Religious Leaders Reject “Secular” Clerics

A group practicing what they describe as "secular humanistic Judaism" plans to ordain the first "secular humanistic rabbis" in a ceremony in Jerusalem on Friday. The seven set to be ordained have completed a three-year course to be secular community leaders, but will preside over ostensibly religious ceremonies such as weddings, brit mila (religious circumcision), bar and bat mitzvahs. Religious leaders have asked the attorney general to prevent the ‘secular ordinations.’ Israel‘s chief rabbi criticized the  use of a religious title by the secularists, saying, "Just as it is inconceivable for a plumber to pass himself off as an arterial surgeon, even though both professions deal with blocked pipes,…so too a person who has decided to be secular and to conduct religious ceremonies cannot be called a rabbi."