Matthew Wagner , THE JERUSALEM POST

Jul. 16, 2009

In the latest salvo in the ongoing war between two vying camps over the future of religious Zionism, haredi-leaning rabbis this week torpedoed the appointment of a liberal-minded professor as president of a popular teachers college.

To protest the move, hundreds of more liberal-minded rabbis - many affiliated with the religious kibbutz movement - as well as religious Zionist youths and educators held a collective learning session/demonstration across the street from the Ramat Gan Hesder Yeshiva Wednesday night.

The venue was chosen as protest against the head of the yeshiva, Rabbi Yehoshua Shapira, who recently labeled some more liberal-minded religious Zionist leaders as "neo-reformers."

The liberals earned the name, said Shapira, because they favored coed education in the Bnei Akiva youth movement and supported a greater role for women in religious leadership, including as rabbis. Shapira also lamented the willingness of some religious Zionist rabbis to allow older single women, whose biological clock for baby bearing was running down, to use artificial insemination.