c. 1999 Religion News Service
Poll: Most South African Jews to stay despite gloom over future
(RNS) Despite a gloomy view of South Africa’s long-term prospects, more than half of that nation’s Jews say they are likely to remain in the country, according to a new survey published Sunday (Aug. 29) by the London-based Institute for Jewish Policy Research.
While noting concerns over personal security, educational and job opportunities and a perceived increase in anti-Semitism, only 15 percent said it was”fairly likely”they would emigrate, while 12 percent said it was”very likely”they would do so.
Thirty-five percent of the sample of 1,000 Jews thought the substantial changes in South Africa since the ending of the apartheid regime in 1994 had benefited the people of South Africa as a whole. Fifty-two percent thought they had not.
Sixty-five percent thought the quality of their life in South Africa would not improve over the next five years. Just 22 percent said they believe South Africa will still have a substantial Jewish community in 20 years.
The survey showed South African Jews _ who number about 80,000 _ generally to be financially well-off and strongly rooted in their Jewish identities.
Seventy-nine percent said they attend an Orthodox synagogue, compared to less than 10 percent of American Jews. Only 7 percent of South African Jews are married to non-Jews, compared with about 28 percent of American Jews.
The pervasive sense of unease among South African Jews is reflected in just 11 percent of them having supported the ruling African National Congress in the 1994 election, despite widespread Jewish opposition to the previous apartheid government.
South Africa’s Jewish community traces its origins to Lithuanian Jewish immigration in the early decades of the 20th century. At its height, the community numbered more than 130,000. Between 1970 and 1992, about 39,000 Jews left South Africa, although about 10,000 Israelis moved there, according to the World Jewish Congress.
New religious-secular political spat defused in Israel
(RNS) The latest Israeli government crisis between ultra-Orthodox and secular politicians has been defused. This time the issue was over the transfer of a giant electrical turbine part during the Jewish Sabbath, when most forms of work and travel are prohibited by traditional Jewish law.
Ultra-Orthodox political parties backed away from their threat to quit the government after Rabbi Michael Melchior, a close political ally of Prime Minister Ehud Barak, fashioned a compromise that permitted the 300-ton electrical turbine part to be moved on the Sabbath.
Melchior gained the tacit approval of ultra-Orthodox politicians to the transferring of the turbine part _ which spans three lanes of traffic and could be moved at only 10 mph _ on condition the actual loading of the turbine was carried out before the onset of the Sabbath and the truck driver was not Jewish.
Orthodox Jewish law sometimes permits non-Jews to perform work on the Sabbath in the place of Jews. The Sabbath extends from sundown Friday until nightfall Saturday.
Movement of the giant turbine part between the Israeli cities of Ramat Ha Sharon and Ashkelon was the latest in a number of operational transfers by the quasi-public Israel Electric Corporation that have enraged ultra-Orthodox politicians eager to bolster Sabbath observance in the Jewish state.
At the same time, the secular Israeli public has demanded a relaxation of laws forbidding Sabbath business and industrial activity. Some secular activists even have taken to the streets on Friday evenings to cheer on the transfer of the turbine parts.
Electric Corporation officials said movement of the giant industrial parts at times of low traffic flow _ such as the Sabbath _ was essential to head off massive traffic jams in the crowded Israeli coastal area.
Some religious politicians condemned the move by the ultra-Orthodox to split Barak’s new political coalition _ which includes leftists, centrists and religious parties _ over movement of the turbine.”When we start a fight, it should be over something clear and comprehensible,”said Shaul Ya’alom, deputy minister of education and a member of the National Religious Party.”The secular public doesn’t understand the whole concept of having non-Jews doing work for Jews on the Sabbath. … We’ve come up with solutions that are only embarrassing and make religion a laughingstock.” Update: Judge modifies Cleveland school voucher ruling
(RNS) A federal judge has reversed himself to allow most of the students in Cleveland’s publicly funded school voucher program to attend private _ including religious _ schools this year.
U.S. District Judge Solomon Oliver Jr. ruled Friday (Aug. 27) that elementary school children who participated in the program last year may receive tuition vouchers again this semester. About 3,400 of the 4,000 kindergarten through sixth-grade students in the program this year are holdovers from last year.
Earlier last week, the judge ruled that because most of the 56 schools participating in the program are religious schools, the program appeared to have the”primary effect of advancing religion.” Oliver’s rulings came in response to a lawsuit seeking to halt the program as a violation of constitutional church-state separation provisions. He set a Dec. 13 trial date for the case to be heard.
The program provides up to $2,500 in tuition vouchers to participants, all of whom are from poor families.
Oliver’s actions, coming during the first week of Cleveland’s new school year, created confusion for students, parents and educators. The Roman Catholic Diocese of Cleveland, which operates many of the religious schools in the voucher program, said it would continue for now to accept voucher students, regardless of the judge’s rulings.
Update: Arizona Supreme Court OKs abortion for 14-year-old
(RNS) The Arizona State Supreme Court, by a divided 3-2 vote, has cleared the way for a 14-year-old girl to obtain a late-term abortion.
In a rare Sunday (Aug. 29) ruling, the court reversed a decision by an appeals judge that had temporarily blocked the girl _ believed to be 24 weeks pregnant _ from being taken to Kansas for the procedure, a court spokesman said.
No Arizona clinics perform abortions after 20 weeks.
It was not immediately clear if the ruling would be appealed, Reuters reported.
The Supreme Court ruling overturned a decision issued on Saturday by Appeals Court Judge Michael Ryan that barred the girl from having the abortion. Ryan’s ruling had overturned an earlier ruling that same day by Superior Court Judge William Sargeant to permit the abortion.
The high court’s Sunday ruling said Sargeant did not”abuse his discretion”nor was his ruling”clearly erroneous,”the Supreme Court spokesman said.
A ward of the state since she was 5 and a ward of Maricopa County Superior Court, the girl first requested an abortion when she was 14 weeks pregnant, saying she had been raped. But she then ran away and returned only recently.
Dr. Carolyn Gerster, chairwoman of Arizona Right to Life, an anti-abortion group, said she was outraged at the Supreme Court decision.”What crime did this (unborn) baby commit to be sentenced to death?”she said.
But Bruce Miller, director of Arizona Right to Choose, said the court made the right decision and society must respect the girl’s decision and let her get on with her life.
Helder Camara, sometimes called the `Red Bishop,’ dies at 90
(RNS) Dom Helder Camara, former archbishop of Olinda and Recife, Brazil, and one of the earliest and staunchest advocates of liberation theology for his nation’s poor, died Friday (Aug. 27). He was 90.
Dom Helder, as he was known, pushed the Roman Catholic Church to move beyond mere charity for the poor to advocate fundamental social change in such areas as land distribution and access to education to empower the poverty-stricken in the world’s largest Roman Catholic nation.
He was one of the most outspoken advocates of liberation theology, the theology that argued the church must have a preference for the poor and sometimes used Marxist sociological analytical tools to criticize social structures it saw as creating poverty.
Camara was denounced by the ruling party as”the Red Bishop”and”Fidel Castro in a cassock.”His retort to such allegations has become a slogan on posters around the world:”When I fed the poor, they called me a saint. When I asked, `Why are they poor?’ they called me a communist.” Born in the port city of Forteleza in northeast Brazil, Camara was ordained in 1931 and rose through the church’s ranks to become an auxiliary bishop of Rio de Janeiro in 1952. He served as secretary general of Brazil’s national conference of bishops for 12 years and was named archbishop of Recife in 1964.
During his period as general secretary he urged church leaders to drop such titles as”excellency”and”eminence.”In Recife he put the archbishop’s gilded throne in storage and replaced it with a simple wooden chair. He chose to live in a sparsely furnished room behind a church.
Camara, and others like him throughout Latin America, helped move the Catholic Church on that continent from being an ally of the military and propertied elite to an advocate for the poor and landless.
The ruling elite in Brazil treated him as a non-person but in 1980, Pope John Paul II went to Recife and met Camara, embraced him and declared,”This man is a friend of the poor. He is my friend.” The archbishop retired in 1985 but continued to criticize the role that multinational corporations and industrialized nations played in the Third World. He also criticized communist powers for imposing their will on smaller countries.
On Sunday, President Fernando Henrique Cardoso called Camara”a blessed man who dedicated his life to ecumenical human rights,”the New York Times reported. He declared three days of national mourning for the archbishop.
Quote of the day: Sister Camille D’Arienzo, president of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious
(RNS)”Jubilee people in a jubilee world must have two priorities: freeing prisoners and freeing children. We long to free the children.” _ Sister Camille D’Arienzo, president of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, the umbrella organization of Roman Catholic women’s religious orders, in an Aug. 24 address on the nuns’ priorities for the coming year.
DEA END RNS
