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Israel Religious Action Center
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“And the Lord executes righteousness,” Psalms 103:6
About IRAC: IRAC
occupies a unique place in the social and religious
landscape of Israel: it is the only organization that
infuses social justice advocacy with the spiritual energy
and humane worldview of Progressive Judaism. The public and
legal advocacy arm of the Reform Movement in Israel, IRAC
was founded in 1987 with the goals of advancing pluralism in
Israeli society and defending the freedoms of conscience,
faith, and religion. In its 20 year history IRAC has built
up a network of legal-aid centers, engaged in public policy
advocacy to advance civic equality, and presented many
precedent setting petitions to the Supreme Court. These
activities have established IRAC as a leading organization
working to strengthen the democratic character of Israeli
society.
The Need for IRAC:
Poverty has intensified over the past few years; according
to the Government of Israel, one-third of Israeli children
live below the poverty line, while one-in-five Israelis is
considered poor. The Orthodox establishment still controls
all Jewish life cycle events in Israel, and the state offers
no legal civil alternative. Because of these policies,
hundreds of thousands of Israelis are not able to be married
in Israel. A growing numbers of new immigrants from the FSU
and Ethiopia are struggling to defend their Jewish identity
against the Orthodox monopoly. The corruption in State run
religious services runs rampant, but there is currently no
legislation in place to hold Religious Council employees
accountable. The level of control that the Orthodox
leadership holds was perhaps best exemplified in the Fall
2006, when ultra-Orthodox Jews rioted in Jerusalem, starting
street fires, turning over cars, and stoning the mayor of
Jerusalem - all to stop a gay pride parade. This violent
intimidation was in fact successful. Against this chaotic
background, IRAC occupies a singular distinction: it is the
leading Israeli organization that merges social justice work
with the spiritual energy of Judaism, and the only one to
advocate on behalf of a broadly inclusive Israeli democracy.
In the past 4 years, IRAC has doubled its annual operating
budget to $2,000,000 to support its ever-expanding programs.
IRAC’s Goals: IRAC hopes
to continue its groundbreaking work in sowing the seeds for
an egalitarian and pluralistic Israeli society. Toward this
greater end, we have several major goals:
1. The Promotion and Defense of Progressive Judaism in
Israel: Orthodox Judaism currently profits from a
hegemonic position in Israeli society, as it is the only
state-recognized form of Jewish practice. IRAC will work
with the Israeli Movement for Progressive Judaism to ensure
greater official recognition for non-Orthodox Rabbis and
life-cycle events such as marriage, burial, and conversions.
IRAC will defend the IMPJ’s congregations and institutions
from discrimination with regard to State recognition and
funding.
2. Defense of Women’s Rights and Gender Equity: As a
result of the Orthodox stranglehold on state-provided
religious service in Israel, the same movement’s archaic and
demeaning attitudes toward women have largely ossified
within Israeli society. IRAC will combat the religious
justification of practices exclusionary towards women, thus
advancing women’s rights and sex equality, a key tenet of
Progressive Judaism.
3. Advancing Social Justice and Combating Poverty:
The Government of Israel has stated that a third of Israeli
children live in poverty and that a full fifth (20%) of the
general population considered poor. Consistent with the
Progressive Jewish emphasis on tzedakah (charity) and tikkum
olam (bettering the world), IRAC provide material support to
disadvantaged and needy families in Israel and advocates in
Knesset for laws that seek to address the problem of
nutritional insecurity in Israel. In addition, IRAC promotes
social responsibility and social action in Jewish
communities throughout Israel
4. Promotion of Good Governance and Fighting Corruption:
Religious services in Israel are largely funded and overseen
by the State. Progressive Jewish congregations are often
excluded from government funding for educational programs,
social services, and building of new congregations; whereas
Orthodox groups regularly receive such funding. Furthermore,
Orthodox groups regularly misappropriate and embezzle such
funds. IRAC will support clean government practices as well
as the right of Progressive Judaism to receive equal support
from the State.
Measurable Objectives/ Outcomes
Corresponding to Goals
1. Recognition of Rabbi Miri Gold as a Municipal Rabbi and
her receipt of a State salary. It is not clear when this
case will be resolved and it could take several more years.
In the meantime IRAC will continue to press this case as
well as line up at least 5 other similar cases by the end of
2007 that can be launched as soon as the Gold case is
decided.
2. We hope to see by the end of 2007, either the
discontinuation of the forced gender segregated buses by the
Egged line, or more likely the addition of duplicate
non-segregated bus lines that for the same price and that
run on the same routes and frequency.
3. Our social action work has many projects. We will run our
holiday food drives, distributing over 12 tons of food
packages to needy families serving at least 2500 families
for Passover, 1500 families for Rosh Hashana, and also
serving over 5000 Arab Israelis celebrating with packages
for Christmas and the Muslim Feast of the Sacrifice. We will
also continue to supply food weekly to over 100 families of
foreign workers. More than 1000 people will participate in
our social action training courses, from at least 70
different congregations, who will run at least 50 different
social action projects in their respective communities.
4. We will launch an Anti-Corruption Campaign with a media
campaign with ads running for at least one month and a
staffed hotline running concurrently. This campaign will
give us evidence to launch at least 3 petitions against the
government for corruption in stated funded mandatory
religious services.
Methods
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IRAC uses diverse methods to accomplish
our greater goal of cultivating a pluralistic and
egalitarian Jewish state. |
1. Litigation: The Legal Department executes the core
work of IRAC addressing freedom of religion and conscience,
religious pluralism, and equal rights before the law for the
many individuals, organizations and institutions it
represents. Through the Legal Department, IRAC has led
historic battles resulting in landmark Israeli Supreme Court
precedents. IRAC litigates a variety of cross-spectrum cases
ranging from "Who is a Jew?" and personal status issues,
government corruption, social justice, and matters of public
funding. Litigation is an integral tool in our work, and we
expect to file a number of petitions dealing with
recognition of Progressive Judaism, women’s rights,
immigrants’ rights, and government corruption.
2. Legal Aid Center for Olim (LACO): Our three
centers (Tel Aviv, Beer Sheva, and Haifa) offer pro-bono
legal aid for new Israeli immigrants struggling with legal
issues because new immigrants are the most vulnerable to the
Orthodox establishment’s discriminatory practices. Many of
these cases feed IRAC’s precedent setting Supreme Court
petitions. In 2007, LACO assisted more than 6,000 new
immigrants, primarily from Ethiopia and the FSU.
3. Social Action with Kehilat Tzedek and Keren B’Kavod:
These two programs form the core of our social outreach
activities, consistent with the Jewish emphasis on tzedaka.
Kehilat Tzedek is the Reform Movement’s social action
empowerment and training program that promotes the
social-action involvement of Jewish congregations from all
denominations in Israel. B’Kavod is the Reform humanitarian
assistance program that distributes food, hygiene and baby
products to the poor and needy in Israel regardless of
religion or ethnicity. This program proved critical during
the Second Lebanon war, when it distributed over $100,000
worth of humanitarian aid. IRAC works through both of these
departments to increase Jewish social involvement and
provide critical aid to Israel’s most needy.
4. Legislation & Advocacy: In the past, IRAC’s main
legal tool was filing petitions against the Supreme Court.
After our numerous courtroom successes, we are now expanding
our work in the legislative sector, thus increasing its
efficacy. Legislation is another form of advocacy that will
increase our influence on policy makers and public opinion.
We lobby the government to block proposed bills that wound
the unity of the Jewish people (such as a recent proposal to
bar aliyah by all converts), and ultimately propose bills to
the Knesset.
5. Public Relations Campaigns: Due to IRAC’s singular
position in Israeli society, our work receives significant
public attention. We will continue to harness this
visibility as we pursue our goals by updating our website,
issuing press releases, publishing multimedia
advertisements, and by setting up hotlines that the public
can use to address issues such as corruption.
Highlights of Major Activities and
Issues for 2008
1. Who is a Jew? Who is a Rabbi? And Who Decides?
Recognition of non-Orthodox Rabbis: Rabbi Miri Gold
In September 2005, IRAC filed a petition on behalf of Reform
Rabbi Miri Gold of Kibbutz Gezer. The petition seeks formal
recognition for Rabbi Gold as the Kibbutz Rabbi and the same
State funding that other hundreds of Municipal Rabbis (all
of them Orthodox men) receive. The petition also asks the
State to establish a general procedure that will allow
non-Orthodox rabbis to serve in an official capacity. IRAC
views this petition as a first step toward greater
recognition of non-Orthodox rabbis by the State. The Israeli
Supreme Court has previously decided that since the
religious councils should serve the religious needs of all
Jews, they should include non-Orthodox (as well as Orthodox)
representatives, as well as both men and women.
On June 22, 2006, the Rabbi Gold case was heard before the
Supreme Court, where we argued that the State has not denied
the blatant discrimination of non-Orthodox rabbis in Israel.
In response to our petition, the Court ruled that a
committee should be established to address the regional
rabbinical councils and the issue of non-Orthodox rabbis;
however, the commission is far from completing its
discussions. In addition to Rabbi Gold’s case, IRAC is
pursuing recognition for non-Orthodox rabbis on two fronts:
seats on the regional rabbinical councils, and posts of
municipal rabbi. We are currently in the process of
submitting at least a half-dozen such petitions and are
working with Reform and Conservative congregations to
explore further opportunities in this quest for inclusion in
the Jewish community. With the Israeli government’s formal
recognition of Reform, Reconstructionist, and Conservative
Rabbis, IRAC will pave the way for total recognition of all
religious ceremonies performed by them including: marriage,
brit mila, burial, divorce and conversion. When Israelis are
not forced to accept the rule of the Orthodox rabbinate and
can choose their form of Jewish observance, then IRAC will
have truly attained its goals of Jewish pluralism in Israel
and an end to the Orthodox hegemony.
2. Religious Coercion by the Ultra-Orthodox
Gender Equity and Religious Freedom: Desegregating Israeli
Buses
On January 24, 2007, IRAC filed a petition against the Egged
bus company and the Ministry of Transportation regarding
numerous offenses against women committed on their buses.
Egged has designated 30 lines as ultra-orthodox, and women,
in accordance with ultra-orthodox custom, are expected to
dress “modestly,” enter through the rear door, and then sit
at the back of the bus—these buses are in effect segregated.
Though these regulations are not explicitly delineated, they
have been accepted as a sort of customary law by both Egged
and much of these lines’ ridership.
IRAC currently represents five petitioners in this watershed
case, including observant Israeli writer Naomi Regan. She
entered an empty bus and sat near the front, but was asked
to move by an ultra-orthodox man. When she responded that
there was neither a sign nor any basis in halakha (Jewish
law) for such a request, Regan was forced to endure violent
harassment and threats throughout the trip—all while the
driver of the bus complacently looked on. Other petitioners
spoke of being denied entrance to these buses because of
“immodest” dress such as a skirt down to the knees or
trousers (ultra-orthodox women wear long skirts that expose
none of their legs). Those who refuse to ride on these 30
segregated lines, 23 of which run on major intercity routes,
must often take multiple buses and pay greater fares to
reach the same destination. As such, these special
ultra-orthodox lines violate not only the rights of women,
but also the right to be free from religious coercion. As
our petition was just filed last week, we are still awaiting
Egged’s and the government’s responses to our petition.
3. Anti-Corruption Campaign
In the past few years, Israel has encountered the growing
phenomenon of corruption. In specific, the reports of the
ombudsman are full of corruption and mismanagement of
rabbinical and religious institutions. In other government
systems that are special disciplinary courts; however, the
employees of the religious councils are not held accountable
by any disciplinary system, public or governmental.
Unfortunately, no current legislation exists which would be
qualified to address this issue. There is also no regulation
over the kashrut system. The lack of clearly articulated
common standards over kashrut has left the door wide open
for corruption. The goal of the IRAC Anti-Corruption
Campaign is to provoke a clean-up of the rabbinical and
religious institutions in Israel. First, there must be a
public awareness. This campaign will invite the Israeli
public to report cases of corruption in the areas of burial
services, weddings, and the kashrut system. IRAC will use
these cases as the impetus for the introduction of new
legislation and rulings by the court. There must be new
legislation created that will make it possible to address
corruption in religious services directly and will lead to
disciplinary actions by the courts. Ultimately, the
Anti-Corruption Campaign will create a public atmosphere
that no longer tolerates corruption.
4. Increased Assistance to Ethiopian Olim
IRAC opened its Legal Aid Center for Olim in 1992, with the
recognition that many new immigrants from the Former Soviet
Union and Ethiopia do not have the necessary tools for the
various problems facing them in their absorption process.
Since then LACO has successfully helped over 60,000 new
immigrants. The majority of cases that LACO handles involve
the Ministry of the Interior. They include issues of
marriage, adoptions, conversions, family unification, and in
the worst case scenarios preventing deportation. We also
handle many cases where we simply assist new olim who have
been taken advantage of by employers, landlords, insurance
providers and retailers who exploit the new immigrant’s
ignorance and naivete. One of the primary issues that
Ethiopian immigrants confront is age correction due to the
lack of documentation in Ethiopia, the difference in
calendars and the general disarray with the aliyah process.
This bureaucratic mistake can wreak havoc on the lives of
new immigrants - twelve year olds have been called to
military services and the elderly have not been considered
old enough to collect their pensions. In addition, severe
difficulties arise from the fact that many single Ethiopian
women are raped while awaiting aliyah and the children born
afterwards can't be converted to Judaism without both
parents’ approval. To ask a victim to attempt to find the
offender is obviously completely unreasonable. In the past
two years we have seen a huge increase in the number of
petitions served to the District and Supreme Courts on
behalf of new Ethiopian immigrants and their families. This
year IRAC has hired an Amharic speaking Ethiopian attorney
(one of the first in Israel) who will work full time to
serve the needs of this growing population. One of the
reasons for the increase in our petitions is the inability
of the Interior Ministry to deal with the current reality of
immigration to Israel. Thus, in addition to assisting
individuals, we have also been very active in working
towards changing the immigration policies of the State of
Israel. |
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