Word: halakah
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...basis for keeping a kosher household is the Halakah, Judaism's Scripture-based code of 613 religious laws that regulate every facet of life. Among the most detailed provisions of Halakah are its dietary laws. Jews, for example, are forbidden to eat meat and dairy food at the same meal, or from the same dishes. By tradition, an observant housewife must have four sets of dishes, silverware and kitchen accessories: one for meat, one for dairy products, and two sets used only during the season of Passover. To avoid the danger of contamination, meat and dairy dishes must...
...People. Increasing concern over Israel among Reform Jews represents a change in their tradition. Born in Germany during the Enlightenment, Reform Judaism rejected many restrictions imposed by Halakah, the rigid code of Jewish religious law. Whereas Orthodoxy maintained that Halakah is divinely inspired and cannot be altered, Reform contended that Jews have the right to adapt their religious laws to changing conditions...
...joined the Zionist underground in 1936, was a sniper in Jerusalem during the Palestine war. and became chief rabbi of the Israeli army when it was formed in 1948. Throughout the fighting, Goren also played an active role in a rabbinical committee assigned to study the modernization of Halakah. The committee's findings proved too controversial even to be published, let alone adopted, in Israel. One closely reasoned recommendation by Goren held that the Biblical proscription against the use of fire on the Sabbath should not prevent Orthodox Jews from using electricity, since modern physics had proved that electricity...
Goren is also a brilliant Talmud scholar whose unorthodox approach to Orthodox Judaism has caused some concern in Israel's ultraconservative chief rabbinate, which demands strict observance of ancient Halakah (religious law) and fears him as a "reformer." Last week, however, by a vote of 46 to 41, a council of rabbis and civic representatives elected him chief rabbi of Tel Aviv's Ashkenazi (European) Jews, the second most powerful rabbinicai post in the Jewish nation. The election makes Goren the man most likely to succeed Isser Unterman, 82, as Ashkenazi chief rabbi of all Israel...
...Final Authority. Goren insists that he is an "innovator" rather than a "reformer." Among his innovations, though, are decisions that to many other Orthodox rabbis seem to be in open contravention of Halakah. As chief military chaplain, he allowed his troops to work and fight on the Sabbath, and even drive trucks if it was necessary for the security of the state. Although suicide is a sin for Jews, Goren also ruled that captured soldiers could kill themselves rather than risk revealing military secrets under torture. He also believes that Israel's Independence Day should be regarded...