Israel does not actually prevent Conservative or Reform rabbis from convertingnon-Jews to Judaism. It simply doesn\’t recognize those conversions –not for citizenship, not for marriage, not even burial near one\’sfamily.
Israeli reporters are no slouches. They have better sources and tend to understand more than their foreign brethren.
Amid the bizarre string of foreign-policy fiascos in which Israelfound itself mired as it greeted the new year, surely none was quiteso bizarre as the case of runaway teenager Samuel Sheinbein ofMaryland.
Israel\’s newest weapon in its battle for economic well-being andworldwide acceptance is a tall, thin New Yorker with a great lambrecipe.\n\nHer name is Rozanne Gold.
Relations between the Diaspora and Israel \”were torn apart by a lethal combination of rising Orthodox fanaticism and a Netanyahu government that\’s pandering to increasingly crude Orthodox political coercion,\” said Wilshire Boulevard Temple\’s Rabbi Harvey J. Fields, among the American Reform movement\’s most prominent leaders.
On Sept. 10, the day Secretary of State Madeleine Albright arrived in Israel, the country became preoccupied with another event: the disappearance of Ya\’acov Schwartz.
\”Israel has 5 million inhabitants and China has 1.2 billion,\” Kaveh said during a visit to Los Angeles last week. \”However, we are both ancient civilizations, which have survived much suffering and mighty empires.\”
Madeleine Albright left behind a Middle East that\’s more fearful than when she arrived on Sept. 10 to salvage the peace process. In her first official visit, the secretary of state failed to restore even a modicum of trust between Israelis and Palestinians, or to coax the Syrians back to the negotiating table.
Even without the immediacy of the telephone, the fear, wearinessand anguish that Israelis are feeling is as close to us as thenightly newscast or the morning paper.
\”When\’s our luck going to run out?\” my wife asked after last week\’s triple suicide bombing on Jerusalem\’s Ben-Yehuda shopping street. \”They\’re getting nearer every time.\” It was one of those days when people phone around to count their friends.
