by Johanna Ginsberg
NJJN Staff Writer

September 11, 2008

Rabbi Tamar Elad-Appelbaum thinks Zionism is facing one of its most dramatic challenges: making sure the State of Israel will stay Jewish.

She’s not referring to the Arab-Israeli conflict, however, but an intra-Jewish one: As a rabbi in the Masorti, or Conservative, movement, she says Orthodoxy’s dominance of religious affairs in Israel — from marriages to burials — could be the state’s undoing.

“People feel so left out, so alienated from tradition,” said Elad-Appelbaum, who was raised Orthodox. “I grew up in an Orthodox society that was very exclusive.”

As a result, “many people are uncomfortable with their heritage and cannot find any way to connect. This is a different period of Zionism. Now it is spiritual and educational Zionism that is at stake.”

Not surprisingly, Elad-Appelbaum said, she believes that Masorti Judaism holds the key to helping bring secular Jews back to Judaism, and she is among the movement’s newest faces.

“The most important message for Israeli society is that Judaism does not have to be exclusive,” she said.

The rabbi, who will serve as scholar-in-residence at Congregation Agudath Israel of West Essex in Caldwell Sept. 12-13, isn’t just talking about transforming Israel’s religious landscape: As director of her movement’s Wedding Initiative, she attracted intense media attention around an effort to promote an alternative to the Orthodox rabbinate’s monopoly on Jewish weddings in Israel.

The multimedia blitz directs newly engaged couples to a website where they can explore the Masorti approach to Jewish weddings. Couples who marry in Israel under Conservative auspices will continue to have their marriages unrecognized by the state. Like the growing number or Israelis who opt for secular weddings, they will need to marry abroad to gain legal recognition in the Jewish state.

Masorti hopes to convince these secular couples that there is a religious alternative to Orthodox officiation.

“The idea of getting married through us was there already 30 years, but most people just don’t know about this option. The campaign showed us how important publicizing Masorti Judaism is,” she said.

The effort generated 30,000 hits on the website in the first week alone. It continues to yield hundreds of calls to the movement each week — and earned the ire of the Chief Rabbinate, which argues that the current system ensures a wedded status that all religious streams can agree on.

Elad-Appelbaum is codirecting a second initiative known as Makhilim, which will train non-rabbinic professionals to lead Conservative communities in Israel. She hopes the newly minted leaders will not only help rabbis in the 50 existing Masorti communities in Israel, but will also generate enough enthusiasm to build new ones.

“For many Israelis who are reluctant toward religion, I think Orthodoxy never gave them what they needed. Masorti can be a dramatic new point of view. Orthodoxy shouldn’t be the only default in Israel. Our generation has to make sure we do our task.

“Our parents were fighting in Israel’s war for survival. This is a very different battle. And this may be the most important battle Israel will fight,” she said.

‘Gigantic revolution’

Elad-Applebaum herself experienced liberal Judaism for the first time as a young adult, traveling in England and the United States.

“I had no idea the world outside Israel was so full of life and that so many rabbis were working as liberal rabbis. That made me think.”

Her education began at home, which she described as “open” and “intellectual,” although, she said, it was only “theoretically open. They never took the next step and translated it into synagogue life and rituals.”

She attended the progressive religious Pelech School for Girls in Jerusalem, which was among the first to allow Orthodox girls to study Talmud. “In many ways that marked a gigantic revolution in opening the gates of Jewish thought to me,” she said.

While there she formed a connection with headmaster Alice Shalvi, a leading Israeli religious scholar and feminist who served as its headmaster from 1975 until 1990. Shalvi later went on to a key post at the Conservative movement’s Schechter Institute of Jewish Studies in Jerusalem.

Elad-Appelbaum was ordained at the Schechter Institute in 2005. She served as a pulpit rabbi at Kehillat Magen Avraham in Omer, 10 minutes from Beersheva. Just a few months ago, she moved to Jerusalem with her children and her husband, Yossi Appelbaum-Elad (who reverses their combined last names) to begin work at Masorti headquarters.

Elad-Appelbaum uses the feminized title “Rava,” rather than its Hebrew cognate “Rav.” She credits Israeli author Ruth Almog with the idea.

“My daughters call me ‘Ima,’ not ‘Abba,’” she said. “It’s right for people to call me ‘Rava’ and not ‘Rav.’ Being a woman changes my rabbinate. I have no interest in being a male rabbi. I came to bring the spiritual character of women into the rabbinate.”

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