Prominent Religious Zionist Rabbi Yaakov Ariel suggested this week that according to Jewish law, it is prohibited to form a coalition that depends on a minority in Israel.

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In an essay written for a book that deals with matters of religion and state from the perspective of Jewish law, Ariel said that minorities, such as Arabs, must not be appointed to certain positions that impact the entire nation's overall Jewish character.

Although he did not state so explicitly, he seemed to be referring to the Bennett-Lapid governments that included, for the first time in Israeli history, the Islamist Ra'am party in the coalition. Ariel also said that non-Jews cannot hold high-ranking positions in the Israeli government in some cases, saying that as a state for the Jewish people, Israel cannot ignore its core mission. "The public character of the state must remain Israeli," he said, which is expressed, among others, by the closure of commerce on the Shabbat, kosher food in public institutions, and the Law of Return.

Ariel did not, however, completely veto the participation of non-Jews in decision-making, saying that as tax-paying citizens, they deserved a say in the distribution of budgets. Representatives of the minorities can participate in politics, but only in areas that are common to all citizens, he said. A coalition, however, cannot be formed if it depends on a minority. The politicians representing Israel should only be Israelis [Jews], especially such crucial roles as prime minister, president, Knesset speaker, defense minister, IDF chief of staff, and foreign minister.

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Let's begin with the numbers: there are fewer non-Jewish children born in Israel each year than there are non-Jews who convert to Judaism. The government puts immense resources into attempts to convert close to half a million Israelis originally from the former Soviet Union who are not Jewish according to Jewish law (halacha), but in the past few decades, only about 35,000 immigrants from these countries have actually gone through the conversion process, a study by Dr. Netanel Fisher, head of the School of Public Administration, Governance, and Law at the Academic Center for Law and Science and an expert on conversion. 

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But Israel might be facing a major change. The new conversion guidelines proposed by the Religious Services Ministry would allow city rabbis – for the first time in years – to set up conversion courts. The openly-announced goal of the reforms is to make a process considered severe and unaccepting easier for thousands, if not more, of potential converts. 

A recent study conducted by the organization 1 Million Lobby, which advocates for immigrants from the FSU, and the Jerusalem Institute for Policy Research revealed that approximately 45% of respondents who are not considered Jews according to Jewish law said they would be willing to convert or consider doing so under the Orthodox-governmental system if changes were made to it. Religious Affairs Minister Matan Kahana has already made it clear that conversion will adhere to halacha and will require converts to adhere to the commandments, which could deter some potential converts who would like to be Jews, but not keep the Sabbath or send their children to religious schools. 

Throughout the years, there have been made attempts to encourage conversion in Israel. Back in the 1970s, a national conversion system was established by then-Chief Rabbi Shlomo Goren, and city rabbis were allowed to operate their own conversion courts. In the 1990s, after it turned out that due to lack of oversight, each city rabbi could do as he saw fit, then-Chief Rabbi Eliyahu Bakshi Doron decided to stop these local conversions and leave the matter in the hands of the national authorities, where it remains today. 

But the early 1990s also brought a massive wave of over 1 million arrivals from the former Soviet Union, which led to a problematic situation – hundreds of thousands of new immigrants of Jewish descent, who had Jewish roots but were not considered Jews according to the halachic definition, were making aliyah. This caused many to worry about increased intermarriage and assimilation. They say that the current situation proves their concerns at the time were valid: there are nearly 100,000 mixed couples in Israel, and we can assume that there are many more who are not married but live together as common-law couples. 

The stringent process puts converts off 

Data Fisher has spent years collecting from the national conversion authorities and the Central Bureau of Statistics indicate that when it comes to Israel's attempts to solve the conversion issue, things are complicated. Since the 1990s, about 100,000 people have converted, thus making Israel into a conversion powerhouse. Nearly half of these converts are immigrants from Ethiopia, and some 15% are from various countries who converted for personal reasons. Only 35% are immigrants from the FSU and their children. This means that while there are about half a million Israelis who are not halachically Jewish, only a small percentage of them convert. About 80% of converts are women, which Fisher says stems mainly form the fact that a child's Jewish status is determined by the mother's. 

Every year, some 2,000 people from families who made aliyah from the FSU convert, and about 500 of them are native-born Israelis. In addition, the IDF's Nativ course oversees conversion for 600-800 soldiers annually who made aliyah from the FSU. In the last two years, as COVID cast its shadow over everything, the number of Israelis who converted to Judaism through the national authorities dropped significantly. And as the government dithered, 2020 saw 4,990 babies born (not including Arab Israelis) who are not considered Jewish according to halacha, and only 1,900 converts (excluding converts from Ethiopia).  

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"We're seeing a very worrying phenomenon of a drop in the numbers of converts," Fisher says. "The reason appears to be not only COVID, but also that people are getting used to living in Israel without converting. The fact that thousands of people convert each year is not to be taken for granted, but it creates an astonishing dissonance. On one hand, the Rabbinate is operating well and converting tens of thousands of people, while also taking a beating from the more conservative side, which claims that the rabbinical court judges are too easy. 

"On the other hand, we are far from reaching the potential. In the past 20 years, one out of every four immigrants took a conversion class – more than 100,000 people who started the process. But only 35,000 finished it. True, there are a lot of reasons why many didn't finish it, but there's no doubt that the process itself and the demands it entails put some people off," Fisher says. 

Local conversion 

Although there is a unified national system of conversion in Israel, rabbinical courts at the district level act differently. Some take a more lenient approach, while some make things difficult for converts. In some of these courts, about 80% of the converts pass the tests the first time and become Jews, while in others, less than half pass, which makes the conversion process – which demands mental strength as well as physical commitment – much harder. This difference is rooted in different approaches to Jewish law, but effectively means that someone who lives in a city where the presiding rabbinical judge in charge of conversion is more conservative has a significantly lower chance of converting. 

"A person's success or failure to convert cannot dictate what a person's ID card says," Fisher points out. 

The new conversion framework proves that Kahana understands that there is a need to establish easier alternatives – that are still within the scope of halacha, but will be acceptable to the Haredim, even if they grimace. In 2018 former minister Moshe Nissim proposed a framework for conversion that included the establishment of a completely new system, separate from the Chief Rabbinate. This proposal was attacked by MKs from the Haredi parties and the country's chief rabbis, and was shelved. 

In contrast, the current proposal was put together in cooperated with well-known religious Zionist rabbis, including the prominent Rabbi Chaim Druckman, which did not neutralize Haredi criticism entirely, might blunt it in future, making the new option the lesser evil. 

One of the urgent issues on the table that still hasn't been discussed is whether or not the future committee will allow city rabbis to oversee conversion of children. This is a solution that would allow for fast-tracked conversion of young children and check the rise in the number of non-Jewish Israelis living here. 

Has the government missed the boat when it comes to mass conversion and preventing assimilation? The fact that lately, the number of mixed couples has increased while the number of converts drops shows that the new immigrants and their children – who are Israelis in every point – aren't in a hurry to convert. Because the country was and is demanding that converts observe the religious commandments upon becoming Jews, it's not sure whether a friendlier approach will do the job and bring the masses to the rabbinical courts. 

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Did the events that gave us the Hanukkah holiday 2,000 years ago shape Jewish religious culture as we know it today? Lessons about the history of the Jewish people in general and the Hanukkah events in particular tend to focus on the Hasmonean leadership and other notable figures of that era. But a new book based on archaeological findings attempts to portray the day-to-day lives of the regular people who lived at the time of the Second Temple and how the Maccabees' victory and the Hanukkah miracle influenced the Jewish population in the Land of Israel at that time.

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"I'm not a historian or a researcher of Jewish history. I examine [archaeological] finds and in this case, Jewish culture according to archaeological discoveries," says Professor Ronny Reich, a former lecturer at the University of Haifa and author of the new book Everyday Life: The daily life of the Jewish community in the Eretz Israel in the Late Second Temple Period in Light of Archaeological Finds (published by Pardes, Hebrew only).

According to Reich, the success of the Hasmonean revolt against the Seleucid rule – which happened mostly as guerilla warfare – poses a challenge for modern archaeologists. After the Maccabees wrested control of the land from the hands of the Greeks, many of the buildings that had been destroyed were rebuilt and it has been difficult to find evidence of them in archaeological excavations. However, Reich says that discoveries made in recent years have been more helpful in revealing how the priest Mattathias and his sons influenced Jews' lives in the period following the events that inspired Hanukkah. 

The revolt against the Greeks began in 168 BCE and 16 years later resulted in the founding of the Hasmonean dynasty, which would go on to rule the land for close to 80 years. According to Reich, "When the Hasmonean dynasty rose to power, we see much stricter religious observance. In my opinion, this was the start of Jewish culture as we know it and had many expressions." 

One example Reich cites is the mikveh, which he researched for his doctoral dissertation. "Maintaining purity as a religious rite, linked to entering the Temple and the Mount of Olives, starts in the time of the Hasmoneans. Jews, who needed places to purify themselves, built these sites. There are no archaeological remains that show that purification facilities, mikvehs, existed in earlier times." 

Another possible indication of more stringent Jewish religious observance after the events of Hanukkah is the matter of pictures and sculpture, which could be a backlash to the Greeks' decrees about idolatry. 

"In Jewish communities, there is almost no depiction of people or animals because of the Second Commandment, 'Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image.' We don't see this in excavations of Jewish communities, in contrast to the non-Jewish communities discovered in the region," Reich says. 

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Reich says that pilgrimage to the Temple also gained in popularity under the Hasmoneans. "The story of the defiling of the Temple and its rededication strengthened the subject of pilgrimage and the Temple as the Jewish people's only place of worship. This is unique to the Jewish religion. The Romans, when one temple got too crowded, simply built another one." 

In his new book, Reich explains that increased emphasis on pilgrimage to the Temple can be seen in the large number of cooking vessels used by pilgrims found discarded on the outskirts of the city, as well as the large number of animal bones they threw away. "Not pig bones, of course," Reich stresses. 

In another development under the Hasmoneans, import of wine produced by non-Jews was stopped, another indication of increasingly stringent adherence to Jewish law about the production and consumption of wine. "[Wine] imports ended. The drastic drop in appropriate jugs [found] is proof of this," Reich says.

History tells us that many Jews, prior to the events of Hanukkah, adopted Greek religious practices, and that the Hellenistic culture left its marks on the Jewish people. But when it comes to how, or if, that was expressed in the period following the Maccabees' victory, Reich says in his book, the question remains unanswered. 

"In my opinion, the question of buildings that were used for leisure in the spirit of the Hellenistic culture remains unsolved. Activities that took place there in the Hellenistic world were far from the religious character of the Jewish population, and even opposed to it. It should be noted that currently, we know about them only from the letters of Joseph Ben Mattityahu [Josephus Flavius], and have not unearthed any real archaeological remnants of them," Reich says. 

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Over 50 years after it was founded, the Gal underground movement remains something of a mystery. Even the Shin Bet security agency agents who worked on the case find it difficult to completely understand. 

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The underground was formed in the mid-1970s by Yoel Lerner. Lerner was a genius, a linguist, a translator and education, a brilliant debater who spoke seven languages, but also a right-wing nationalist and radical revolutionary who was in and out of prison. He saw the law as nothing more than a recommendation. 

The declared purpose of the Gal underground was to replace the Israeli government with a regime that would act based on Jewish law. The organization included 45 members, who planned a series of 13 actions to be carried out in a 40-day period. The last, scheduled for the 40th day, was designed to rock Israel and the world to the core. It entailed blowing up Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock. 

Lerner died eight years ago. I knew him very well. We met and spoke dozens of times. I still have my notes from our conversations, letters he sent me from prison, and articles and ideas he typed or handwrote. 

Israel's security apparatus has figured out only part of the Gal plans, and exposed only a few of its members. After Lerner was released from prison, he revealed a bit more, but never the entire story. He said that Rabbi Tzvi Yehuda Hacohen Kook, head of the Merkaz Harav Yeshiva and the spiritual leader for the Gush Emunim folk, was in on the secret, as were a few religious MKs, and even a cabinet minister. But their identities remain secret. Lerner said plenty, but refused to name names, and took the secret to the grave. 

The Gal members wanted their actions broadcast on the radio, as well as at peak viewing hours for Israel's only TV station at the time – the "Mabat" evening news. One member, who had the relevant technical capabilities, was supposed to take over the frequency on which Israeli television broadcast and announce to the public when the movement's various activities were due to take place. 

The 13 actions were planned for different places in the country. One was to target a government ministry, apparently the Treasury. Another was planned against the offices of the Histadrut Labor Federation. The next day, an action was to be carried out against the Prime Minister's Office. There were supposed to be five days between most steps of the plan, with only the last few taking place one day after the other. 

The members of the underground prepared an announcement and intended to publish it in one of the afternoon newspapers. It included one sentence: "Yet 40 days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown," the words of the prophet Jonah to the people of the sinful city Nineveh, at the order of God. At the same time, the Gal members prepared a prison for cabinet ministers at a community in southern Israel. 

Lerner's underground was made up of three "rings" of activists. Each one was cut off from the two others and its members identities were unknown to the other rings. The first ring included the leaders. The second were the simple "soldiers," and the third included potential members who had yet to be trained. 

Most of the members who were arrested in 1977 belonged to that third ring. Eight were students of Lerner's. An IDF officer, Armand Azran, also a former student of Lerner's, supplied the group with bricks of explosives and other weapons. 

The underground trained in the fields outside Beit Shemesh. They met at various apartments, mostly in Jerusalem, but never knew each other's real names. Azran, for example, was known as "Pinchas." Lerner himself was called "Elijah." Other members took on similar biblical "underground" names. They practiced espionage and bombmaking. They wanted to replace the government of Israel with a Jewish theocracy. 

Lerner said that "The 13-step plan, the jewel in whose crown was the action on the Temple Mount, was worked out in detail. It was only written down in a few copies, which the Shin Bet didn't get. A few hours before the Shin Bet arrested us, I burned the incriminating material, and one of my friends destroyed a recording that documented a meeting of the leadership." 

Lerner was born in Brooklyn during World War II and raised in a secular family that moved back and forth between the US and South Africa. At age 19, he made aliyah and studied at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he embraced religion. He began teaching, first in Kiryat Shmona, and then at some of the most prestigious religious Zionist institutions in the country: Himmelfarb School and Nativ Meir yeshiva high school, as well as in schools in Beit El and Binyamina. 

A year before the 1973 Yom Kippur War, Lerner joined the Jewish Defense League, founded by Rabbi Meir Kahana and the Kach movement. He was very different from most of the people who surrounded the Kach founder in those days. He was educated, independent, and assertive. Lerner taught Kahana Hebrew and translated many of his articles and books. Like Kahana, Lerner saw Arabs in Israel as the source of all evil and wanted to kick them out of the country. 

However, Lerner didn't hesitate to disagree with some of Kahana's other opinions and earned himself the reputation of one who would go up against him. With his impressive rhetorical abilities, Lerner was much better-spoken than Kahana and managed to annoy him more than once. Still, their fights did not affect their appreciation of one another. Lerner opposed the idea of Kach running in the Knesset election, but later changed his mind and appeared on the movement's Knesset list twice. In 1996, he was slotted into the fifth place on Professor Shaul Gutman's Yamin Yisrael list. 

Lerner's first brush with the law came because of anti-missionary activity. In 1974 a number of Christian institutions in Jerusalem were set on fire, including Beit Zion on Hanevi'im St. and a Christian bookstore in Rehavia. Lerner was arrested on suspicion of taking part in the arson but acquitted due to a lack of evidence. But he was convicted on another serious charge: incitement to revolt. Police detectives had found a paper in one of his desk drawers titled: "Plans and ideas to thwart the withdrawal agreement from Sinai and Judea and Samaria, if a peace treaty is signed." 

The Anarchist's Cookbook

The possibilities spelled out in the document included blowing up buildings at the Cave of the Patriarchs and blowing up the Dome of the Rock. Detectives also found a copy of The Anarchist's Cookbook, which Kahana had brought him from the US. Lerner had managed to translate a few pages of it, and had underlined one sentence: "The time for protests has passed." That was enough for the court, which sentenced Lerner to 26 months in prison. 

While behind bars, Lerner started to think up the idea of the Gal underground, which he named after a beloved student of his who was killed in the Yom Kippur War – Binyamin (Benny) Gal. 

Lerner developed his ideas. He saw the rebuilding of the Temple as an existential need of the Jewish people, and talked at length about how when the Third Temple rose, the Jewish people would once again be able to observe some 40% of the religious commandments. Lerner was convinced that Israel must be ruled by Jewish law, with the Sanhedrin court as the main source of authority. When the laws of the secular state conflicted with Jewish law, Lerner often opted for the second, and it didn't take him long to start thinking about a change of regime and begin working on the Gal movement's radical plans. 

Lerner and his underground were exposed by chance as a result of the haste of Misha Mishkan, a right-wing activist and settlers who would go on to become of the symbols of the opposition to the evacuation of Yamit. Mishkan refused the compensation the government offered to Yamit residents. Mishkan was not a member of Gal, but knew Lerner well enough to inform him that he had obtained a "biblical fruit" – referring to a hand grenade, which was supposed to be thrown at Arab students in Jerusalem. Lerner met Mishkan and had reservations about his intention of carrying out an indiscriminate mass-casualty attack. He was afraid the Gal plot would be exposed because of some personal initiative by someone he knew, a concern that turned out to be correct. 

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A few days later, Mishkan was arrested. He told police that he had general knowledge of an underground plot that involved Lerner. This tip led to Lerner's arrest, and lifted the lid on part of the Gal underground just two months before it was slated to carry out its first "action." Only 10 members were indicted. Most of the counts of the indictment were not detailed, both because not all the facts were known and because of a desire to keep the affair out of the limelight. 

Lerner was sentenced to three years in prison. Azran, who expressed remorse, was given 18 months. The rest, which included some minors, were sentenced to various short sentences of a few months. 

But not even his time in prison was enough to cool Lerner down. "The government of Israel," he wrote, "is only here to uphold order and protect the people from foreign enemies. The obligation to honor this government and obey it is in effect only if this government obeys the Torah, its laws, and the rule of God, which is the supreme authority for both the Jewish people and their elected government." 

Bringing back the 'Hasmoneans' 

In later years, Lerner would transition into academic work, but he still had a revolutionary-underground adventure ahead of him – the Hasmonean Affair, for which he also would up in prison. According to the Shin Bet, this was another underground initiative that Lerner insisted on calling a "youth movement." 

The original Hasmonean Alliance was founded after Passover of 1937, four years before Lerner was born. Its founders were Rabbi Moshe Zvi Segal, who blew a shofar at the Western Wall despite the prohibition of the British Mandate status quo, and was imprisoned for it. 

The main points of the Hasmoneans were similar to principles of Irgun founder Yair Stern, and stressed values such as the redemption of Israel. In 1981, not long after he was released from prison, Lerner set out to reestablish the Hasmoneans. He even tried to persuade the then-elderly Segal to help him. 

One of the young members of the group, a Nativ Meir yeshiva student who saw Lerner as a confidant, suggested that a bomb be placed near one of the walls of the Dome of the Rock. He even laid out a detailed plan that included collecting explosives in the Negev Desert to use to build the bomb, which would be detonated by the sun using a photoelectric cell. 

Lerner claimed in court that he had only been pretending to go along with the plan so he could scupper it. The court did not believe him, and he was imprisoned for 30 more months. The "Hasmoneans" numbered a few dozen teenaged boys and girls, mostly residents of the Old City of Jerusalem, as were Lerner and Segal themselves. Lerner would hold pledges of allegiance to the Hasmoneans by the "Little Western Wall," and the young members printed posters and pamphlets that walked a fine line between public calls for revolution and a legitimate ideological platform. 

The "new Hasmonean" movement's documents listed seven goals, including: Honoring God through devotion to the Torah, the people, and the Land; rewriting the country's legal code based on the Torah and Jewish law; and founding "a kingdom of Israel with the Jewish people fully redeemed in their land." 

Those who came next

After he was released from prison for the fourth time, Lerner was somewhat calmer and clearer-minded. He set up research institutes, edited journals, and spurred with ideological opponents. At one point, he joined another unusual organization – State of Judea, whose goal was to replace the state of Israel in parts of Judea and Samaria in the event of an Israeli withdrawal from those territories. At another point, he and some friends had the idea of smuggling a sacrificial altar onto the Temple Mount to carry out the ritual Passover sacrifices. The plan was not executed. 

I encountered Lerner occasionally at conferences having to do with the Temple Mount. He was getting older, but always sharp, and clung to his views. As the years passed, various followers took up his torch: members of the Jewish Underground planned were also planning to "act" on the Temple Mount and even tried to assassinate some members of the Palestinian National Steering Committee. After that plot was exposed in the early 1980s, there were a few more less-known attempts to attack the Mount. 

Ahead of Israel's disengagement from Gush Katif in the 2005, for example, the Shin Bet and the Jerusalem District Police uncovered a plot by Jews who were planning a terrorist attack on the Temple Mont with the goal of thwarting the disengagement. Five young men, all Breslev Hassidim, were at the core of the plot. According to the Shin Bet, they had been involved in a plan to fire a Lau missile at the Dome of the Rock from the roof of the Shuvu Banim Yeshiva in the Muslim Quarter of the Old City. 

These suspects were never tried, both because they had misgivings and never carried out their scheme, but also because it appeared that it would be difficult to compile evidence that would be strong enough to convict them. The Shin Bet was also afraid that putting them on trial would burn informants. 

Throughout the years, the Shin Bet has continued to track radical Jewish figures seen as potential hazards on the Temple Mount. Sometimes, because of plans designed to interfere with government policy. Other times, detectives discovered variations of a kind of "Jerusalem Syndrome" – mentally unstable young people who slid into criminality and ideology, and mixed the two into dangerous plans. 

The case of Yoel Lerner and the Gal and Hasmonean undergrounds reflected a third kind of issue – a deeply-held belief that Israel's civil government must be replaced by a theocracy, and the Temple Mount always took center stage. 

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Rabbis in Israel are launching a campaign against worshippers who refuse to be vaccinated for COVID and are enacting more stringent measures to protect congregations – including a recent rabbinical ruling that decrees that unvaccinated individuals may not enter synagogues, participate in a minyan, or be called to the Torah.

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Chief Rabbi of Ramat Gan Yaakov Ariel, considered one of the leading halachic authorities in religious Zionism, has ruled that members of the community who decline to be vaccinated must face consequences for their actions, as they endanger others.

"A person who does not get vaccinated goes against Jewish law, which demands that people remain healthy. We need to demand that everyone be vaccinated," Ariel decreed.

"We must demand that unvaccinated people stay away from others. They should show respect by staying home and not infecting others. If someone like this arrives at a place where others are gathered, he [or she] must be asked to leave. Of course, not through violence, but he must not be allowed to remain [inside]," Ariel wrote.

"We must make the simple demand – do not cause us harm," the rabbi wrote.

Ariel underscored that individuals who refuse to be vaccinated "must not be allowed into synagogues, to participate in a minyan, or be called to the Torah." He said they could stay home or pray outside the synagogue.

Ariel joins a number of other leading rabbinical authorities in Israel who have adopted an almost unprecedented stance against vaccine refusal. This week, Rabbi Yitzhak Yehuda Yaroslavsky, a senior rabbi in the Chabad movement and head of the rabbinical court, also ruled that unvaccinated worshippers may not enter synagogues.

In related news, an unusual incident took place this week at a Torah lesson given by Rabbi Ben Zion Mutzafi. During the lesson, the rabbi argued with a student who claimed that "the Jewish people are not a laboratory" and said he believed in "the Creator."

Mutzafi was outraged and threw the student out. "More than 6,500 people have died," the rabbi told him. "Stop with your nonsense."

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One of the first things ultra-Orthodox boys are taught once they start shaving is that they cannot just use any electric razor they want, because under Halachah (Jewish law) damaging your skin is forbidden.

According to most interpretations, this means electric shavers are forbidden in the many Orthodox communities.  The few that were allowed had to carry a special hechsher (rabbinical approval).   

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However, in what could be unprecedented, a new halachic interpretation in the Tchumin religious journal, which brings together rabbis from different streams of Judaism to discuss and innovate on matters of Jewish law under the auspices of the Tzomet Institute, has made this prohibition all but obsolete. 

The institute announced the decision in a special post claiming that based on the latest inteprertation, "almost every type of electric shaver which operates as described above can be used."

The decision followed extensive deliberations by American Rabbi Chaim Jachter and his son Benjamin, who wrote the new article in the journal. The two based their analysis on their correspondence with senior engineers at several leading manufacturers, such as Philips and Procter & Gamble, and learned that modern electric shavers use a so-called "lift-and-cut" technology, which lifts the hairs and cut them without the blade injuring the skin.

According to Tzomet, "If anything, this mechanism makes the operation even closer to that of scissors, since it uses three elements in the cutting process: the blade, the screen, and the 'lift and cut' device," and therefore it would make no sense to take it out of such electrical appliances for religious reasons. 

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The question was put to Rabbi Baruch Efrati: "Dear Rabbi, Is it permissible to pray for Trump to make a recovery, given his worsening medical condition?"

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Efrati responded that such prayers could be made and advised that anyone seeking to pray for Trump should recite "Mi Shebeirach," the Jewish prayer of healing, with Trump's name added.

Trump went through a "very concerning" period Friday and faces a "critical" next two days in his fight against COVID-19 at a military hospital, his chief of staff said Saturday – in contrast to a rosier assessment moments earlier by Trump doctors, who took pains not to reveal the president had received supplemental oxygen at the White House before his hospital admission.

Trump offered his own assessment Saturday evening in a video from Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, saying he was beginning to feel better and hoped to "be back soon."

Hours earlier, chief of staff Mark Meadows told reporters outside the hospital, "We're still not on a clear path yet to a full recovery."

In an update on the president Saturday night, his chief doctor expressed cautious optimism but added that the president was "not yet out of the woods."

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On Wednesday, Chief Rabbi David Lau held a meeting with Health Minister Yakov Litzman, Health Ministry Director-General Moshe Bar Siman Tov, and other healthcare officials that focused on the disease's ramifications on public religious observance.

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As a result of the meeting, Lau issued instructions for the public to avoid kissing mezuzahs, which are placed on the doorways of nearly every building in Israel's Jewish communities, to avoid spreading infection.

"Currently, as we are witnessing the spread of a serious disease, there is no doubt that mezuzahs must not be kissed or even touched. A person need only think about what is written on [the scroll inside] the mezuzah when he enters or leaves," Lau said, referring to the Shema Yisrael prayer, which is enclosed inside the outer part of the mezuzah, which is what is kissed.

Rabbi Shlomo Hecht, spokesman for the Beit Hillel rabbinical organization, has ruled that women who are in quarantine must not visit the mikveh, and should contact Nishmat, an organization that provides religious advice for women, about how to conduct themselves until they are permitted to leave quarantine and use the mikveh.

"Men who are under quarantine must not visit the mikveh at all," Hecht said.

The Religious Services Ministry has issued similar instructions.

Hecht also said that anyone under quarantine must not violate it to attend public prayer or join a minyan, and that doing so would turn the fulfillment of a religious commandment into a violation.

"Memorial days can be postponed until it is possible to leave quarantine," Hecht said.

This coming Saturday will be marked by a reading of the Zachor Torah portion. Listening to the reading, which deals with Amalek's attempts to destroy the Jews during the Exodus, is a religious commandment. However, Hecht explains that anyone under quarantine must remain so.

"No one [under quarantine] must leave their homes to hear Parshat Zachor … One can and should read the parsha at home," Hecht said.

Hearing the reading of the Book of Esther on Purim is also considered a "must" according to the Torah, so rabbis were forced to come up with creative solutions for those under quarantine.

"A minyan is not required to read the Book of Esther, but a 'kosher' scroll is needed. However, instructions are that the virus could be spread through objects, and therefore a scroll must not be delivered to anyone under quarantine and then taken back. Apparently, the scroll can be read to someone under quarantine through a door or window, if appropriate cautions are taken," Hecht said.

Rabbi Yosef Zvi Rimon backed up Hecht's ruling that those under quarantine must not leave their homes to hear the Book of Esther, but offered a high-tech solution: setting up cameras and streaming the public readings of the scroll.

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Supported by the Walder Foundation and operating under the direction of Rabbi Yosef Zvi Rimon, head of its yeshivah and Jewish-studies programs, the center pioneers a working relationship between halachic experts and renowned faculty members from the college's computer science, engineering and health-sciences departments in order to address the influx of emerging questions pertaining to both Torah and technology.

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Is it permissible to ride in an autopilot vehicle on Shabbat? Can "meat" grown using cells taken from a pig be kosher or even pareve? Can you send Amazon's Alexa voice commands on Shabbat? These are some of the matters to be considered.

Questions like these, in addition to ethical issues related to technology, are already being asked in the Jewish religious community and show demand for answers informed by both Halachah and technology, Rimon told Jewish News Syndicate. Budding technology companies, he added, have also come to him asking him how to make their products more user-friendly for the religious community.

"We have deep answers in Judaism, and want adults and children alike to be excited about how deep they are," he said.

Rimon's organization, Sulamot (formerly the Halacha Education Center), which develops cutting-edge educational technologies and innovative curricula for Jewish studies, will be partnering with the college in the Torah and Technology Research Center.

Prior to the launch of the center – and despite rapid technological development and growth – no centralized scholarly body was equipped to deal with all of the halachic implications and questions that have arisen, said Rimon.

In addition to serving as a centralized authority for the international Jewish community, the center will facilitate the development of innovative technologies specifically adapted to meet halachic requirements for Shabbat, disseminate scholarly material and videos for children, and host symposia to discuss recent innovations and developments on both the halachic and technological fronts.

'The world is changing all the time with new technology'

According to Rimon, the college was the best place to initiate such an entity because of its focus on technology and religion "at the highest level" as well as an active beit midrash (study hall) that serves 400 students.

"Most of the time, students learn Torah and science with no connections between the two. From here should come answers of Halachah and technology," he said.

He also voiced his hope that in the future, they will host conferences and create a visitor's center, website, videos, and encyclopedia on the interdisciplinary topic.

Rimon and college president and professor Chaim Sukenik noted that the new center will further connect the many haredi students on campus to a worldview that embraces science and technology within a halachically observant Jewish world.

"It is another route to see the beauty of Torah," said Rimon. "The world is changing all the time with new technology, and it's important for the religious world to understand them deeply and to see things a little differently."

The inclusion of haredim and religious students in tech, Sukenik told JNS, will "afford new opportunities for technological creativity toward the engineering of Halachah-friendly technologies."

Moreover, he added, engaging with such challenges through a technological lens can enhance the study of Halachah itself, refining one's understanding of principles as they are applied to previously unprecedented scenarios.

Reprinted with permission from JNS.org.

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A recent concert by Steinmetz in the city of Afula, which took place with the audience segregated by gender, sparked a national controversy about gender segregation at public events, even those held for the ultra-Orthodox community.

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On Sunday, the Haifa District Court discussed another petition submitted against another scheduled Steinmetz concert, scheduled to be held at the Haifa International Convention Center on Monday.

"It's infuriating. People who assume to understand how the haredi public's mind work come in and try to dictate how we should live in a Jewish state. I think that the minimum [they can do] is let people who adhere to a 3,000-year-old tradition, who keep the Jewish fires burning, live according to their beliefs," Steinmetz says.

"A musical event is holy, in my eyes. Every time I sing at a concert, I thank God in song … it's a kind of prayer. So as far as I'm concerned, the concert hall is a kind of synagogue, and above all, there needs to be separation [between men and women]," Steinmetz says.

Q: What kind of responses did you get after you announced that you would not appear in Afula unless there was gender segregation?

"Before the concert, [Interior Minister] Aryeh Deri and MK Moshe Gafni came to me and said, 'Good for you for standing up for your principles and for God."

Q: In the US, you recently appeared before male-only audiences. How was that received?

"It only shows the hypocrisy here in Israel. In non-Jewish countries, all over the world, we appear before audiences with full [gender] separation, and receive public funds. We even held a show at a park abroad, with full separation. People everywhere understand that there is an audience that wants this, and there is acceptance and understanding that people think differently. But not in Israel."

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