Dec 25, 2022

Quote of the Day

The Reform Rabbi once again used his immunity and like the last of the criminals is trampling the regulations of the Kotel Rav, via desecration the holiness of the site and desecrating a sefer torah. Soon this will come to an end.

  -- MK Meir Porush (UTJ), commenting on the actions today of MK Gilad Kariv (Labor) who went to the Kotel this morning to daven with the Women of the Wall and used his immunity to bring in a Torah scroll, which he also raised open (hagba or out of the blue?) (see pic below)

1. how will this soon come to an end? Kariv will remain an MK even after the new government is sworn in and will continue to have immunity. What can they do to stop it? I am curious

2. According to Orthodox opinion and according to halacha, it seems that Reform Torah scrolls do not have holiness (I have heard this over the years many times in shiurim and from rabbis talking about these laws) so how did Kariv desecrate a Torah scroll according to Porush? Unless Porush says Reform torah scrolls do have holiness...







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12 comments:

  1. What in the world is a "Reform Torah scroll"? There are no Reform scribes - all of the Torah scrolls which Reform Jews use are presumably kosher.

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    1. that might have been true 30 or 40 years ago (or at least they were very rare). today there are reform scribes that write the torahs and other religious paraphernalia for their religious needs and most religious congregations that have access to them prefer them over buying from the orthodox (from what I have been told)

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    2. but it is surely possibly that Kariv's Torah scroll was written by an Orthodox scribe. I do not know the origins of his torah scroll. Clearly Orthodox scribes are more common and available than Reform and Conservative scribes

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    3. and I should say "some" or maybe even "many", but I have no way of knowing enough to say "most".
      I would add that it seems likely to me that a torah brought by Kariv is almost definitely one that was not written by an Orthodox scribe

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    4. Interesting - thanks!

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    5. I have heard that there are a small number of non-Orthodox scribes, including at least one woman who got a lot of media attention a few years ago. I think that this is a relatively new phenomena.
      It would make sense that if the scribe is not a Shomer-Shabbat male Jew, the Sefer Torah is not kosher (and may need to be destroyed), however many non Orthodox congregations have older Sifrei Torah that were inherited from communities that started as Orthodox, or from communities that no longer exist, or Sforim saved from the Holocaust.

      Looking at the picture of MK Kariv, it looks like a small and old Sefer Torah - There is a very good chance that it was written by an Orthodox Sofer

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  2. here are some links that are relevant:
    https://www.hasoferet.com/ (she is a scribe and trains others)
    https://reformjudaism.org/blog/what-female-scribes-can-teach-us-about-transmitting-torah
    https://www.jpost.com/jewish-world/jewish-features/torah-she-wrote
    https://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/12/nyregion/12torah.html

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    1. As always, as with Christianity, when women are allowed into male positions, they swiftly (naturally) come to dominate. Then the men stop showing up, and then the denomination collapses.

      It's not PC, but it's facts.

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  3. The bottom line is that WoW has a place of their own and they could lein every day there if they wanted to. Any moral advantage they used to have has been squandered by this inconvenient truth and they are now just doing this to agitate and draw attention.

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    1. WoW is 100% about publicity and theatrics, and unfortunately certain hot heads are happy to give them the publicity that the crave. If the regulars at the Kotel just ignored the handful of women who come for this monthly demonstration and they didn't get any publicity from a scuffle, they would probably stop coming.

      As Garnel pointed out, if there are women interested in davening in a non-traditional manner without being interrupted there is an area set up explicitly for that about 20 meters south of where the WoW do their monthy deomonstartion.

      It is very said that the Kotel and holy objects like Tfilin and Sifrei Torah have been turned into props in a demonstration.

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  4. Sorry for leaving a 3rd (!) comment - but just realized that this could be a simple solution to the WoW issue.
    If they brought a scroll written by a woman, they will not have broken the law forbidding brining a Sefer Torah to the Kotel, as the scroll they are brining does not have the status of a Sefer Torah according to Halacha. They should make it very clear that the scroll they are brining was written by a woman or non-Shomer Shabbat Jew.

    The Rabbinate of the should then make it clear that the scroll they have is not a Sefer Torah, and reading it public has no halachic significance, and these women should be ignored and left to do their own thing.

    The media should get a few photos of the scroll used by these women and maybe interview the soferet who wrote it and if they were responsible explain why the WoW regard this scroll as a Sefer Torah, but Orthodox Jews don't.

    Meanwhile the rest of us can get on with our lives and not need to read about this monthly circus every rosh chodesh.

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  5. First, the public should know by now that the WoW fruitcake organization has nothing to do with religion; they don't even believe in G-D. This is a totally political organization, all part of
    the globalist agenda. They want to discard Torah Judaism and even belief in any religion
    because these are the reincarnations of Nimrod and his followers who also wanted to war against the Creator. They are shameless and G-Dless. Let's see what the new administration will do about them.

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