March, 2000 (Vol. 15, No. 5)

The flood of non-Jewish immigrants into Israel in the last few years is leading the government to engage in Jewish education for prospective newcomers.

Inside Israel newsletter (February) reports that in the earlier years of  immigration into Israel from Russia and other post-communist countries, at least 85 percent of those entering Israel were Jews according to Jewish law. “In 1995 this began to change to the point that this past year it is estimated by the government that over 50 percent of this incoming group are non-Jews…[A] Jewish journalist visiting Belarus said that he found that 80 percent of participants in a youth program sponsored by the Jewish Agency were not Jews.”

Except for most of the Orthodox, there is strong resistance against changing the Law of Return (a law allowing all Jews to emigrate to Israel) to prevent non-Jews from obtaining the benefits of entering Israel. Such a change might encourage “religious extremists” and threaten Israel’s democratic standards.

One official says that the change must come from the Jewish Agency (the organization in charge of encouraging and facilitating emigration to Israel) changing its work from “searching out Jews to being searched out by Jews who truly want to become a part of the nation of Israel because of their Jewish heritage.”

(Inside Israel, Box 22029, San Diego, CA 92192-2029)

Christians of a leftist political perspective are finding their way into top government positions in several European countries, reports the German news service Idea (Feb. 1).

Whereas in the past, European politicians on the left often were secular or excluded their religious affiliations from their public life, today’s politicians seek to combine their Christian roots with their political philosophies. Left-wing and outspokenly Christian politicians include Tony Blair of England, French President and socialist Lionel Jospin, and the Italian President of the European Commission (EC), Romano Prodi. Jospin is an active member of the Protestant Reformed Church, and is said to encourage dialogue with “critical social ethics.”

Blair is an Anglican who has close ties to the Catholic church, which may be partly explained by the leftist tendencies of British Catholicism. Prodi openly professes to be a “believing Catholic,” and, like the other officials, tries to combine democratic socialism with Christianity. The news service reports that German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder may be similar to the others in his political views, but he is the most secular, even omitting the statement, “so help me God,” from his inauguration ceremony.

He is also somewhat distant from both the Protestant and Catholic churches.

(Idea, Postfach 18 20, D-35528 Wetzlar, Germany)

A clergy shortage is impacting synagogues as well as Protestant and Catholic churches, reports the New York Times (Feb. 14).

The problem is most acute in the Jewish denominations and the Catholic Church. In Reform Judaism, about 200 out of 895 congregations are without a full-time rabbi. The modern Orthodox branch has a similar shortage, though the shortage in Orthodoxy is largely due to the growth of new and small congregations.

The shortage in the ranks of the Jewish clergy started about five years. Before that time, there was a glut of rabbis, which resulted in a de-emphasis on clergy recruitment. For Catholics the number of parish priests declined by 12 percent from 1992 to1997. The article notes that clergy recruitment is particularly difficult in the Episcopal Church (which is the only Protestant denomination mentioned).

An official estimates that the church has under 300 members of the clergy out of 15,000 who were born after 1964. The church is feeling the shortage in both urban as well as in rural parishes. While some say that the robust economy is the reason for the lull, one specialist views the declining appeal of the ministry more a result of the rejection of authority.

Churches are increasingly engaging in coalition-building and other forms of unity in their involvement in faith-based public programs.

As church-based programs move into place for prisons, inner-city youth ministries and job training, cooperation seems to be growing. In mid-February a major stride forward was taken by 57 religious leaders of all denominations as they met on the steps of the nation’s Capitol to proclaim their “Covenant to Overcome Poverty.”

As reported in ReligionToday.com, a broad coalition of policy makers and spokespersons met after two days of conferences on social ministry to show their unity in starting a ten-year program for affordable health, good education, affordable housing, a livable income, and related goals.

In preparation for five years by Jim Wallis, Editor of Sojourners, the coalition will start with leaders organizing town meetings in 17 major cities. Among the signs were the National Association of Evangelicals, the National Council of Churches several African-American churches and representatives of several Roman Catholic groups.

— By Erling Jorstad

A service consecrating two bishops on January 29 in the Anglican Church in Singapore has raised fundamental questions for the Episcopal Church in the U.S. about Anglican unity and the limits of dissent.

The normal procedure in the worldwide Anglican Communion allows each national church to regulate its own ordination of bishops, with the Episcopal Church presiding over the American scene. But in Singapore two American Episcopal priests, the Revs. Charles H. Murphy III and John H. Rodgers, Jr. were ordained by six bishops, none of whom reside in the United States.

The newly ordained bishops, allied with the conservative renewal group First Promise, headed by Bishop Murphy, explained the consecrations were intended as a response to the “failure” of the Episcopal Church to “defend the truth of the Bible” against ordination of homosexuals and acceptance of rituals for same-sex couples. The bishops who performed the act were from the Third World, a conservative region gaining increasing influence in the worldwide Anglican communion.

The most influential of Anglican leaders, the Archbishop of Canterbury, George L. Carey called the ordinations “irresponsible”, and warned they “only harm the unity of the communion.” Religion writers Gustav Niebuhr and Richard Ostling point out in Beliefnet.com (see beliefnet.com/story,9/story_947_.html) that unless major compromises or concessions are made by the conservative bishops and their Third World counterparts, the already-strained threads of unity in the Anglican world communion will be tested as never before, perhaps to the breaking point.

— By  Erling Jorstad, RW contributing editor

A new interest in Catholic products — from rosaries to videos — is propelling the growth of Catholic marketing, reports the National Catholic Register (Feb. 13-19).

The newspaper reports that the expansion is evident in the four-year-old Catholic Marketing Network,, a Dallas-based firm that holds trade shows for Catholic store owners and other suppliers of religious goods from around the country. The network recently increased its trade shows to two per year, one of them moving outside of the strong East Coast Catholic circuit.

One merchandiser cites statistics showing that while 25 percent of the U.S. population is Catholic, less than five percent have ever been inside a religious bookstore, indicating a good deal of room for growth and exposure of Catholic products.

While some of the Catholic products are modern and updated, following the trend in non-Catholic Christian gift items, such as videos and CD’s of Catholic performing artists, other items run in the more traditional direction. The Boston Globe (Feb. 2) reports that the sales of rosaries have skyrocketed after going into decline after the Second Vatican Council. Two Northeast manufacturers of rosaries say their sales have quadrupled over the past 15 years.

The sales of high-end rosaries (costing as much as $4,500) are up, and even two untapped markets, men and Protestants, are showing an interest. Practitioners often cite a mix of duty and desire, as well as a return to the Catholic faith, as prompting the revival of praying with the rosary.

(National Catholic Register, 33 Rosotto Drive, Hamden, CT 06514)

A spate of highly publicized scandals in the American Orthodox Jewish community has “touched off a campaign of intense soul-searching among American Jews” concerning ethics.

Moment magazine (February) reports that in the last few years, prominent Orthodox, particularly Hasidic, Jewish leaders and sometimes whole communities have found themselves mired in scandals involving allegations of corruption and fraud. One well-known case involved a Brooklyn Hasidic rabbi using his bank account to launder $1.75 million of what turned out to be Colombian cocaine money. Other recent cases include welfare fraud by an Orthodox community, Hasidic rabbis allegedly involved in kidnapping a teenager, witness tampering, and even attempted murder.

The scandals have been enough for sermons and articles in the Hasidic world to argue that their immersion in politics is misguided and that there needs to be a return to insularity and isolation. Marc Stern of the American Jewish Congress calls many of these cases part of a “hangover from Europe,” when Jewish communities viewed their anti-Semitic regimes in prewar Poland, Hungary and Stalinist Russia as the enemy. “An attitude developed that whatever we can get from them is giving them back their due,” he adds.

The attitude of Jewish law is also sometimes ambiguous about the value of secular law. There are some halachic and talmudic passages that give the law of the Torah priority over the laws of the land, such as in teaching that stealing from the government is less serious than stealing from an individual. Many of the cases of fraud and corruption involves politicians who tend to “fall over themselves to throw aid at Hasidic communities,” thus tempting the often financially strapped, and sometimes impoverished, Hasidic Orthodox community to cut corners to receive such funds.

A double-standard can’t be ruled out, since many of the offenses committed by these rabbis and splashed across newspapers also regularly involve secular institutions and figures who receive little press attention. Many Orthodox leaders feel that the non-Orthodox world amplifies and publicizes their offenses because they dislike the “air of self-righteousness that Orthodox carry about them in the pursuit of their distinctive lifestyle,” according to the article (Moment).

Another article in the same issue of Moment finds that prejudice against Orthodox Jews is common in both the secular and Jewish press. The coverage of such events as men and women non-Orthodox Jews praying at Jerusalem’s Western Wall [separate areas for men and women are designated at the Wall] and coming under attack by the ultra-Orthodox are played up by the media. But the fact that these efforts by the non-Orthodox are meant to be provocative and garner political attention and that the majority of Orthodox at the Wall do not participate in the attacks is not reported.

Also glossed over is the fact that Orthodox religious authorities have regularly forbidden violence against any groups. Another widely reported story involved an Orthodox-inspired plan for gender segregated buses  The news raised outrage against the Orthodox in Israel and in the West, although it was later found out that the program was voluntary and limited to the back sections of buses in strict Orthodox neighborhoods.

A widely publicized and baseless recent story in the Jewish and secular press about  the trend of Orthodox men using concubines was the most recent case of misinformation involving this religious group. Even more legitimate stories, such as the  Orthodox rejection of the validity of other Jewish groups’ conversion rituals, are given slanted treatment, according to the article. There is little media treatment of Conservative Judaism which rejects most Reform conversions, nor criticism of Reform’s refusal to include Humanistic Judaism or Hebrew Christians under its umbrella.

(Moment, 3000 Connecticut Ave., NW, Suite 300, Washington, DC 20008)