Abortion and Politics
In an essay in the latest issue of First Things, Joseph Bottum (the magazine’s editor) criticizes Governor Mitch Daniels of Indiana, a Republican presidential contender in 2012 (link). As a devout Catholic, Bottum opposes Daniels’ effort to sideline “social issues” and focus on “survival issues”. Even though Daniels is pro-life, his refusal to make his opposition to abortion a major campaign issue seems wrong to Bottum on multiple levels. I fail to understand his criticism. Abortion has been a hot-button issue for decades and automatically captures media attention. A successful campaign has to address the issues that the majority of the country cares about — economy and security. If Daniels focuses on abortion, or if the media choose to make his position on that issue their prime concern, he will be marginalized as a fringe candidate. Instead, he is trying to capture attention for his broad agenda for the country by calling for a truce on social issues that are currently unwinnable. I applaud his media savvy in (so far) successfully avoiding being pigeon-holed as a single-issue candidate and instead appearing to be a politician who can solve all of the country’s problems.

Conversion Bill
What’s going on with this conversion bill in Israel? Here is my understanding: The party Yisrael Beiteinu, supported largely by Russian immigrants, wanted to make conversion easier rather than having to conform to the strict standards that come about when dealing with universal consensus. Their solution is to allow city rabbis to set their own standards. Some will be stricter and others more lenient. The lenient city rabbis will end up performing many conversions that are nationally recognized. While pursuing this solution, non-Orthodox and general Jewish organizations expressed great interest in the details and discussed the proposal at length with its sponsors.

At the last minute, Yisrael Beiteinu reached an agreement with Charedi parties whereby the Chief Rabbi will have ultimate authority over the city rabbis performing conversions. Exactly what this means hasn’t been completely fleshed out because the bill’s language hasn’t been finalized, but it seems that the Chief Rabbi (or an oversight board he controls) will have the right to annul a conversion within 30 days. This was thrown into the bill at the last minute without notifying any of the non-Orthodox or general parties who had been interested in this proposal. They took it as both an affront and a sneaky way to undermine them, and have vehemently opposed the new version of the proposal (link).

On the one hand, this is just bad politics. The interested parties should have been given notice that the proposal was significantly changes. They weren’t and are now upset. But more than that, they have good reason to fear that the Chief Rabbi will be unreasonable. If he has the right to veto conversions, there is the distinct possibility that he will choose (or be pressured) to use it in ways that many will consider political and unfair.

Additionally, the non-Orthodox movements have been trying to gain footholds in Israel. They can envision a time when a Conservative or Reform rabbi will be an official city rabbi and will then have the ability to perform conversions. Or they can see a time when they petition the Supreme Court to give their rabbis the same rights as official city rabbis. If the Chief Rabbi retains control, then he can veto any of the non-Orthodox conversions.

If you ask me, this all seems like bad politics. The sponsors of the bill proceeded without adequate support of all the interested parties. Maybe they had no choice but on such a sensitive topic, the kind of opposition they are facing was inevitable unless they obtained non-Orthodox buy-in beforehand.

I Like Newsweek
I’ve been reading Newsweek since I was a teenager. A few years ago, I wrote on this blog that I had given up on the magazine because it was infuriatingly liberal (link). Since then, we canceled our subscription but eventually resubscribed. Not long after we signed up again, Newsweek underwent a dramatic overhaul and redesign. In the internet world of immediate news and unlimited opinions, the magazine made two decisions. First, it can’t compete in delivering the news so it won’t even bother. Second, it will focus on giving opinions — lots of them, often conflicting but always thoughtful and worthy of attention. I think they pulled it off wonderfully. I might not agree with every article but I find enough stimulating material that I enjoy reading what I can, when I can. I used to hate the news because it included opinion. Now that it is labeled opinion, and therefore more artful opinion, I appreciate it much more. So when R. Steven Pruzansky writes in this week’s Jewish Press how much he dislikes Newsweek (link), I find myself in total disagreement.