Staying Real in Israel
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"The Marty Roberts Show"

The fact of the matter is that most Israelis, even if they would not be classified as “orthodox” Jews, respect and honor Jewish tradition. Most celebrate the Jewish holidays and perform the rituals of the Jewish cycle of Life…Bar/Bat-Mitzvah, Brit Milah, Jewish wedding, Jewish burial…
The Passover Seder is celebrated by most Jewish families, and a vast majority of Israeli Jews respect the Jewish Law and do not eat chametz (leavened products) during the week-long Passover holiday.
The first chief Rabbi of Israel, Rabbi Kook, used to say that the average, non-religiously observant Jew living in Israel performed more mitzvahs (Torah commandments) every day than the average “orthodox” Jew living in exile. Just look at the kosher food in his fridge, etc. etc…
One more reason to come home, my brothers and sisters…

No Chametz Allowed on Passover

Poll: Most Israelis won’t eat chametz on Pesach

Nearly half of Jewish secular public plans to conduct traditional seder, abstain from bread

Reprinted from Ynetnews.com

Most of the Jews in Israel say they do not plan on eating bread during Passover, according to a Ynet and Gesher survey held ahead of the holiday.

The majority of the Jewish public also plans to conduct a proper seder, which will include reading the haggadah. The survey was conducted among 300 Jewish adults residing throughout the country.

Asked whether they planned to eat chametz on Passover, 69% said no and 19% said they would only do so in the privacy of their own homes so as not to offend the religious public. Only 12% said they would eat bread in public.

When separated into sectors, the poll revealed that 49% of secular Jews would not eat chametz, a surprisingly large figure. As expected, 100% of haredim polled said they would not eat bread.

To the question of how they planned to celebrate Pesach, 63% said they would hold a traditional Seder, which includes reading the entire haggadah, while 23% said they would only read up to the dinner part. Just 4% said they would not read the haggadah at all.

The survey also asked whether those polled would be willing to hold the seder abroad, and specifically in Turkey. Forty-two percent said they would not hold the seder abroad and 34% said they would, but not in Turkey. Just 17% were willing to spend the holiday in the recently alienated country.

Of the seculars polled, 71% would not mind spending the seder abroad, but 49% would not choose Turkey as their destination.

Ilan Geal-Dor, the general manager of Gesher, was satisfied with the results. “More than 90% of the public marks the Seder – that’s an incredible figure!” he exclaimed.

He said his organization had been studying the Israeli public’s regard for the holiday for three years and that it was consistent in honoring the Passover tradition. “Israeli society wants to mark Passover in the public sphere,” he said.

“Sometimes it seems the Israeli public has thrown off all Jewish characteristics, but this survey proves that this is not the case. Israeli society wants Jewish identity in the public sphere. It doesn’t want oppression, though, and that is why Judaism must be left to each person’s free choice.”

A Mormon Passover seder? Only in the US, I guess. Never heard of this one. Then again, my Mormon friends never did mention any fun kinds of ritual observance in their faith, so I guess they must have thought that our Seder was a good one to add to their religious arsenal…A lot more fun then going door to door and having your little booklets rejected by everyone.
Seems they also thought it was kind of fun to wear the little beanies on their heads during the seder, so they adopted THAT one from us also…wearing yarmulkas on their heads.
One slight problem, however…an important, in fact, esssential part of a kosher Jewish Passover seder is the drinking of 4 cups of wine by all in remembrance of the 4 Redemptions that are mentioned in the Torah. Needless to say, this adds considerably to the festive atmosphere of said kosher Jewish Passover Seder. But Mormons don’t drink, so they have to get by with Paul Newman brand grape juice…
Another reason I am happy to be a Jew…

Mormon Passover Seder

US Mormons mark Passover with seder


Members of Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints hold their own traditional meal retelling biblical story of Hebrews’ exodus from Egypt. Jewish leaders in Utah say not offended

Reprinted from Associated Press/Ynetnews.com

On Monday evening, Jews around the world began the holiday with a seder, the traditional meal during which the biblical story of the Hebrews’ exodus from Egypt is retold. Members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints will be holding one of their own this week.

Avraham Gileadi, a Mormon who is also a Hebrew scholar, will direct “A Passover for Joseph and Judah” at Provo’s Scenic View Academy on Friday.

Gileadi, 69, is affiliated with the seder’s sponsor, The Hebraeus Foundation, an organization promoting biblical scholarship. He said that Mormons and Jews share similar attributes and that while Passover isn’t an LDS tradition, it could be.

“A lot of LDS people are also part of that heritage,” Gileadi said. “It’s as much about us as it is about Jews.”

Gileadi said the evening also will feature a children’s choir and a performing harpist.

“We’ve kind of enriched this event to be a family experience,” he said.

Like Christianity and Islam, the Mormon faith has ties to Judaism. “The Book of Mormon,” which members of the religion abide by, along with the Old and New Testaments, says that Israelites migrated to the New World and were the ancestors of American Indians.

Latter-day Saints believe that church founder Joseph Smith Jr. translated the holy book from golden plates he discovered through an angel in the 1820s and restored authentic Christianity. The book follows the story of a family who leaves Jerusalem for the Americas around 600 B.C. In 1841, Smith sent apostle Orson Hyde to Jerusalem to dedicate the land for Smith’s prophecy of the return of the Jews. A park on the city’s Mount of Olives commemorates Hyde’s pilgrimage.

Brigham Young University has hosted seders open to the public for nearly 40 years, and this year’s Provo Passover is its fourth in a row.

Attendees are coming to Provo for a combination of religious and educational reasons. Eric Palmer, 60, owns a small business in the area and is drawn to the Jewish tradition as a way of understanding his own Mormon faith.

“I think this is an undeveloped area of our religion. It’s our history, and we’ve lost it,” Palmer said. “It’s an important tradition to a lot of people in the world, and I’d like to understand it better.”

The relationship between the faiths has been strained over the Mormon practice of posthumous baptisms, which have included the baptism of Jews killed in Nazi concentration camps.

‘As kosher as possible’

Some Holocaust survivors have said the church repeatedly violated an agreement barring the practice. Mormon church leaders have said they are making changes to their genealogical database to make it more difficult for names of Holocaust victims to be entered for posthumous baptism by proxy.

Jewish leaders in Utah say they aren’t offended when Mormons sit down to a seder.

“I don’t find it insulting; I say that it just validates that much more the preciousness and the richness of our heritage,” said Rabbi Ben Zippel of Utah’s Chabad Lubavitch congregation. “I think that the best form of flattery is imitation.”

Hebraeus Foundation board member Charlene Stott said there will be plenty of that at the Seder, where the familiar trappings and trimmings of the meal, such as the unleavened bread, matzo, are part of the experience.

“We keep the dinner as kosher as possible, although the kitchen wouldn’t qualify,” Stott said in an e-mail.

Mormon men will also wear yarmulkes on their heads. Everyone will follow along in a Haggadah, a reading at seders retelling the Exodus narrative.

The one major exception, Stott said, was that wine won’t make it onto the dining tables since many Mormons abstain from alcohol.

“We serve Paul Newman’s Own grape juice,” Stott said. “Great stuff, and we still have fun.”

More anti-semitism in Europe…So what else is new?
It would seem to me that it is obvious that the time has come for the Jews still in exile to come home. The Creator cannot make it TOO much clearer without it getting REALLY painful, and He would prefer NOT to do that to his Chosen People.
But, if there is no other way for the Jews to get the message (we Jews can be a bit on the stubborn side…you know, stiff-necked and all…), our Father in Heaven has been known to turn up the heat on His children.
You can choose the easy way, or do it the hard way…

A neo-Nazi in Hungary. 'Sense that Jews need to lower their heads'

Budapest: Stones thrown at rabbi’s house during seder


Rabbi Shmuel Raskin’s home in Hungarian capital pelted with stones three times during holiday meal. ‘The rabbi was saved by a double window. Police came, but were indifferent,’ says one of guests present. Jewish Agency representative expresses concerns over rise of extreme Right in Hungary

Reprinted from Ynetnews.com Anat Shalev

Sitting around Rabbi Shmuel Raskin’s table for the second seder in Budapest and singing Passover songs, holiday celebrators were shocked when stones suddenly crashed against the windows. Ynet learned of the threatening incident, which members of the local Jewish community are attributing to the rise of the radical Right in Hungary.

Sitting next to Rabbi Raskin was Eran Elbar, a Jewish Agency representative in eastern Europe. “At around 11 pm, stones were thrown at the window behind the rabbi and myself. We didn’t make a big deal about it. We closed the shutters a bit and continued. A half hour later, we opened the shutters again, and another stone was thrown,” said Elbar.

The second incident prompted the seder guests to call the police. Police officers stationed themselves along the street, but that apparently did not deter the stone-throwers.

The rabbi himself could not be reached for comment because the holiday is not yet over in Hungary.

“Afterwards, at midnight, what seemed to be a rubber bullet from a slingshot or some primitive weapon was fired at the window. The police are still looking into the weapon. The hole made looks like a gunshot,” Elbar explained.

Another guest, a photographer working in Hungary who has attended the Raskin seder for the past few years, said that the double window installed for extra insulation against the cold apparently protected the participants from harm.

“The interior window in essence stopped the bullet from hurting the rabbi, and this is how he was miraculously saved,” explained the photographer. According to him, the improvised rubber bullet fired after midnight passed “right over the rabbi’s head.”

‘The Right growing stronger’

The photographer claimed that the police addressed the incident poorly: “They didn’t see that there was a rubber bullet and insisted that only stones were thrown. They told us, ‘We’re not going to go knocking on all the doors now to find who threw a stone at you.’ I understood they were going to do anything, so I ordered the security from the embassy to the site, and they arrived quickly.”

The photographer was deeply shaken by the evening’s events. “I couldn’t fall asleep all night. The rabbi is like my father and the Chabad House is like my second home even though I’m not religious. The Right is growing stronger here, and now there are concerns that there will be legitimacy granted to hurting foreigners. I am worried by the situation we have reached. I have lived and worked here for a few years and collaborate with Hungarians. What is going to happen now?”

Jewish Agency representative Elbar also said the incident affected the seder guests. “Even though no one was hurt, we all felt like this was a significant event. There is a sense that Jews need to lower their heads in light of strengthening of the extreme Right that could make headway in the upcoming elections. There are pamphlets everywhere for the party against the Jews,” said Elbar.