19 08, 2013

If married civilly a Jewish divorce is unnecessary

By |2013-08-19T00:23:41-07:00August 19th, 2013|Thoughts|

                                            By Israel Drazin    In “A Message to the New Chief Rabbis,” in the Jerusalem Post of August 16, 2013, the prominent Rabbi Shlomo Riskin, chief rabbi of Efrat, reports the halakhic (Jewish legal) ruling of the highly respected Rav Moshe Feinstein. Rav Feinstein addressed the question: do wives and husbands need a get, [...]

7 05, 2013

Divorces in Israel

By |2013-05-07T04:41:42-07:00May 7th, 2013|Book Reviews|

                                                                    Review by Israel Drazin      Marriage and Divorce in the Jewish State Israel’s Civil War By Susan M. Weiss & Netty C. Gross-Horowitz Brandeis University Press, 2013, 218 pages   In 1953, the Israeli government acquiesced to far right religious elements in the state and enacted the restrictive Rabbinic Courts Jurisdiction Law, [...]

1 12, 2011

Why listen to clergy?

By |2011-12-01T03:59:06-07:00December 1st, 2011|Thoughts|

By Israel Drazin   Why do people feel that they should listen to their clergy? There is nothing in the Hebrew Bible, New Testament, or Koran that says that its adherents must obey rabbis, priests, and imams. In fact, Judaism didn’t have rabbis until around the year 70 of the Common Era, after the second [...]

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