c. 1999 Religion News Service

Liberal Jewish leaders urge withholding funds from Israeli Orthodox

(RNS) Reform and Conservative Jewish leaders Tuesday (Jan. 5) urged their American followers to withhold financial support from Israeli politicians and groups that back Orthodox attempts to retain their religious dominance in Israel.

At a New York news conference, the Jewish leaders said non-Orthodox American Jews should use their financial resources to counter Orthodox attempts to skirt recent court decisions in Israel that have backed Reform and Conservative Jews.

The call for pocket-book politics was the latest round in an ongoing dispute between Orthodox Jews seeking to maintain their position and Reform and Conservative efforts to gain equal government recognition.”We must use the power of our dollars, as well as the power of our voice, to indicate we will not support candidates for prime minister or the Knesset (parliament) who do not have a sensitivity to the concerns of the American and diaspora Jewish communities,”said Rabbi Jerome Epstein, executive vice president of United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism.

Although the Reform and Conservative movements account for the majority of synagogue-affiliated American Jews, Jewish religious life in Israel is dominated by the Orthodox. In recent years, the non-Orthodox groups have gained court victories that have enabled them to break the Orthodox monopoly over conversions to Judaism, marriage, burial and other aspects of life that have a religious dimension.

Most recently, the chief judge of the Jerusalem District Court directed the Israeli government to register as Jews 23 immigrants to Israel who converted to Judaism under non-Orthodox rabbis. In response, Orthodox politicians said they would push for legislation in the Knesset to circumvent the court ruling and write into law the de facto Orthodox power over Jewish religious life.

Other recent rulings have forced the government to accept non-Orthodox members on local government-financed religious councils. Tuesday, Israel’s Orthodox chief rabbis called on Orthodox council members to boycott meetings at which non-Orthodox participate. Orthodox politicians also have introduced legislation to counter the court rulings concerning the councils.

At the New York news conference, Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch, executive director of the Association of Reform Zionists of America, said”we are taking note and eagerly observing which key Knesset members defend our position.”

Jewish group to sue Israel in effort to remove Auschwitz church

(RNS) A New York-based Jewish group has come up with a novel way to force removal of a Catholic church at the former Nazi death camp at Auschwitz _ sue Israel.

The Coalition for Jewish Concerns said Monday (Jan. 4) that it will ask Israel’s Supreme Court to block trips to Auschwitz organized by Israel’s Education Ministry in order to prod Jerusalem into pressuring Poland to remove the church.

The church is all that remains of a group of Carmelite nuns who left Auschwitz in 1993 after being ordered to do so by the Vatican. That order followed Jewish protests that the nuns’ presence violated a 1972 United Nations agreement declaring that Auschwitz would be left as is.

Some 1.5 million prisoners, mostly Jews, died at Auschwitz during World War II. Some Jews feel that the church and crosses placed at the site by Polish Catholics violate the memory of the Jews who died at Auschwitz. Catholics say they are only seeking to remember their own who also were killed at Auschwitz.

Rabbi Avi Weiss, leader of the Coalition for Jewish Concerns, told the Associated Press that”I have great respect for all religions of the world but there is no room for a church in a place like Auschwitz … Fifty years from now, if people go to the camp and all they find is a cross and church, they’ll think that the Holocaust was an attempt to murder Christians.”

Update: Chinese say they cannot confirm priest’s arrest

(RNS) Chinese officials said Tuesday (Jan. 5) they had no knowledge of an underground Catholic priest having been arrested and subjected to attempted sexual blackmail.

Fides, a publication of the Vatican’s missionary Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith, said Monday that the Rev. Li Qinghua, 31, had been arrested in November and that police had used female agents to try and sexually compromise the priest.

However, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhu Bangzao said the Fides report”has not been confirmed up to now,”the Associated Press reported. Zhu also implied that Fides had acted irresponsibly in reporting the arrest.

Chinese religious affairs agency members and officials and police in Hebei province, site of the reported arrest, also denied knowledge of the incident.

China’s underground Catholics recognize the Vatican’s jurisdiction over their church, an illegal act according to Chinese law. China’s government has created its own, officially recognized Catholic church.

Aid group denies giving guns to Kosovo guerrillas

(RNS) Doctors without Borders, one of the most respected international humanitarian groups, has been accused by a government official in Kosovo of supplying weapons to ethnic Albanian rebels fighting for independence from Serbia.

The Paris-based group sharply denied the charge.

On Monday, Vukasin Andric, health secretary for Kosovo, said members of Doctors without Borders had been”caught hiding and smuggling weapons for Albanian terrorists”but he provided no details to back up his charge.

Bas Tieliens, a spokesman for the humanitarian group, said the accusations”came out of the blue”and were unfounded. He noted the group had been working in Kosovo since 1993, before the current hostilities between Serbs and ethnic Albanians in the Serb-controlled province erupted.

But its continued work in Kosovo could be put in jeopardy by the charges, the Associated Press reported.”We are often victims of such accusations, particularly in a context of war,”said Benedicte Jeannerod, a spokesman for the group in Paris.”We are regularly accused of spying. The truth is that we are trying to help the population on both sides of the conflict.” Doctors without Borders provides emergency medical relief in more than 80 countries using more than 2,000 medical professionals.

Update: Pakistani Shiites call for prime minister’s removal

(RNS) Pakistani Shiite Muslim mourners Tuesday (Jan. 5) demanded the removal from office of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif during services for 11 victims of an attack by gunmen on a mosque.

The mourners _ who called Sharif a”murderer”_ said he should be thrown out of office for allegedly doing little to stop violence between the minority Shiite community and Pakistan’s majority Sunni Muslims.

The mourners called for the military to oust Sharif.

On Monday, gunmen on motorcycles and believed to be associated with radical Sunni groups sprayed gunfire into a mosque packed with Shiite worshippers in the eastern Pakistan village of Quereshi More. At least 16 were killed and more than two dozen were injured.

Tuesday, 11 of the dead were buried in Quereshi More. The others were buried in their home villages.

Police have blamed the attack on the radical Sunni group Guardians of the Friends of the Prophet. There have been no arrests.

Over the years, hundreds have been killed in Shiite-Sunni violence in Pakistan. Shiite-Sunni animosities date to the seventh century and a dispute over succession to the Prophet Muhammad.

Kirk Franklin nominated for several Grammy Awards

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(RNS) Gospel music star Kirk Franklin has racked up a number of Grammy Award nominations, including Song of the Year.

The nominations were announced Tuesday (Jan. 5) by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences.”Lean on Me,”a track from”The Nu Nation Project”album, is performed by Franklin with Mary K. Blige and R. Kelly, Bono, Crystal Lewis and the Family.

That song also was nominated for Best R & B Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals and Best R & B Song. The album also was nominated for Best Contemporary Soul Gospel Album and Best Engineered Album, Non-classical, the Gospel Music Association reported.

A song that has been featured on the soundtrack from the”Touched by an Angel”television program also is a Grammy nominee.”I’m Your Angel,”by R. Kelly and Celine Dion, a track from”R.”, an album by R. Kelly, was nominated for Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals.

Nominees in gospel music categories are as follows:

Best Rock Gospel Album:”Some Kind of Zombie,”by Audio Adrenaline;”Amplifier,”by Big Tent Revival;”You are There,”by Ashley Cleveland;”God Fixation”by Petra; and”Sixpence None the Richer”by Sixpence None the Richer.

Best Pop Contemporary Gospel Album:”Mission 3:16,”by Carman;”Supernatural,”by dc Talk;”Steady On,”by Point of Grace;”Live the Life,”by Michael W. Smith; and”This is My Song,”by Deniece Williams.

Best Southern Gospel, Country Gospel or Bluegrass Gospel Album:”They Gave the World a Smile: The Stamps Quartet Tribute Album,”by James Blackwood Quartet and the Light Crust Doughboys;”Faithful,”by the Cathedrals;”Down by the Tabernacle,”by Bill and Gloria Gaither and their Homecoming Friends;”Just as I Am,”by Andy Griffith; and”The Apostle: Music From and Inspired by the Motion Picture, by various artists.

Best Traditional Soul Gospel Album:”Just Right for a Miracle by (Bishop G.E. Patterson presents) Rance Allen and the Soul Winners’ Conference Choir;”Now That I’m Here,”by Beverly Crawford;”He Leadeth Me,”by Cissy Houston;”Live! My Soul Feels Better Now,”by Della Reese; and”Been There Done That,”by Rev. Timothy Wright and the B/J Mass Choir (featuring Myrna Summers).

Best Contemporary Soul Gospel Album:”Songs from the Heart,”by Yolanda Adams;”Finally Karen,”by Karen Clark-Sheard;”The Nu Nation Project,”by Kirk Franklin;”Pages of Life _ Chapters I and II”by Fred Hammond and Radical for Christ; and”Everlasting Love,”by CeCe Winans.

Best Gospel Choir or Chorus Album:”Just Churchin’ by Bobby Jones and New Life with the Nashville Super Choir, Nathan Young, choir director;”Love Alive V _ 25th Anniversary Reunion”by the Love Center Choir, Jonathan Grier, Edwin M. Harper, Walter L. Hawkins, Rusty Watson, and Maggie Wincher, choir directors;”Pastor Hezekiah Walker presents the LFT Church Choir _ Live at Love Fellowship Tabernacle,”by LFT Church Choir, Pastor Hezekiah Walker, choir director;”Reflections”by The Associates, O’Landa Draper, choir director;”Strength,”by New Life Community Choir, John P. Kee, choir director.

Quote of the day: Belgian playwright Francois Perin

(RNS)”My departure from Christianity was slow, meticulous, and without crisis or fury or anguish. Progressively I ceased being Christian, because when still very young I took religion very seriously. Otherwise I would have remained a Catholic.” _ Belgian playwright, professor and politician Francois Perin, on his falling away from his Christian faith and re-connecting with Europe’s older, pagan gods, in an interview in the February 1999 edition of”Hinduism Today”magazine.

DEA END RNS