| (Or What Israel Can Learn from World Jewry) By DONNIEL HARTMAN We awoke this week to yet another assault on Judaism and democracy by rabbis fulfilling official positions within the Israeli rabbinate. As distinct from the past, however, the vast majority of Israelis from a wide spectrum of religious and political beliefs, including our prime minister, condemned their ruling, which declared it Jewishly illegal in essence to allow non-Jews to live in proximity to their fellow Israeli Jewish citizens. Israelis have not been silent; a continuous flow of headlines, editorials, and petitions have given expression to the revulsion that most Israelis feel. Given this broad-based response, the question that needs to be asked is: Why is this happening again? Why are rabbis in Israel continually susceptible to these types of moral, ideological lapses, which never seem to plague their colleagues, Orthodox and liberal alike, who live around the world? One explanation, which was mirrored in the ultra-Orthodox rabbinic critique in Israel against these rabbis, is that rabbis in Israel are free from the fear of worrying about "what the goyim will say," and whether their remarks will incite anti-Semitic responses. Under this explanation the "gift" of sovereignty is that Jews today can be uninhibited and free to finally descend to the moral insensitivity and bigotry to which we always aspired but were prevented from doing. While this explanation may have been true of Diaspora life for centuries, it no longer reflects the nature of Jewish experience or motivation. Most Jews around the world have left the exile not through making aliyah, but by embracing their communities as their new homes. For Jews around the world, the non-Jew is no longer only or even at all an adversary who threatens our existence. They are friends who have welcomed us as members in full standing into their societies. Jews have reciprocated by embracing the larger world and engaging with it in a new partnership. They don’t see the world as a dichotomous us-them, but as a place they want to learn from and contribute to. No rabbi in the world would ever forbid living in neighborly relations with the non-Jew, not simply because such a ruling is politically self destructive, but rather because it does not reflect the values and experiences that have come to define the nature of Jewish life outside of Israel. Around the world, Judaism is growing and flourishing, especially in North America, in the midst of a shared, multi-religious public sphere where new levels of respect, cooperation, and learning take place on a daily basis. This is not the experience of Israelis. While instinctively rejecting the racist immorality of these few rabbis, our attitude toward non-Jews very often reflects that of the shtetl in the Middle Ages. Despite our power we often feel threatened and endangered by the Arab population, both in Israel and around us. That is not to say that many of these feelings are not without cause. Peace and coexistence have yet to become the central values defining Middle Eastern life. However, one of the greatest challenges facing modern Israel is not to allow the Middle East conflict to transform Israel into the largest ghetto in Jewish history, where a ghetto mentality will prevail. We cannot allow the fostering of a Judaism which aspires to further alienate us from our neighbors and which permits racist and separatist ideologies. We cannot excuse and ignore such expressions, even if they are in the minority, for minority positions which are ignored today become the inheritance of the majority tomorrow. We can no longer allow our government to turn a blind eye and fund for political considerations Jewish ideologies, rabbis, teachers, or schools which undermine the moral fiber of Judaism and the democratic character of the State of Israel. We have embarked on a momentous project - to build a homeland for the Jewish people, a place where the best of Jewish values define the public sphere, a place where all Jews around the world, those who live in Israel and those who see their homes elsewhere, have a stake and a share, and a role in shaping the future of this society. We Israelis must learn that we have much to learn from the Judaism of Jews around the world. The experience of building Judaism in a minority context has enhanced our moral sensitivity and opened us to some of the best ideas and values that the world has to offer. As for the Jews of the world, the opportunity created by the State of Israel to take full responsibility for a society and which positions Judaism on a world stage as never before, creates unparalleled opportunities for Jewish innovation, pride, and experience. Their lives as Jews can be enhanced and enriched by this experience. This opportunity, however, brings with it great challenges. Greatness is not inherited; it needs to be earned. Jews of moral principles in Israel and around the world must reach out to each other to ensure that each is benefiting from the experience of the other. We must make sure that our response to those who are creating a Judaism in Israel which is unworthy of our tradition will neither prevail nor be allowed the position of representing our people, our country and our faith. We the majority, both in Israel and around the world, need to see each other, reach out to each other and build ever-new avenues of cooperation so that we will be worthy of the opportunities given to us in the modern world and strong enough to respond to its challenges. |
This is an uplifting piece. I fear, though, that entrenched power in Israel, like entrenched power everywhere else in the world, will not step aside willingly. I wonder what checks and balances are in place to curb the actions of the official rabbinate in Israel? I also wonder whether our chief rabbinate is simply an early evolutionary form of Iranian theocracy? The demographic peril in Israel has little to do with Arabs, to my thinking. It has everything to do with Jewish fundamentalism, the disunity it promotes, and leaders who have probably been corrupted by power and money...perhaps like the Temple cult of old?
ReplyDeleteIn this week's parasha, Israel doles out some tough love in the form of a father's blessing over his sons. Perhaps it is time for modern day Israel to dole out some equally tough love by routing out theocracy that is running amok?
Judaism is a Pharisaic tradition. I thought the Sadducees and the Israelite Temple cult became extinct almost 2,000 years ago.
David
Dr Hartman,
ReplyDeleteThe fact that so soon after the ruling you come out with your dissertation tells me you're biased towards the left.
Your statement, " Israelis have not been silent; a continuous flow of headlines, editorials, and petitions have given expression to the revulsion that most Israelis feel."
Most Israelis in fact lean to the right, as the elections demonstrated. The fact that the country keeps going going forward with a leftist agenda only shows the political system can be hijacked by shenanigans. And, like here in America, the leftist media and the "enlightened" liberals that kowtow to the socialist agenda in power, remain callously indifferent to the majority concerns - they have an agenda and whatever lies in the way - they'll just bulldoze over it.
Arabs have gotten free higher education for years, have been allowed to build illegally for years, have been dealt with kid gloves for years, etc - but all the meanwhile while the religious Jews were dealt with discriminately. The most obvious fact of the latter was the expulsion of 3 generations of Jews living in Gush Katif.
I wonder what your thoughts about that tragedy are today, after we tore the land away from OURS, our very best, and gave it to THEM, the very worst of them. Then - you wre most probably quiet. You probably never peeped. Only when the Arabs begin to encroach upon us from every which way, and people want to keep Israel a Jewish state, only then do the likes of liberals, such as yourself, pipe up with "racism".
How easy for you to take broad swipes at us religious Jews with labels such as "Ultra-Ortodox" - meaning to say, "Orthodox is bad enough but - you know who I mean - thoes way-too-orthodox bunch. How come we never hear terms like "Utra-Reformists", huh?
You say, "The demographic peril in Israel has little to do with Arabs, to my thinking." Your thinking is to side with the Arabs, with the non-religious - and that's all there is to this dissertation of yours. You want Israel to be a potpourri of peoples, because you stand for the ism of democracy. (You can see where that ism is taking this country now, Hashem please forbid its continued deterioration in that perilous direction).
Well, I for one, as a religious Jew, make that an ultra-orthodox religious Jew, and you can embellish that with black-hat, black coat, black Yarmulke (but my shirt and tzitzis are white), ultra-orthodox Jew, want to get rid of the Arabs in our midst. You may not sense their uplifted arrogance whenever they're given an inch more, you may not sense that they never yield anything but are always looking to do us in silently as the 5th column, as a Tojan Horse, but that is my sense of it. So it's guys like me, against guys like you PLUS the Arabs who are on your side. It's the whole story of Chanuka, if you will, all over again. The little pure oil they found was a miracle, that they beat the great odds was a miracle, and I do trust that Hashem will again provide for us that miracle of a little pure light that will finally disperse away the vast darkness cast by the other side.
G-d bless you.
I address this comment to DAVID, for what he said about wishing the extinction of the theocratic cult.
ReplyDeleteAgain, let's take note of the festival of Chanuka we just celebrated, to commemorate a war, a war we fought to preserve the Jewish spirit from reform.
I cannot show the chart here, based on American data - but it crystallizes the specter "REFORM Judaism" casts upon Jewish heritage. It shows that its adherents cannot withstand the test of time beyond 3 or 4 generations before they are swallowed up and lost from the Jewish people. Even a Hitler could not have devised so good a strategy to quietly annihilate so many Jewish souls.
Leaving aside the reason for their fragility or vulnerabilty to self-extinction, by the time their grandchildren are born, most of these reform Jews will already have been subsumed under Gentile persuasion; Their Jewish genomes will have migrated out of the collective Jewish gene pool and their Jewish souls will have lost their moorings to Jewish tradition and intimacy with G-d.
But there is a strange twisted logic many Reform Jews apply. If they were to admit they prefer chiselling away at tradition to relieve their anxiety about perceived constraints on their mode of easy living, THAT WOULD AT LEAST BE REFRESHING. But rather, at least if a representative website's reasoning is any indication, convenience isn't at the core of the issue. Here's how that website rationalizes reform philosophy:
"The word 'Reform' in the name of our Movement is a recognition that reform is part of our way of life, as it has been for Jews throughout the centuries."
While the assertion that reformism has been around "throughout the centuries" is authentic, it conceals a spurious statistic I mentioned above - and we must separate the authentic fact from its spurious justification. It may well be true a fringe of Judaism always prefers assimilation or reform, but that does not mean that they - as a collective body - are perpetuated. This is the crucial point: Reform Jews of today are definitely not descendants of Reform Jewry of the past. Reform Jews - as Jews - self discard! After 2 or 3 generations, most are already intermarried and their assimilation into the Gentile world is complete.
The Reformist's claim of a centuries-old "tradition", therefore, is deceptive. Their duration, in fact, occupies miniscule fragments of history. In the space of a few generations, they will have lost their Jewish identity.
Every generation has fringe elements that might drift to reformism ("conservative" or "reconstructionist" included). But these offshoots simply disappear from the Jewish horizon in a few generations. There simply is no longevity to their compromising way of life. In fact, they fare no better than secular Jews, most of whom have been "kidnapped from birth" by their foreign culture, in preserving a Jewish identity.
The permanence of Judaism rests in Torah-true tradition. Torah is the glue of Jewish civilization. The Reform "movement" does not survive. To attribute tradition to reformism is the voice of lemmings taking comfort in mass flight from Torah -- headlong to self-extinction.
Dear [in the vanguard],
ReplyDeleteYour last post in particular is powerful and striking.
It necessitates an equally powerful and striking response.
Unfortunately, it'll be a while before I get to that, because I want to do it thoughtfully.
Here's why I'm so busy. My senior colleague is out of town, and this weekend alone, I will have conducted Friday night and Saturday services, attended Torah study, delivered a sermon, officiated at the B'nei Mitzvah of two boys, officiated at a wedding, officiated at a ceremony of bestowing a Hebrew name on a baby girl, and conducted two funerals.
That's a not-entirely-atypical weekend in the life of the rabbi at a thriving, vibrant Reform congregation of 1,200 households in suburban NYC.
All told, I'd say I interacted with 600 - 700 or more people in the course of these life-cycle moments, most all of whom affiliate with a Reform congregation.
The deep engagement in Jewish living that I saw among our people this weekend tells a story very different from the one you wish to present in your comment.
Come spend a Shabbat with us, or better yet, come spend a whole week in our congregation, and then make a comment informed by your experience.
You are most warmly invited.
Yours with blessing,
Jonathan
To my kharedi khalutz, let me quote a passage usually attributed to my namesake from tehilim:
ReplyDelete"Hinei ma tov uma na'im, shevet akhim gam yakhad."
It is indeed cause for celebration when kharedi and reformi sit down together at the same e-table to talk Torah. We don't have to agree on everything; but, it is a wonderful step in the right (not left...) direction of shalom bayit--of our People, that is. Just as Moshe rabeinu strove to unify the tribes in Bamidbar as they showed signs of fraternal fragmentation before crossing over into the Promised Land, so too some modern day rabbis seek unifying, common ground. As you know, the sons of Re'uven, Gad, and Machir sought to live apart--but, not before Moshe rabeinu gave them a win-win stake in our unified People, by serving as khalutzim--perhaps as your namesake.
I recognize we were discussing Vayekhi, not Matot. But, my cup runneth over... I look forward to reading your posts in weeks to come. And, most importantly, if you are within walking distance of our shul, we would love to have you join our shabbat Torah study minyan. I believe our bagel vendor has a hashgakha from Westchester Vaad (needs to be checked).
Shavua tov,
David
Rabbi Blake,
ReplyDeleteWhat's to answer?
These are facts that cannot be rationalized away.
Here's the chart I referred to:
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_quu-0qzgpEg/TOCx7ozPhsI/AAAAAAAAA_g/Ek_DHATfp5o/s1600/reformChart.jpg
Kol tuv!
I don't want to take this discussion off point by focusing on this chart; but, its flaws seem to mirror those of so-called statistically sound Jewish demographic studies by other significant Jewish institutions, some of them even Reform-sponsored.
ReplyDeleteIt is important to recognize that the growth of the Jewish people comes not from internal sources alone, but also from the expansion of our people through conversion. A business (or synagogue) that looks only to its current customers is one which will be out of business in a few years. You need only visit a dynamic Reform synagogue to see the children of intermarriage being raised and educated as Jews. These are not an insignificant percentage. And, my hypothesis is that these tend to congregate in Reform communities where these families are more welcome. Chabad, which differs from Reform Judaism in many ways, shares a common respect for external growth.
If the chart you shared were accurate, our American Jewish communities would be awash in black hats, as they are on parts of Eastern Parkway. After all, Jews have been in America for over 3 centuries now. But, the reality, at least in the United States, is quite different. Of course, if one defines a Jew as one who wears a black hat, then the implication of the chart is vacuously true.
Rabbi Morgenstern, of Young Israel in our local community, wrote a penetrating Dvar Torah, published recently in Amit Magazine, where he tackled the Q of what is a religious person or Jew: http://amitchildren.org/wp-content/plugins/page-flip-image-gallery/popup.php?book_id=49 (pp.18-19) If one seeks to probe deeper into Jewish demographic studies--either from a statistics vantage point or for Jewish significance--an understanding of what it means to be a (religious) Jew is directly relevant.
I would argue that there are many parallel ways to living good Jewish lives and growing the Jewish people. Jews have been reinterpreting Torah and changing or reforming the ways they understand Torah for centuries and millennia. For me, the focus on the superficial (not meant to be pejorative, but, the superficial layer)—e.g., the literal interpretation of ancient texts, blind focus on the performance of mitzvot, the wearing of tribal Jewish garb, whether black hats, fur hats, Prince Albert frock coats, etc.—is to defer the significance of living a religious Jewish life to others. For me, the key to the growth of our people is in education, not simply procreation.
In the Vanguard, I think your comments above seem to have forgotten our collective need to remember that we were once slaves in the land of Egypt. How many times does the Torah instruct us to protect the rights of, and even love, the sojourner (ger tashuv) in our midst? The Arabs were not among the Canaanites and other explicitly named peoples which the Torah instructed us to proscribe upon conquering the Promised Land. They were still living in the Hijaz during those times. For centuries the Arabs represented the height of global intellectual and scientific achievement, when many of our forebears were probably still peddling pelts to illiterate Europeans. Some of our greatest rabbis wrote in Arabic. I just learned last night that some of our liturgical melodies may even have origins from the Hijaz.
I guess my reaction to your comments would be to encourage you not to forget the ger—the ger tashuv whom we are to love; and, the ger tzaddik who in modern times may be one new source of growth for our people.
I wish you all health and happiness through what can be a cold and harsh time of the year (for those of us up North). In the Vanguard, I reiterate my invitation to you to join us in studying Torah. But, prejudices and intolerance need to be checked at the door.
Zei gezind,
David