Viewpoint: Israel ought to be a place where all streams of Judaism are validated and treated equally.
By ROBERT HORENSTEINjudaism (do not publish again)(photo credit: avi katz)
ACCORDING TO THE AUTUMN 2010 AMERICAN JEWISH Committee survey, 95 percent of Jews in the US believe that the Palestinians should be required to “recognize Israel as a Jewish state in a final peace agreement.” To be sure, this finding reflects a belief that the core of the conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians is the latter’s ongoing rejection of the inalienable right of the Jewish people to sovereign statehood.But it’s more than that. The overwhelming majority of American Jews understand, at least conceptually, that Israel’s special character as the nation-state of the Jewish people must be preserved at all costs. This, in turn, raises an important question, one that has serious implications for sustained long-term American Jewish support for Israel: How should Israel define itself as “the Jewish state?”Clearly, nothing about Israel could be more self-evident than its Jewish nature. The modern state of Israel was established in the Jews’ historic homeland; over three-quarters of Israeli citizens are Jewish, representing half the global Jewish population; Judaism and Jewish customs are very much a part of Israel’s legal and cultural framework.Even so, the issue of Israel as the Jewish state is much more complex – and sensitive – than these conspicuous characteristics suggest.Ever since the state’s first prime minister David Ben-Gurion decided over six decades ago that matters of personal status (i.e., marriage, divorce, conversion and burial) would remain under the sole jurisdiction of the Orthodox rabbinate, Israel has grappled with the role of Judaism in public life.Here in the US, the Jewish community, 85 percent of which is non- Orthodox, observes Israel from afar and wonders what the Jewish state will look like in the coming decades. Will it foster Jewish pluralism, or will a state-empowered ultra-Orthodox authoritarianism continue to stifle the more progressive forms of Jewish religious expression? Will it be a Jewish state that continues to be a source of vicarious pride or one from which even staunchly pro-Israel American Jews could become estranged?It’s a question that many of my colleagues in the pro-Israel community would rather not address. And yet it must be addressed precisely because Israel, which will continue to face outside threats for the foreseeable future, can’t afford to lose the support of American Jews by becoming something with which the majority of our community can no longer identify.That’s why the Jewish Federations of North America have vehemently objected to the conversion bill introduced in the Knesset by Yisrael Beiteinu’s David Rotem. The bill would officially place total control over conversions in the hands of the Orthodox rabbinical establishment, terminating a 12-year-old compromise arrangement whereby Reform and Conservative teachers play a role in the Conversion Authority that presently resides in the Prime Minister’s Office.Yet the conversion bill is hardly the most troubling indication that the task of defining the Jewish state – indeed, defining what it means to be Jewish – is being left solely to the ultra- Orthodox. Last July, for example, Anat Hoffman, director of the Reform movement’s Israel Religious Action Center and leader of the Women at the Wall prayer group, was arrested for allegedly violating a law banning women from holding a Torah scroll at Jerusalem’s Western Wall. If convicted, she could be sentenced to three years in prison.Who could have imagined that a citizen of the Jewish state could be taken into custody for the “crime” of carrying a Torah? Certainly, individuals attending services at an Orthodox synagogue should be obligated to respect the minhag (custom) of the congregation. However, the Western Wall is the symbolic spiritual center of the entire Jewish people. If it ends up being the exclusive province of the haredim, a significant piece of our heritage will become a place of alienation for non- Orthodox Jews.For years, women who have sought to pray with Torahs and talitot (prayer shawls) at the Wall have been subjected to physical and verbal abuse by haredi men. Sadly, this atmosphere of intolerance starts with the official state rabbinate. Last September, Sephardi Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar sent a letter to rabbis urging them to petition Knesset Members to thwart the influence of the non-Orthodox movements in religious affairs. The “liberals and reformers” have brought Israel to “our spiritual low point,” the rabbi wrote.Similarly, the late former Sephardi Chief Rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu declared in 2007 that Reform and Conservative synagogues “reek of hell” and that it’s therefore forbidden to enter them. These disparaging remarks were reprinted in Eliyahu’s Shabbat newsletter and distributed in synagogues throughout Israel.That there are irreconcilable theological differences between the progressive and Orthodox streams of Judaism isn’t the issue. To the contrary, Israel ought to be a place where all streams of Judaism – even those that aren’t to one’s liking – are validated and treated equally. For Israel to achieve this goal it would likely require, at a minimum, the disestablishment of the Chief Rabbinate and electoral reform that diminishes the disproportionate power of the ultra- Orthodox political parties.The bottom line: The denigration of a portion of the Jewish people – especially that portion on whose support Israel depends to help ensure its very survival – mustn’t be a feature of the Jewish state.Robert Horenstein is community relations director of the Jewish Federation of Greater Portland.
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