Religion Israel

Behold, the Lord your God has set the land before you: Go up and possess it. --Deuteronomy 1:21 Rabbis are speaking out more and more on the vexing issue of whether Israel can and should give up land that is in dispute with Palestinians, and the rabbis engaged in the debate offer studious assurances that God backs their views. It is a discussion in which Talmudic scholars from ages past are recruited as allies by all sides.

Because of the scarce print space allocated among the 60 to 70 letters to the editor that run each week, submissions replying to other letters are only occasionally published on the regular pages. When an unusually high volume of "letters on letters" are sent to letters@lames.com , a selection will run in this space. This week, more than three dozen readers weighed in on other letters, most of them responding to discussions on freedom of religion vis a vis the Obama administration's rule on mandatory contraception coverage, and on Israeli President Shimon Peres' take on a two-state solution.

Israelis may be astonished by the notion of a Jew killing another Jew, but Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was ultimately the victim of a broader force that has become one of the most energetic and dangerous trends in the post-Cold War world: religious extremism.

One of Israel's top religious leaders has found backing in Jewish law for the government's policy of hunting and killing suspected Palestinian militants, a practice that has garnered U.S. and international condemnation. Chief Rabbi Israel Meir Lau says Jewish law authorizes the government to engage in "active prevention" to stop Palestinians from carrying out terrorist attacks.

Dooby Salman, Israeli cowboy, fell in love with lassos and Stetsons during the filming of a Western in the desert near the Dead Sea. He went off to California to learn rodeo techniques, dropped the English- and cavalry-style riding he had learned at home and came back to Israel a self-styled wrangler. Salman is trying to share his love affair with fellow Israelis, even ones who wouldn't know a bronco from a blintz.

If nonbelievers are doomed, Avishai Simantov suddenly thought one day, why aren't the Christians and Muslims dying? Could all secular Jews truly be sinners and thieves? Is the purpose of life to study the Torah all day, or might there be something else worthwhile? Simantov was a 16-year-old yeshiva student in Jerusalem when he posed these questions to his rabbi. The learned man told him to put his head down and study harder, that the Bible and Jewish law would provide his answers.

Tenants let three apartments in the predominantly ultra-Orthodox Tel Aviv suburb of Bnei Brak burn while they asked a rabbi whether a call to the fire department on the Sabbath would violate Jewish tenets. Observant Jews are forbidden to use telephones on the Sabbath because to do so would involve breaking an electric current, which is considered a form of work. They are, however, permitted to break the Sabbath in case of an emergency.

As church bells all over the Old City tolled at midday, a Jewish settler group announced Tuesday that it had met a deadline for evacuating a controversial hospice in the heart of the Christian Quarter but was leaving 20 settlers behind to guard and maintain the building.

For American evangelicals who profess a theology that sees Israel's existence as part of biblical prophecy, last week's election in the Jewish state produced a mixed blessing. Many evangelical Christians who interpret the Bible literally tend to view the election of hard-liner Benjamin Netanyahu as prime minister as part of God's plan for the Second Coming of Jesus.

Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir's Likud Party gained ground on the once dominant Labor Party in nationwide municipal elections Tuesday, further highlighting a swing by Israel to the political right. Jewish religious parties also made strong showings and helped deny Jerusalem Mayor Teddy Kollek a majority on the City Council for the first time in his 24 years in office. An Arab boycott of the vote also crippled Kollek's "One Jerusalem" council ticket.

Christian pilgrims clutched wooden crosses and gold prayer books as they walked along the cobblestone streets of Jerusalem's walled Old City on Good Friday, retracing the last steps of Jesus. The groups that made their way along the Via Dolorosa to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher--the site where many Christians believe Jesus was crucified and buried--were noticeably small. Tourism has dropped sharply after more than six months of fighting between Israelis and Palestinians.

Boarded over and trash-strewn, the Great Mosque that served the once thriving Muslim population of this desert town has become another battleground in the Israeli-Palestinian war over memory and land. To Muslims, the sandstone building, with its graceful minaret and dome, arched windows and interior courtyard, is a holy site, a cherished remnant of the Arab Beersheba that existed before the 1948 birth of the Jewish state.

The story of this Christmas, Palestinians say, lies not in the decorated tree tucked into a corner of Manger Square's Peace Center, nor in the creches from churches around the world displayed there. It is in the Palestinian children's drawings that are hanging in the center's main auditorium. Dozens of crayon sketches show villages being strafed by helicopter gunships, soldiers pointing guns at stone-throwing children, tanks rolling through the streets, and armed and masked Palestinian fighters.

Thousands of Muslim men and women gathered at Jerusalem's Al Aqsa mosque to pray on the first Friday of Ramadan, returning to the disputed site that has figured so prominently in more than two months of Israel-Palestinian bloodshed. With an army of Israeli police officers deployed on foot and horseback in and around Jerusalem's walled Old City, the prayers unfolded in relative calm. There were only a handful of skirmishes, allaying fears of a new escalation.

The ghosts of past wars and the threat of a new one weighed heavily on Israelis on Sunday as the nation began its observance of Yom Kippur, Judaism's holiest day, a day of fasting and "affliction of the soul." Preparing their sermons before the holiday began at sundown, some rabbis said that events had unfolded so rapidly in the past 11 days that they had been hard pressed to keep up with the changes in their congregants' moods.

For investors, Israel's national airline, El Al, would seem like a great catch. Its assets include sleek new jets, an occasional profit, and flights that are routinely packed to capacity. But El Al cannot fly on the Jewish Sabbath. Grounding the carrier from Friday afternoon to Saturday night, every week, has been costing millions of dollars and, the government claims, drives away potential financial backers.

It is shortly before dusk when Romy Cernea arrives at the religious school where he spends each Friday night, and the tranquillity of the Jewish Sabbath is spreading across the neighborhood of Bayit Vagan. A last bus swings along Rabbi Frank Street and two small boys wearing skullcaps and side curls dash squealing into a nearby apartment as Cernea gathers the modern tools of his ancient trade: a borrowed cell phone, the keys to a battered white Subaru and several large plastic signs.

One of the great mysteries for biblical scholars and believers is exactly where the Ark of the Covenant stood in the temple King Solomon built in Jerusalem nearly 3,000 years ago. The Ark of the Covenant itself--the wooden chest used to store the stone tablets on which the Ten Commandments are believed to have been written--has been lost in the dust of history.

In an illustration of the centuries-old rivalry over Jerusalem that derailed the Camp David peace talks, Muslim custodians of one of the city's sacred sites locked an entrance used mostly by tourists and Jewish worshipers for several hours Saturday. Officials of the Muslim religious council that administers the Temple Mount in Jerusalem's Old City said they locked a Temple Mount gate because Jewish extremists tried to bring Israeli flags into the complex's Al Aqsa mosque Thursday.

The carefully tended garden that surrounds Israel's parliament is a national showcase, a colorful display of seasonal blooms that usually provides a respite from the raucous, arm-waving debates inside. But now the periwinkles, begonias and roses have become unlikely bit players in Israel's angry culture war, the intensifying struggle between the religious and the secular that many Israelis consider the most significant threat to their state.