I responded again by stressing that the non-Jewish presence at the site was not the focus of my question and that it was mentioned only to illustrate a possible concern with the current setup.
I have not yet received a second response...
Two additional updates on this front are actually a tag-team assist from my sister and brother in law (Shira & Chaim). Chaim summarized some very good points for and against the Machon Tzomet solution for oil drilling. I've included his comments at the end of the post. Shira actually attended a shiur from R' Rozen the other day and subsequently spoke to him about the issues we raised. R' Rozen reportedly made 2 interesting comments:
- He acknowledged that Machon Tzomet's approach in general is somewhat controversial and has historically been the source of disagreement with other Rabbinic authorities
- He confirmed what we suspected in previous posts - the reason for the media coverage was to try and mitigate the possible mar'it ayin factor. This may be a chiddush as we pointed out, but it does seem to make sense.
Chaim's comments are as follows:
Just to add: R' Rozen also said something on the topic of mar'it ayin (I don't remember his exact phrasing): from what I understood he said that mar'it ayin is not really an objective/defined halachic principle in itself - it is dependent on other factors - so he wouldn't really say that Tzomet has a defined "mar'it ayin policy," rather they take the relevant factors of each situation into account.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the double shout-out!