Israel’s Ashkenazic Chief Rabbi Shlomo Goron rejected here yesterday the decision by American Conservative Judaism to count women for a minyan. Rabbi Goren who is visiting here on behalf of the Joint Israel Appeal, said “I hadn’t even paid attention to this ruling until the question was put to me. It cannot be even considered.”
The Orthodox rabbi added that the traditional exclusion of women from a minyan “is not a matter of discrimination. It is halachic law based on the nature of the universe.”
Other points made by Rabbi Goren at a press conference here included the assertion that Jewish emigration from the Soviet Union was not mere aliya “but a Messianic phenomenon”; that aliya was a Divine injunction and hence it was a religious obligation to live in Israel; that the most important achievement of Israel’s new Chief Rabbinate since it took office a year ago was its defense of the religious status quo which forbids civil marriage or divorce in Israel.
Rabbi Goren who recently visited the Jewish Agency’s immigrants transit point for Soviet Jews at Schoenau castle near Vienna, said that about three percent of the Jewish emigrants from the Soviet Union brought non-Jewish spouses into Israel. He said there were plans for a special center, sponsored by the Chief Rabbinate, the Jewish Agency and the Absorption Ministry, to give them special religious instruction preparatory to conversion.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
