Medical Ethicist Dies

NEWYORK — Gerald Wolpe, a renowned rabbi and medical ethicist, died May 18 at age 81 after battling pancreatic cancer. As spiritual leader of the 1,500-family Har Zion Temple in Philadelphia for 30 years, until his resignation in 1999, he became a leading voice in medical ethics and caregiving, a field he became interested in during the 1960s, but became personally invested in after his late wife suffered brain aneurysms.

Boycott Battle

EDINBURGH — An Israeli filmmaker said she’ll attend a Scottish film festival despite threats of a boycott. Ken Loach, a prominent British film director, called for a boycott of next month’s Edinburgh International Film Festival after it accepted an Israeli state grant to fly Tali Shalom-Ezer to the festival to screen her film, Surrogate. The festival returned the money, but offered to fund her flight at its own expense. Loach said he was OK with Israeli filmmakers attending. Shalom-Ezer said she would attend, but reproached Loach as a “racist” and expressed concern the controversy would keep people from going to see her film, which depicts the relationship between a patient and a woman treating him with sexual therapy

Black Female Rabbi

CINCINNATI — The first African-American female rabbi will take up a pulpit in North Carolina in August. Alysa Stanton, who will be ordained June 6 at Cincinnati’s Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, will be spiritual leader of Congregation Bayt Shalom in Greenville, a small Conservative shul that two years ago also affiliated with the Reform movement. Stanton, a convert and mother of a daughter, 14, is a psychotherapist who specializes in grief and trauma. She’ll be the first black rabbi to lead a majority white shul.

Magazine Pulled

PARIS — AParis judge last week ordered a French magazine featuring a handcuffed Jewish murder victim on its cover to be removed from sales racks. The judge ruled in favour of Ilan Halimi’s family, which filed a complaint against the Choc monthly for “invasion of privacy” over its June issue. The photo of the 23-year-old Halimi was taken by his kidnappers, a gang called the Barbarians, and sent to his family as part of a ransom demand. Soon after, Halimi was found naked, bound, beaten and near death beside subway tracks near Paris in February 2006. He died a short time later. Gang members are now on trial.

Yeshiva For Women To Open In Fall

NEWYORK —  Rabbi Avi Weiss has launched a yeshiva to train Orthodox women to “function as rabbis.”
Known as Yeshiva Maharat, it’s expected to open in September and will offer women part-time instruction in all areas of Jewish law, pastoral training and a synagogue internship. Its name is taken from an invented title conferred in March upon Sara Hurwitz, previously “spiritual mentor” at Rabbi Weiss’ shul, the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale. Maharat is a Hebrew acronym that stands for spiritual, halachic and Torah leader.
“We’re training women to be rabbis,” Hurwitz told the Forward. “What they will be called is something we’re working out.”
Rabbi Weiss was said to be considering calling Hurwitz a rabbi, at the urging of several Orthodox feminist leaders. The Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance called her “ordination” and the new school “historic.” Hurwitz admitted that graduates of the new program may have trouble getting jobs. Only a handful of Orthodox shuls employ women in positions as more or less as the equal of male rabbis, except for performing public ritual roles in worship services.
“You have to start somewhere,” Hurwitz told JTA.