MERCAZ USA Newsletter — Summer 2009

Masorti Movement under Attack

Sometimes it seems like the Masorti Movement is "damned if it does and damned if it doesn't". Two recent matters illustrate this situation.

Recently, the Israel Defense Forces issued a ruling that restricted men from growing beards during their service unless the soldiers had medical or religious reasons for doing so.

A group of male soldiers from the Masorti youth movement NOAM who serve together in the NAHAL infantry brigade and work during their army service for the movement, began to grow their beards following the first day of Passover in observance of the religious restrictions not to cut one's beard under the Sefirah period. However, they were forbidden from continuing to do so because the Orthodox rabbi attached to the brigade refused to recognize the Masorti stream of Judaism as a "religious" movement qualifying for the exemption. Following a meeting with the IDF rabbinate, the soldiers received permission to grow beards but the approval was intentionally issued only after Lag B'Omer, the day during Sefirah when the soldiers, like many others who observe the traditional semi-mourning customs associated with the period, had already planned to resume shaving anyway.

At the same time, for the second year running, the Masorti Movement has been running advertisements on the radio instructing couples planning their weddings to consider marrying in a Conservative/Masorti ceremony rather than an Orthodox one.

While the Masorti Movement makes clear to all applicants that its wedding ceremony is not recognized by Israeli law which gives Orthodox rabbis a monopoly on marriage and divorce, the Chief Rabbinate's general attorney sent a letter to the Israel Broadcasting Authority urging it to take the ad off the air or to require it to be revised, charging that the ad is fraudulent and deceitful since it fails to note that a Conservative wedding is not recognized by the state's authorities.

Rabbi Sandra Kochmann, who is in charge of the Masorti Movement's wedding intiative, rejected the Chief Rabbinate's position as "the worst kind of monopoly, the kind that produces corruption and a lack of understanding towards the applicants."

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