Likud Member of Knesset Galit Distel Atbaryan sparked a storm on Monday after suggesting during a parliamentary session that adherents of Reform Judaism should not be considered part of the Jewish people.
The incident took place during a meeting of the Subcommittee for Jewish Thought in the Education System, where Distel Atbaryan serves as chair. In a heated exchange, she ordered MK Gilad Kariv of The Democrats party to be removed from the discussion, declaring, “Remove the Reformist, [the] Jews here want to continue.”
Kariv had voiced his support for permitting girls to don tefillin in public schools as part of a broader effort to allow tefillin stands in secular educational institutions. While halacha restricts the use of tefillin to boys from the age of bar mitzvah, Reform practice supports the inclusion of girls.
Reacting to the incident, Kariv criticized Distel Atbaryan and her political allies, saying, “The hateful attack and loss of composure by Distel testify to her and her coalition partners’ convoluted Jewish worldview – a zealous, misogynistic, isolationist, and resentful Judaism.”
He continued, “We will not allow this view of Judaism to take root in our children’s schools. We will introduce them to a tradition that embraces diversity, humanity, and inclusion and that serves as the meeting point between tradition and renewal.”
Later in the day, Distel Atbaryan addressed the controversy from the Knesset floor, issuing a strong rebuttal to Kariv’s remarks.
“Listen carefully, Gilad Kariv. As long as I am leading the Subcommittee for Jewish Thought in the Education System, I will personally prevent the takeover of the education system by Reformist organizations. No matter how much you talk about religious coercion, Israeli students will know the Bible. No matter how much you try to instill fear in the secular public, Israeli students will know the biblical story,” she said.
She went on, “No matter how much you lie, distort, incite, hate, and sow discord, Israeli students will return to learning about their identity and knowing their sources. Because of fear-mongering by people like you, schools in Israel have simply stopped teaching the Bible.”
“My committee is changing this reality and leading a real and exciting reform. And I am immensely proud of this achievement. The committee is inclusive and invites everyone: secular, traditional, religious, ultra-Orthodox – everyone.
“The only thing it does not include is populists like you, who hate Israel and try to impose the minority’s opinion on the majority, all in the name of pluralism. You are a joke.”
This is not the first time Kariv, a Reform rabbi, has faced dismissive or antagonistic remarks in the Knesset, particularly from members of the ultra-Orthodox parties, who frequently question his religious legitimacy either directly or through insinuation.
Reacting to the uproar, Gusti Yehoshua Braverman, who represents the Reform Movement within the World Zionist Organization, issued a condemnation of Distel Atbaryan’s words, calling them “not only offensive and cruel, they reflect a deep and deliberate alienation toward millions of Jews in Israel and around the world who identify with Reform and Conservative Judaism.”
She added, “As a Zionist woman, a Reform Jew, and a public representative of the World Zionist Organization, I utterly reject this statement, which disgraces the Knesset and the core values of the Jewish people.”
{Matzav.com}
“The core values of the Jewish people” are those provided by the Torah, not by “Reform” heretics.
Did you notive the woman involved is a Reform jew, but wants to revert to teaching the Torah as we Frum Jews do?
REFORM CLERGY DONT EVEN BELIEVE IN DIETY. ASK HURAV HATZADIK GOOGLE
There was no demand to remove Miki Rosenthal when she declared to “strangle with tefillin” Jews who offer free tefillin to children.
Yitamu CHATA’IM min ha’aretz. Al tikra CHOTIM eleh CHATA’IM! THIS is a true Torah value.
It absolutely must be made glaringly clear that Jews who may be members of reform congregations and believe in and follow and practice what they call “Reform Judaism” ARE full Jews!! So, it is extremely wrong to ever say any remarks that could be understood as implying someting different. The issue of the problem of this situation though, is that WHAT these Jews believe in & follow & practice, this religion that they call “Reform Judaism,” is not Judaism!! Now, it obviously has in it an extremely gigantic amount of (real) Judaism, and the people who formed it obviously had real Judaism as their starting point. However, very unfortunately, they distorted it with all kinds of many distortions, producing a product that is quite different from real Judaism.
Not necesarily true. Some are Jews, some are from intermarried families. Where the mother was a gentile, so they aren’t Jewish.
Not necesarily true. Some are Jews, some are from intermarried families. Where the mother was a gentile, so they aren’t Jewish.
Yitamu CHATA’IM min ha’Aretz. Al tikra CHOTIM eleh CHATA’IM!
Yitamu CHATA’IM min ha’Aretz. Al tikra CHOTIM eleh CHATA’IM!
The REAL Torah value is to daven for their return, not to send them off in the sunset.
The Truth. Unfortunately, you are wrong. A large number of Reform Jews are NOT Jews, according to Halacha. With over 70% intermarriage, perfunctory “conversions” and the replacement of Judaism with their new religion of leftism, very few Reform Jews are actually Jewish.Sadly, they have lots of money to burn in their efforts to destroy Judaism in Eretz Yisrael.
My statement was JEWS — I am streesing “JEWS” (in other words true Jews, who were bron from a Jewish mother, who herself was born from a Jewish mother, and so on) — who belong to a Reform congrgation and ffollow & do the Reform way ARE DEFINITELY STILL JEWS!! Their doing the bad things of the Reform way does not make them become not Jews.
Now, I did further say that their bad Reform way is bad because it gravely distorts quite a lot of what Judaism is, and so their bad reform way is NOT “Judaism.” One of the big distortions that they have made is that they will call a person born from a Jewish father and a non-Jewish mother a Jew, even though the fact is that this person is NOT a Jew. So you (and shmendrick above) very correctly point out that in a Reform congregation there are probably a significant number of persons who were born form non-Jewish mothers who are thus not Jews but their Reform colleagues are calling them Jews.
It must be further repeated that the Gedolay Torah of the last few generations have pointed out that most — maybe even all — of the Jews who are affiliated with and who identify with “reform” or “conservative” are “Tinokes Shenishb’u” – they are like very young (Jewish) children who were taken captive by non-Jewish hordes and placed in non-Jewish communities and thus grew up in non-Jewish environments. So, it is completely understandable that they have almost no memory of their original Jewish families and even less memory of the Jewish practices that their families did. So, there is no blame at all on them that now, they do not follow any Practices of Judaism, for they were never taught anything or knew anything at all about that.
With the many masses of Jews who emigrated from the many religious Jewish communities in Europe to come to the United States and Canada and other areas of the western world, they were obviously not being brought as captives by a foreign army. However, many aspects of their circumstances greatly paralleled those of captives.
First of all, probably the vast majority of them had been virtually FORCED to leave their European communitiues. For there, they had been in the midst of non-Jewish populations AND GOVERNMENTS filled with vehement Sinas Yisroel. Especially in the spring, when the Christain religion has days celebrating when, in their beliefs, us Jews killed their god, hordes of these non-Jews — often with government backing — would attack the communities, ransacking & burning homes and even killing numbers of us.
So, they egarly came to America, where the policy of the government is Freedom of Religion, that people are free to choose whatever religion they want to be, and that there is to be no prejudice against anyone.
When they arrived & settled in America though, there was almost zero infrastructure of Torah facilities that are necessary for a Torah following life. The established Jewish communities with their infrastructures of Shuls, which they called “temples,” and social service organizations, had been built by earlier Jewish immigrants, who, in Europe, were already strong promoters of the Reform way. Once in America, these earlier immigrants even more strongly propelled the Reform idea that the ways of Torah may have been “nice” in the “olden days” of the “old” drab ghettos & villages of Eastern Europe but had no place in the gleaming cities of the “modern” world.
Initially, some Torah infrastructures were erected in small, isolated locations, such as Manhattan’s renowned “Lower East Side” in New York City. Those infrastructures ultimately “dried up” and “dissipated,” though, as the populace, upon success, moved away from them to “better” “upper class” neighborhoods. As noted above, the only “Jewish” infrastructures in those classier areas were Reform & Conservative temples.
So, those Jews who were so strongly compelled by these circumstances to eventually join in with Reform & Conservative operations & non-Torah observant ways, can well be viewed like “Tinokes Shenishb’u,” “chlldren who were taken captive.” They were “taken captive” (not by an actual “army” but rather) by “compelling circumstances.” Certainly their children and their grandchildren and their great-grandchildren are considered “Tinokes Shnishb’u.” For the only “Judaism” that they grew up in and were taught & educated in and knew about was Reform & Conservative style.