Two Worlds of Judaism

As Israel’s governing coalition was cobbled together late Wednesday night, just two hours before deadline, I thought of Winston Churchill’s quip: “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others.” Despite the fact that Prime Minister Netanyahu won a stunning thirty-seat victory for his Likud Party, by Wednesday night his Knesset majority stood at a razor thin sixty-one seats. For those unfamiliar with the structure of Israel’s 120-seat parliamentary system, the stability of any government is contingent on it having the sixty-one votes necessary to pass legislation. And because no single party in Israel’s government can muster a majority on its own, the larger party (in this case Likud) offers all sorts of concessions, promises, and government portfolios to the smaller parties in order to ensure their cooperation in forwarding the larger party’s agenda. Unlike the public posturing of the election season, or the acrimonious debates on the Knesset floor, it is the closed-door coalition dealings of the last forty-plus days that often set the tone and agenda of the incoming government. Who will control the education ministry – someone with a secular or a religious agenda? Who will represent Israel in foreign affairs or in negotiations with the Palestinians? That, too, is negotiated during this period. Will the minister of housing or agriculture look to secure Israel’s foothold in the West Bank? These and so many other decisions shaping the future of the Jewish State were locked into place these past few days.

While we could turn our attention to the peace process, foreign policy, or any number of domestic issues Israel faces, this morning I want to address the issue that most affects North American Jewry, and that is the religious leanings of this new government. The turnaround from the last government is jarring. The deals that Prime Minister Netanyahu has made with the ultra-Orthodox party United Torah Judaism, the Sephardic ultra-Orthodox party Shas, and Naftali Bennett’s Jewish Home Party have resulted in a decidedly rightward shift in this new coalition. Millions, if not billions, have been promised to ultra-Orthodox education and religious institutions. Whatever the recent rise in employment among ultra-Orthodox men may be, about 45% at last count, a series of entitlements will be set in motion incentivizing them to stay in the yeshiva and out the workforce. Legislative advances made in the past administration seeking to include the Haredi community in Israel’s national military service will most certainly be rolled back. The Religious Affairs Ministry, which controls the Chief Rabbinate and its appointment processes, now sits in the hands of Shas. The past government’s allowance to permit municipal Orthodox rabbis to perform conversions will most likely be rescinded. It goes without saying that any gestures towards a pluralistic vision of Israeli Jewish life have been rendered stillborn in this new coalition.

The list goes on and on, and the particulars of every deal are yet to be known. What is clear is that there has been a dramatic turnabout, as all matters of personal status have shifted into the hands of right-wing religious parties. It is not, to be sure, the first time this has happened. In fact, ever since Ben-Gurion established his first government, matters of religious concern have reflected the sensibilities of the religious right and not the Israeli electorate as a whole. Nor, for that matter, is this new state of affairs necessarily a reflection of Netanyahu himself, for whom these concessions undoubtedly reflect political expediency, not his own ideological preference. And yet, because his majority is so slim, because it would take but one of these parties leaving the coalition to force another election, the Prime Minister has been rendered totally beholden to their agendas, whose influence now extends well beyond whatever their numbers merit.

All of which, for those of us invested in the relationship between Diaspora Jewry and Israel, should be a matter of major concern.

Over the last few months, I have had the honor of participating in something called the Jewish Religious Equality Coalition, a leadership group convened by the American Jewish Committee (AJC) representing the spectrum of American religious life, as well as communal heavyweights like the ADL, UJA-Federation, and others. What became clear in our meeting last week was that the religious vector of this new government – specifically, the exclusive control of the Chief Rabbinate over matters of personal status – risks severing the bond between Israel and the global Jewish people. It is not merely an internal Israeli issue: whether buses do or don’t run on Shabbat, the ability of Israelis to marry outside the Orthodox rabbinate, or the hundreds of thousands of Israelis not considered Jewish by the Chief Rabbinate. The stakes extend into our lives as American Jews. Is the Judaism that is practiced and preached here recognized as Judaism? Are marriages performed outside of the Orthodox rabbinate considered marriages? Are non-Orthodox converts, their children and grandchildren considered Jews at all? With the boundaries of Jewish identity being determined by Israel’s religious right, it is altogether likely – if it is not already the case – that no matter how profound our love for Israel, you and I, our Judaism will not be recognized by Israel as Jewish at all.

I fear we are living through a time when a parting of ways is taking place between American Jewry and Judaism as defined by the state of Israel. In Israel there is a tightening of definitions as to who is and isn’t a Jew. Perhaps due to a fear of secularism, perhaps due to an emboldened and growing Haredi population, a strain of fundamentalism has emerged in the ultra-Orthodox community. The fences are getting higher, the requirements for conversion more stringent, and the ability of the ultra-Orthodox to countenance alternate expressions of Jewish life less and less. Like any radical religious movement, the ultra-Orthodox presume not only that they possess the sole authentic expression of faith, but also that their expression is definitive for all others.

Here in America, we are headed in the opposite direction. As evidenced by last year’s Pew report, American Jewry is undergoing a process of redefinition in which the lines between Jew and non-Jew are becoming increasingly blurred. With over seventy percent of non-Orthodox Jews marrying someone born of another faith, the American rabbinate is searching for a tactical response attuned both to the tradition and the realities on the ground. Some of my colleagues, for instance, are pushing if not breaking the boundaries regarding intermarriage. Others, myself included, are seeking to articulate a language and practice of inclusion that embraces the would-be Jew and stretches conversion standards within the boundaries of Jewish law. We may differ in particulars, but the conditions to which we are responding are the same. Namely, how shall the American rabbinate best strengthen the increasingly heterogeneous Jewry that we have been tasked to serve? And because America, unlike Israel, ensures a separation of church and state and eschews any notion of a centralized rabbinate, the diversity of responses will undoubtedly increase in the years ahead.

This is the picture: Israeli Jewry and American Jewry are on two very different trajectories. Israel is headed towards centralization, exclusion, and insularity; American Jewry, towards decentralization, inclusion, and pluralism. Difficult as the news of this new government may be for those invested in religious pluralism, it is really just a particularly stark manifestation of a long-brewing circumstance. An Israeli journalist friend of mine sought to console me this week with the insight that this new government may prove to lack both the consensus and the longevity to do much damage on the issues we care about. Nevertheless, if we do care about the relationship between Israel and Diaspora Jewry, we must do what we can, intervene where we can, in order to steer our worlds of Judaism closer. Our decision not to live in Israel precludes us from having a vote or voice in the math of Israel’s Knesset. But we can and we must signal to Israel’s elected leadership that our support for Israel emerges by way of our Jewish identity, a Jewish identity that must be recognized by the country we so love. We can and must support those like-minded organizations like the Conservative Movement/Masorti in Israel (http://masorti.org), like Rabbis for Religious Freedom and Equality in Israel (http://hiddush.org) and like the AJC with its recent forays into this subject (http://www.ajc.org ). We can and must both pick fights and plant seeds, leverage all the tools at our disposal to ensure that Israel’s religious future is one that is not only recognizable to American Jewry, but recognizes American Jewry as part of the global Jewish family.

At the conclusion of our Torah reading, there is an account of a troubling incident in which a man born of an Israelite mother and an Egyptian father comes to blows with a full-blooded Israelite, blasphemes God’s name, and is put to death. More often than not, this incident is understood as a lesson regarding the offense of blasphemy and the collective responsibility of the community to root out such a sinner. Notwithstanding the transgression at hand, I cannot help but wonder if this entire story would have turned out differently had the Israelite community sought to integrate, not alienate, this individual on the communal fringe. Had the communal impulse been one of inclusion, not exclusion, would our sinner have been reduced to pain, anger, and rage? I don’t read this tale as a lesson on the sin of blasphemy; I read it as an object lesson regarding Israel’s systemic failure to countenance the diversity in its midst.

Long before this recent election and last year’s Pew study, our Jewish family has wrestled with the boundaries of Jewish identity. Who is and who isn’t a Jew? Who gets to decide, and what shall our posture be towards those seeking entry? May we be the generation that chooses the path of inclusion, stretching the bounds of Jewish law to extend our Jewish tent far and wide. May we support the efforts of those in Israel seeking to do the same, and may the bonds between American Jewry and Israel be healed and strengthened towards a bright future.