In yesterday's NY Times, there was an Op-Ed entitled, Protect Sharon from the Right. While reading this piece, I was highly disturbed by the report that a certain well respected Rabbi said that if an Israeli gives back land, the person could be the target of a rabbinically sanctioned murder, implying that Sharon might be liable for death. While giving back land might be seen as endangering lives, this is no excuse to basically say that it is religiously correct to assassinate someone. Did the Orthodox Rabbinate in Israel not learn from the fallout of the assassination of Rabin? I grant that being in America, it is not my place to say something, but I agree with the author of this op-ed, who ended his article by saying,

The mainstream Orthodox rabbinate - in America and in Israel - failed nine years
ago to defend Yitzhak Rabin against extremism. It could be doing a great deal
more today to prevent the murder of Ariel Sharon.

Assassination by any group is wrong. Just because we do not agree with someone's policies doesn't make it right to kill them.

There was an interesting Op-Ed piece today in the New York Times. It seems that the academy is beginning to study Quran like it had done to the Old Testament. The Op-Ed's prime example is that some believe that the promise of 72 virgins for giving up one's life really meant to be grapes and not virgins. However, what I found most interesting is the thinking that this new study will lead to an Islamic Reformation. Unfortunately, while it might be a good thing on the one hand, history has shown that reforming religion leads to the polarization of religion. It will lead to many becoming fundamentalist, so the hope of a "bright" future is not really in sight as a result of Quran Criticism. For more information about Quran Criticism, read the following book review. The reviewer concludes with the following warning:

It is hoped that an English translation of this work will soon appear.
Despite the sober revolution this book will no doubt create, one should not be
naïve to think that all Islamicists in the West will immediately take up and
respond to the scholarly challenges posed by any work of this kind. However,
just as Christianity (my addition - and Judaism) faced the challenges of nineteenth and twentieth century biblical and liturgical scholarship, so too will serious scholars of Islam, both East and West, benefit from the discipline Luxenberg has launched.

In response to a comment from one of my previous posts, from July 20th, I would like to take this opportunity to set out my thinking a little. While it might go against the grain of traditional religious thinking, and some might accuse me of following Conservative or Reform Jewish thinking, I believe that we cannot ignore what is out in the world. This might back me into a corner because some will ask, what about things like Bible criticism, which destroys our foundations of belief. My response is, the ignoring of the arguments implies we don't have answers. However, what I am mostly referring to is how do we account for multiculturalism and the latest academic rhetoric within our lives. I don't think that it is impossible. Religions have always been able to find ways of incorporating certain things. This also doesn't mean a total submission to all ideas in the world, because some things are quite far-out and not substantial.

I went to a wedding last Thursday up in Monsey and during the meal, a Rabbi got up to speak. His speech was about why a bride wears a veil at a wedding. His main point was that Jews, unlike non-Jews, don't have relationships before they are married, meaning that the man and woman don't think of themselves as a unit until the end of the חופה. Therefore, she wears a veil to show that they are separated until the ceremony ends. With all due respect, you could ask yourself why a woman covers her face and not a man, and while one could provide many answers, like the woman being in a veil is a sign of modesty, it is clear that wearing a veil is another remnant from the ancient world. At most weddings in most cultures, there is some sort of veiling process. In Judaism, we make it into a whole ceremony, which we call the בדקין.

Furthermore, what struck me as really interesting was when the rabbi tried to say that a veil was a Jewish specific thing. Even if you were to ignore other historical accounts and focus yourself specifically on the biblical accounts of marriage, it is pretty clear that a veil is not a "Jewish" thing. In fact, the first description of a marriage, between Jacob and Rachel (which really became Jacob and Leah), one could say the switch occurred as a result of Jacob not seeing his bride's face before the ceremony, thus allowing Laban to pull the switch.