The Sixth Cup?

06 Thursday Apr 2017

Posted by rabbijohnrosove in American Jewish Life, Divrei Torah, Ethics, Holidays, Jewish History, Jewish Identity

Exodus 6:6-8 is the basis upon which the rabbis determined that 4 cups of wine are to be consumed during the Passover Seder. Each cup corresponds to one of the 4 verbs that describes how God freed the Israelite slaves from Egyptian bondage:

“… I will free you (ho-tzei-ti et’chem) from the labors of the Egyptians and deliver you (v’hi-tzal’ti et’chem) from their bondage. I will redeem you (v’ga-al-ti et’chem) with an outstretched arm … And I will take you (v’la-kach’ti et’chem) to be My people, … I will bring you (v’hei-vei-ti et’chem) into the land…”

Wait! There are 5 verbs, not 4, and so we have to wonder why we don’t drink 5 cups of wine.

Some explain that Elijah’s cup is the 5^th cup and is the most important of all because it symbolizes the future messianic era when justice, compassion, and peace will characterize all human affairs.

Others say that since the Haggadah is a Diaspora text (the first Seder was held in the middle of the night in Egypt), from the perspective of the Haggadah the 5^th verb points to a state of being that has not yet occurred because the people have not as yet entered the land of Israel.

Since the establishment of the State of Israel, some Israelis identify the 5^th cup of wine as the “Zionist cup” representing the fulfillment of the Zionist project in the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948.

Rabbi Josh Weinberg (President of the Association of Reform Zionists of America – ARZA) suggests that perhaps there ought to be an additional cup of wine, a 6^th cup symbolizing the need of every Jew to understand, acknowledge and reconcile the differences that characterize Diaspora Jews and Israeli Jews, Orthodox and non-Orthodox Jews, political right-wing and political left-wing Jews, young Jews and old Jews.

A 6^th cup of wine can be a reminder that the unity of the Jewish people must be a principle goal for us all. The concluding verses in the Prophetic Book of Malachi, the Haftarah portion read on this Shabbat Tzav, present both the challenge and the consequences of failure in stark terms:

“Lo, I will send the prophet Elijah to you before the coming of the awesome, fearful day of the Lord. He [Elijah] shall reconcile parents with children and children with their parents, so that, when I come, I do not strike the whole land with utter destruction.” (3:23-24)

May your Seders be filled with understanding and light, renewal and optimism, meaning and significance, good food and wine, loving family and friends, joy and hope.

Shabbat shalom and Chag Pesach sameach!

The Real Existential Threat to the State of Israel is Not BDS

02 Sunday Apr 2017

Posted by rabbijohnrosove in American Jewish Life, American Politics and Life, Ethics, Israel and Palestine, Israel/Zionism, Jewish History

≈ 1 Comment

The international Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel is deeply disturbing to Israelis and Jews around the world because it unfairly singles out Israel while ignoring all other nations that commit far greater human rights violations. However, BDS has become a significant distraction from the real existential threat confronting the State of Israel, the occupation of the West Bank and a lack of resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

This past month Israel’s Public Security and Strategic Affairs Minister Gilad Erdan brought the BDS fight home for the first time. He has sought to expand his ministry’s recently launched intelligence division that is collecting information on foreign BDS activists by compiling a database of Israelis working with the BDS movement.

The editors of the Israeli daily Haaretz reacted strongly against Erdan’s efforts:

“With frightening speed, Minister for Public Security and Strategic Affairs Gilad Erdan is becoming the Israeli heir to notorious U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy.” (http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/editorial/1.778768)

Haaretz also reported that Israeli Attorney General Avichai Mendelblit and Deputy Attorney General Avi Licht have voiced their opposition to Erdan’s efforts and stated that the Public Security Ministry has no legal authority to gather intelligence and maintain a database on Israeli citizens.

The Editorial went on: “The struggle against the Israeli occupation, whether from Israel or abroad, is legitimate, just and moral – and every person of conscience is entitled to participate in it. Moreover, the means of struggle in question, boycotts and nonviolent sanctions, are legitimate in view of the illegal status of the settlements.”

Minister Erdan shot back: “A newspaper that calls on Israelis to oppose the struggle I am waging against the boycott against Israel and the BDS, apparently does not really understand what is happening here…Instead of Haaretz simply admitting that they support a boycott of Israel, they launched an attack on me, …I will continue to act so that those who want to bring about the end of Israel as a Jewish state will pay a price for their actions, and those who get bent out of shape, you already know what will happen to them.” http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/227148

Haaretz described ominously the significance of Erdan’s attack on sympathizers with BDS: “Databases on political activists have always been a hallmark of the darkest regimes. It is there, under the darkness of tyranny, that authorities gather information on regime opponents and compile blacklists. With his actions, Erdan is aspiring to have this sort of regime in Israel.”

I believe that Haaretz is right. However, lest I am misunderstood, I oppose BDS because too many of the groups that support it are out to delegitimize the State of Israel. I also oppose BDS as it is applied against only West Bank settlements because I don’t believe BDS can be successful as a non-violent political tactic in ending the Israeli occupation of the West Bank.

BDS is a significant challenge, as Don Futterman, the Director of Israel’s Moriah Fund, noted this past week in “The Promised Podcast.” But BDS is not an existential threat to the State of Israel, though it could become one in ten or twenty years when large groups of western young people who have been influenced by the BDS movement come into power and influence in their respective countries. https://tlv1.fm/full-show/promised-podcast/2017/03/30/the-bds-and-the-rat-bastard-conundrum-edition/

Focusing too much of our attention on BDS obfuscates the real existential challenge facing Israel – the occupation and the continuation of the status quo that will end Israel as a Jewish and/or a democratic state.

Those who place the settlement movement as more important than Israel’s future as a Jewish and democratic nation are the greatest threat to Israel’s future, not BDS.

Note: I speak only for myself and do not necessarily represent the views of my synagogue or any other Jewish organization.

A Jubilee Haggadah Marking the 50th Year Since the 1967 War

26 Sunday Mar 2017

Posted by rabbijohnrosove in American Jewish Life, Ethics, Holidays, Israel and Palestine, Israel/Zionism, Jewish History, Social Justice

≈ 4 Comments

A new Haggadah has just been published by SISO (“Save Israel – Stop the Occupation”). It is called the Jubilee Haggadah because it marks the 50th year since the 1967 War, a turning point in the history of the modern State of Israel that the writers and editors conjoin with the biblical Jubilee commandment – “You shall proclaim liberty throughout the land for all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you…” (Leviticus 25:10) – and with the celebration of Passover, the festival of liberty.

The Haggadah is part of a new initiative begun by prominent Israeli individuals and organizations in partnership with Jewish leaders around the world who believe that the prolonged Israeli military occupation poses a very real threat to Israel’s safety and well-being, and undermines the moral and democratic fabric of Israel and its standing in the community of nations. See SISO’s website – https://www.siso.org.il.

Critics will argue that this Haggadah does not provide adequate historical context nor, in the words of one of its contributors, Professor of Jewish History at Ben Gurion University Haviva Pedaya, a “political outline of how to bring about a solution” to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Dr. Pedaya acknowledges:

“Nor is one party alone guilty for the complex situation. In broad visions, the discussion about the concept of the victim and the subjugator is most complex. But those people who ate potato peels on Seder nights, who recited by heart the Haggadah in the concentration camps, like those people who ate the manna in the desert or those slaves whose children drowned in mortar and were built into the pyramids – those people come to us with the demand: turn the face of the brother to the other and to responsibility.”

So many Jews and lovers of the State of Israel have come to accept what seems to be a historical inevitability, that Israel will forever occupy another people. This Haggadah addresses the moral consequences of failing to advocate for the only solution that can best assure Israel’s Jewish and democratic character – a two-states for two peoples resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

SISO’s editor and publisher describe the Haggadah in these words:

“Thirty authors, artists, and thinkers from throughout the Jewish world have joined together — in commentary, song, and moral outcry — and proposed contemporary interpretations to the Haggadah.

From Amos Oz to Sarah Silverman, Achinoam Nini to Leon Wieseltier, Anat Hoffman to Carol Gilligan, in this fiftieth year, we are proclaiming liberty throughout this land for all its inhabitants.

The Haggadah is edited by Dr. Tomer Persico. The texts are rich, nuanced and diverse, and together with the original artwork and design (by leading Israeli graphic designer Michal Sahar) make this a beautiful work that invites reflection and conversation.

I am honored to be among the thirty contributors (page 4 – item 1). I offer a few commentaries to evoke the spirit of this Haggadah. The entire text that can be downloaded at nif.org/sisohaggadah:

“We were not born to be people of masters… We are condemned now to rule people who did not want to be ruled by us… The shorter the occupation lasts, the better for us, because an occupation is inevitably a corrupting occupation, and even a liberal and human occupation. I have fears about the kind of seeds we will sow in the near future in the hearts of the occupied. Even more, I have fears about the seeds that will be implanted in the hearts of the occupiers…” (Amos Oz – Davar, August 22, 1967)

“We must care for each other. We must see each other clearly… as equal under God … We must recognize each other’s humanity, aspirations, rights, emotions … at the end of the day, the only way to be saved by God from whatever ‘Egypt’ is enslaving you, is to love your neighbor as you love yourself.” (Achinoam Nini – Noa – Israeli singer and peace activist)

“Now that we have returned to the land by the grace of God, and are privileged to move through all of the land of Israel and to settle in it, we have to protect ourselves and to safeguard our security – but not to base our existence on life by the sword. We are tested by our ability not to rule another people by ‘force,’ but to live here by ‘My spirit.’ In other words, to build a model society. If in Egypt we became foreigners who were denied all rights to existence, liberty, and the land, and in this lay the root of our subjugation, we must not do to others what we ourselves hate. The Palestinian people that lives among us also needs its land, its existence, and its liberty…. Only through a brave conjoining of all the children of Abraham who dwell in this land will God’s blessing to our forefather Abraham, and ‘all of the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him’ come true for us.” (Rabbi Michael Melchior, Jerusalem thinker, activist and former Israeli government minister)

“Of all people, Jews know the bitterness of being oppressed – and not being in our own country. That’s what makes the occupation so ironic. Sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference between right and wrong, the situation is complicated and scary, but I’m guessing oppression will always prove to be on the wrong side of history.” (Sarah Silverman, comedian, and actress)

“The quarrel between Israel and Palestine has been a bleeding wound for decades, a wound that is hemorrhaging and is full of pus. You can’t keep waving a big stick and beating a bleeding wound again and again so as to scare it and make it finally stop being a wound and finally stop bleeding. A wound has to be healed. And there’s a way to gradually heal this wound.” (Amos Oz, January 2017)

I recommend downloading the entire Haggadah and using whatever commentaries you choose during the course of your own Seder.

An Arab lawmaker imagines a utopian Israeli-Palestinian state and himself as Prime Minister

03 Friday Mar 2017

Posted by rabbijohnrosove in American Jewish Life, Israel and Palestine, Israel/Zionism, Jewish History, Jewish Identity, Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

There are increasingly more people who are giving up on a two states for two peoples resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and are, instead, supporting a one state democracy that stretches from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.

In my view, this represents for the Jewish people a defeat of historic proportions.

The State of Israel was founded on the basis of it being a Jewish state that is democratic in character and affirms the principles of justice and equality for all its citizens, Jews and non-Jews alike.

As time passes and the Jewish settlement enterprise continues and as the status quo is maintained a one-state reality becomes more probable. If that is the end result, the question remains as to what kind of state it will become.

The Arab and Jewish populations between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea including Gaza are nearly equivalent (5.5 million Israeli Jews and 5.5 million Arabs of which only 1.5 million are Israeli citizens and the remainder live under occupation in the West Bank or are ruled by Hamas in the Gaza Strip).

There are essentially three options:

Two states for two peoples (Israel and Palestine) with established borders, Jerusalem as a shared capital, Palestinian refugees enjoying the right of return to Palestine and not Israel, Palestinian acceptance of the legitimacy of the Jewish state of Israel and Israeli acceptance of the legitimacy of the State of Palestinian, and assured security;
A one-state democracy in which all citizens share equal rights including the right to vote in national elections and to serve at the highest levels of government;
A one-state undemocratic Jewish State of Israel in which Arab citizens do not share equal rights with Israeli Jews.

The first option preserves the Jewish and the democratic State of Israel.

The second represents the end of Zionism.

The third ushers in a new form of Apartheid in which Israel ceases to be a democracy and risks further international isolation, the weakening of the American-Israeli relationship, and the alienation of large segments of world Jewry from Israel.

Yesterday (March 2, 2017) in the Israeli daily Haaretz there appeared an interview with Member of the Knesset Ahmed Tibi (of the Arab List). The interview offers a realistic glimpse into what a one-state non-Jewish democracy might look like (see link to article below)

A few highlights of Mr. Tibi’s comments:

“I belong to those who support the two-state vision, have fought for it and continue to fight for it. I think it’s the optimal solution for the existing situation. The international community wants it and the majority on both sides wants it, even though that majority is diminishing according to the surveys I see, among both Palestinians and Israelis. And with 620,000 settlers in the West Bank and Jerusalem, and two separate judicial systems, there’s a reality today of one state with rolling apartheid.” …

“[In a one-state solution] We will annul the [Israeli] Declaration of Independence and in its place write a civil declaration that represents all citizens: Jews, Muslims, Christians, Druze. The entire public. It’s untenable for a democratic state to have a declaration of independence that is fundamentally Jewish.” …

“That [the Jewish right of return] would automatically be annulled because the country would no longer be a Jewish state as it is today. The single state will not resemble the present-day State of Israel. It will be something different. Why should Jews be able to return here and Palestinians not?” …

“…With one, equal state, the State of Israel in its present format will not exist. All its symbols will change, and the narrative will be different. The unifying element in one state will be different from what it is today because it will be a state of everyone, not a state of the Jewish collectivity in which there is a tolerated minority that is thrown a bone in the form of gestures like new roads and the establishment of well-baby clinics. In an equal, single state, equality is a supreme value.”

Those who support the status quo in effect are supporting option #3.

According to American Middle East envoy Martin Indyk who spoke at the recent J Street National Conference in Washington, D.C., the status quo might seem to be sustainable in the short term, but in the long term “there will be an explosion.”

If that happens, the dream of the founding generation of the State of Israel will be lost.

http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.774936)

Friedman’s ‘kapo’ comment should disqualify him as ambassador to Israel” – Dr. Charles Gati

01 Wednesday Mar 2017

Posted by rabbijohnrosove in American Jewish Life, American Politics and Life, Ethics, Israel and Palestine, Israel/Zionism, Jewish History, Jewish Identity

≈ 3 Comments

Earlier this week, I was asked to participate with two others in a press conference in Washington, D.C. on behalf of J Street which was convening in its 6th Annual National Conference.

I joined Dr. Charles Gati, Senior Research Professor of European and Eurasian Studies of Johns Hopkins SAI, a former state department consultant and Holocaust survivor, and Dylan Williams, Vice President of Government Affairs for J Street. I was asked as a former co-chair of the Rabbinic Cabinet of J Street and now as the national chair of the Association of Reform Zionists of America.

We were being questioned about President Trump’s nomination of David Friedman to be the next United States Ambassador to Israel. All three of us were strongly opposed to the nomination.

We oppose Friedman because of his long-standing support of the settlement enterprise, his public opposition to the two-state solution, and his assaults against large segments of the American Jewish community that support the two states for two people’s resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

We said that Friedman’s policy positions run counter to the long-held positions of every American President in the last 25 years who have supported the two-state solution, his slander of J Street supporters as “worse than kapos,” his charge that the ADL is led by a bunch of “morons,” and that President Obama and Secretary Kerry are anti-Israel and anti-Semites.

These positions and statements ought to disqualify Friedman’s appointment to any position in the government, let alone as the chief American diplomat in one of the most sensitive regions in the world.

I was asked by Al Jazeera English whether or not I accepted Friedman’s statements at his Senate hearing in which he recanted virtually every position he ever held and every statement he ever made vis a vis Israel and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I said that I do not accept anything he said in the hearings as reflective of his true beliefs and as an indication of how he would conduct himself should he be confirmed by the Senate in the next few days.

In particular, I was moved by Dr. Charles Gati. He was ten years old when the Nazis invaded Budapest in 1944 and ordered the expulsion and murder of all that city’s Jews. Charles was spared being shot and thrown into the Danube River due to pure luck.

His opposition to Friedman was based not only on his policy positions and ill-temperament but because Friedman showed how woefully ignorant he is of Jewish history and the history of the Holocaust when he callously used the word “kapo” to describe J Street supporters.

After hearing Dr. Gati, I told him and Dylan Williams that meetings ought to be arranged this week one-on-one between Charles and every reasonable Republican Senator. I am certain that Charles would persuade any reasonable leader to oppose this nomination.

Read: Friedman’s ‘kapo’ comment should disqualify him as ambassador to Israel, The Hill

http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/international/321633-friedmans-kapo-comment-should-disqualify-him-as-ambassador

Why I Signed onto an Amicus Brief Suing the President of the United States

19 Sunday Feb 2017

Posted by rabbijohnrosove in American Jewish Life, American Politics and Life, Ethics, Jewish History, Jewish-Christian Relations, Jewish-Islamic Relations, Social Justice

≈ 2 Comments

Last week I accepted an invitation to join with eight others as signatories in an interfaith amicus brief in support of two Iraqi refugee petitioners. They charge that President Donald Trump’s Executive Order Travel Ban violates the equal protection component of the Due Process clause of the US Constitution because it discriminates against refugees based on their religion.

Darweesh et al.v. Trump et. Al was filed in the Eastern District of New York on Thursday, February 16 by the legal firm of Covington & Burling LLP, Washington, DC. The firm is representing the two plaintiffs pro bono.

Here is the unconstitutional passage of the Travel Ban Executive Order:

“…the Secretaries of State and Homeland Security may jointly determine to admit individuals to the United States as refugees on a case-by-case basis, in their discretion, but only so long as they determine that the admission of such individuals as refugees is in the national interest – including when the person is a religious minority in his country of nationality facing religious persecution…” (“Executive Order: Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States” – January 27, 2017 – Section 5e)

Trump’s specific designation of seven Middle East nations to which this Travel Ban applies (Iraq, Syria, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen) are majority-Muslim countries. The Executive Order gives preference to minority religious communities in those countries (i.e. Christians). That is a clear violation of the equal protection component of the Constitution’s Due Process clause because Muslims as a religious community are discriminated against.

The two plaintiffs are both Iraqi. One served as a translator for the American military in Iraq and feared for his life should he remain in his native country. He was promised political asylum by his American military handlers, but when he arrived at JFK he was refused entry because of Trump’s Travel Ban.

The other plaintiff is an Iraqi refugee who came to America in order to join his family. They had been thoroughly vetted and were cleared and granted visas. He too was refused entry and held at JFK until the Ninth Circuit Court stayed the ban. Both plaintiffs are now safely in the United States.

We Jews, if nothing else, know the heart of the stranger. The Torah instructs us frequently to remember that we were slaves in the land of Egypt. Tradition instructs us to welcome the stranger at all times with dignity, courtesy, and active support.

In times of crisis such as these in which millions of refugees are fleeing violence in their native countries, the exceptionalism of America combined with the ethical and moral impulse in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam call upon us to do everything possible to provide safe haven for the “tempest-tost.” (see Emma Lazarus, “The Great Colossus” inscribed on the Statue of Liberty)

Altruism is the noblest of moral motivations, but enlightened self-interest is also efficacious in our doing what is just and compassionate. The German Lutheran Pastor Martin Niemöller reminds us of real-world consequences if we don’t act on behalf of others:

“First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.”

The interfaith amicus brief signatories include:

Bana Alabed, a seven-year-old Syrian refugee from Aleppo who wrote to Donald Trump not to forget the children of Syria. Syrian President Assad called Bana’s posts “terrorist propaganda”
The Auburn Seminary, New York, NY
Congregation B’nai Jeshurun, New York, NY
The Muslim Public Affairs Council
Rabbi James Ponet, Retired Director of The Joseph Slifka Center for Jewish Life, Yale University, New Haven, CT
Rabbi John Rosove, Senior Rabbi, Temple Israel of Hollywood, Los Angeles, CA
Rabbi Keith Stern, Senior Rabbi, Temple Beth Avodah, Newton Center, MA
The Union Theological Seminary, New York, NY
Suhaib Webb, the imam of the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center

I will report back as this case moves through the courts.

Though so many in my congregation have expressed their moral outrage at this Travel Ban, I am a signatory as an individual and do not claim to represent my synagogue or any other organization.

Reform Jewish Movement Opposes David Friedman’s Nomination for U.S. Ambassador to Israel

17 Friday Feb 2017

Posted by rabbijohnrosove in American Jewish Life, American Politics and Life, Ethics, Israel and Palestine, Israel/Zionism, Jewish History, Jewish Identity, Jewish-Christian Relations, Jewish-Islamic Relations, Social Justice, Women's Rights

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This is the first time that all the organizations of the American Reform Jewish movement have ever weighed in on a nomination by a President of the United States. However, we have done so because David Friedman’s qualifications, lack of diplomatic experience, erratic temperament, outrageous rhetoric and attacks on large sections of the American Jewish community, and his policy positions vis a vis Israel are not in the best interests of the American-Israel relationship and do not represent our Reform Jewish values in relationship to the democratic and Jewish State of Israel.

As the national Chair of the Association of Reform Zionists of America (ARZA), on behalf of ARZA’s President Rabbi Josh Weinberg, and with the unanimous support of the national ARZA Officers and Board, I express my own gratitude that our movement of 1.5 million American Reform Jews has made such a clear and strong statement.

Please read the attached statement and note the expansive support of our movement’s national leadership.

http://www.urj.org/blog/2017/02/17/reform-jewish-movement-opposes-david-friedmans-nomination-us-ambassador-israel

“‘Remember the 11 million’? Why an inflated victims tally irks Holocaust historians” – Times of Israel by Ron Kampeas, February 1

03 Friday Feb 2017

Posted by rabbijohnrosove in American Politics and Life, Jewish History

≈ 3 Comments

Until today (February 3, 2017), I believed that the number commonly cited of murdered victims by the Nazis was 11 million (6 million Jews and 5 million others – Catholics, Romas, homosexuals, communists, trade unionists, etc.). It turns out that Simon Wiesenthal, the famed “Nazi hunter,” made up the 5 –million number of non-Jewish victims in order to catch the attention of the non-Jewish world in the 1970s that were ignoring the crime of genocide by the Nazis against Judaism and the Jewish people.

The real figure, according to Holocaust historians Yehuda Bauer and Deborah Lipstadt, is more on the order of 500,000 non-Jews murdered, certainly not a small number by any measurement, but not 5 million. The total number of people who died as a consequence of the Nazi aggression is about 35 million.

Read this article in “The Times of Israel” by Ron Kampeas (February 1) for details and the unintended impact of Wiesenthal’s made-up fiction on politics today.

“An oft-cited statistic of 4 million non-Jewish Holocaust deaths has no basis in fact, experts say and may be contributing to [Holocaust] denial efforts…All of the world had to be annihilated,” [Holocaust historian Yehuda] Bauer said. “That was the intent. There was never an idea in Nazi minds to murder all the Russians…

The number 5 million also adheres to no known understanding of the number of non-Jews killed by the Nazis: While as many as 35 million people were killed overall because of Nazi aggression, the number of non-Jews who died in the concentration camps is no more than half a million, Bauer said.”

http://www.timesofisrael.com/remember-the-11-million-why-an-inflated-victims-tally-irks-holocaust-historians/

A year has passed and nothing has happened

01 Wednesday Feb 2017

Posted by rabbijohnrosove in Israel/Zionism, Jewish History, Jewish Identity, Women's Rights

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It has been a year since the Israeli government agreed to establish an egalitarian prayer space in Jerusalem’s Southern Kotel Plaza that would be independent of the strict ultra-Orthodox rabbinate and the Ultra-Orthodox Administrator of the Western Wall. The government agreement called for the construction of an attractive prayer space equivalent in size to the traditional prayer space and visible from the entrance of the plaza. The prayer space would be overseen by the Reform and Conservative movements, the Jewish Federations of North America, and Women of the Wall.

It is a year later and nothing has happened.

When I was in Jerusalem in October for meetings of the Board of Governors of the Jewish Agency, the 120 of us representing world Jewry met in the Knesset with Prime Minister Netanyahu. He asked us to be patient and explained that he needed more time to work with his coalition partners to implement the agreement.

Jewish Agency Director Natan Sharansky, who the Prime Minister had asked three years earlier to meet with all the interested parties to find a consensus agreement, told us minutes before the Prime Minister came into the Chagall Lobby that the Prime Minister was indeed committed to doing everything he could to implement this agreement, except one thing – Netanyahu would not sacrifice his government or his position as Prime Minister – and that of course, is the rub!

Once the agreement was signed in January 2016 that included the Ultra-Orthodox Administrator of the Wall, the ultra-Orthodox political parties in the government rose up in defiance and threatened to bring down the government should the agreement move forward and be implemented. Rather than take that risk and form a new government without the Ultra-Orthodox, Mr. Netanyahu seems to have taken the position that the preservation of his government and his position as Prime Minister are more important than the facilitation of an agreement that would preserve the unity of the Jewish people and welcome to the holiest site in Judaism every Jew who wishes to pray according to his or her Jewish custom.

In the Jewish Forward (“The Wall That’s Growing Between Us,” January 27, 2017), Editor-in-Chief Jane Eisner reviews the history of this effort. She says: “So now, a year after nothing, a time for pleading an exhortation may be over.”

Eisner quotes Elazar Stern, a member of the Knesset from the centrist Yesh Atid party and a former major general in the Israeli Defense Forces, that whenever he meets leaders from the Diaspora “I tell them they must insist that these issues be dealt with immediately. And until that happens, I say to them, ‘You need to stop inviting them [i.e.Israeli government leaders including, I presume, Prime Minister Netanyahu] as guests of honor to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and Jewish Federation conferences. Even if you really need them — and I know you need them — hold back for just two years. It won’t take longer than that for them to see that they need you even more than you need them.”

Stern throws down a gauntlet to world Jewry, and I wonder whether we’ll pick it up. Stay tuned!

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