Municipal skirmish provides drama on MetroWest pluralism mission

by Gil Hoffman
Special to NJ Jewish News

JERUSALEM — Visiting Israel last week, a 15-member delegation from United Jewish Communities of MetroWest New Jersey got a first-hand look at how far religious pluralism has come in Israel — and how far it still has to go in a country where religious life is often equated with Orthodoxy.

The delegation visited vibrant UJC-funded pluralism initiatives across Israel, met with pioneers of the movement to increase religious choices among Israel’s Jews, and even got caught in the verbal crossfire between congregants of a Reform synagogue and a mayor who refused to help them build a sanctuary.

“Many people in MetroWest can’t understand why we are involved in advancing religious pluralism in Israel,” said Joyce Goldstein of Essex Fells. “But coming on this mission made me realize that after helping build the state physically, Americans have a responsibility to reclaim the state spiritually and help Israelis appreciate their Jewish roots.”

Goldstein chairs UJC MetroWest NJ’s Israel and Overseas Committee, whose religious pluralism subcommittee sponsored the mission.

Participants experienced the challenges in promoting pluralism when they visited Modi’in. As a new city halfway between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, Modi’in is seen as a test case for Israeli pluralism.

Modi’in Mayor Moshe Spector and city council members came to a meeting of mission participants with members of the city’s Reform Yozma Congregation. The meeting took place in the synagogue’s temporary headquarters, a mobile home that doubles as a preschool and a community center.

Spector made clear that his goal is to find benefactors from New Jersey to build a synagogue for Yozma. But congregants and mission participants stood up to the mayor and told him that his city should spend public funds on the building as it had for six Orthodox synagogues that were financed by taxpayers.

Yozma wants to become the first Reform congregation in Israel to be built with government funding. Religion and state are not separated in Israel, and the six-year court battle over the synagogue has reached Israel’s High Court of Justice.

Emotions ran high at the meeting, and Spector left the event clearly shaken. Mission participants marveled at how their presence gave the congregants an opportunity to reach the mayor and raise issues he never would have heard.

“The people from New Jersey became players in the game — not just observers and funders, but real activists,” said Amir Shacham, director of MetroWest’s Israel office. “They brought about a debate between the mayor and the congregants, and he had to give answers. They also received a taste of the complexity and the tension involved in this issue and how it is impacted by politics and the debate over religion and state.”

While the majority of Israeli Jews describe themselves as secular or “traditional” (observing many Jewish practices without embracing an Orthodox ideology), the state-sponsored Orthodox rabbinate and Orthodox religious parties retain authority over marriages, divorces, funerals, issues of conversion, and other personal and religious status issues.

Chaplains and soldiers

The Modi’in event was the culmination of the most intense day of the mission, which also took the group to Jerusalem, where they learned about the success of the Conservative-affiliated TALI school system, and Tel Aviv, where they visited Alma, a cultural college where mostly non-religious students study Judaism, philosophy, literature, and culture.

“I learned from TALI that merely feeling Jewish is not enough,” Hannah Regev, who directs the MetroWest-funded TALI Leadership Development Program, told the group. “In 28 years as a teacher and principal, I never discussed Jewish identity because it was considered enough to be born in Israel and go to the army to be Jewish.”

The TALI event took place at the Conservative Machon Schechter rabbinical school, where the NJ visitors learned from the school’s dean about how the Conservative movement reaches out to Israelis who are seeking an alternative to Orthodoxy. Schechter has started a chaplaincy program at Israeli hospitals and has initiated Jewish cultural projects at Jewish community centers.

“In America the rabbi functions out of the synagogue, the portable homeland of the Jewish people,” said Dr. Rabbi Harvey Meyerovitz, the dean of Schechter’s rabbinical school. “In Israel, that’s not the case. The synagogue is where you pray, period. Since most Israelis don’t attend services, we had to diversify out of the synagogue setting.”

The group traveled from Schechter to the Israeli Tank Museum in Latrun, on the Jerusalem-Tel Aviv highway, where they learned about IDF chief of general staff Moshe Ya’alon’s efforts to ensure that soldiers are aware of their Jewish roots and know what they are fighting for.

Ya’alon invited the Beit Morasha organization to teach IDF officers about their Jewish and Zionist identity. The program works with 6,000 officers who teach the lessons they learn to the 100,000 soldiers they command.

In IDF units, Orthodox and secular Jews serve together with non-Jews from the former Soviet Union, Bedouins, Druse, and Arabs. Four-day educational seminars give units time to deal with the issues of their multicultural atmosphere and teach soldiers to respect the backgrounds of their comrades.

“The army is the last opportunity to teach young Israelis where they come from,” Johnnie, an Ethiopian immigrant IDF officer, told the group. “My course helps people learn about the history of the army and the land so they will know what they are protecting. Sometimes you forget, so this helps people believe in what they are doing.”

Duty and sensitivity

Hannah Goldman, chair of the religious pluralism subcommittee, asked Beit Morasha’s dean, professor Benny Ish-Shalom, about how his organization is teaching IDF soldiers to handle the forthcoming withdrawal from the Gaza Strip.

“We have to prepare the soldiers and commanders to deal with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s disengagement plan in the most proper way,” Ish-Shalom said. “The soldiers have to know they are not facing an enemy, but their Jewish brothers and sisters. They have to do their duty but to be very sensitive and understand the roots of the emotions of these people for their land and the houses they built over the past three decades.”

Goldstein said the highlight of the weeklong mission was seeing young Israelis who are trying to understand what it means to be Jewish. She said she saw how the organizations her committee funds helps Israelis on their Jewish journeys.

“Involved Jews in America have no concept of what it is to be an Israeli and not have the Jewish content to their lives that we take for granted,” Goldstein said. “Most American Jews have had a bar mitzva. They may reject Jewish observance but they at least have smelled what it is. Secular Israelis have no idea what they have so they cannot even intelligently reject it.”

Another highlight for Goldstein, who was on her first Israel mission, was Midrasha b’Oranim outside Haifa, a college affiliated with the kibbutz movement, where Orthodox and secular Israelis come together to explore their Jewish identities. The visitors from MetroWest saw secular kibbutzniks and kipa-wearers studying texts together and discussing the meaning the text gives to their lives.

“People should always push themselves to the next step in learning and ask how it can change you,” Goldstein said. “To me, that’s what Jewish education is all about.”

UJC MetroWest president Ellen Goldner acknowledged that she was skeptical at first about funding religious pluralism projects in Israel. “It upset me that we were spending so much money that could be used to feed people because we as Jews weren’t respecting each other’s beliefs.” Respecting people, she said, “should be a given. But now I see why [these projects] are so necessary — even though it’s still a shame.”

Gary Aidekman of Madison is set to take over from Goldman as chair of the pluralism subcommittee on July 1. He said he can offer a broad perspective on religious pluralism, because as a child he attended his grandfather’s Orthodox synagogue, was raised in a Conservative synagogue, and now regularly attends a Reform synagogue.

Aidekman said that under his leadership, the subcommittee would explore reducing the number of small grants and focusing on larger programs in an effort to be more effective.

“Religious pluralism is an issue that is more important to Israeli society than most American Jews appreciate,” Aidekman said. “Israelis have to find a way to live together respectfully. It’s exciting to see how vibrant this issue in Israel is and the many different approaches. It’s a renaissance, and it’s exciting to see it.”

Shacham said that he did everything possible to give the subcommittee a complete picture of religious pluralism in Israel in a limited period of time. He said the trip was an eye-opener for knowledgeable, veteran subcommittee members as well as newcomers.

“Only someone who experiences the entire journey through Jewish identity can understand the complicated situation of religious pluralism in Israel,” Shacham said. “This is the only Diaspora group that gets into the guts of this issue like we do. This is something very special, and I am glad that MetroWest handles it in such a sophisticated way.”