http://www3.haaretz.co.il/eng/scripts/article.asp?mador=14&datee=07/07/00&id=84240
Reform's Jerusalem center hit
By Baruch Kra, 7/7/2000, Ha'aretz Correspondent
In the latest of a spate of attacks on non-Orthodox religious buildings,
vandals yesterday morning smashed the glass entrance to the Hebrew
Union College, the Reform Movement's center in Jerusalem. "Satan" was
spray painted on a nearby wall.
The case was transferred to a special unit set up to investigate the series
of attacks.
A Reform community activist who lives in the building was wakened at 4
A.M. by a bang and called the police. They found the large glass door had
been blasted - part of it had been shattered by vandals three weeks
earlier.
This is the third attack on a non-Orthodox religious building in recent
weeks.
http://jta.virtualjerusalem.com/index.exe?0007067
Israel's Reform campus vandalized in another attack on liberal Judaism
By Avi Machlis, Jewish Telegraphic Agency, 7/6/2000
JERUSALEM, July 6 (JTA) - Vandals struck the Reform movement's
Hebrew Union College in Israel this week, smashing glass windows
and doors and spray-painting the word "Satan" in black letters on the ground.
Thursday's attack on the institute was the second on the HUC after a door was smashed there a few
weeks ago.
It was also the fifth recent attack on a non-Orthodox institution, the most serious being the torching of a
Conservative synagogue in Jerusalem last week.
"This has become a wave," said Motti Inbari, spokesman for the Reform movement in Israel. "There is
a connection between the incidents."
Reform officials notified the police and said no suspects have yet been apprehended. However, they
said, night workers on the scene said men dressed in haredi, or fervently Orthodox, garb were seen
nearby before the attack.
Rabbi David Rosen, the modern Orthodox director of the Anti- Defamation League's Israel office, said
the perpetrators of recent attacks and those who agree with them must be taught "in schools and
synagogues, through the media and from political and religious leaders," that differences of opinions
must be accepted in a democracy.
"These acts, which seek to curtail freedom of religious expression, undermine democratic rule," he said.
The burning of the Ya'ar Ramot Conservative synagogue last week sparked a landmark condemnation
from Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau, Israel's Orthodox Ashkenazi chief rabbi.
Condemnations were also voiced from some fervently Orthodox political leaders and printed in the
haredi press.
However, Reform and Conservative leaders complained that many of these statements were
ambiguous. Some even accused the liberal streams of carrying out the attack on their own synagogue
to gain sympathy.
Meanwhile, Aharon Barak, president of Israel's Supreme Court, has promised a swift ruling on the
legitimacy of non-Orthodox conversions in Israel.
The court on Wednesday completed its hearings - held by a special panel of 11 judges - on a list of
outstanding cases.
In recent years, the court has avoided issuing rulings amid political attempts at a compromise.
If it chooses to rule now, it could create the most significant precedent ever on the conversion issue,
which has been at the core of the pluralism debate and Israel-Diaspora tensions in recent years.
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