4 Friday, September27, 1985 THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS THE JEWISH NEWS Serving Detroit's Metropolitan Jewish Community . with distinction for four decades. Editorial and Sales offices at 20300 Civic Center Dr., 'Suite 240, Southfield, Michigan 48076 Telephone (313) 354-6060 PUBLISHER: Charles A. Buerger EDITOR EMERITUS: Philip Slomovitz EDITOR: Gary Rosenblatt BUSINESS MANAGER: Carmi M. Slomovitz ART DIRECTOR: Kim Muller-Thym NEWS EDITOR: Alan Hitsky LOCAL NEWS EDITOR: Heidi Press EDITORIAL ASSISTANT: Tedd Schneider LOCAL COLUMNIST: Danny Raskin ACCOUNT EXECUTIVES: Lauri Biafore Allan Craig Rick Nessel 'Danny Raskin OFFICE STAFF: Marlene Miller Dharlene Norris Phyllis Tyner Pauline Weiss Ellen Wolfe PRODUCTION: Donald Cheshure Cathy Ciccone Curtis Deloye Ralph Orme (C) 1985 by The Detroit Jewish News (US PS 275-520) Second Class postage paid at Southfield. Michigan and additional mailing offices. Subscriptions: 1 year - $21 — 2 years - $39 — Out of State - $23 — Foreign • $35 CANDLELIGHTING AT 7:01 P.M. VOL. LXXXVIII, NO. 5 Weir's War The good news is that Rev. Benjamin Weir is once again a free man, back in the U.S. after a 16-month ordeal as a hostage in Lebanon. The bad news is that the media has acted irresponsibly in allowing Weir to convey his captor's propaganda without questioning his skewered convey perspective. Weir says his release is a sign of the "good intentions" of the terrorists who held him in solitary confinement for a year, and that statement goes unchallenged. Weir says Israel is an "oppressive, aggressive, militaristic" country whose lobby in Washington "pretty much creates U.S. foreign policy" and his statement stands. It is admirable that Weir maintained his sanity during his confinement but that does not mean that his views on terrorism, the Mideast and world diplomacy deserve unquestioned front-page play. It has become increasingly evident since the hijacking of the TWA plane in June that the Mideast terrorists are extremely sophisticated in manipulating the Western media. Their threats and demands are broadcast on prime time and yet they portray themselves as desperate underdogs rather than calculating criminals. Weir was released not for humanitarian reasons but because his captors hoped he could help publicize their cause in forcing the release of 17 convicted terrorists imprisoned in Kuwait. Tiny Kuwait has held firm in its refusal to release the men, convicted of a fatal bomb attack in 1983. How foolish and impotent the U.S. would appear if we were to give in to the terrorist demands and force Kuwait to comply. Americans must come to understand that we are at war, that America is under attack from a worldwide terrorist conspiracy and the U.S. media must accept part of the responsibility for the terrorists' success. As Michael Novak, the author and commentator, has noted: "American sentimentality must be shattered. The depiction of the families' anguish must not deter us from going to causes, not symptoms." He adds that the point is not to sentimentalize our enemies but defeat them. Let us rejoice in Benjamin Weir's safe return but his message reminds us that the terrorist war goes on. And we are losing. True Peace? King Hussein of Jordan and President Mubarak of Egypt met in Cairo last week for talks on their "peace drive" before their separate vis- its to Washington later this month. The two men have emphasized talks between the U.S. and a Jordanian-Palestinian Arab delegation. But such talks would bypass Israel, and the point must be made that peace needs to be established between Israel and the Arabs, not between the U.S. and the Arabs. Israel is ready to meet with Hussein and non-PLO representatives at any time and at any place, without prior conditions. Both the U.S. and Is- rael remain convinced that only direct talks between the governm'ents of the countries at war can resolve the conflict. In contrast, Jordan and other Arab governments continue to call for an international' conference with the full participation of the Soviets and the PLO, the . two most seri- ous antagonists to Mideast peace. OP-ED Ethiopians And The Rabbis: A Study Of Two Paradoxes BY IRVING GREENBERG Special to The Jewish News Operation Moses, the airlift of thousands of Ethiopian Jews to Is- rael, filled world Jewry with reli- gious exhiliration, like a new Exodus. It was therefore jarring to learn that the Chief Rabbinate of Is- rael was requiring Ethiopian Jews to undergo ritual "conversion" as if they had to establish their status as Jews, after all. Initially, the rabbinate justified the conversion requirements as a stringency (l'humra) applied to any- one of questionable Jewish status so as to remove any possible challenge to their identity as Jews. But Ethio- pian Jewry's status has been upheld in the halakhic literature since the Sixteenth Century. After much criti- cism (including Prime Minister Shi- mon Peres' intervention), the rabbi- nate dropped its demands for sym- bolic circumcision, explaining that circumcisions performed in Ethiopia were valid and acceptable. The immersion requirement was sustained, however, justified by some who 'argue that over the centuries, non-Jews may have married into the Ethiopian community, bearing non- Jewish offspring. Others hold that the Beta Israel -(as the Ethiopian Jews call themselves) lacked the competence to do divorces (gittin) ac- cording to rabbinic law. Therefore, there might be illegitimate children (mamzerim from second marriages. Being considered non-Jews and un- dergoing conversion would free Ethiopian Jews of such a "taint" be- cause non-Jews do not need gittin to dissolve their marriages, not being bound by Jewish law. However, the strict religious be- havior of the Beta Israel, their Rabbi Greenberg is president of CLAL: The National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership. well-nigh non-existent divorce rate, and their outsider status in Ethio- pian society make intermarriage and illegitimacy highly unlikely. Fur- thermore, the former Chief Rabbis (Ovadia Yosef and Shlomo Goren) averred publicly that the Ethiopians were fully Jewish and needed no ritual — immersion, circumcision, or The insulation of the Israel rabbinate from popular value and choice has allowed the Eastern European yeshiva world to impose its values . . . otherwise. (This was a landmark rul- ing, for it helped turn the tide and paved the way for Menachem Be- gin's reversal of governmental policy toward bringing the Ethiopians home.) Why then have the current rab- bis inflicted this requirement on Ethiopian Jews? After all, the rab- binate's record on the issue is at least as good as that of its American critics. The rabbinate's performance on the ingathering of Ethiopian Jewry is one more unfortunate result of the growing establishment of religion in Israel. The rabbiniate is •insulated from society and from constituency groups. It does, however, remain subject to the peer pressure of the world of yeshiva learning and the judgment of right-wing Orthodoxy which is skeptical of all conversion and is constantly pressuring for "stricter" rulings. • The rabbinate is more sensitive to its traditionalist critics than it is Continued on Page 12