PLURALISM IN THE JEWISH STATENon-Orthodox search for spiritual identityCYNTHIA MANN
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 Children enrolled in a holiday workshop act out the biblical story of Ruth. |
Holidays were celebrated through food
"We never went to synagogue except on Yom Kippur, 10 minutes before the shofar to show off the well-dressed kids," she says.
Today, Shilo teaches Bible in a secular public high school in Jerusalem and maintains, with her husband, what she calls a secular household.
Nevertheless, they went to great expense to move to a neighborhood that boasts a Tali school, one of a network of schools initiated by the Conservative, or Masorti movement, for their two young children. Masorti is the Hebrew word for "traditional" that was assigned to Israel's Conservative stream in the early 1980s.
Shilo and her husband decided that Tali, now part of the public school system but affiliated with Masorti and Reform Judaism, "was a great opportunity" to expose their children to Judaism while "it wouldn't force us to do things we can't do," she says.
In fact, their home has become more traditional
She says she and her "secular" friends believe that if there is no alternative to Orthodox Judaism, "there will be nothing for our children."
Shilo's openness to other streams of Judaism may well reflect a new trend in Israel, as more and more of the non-Orthodox population
Many Israelis, from secular to Orthodox, demonstrate unfamiliarity with or outright hostility toward the non-Orthodox movements, often describing them as irrelevant or even insidious to Israeli culture.
In the secular camp, many dismiss the streams as synagogue-based imports from North America and say that even though they are not subscribers, the only true Judaism is Orthodox Judaism.
Reform and Conservative champions, for their part, say these attitudes are a function of ignorance, resulting from a historically uneven playing field in which they suffer a distinct disadvantage in the face of the state-sanctioned Orthodox monopoly on religious life.
In recent years, however, that monopoly, long termed the "status quo," has been eroded by a series of Supreme Court decisions. These decisions have spurred delight among Reform and Conservative sympathizers and deep alarm in the Orthodox establishment. Religious newspapers assailed the chief justice, Aharon Barak, for his judicial activism, calling him "a new dictator" and a "dangerous enemy."
The Israeli elections in May further polarized the Orthodox and non-Orthodox. They consolidated the power of the religious parties, which secured an unprecedented 23 seats in the Knesset and vowed to reverse any legal gains made by the non-Orthodox movements.
For many non-Orthodox Jews, the elections were a wake-up call. Some proclaimed the start of a cultural war that they believe would trigger a broad search for Jewish meaning and defense of religious freedom.
"We may be entering a stage in which the pluralistic public in Israel recognizes the need to fight," said Avinoam Armoni, chair of Mate Chofesh, or Freedom Front, a new coalition formed to fight the Orthodox monopoly. "We define it as an urgent emergency struggle for the pluralistic, democratic nature of Israel."
If the issue is framed as opposition to the monopoly of Orthodoxy over life-cycle ceremonies and civil freedoms to dress and speak as one wishes in public, secular Jews may rally for change, he said.
Ruth Calderon Ben-Shahar is one Israeli who believes that the public has been jolted by the prospect of intensified Orthodox coercion.
The elections "put the non-Orthodox community in a corner where it can no longer leave Judaism and Jewish culture to the Orthodox to decide," says Calderon Ben-Shahar, the founder of Elul, a Jewish studies center for religious and secular Jews.
She is now building a college for the study of Hebrew culture and getting her doctorate in Talmud because, she says, "you need a knowledge base to fight a cultural war."
Others voice an antipathy to the Reform movement.
"The Reform are Jews but they don't act according to the Torah," says Shalom Biton, a taxi driver who was born in Casablanca, Morocco, and is a member of the Orthodox National Religious Party. "They do what's comfortable for them. They desecrate the Sabbath. It's not religion."
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"There is a need in Israel for modern Judaism, but there is a lack of information and knowledge and (there is) prejudice because of lack of understanding," he says.
And that, says Azari, reflects a failure of commitment by Reform and Conservative leaders in North America. They "didn't invest in Israel the heart and the money needed to build the movements."
Modern Orthodox Rabbi David Hartman also lays the blame for the movements' fledgling status on their leaders in North America.
Conservative and Reform leadership failed to "recognize the enormous power Israel would have on the future of Jewish life" and they are now facing the consequences, says Hartman, the director of the Shalom Hartman Institute for Advanced Jewish Studies.
Rabbi Benjamin Kreitman of the World Council of Conservative/Masorti Synagogues in New York, acknowledges that his movement did not make Israel a "priority" arena until the early 1980s.
"The priority has grown over the years as the importance of Israel has become pivotal for American Jewry," he says.
For his part, Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch, executive director of ARZA, the Association of Reform Zionists of America, acknowledges that his movement's pre-state anti-Zionism contributed to years of inattention to community-building in Israel.
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Aharon Yadlin, a secular sabra who was an education minister during the 1970s involved in launching the Tali schools, believes strongly in pluralism and that the Reform and Conservative movements "may help us in some way."
Yadlin is based at Beit Yatziv, a center in Beersheba that is helping to train teachers in the new Jewish studies curriculum recommended by the Shenhar Commission. That commission was appointed in 1991 by the government to remedy a widespread ignorance of Jewish culture and heritage, an ignorance the commission said threatened the state's Jewish identity.
In an important boost to the non-Orthodox movements, it recommended that secular public schools' curriculum include the study of a diversity of Jewish thought and tradition, including non-Orthodox streams. But it is now in jeopardy, due to budget cuts and the more Orthodox bent of the new government.
Rabbi Ehud Bandel, for one, strongly believes that the message of the movements would resonate with Israelis
The first sabra to be ordained in Israel as a Conservative rabbi and a former spokesman for the Masorti movement, Bandel tries to reach out to couples when they come to him seeking a Conservative wedding.
"At the moment it is not officially recognized; it can't compete," Bandel says of Masorti Judaism. Non-Orthodox rabbis may perform weddings, but such unions are not legally recognized. And the majority of even the most secular Israeli Jews still seek Orthodox ceremonies when it comes to life-cycle events.
Nava Eisin, who runs the Archives of Jewish Education at Tel Aviv University, and who describes herself as secular, "for the sake of continuity" chose an Orthodox ceremony when it came time for the bar mitzvah of her son.
"It goes without saying that I'm for pluralism and that everyone should be free to exercise his feelings according to what's good for him and his family," says Eisin. But that does not make her a subscriber to Reform or Conservative Judaism or synagogues.
For one thing, she is impatient with Reform Judaism's requirement of a year of Jewish learning prior to a bar mitzvah and its push for families to attend synagogue every Shabbat in that year.
She noted that in the Orthodox synagogue, her son "learned his parshah (weekly Torah portion), we paid the money and that was that."
Cynthia Mann wrote this piece from Jerusalem. Natalie Weinstein of the Jewish Bulletin of Northern California contributed to this report.
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