Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis to be Next UK Chief Rabbi

And he is South African born.

Britain’s chief rabbi-designate is to be Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis of Finchley Synagogue, the United Synagogue has announced.

He will be Anglo-Jewry’s 11th chief rabbi. And, like most of his predecessors, Rabbi Mirvis is not British-born.

But the 56-year-old South African-born rabbi, the son and grandson of religious leaders, has spent a large part of his career serving Anglo-Saxon communities.

This, of course, is not his first chief rabbinate. He was Chief Rabbi of Ireland from 1985 to 1992, and for three years before that was minister of Dublin’s Adelaide Road Synagogue.

Rabbi Mirvis comes from a family of rabbis and teachers. His grandfather, Rev Lazar Mirvis, was a minister in Johannesburg, while his father, Rabbi Dr Lionel Mirvis, led the Claremont Synagogue and also the Wynberg Hebrew Congregation in Cape Town.

His mother, Freida, was principal of the Athlone Teachers Training College, which, during the apartheid years, was the only college for black teachers of pre-school instruction in South Africa.

After leaving Cape Town for Israel, where he attended a number of yeshivot and obtained his semicha (rabbinical qualification), Rabbi Mirvis married Zimbabwe-born Valerie Kaplan, a former senior social worker with Jewish Care, who now works for a local authority in the same capacity. The couple have four sons.

Along the way Rabbi Mirvis qualified as a shochet, mohel and chazan. Between 1992 and 1996 he was the rabbi of Marble Arch Synagogue. Since 1996 he has become synonymous with the ever-growing Finchley Synagogue, one of the biggest congregations in London.

A member of his congregation said on Monday night: “The congregation is torn. They know he is the best candidate to be chief rabbi. But they will miss him desperately. They think he is irreplaceable.”

It is more than two years since Lord Sacks’ retirement date was announced.

His departure was announced at a United Synagogue council meeting on December 13, 2010.

Then US President Simon Hochhauser made clear that there would be a successor and said focus groups would be used during the recruitment process.

Rabbi Mirvis was the long-time frontrunner for the role, but the US selection procedure nonetheless took months longer than expected. It was first intended to name the new chief by Rosh Hashanah 2012.

 

Rabbi in Germany Prosecuted for Performing Circumcisions

I saw this over at First Thoughts:

The entire Catholic community—in Germany and throughout the world—must stand with Rabbi Goldberg and speak out against his prosecution for performing circumcisions of male infants in compliance with their parents’ wishes and Jewish law.  The threats to religious liberties and to religious people whose beliefs and practices are regarded as intolerable by those who preach the supreme importance of tolerance know no borders.

 

Chief Rabbi of Amsterdam Sacked after Saying Homosexuality is Sinful

The nominal Chief Rabbi signed a statement saying that homosexuality was ‘sinful’ and could be ‘cured’.

Dutch News:

Amsterdam’s Orthodox Jewish community has suspended rabbi Aryeh Ralbag as its nominal chief after the New York-based official signed a statement describing homosexuality as an illness which can be cured.

Ralbag will remain suspended until he and community leaders have spoken about the issue, the Telegraaf said on Tuesday evening.

The declaration, signed by 162 rabbis and mental health practitioners last year, states that ‘homosexuality is not an acceptable lifestyle’ and that ‘behaviours are changeable’.

Visits

Ralbag, who lives in New York and visits the Netherlands once or twice a year to rule on legal matters, signed the statement using all his official functions, including that of chief rabbi of Amsterdam. That part of his signature has now been removed.

‘Rabbi Ralbag’s signature may give the impression the Orthodox Jewish community of Amsterdam shares his view,’ said a press release by the community’s board NIHS. ‘This is absolutely untrue. Homosexuals are welcome at the Amsterdam Jewish community.’

The Dutch Israel information centre CIDI has also called on Ralbag to stand down from his Amsterdam position, the Telegraaf said.

According to deputy director Esther Voet in the Jerusalem Post, the Dutch Jewish community is unique. ‘We need a chief rabbi who is aware of our traditions and that’s something you cannot fly in two times a year,’ the paper quoted her as saying.

 

Methodist Seminary to Train Rabbis and Imams

 The Claremont School of Theology, a Christian divinity school in Los Angeles, will use a $50 million gift to begin training Jewish and Muslim clergy.

The gift from David and Joan Lincoln of Arizona, $10 million of which was given last year, will help Claremont transform itself into a multifaith institution offering interfaith degree programs as well as training for rabbis, imams and ministers, The Los Angeles Times reported.

The Claremont Lincoln University, as the new school will be called, will be the first U.S. school to offer clerical degrees in all three religions, according to Tamar Frankiel, dean of academic affairs for the Academy for Jewish Religion, California. The Los Angeles-based academy, which is not affiliated with a particular Jewish stream, will provide the Jewish clerical training.

The academy has 60 students enrolled in its rabbinic, cantorial and chaplaincy programs. It plans to institute distance learning as early as this fall to help students not located in Los Angeles, Frankiel told JTA.

The Islamic Center of Southern California will train the Muslim clerics. The Claremont School of Theology, which has about 240 students enrolled in master’s and doctorate programs in religion and counseling, and is affiliated with the United Methodist Church, will continue to educate Christian ministers. 

All three institutions will remain in their existing locations, with degree programs and courses coordinated through the new university.

The Los Angeles Times reported that a plan announced last year to train clergy for all three faiths in one college upset the United Methodist Church, which has funded the seminary since its creation. The three-part structure for the new university was developed so that only the Christian program will receive church monies.

Claremont officials are hailing the interfaith initiative as unique…

The above and more here.

Repent One Day Before Your Death

But nobody knows when they will die! Exactly…

Rabbi Elizer said, “Repent one day before your death.”

His disciples asked him, “But does a person know on what day he is going to die?”

“All the more reason, therefore, to repent today, lest one die tomorrow. In this manner, one’s whole life will be spent in repentance.”

- Babylonian Talmud, Shabbat 153a

Glenn Beck: ‘I blew it’ Comparing Rabbis to Islamic Radicals

Yes, blew it big time!

Glenn Beck is apologizing for remarks he made on his radio show comparing rabbis from a major Jewish tradition to Islamic radicals, saying, “I was wrong on this and I also apologize for it.”

“In this case I didn’t do enough homework,” Beck told radio listeners on Thursday, while his website said his comments contained “one of the worst analogies of all time.”

On Tuesday, Beck said on his show that “reformed rabbis are generally political in nature.”

“It’s almost like Islam – radicalized Islam,” he continued, “in a way to where radicalized Islam is less about religion than it is about politics.”

Beck’s comments came after a group of 400 rabbis, many from the Reform movement, took out a full-page ad in The Wall Street Journal blasting him for comments he made about the Holocaust.

Beck, who also hosts a show on Fox News, had aired a radio series about financier George Soros that accused him of collaborating with the Nazis to send Jews to death camps, according to the Jewish Funds for Justice, which sponsored the ad.

Soros is Jewish.

The Reform movement, founded in 19th century Germany, counts a million and a half Jews in North America, according to the Union for Reform Judaism.

Beck sent a letter to the Anti-Defamation League, a group that works to combat anti-Semitism, to apologize for his remarks.

“I was admittedly misinformed on Reform rabbis, and made a horrible analogy that I immediately attempted to clarify – quite honestly, I blew it on this one,” Beck wrote, according to a copy of the letter released by the Anti-Defamation League.

Anti-Defamation League National Director Abraham H. Foxman says he accepts Beck’s apology.

“Glenn Beck has shown that he understands how his remarks were offensive and out of line,” Foxman said in a statement Thursday. “We welcome his words of apology and consider the matter closed.”

The Jewish Funds for Justice, meanwhile, said Beck’s apology did not go far enough.

“Glenn Beck’s apology for comparing Reform Judaism to ‘radicalized Islam’ is welcome but incomplete,” the group said in a statement.

“While we are heartened to hear him recognize his ignorance,” the statement continued, “he still has not acknowledged that the letter signed by 400 rabbis and organized by Jewish Funds for Justice represented a cross-section of denominations, including Orthodox, Conservative, Reconstructionist, and Renewal rabbis.”

True dilettantism Mr Beck.