As I write these words in the hours before Tisha Be’Av, I feel a sense of great
sadness. As a lifelong Zionist devoted to the State of Israel as the national
homeland of the Jewish people, I am filled with sorrow regarding recent
developments that threaten to undermine both the liberal and democratic ethos of
its founding leaders and the relationship between American Jews and
Israel.
The arrest of Anat Hoffman for carrying a Torah scroll publicly
at the Western Wall last week as she participated in the Rosh Hodesh prayers
held monthly by “Women of the Wall” as well as the proposed Rotem conversion
bill that would have granted a Haredi Chief Rabbinate exclusive oversight over
all conversion matters had left hundreds of thousands of Jews with feelings of
sorrow and anger. These acts were tantamount to a declaration of war by zealots
in governmentally sanctioned positions of power against liberal religious Jews
in particular and Diaspora Jewry in general.
Admittedly, my gloom has
been in part lifted by the tactical decision of Prime Minister Binyamin
Netanyahu and Chairman of the Jewish Agency for Israel Natan Sharansky
to delay
consideration for the time being of the Rotem bill in the Knesset.
The
outrage of passionate Diaspora Zionists as well as the vast majority of
Israelis
themselves who refuse to surrender to fundamentalist control over the
Jewish
State has awakened the leaders of Israel to the potentially destructive
impact
this bill would have on the fate of the Jewish people.
Those guiding
Israel’s future clearly understand that Israel is not only under attack
from so
many external enemies but that it faces another danger as well: the
disquieting
reality that the presumed continuity of American Jewry’s faithful
support of the
state is challenged by an emerging generation of young Jews increasingly
distanced from or disinterested in a State of Israel that they perceive
as not
fully committed to democracy and free religious expression.
WHY ARE we
distressed by Hoffman’s ignoble detention? It is not simply because so
many of
us view her act of carrying the Torah and engaging in Jewish prayer with
her
sisters at the Wall as completely consistent with an egalitarian Jewish
religious viewpoint. Our anger has arisen because her arrest runs
completely
counter to a democratic ethos enshrined in the Israeli Declaration of
Independence that proudly proclaims, “The State of Israel will ensure
complete
equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants
irrespective of
religion, race, or sex” and asserts that Israel “will guarantee freedom
of
religion” and “conscience” to its inhabitants.
Her seizure challenges the
sense many of us have that the State of Israel champions religious
freedom and
unfortunately confirms what is undoubtedly true – the Western Wall is
not
actually the most potent historical symbol of the national sovereignty
of the
Jewish people in our historic homeland.
Rather, it is essentially a
Haredi synagogue and all Jewish persons of religious conviction who do
not share
their ultra-Orthodox beliefs must be prepared to surrender their own as a
pre-condition should they wish to worship there.
In the case of the bill
proposed by MK Rotem, I do not doubt that he is well-intentioned in his
desire
to offer a bill that seeks to resolve the heartbreaking dilemma
confronted by
hundreds of thousands of Israelis who live as Jews in the Jewish State
while
being ineligible for marriage because their status as Jews is not
recognized by
the Chief Rabbinate. Rotem is rightfully concerned about the decision
issued
several years ago by the highest Haredi legal authority in Israel to
annul
conversions conducted under Orthodox authority in Israel itself – a
judgment
that places the conversion to Judaism of more than 40,000 Israeli
converts in a
state of limbo and makes the alternative of conversion to Judaism on the
part of
hundreds of thousands of other non-Jews now living in Israel virtually
impossible.
AS A scholar of Orthodox Judaism, I am perplexed that the
government has allowed a rabbinic tradition of such openness and
flexibility on
the issue of conversion to be hijacked by its most retrograde and
stringent
interpreters. Sadly, I believe it is due to the corrupting enmeshment of
religion and state.
As a result, Rotem’s “so-called solution” was and is
not a solution at all. His bill only exacerbates the problem by
tightening the
control the haredim have over matters of Jewish status. The bill
completely
disenfranchises liberal streams in the Jewish religious tradition by
denying
their rabbis as well as most Modern Orthodox rabbis the authority to
perform
legally recognized conversions and withdraws even the limited legal
gains that
the non-Orthodox streams have made on this matter by overturning a
Supreme Court
ruling that all Jews converted by rabbis from all streams of Judaism are
eligible for citizenship.
For Jews in both the Diaspora and in Israel who
are committed to Israel as both a democratic and a Jewish state, these
episodes
call into question whether the state itself actually possesses those
commitments. The impediments and restrictions placed before non-Orthodox
expressions of Judaism by the Israeli government are matters of serious
concern
because they reveal that the State employs coercion and imposes a
limited range
of acceptable practices on Jews who have diverse conceptions of Jewish
religious
authenticity.
This struggle for Jewish religious freedom is a principled
fight for justice that expects the state to be impartial in defining
authentic
religious Judaism. It is high time that the legitimacy and authority of
different branches of religious Judaism be affirmed in Israel. This will
surely
enhance and strengthen the commitment significant numbers of American
Jews feel
towards the Jewish state.
This desired outcome needs to be impressed with
all candor upon those who are our Israeli sisters and brothers, and
divisive
fights such as those brought on by the Rotem bill should be avoided at
almost
all cost just as room for the type of religious expression Anat Hoffman
and
Women of the Wall seek should be protected by the government as the
State of
Israel strives to fulfill its mandate as a democratic and Jewish
nation.
The writer is president of Hebrew
Union College-Jewish Institute
of Religion.