Judaism in Israel: Reform and Conservative Fight for Status
FRIEDMAN, INA
Reform and Consevative Fight for Statur INA FRIEDMAN Judaism in Israel Arandom survey in downtown Jerusalem on what the "average secular Israeli" knows about the Masorti (Conservative) and...
...Those schools come in two polar varieties in Israel—secular and religious—with a huge gap in between...
...and the sponsorship of hot lines for sectors of the population (such as immigrants and minorities) that are particularly vulnerable to infringements of their rights...
...Only in Israel are Jews subject to discrimination based on their approach to prayer and practice...
...One man, eager to please, guessed on the basis of its name (which translates as "traditional") that the Masorti movement was one of the many ultra-Orthodox associations created as addresses for the hundreds of millions of shekels in "special allocations" dispensed to this sector by previous governments...
...They're looking for some kind of inspiration, elevation, illumination without necessarily being able to articulate their need as such...
...In addition to being irked by the disproportionate political power of the country's religious parties, many secular Israelis resent the intrusion of the Orthodox rabbinate into their personal lives...
...Yet persuading secular Israelis to take a look at Judaism has become even more difficult in recent years because of the power and high-profile activities of the religious parties in the government...
...Last year the municipality of Ra'anana, a thriving middle-class suburb of 50,000 located north of Tel Aviv, responded to the Reform congregation's request for an allocation of land for a synagogue with a "blanket refusal...
...What attracted us to the Progressive movement is its stress on values, on the spiritual and cultural content of Judaism, rather than on a regimen of dos and don'ts...
...People are looking for sanctity, even if they don't know what that is...
...Outside Israel, many Jews attend a synagogue not only, or necessarily, as an affirmation of faith but as an expression of identity...
...The recently arrived immigrants from the former Soviet Union have become a prime target population for the Masorti and Progressive movements...
...The Masorti movement encourages its members to observe halachah in their daily lives but stresses its opposition to "religious coercion...
...Reform and Consevative Fight for Statur INA FRIEDMAN Judaism in Israel Arandom survey in downtown Jerusalem on what the "average secular Israeli" knows about the Masorti (Conservative) and Progressive (Reform) movements in Israel produced a plethora of shrugs, shaking heads and sheepish smiles...
...The establishment of the Progressive primary school is a saga in itself...
...For the first 30 years we concentrated on our synagogues, strictly duplicating the Israeli model," says Rabbi Joel D. Oseran, director of education for the World Union for Progressive Judaism...
...Sociologist Ephraim Tabory points out other demographic and sociological factors militating against acceptance, such as "the absence of feminism as a pressing issue in Israeli life," which makes the egalitarian features of the alternative congregations less of an attraction...
...It is a bond between the Orthodox claimants to "sole legitimacy" and the vast majority of secular Israelis, who consider Orthodoxy to be the only "legitimate" or "authentic" Judaism but aren't having any of it themselves...
...Spectre also includes in the category of mitzvot working in hard-pressed communities and raising the level of driver education in a country with one of the highest accident rates per capita in the world...
...It has even issued a popular guide to the working of the small claims court...
...The Reform movement found itself taking a somewhat different tack...
...Similarly, in explaining why the Progressive movement's Israel Religious Action Center (IRAC) set up a special hot line for East Jerusalem Arabs who are having difficulties obtaining social security benefits, Amir Shacham, the center's administrative director, invokes the value of tikun olam (roughly, "making the world a better place") as a guiding principle of Jewish life...
...Despite different approaches to halachah, however, both the alternative streams see their role as breaking the all-or-nothing approach to religion that is the standard in Israel...
...The council was then challenged in a discrimination suit still pending before the High Court of Justice...
...Most people identify with the Progressive movement because they're in search of something," says Rabbi Hirsch, adding that the "isms" that informed Israeli life during the state's early decades are no longer sufficiently satisfying or relevant...
...This is a cardinal point because, in contrast to the situation in the Diaspora, most aspects of what is broadly defined as "religious life" in Israel are controlled and funded by the state...
...Yet far from shriveling in the oddly hostile climate of the Jewish homeland, both movements have continued to grow—in large measure by adjusting to local realities—and slowly their image has changed along with the mood and needs of the Israeli public...
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...From four congregations in 1972, the Masorti movement has expanded to 38 today (41 on the High Holidays) and the proportion of native-born and veteran Israelis in its ranks has risen from 14 percent in 1979 to over 50 percent of its more than 12,000 members today...
...Educational programs and facilities are another feature of the two movements that have brought them to the attention of the secular public...
...Secular Israelis regard religion as calcified, frozen, medieval," she laments...
...The project thrived and is today a state-supported public school boasting its own building and over 300 students...
...Rabbi Michael Graetz of the Masorti congregation in Omer, outside Beersheba, points out that individual congregations tend to make their mark more effectively in smaller communities or in cities,such as Jerusalem, where the level of neighborhood solidarity is high, than in larger, less-focused population centers...
...These include a mixed bag of Friday-night entertainment programs, featuring some of the country's most popular performers, and unique holiday ceremonies, ranging from commemorations of the new month, Tu b'Shvat seders and other "re-newal-of-tradition celebrations" to special outings and theatrical presentations on each of the three pilgrimage festivals: Sukkot, Pesach and Shavuot...
...Rabbi Na'amah Kelman, the first woman to be ordained in Israel (by the Progressive movement), sees the challenge in similar terms...
...Both, however, have become the exclusive preserve of Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox forces...
...The force of this dichotomy is further underscored by the different roles the observance of ritual and synagogue attendance play in Israel and the Diaspora...
...The religious parties in the previous government tended to treat this sphere as a private fief, while the new minister of absorption (Ya'ir Tzaban of the left-wing Meretz party) has invited the Masorti and Progressive movements to join his board of consultants on this facet of integration...
...The Jerusalem primary classes began as a parent-created private school that fought to become a public one...
...But today many of these synagogues have expanded into "religious centers," including kindergartens, in response to local needs...
...Yet in summing up the impact of the alternative streams on Israeli society as a whole, he too ultimately agrees with Rabbi Hirsch's evaluation that "the alternative streams have made a significant dent on a comparatively small number of people...
...At the same time, the exigencies of coalition politics have made the Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox communities the sole beneficiaries of government funds earmarked for "religious services...
...In addition to lobbying to abolish the system of "special allocations," petitioning the High Court for the right to non-religious burials and sponsoring other Why Are Conservative And Reform Judaism Mainstream In The U.S., Marginal In Israel...
...Nevertheless, it is difficult to say that spokespersons for either of the movements are predicting any dramatic change of fortune, even under the new Israeli governReform and Conservative continued from page 54 ment...
...Even more infuriating to members of the Progressive and Masorti movements is that the norm of denying them the same rights as those of Orthodox Jews has spread from the religious establishment to purely political bodies...
...The Jerusalem branch of the Reform movement's Hebrew Union College has ordained 11 rabbis since 1980 and has another 12 en route, including the movement's first native-born woman, Maya Leibovich, due to graduate this year...
...Seen in this light, their disenfran-chisement by the Orthodox establishment has almost been to the advantage of the alternative streams and may even have heightened the secular public's readiness to identify with them...
...My job here is much the same as it would be in the United States: to make Judaism accessible to modern, competent, worldly people...
...Synagogue attendance is a matter of faith, lifestyle or a commitment to ritual...
...special investigative efforts (mainly to uncover abuses of power by government bodies and the religious establishment...
...Today, that mom-and-pop operation has grown into a network of 14 kindergartens and a primary school in Jerusalem, backed by teacher-training and curriculum-development programs...
...The city council of Jerusalem acted in a similar spirit in 1989 by voting down all the Conservative and Reform candidates for the local religious council...
...These newcomers welcome instruction in basic Jewish concepts as a part of their integration and possess less of the deep antagonism toward religion ingrained in so many native Israelis...
...But Rabbi Hirsch is also willing to look into the mirror of self-criticism and concede that "perhaps we haven't delivered our message, or made it meaningful enough, or had the right messenger"—a reference to the belief that the native-born rabbis now entering the ranks in greater numbers will improve the level of communication with the secular-Israeli public...
...But as soon as they have their first encounter with the Masorti approach, by attending a wedding or bar mitzvah, they suddenly realize they've found their place...
...For the Progressive movement's kindergartens—which are in great demand around the country—developed not as the result of a policy decision to create an educational arm for the Progressive movement but simply because a number of staff members at the World Union's Jerusalem headquarters lacked what they deemed appropriate schools for their own kids...
...The traditional halachic approach determines Jewish lineage by the mother...
...The government pays the salaries of congregational rabbis—but only of Orthodox congregations...
...But the forces of reform and liberalization—in politics as well as religion—completely bypassed Eastern Europe and the Middle East, the birthplaces of the majority of Israel's founding population...
...We engage in this kind of work because it's a mitzvah whose time has come...
...The shut they don't go to is Orthodox" is how Rabbi Richard G. Hirsch, executive director of the World Union of Progressive Judaism, typifies the attitude of secular Israelis who both endorse Orthodoxy and reject it in a way that exempts them from engaging in any religious life at all...
...Thus, the state sees to the allocation of land for construction of synagogues—but only Orthodox synagogues...
...Rabbi Michael Boyden brought the matter to the attention of the Ra'anana's "sister region" in the United States (the metro-west area of northern New Jersey...
...Rabbi Bandel echoes this sentiment...
...The Conservative Seminary of Judaic Studies has ordained 12 rabbis since 1988 and currently has an enrollment of some 100 students, not all of whom are destined for ordination...
...I think families would fill five schools like ours," says Rabbi Oseran, "because it offers progressive education plus progressive Jewish education...
...Born in Germany in the wake of the Emancipation in the 18th century, the Reform and Conservative movements readily moved westward with the flow of Jewry to the United States...
...The Masorti and Progressive movements want this to change, and one way to bring change about is to engage secular Israelis in Judaism by emphasizing its social and ethical components in addition to its rituals...
...Rabbi Stanley Ringler, the director of the American Section and International Department of the Israel Labor party, points out that equality of the various streams probably won't come to pass before the country's political system undergoes some basic reforms— such as the passage of a basic civil rights law and the revamping of the electoral system—so that the mainstream parties will be less dependent on the whims of minority or marginalized sectors of the population...
...Still, the question remains to what degree this array of activities—only some of which are strictly religious outreach programs—translates into increased synagogue attendance, involvement with Jewish tradition and a return to religious practice...
...For example, the chief rabbinate of Jerusalem repeatedly placed an ad in The Jerusalem Post informing the public of its "opinion" (which it immediately qualified as a "halachic ruling") that "the Holy Torah forbids participation in [Masorti] 'prayers,'" and that one "cannot fulfill one's obligations to pray by going to a Conservative congregation...
...While the Masorti and Progressive movements are lumped together in the Israeli popular imagination, they do evince certain differences in their philosophy, style and approach...
...It does not subscribe to the patrilineal resolution accepted by the Reform movement in the U.S., which allows Jewish lineage to flow from either a Jewish mother or father...
...Another correctly associated the movements with the issue of non-Orthodox conversions and recalled a High Court of Justice case on the matter but couldn't remember what the ruling had been...
...court actions to protect the civil rights of non-Orthodox converts, IRAC has applied its energies to such causes as consumer and abortion rights and ensuring freedom of information...
...This is not solely an Orthodox view...
...The move by several key government ministries to consult leaders of the alternative streams certainly represents progress, albeit both modest and reversible...
...And those who did not accept the tenets of Orthodoxy—including the early pioneers, who scorned it as one of the ills of Diaspora life—were left with a void...
...Some of these services (registering marriages, for example, or supervising koshrut) are the responsibility of the state-sanctioned rabbinate...
...There they found a supportive environment in the Protestant, pluralist society disposed to religious reform...
...IRAC fights fire with fire by legal means and weakens the anti-pluralistic forces by spotlighting their involvement in questionable practices...
...Many parents are drawn by the smaller class size, but they also want their children to acquire what Rabbi Oseran calls 'Jewish literacy...
...And only recently have Israelis come to perceive these acts of blanket exclusion and delegiti-mization as violations of the civil rights guaranteed by their Declaration of Independence in the clause ensuring "freedom of religion [and] conscience...
...We can't compete with weights tied to our feet," says Rabbi Bandel of the onerous political problems, while one of the many publications introducing the Progressive movement places the blame on the hard-set prejudices of secular Israelis, such as a fear of being branded as "religious" and the perception of liberal Judaism as something "not Jewish...
...And "need" is definitely the operative word here...
...Reform congregations in Tel Aviv and Ramat Hasharon had to go to court to obtain synagogue building sites...
...Public funds have been used to discredit the alternative streams...
...Along with a growing interest in Jewish studies among secular Israelis, he finds that "people are seeking spirituality"—a word, it must be said, that does not crop up very often in standard Israeli discourse...
...More than any other institution of the alternative streams, it operates in a mode and language—political, legal and media-oriented—that "speak" to the vast majority of Israelis, who are sensitive to the least hint of being coerced, diddled or denied their due...
...Yet both movements have made significant strides forward in the past two decades in what has been—and will probably continue to be—an uphill struggle...
...First introduced by Jewish immigrants from Germany through individual and short-lived congregations in the 1930s, Conservative and Reform Judaism did not really establish footholds in Israel until the surge of immigration from English-speaking countries after the Six-Day War...
...As a result of these activities, IRAC has been very much in the public eye...
...Until then, the alternative streams will have to do what Israelis in all walks of life do to succeed: expend generous amounts of energy, imagination and conviction on extending the bounds and circumventing the constraints of the often stifling and incredibly tenacious status quo...
...The responses reflect what the leaders of the Conservative and Reform movements in Israel already know: that the philosophies, programs and spiritual, ritual and ethical alternatives offered by these two streams are, in the words of Masorti spokesman Rabbi Ehud Bandel, "still a great secret here...
...Both movements have also established kibbutzim (the Masorti Hanaton in the Galilee and the Progressive Yahel and Lotan in the southern Aravah plain...
...One pamphlet outlining the Masorti movement's history, ideology and principles states that "while ritual is regarded as an integral part of the pattern of Jewish life, the Masorti approach emphasizes a way of life which adheres to a moral code which has been upheld by countless generations...
...Rabbi Bandel has also reported on cordial meetings with the new minister of education, Meretz's Shulamit Aloni, and acting minister of religion, Labor's Uzi Baram, at which assurances were made that the alternative streams would no longer be excluded from the roster of institutions entitled to government funds...
...Similarly, all its institutions in Israel keep strictly kosher (unlike,the norm in the United States...
...I used to look upon Judaism as basically a system of prohibitions," explains Penina Rauscher, who, together with her husband Uri, has become an active congregant of the Kol Haneshama synagogue in the Baka neighborhood of Jerusalem...
...The Masorti and Progressive movements will continue laboring under a crippling handicap until the passage of legislation that recognizes the authority of their rabbis and equalizes the status of their institutions with those of the Orthodox establishment...
...Also, she explains, though they wanted to add a religious dimension to their lives, they didn't want to divorce themselves from their natural social environment to do so...
...They support their own youth movements (the Masorti Noam, the Progressive Telem Scouts), have created educational networks, run summer camps, and—perhaps most telling of all, in terms of establishing their permanency and building for the future—have their own seminaries to train educators and ordain rabbis...
...The religious framework of Reform and Conservative Judaism appears to be a legitimate shield for an ethnic Jewish identification," writes sociologist Ephraim Tabory of the broader role of religious observance in the Diaspora...
...Long hampered by an image of foreign-ness, the Conservative and Reform movements have been derided as "transplants" from "alien" cultures that never took root in the soil of the Holy Land—and never will...
...This is the source of the radical all-or-nothing approach to religious practice that became the norm in Israel...
...Only then did the mayor promise to bring the request before Ra'anana's city council (which he has yet to do, though in the meantime he has enabled the congregation to meet on municipally-owned premises...
...Today, over 3,500 children are studying in Tali programs in 15 schools around the country, including a high school in Jerusalem...
...Further corroborating that belief is the drawing power of the programs offered by Beit Shmuel, the Progressive movement's educational and cultural center in Jerusalem...
...Our movement's agenda is to show the secular public what it has to gain from religious life, Jewish values and Jewish wisdom...
...Others (such as the construction and maintenance of facilities) fall under the jurisdiction of religious councils—strictly civil bodies that are attached to the local government structure in Israel...
...This was not an isolated incident...
...Working against what Rabbi Bandel calls a "free market," in which all streams of Judaism can compete on an equal footing, is a tacit conspiracy or "unholy alliance"—as the Progressive and Masorti spokespersons often put it...
...an archive on matters pertaining to the relationship between religion and politics...
...But perhaps the most successful venture of all for gaining the attention and at least passive support of Israel's secular community is the Progressive movement's Israel Religious Action Center (IRAC), a constantly expanding entity...
...The Tali principle creates a middle ground by enhancing the Jewish content of a secular school's curriculum by 15 to 20 percent...
...In Israel "religion" became synonymous with "Orthodoxy...
...they've just turned away from Jewish life because they've been alienated by the political manifestations of Orthodoxy...
...Religion is equated with Orthodoxy—particularly ultra-Orthodoxy—and Orthodoxy has come to be associated with odious behavior, such as "extortion" (especially in coalition bargaining) , "embezzlement" (particularly by members of the ultra-Orthodox Shas party) and "draft dodging" (the approximately 20,000 ultra-Orthodox yeshivah students exempt from military service have incurred growing resentment among the secular public...
...The smaller Israel Movement for Progressive Judaism has grown from a single congregation in 1958 to 20 today, with 2,000 dues-paying families, plus an additional 10,000 or so Israelis affiliated with its schools, cultural programs and synagogues on the High Holidays...
...The Progressive movement has a more elastic approach to halachah but is nonetheless more traditional than its American counterpart...
...a moshav (Shorashim) is affiliated with the Masorti movement and a mitzpeh (small hilltop community in the Galilee) with the Progressives...
...Now we're creating our own 'menu' of practices and enriching our knowledge of Judaism without retreating into a lifestyle that would be unnatural and unsatisfying for us...
...The secular majority in Israel aren't committed atheists...
...Orthodox rabbis have gained a stranglehold on the system that places matters of personal status {ishut)— including marriage, divorce and burial— exclusively in clerical hands...
...Clearly, this is one of the prejudices that the alternative movements are struggling to combat...
...We're not just an alternative stream of religion," he explains in talking about the movement's training of young Ethiopians to work as paraprofessionals within the Ethiopian communities in the Negev development towns...
...Currently IRAC combines a political lobby with a legal-action unit...
...So deeply is the absolute identity of "religious" and "Orthodox" embedded in the Israeli worldview that Rabbi Richard G. Hirsch, the executive director of the World Union of Progressive Judaism, was once introduced to an audience of secular high school students in Jerusalem as a "non-religious rabbi" ["rav lo daft...
...It was members of the Masorti movement who pioneered the concept of the Tali (enriched Jewish studies) program for the public schools...
...Since then, their growth has been steady...
...We found that lots of Israelis wanted for their children exactly what we did: a Jewish setting and Jewish education imparted in a liberal, humanistic, Zionist, child-centered way," says Rabbi Oseran...
...Beginning with a core of six children, the roll of the initial class soon expanded to 40 just by word-of-mouth...
...Why not on more...
...Bandel also speaks of a spreading desire for "meaningful ceremonies," which the Masorti and Progressive alternatives provide in the form of egalitarian weddings, for example, or ceremonies in which the kelubah is read in Hebrew (rather than Aramaic), the bride gives the groom a ring, and other touches are added to honor contemporary values without offending traditional ones...
...Some of them aren't aware of it...
...So far, the one ray of light that has penetrated the system is in the area of "spiritual absorption" of new immigrants...
...Even today, the eyes of the great majority of the Israeli population can see no shades of gray: one is either an Orthodox or ultra-Orthodox Jew or a secular one...
...The roguish image that has attached to many of Israel's religious politicians, coupled with the racist overtones that have crept into the discourse of some ultra-nationalist elements in the Orthodox population, have given religion a bad name among secular Israelis on precisely ethical grounds...
...Rabbi Philip Spectre, the movement's executive director, takes that outlook a step further...
...At the other end of the spectrum, outspoken secular voices like that of Ruth Calderon Ben-Shahar of Elul (a center where tradidonal Jewish texts are studied by secular and religious Israelis together) argue that to be meaningful to Israelis, an alternative to Orthodox Judaism must grow out of the native experience and reflect the country's indigenous language, symbols and even landscape...
...Some of the most improbable types—people you'd never suspect of being anything but hardcore secularists—are delighted that their kids are studying Jewish sources and praying in the morning...
...Thus the Masorti and Progressive movements are not half as well guarded a secret as they were 10 or even five years ago...
...to help it see that there's no contradiction between a commitment to the past and a liberal approach," explains Rabbi Bandel, who was himself raised in a secular home and found his way into the Masorti movement...
...In Israel one is a Jew by nationality and needs no more than a state-issued identity card (which everyone carries) to affirm that fact...
...Last month, the Masorti movement voted to ordain women...
Vol. 18 • February 1993 • No. 1
