Stephen Sizer’s Empty Apologies

Stephen Sizer, an Anglican minister, is the subject of an investigation by his ecclesiastical superiors for posting a link to an anti-Semitic conspiracy website on his Facebook page. He has since removed the link and apologized. But as Betsy Childs notes, he has done this sort of thing before, and seems to have learned little:

In October 2011, Dr. Sizer apologized for calling Israeli Christians who support their nation “an abomination.” . . . The same month, Dr. Sizer posted a link on Facebook to an anti-Semitic website called The Ugly Truth. He apologized in an email to his bishop. . . . By the following May, Dr. Sizer had posted a link to another anti-Semitic website called Veterans Today. He issued a public apology. . . .

Just one month later, in June 2012, Dr. Sizer apologized for posting a link to the anti-Semitic website Window into Palestine. The site refers to the Holocaust as the “Hollow Cause” and includes ads for the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. His apology, which appeared in the Jewish Chronicle, announced that he had removed the link but pleaded the justification that it is “not always possible to run background checks on every website before linking to materials.” . . .

This January, Stephen Sizer posted a link to an article from a website called Wikispooks. The article with the headline “9/11, Israel did it” outlined a conspiracy theory laying the responsibility for the September 11 terrorist attacks on Jews. . . . The Church of England put out a statement that Dr. Sizer’s conduct was unacceptable and promised an investigation into the matter. Only then did Dr. Sizer apologize for this his most egregious Facebook link yet. . . .

What can be learned from all these episodes? While Stephen Sizer has shown himself ready to apologize, he has been unwilling to alter his behavior. It is past time for his church to stop allowing him to plead carelessness as his excuse.

Read more at First Things

More about: Anti-Semitism, Church of England, Protocols of the Elders of Zion

It’s Time for Haredi Jews to Become Part of Israel’s Story

Unless the Supreme Court grants an extension from a recent ruling, on Monday the Israeli government will be required to withhold state funds from all yeshivas whose students don’t enlist in the IDF. The issue of draft exemptions for Haredim was already becoming more contentious than ever last year; it grew even more urgent after the beginning of the war, as the army for the first time in decades found itself suffering from a manpower crunch. Yehoshua Pfeffer, a haredi rabbi and writer, argues that haredi opposition to army service has become entirely disconnected from its original rationale:

The old imperative of “those outside of full-time Torah study must go to the army” was all but forgotten. . . . The fact that we do not enlist, all of us, regardless of how deeply we might be immersed in the sea of Torah, brings the wrath of Israeli society upon us, gives a bad name to all of haredi society, and desecrates the Name of Heaven. It might still bring harsh decrees upon the yeshiva world. It is time for us to engage in damage limitation.

In Pfeffer’s analysis, today’s haredi leaders, by declaring that they will fight the draft tooth and nail, are violating the explicit teachings of the very rabbis who created and supported the exemptions. He finds the current attempts by haredi publications to justify the status quo not only unconvincing but insincere. At the heart of the matter, according to Pfeffer, is a lack of haredi identification with Israel as a whole, a lack of feeling that the Israeli story is also the haredi story:

Today, it is high time we changed our tune. The new response to the demand for enlistment needs to state, first and foremost to ourselves, that this is our story. On the one hand, it is crucial to maintain and even strengthen our isolation from secular values and culture. . . . On the other hand, this cultural isolationism must not create alienation from our shared story with our fellow brethren living in the Holy Land. Participation in the army is one crucial element of this belonging.

Read more at Tzarich Iyun

More about: Haredim, IDF, Israeli society