Parshat Shmot - Masorti

January 5, 2013

Welcome to a new book (sefer Shmot) in a new year (with a sort of new rabbi.).  In many ways this is the parsha where it all begins – the transformation from exploits of Jacob and his sons to the national saga of the people Israel.  The crucible of slavery in a foreign land that will of course culminate in the redemption from bondage and the revelation of God’s law on Mt. Sinai – this is where am Yisrael, the Israelite People, begins.

And as we return to the beginning of our national saga, remembering is a key component.  Vaykom melech hadash al mitzrayim asher lo yada et Yosef.  A new Pharaoh arose over Egypt who did not know Joseph.  The absurdity of that very idea – that the ruler of Egypt did not know of the Hebrew slave who rose to spectacular prominence and saved the Egyptian nation from starvation one generation earlier--  that absurdity is unmistakable and deliberate.  As Rashi teaches, “He made himself not remember Joseph.”

On the other hand we are told that the reason the Israelites merited redemption was their willingness to remember where they came from: We read in the midrash that they did not change their style of dress or language or names.  Communal memory was the first step to redemption.

We can be forgiven for not remembering details of our distant past.  Even Pharaoh’s forgetting is a phenomenon we can recognize – that mechanism by which we pretend to ourselves that something we did not like never happened, or has no lasting impact.  More troubling is a sort of collective failure to remember even our recent past.  More on this later.

Just a few weeks ago I was in Israel on a Masorti mission: Four days jampacked with visits to congregations and schools, meetings with politicians, briefing sessions, even, inexplicably, the opportunity to see a dozen or so F-15s take off.  It was an inspiring trip.  You can speak to Alisa Levine who also was there, about how her perception of Zionism has been revitalized by the mission.  Indeed, we met with leaders of small but steadily growing congregations throughout the country: From BeerSheva and Ashkalon in the South up to the Western Gallil in the North and even, improbably enough in Tel Aviv, that bastion of secular life recently praised by Homeland Star Claire Danes as the greatest party city in the world.  Even there – crazy, secular Tel Aviv Masorti congregations are growing, are reaching Israelis both native born as well as recent immigrants.

I came home encouraged and inspired but soberly aware of the challenges Masorti faces.   First, a brief overview of Masorti, the Conservative Movement in Israel.  Forgive me if I repeat remarks I have made previously.  Israeli Jews typically define themselves as Hiloni, secular or dati, religious.  And religious, for most Israelis can only mean Orthodox.  If you are not Orthodox, you call yourself secular.  Now I must stress from the outset that loving Masorti and believing it should grow in Israel does not mean discounting Orthodoxy, or devaluing it in any way.  There will always be Orthodox Jews in Israel and God willing they will continue to thrive and build communities of serious learning and great spiritual growth and we will all be richer for the interplay among the various ways we live our Jewish lives.

Nevertheless, Masorti has the potential to revitalize Israeli society – religiously, of course, but also civilly and even politically.  Why?  Masorti is, in its own right, a good thing – liberal, egalitarian, democratic, inclusive – these are all values that I take as a given are beneficial for a democratic society. But it happens that right now – for the past several years and probably for several years to come – nurturing these values takes on a greater urgency.  More and more power is concentrated in the hands of a small segment of Israeli Jews: The haredim, the ultra-Orthodox.

Some manifestations of that growing power: Only about 7% of Israeli Jews are haredim, another 15% Orthodox, yet over 80 daily bus lines are segregated – women sit in the back.  Why would a modern, secular or even a modern Orthodox woman ride such a bus?  Because they are government subsidized and by far the most economical way to travel.

You are probably familiar with the exemption from army service granted to ultra Orthodox men.  What was originally intended to be a short-lived measure, excusing a few hundred yeshiva students has ballooned to fifty thousand.  Fifty thousand Haredi men do not serve in Israel’s Defense Forces.

Yizhar Hess writes: {A dark wave of extremism has swept over the religious Zionist camp in recent decades} The obsession with modesty which had focused on women, then teenagers now girls in first grade who are not allowed to dance at their of year party in front of their fathers.

Segregation of women in the public arena, exemption of vast numbers of men from shouldering public duties, shaming and degrading young girls – these are some of the results of too much power in the hands of a few extremists.  This power is granted through a number of factors, hopelessly intertwined:

A political system which indebts major political parties to small but savvy parties, lack of constitution, demographics of an ultraorthodox community with population explosion, the constant security threats which time and again push domestic issues to the back burner.  But I want to tease out two factors to which we can respond.

The first is funding.  Sadly, Jewish religious life in Israel is in large part all about the money.   Israel has no separation of Church and State, an underpinning of US democracy that we often take for granted.  This is not theoretical, it has real pragmatic outcomes. It means that the state supports religious life.  It means that Israeli shuls, rabbis, mikvaot, educational institutions are funded by the government.  It means Israeli Jews, no matter how actively involved in synagogue life, do not pay synagogue dues.   All synagogue expenses, building maintenance, even the salaries of rabbis and cantors are paid by the State.

And here, of course, is the rub: Who determines which synagogues and which rabbis will be funded?  The state agency that determines that is the rabbanut – the Israeli Rabbiniate.  And the Rabbanut recognizes only Orthodox institutions.

Funding in the religious realm spills into personal life as well.  The state subsidizes families raising children – a small amount for a first child, a little more for a second child, and a huge jump is subsidy for a 6^th and more.  i.e. encourages the large families of UltraOrthodox.  And it is not unusual for the men in those large families not to work.  As of last year 65% of haredi men were full time yeshiva students meaning those large families require enormous public assistance (and pay no taxes).

Masorti is desperately important to Israeli life: I say that not just because I think women should count in a minyan or be able to read Torah.  But because Israel is in desperate need of religious communities -- Masorti, Reform, modern Orthodox, which are tolerant, non-coercive, respectful of human rights and serious about Jewish practice and identity.  The state of Judaism in Israel is, ironically, alienating to worldwide Jewry, particularly young adults: They ask questions like, Why would I want to be part of Israel if I’m not counted as a Jew because my mother had a non-Orthodox conversion?  What is my connection to a land that does not recognize my religious practice or allow me to marry as a Jew?  How is Israel my homeland if I have to ride in the back of a bus or risk harassment for not dressing to an ever confining standard of modesty?

More than that, Israeli Jews themselves see no place for themselves in a Jewish community that tells little girls they should not be singing in front of their daddies.

I hope this does not strike you as unseemly on Shabbat, but funding is essential to the success of liberal pluralistic Judaism in Israel.  The government funds Orthodox institutions and rabbis, not Masorti or Reform.  Israelis are willing to make modest contributions to the maintenance of synagogues and professionals, but not enough to support full time rabbis or cantors.  And with no false modesty I can tell you that the communities who can hire a rabbi are the communities that are growing and reaching Israelis who never thought they had a place in organized religious life.

I am thrilled to share the following with you.  On our last full day of the mission we visited Hanaton, the Masorti kibbutz.  We met with a few dozen students in a brand new mechina program: This is a program designed for high school graduates before they begin their army service.  They live on the kibbutz and volunteer in the surrounding communities. (One of the girls Alisa and I had lunch with volunteers teaching Hebrew to the children in an Arab village, the other helps with a program of biking for physically handicapped adults.)  These kids also have classes in Jewish text, a first for many of them, and in intensive leadership training.

The two girls we ate lunch with both had to convince their parents to let them join the program.  One girl is from a secular family and her parents worried that her head would be filled with religious gobblydi-gook and she would come home in a long skirt and head covering.  The other is from a religious family.  Her parents worried that she would come home rejecting Jewish law and life entirely.  These are two girls who would never have met.  Now they are fast friends.  They understand that  “religious” need not mean coercive or exclusive.  And they will take those relationships and that knowledge with them to the army service.

We were all so impressed with these young people, and with this brand new program.  But we understood how precarious it is.  It is very expensive to run such a program.  Tuition covers only a fraction of the cost.  Once the mechina has completed its third year it is considered “proven” and the government will subsidize it.  In the meantime, Masorti, already stretched beyond capacity, underwrites it. On the bus ride back to Tel Aviv, everyone on the mission accepted the challenge of one of the rabbis from Minnesota: This year and next we would each raise $2,500 of new money from our communities.  This year meant 2012; we got back from Israel Dec. 7.  And I am so proud to say that by Dec. 31 the Kesher committee of Temple Aliyah made good on our pledge.  There were no parlor meetings, no solicitations; Kesher stepped up in a most timely and generous way.  But don’t worry, we are pledged to raise another $2500 in 2013.  You’ll be hearing from us.  Masorti is good for Israel and is desperately underfunded.

Only recently I have identified the second challenge that I want to talk about.  This one is a little more difficult to describe.  This is what I’m calling our faulty collective memory.

We seem to forget that Israel was founded as a bastion of equality and democracy.  Israel has not always been in the grip of the haredim.  The earliest Zionists, the pioneers of the early State were secular and religious and not always the best of friends, but in large part were mutually respectful.  We forget that the Rabbanute was originally headed by Rav Avraham Yitzhak Kook.  Israel’s first Chief Rabbi was staunchly, unapologetically Orthodox. Yet he acknowledged the rights of any who identified as a Jew and engaged in joint projects with modern Orthodox and secular Zionists to build a just society in the new State – he saw that tolerance as his religious mandate.

Too often our faulty memory allows us to defer to what looks like a more authentic Judaism.  And bizarrely, that image of authenticity is increasingly 16^th Polish nobility.  There is nothing unholy or corrupt about people in modern day Israel choosing to wear the long black coats and large hats of medieval Polish nobility.  But we forget that’s not the only or even the oldest expression of Jewish identity.  There is nothing wrong or shameful about it but it is no guarantee of piety or righteousness, either.  We negate centuries of history and the richness of countless models of legitimate Jewish expression when we defer to the demands of a particular community because it seems steeped in tradition and therefore more authentic than any other era, including our own.

In the past, women being asked to sit in the back of the bus would have been unimaginable.  We seem to forget that until only a few years ago women moved freely along and around the Western Wall.

Again, Yizhar Hess:  “In the first half of the 20^th century before the Wall was under Israeli sovereignty men and women prayed side by side.  In the early days after liberation a sense of community prevailed.  If you look at photos of the Kotel from the 70’s and compare it to contemporary photos you see the barrier has grown steadily higher.  Beginning in the 80’s women began to receive nasty looks for dressing “immodestly” and have even been obligated to wrap themselves in ragged scarves before approaching the stones of the Wall.  We must now admit to ourselves what has befallen us: The Wall has been captured lock, stock and barrel, hijacked by a group of extremists who represent a minority of Jews both in Israel and throughout the world. 

This past October, several women on a Hadassah mission were

arrested for singing the Shema too loudly.

It is at our own peril that we forget that Israel was founded on principles of tolerance and equality – among the sexes, for members of all religions.  The growth of Masorti, of non-coercive egalitarian expressions of Jewish life need not threaten the Orthodox community.  But it will rescue Israeli Jewish life from extremism if we remember that equality and tolerance are our true heritage no less than ritual piety, and if we foster the professionals and programs that support these values through financial support.

Conclude with account of one of the highlights of the trip: New community in Pardes Hannah.  Tiny community, small very sweet building the size and configuration of a mid-sized home.  One of the rabbis on our trip brought with him a sefer Torah that his home congregation had donated to this new Masorti shul.  Members of the community waited for us in the courtyard.  As we entered a recent oleh – immigrant—from South America played guitar and pipe and led all of us – maybe 100 people in total in singing and dancing with and around the Torah.  (Hey, like Israelis dancing in the movies!) The celebration had a simplicity and a sweetness that are hard to capture.  Maybe you remember our celebration when we dedicated our most recent Torah.  This was a fraction of the number of people, but an exponential increase in the palpable joy – this was their first Torah and it gave them a sense of legitimacy and solidity.  The ceremony was extraordinary in many ways.  But here’s what stays with me: An older gentleman was called up for an Aliyah to the Torah.  He had been there dancing with his grandchildren but momentarily disappeared and there was some scrambling to find him.  Just in time someone brought him back to the shul as he was leaving to put his grandchildren to bed.  You see he had grown up in an Orthodox home and like many of his generation, had rejected religious life and not raised his children in a home with religious traditions.  He had forgotten the richness of Shabbat and holidays and study and had not passed it to his children.  But now he remembers.  He wants to give to his grandchildren what he did not give to his children.  Shabbat meals around the table, comfort in synagogue services, beautiful holiday celebrations.  And the Masorti shul, now taking hold, is the just the place to teach them that.