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| Volume 10 Number 114 | Sat May 5 23:55:01 US/Pacific 2001 |
From: Johanna <rebiljo@voyager.net> Date: Fri May 4 13:05:43 US/Pacific 2001 Subject: Re: Children and Animals Given some internet insanity with my ISP, I have not received any of the mlj posts since last weekend. If anyone has written regarding my situation with my daughter, or anything else, could you please copy and send it to me directly? Sorry about that. By the way, my daughter admitted that the only reason she did what she did was because she wanted to see if she could get away with it. I, with the input of my husband, crafted a series of tasks and punishments that were age appropriate. In part they involve being grounded from playing with friends and parties (of course), excersising only with the dog, and writing out many times that the Torah tells us to respect our parents and take care of animals. In general, she has tremendous respect and sympathy for all life, especially animals, and especially dogs, she just wanted to see how good a liar she was! We also had a nice long talk about Yetzer HaRa and Yetzer HaTov, and how she can choose to do right or wrong, but has to suffer the consequenses of her choices. Needless to say, she has been an angel since all this happened. But it's good to turn her on to whatever I can in this regard. No doubt, there will be other times when she makes "the wrong choice". As for the dog, she's fine, and was not punished, of course. Johanna Smith
From: Johanna <rebiljo@voyager.net> Date: Fri May 4 13:06:30 US/Pacific 2001 Subject: Re: Halachic Observance Michael Horowitz wrote: > First it is not what I want but what the Roth teshuva stated. Your problems > are not with me but with Rabbi Joel Roth [of the Conservative Movement] who > wrote the responsa. > > Rabbi Roth argued that woman could voluntarily assume the obligation of men > and then would have the same level of obligation. Michael is absolutely right as far as it goes. I did have the opportunity to hear Rabbi Roth defend his position to a small group of Conservative Jews in the IMUN lay leader program. Although no one (including myself) attacked his position directly, in subsuquent discussions, we pretty much uniformly rejected it. Another rabbi in the program told us that in his opinion, the Conservative halacha should have rejected the traditions restricting women's practice (and amended the shades of grey between minchag and halacha) and declaired them as obsolete as those regarding the holding of slaves or polygamy. As an egalitarian Conservative Jew, of course, I agree. So, I think, do most Conservative Jews, lay and ordained alike. As often happens, the practice becomes minchag and, I believe, eventually becomes law. I appologize to Michael for his position. He is right. Althoug I may not agree with him, in this case, it is Roth I have the argument with. Johanna Smith
From: Your Moderator <moderator@mljewish.org> Date: Sat May 5 22:30:38 US/Pacific 2001 Subject: Long Distance Calling to Israel Forgive the peripherally related submission, but I'm the moderator :-) My father's long distance company that he used for phone calls to Israel just went belly up. If anyone has some suggestions on companies to use, please forward them to me, or send them to him directly at eafaigin@pacbell.net. Thanks, Daniel
From: Your Moderator <moderator@mljewish.org> Date: Sat May 5 22:32:59 US/Pacific 2001 Subject: Shavuot Shavuot is coming up. So, here's a topic of discussion. Typically, both Lag B'Omer and Shavuot get little attention in Reform congregations. Certainly, Shavuot doesn't get the attention that the other equivalent festivals (Sukkot, Pesach) get. How does your congregation celebrate Shavuot? What do you do to make Shavuot meaningful to the progressive Jew, to whom "relevation at Sinai" has a non-traditional meaning? Daniel
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"It is not our task as liberal Jews to complain about the Orthodox attitude or to be bullied by it, but rather to choose our legitimate path according to the inner logic and development of liberal Judaism" (Rabbi Walter Jacob)
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