A leading American Orthodox rabbi offered a vigorous defense today of Israel’s Chief Rabbi Shlomo Goren and assailed his detractors in some Orthodox circles as frustrated individuals whose attacks on Rabbi Goren’s ruling in the Langer case were “alienating countless Jews from their people and their heritage.”
Rabbi Emanuel Rackman, of the Fifth Avenue Synagogue, said that because some Orthodox rabbis and yeshiva students in Israel and the U.S. were unable to prevent Rabbi Goren’s election as Ashkenazic Chief Rabbi, “they are making capital of his courageous and humane decision to solemnize the marriages of two persons whose eligibility to marry was in doubt.”
Rabbi Rackman, a member of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency Board of Directors, said that what happened in the last few weeks “is that many rabbis lost their perspective and with almost unprecedented malevolence regretted that two–or four–people were made happy.”
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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.
