Synagogue trip explores ways of boosting programming at home

by Gil Hoffman
Special to the NJJN

JERUSALEM — Representatives of seven MetroWest synagogues were in Israel this month, spending each day exploring what they could take back from their visit to share with their congregations.

But this was no simple souvenir hunt: The trip was part of an effort to boost Israel programming in Diaspora synagogues, and perhaps turn the tide of what many see as a decline in Israel-centered activities in American Jewish communities.

Rabbis, educational directors, and lay leaders from the synagogues spent a week touring Israel and learning how to better connect their congregants with the culture, spirituality, and beauty that the modern Jewish state has to offer.

The trip was a project of United Jewish Communities of MetroWest NJ and the North American Coalition for Israel Education program, a Jewish Agency-initiated project hopes to develop new approaches to Israel-centered education in the United States.

Forty-two participants came on the program, six each from Congregation B’nai Israel in Milburn, Congregation Beth Hatikvah in Chatham, Congregation Shomrei Emunah in Montclair, Temple B’nai Abraham in Livingston, Oheb Shalom Congregation in South Orange, B’nai Shalom in West Orange, and the Mount Freedom Jewish Center in Randolph.

The program was called Hayashan Yitchadesh (“The old will renew”): Renewing Israel in Jewish Life. Its goals were to put participants in touch with their personal connection to Israel, to give them a more textured understanding of Israeli society, and to help them develop the vision, policies, programs, and resources necessary to engage, inspire, and strengthen the bond with Israel in their synagogues.

Most of the participants on the program said it had accomplished those lofty goals and that they couldn’t wait to come back home to New Jersey to pass on their newfound knowledge to their congregants.

“My lifelong relationship with Israel has been rekindled,” said Gil Mayor, a vice president at the Mount Freedom Jewish Center. “The attachment to Israel by Diaspora Jews has been changing and the clichés don’t work any more for the young generation. I want to struggle to find ways to keep Israel on the radar screen for the next generation of Jewish children.”

Mayor said that his synagogue is planning an Israel-themed retreat for congregants at a local hotel, where they will try to recreate life in the Jewish state with an Israeli dinner, movie, and games. He said such a weekend of education and immersion in all things Israeli would promote awareness that Israel should be part of the congregants’ daily lives.

Several participants said they intended to devote the next year in synagogue programming to Israel-themed projects in every synagogue club and committee, from youth groups to men’s clubs, sisterhoods, and book clubs. Some had creative ideas like hosting Israeli wine and cheese events and forming an Israeli investment club.

Howard Tepper, lay chairman of MetroWest’s NACIE program, said the trip grew out of concern that the American-Jewish community wasn’t demonstrating as much attachment to Israel as it used to, especially after programs that take teens to Israel were canceled during four years of Palestinian violence.

“We want our children to have the positive experiences we had, so their hearts will beat a little faster when they hear Israel,” Tepper said. “It can’t be taken for granted that Jews in America will always feel Israel’s pain and joy. It has to be a natural feeling. We will work as a supportive community to help each other.”

Rebecca Glass, who is NACIE’s Israel education director for UJC of MetroWest, planned the trip in order to help engage communities in MetroWest in Israel education via their synagogues.

Glass said she saw an intrinsic benefit in the interaction among synagogues representing different denominations, including Mount Freedom, associated with the Union for Traditional Judaism, and Temple B’nai Abraham, an independent synagogue that calls itself traditional and progressive. Members of the different synagogues even talked about working together to bring speakers on Israel issues to New Jersey.

“I learned just as much from the people on the program from the other synagogues as I did from the speakers,” said Bruce Fein, who heads the education committee at B’nai Abraham.

The program started with a one-day orientation in MetroWest before the trip. Additional meetings are set for one month after the trip to follow up and see how the lessons of the trip are being implemented.

The participants started in Tel Aviv, where they learned about Israeli secular society and how Israel has changed as it has absorbed immigrants from around the world. On a tour of Jerusalem’s Old City, they were asked to consider why Jews made pilgrimages to Jerusalem at the time of the Temple and why coming to Jerusalem from around the world is still important now.

The group visited the new Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum, learned Israeli history at the Mount Herzl Cemetery, and met with Israeli teachers, students, and community leaders in Ofakim, a development town in the Negev desert that collaborates with MetroWest in the Jewish Agency’s Partnership 2000 program.

Speakers on the program, which was coordinated by the Melitz Center for Jewish-Zionist Education, addressed the role of Israel in the synagogue, the complexities of Israeli society, and contemporary issues facing Israel’s de facto ambassadors abroad.

The highlight for many participants was a one-man show by an actor who played nine different kinds of Israelis. Claudia Greenman, B’nai Abraham’s youth director, said the show hit home for her because the actor showed how the Jewish people are one despite their many divisions.

“We are all striving for the same goal: for Israel to succeed and be a strong country,” Greenman said. “I’ve learned that it’s critical to consider the Israeli perspective when we decide how to connect with Israel. We have to think about what Israel wants from us.”

To that end, Greenman said she would start a project in her synagogue asking children to collect supplies and clothes for their Israeli peers, and then bring them to Israel to distribute them personally.

Rabbi Amy Small of the Reconstructionist Beth Hatikvah said she would organize a synagogue mission as soon as December. Small, who participated in a similar program for Israel educators last year, said this year’s program was more meaningful because she came with five members of her congregation who will return home just as enthusiastic as she is about including Israel in the ritual, social, and educational life of her synagogue.

Jonathan Engel, the membership committee chairman of B’nai Israel, a Conservative synagogue, was more skeptical about the program. He said the workshops were too vague and philosophical for his taste and that after the program he is more worried about the connection of Israelis to Judaism than that of North American Jews to Israel.

“Israel has a problem with religion as a state founded by Jews in which as much as 80 percent of the population is alienated from Judaism,” Engel said. “In America, we have developed a functional Judaism that is vibrant, while Israel has not. Religion, which was supposed to be a unifying factor in Israel, has instead become divisive, while we in America have built a pluralistic society.”

Engel said that until now Israeli programming in his synagogue consisted of “warmed over falafel balls and a hora.” He said that he would push for his synagogue to bring different kinds of Israelis, such as a Gaza Strip settler and a secular businessman, to help congregants get a more nuanced picture of the complexity of Israeli life and society.