Local reaction was positive — with an element of wait and see — to the choice of Stanford professor Arnold Eisen as the new, de facto leader of the Conservative moment. Eisen, who isn\’t a rabbi, will take over this summer as chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York.
These two cases vividly illustrate the current problems of the modern day agunah (a woman chained to an unwanted marriage), because halacha (Jewish law) gives the husband the sole, unfettered power of divorce. While under Ashkenazic tradition a woman can withhold her \”consent\” to such a divorce, the remedies available to the victim of a recalcitrant husband or wife differ substantially.
Grief erases all regular rules. All the logic that has ever seemed to govern one\’s life suddenly seems useless. More than useless, it seems pointless.
Even as Ron Reagan makes a case for stem cell research at the Democratic National Convention, Californians may take matters into their own hands. In November, the state ballot will include a 10-year bond issue, which would generate $3 billion for stem cell research.
In downtown Los Angeles, three judges are deciding a case involving tens of millions of dollars and dozens of properties. The judges aren\’t dressed in robes or seated behind wooden podiums with a court reporter close at hand. Instead, the three bearded rabbis are sitting in a small conference room at a table piled high with documents they peruse carefully.
Robby Berman was a journalist living in Israel writing about organ donation when he came across some alarming facts: Out of 200 people who were declared brain-stem dead in a given year, only 70 families agreed to organ donation — giving Israel the lowest percentage of organ donors in the Western world.
As a woman prepares to say \”I do,\” her friends prepare to stand by her side in purple puffy dresses and lavender dyed shoes. In sickness and in health, in velour and in taffeta, in chartreuse and in lemon. As her bridesmaids, they will participate in a tradition that may be as old as Judaism itself.
In our studies at Beth Chayim Chadashim\’s (BCC) Queer Jewish Think Tank, we are not throwing out the halacha, nor are we bending and twisting the texts to suit our own devices (\”A Conservative Challenge,\” Jan. 17).
Because elder care can be an enormous drain on an individual\’s resources, with nursing homes costing in excess of $100 a day and home care costing even more, planning ahead and buying long-term-care insurance is one way of preventing the costs from being too overwhelming.
The heart of the dispute centers on whether Sea Point must observe the standards of halacha demanded by the country\’s chief rabbinate in Johannesburg, or whether it can adopt looser standards.
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