In the News

The Coalition for Jewish Values welcomed news that US President Donald Trump had commuted the sentence of Sholom Rubashkin, former head of the country’s largest kosher meat-processing company, who had been sentenced to 27 years in prison for fraud and money laundering.

In a letter last week to YU President Berman, CJV President Rabbi Pesach Lerner and his colleagues argued that Olson’s participation in the divide-Jerusalem declaration is so far outside the Jewish community consensus that he is “harming the university’s reputation in the eyes of the Jewish community.”

The Coalition for Jewish Values called the move “correct” and urged the president to complete “his pledge to move the embassy”.

The CJV noted that every other country chooses its capital, and all other countries place their embassies in those same cities to facilitate access to officials of the host government.

“What happened with [Deputy] Minister Hotovely is disgraceful,” Rabbi Schonfeld said in an interview with Arutz Sheva. “She made a statement which I believe is correct.”

Yaakov Menken, director of the Coalition for Jewish Values, said Phillips’ case is particularly important for Jews because so much their religious observance is based on their actions.

In the USA, only the Coalition for Jewish Values, a newcomer on the American Orthodox scene, spoke up in Hotovely’s defense. A CJV spokesman said, correctly, that “She held up a mirror to much of American Jewry, and some of their self-appointed leaders do not like what they see.”

Rabbi Pesach Lerner, president of CJV, explained in an email, “The separation of church and state means that there is no state religion; it does not mean that citizens’ views on moral issues are disqualified when their positions stem from their personal religious beliefs.”

Rabbi Yaakov Menken of the Coalition for Jewish Values joined American Greatness Publisher, Chris Buskirk, on the Seth and Chris Show to discuss developments on questions of religious liberty since the election of President Trump.

Lerner said that there is already a schism with US Jewry since liberal Jews don’t understand the situation in Israel and think they know what is good for it.