A number of weeks ago I read with great anguish that the renowned author Yoram
Kaniuk wished to remain a citizen of Israel, but was resigning as a member of
the Jewish religion. Two days after that a couple came to see me, requesting
that I marry them in a religious ceremony, but insisting that their wedding not
be officially registered within the Israeli rabbinic
establishment.
Ironically, the very next day I was informed by Rabbi
David Stav of the religious Zionist Tzohar organization that the Ministry of
Religious Affairs would no longer allow couples to choose Tzohar rabbis to marry
them, but was rather insisting that a couple can only be married by the rabbis
of the community in which they live.
What are the origins of an official
religious establishment in Israel, and what is causing the negative feelings
towards the Chief Rabbinate and its judiciary system? The frustrating conundrum
of Israel, as well as the secret of our eternity, lies in our hybrid personality
as both a nationality and a religion. Our status as a nation was formed in the
Biblical covenant between the parts when Abraham, the first Hebrew, was
guaranteed eternal seed and was granted the geographical borders of a national
homeland. It was forged in the Biblical insistence that every human being is
created in the Divine Image, thereby guaranteeing the inalienable rights of
human freedom and human inviolability. Hence our national narrative enjoins us
to re-experience our formative servitude in and freedom from totalitarian Egypt,
so that our national mission has been informed with spreading the ideals of
loving the stranger, compassionate righteousness, and moral justice throughout
the world.
Our status as a religion was formed at the covenant of Sinai.
This gave concrete expression to our national mission in the form of ethical,
moral and ritual laws, which would hopefully shape a God-fearing, sacred nation
and kingdom of priest-teachers. Hence, our Torah and our Hebrew calendar –
replete with panoply of feast and fast days with both historical and spiritual
significance – serve as national as well as religious expressions. This is what
makes a simplistic separation between “synagogue and state” in Israel a near
impossibility, but this is what also gave us our ability to survive and recreate
our national status after almost 2000 years of exile.
Our national
covenant kept alive the dream of our return to Zion despite the destruction of
our Temples and our worldwide persecution; and our complex legal system provided
our nation with boundaries even though we had no geographical area to call our
own.
There is, however, a profound distinction between the national and
religious covenants: the citizens of a nation-state are bound by laws promulgated
by the legislative and judiciary bodies of that polity, to which they must
comply as long as they are residents within that nation-state. Religious law, on
the other hand, which its adherents believe has its origins in Divine Revelation
and its legal system interpreted by religious legal authorities in every
generation, is dependent for compliance upon the free choice of the individual.
As my revered teacher, Rabbi J.B.
Soloveitchik, was wont to say, the term
religious coercion is an oxymoron; no truly religious act for the sake of heaven
can be legislated by legal force and still retain religious significance for the
one who performs it.
I BELIEVE with all my heart and mind that the State
of Israel ought to feature a Chief Rabbinate as an official and revered
representative of Israel before world Jewry and before humanity – for all the
historical and existential reasons relating to our miraculous survival for the
past 4,000 years. According to recent surveys, fully two-thirds of Israeli Jewry
consider themselves to be on the spectrum of “traditional” Judaism.
Most
Israelis have profound respect for and even personal involvement in our
time-honored rituals of life-cycle passages such as circumcision, marriage under
a nuptial canopy, burial in the ground and shiva, and festive occasions such as
Friday evening familial kiddush and meal, Passover Seder, Shavuot Torah study
and Chanukah menorah lighting. I do not believe that most Israelis are ready to
join Yoram Kaniuk in adopting the Jewish nation but resigning from the Jewish
religion.
They are not yet ready to join Yoram Kaniuk, that is, but the
establishment rabbinate is doing everything in its power to bring them to the
brink of doing just that. Once upon a time even so-called secular Israelis were
proud of chief rabbis, men like Rabbis A.Y. HaKohen Kook, Isaac Halevi Herzog
and Shlomo Goren (all of blessed memory) because these rabbis were inclusive
rather than exclusive; they sought to embrace every Jew and bring him or her
closer to tradition. These mighty individuals looked to halachah to solve
questions of personal status, not to complicate them.
At a time when an
unfriendly and inflexible Chief Rabbinate and its courts of law are driving
young couples to Cyprus so as not to
get married “in accordance with the laws of
Moses and Israel,” thankfully the rabbis of the Tzohar organization have been
finding user-friendly and welcoming halachic solutions to include them under the
Jewish marriage canopy.
Now, in their infinite wisdom, the Chief
Rabbinate and Ministry of Religious Affairs have closed yet another door (in
addition to the doors of meaningful Jewish divorce and conversion) – the door of
Jewish marriage – to a confused and disgruntled Israeli public. All “for the
sake of heaven.”
I understand that the present controversy between Tzohar
and the Ministry of Religious Affairs is on the road to resolution. But the
general and underlying problem still remains in full force. Local religious
councils are still setting up difficult roadblocks before well-meaning secular
couples who have never heard of Tzohar but who want to be married by a rabbi –
if it isn’t too much of a hassle to do so. The rabbinic courts remain extremely
reluctant to force husbands to divorce their wives in accordance with halacha no
matter the difficulties of their marital situations, and no matter how
unreasonable the husband’s demands may be as his price for the giving the
get.
Furthermore, close to 350,000 Israeli citizens from the former
Soviet Union – “Kanukian” Israelis under the right of return but not
halachically Jewish – are still awaiting the establishment of user-friendly
ulpanim and courts for conversion devoid of small-minded bureaucracy and whose
conversions will not be nullified later on by one of the Chief Rabbis’ court
judges.
Our sacred Talmud and the Responsa of Jewish law have loving
solutions for the overwhelming majority of problems engendered by these
situations; “
It din” the law is flexible, but “
let dayan,” many of the judges
are not, as the Talmudic saying goes. Let us only pray that until the proper
changes in the system are put into effect, a disgruntled Israeli populace will
not throw out the baby with the bathwater.
Postscript The story is told
of Rabbi Aryeh Levin, the famed tzaddik of Jerusalem, who once spotted a young
soldier on a short furlough from the army. The rabbi knew the young man from the
neighborhood in Geula, and so he crossed the street in order to extend his hand
in greeting. “
Shalom Aleichem,” said the venerable sage. “Please come to my
home. I would very much like to drink tea with you and hear about your
activities.”
The young soldier seemed uncomfortable.
“I don’t
think it’s right for me to come visit you,” he said. “I don’t wear a kippa
anymore.”
Rabbi Levin, in his black hat and black kaftan, smiled warmly
at the young man and took his hand in his own.
“Don’t you see?,” he said,
“I’m a very short man. I see you, but I cannot look up so high as to notice as
to whether you are wearing a kippa. But I can see your heart – and your heart is
big and kind, and that’s what counts.
You are also a soldier placing your
life at risk for all of us in Israel. Please drink tea with me; your kippa is
probably bigger than mine.”