Religion, Nationalism, and Terror

Haredi sect brands Chief Rabbi Metzger ‘Zionist stooge,’ wicked - Haaretz, February 5, 2008

The strongly anti-Zionist Neturei Karta sect of ultra-Orthodox Jewshas attacked Ashkennazi Chief Rabbi Yona Metzger as a “very well paid Zionist stooge” and a “a wicked emissary of evil” who should be expelled from Israel, following Metzger’s reported comments proposing that poor Gazans be moved to a Palestinian state established in the Sinai.

The statements, reported in Haaretz last week, spurred an angrily worded response from Neturei Karta, which has often taken vocally pro-Palestinian stances against Israel.

Denouncing Metzger’s Sinai proposal, the group refered to him as the “so-called Chief Rabbi of the so-called State of Israel” and as a “very well paid Zionist stooge”.

Referring to Zionism as an “idolatrous cult,” Neturei Karta called for Metzger to “removed from the Holy Land,” describing him as “a wicked emissary of evil”.

Metzger had said that his plan would be to “take all the poor people from Gaza to move them to a wonderful new modern country with trains buses cars, like in Arizona - we are now in a generation where you can take a desert and build a city. This will be a solution for the poor people - they will have a nice county, and we shall have our country and we shall live in peace.”

Ian Fisher, Pope’s Rewrite of Latin Prayer Draws Criticism From 2 Sides - New York Times, February 6, 2008

ROME — Pope Benedict XVI on Tuesday issued a replacement for a contentious Good Friday prayer in Latin, removing language that many Jewish groups found offensive but still calling for the Jews’ conversion.

However, representatives of Jewish groups as well as traditionalist Catholics quickly condemned the new prayer, though for different reasons. Jewish groups said it was still offensive, and traditionalists said they preferred the version that was replaced.

“It’s disappointing,” said Rabbi David Rosen, director of inter-religious affairs for the American Jewish Committee, who for 20 years has worked on Jewish-Catholic relations with Benedict as pope and, earlier, when he was a cardinal.

The prayer was a focus of dispute last year when Benedict allowed for greater use of a traditional version of the Latin Mass, called the Tridentine rite. That decree improved ties with Catholic traditionalists, who oppose the sweeping changes to church liturgy made from 1962 through 1965 during the Second Vatican Council.

The prayer is not part of the standard service used by most of the world’s 1.1 billion Catholics, who celebrate Mass in their local languages.

The new prayer, published only in Latin on Tuesday in the Vatican newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, deletes a reference to Jews’ “blindness” and a call that God “may lift the veil from their hearts.”

Pope nixes reference to Jews’ `blindness` over Jesus in prayer - Haaretz, February 6, 2008

Pope Benedict has ordered changes to a Latin prayer for Jews at Good Friday services by traditionalist Catholics, deleting a reference to their “blindness” over Christ, the Vatican said on Tuesday.The Vatican newspaper l’Osservatore Romano published the new version of the prayer in Latin and said it should be used by the traditionalist minority starting this Good Friday, March 21.

Apart from the deletion of the word “blindness,” the new prayer also removes a phrase that asked God to “remove the veil from their hearts”.

But the new prayer hopes that Jews will recognize Christ.

Le pape atténue les termes de la prière de “conversion des juifs”, Le Monde.fr, February 6, 2008

À la veille du Carême (période de quarante jours de prières et de pénitence avant Pâques), ouvert mercredi 6 février, dit “mercredi des Cendres”, le Vatican a tenté de clore une polémique qui a assombri, ces derniers mois, le climat des relations entre catholiques et juifs, devenu plus fraternel quarante ans après le concile réformateur Vatican II (1962-1965).

Cette polémique était née le 7 juillet 2007, avec la publication du motu proprio (décret) de Benoît XVI libéralisant sous conditions - à titre “extraordinaire” - le rite antérieur à Vatican II, appelé rite “tridentin” (concile de Trente au XVIe siècle). Destiné à satisfaire les fidèles traditionalistes, ce décret du pape avait choqué la communauté juive parce que l’ancien rite de l’Eglise comprend - outre la messe en latin - une prière pour la “conversion des juifs”, traditionnellement récitée dans les églises le Vendredi saint (jour de la crucifixion du Christ).

En 1959, cette prière avait été réformée par le pape Jean XXIII (1958-1963), qui avait supprimé l’emploi de l’adjectif “perfides” pour désigner les juifs. Mais le reste n’avait pas été retouché.

En date du 4 février, une note de la secrétairerie d’Etat du Vatican rectifie à nouveau - partiellement - cette prière. Les passages demandant à Dieu de “soustraire le peuple juif de ses ténèbres” et de “l’aveuglement” ont disparu. Mais la suite, qui invite à prier “afin que Dieu illumine le coeur des juifs et qu’ils connaissent Jésus-Christ, sauveur de tous les hommes”, est maintenue. Elle demande à Dieu de permettre “que tout Israël soit sauvé en faisant entrer la foule des gens dans (son) Eglise”. Cette nouvelle version devra être en usage à compter de l’année 2008 dans toutes les célébrations de la liturgie du Vendredi saint.

Avirama Golan, Splintering into tribes in the name of unity - Haaretz, February 6, 2008

An emotional advertisement in the newspaper Hamodia this week urged ultra-Orthodox Jews to come to Jerusalem en masse yesterday. The Haredi community knew that this would be a political-diplomatic demonstration, but the official pretext was an injury to Haredi educational institutions. Only for that is it permissible to abandon Torah study and take to the streets.Representatives of the national religious community also took part in the “mourning.” Seemingly, this is a new alliance. In reality, it is a process that has gained strength in recent years and has made the Zionist rabbis superfluous, split the national religious movement and created new political splinter groups.

Professor Yisrael Aumann, winner of the Nobel Prize in economics, recently joined one of these splinters. Ahi (literally, “my brother,” but also a Hebrew acronym for “land, society and Judaism”), is a movement established by MKs Yitzhak Levy and Effie Eitam. It plans to hold a membership drive and then allow its members to directly elect its Knesset slate, because the negotiations it held on a joint list with two other factions, Moledet and Tekuma, failed. Levy and Eitam argue that the registration drive will redefine the leadership of the religious right, and in the end, everyone will reunite. But Tekuma, Moledet and the National Religious Party all protested the move in an angry letter to leading rabbis.

It is hard to imagine the magnitude of the resentment percolating through the religious right. The only common denominator among the various splinters is the claim that all are working to unify the nation. In the name of this unification - and after the NRP was swallowed up in the National Union faction, along with Moledet (a party of religious and secular rightists) and Tekuma (a religious faction headed by rabbis) - Ahi is now threatening to shed the old NRP, headed by MK Zevulun Orlev, like a discarded skin.