The government demonstrates its contempt for religious Jews by settling them in inhospitable areas, and atheist Jews demonstrate theirs by protesting the neighborhoods of haredim but not those of Arabs.

This, however, is a Jewish country. If not life, then at least death here is governed by Jewish law. The boy had no religious affiliation in his ID papers. He was born abroad and adopted in Israel. The rabbis reasonably doubted his Jewishness.

The rabbis are not monsters. Rather, they deeply mistrust the secular legal system—for good reason—and are not willing to give up one of their own for prosecution by atheists.

A possible solution to the problem of the religious community protecting its scoundrels from secular prosecution would be to allow rabbinical leaders criminal jurisdiction over their members.

Religious parties oppose a provision of the bill which authorizes any three local rabbis to form a band and start authorizing conversions. Such an arrangement would encourage prospective converts to shop for the most lenient rabbis—who would be in no short supply.

The bill, sensibly enough, closes the conversion loophole to illegal immigrants, who would of course convert for economic reasons. That provision will be opposed by leftists, who love the illegals.

In any case, very few people want to convert. Since the state is not practically Jewish, they are comfortable with their current religious status.

To Meridor, the Western Wall is not a religious place, but a national monument. Rabbis, accordingly, must be barred from setting rules for attendance.
He also lamented the fact that not all religious streams are equal in Israel. Guess what, this is a country of Judaism, not of Reform ‘rabbis’ or Polynesian shamans.

For their part, the American ‘rabbis’ protested an incident in which a female Reform ‘rabbi’ was barred from the Western Wall because the clown put on tallit.

It is a religious and nationalistic obligation for Jews to demolish all mosques in our land.

The bizarre part is that they will need to undergo conversion to Judaism before immigration, which means that they are not Jews as of now.

The “Bnei Menashe” claim their remote ancestors were Jewish. So also claim the Ethiopian Falash Mura Christians, some 4,000 of whom are also preparing to enter Israel.

Since early 1990s, by far most egg donors in Israel have been non-Jewish. Many Jewish women underwent cheaper IVF abroad, where the eggs are 100% non-Jewish. Some of the IVF babies have already grown up and had their own non-Jewish children.

On the background of Trinity and virgin birth, who cares about Pius’ sainthood?

On the positive side, many religious soldiers will now lose their illusions about rabbis on the government payroll, a crowd no less treacherous than the Council of Settlements.

The Defense Ministry retaliated by shutting down his yeshiva.

Rabbi Melamed will soon sign a letter condemning insubordination in the army, even though Jewish religious law is clear: we do not follow the orders that violate the commandments.

Like any closed society, the ultra-Orthodox community can only remain unquestioningly loyal to its leaders if foreign opinions are blocked. Communists, too, relied on a total blockade of information.

Liberalization in the ultra-Orthodox community resembles the processes which took place in Jewish communities in general two hundred years ago.

If the Vatican needs something from Israel, we would expect the Vatican’s officials to stay here and continue to ask humbly. But the ostensibly right-wing Israeli deputy FM went to the Vatican instead.

State guarantees for the Vatican’s lands? Italy confiscated almost all of them, and Israel did likewise under normal governments. But now times are different.

The halachic ruling violates the rabbinical ban on paying non-Jews for Shabbat work. Rabbis circumvent the Torah’s command that  “no one shall work in your house” on Shabbat by noting that it lists children, slaves, and animals—but not free non-Jews.

Rabbi Lior’s halacha will remain operative for the duration of the construction freeze. Settling the land takes precedence over rabbinical bans.

No one, of course, thinks of rescinding theirs or their parents’ citizenship.

Polls indicate that 65-70% of Jewish Israelis have never been to Hebron, the holiest city in Israel.

Though Orthodox Jews consider such behavior offensive, it is known that daughters of great Rashi wore tfillin and talit prayer shawls. The Reform “rabbis” acted with deliberate provocation; according to a long-standing arrangement, women can read the Torah at an arch near the Western Wall.

The town which must give birth to the messiah has been abandoned to the Palestinian Authority. Since no Jews reside in Bethlehem, how can there be a messiah?

Now Rabbi Elyashiv will have to prove himself a higher religious authority than Rambam, who did ascend the Temple Mount.

Taking money from Christians is doubtless unacceptable in Judaism, whose adherents pray after every meal to be spared dependence on foreigners for a living. The debate resurrects the age-old question of whether Christianity is idolatry—as maintained by almost all classical commentators, who cite the Trinity and icons as prima facie evidence of idolatry.

The IFCJ is right that haredi communities must take an honest position, and either spurn the giving hand or stop bad-mouthing it.

The Torah commands us to destroy Al Aqsa.

Basic decency toward the Jews who guard our country against rioting Arabs would have suggested Rabbi Elyashiv keep silent on the matter for the time being.

The Palestinians are using the Temple Mount riots as a dress rehearsal for the Third Intifada.

Nine years ago Arabs started a second Intifada over Ariel Sharon visiting the Temple Mount. Muslims are normal—they defend their holy places. But Jews are polite, content to allow the desecration.

According to commonly ignored Jewish religious law, Arabs cannot live in Israel, but there is no general prohibition of them working here.

The ecologists charge that the new city would disrupt wildlife in the Negev—as if hundreds of illegal Bedouin settlements do not disrupt it enough, or the haredim, in dire need of housing in their overcrowded communities, are less important than foxes.

Religious schools, of course, refuse to admit fake converts.

The Education Ministry has promised to revoke government funding of schools that seek to protect Jewish pupils from black migrants.

Since Israel liberated the Temple Mount in 1967, no Jew is allowed to pray, there lest we disturb the Muslims.

Haredi men are often engaged in the black-market economy and do basic jobs, mostly trading. Women practically lack employment opportunities in haredi communities, and see education as the only way out of their Kinder, Küche, Kirche environment.

According to Rabbi Druckman, the agreement between the treacherous Council of Settlements and IDF takes precedence over the commandment which forbids us to abandon any part of the Land of Israel.

In the Sinai and Gaza evacuations, Rabbi Druckman ordered his followers to obey the government’s orders and vacate the Jewish villages.

Rabbi Meir Kahane wrote about Yamit:

For two of the leading rabbis of the Stop the Retreat Movement, alleged “hawks” Rabbi Moshe Tzvi Nerya, head of yeshivot Bnei Akiva and Rabbi Chaim Druckman, had ruled that a religious soldier who was ordered to remove settlers must do so, despite the fact that the evacuation was contrary to halacha. The ruling, so clearly contrary to the clear ruling in the Talmud (Sanhedrin 49) and Maimonides (ibid.), led Yamit Rabbi Yisrael Ariel to run to Rabbi Nerya, who had been his rabbi at Kfar Haroeh, and to ask him for his halachic source. Rabbi Ariel, two weeks ago, pleaded with soldiers standing at the roadblocks to disobey orders to remove settlers. His words, based on the above-mentioned halacha, led to demands by leftists for his arrest. His consolation was that he stood by the Torah ruling. Now, with the incredible stand taken by Rabbis Nerya and Druckman, he looked wan and weary as he sat in his home and told me of a threat by a famous rabbi that he would ask that Rabbi Ariel be arrested!

A country which sends her soldiers to risk their lives can certainly forgive them minor misdeeds.

But that was not a misdeed: “God… will give you towns big and plentiful which you did not build, and houses full of the good things which you did not fill” (Deuteronomy 6:11). The soldier had a religious right, indeed an obligation, to steal from the Palestinians.

There is no discrimination, but rather a strict case of “separate but equal.”

Where it orders execution for homosexuality, the Torah prescribes it for males only, so the girl was killed in error.

The Torah, of course, is not written for Shas, which announced that “killing is against the Torah path.”

Leviticus 20:13, “And a man who lies with a man as they lie with woman, both of them have done an abominable thing, and they must be put to death. Their blood is upon them.” Not upon the assassin.

Never mind that is a construction-support wall, not sacred to begin with.

True, the enforced presence of atheist youngsters is not be the best sight around, but where was Shas when the Pope and Obama visited the Wall? Or the millions of foreign tourists?

Shabbat may be generally violated only in the face of enemy attack, and Rabbi Lior has thus declared IDF an enemy army—which, from the settlers’ perspective, it really is.

The halachic prohibition on using mobile phones is very weak. They are banned as a “non-Shabbat activity,” rather than as one of the types of prohibited labor.

No less silly, IDF command threatened religious soldiers with disciplinary action up to and including jail for abandoning the events.

Rabbi Eliyahu, accordingly, told soldiers to choose jail over singing. His halachic position is that jail is a less immodest place than the singing events.

Two decades ago, when the Supreme Court was poised to ban Kach, Rabbi Kahane asked his mentor Chief Rabbi Eliyahu for a statement that his political views were strictly within halacha, thus not subject to the anti-racism law. Rabbi Eliyahu indeed issued a statement praising Meir Kahane—hours after the court ruled to ban his party.

After the National Religious Party and Agudat Israel refused to oppose the government on the Sinai and Gaza withdrawals, and concurred in abandoning the Promised Land to our enemies, they had better shut their mouths about parking lot issues.

It is obscene to see the atheistic court meddling in purely religious matters. The law of kashrut requires the baker to be Jewish, or at least to delegate important tasks to Jews. The Supreme Court has ruled in past immigration cases that conversion to Christianity is incompatible with Jewishness.

In practice, the rabbis would accord the Christian baker kosher supervision, but they would supervise him to the death of his business.

Years ago, the Supreme Court penalized religious schools: unless they accepted all the Ministry of Education’s courses, which include atheist propaganda, their financing was capped at 75 percent of that of other private schools.

For twenty-three centuries religious schools have made the Jews the most literate nation on Earth and developed the famed Jewish intellect.

The parking itself is not the issue: the previous mayor, a haredi Jew, opened a similar lot without hassle.

Rather, the haredi leaders are reasserting their rightful power over Jerusalem despite the election of an atheist mayor.

A previous visit by an Israeli public leader, Ariel Sharon, sparked the Second Intifada.

When Jews took over the Temple Mount in 1967, IDF Rabbi Shlomo Goren urged Moshe Dayan to blow up the Al Aqsa abomination immediately, as Jewish law unequivocally commands. Dayan retorted that he did not want a second Vatican here. This fear of strengthening the religious camp drives the government’s refusal to cleanse our holy site of Muslims.

Technically, Jewish law does not forbid gentiles from working on the Sabbath, including car-park operation and driving, but the commandment is clear that “no one should work in your towns.”

Anti-religious policies, supported by court decisions, fuel the exodus of religious Jews from Jerusalem because they cannot live in secular districts and the religious districts have become too small for their growing communities.

Obedient to their religious leaders, haredim are the most potent anti-government force among the subservient Jews. No other Jewish group would contemplate violent resistance to the anti-Semitic polices of the state.

Since Gush Katif, Zionist rabbis have become increasingly militant, though not nearly militant enough to call on good Jews to stand against the treacherous government.

Shimon Peres addressed the Pope as “Your Holiness,” suggesting that there is something holy about a fellow who poses as God’s representative on earth. According to Jewish law, such a pretender must be stoned. Jews have plenty of reasons to stone Peres, as well.

The ignorant Israeli president claimed falsely that Judaism is a religion of tolerance. Right, go tell that to Pinchas.

The former member of Hitlerjugend and friend of Holocaust-deniers visited Yad Vashem. Then the worshiper of icons toured the Holy Land.

On the positive side, the Pope unwittingly abrogated the age-long concept of Christians as “New Israel” when he wished that “both peoples may live in peace in a homeland of their own.” The only reason for Jews to regard this land as their own is the fact that they are the Children of Israel.

Bibi’s spokesman responded that the government is committed to bringing Falash Mura into Israel, adding to the 140,000 black ‘Jews’ who are already here.

In the wake of the Pope’s visit, the chief scoundrel of Israel is pushing for the transfer of six major Christian sites, including the Gethsemane, to the Vatican.

According to Jewish law, Christian churches which bear images must be torn down, without exception. The prohibition of images is not some rabbinical invention but one of the Ten Commandments.

Peres’ move is absurd strategically. Catholics are traditionally anti-Israeli and often anti-Semitic. Why offend friendly American protestants by transferring these churches to the Vatican’s jurisdiction? If anything, give them to CUFI.

Netanyahu ended the “aliyah” by cutting funds in his budget.

Falash Mura and their supporters protested, claiming that tens of thousands more blacks want to immigrate.

About 140,000 Ethiopians—some of them adhering to Judaism, but others plainly Christian—are already in Israel, a constant source of crime and a heavy burden on the Jewish economy.

Only the Greek patriarch undresses in the antechamber to prove that he carries no matches, but his two colleagues can bring anything. They can hide matches in the cave before the ceremony. Shamefully, Israeli police annually certify the miracle’s authenticity.

The cross-wearing mob in the church, bearing what they believe to be images of God, marked the anniversary of Jesus’ crucifixion.

The Jewish government secured the gathering instead of allowing the Muslims to expel the idol-worshipers.