonism between these two terms - "Jew" and "Atheist". Most people, inside and outside the Jewish nation, accept "Judaism" as a Religion, or at least as something strongly connected with religion. Although it is recognized that there are secular Jews, many modern Jewish people refuse to accept the existence of and legitimacy of "Secular Judaism". As a result the secular, the atheist, or agnostic Jew finds his identity questioned: he is free to define himself as a secular Jew, but his community of Secular Judaism is still not officially recognized. This situation has a historical origin. From the early Israeli kingdoms of the bible, to the later spread of the Jewish people all over the world (the Diaspora), the Jewish nation has been heterogeneous in its religious belief, consisting of various religious and secular elements. Being in diaspora, the Jewish people had no official nor practical national basis, and the various Jewish communities searched for a common, unifying factor, which was the Jewish tradition, including religious components. The community centre - the Synagogue - was for many a location for a social gathering, not obligatorily a religious one. Before the Renaissance religious scripts were, for all peoples, the only cultural source. Since then, however, art and science have become the common property of many, and the effects of this knowledge have become part of what it is to be a modern human being, including, of course, the Jewish individual. For the Jewish nation the rebirth of it ancient language - Hebrew - by Eliezer Ben-Yehuda at the end of the 19th century, was a turning point when literature, arts, science and social studies became for many the natural components of the Jewish individual's identity. At the same time the archaic, irrelevant, unnatural and sometimes objectionable Jewish religious identity, including the belief in God, together with God's commandments and religious rituals, ceased to be necessary factors. However, despite this, the orthodox Jewish religious establishment, like any other religious establishment, did not stop from advancing their own narrow objectives, to maintain and enhance their political and financial power. This included the uncompromising rejection of any definition of Judaism that did not link with their orthodox dogma. One means to reach this objective was to force their orthodoxy on all Jews, even regarding the most personal and private concerns, such as birth, marriage, divorce and death. At the same time the orthodox Jewish establishment acts to delegitimize, defame and ban all other opposing Jewish trends, sects and individuals, which it holds in contempt. The orthodox Jewish establishment has also rewritten Jewish history according to their narrow objectives, leading every Jew to believe that the Jewish orthodoxy was, is, and eternally will be the only representative of the Jewish nation. These two terms "Judaism" and "Religion" became so firmly equivalent in people's minds, that in 1948, during the process of establishing the newly-born Jewish state of Israel, the secular leaders of Israel transferred, by their own free will, all individual human rights - marriage, divorce, the control of food production and import, transport on the Shabat, and other matters, solely to Jewish Orthodox rule. And this despite the opposition of some of the orthodox movements. As the third millennium approaches, the secular Jew in contemporary Israel finds himself torn between two forces: on one hand stand his legitimate rights to define himself as a secular, atheistic or agnostic Jew, and on the other hand there is the force of religious coercion acting on these same rights. While in any other developed country or society the discussion between the atheism and the religion lies on the ideological plane, in Israel the STATE gives ultimate power to the religious orthodox establishment. There is a statutory coercion in which Israel interferes with the private life of her citizens by deciding how and with whom one can marry or not, how to divorce and when it is forbidden, what will be the fate of many outsiders wishing to marry or divorce, what to eat and what it is forbidden to eat, etc. These statutes reflect Jewish religious rules which are, in many cases, inhuman and cruel, unwilling to recognize everyday human need and frailty that is not in accord with religious dogma. This statutory coercion is an unjustified, unfair and wrongful interference with the private lives of Israeli citizens. Secular Jews, those who accept the world without a superpower God, those who refuse unquestioningly to accept "God's Holy Commandments" are nevertheless coerced by the state to participate in religious rituals and ceremonies. Under the influence of this coercion it is impossible to debate the existence or nonexistence of God in an ideological and philosophical manner. Instead, this is a political battle, where religious political parties use their leverage (Israel has a proportional voting system that can give disproportionate power to minority parties holding the balance of power) to extort and blackmail the non-religious parties and leaders who do not hesitate to sell human rights for a chair in the government. Its is clearly seen today, where a secular leader, the winner of the recent elections, yields to the absurd demands of Orthodox leaders, which directly diminish human rights. The major support to that religious extortion in given , alas, by secular Jewish communities, parties and leaders, who are blind to the meaning of Secular Jewish identity. This identity is still obscure to many, who repeatedly misunderstand the continuous historical error in the definition of Jewish identity, and the continuous willing surrender to religious pressures. Only when the secular Jew releases himself from the irrational and unjustified link to his religious fellow and to the historically unjustified surrender to archaic norms, only then will his secular identity be recognized as legitimate, both individually and nationally, and the road to an intellectual discussion on Jewish atheism and agnosticism will be opened. Dan Mahler
MIQVE is a sort of public bath, separated for women & men, where the orthodox Jew has by the laws of his religion the bath himself for the purpose of "PURIFICATION" (In Hebrew: TO'HA'RA). There are special rules for performing this bath. As to women - a very religious woman has, by laws of HALACHA (the Jewish religious rules) to go to MIQVE after the end of her monthly menstruation period, otherwise her husband is not allowed (again by the same rules) to "sleep" with her. Moreover - every Jewish woman has to go to MIQVE close before her marriage, and gets a certificate for it. As the "marriage" issue is solely in their hands, the Orthodox Rabbinate makes all efforts to force EVERY Jewish woman, even those who are not religious, even those who reject this act, to do it before her marriage. Now - a woman who does not obey those Halacha rules, and does not go to MIQVE monthly or before marriage is called NIDA. A NIDA woman (in Hebrew: ISHA NIDA) is an "insult" name, used by the orthodox people against the secular Jews. This is the origin to Rav Ovadia Yossef insult. Dan Mahler Visit the Hofesh web site and discover more of the sort of problems Israeli secularists face! |
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