The Equality Act Could Prove a Threat to Religious Jews

Recently passed by the House of Representatives, the bill known as the Equality Act seeks to protect homosexuals and transsexuals from bigotry and discrimination. But, argue Yaakov Menken and Monica Burke, if passed it would inevitably intrude on the freedoms of religious traditionalists, and perhaps of Orthodox Jews in particular:

Should it ever become law, it will impact businesses, non-profits, houses of worship, and individuals. For example, it could put Jewish wedding halls, bands, caterers, and photographers out of business if they refuse service to a gay wedding. Even a synagogue that rents out a hall for weddings and other celebrations could be at risk. Furthermore, the bill would obligate businesses seeking to hire individuals of a particular sex to evaluate candidates based upon their expressed “gender preference,” rather than their biological sex. . . .

[Such] policies could also be the undoing of many religious charities. The Downtown Hope Center in Anchorage, Alaska was recently sued after it declined to allow a biological male who identifies as a woman to stay overnight in its shelter for battered women. That biological women—especially women seeking refuge from abuse—often feel unsafe sleeping near unfamiliar men was of no interest to government investigators. . . .

The Equality Act would [also] require doctors and nurses to perform and prescribe “transition-affirming” therapies, even if they deem them to be detrimental to their patients. Hospitals, even those with religious missions, would be forced to provide these procedures, and insurers would be required to pay for them.

And if the medical community is expected to provide hormonal and surgical interventions for adults, it will soon be expected to do the same for children. Activists suggest social transition for children as young as four, puberty-blocking drugs for children as young as nine, cross-sex hormones for children as young as fourteen, and surgery a few years later. These drastic therapies come with harmful and potentially fatal side effects: increased risk for cancer, heart disease, liver disease, and, of course, sterility.

Read more at Jewish Press

More about: American politics, Homosexuality, Judaism, Transsexuals

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