Conservative Jews furious with Israeli president over scrapped bar mitzvah service

[rug]

By Michele Chabin?|?Religion News Service June 8 at 3:51 PM

JERUSALEM — Conservative Jews in the U.S. and Israel have accused Israeli President Reuven Rivlin of canceling a bar mitzvah ceremony at the official President’s Residence because one of the rabbis scheduled to conduct the ceremony is non-Orthodox.

The ceremony, for four boys with autism, was scheduled about two weeks ago, after the ultra-Orthodox mayor of the city of Rehovot refused to allow the bar mitzvah, long planned by the Conservative movement, to be held at a Conservative synagogue. The Conservative movement has been running a bar/bat mitzvah program for Israeli children with disabilities for two decades.

The cancellation of both ceremonies hit a raw nerve with non-Orthodox Jews because non-Orthodox rabbis and institutions have no legal standing in Israel and, unlike the Orthodox establishment, receive virtually no government funding.

Conservative Jews, called Masorti Jews in Israel, said Rivlin’s decision amounts to a de-legitimization of non-Orthodox Jewry.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/religion/conservative-jews-furious-with-israeli-president-over-scrapped-bar-mitzvah-service/2015/06/08/b544f090-0e17-11e5-a0fe-dccfea4653ee_story.html

[villager]

1. The Conservative movement is only *now* realizing this?

Better late than never, I guess. Though one wonders if it isn't too late, given the insistence of far-right elements in Israel to unravel its global support, its once-promise, etc...

[rug]

3. There have been some pronounced clashes in Israel this year betwen the Orthodox and the non-Orthodox

[villager]

4. I keep wondering when *their* fundamentalists will finally, at last, overplay their hand.

And at what cost?

[Cartoonist]

2. Petty tribal religions

Pathetic!