Grapevine: Mayor Nir Barkat champions a second, Zionist chief rabbi

JERUSALEM HAS survived without a chief rabbi for more than a decade, but it would appear that Mayor Nir Barkat wants not only one chief rabbi, but two to take over the spiritual leadership of the capital.

By GREER FAY CASHMAN
Nir Barkat 521 (photo credit: Flash 90)
Nir Barkat 521
(photo credit: Flash 90)
JERUSALEM HAS survived without a chief rabbi for more than a decade, but it would appear that Mayor Nir Barkat wants not only one chief rabbi, but two to take over the spiritual leadership of the capital. One should be haredi and the other should come from the pro-Zionist, national-religious camp. Presumably, one should be Ashkenazi and the other Sephardi.
The name of Rabbi Aryeh Stern, director of the Halacha Brura Institute, has been bandied about in Ashkenazi religious-Zionist circles. Stern also teaches at Merkaz Harav Yeshiva and is a congregational rabbi in Katamon.
The frontrunner reportedly on Barkat’s list of favorites is Safed Chief Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu. Highly unpopular in left-wing circles and among national-religious stalwarts, Eliyahu is considered to be racist on the grounds that he issued statements to the effect that it is forbidden to sell or rent an apartment to an Arab, and has declared the Arabs to be a violent society. Some of those opposed to his running for office in Jerusalem are conducting a campaign to disqualify Eliyahu from running. More recently Eliyahu sent letters to parents of girls in religious schools, urging that every effort be made to stop girls from joining the army – because in his view, the army places them in inappropriate situations that harm their faith, emotions and sometimes, their bodies.
Other names that have been mentioned as possible candidates are Rabbi David Yosef, one of the sons of late Shas mentor Rabbi Ovadia Yosef; former Sephardi chief rabbi Shlomo Amar; and Rabbi Yehuda Deri, chief rabbi of Beersheba and brother of Shas leader Arye Deri.
APROPOS RABBI Ovadia Yosef, one of his daughters, Adina Bar- Shalom, objects to the commercialization of her father’s memory, especially by fund-raising organizations which use his photograph and name without applying to his family for permission. There is also a dispute between members of the Yosef family and Arye Deri as to whether Ovadia Yosef’s apartment should be turned into a museum, should be a residence for family members or should be sold. Deri is in favor of a museum to perpetuate Yosef’s memory.
EACH YEAR, the Hebrew University Orchestra conducted by Anita Kamien performs a special concert to honor the memory of Avraham Harman, who was the university’s president and later chancellor from 1968 to 1983. Prior to that he was a diplomat and among the founders of the Foreign Ministry, eventually serving from 1959 to 1968 as Israel’s ambassador to the US.
He was also the founding president of the Israel Public Council for Soviet Jewry.
This year’s concert, on Saturday, February 22 at the Henry Crown Auditorium of the Jerusalem Theater, is of particular significance because it celebrates the centenary year of his birth. Harman was born in London in 1914, and died in Jerusalem on February 23, 1992. The concert, with works by Mozart, Beethoven and Brahms,JERUSALEM HAS survived without a chief rabbi for more than a decade, but it would appear that Mayor Nir Barkat wants not only one chief rabbi, but two to take over the spiritual leadership of the capital. One should be haredi and the other should come from the pro-Zionist, national-religious camp. Presumably, one should be Ashkenazi and the other Sephardi.
The name of Rabbi Aryeh Stern, director of the Halacha Brura Institute, has been bandied about in Ashkenazi religious-Zionist circles. Stern also teaches at Merkaz Harav Yeshiva and is a congregational rabbi in Katamon.
The frontrunner reportedly on Barkat’s list of favorites is Safed Chief Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu. Highly unpopular in left-wing circles and among national-religious stalwarts, Eliyahu is considered to be racist on the grounds that he issued statements to the effect that it is forbidden to sell or rent an apartment to an Arab, and has declared the Arabs to be a violent society. Some of those opposed to his running for office in Jerusalem are conducting a campaign to disqualify Eliyahu from running. More recently Eliyahu sent letters to parents of girls in religious schools, urging that every effort be made to stop girls from joining the army – because in his view, the army places them in inappropriate situations that harm their faith, emotions and sometimes, their bodies.
Other names that have been mentioned as possible candidates are Rabbi David Yosef, one of the sons of late Shas mentor Rabbi Ovadia Yosef; former Sephardi chief rabbi Shlomo Amar; and Rabbi Yehuda Deri, chief rabbi of Beersheba and brother of Shas leader Arye Deri.
APROPOS RABBI Ovadia Yosef, one of his daughters, Adina Bar- Shalom, objects to the commercialization of her father’s memory, especially by fund-raising organizations which use his photograph and name without applying to his family for permission. There is also a dispute between members of the Yosef family and Arye Deri as to whether Ovadia Yosef’s apartment should be turned into a museum, should be a residence for family members or should be sold. Deri is in favor of a museum to perpetuate Yosef’s memory.
EACH YEAR, the Hebrew University Orchestra conducted by Anita Kamien performs a special concert to honor the memory of Avraham Harman, who was the university’s president and later chancellor from 1968 to 1983. Prior to that he was a diplomat and among the founders of the Foreign Ministry, eventually serving from 1959 to 1968 as Israel’s ambassador to the US.
He was also the founding president of the Israel Public Council for Soviet Jewry.
This year’s concert, on Saturday, February 22 at the Henry Crown Auditorium of the Jerusalem Theater, is of particular significance because it celebrates the centenary year of his birth. Harman was born in London in 1914, and died in Jerusalem on February 23, 1992. The concert, with works by Mozart, Beethoven and Brahms, will feature soloists Roger Kamien on piano, Ilya Konovalov on violin and Kirill Mihanovsky on cello. The concert is sponsored by the Hebrew University’s Department of Musicology in the Faculty of Humanities, in cooperation with the office of the Dean of Students.
ONCE THE statutory rape file on popular singer Eyal Golan was closed, many women were perfectly happy to have him appear at a women’s conference in Eilat last week, though leading figures from various women’s organizations – most notably the Rape Crisis Center – are not at all happy that Golan is running free.
Golan is scheduled for a mega-concert at the Jerusalem International Convention Center on Saturday, March 15, the eve of Purim, which is widely recognized as a women’s festival, given it was Queen Esther who saved the Jewish world of her era from annihilation.
Unless another scandal related to Golan erupts, it can be safely presumed that the concert will be a sellout.
SEVERAL DRUSE families have relatives living in Syria, and it’s not uncommon for brides to cross the border from one country to the other while wedding guests from each country stand on either side of the fence.
Not only brides cross the border. It’s a well-known fact that in recent months, several hundred Syrians who are victims of the strife in their country have been treated in Israeli hospitals; from this side of the border, quite a number of young men have gone to Damascus to study. One of the reasons for this was revealed last Friday in the weekly broadcast on Israel Radio that Haim Ador anchors from Haifa: Education in Syria is free of charge.
Ador interviewed Druse actor Jabbar Abu Jamal from Majdal Shams, who had studied drama at the University of Damascus – where not only is the tuition free, but so is student accommodation. Ador had been to see play in which Abu Jamal had performed, and had been sufficiently impressed by the actor’s talent to invite him to appear on his show.
The course for which Abu Jamal wanted to enroll required an audition. He chose to do a Shakespearean soliloquy in Arabic, which the admissions panel approved, but he then had to do a reading of something the panel selected for him. Each year, only 16 new students are admitted to the course, and Abu Jamal was one of them. He could vouch for the high standards, he said.