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THE JEWISH
STAR
VOL 10, NO 13 ■ APRIL 1, 2011 / 26 ADAR II, 5771
Get protest
ORA fights for divorce By Sergey Kadinsky Kurt Flascher once marched with Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. aiming to promote civil rights in the South. So when a Jewish organization called him about a protest rally in Borough Park on March 27, he offered them milk and cookies. But it was in jest, because the rally was outside his first-floor window, and the subject of the rally was Flascher himself. Initially emerging from his apartment to observe the crowd, as it grew to 40 people, Flascher, 83, cursed at them and ran back inside. The protest was organized by Organization for the Resolution of Agunot (ORA), a nonprofit that seeks to resolve longstanding cases where a husband refuses to give his wife a get, the document of religious divorce. “You’re a civil rights hypocrite. We’ve sent you letters and you’ve ignored them. The beit din has summoned you and we cannot stand by while a Jewish woman is being abused,” said ORA Executive Director Rabbi Jeremy Stern. Flascher’s ex-wife Sara Ain, 64, requested her get from Kurt in 2000, and two years later, the Beit Din of Elizabeth issued a seContinued on page 2
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Faster than a speeding Billet Running to a Mitzvah By Rabbi Hershel Billet In 1992 I approached Elisha Peleg, the sanitation Commissioner of Jerusalem, to help clean a Palestinian garbage dump on an obscure part of the Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives. He enthusiastically consented and gave my colleagues and me, one thousand garbage bags, a steam shovel, a sanitation truck,
and a platoon of soldiers to protect us. He said that it was a unique opportunity to realize a Zionist dream with trash. Indeed, it was just that. We mobilized some 120 American students studying in Israeli Yeshivot that year and uncovered some 300 neglected Jewish graves hundreds of years old. Last week, I discovered another unusual way to express my pride in Zion. I joined with more than 10,000 runners from 40 countries who ran, either, 42, 21, 10, or 4 kilometers — all parts of the first Jerusalem marathon. I ran 10K and felt a special connection to the verse in Psalm 122: “Omdot hayu ragleinu b’shearayich, Yerushalayim,” “Our legs stood within your gates, O Jerusalem,” “Yerushalayim habenuyah k’ir shechubra la yachdav;” “The built-up city of Jerusalem is like a city that is united;” The run included West Jerusalem, the Old City, and Mount Scopus--all neighborhoods of the united indivisible capital of the Jewish State. Many of us felt that we were running through almost 5000 years of history and making a strong statement to the world about the importance of Jerusalem to the Jewish people. Even though the tradition of a marathon comes from Mount Olympus, on this day Mount Zion and our Holy Continued on page 3 Photo byDavid Nesenoff
Rabbi Hershel Billet, of Young Israel of Woodmere, ran in the Jerusalem marathon to help Israel.
Photo by Sergey Kadinsky
Agunah Edna Shifteh, at ORA rally outside her estranged husband’s home in Brooklyn.
Shabbat Candlelighting: 7:02 p.m. Shabbat ends 8:03 p.m. 72 minute zman 8:32 p.m. Torah Reading Parshat Tazria Shabbat Hachodesh
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