My first encounter with a Reform community came as kind of a shock. It happened in the early nineties in Omaha, Nebraska. I participated in a Symposium of the Philip M. & Ethel Klutznick Chair in Jewish Civilization at Creighton University. The incumbent of the position, Prof. Menachem Mor, asked whether I would be willing to deliver a lecture at the Friday night service at the Reform Temple. I agreed.
I was not shaken by the mixed sitting, neither that the prayer was led by a hazanit (woman cantor) and not even by the use of a microphone. I’ve experienced all this at Conservative services. What was new to me was the fact that the community, including the rabbi, prayed with uncovered heads. Indeed, besides myself there was only one elderly man who wore a kippa.
Yet, I nevertheless think that the Reform Movement, just like the Conservative, brings a service to Am Yisrael. Besides the fact that every community is free to conduct its own way we remember that Rabbi Elazar Shach regarded the Lubavitch movement a “cult” and sarcastically defined it “as the religion closest to Judaism.” Moreover, he regarded Modern Orthodox Yeshiva University as a threat to authentic Judaism and accused Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz of heresy.
I observed the community gathered for the prayers and asked myself how many of them are Jewish according to the Shulhan Aruch. I had no doubt that some were not born to a Jewish mother and that among many of the couples only one was Jewish. The question is how we should treat them. We may follow Shammai who repulsed a gentile who wished to convert on condition that he should teach him the entire Torah while standing on one foot. Likewise, the gentile who declared that he does not believe in the Oral Torah and the gentile who wished to convert in order to become High Priest. Unlike Shammai, Hillel accepted all the three. “Eventually, Talmud tells us, the three converts gathered together in one place, and they said: Shammai’s impatience sought to drive us from the world; Hillel’s patience brought us beneath the wings of the Divine Presence.”
Again, the analogy is out of place. Hillel who accepted the converts envisaged that they will become real Jews. This is not the case of gentiles who join a liberal community without undergoing any conversion. Yet we must ask ourselves what we will gain by rejecting them. The fact is that in many countries over half of the marriages are mixed marriages.
Following violent attacks on the Women of the Wall, a compromise was set. The services at the Western Wall will be Orthodox while liberal movements will pray at the distant “Ezrat Yisrael.” With heavy heart, the movements accepted the “Kotel scheme,” which they regarded as an exile from the “real” Kotel.
However, the zealots wished to drive them away even from this site. Hundreds of Orthodox youngsters arrived there on the eve of Tisha Be’av, violently disturbing the reading of the Book of Lamentations and prayers of mourning for the destruction of the Jewish temples. Ironically, they were organized by ”Liba Yehudit,” whose mission is “to strengthen the Jewish identity of the State of Israel.” Regrettably, this took place on the day when we realize the heavy price we pay for baseless hatred.
FORTUNATELY, FOR the first time, leading Orthodox authorities came out openly against the rioters.
The Rabbinical Council of America issued a statement condemning “the uncivil disruption by orthodox Jews of Tisha be’Av observances at the Kotel.”
Rabbi Rafi Feuerstein wrote: “It is amazing that on the night when we express our pain at Sinat Hinam, which led to the destruction of the Temple and started the bloody exile, the legitimate struggle over Jewish identity takes such a violent and ugly face.”
Rabbi Benny Lau wrote “with tears: I ask the leaders of this war... who won? Would a single Jew come closer to the patriarchs’ tradition? Would anyone be attracted to the old or new Wall?”
Eliezer Melamed – one of Israel’s most prominent National-Religious rabbis – was unambiguous. In an article reproduced on his yeshiva’s site he openly wrote: “Conservative and Reform Jews should be allowed to pray at the ‘Ezrat Yisrael’ section of the Western Wall, and the rabbi of the Western Wall should take care of all their needs, including supplying them with a Torah scroll.”
Melamed elaborated: “”The war against the Reform movement was waged by the Gedolei Yisrael in the beginning when there was still a chance to annul it and prevent the schism, but today, when it is a fait accompli, we must engage in bringing hearts together, specifically in the vicinity of the Temple Mount, the place that unites all of Israel, more care must be taken to keep the peace.”
As expected, Melamed’s statement did not go unnoticed by haredi (ultra-Orthodox) circles. Rabbi Shlomo Amar, chief rabbi of Jerusalem and former chief rabbi of Israel, went as far as to declare that Melamed fell into a dark hole and called upon him to throw away his kippa.
It seems that since the trio Litzman-Gafni-Deri appeared in a ridiculous ceremony attacking Prime Minister Naftali Bennett one doesn’t have to be an antisemite in order to command a Jew to take off his kippa.
By the same token, we may ask those who sow hatred and rift to throw away their fur shtreimel and brimmed hat. It is not a kiddush ha’Shem (sanctification of reverence for the [Divine] Name) that they are performing but rather a hillul ha’Shem (defamation of the [Divine] Name).
The writer is a law professor, dean of the Peres Academic Center Law School and honorary vice president of the International Association for the Defense of Religious Liberty.