Rabbis

The winter assault on the Gaza Strip was officially portrayed in Israel as an attempt to quell rocket fire by militants of Hamas. But some soldiers say they also were lectured about a more ambitious aim: to banish non-Jews from the biblical land of Israel. "This rabbi comes to us and says the fight is between the children of light and the children of darkness," a reserve sergeant said, recalling a training camp encounter.

Re "Rabbis criticized for Gaza stance," March 25 Wow! Israel's army uses rabbis to serve as chaplains. Who could've figured that? Next we'll be told they minister in Hebrew. Sounds like a disproportionate praying force versus Gaza Arabs, who probably don't have a single rabbi in their chaplain corps. Joe Siegman Los Angeles -- To the almost 1,400 Palestinians killed during the winter assault on the Gaza Strip, it really doesn't matter what the military rabbis told the soldiers.

Rabbi Bernard Cohen, retiring at 66 and turning over control of his 12-year-old Clergy Network to a newly formed clergy council in the San Fernando Valley, received unusual praise Wednesday at a luncheon marking the transition. One speaker termed the outspoken Cohen diplomatically as "unique." The Rev. Jeff Utter of Chatsworth Congregational Church called the Reform rabbi "idiosyncratic."

The time has come for Haim Asa, who learned of compassion amid this century's darkest plunge into hopelessness and hate, to bid farewell. After hundreds of bar mitzvahs, countless Sabbath services and years of helping break down barriers among Orange County's religious leaders, the county's senior rabbi is retiring. Asa, 65, leaves a legacy that transcends even profound differences over the very concept of God.

Judaism is no longer one religion and it is time for Reform Jews to break free of Orthodox confines, the head of a Reform rabbinic association says. In a speech to open the recent five-day convention of the Central Conference of American Rabbis, Rabbi Simeon Maslin said Orthodox direction has become insulting, arrogant and power-hungry to Reform Jews. "It is all very well to sloganize about how 'We Are One' . . .

There he was, behind bars again helping inmates observe their faith. For the 28th year, Rabbi Mika M. Weiss traveled to the Pitchess jail in Castaic to conduct High Holiday services for about 30 Jewish inmates. It's a responsibility Weiss, a rabbi emeritus of Temple B'nai Hayim in Sherman Oaks, has shouldered since 1968. So what was it like for Weiss during his first visit to Pitchess?

In an open challenge to the Israeli government, the president of the largest wing of Judaism in the United States assailed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Los Angeles on Friday, accusing him of a failure of leadership that has led to growing tensions in the Middle East. Rabbi Eric H. Yoffie, president of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations--the synagogue arm of the 1.

Amid growing pressure on rabbis to marry Jews to non-Jews, lay leaders of Reform Judaism have voted not to challenge their rabbis' official opposition to interfaith marriage ceremonies. The Union of American Hebrew Congregations' national board of trustees took up the hot-button issue for the first time at its three-day meeting here. The board decided that the rabbis' right of conscience and authority on religious matters must be respected.

Amid growing pressure on rabbis to marry Jews to non-Jews, Reform Judaism's lay leaders have voted overwhelmingly against urging their rabbis to drop their official opposition to interfaith marriage ceremonies. The Union of American Hebrew Congregations' national board of trustees took up the hot-button issue for the first time ever at its three-day Los Angeles meeting, which ended Sunday, but decided that the rabbis' right of conscience and authority on religious matters must be respected.

Even here, at dusk, in a sea of sadness, Rabbi Bernie King couldn't turn away from the man's haunted face. The rabbi spotted the stranger in an audience of about 150, after his invocation at a Brea cemetery for the Parents of Murdered Children. Maybe he had seen the sobbing father at another candlelight vigil, King thought. And then, boom, he remembered where he had seen the gray-haired man before--on TV.