Tag: Judaism

Media Release: Government gives $20K grant to promote inclusive communities to homophobic organisation

ALEPH MELBOURNE
MEDIA RELEASE: GOV’T GIVES $20K GRANT TO PROMOTE INCLUSIVE COMMUNITIES TO HOMOPHOBIC ORGANISATION
JULY 13 2012

J-Wire reports [1] the Institute for Judaism and Civilisation (IJC) [2] has been awarded a $20,000 grant to produce a teaching manual of the shared values of Christianity, Islam and Judaism to strengthen resilience against violent extremism.  Aleph Melbourne welcomes government grants of this nature and sees them as a valuable opportunity to further relationships between religious communities.

Attorney General Nicola Roxon describes of the Building Community Resilience grants program [3]:

We want to support local projects to build stronger, more inclusive communities. … Grants such as this will fund practical new activities to assist individuals and communities to resist and disengage from intolerant ideologies and encourage positive community participation.

Director of the IJC, Rabbi Dr Shimon Cowen, is on the record in his 2012 submission to the Senate on “homosexual marriage” [4] as inferring that homosexuality is prohibited by God and that to allow any recognition of homosexuals is to show defiance to the universal ethics of God.

Cowen was also embroiled in a controversy earlier this year where he openly advocated for reparative therapy for gay people and that the anti-homophobic anti-bullying program Safe Schools Coalition Victoria be de-funded. [5]

Cowen’s stance is clearly at odds with this shared values program, which is described as funding “practical new activities to assist individuals and communities to resist and disengage from intolerant ideologies and encourage positive community participation.”

Cowen and the IJC have blatantly demonstrated an intolerance of homosexuality.

Michael Barnett, Convenor of Aleph Melbourne said, “By allocating this significant grant to such an organisation that fosters intolerant homophobic ideologies is a slap in the face to all same-sex attracted Jews, Christians and Muslims who are trying to gain acceptance in their respective communities.  Further, it sends the message that homophobic intolerance is acceptable.”

Federal MP Michael Danby has commended Cowen and said that this grant will allow the faith communities to explore their similarities and avoid extremism.

Barnett said, “The irony of the situation is that followers of ultra-conservative religious perspectives common to Judaism, Christianity and Islam, people like Shimon Cowen, believe that practitioners of homosexuality are sinners who should be shunned and actively discouraged from acting on their innate sexual orientation.  Some extremist viewpoints of these religions go so far as to say such people are worthy of death.”

Barnett calls on Danby and Roxon to revoke the $20,000 grant allocated to the IJC on the grounds that the IJC is a proponent of intolerant ideologies and to reallocate the funds to organisations that embrace diversity.

Further comment available from Michael Barnett on 0417-595-541.

[1] http://www.jwire.com.au/teaching-manual-to-be-produced-on-shared-values/
[2] http://www.ijc.com.au/
[3] http://www.livingsafetogether.gov.au/newsandblog/Pages/Building-resilient-communities.aspx
[4] http://aleph.org.au/2012/04/03/jewish-submissions-to-senate-enquiry-on-marriage-equality/
[5] http://aleph.org.au/2012/02/10/the-homosexual-anti-bullying-program-for-schools-an-unconscionable-strategem-afa-journal-vol-32-no-2-2011/

Update – January 5 2013 & October 5 2015

Since this media release was issued the AG web site link has changed. The new grants program page can be viewed http://www.livingsafetogether.gov.au/newsandblog/Pages/Building-resilient-communities.aspx. Details of the grant application in question can be viewed in full here and summary here.

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AJN Letters: Rabbi Shimon Cowen draws on Robert Spitzer – May 25 2012

25 May 2012
The Australian Jewish News Melbourne edition

Letters to the editor should be no more than 250 words and may be edited for length and content. Only letters sent to letters@jewishnews.net.au will be considered for publication. Please supply an address and daytime phone number for verification.

Rabbi Glick’s view of homosexuality

IN last week’s AJN (18/05), the editor commented that Rabbi Avrohom Glick’s statement that homosexuality “can be cured … in most situations” is “an affront … to all those who believe in equality irrespective of sexual orientation”.  I am sure that Rabbi Glick acknowledges that the commandment of loving a fellow Jew extends equally to homosexuals.

The editor also commented that Rabbi Glick’s remarks raise questions about his role as director of student welfare.  Rabbi Glick serves in a school under the aegis of the Lubavitcher Rebbe.  The Lubavitcher Rebbe himself published an essay on homosexuality, in which he wrote that the point of education in general is to modify “inborn dispositions”, including homosexual dispositions, which pose challenges for the ethical requirements of Torah.

He wrote that “for some it is easier and for others it is harder”, but with the exercise of free will and the help of educators, therapists and counsellors, individuals can overcome these drives.  In his position at a Jewish, Orthodox, and particularly, a Lubavitcher school, it is a simple matter of religious freedom and charter that Rabbi Glick should be able to express this view.

Rabbi Glick’s statement that practical homosexual orientation could be experienced as abnormal and be altered was in fact demonstrated in a psychological research paper published by Dr Robert Spitzer in 2003.  This appeared as a revision of Spitzer’s position when, 30 years earlier, he was integral in having homosexuality removed as an illness from the American Psychiatric Association’s (APA) Diagnostic and Statistic Manual of Mental Disorders.  Spitzer was at once assailed by the APA and various lobbies for his new research, and over time a number of recantations were elicited from him.

The primary objection which was used to disqualify Spitzer’s new work was that his sample of interviewees was drawn from highly religiously motivated individuals who sought to change their homosexual orientations – a sample, it was argued, that did not represent average homosexuals.  And yet this is precisely the point: because these individuals had a conscious spiritual identity, a higher self, resonating with the Creator’s moral template, which negates homosexual conduct, they were often able to engage with and transform “another”, contrary physical self, as Spitzer found.  Without any concept of an autonomous spiritual self, capable of struggle with psychophysical impulse, the politically ascendant psychology of the APA necessarily rejects freedom, choice and cure in homosexuality.

RABBI SHIMON COWEN
Balaclava, Vic

AJN Letters: Homophobic bullying – March 23 2012

23 Mar 2012
The Australian Jewish News Melbourne edition

Letters to the editor should be no more than 250 words and may be edited for length and content. Only letters sent to letters@jewishnews.net.au will be considered for publication. Please supply an address and daytime phone number for verification.

Our duty to combat homophobic bullying

AS a member of a people who have fallen victim to a historical “norm” of persecution and ostracism, I find the argument against the program tackling homophobic bullying in schools extremely troubling.

It seems perverse to suggest that it should be the aspiration of our society to converge to the human condition, a condition that has seen the violent oppression of both homosexuals and Jews for millennia.

Now that Jews have finally been afforded a time and place where we are free from such persecution, why would some in our community be tacitly encouraging the vilification of others, some of whom fall within our community, based on their identity?

In advocating that Jews adhere to a medieval idea of morality, certain members of the Orthodox rabbinate are tragically out of step with the modern world.

Should this mentality persist, they will only continue to stand there scratching their heads as shul attendance continues to plummet.

DANIEL MEYEROWITZ-KATZ
Dover Heights, NSW