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Jewish World Review Jan 12, 2000 / 5 Shevat, 5760
http://www.jewishworldreview.com --
THERE IS SOME HOPE now that two young Jewish girls in Italy who have been
the focus of much of the Orthodox Jewish world's attention in recent months
may yet be removed from the custody of their non-observant father --
reportedly a convert to Christianity -- and perhaps even returned, as is
their wish, to their observant Jewish mother in Israel.
The startling
decision of a juvenile court in Genoa that awarded the father, Moshe
Dulberg, custody of the girls and severely limited the youngsters' contact
with their mother and other religious Jews has been overturned by a court of
appeals. While the new ruling is based on technical jurisdictional grounds
and so its full import is not yet fully known, it is certainly a step in the
right direction.
According to a report in the Anglo-Jewish weekly, Forward, the Reform leader
described as "extraordinarily troublesome" the Italian juvenile court's
evident determination that an Orthodox life would be detrimental to the
girls' welfare, and decried its "assumption that Orthodox Judaism is a cult
that is not deserving of the respect of the court and the protection of
international religious freedom treaties."
Indeed, among the evidence entertained by the Italian court was testimony by
a psychologist who asserted that Orthodox Judaism views "exploitation of and
cruelty to minors as legitimate... and perverted behavior as normal." At
the same time, the court refused to allow testimony about Orthodox practice
and belief from former Israeli Finance Minister Yaakov Neeman or several
Orthodox rabbis.
Rabbi Saperstein's inclusion on the list of those expressing outrage at the
court's apparent bias against Orthodox Jews and Orthodox practice is
particularly laudable, welcome and heartening.
It is also somewhat surprising, because negative characterizations of what
the world calls Orthodox Judaism - what for several thousand years until
fairly recently was called simply Judaism, without any prefix - have emerged
on more than one occasion from an assortment of leaders of the movement
Rabbi Saperstein represents.
Nor was his intent unclear when he went on to ask how "a reasonable person
[can] be anything but repelled" by such Jews' "need" to "out-pietize each
other." For good measure, Rabbi Maslin decried shechita as a "painful
method of slaughter," the requirement of a religious divorce as "utterly
insensitive to the dignity and status" of women, and ridiculed Orthodox Jews
for daring "to pray, at the dawn of the 21st century, for the
reestablishment of the sacrificial cult."
More recently, the Union of American Hebrew Congregations' current
president, Rabbi Eric H. Yoffie, decried what he christened "ghetto
Judaism" --- which he defined as the belief that Jews "should be secluded in
our own communities concerned only with our own learning and observance...
that our connection with the outside world should be a utilitarian one..."
And lest anyone misconstrue his mark, he went on to identify it as having
long existed "in Williamsburg and Borough Park."
Rabbi Yoffie has also made reference, in other contexts, to "utterly fanatic
ultra-Orthodox Jews in Israel who are becoming more extreme every day" and
has accused "the ultra-Orthodox" of having "abused Torah for their own
selfish purposes and brought it into disrepute." While those latter
comments might have been more politically than religiously motivated, such
distinction is likely lost on those predisposed to disdain religious Jews as
a group.
Sentiments like those voiced by Rabbis Maslin and Yoffie have had,
unfortunately, a profound effect on their intended audiences - Jews who
might be persuaded to support Reform efforts, in particular to change
Israel's religious status-quo. But they might also have had an unintended
but not insignificant ripple effect on the larger world. Reform Judaism,
after all, is an impressive, glossy publication mailed to 310,000 addresses,
not all of them Jewish homes, and the national and international press
routinely provides broad coverage to Reform leaders' remarks. And the full
effect of negative rhetoric is sometimes not evident until it is reflected
back, grotesquely magnified, from other, sinister, fun-house mirrors.
And so it is deeply gratifying on several levels to note Rabbi Saperstein's
recent stance and remarks. And deeply stirring to imagine that they may
signal a retreat on the part of the Reform leadership from the anti-Orthodox
excesses of its past. Such a change, especially on the heels of Reform
movement's recent and much-publicized acknowledgment of the importance of
traditional Jewish practice, could bode well indeed for the Jewish future.
For just as expressions of contempt for Jewish tradition and its adherents
can drive Jews away from both, respect for what lies at the roots of all
Jews can only help foster movement in the opposite
direction.
Friendly words from a surprising place
By Rabbi Avi Shafran
Among the many groups have become actively involved in the effort to
"rematriate" the girls are Agudath Israel World Organization, Am Echad, the
Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, the
Orthodox Union, and the Conference of European Rabbis. Another prominent
figure whose voice was added to the chorus of protest deserves particular
mention, and credit: Reform Rabbi David Saperstein, the director of his
movement's Religious Action Center.
The court's decision, now thankfully overturned, also expressed its concern
that the girls' observant mother not be allowed to "influence" her
daughters, and set rules about their interaction with their mother that not
only ignored their declared love for her but seem designed to undermine it.
The mother was granted only minimal visitation rights, and all personal
meetings between mother and daughters were to be in a place designated by
the father, in the presence of someone designated by him; he was also
permitted to tape all phone conversations between his daughters and their
mother.
Several years ago, for example, the then-president of the Central Conference
of American Rabbis, Rabbi Simeon Maslin, was not waxing sentimental when he
described "bearded men in black caftans and women wearing sheitels (wigs)...
[who] pray rapidly in a sing-song Hebrew, pore over the Talmud in segregated
yeshivot, buy their meat and fowl from glatt kosher butchers (ostensibly a
higher degree of kashrut) and generally reject modernity." (Reform Judaism,
Summer, 1996).
Rabbi Avi Shafran is American Director of Am Echad, an international organization promoting Jewish unity. He may be reached by clicking here.
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