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Masorti rabbi attends Christian Zionist event
Jewish paper reports 'growing if uneasy acceptance' of Evangelical pro-Israel activism among US Jews; Meanwhile, Montreal celebrates Israel's birthday
Fresh controversy has erupted around Christian Zionist leader Pastor John Hagee, after Conservative leader Rabbi Jack Moline's name appeared on the list of invited guests at an event hosted by Hagee's Christians United for Israel (CFI) group, the Jewish Week said.
"Rabbi Jack Moline is a Jewish centrist in almost every respect. He is leader in the Conservative movement, a crusader against intermarriage and a fierce opponent of the religious right's growing influence on American life," the Jewish Week said.
"Rabbi Moline says his views about the domestic dangers posed by the religious right have not changed, but conditions have," the report added.
The Jewish Week quoted Rabbi Moline as saying: "We're no longer in a position of being too selective in choosing our friends," and citing "the threat posed by Iran and Israel's growing isolation."
"Rabbi Moline's participation marks the growing if uneasy acceptance of Rev. Hagee's brand of pro-Israel activism across the Jewish community.
Mainstream Jewish leaders are rushing to embrace him, despite continuing concerns about his apocalyptic views about Israel's future, his open advocacy of war with Iran and his harsh domestic views, and critics are being pressured into silence," the Jewish Week added.
Masorti seeks new direction
Meanwhile, over 400 American rabbis met in Cambridge, Massachusetts in order to set a new direction for the conservative movement, the Jewish Advocate reported on Friday.
"The myriad hot-button topics of the 2007 Rabbinical Assembly Convention, which bore the theme "Leadership and the Rabbinate," indicated above all that Conservative Judaism as an institution is in a particularly transitional and transformative state," the Jewish Advocate said in its report.
The report quoted Jewish Theological Seminary Chancellor-elect, Arnold Eisen, as saying: "We've largely dropped the ball when it comes to message. We need to do some things to bring us together and keep us together and keep us strong."
Eisen focused on mitzvah and community as core issues, and "spoke of a plan to initiate dialogue within and between congregations to 'give us a larger sense of what unites us as a movement,'" the report added.
Israeli indepenence celebration in Canada
Some seven thousand people took part in a rally in Montreal to celebrate Israel's 59th Independence Day, the Canadian Jewish News (CJN) reported.
During the rally, "Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day compared Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to Hitler and warned the world not to be indifferent to the Iranian president's plan to annihilate Jews, the CJN said.
The CJN quoted Day as saying: "Just as a leader 60 years ago had a plan to exterminate all Jews, there's a leader today who wants to do the same thing. And just as people then said that leader is crazy or they don't care, the international community is saying the same thing today."
He added: "Canada cares for Israel and will stand with it. When will there be peace? Next year in Jerusalem if we stand together."
"Day, who sported an Israeli flag in his breast pocket, praised Israel for its strong defence of democracy since its founding. Arabs and Jews can and do run for political office and sit on Israel's Supreme Court, and they have freedom of religion and expression, he said, contrasting the situation in the Jewish state with Pakistan, which was founded as a Muslim state shortly before Israel," the report added.
