December 27, 2007
Sherry Kagan Segal is about to get a new temple. True, Sherry has had new temples before — starting with her first temple, Temple Beth Shalom in Livingston, to her most recent, Martha’s Vineyard Hebrew Center. And true, this temple won’t be exactly new, since Kehillat Yozma — the Reform congregation and nursery school that Sherry helped found in Modi’in, Israel — has been meeting and praying since 1997 in a preschool classroom.
But this temple — a 1,720-square-foot prefabricated building that the Israel Ministry of Housing and Construction is about to plop down on a plot of land allocated to Yozma years ago by the city council — will certainly be the most historic: Yozma’s temporary new home will be the first such building ever supplied by the Israeli government to a non-Orthodox synagogue in Israel. Since its creation Yozma has been battling against nonrecognition and discrimination by various Israeli authorities.
But times are changing. So just in time for Hanukka — at the very spot where Judah Maccabee struck history’s first blow for religious freedom against the Hellenistic defilers of the First Temple — a Reform synagogue (it’s called Progressive Judaism in Israel) will rise and find its own pluralistic voice.
By the time the building is dedicated in the coming weeks, Yozma will hit the ground running. Yozma’s religious programs are flourishing; in addition to its founding rabbi, Kinneret Shiryon, Yozma has hired newly ordained sabra Rabbi Nir Barkin to share rabbinical duties. The growing community has six full preschool classrooms, an elementary school that grows by a grade every year, a rich agenda of tikun olam activities, youth activities, and a b’nei mitzva group, a beit midrash, a conversion course, and much more.
Yozma has been working diligently, together with the Israel Religious Action Center, to translate its on-the-ground success in Modi’in to official support by the local and national government and the Israeli Supreme Court. Now that the hard work is beginning to bear fruit, it’s not just Sherry, the other dedicated volunteers, and the energetic Yozma staff that can take pride in the accomplishments. Yozma could not have achieved what it has without hundreds of dedicated friends and supporters abroad — such as Sherry’s mom and late stepfather, Beverly and Paul Nadler, and the Nadler Family Foundation.
Moreover, the United Jewish Communities of MetroWest NJ has been supporting Yozma for over four years now, particularly the flagship educational programs and crucial outreach to the wider community.
In an era of weakening Jewish identity in Israel and abroad, and at a time when Israel and the Diaspora are struggling to find meaningful content to a fraying relationship, UJC MetroWest has been doing truly pioneering work through its religious pluralism subcommittee, supporting not only Yozma but also the cause of religious pluralism and diverse Jewish alternatives throughout Israel.
Of course, in Modi’in the cause of religious pluralism finds particularly fertile ground in which to flourish; not only is the city young, dynamic, and liberal-minded, but the mayor has also been a rare politician not afraid of publicly supporting a non-Orthodox initiative.
For a small but vital segment of North American Jewry, the cause of religious pluralism in Israel is no less important than it is to the Yozma activists in Modi’in. For Sherry and her family, it’s personal. Her goal is for her three Israeli-born daughters to grow up in a community where a female rabbi and egalitarian approach is not just normative, but accepted by the state. Here in the land of the Maccabees, we’ve learned that anything is possible — sometimes even miracles.
