Washington DC, population change

Perhaps this question will mark me as a hopeless racist. I hope not, but yesterday there was an article in the Post talking about the dropping numbers of African Americans in DC.

I understand that we don't want African Americans driven out of DC, and that we should work to make it so that middle class people - like firefighters and nurses- can afford to live in DC, and support a black middle class, but it looks to me like the people that are coming in are replacing people that have already left over a rather long period of time. So, while I think that we definitely should make DC not just for the very poor and the very rich, isn't it sort of a good thing that DC isn't necessarily only (or mostly) African-Americans? Won't it improve city services and schools to have a more balanced population? Am I being totally racist to think that if we could focus more on how to integrate the city it would be a good thing for the African-American community, too?

If I'm being really racist, could someone please point this out to me?

The "Status Quo" is a state of woe

According to the Jpost, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert called Sunday on religious and secular cabinet ministers to reach a compromise on legislation that would expand Rabbinic Court jurisdiction in divorce cases. "Feminists," which apparently means any women with a grain of sense, are protesting this bill as discriminatory against women.
It seems to me that this is somewhat of an understatement. The Rabbinic Courts have long been er, discriminatory against women; that is to say, they tend to arbitrate in favor of the husband, and extort money (that is, money that would normally be part of her financial rights in the divorce, such as child support) from a woman before granting her release from her husband. That is, in cases where he will grant her a divorce at all, since by and large the religious courts don't much force the issue (there have been a few exceptional cases where the husband has been jailed for failing to give a get, but by and large, this problem - which could be halachically solved, and has been by the Masorti movement, and will not be, by the Orthodox, because the options that they once considered acceptable were adopted by the Masorti movement, making them treif by association- remains an enormous one for Orthodox women, in which the courts demand that she submit to all sorts of craziness in order for them to pressure the husband to give her a divorce).

According to the JPost article

Rabbinic Courts Administration spokeswoman Efrat Orbach said the proposed legislation would simply maintain the status quo.

"The Supreme Court recently overturned decades of precedent during which the Rabbinic Courts litigated in monetary matters connected with the divorce process, even after the husband gave his ex the divorce writ," Orbach said.

"This bill simply anchors in law what has been common practice for a long time now."

Because Israeli law needs to have more religious control. the hegemony not being yet complete. This is a terrible idea. The status quo is not such a beautiful thing that it needs to be "anchored in law." To the contrary, the status quo is quite broken and needs to be fixed.


xp to Jewschool

Gonna soak up the sun...

Writing from the City of Angels, where I'm taking a break from the day to day to see my two friends (and one who was my doula) get ordained. I've had the side benefit of getting to catchup with others who have flown in to see the up and coming rabbis receive smichah, and to visit with those who never left. And I get to indulge in some very pleasant weather and trips to the beach as well (too cold for swimming in the Pacific of course, but no one swims in the ocean here anyway).
This is pretty much the last class where I know everyone being ordained - they were first years as I left - I don't know them all that well, except for a few, but I do know that most of the class will surely be a blessing.

The car we rented turned out not to be available, so we had to be upgraded to a red mustang convertible. Oh, yeah.

And now back to our regularly scheduled sunshine, jasmine, palm trees, rosemary, lavender, eucalyptus, and laden citrus trees.
Why did I move, again?

Shabbat shalom!