Israelis cannot let Judaism be a mask for racism

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It's time Jews in Israel shed their Diaspora mentality of fearing assimilation and start taking care of the minority religions living in this country.

Ahmadiyya Times | News Watch |
Source/Credit: Haaretz
By Arie Hasit | Aug. 28, 2014

The recent protest outside the wedding of Morel, a Jewish-born woman who converted to Islam, and Mahmoud, a Muslim, has nothing to do with intermarriage, nor did it have to do with assimilation. It was racist, pure and simple.

Despite that the wedding was no one’s business other than that of the couple, their friends and families, I can understand why the wedding evoked strong emotions among members of the Israeli public. A Jewish-born woman chose to leave the faith, and even though she apparently now identifies as a Muslim, many Jews still see the relationship as intermarriage between a now-apostate Jew and a Muslim.

Even so, I am not convinced that the protests against the wedding came from a religious objection to intermarriage. First, the claim that the wedding was a religious intermarriage is a tenuous one, as Morel converted to Islam. While Judaism technically views her as a lapsed Jew, but nevertheless a Jew, in the eyes of the couple, the wedding was between two members of the same religion.

From a Jewish religious perspective, the problem is not that the bride was marrying outside the faith, but that she left the faith altogether. I can understand the sadness at seeing that our religion ceases to speak to some of our members, but we should not publicly mourn that departure from the faith at the celebration of two people joining their lives together.  [ more ... ]




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