14 Friday Oct 2016
For those interested, Temple Israel has posted my sermons (below) on our Temple website (written texts and UTube) as well as those of my colleagues, Rabbi Michelle Missaghieh and Rabbi Jocee Hudson.
Hag Sukkot Sameach!
see http://www.tioh.org/worship/rabbis/clergystudy
Rabbi John Rosove’s High Holyday Sermons:
07 Friday Oct 2016
Shalom,
Allow us at the Association of Reform Zionists of America (ARZA) to wish you a Shanah Tovah and a Chatima Tovah.
As many of you may be aware yesterday, Thursday, October 6, 2016, the Israel Movement for Progressive Reform Judaism, the Conservative Movement, Women of the Wall and other organizations filed a petition to the Israeli Supreme Court, following orders by Supreme Court justices from September 2016, as part of the petition against the Kotel Heritage Foundation. This petition was an amended version of the original petition appealing to the court to enforce the decision that already passed the Government to create an egalitarian prayer space in the South Kotel Plaza in Jerusalem this past January. Keep in mind, this agreement already passed and we’re just insisting that it be implemented.
“This petition is the most painful note we have had to place between the ancient stones of the Kotel until now,” explained Anat Hoffman, Executive Director of the Israel Religious Action Center and the Chair of Women of the Wall.
While the petition is making its impact in the courts, we want the powers that be in the Israeli government to hear from as many members of the Diaspora Jewish community as possible. That is why we are asking everyone for a simple and low-effort action: to send an email through this site: http://www.urj.org/join-campaign.
We have reason to believe that the more voices are heard, the greater the impact it will make upon the Prime Minister to fulfill the agreement that has already been made.
We appreciate your help and effort in doing all that we can to bring about progressive democratic and pluralist change to the State of Israel on a matter that affects all of world Jewry.
גמר חתימה טובה ושבת שלום,
Rabbi Joshua Weinberg – President of the Association of Reform Zionists of America (ARZA)
Rabbi John Rosove – National Chair of of the Association of Reform Zionists of America (ARZA)
31 Sunday Jul 2016
Posted in Health and Well-Being, Israel/Zionism, Life Cycle, Stories, Women's Rights
“In this city I gave birth to my daughters – in this city I die because of my daughters….I understand that I am sick and needy, and I don’t want to continue to be a burden on you….Don’t make much effort for the ceremony, something modest with a lot of flowers, and remember that this is what I chose as best for me, and also if you say that I am selfish, I accept and understand your lack of understanding.”
So wrote Esti Weinstein, 50, in a suicide note found alongside her body in her car that was discovered four days after her death at a beach in the city of Ashdod, Israel.
I learned of Esti’s story not from the media, though her suicide was headline news in Israel at the end of June, but from one of my synagogue’s regular cantorial soloists a day after her body had been discovered.
Meni Philip was Esti’s friend. Like Esti, Meni had left the ultra-Orthodox Haredi world in Israel in which he was raised. Both Esti and Meni were disowned by their parents and community and were cut as if by a surgeon’s knife by their Haredi community away from everything and everyone they knew and loved.
Meni (47) is the second child of eleven siblings and the father of five children. His marriage had been arranged, but he never loved his wife. At 32 Meni asked his rabbi for a get (a religious divorce). He continued to live in the ultra-Orthodox Haredi community doing all that was expected of him religiously, though he had come to no longer believe in the God that had been taught to him by his rabbis. Four years after his divorce, though continuing regularly to see his parents and children, he could no longer keep up religious appearances, took off his kippah and began wearing western clothing. He didn’t anticipate, however, that he would become persona non grata. His family, rabbis and friends suddenly would have nothing to do with him. He was denied visiting his children. Yet, he persevered, built a new life, learned survivor skills, acquired work, and became a filmmaker.
Four of Meni’s siblings followed him out of the Haredi community. Today, he has reconciled with his parents and children.
Such was not the positive outcome for Esti Weinstein, the mother of seven daughters all of whom save one, Tami, completely cut ties with her.
Esti comes from a prominent Gur Hasidic family, a stringent Haredi sect considered extreme even by others in ultra-Orthodox world. Husbands never address their wives by name. Sexual contact between them is considered a sacrilege and is engaged only for the purpose of procreation. Sex occurs rarely, quickly, while fully clothed, and devoid of emotion, intimacy, and joy. (http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/gur-hasidim-and-sexual-separation-1.410811)
After leaving her community, Esti suffered. She wrote an autobiography (that Meni sent to me) in which she told her inside story in a 183-page book she called “Doing His Will.” Esti dedicated the volume to her daughter Tami who followed her out of the Gur sect and who remained close to her. She wrote as well of her marriage, the loss of her other six daughters and about a previous suicide attempt.
In a story reported by The Times of Israel one can view photos of Esti (see below). She was a natural beauty, but beneath the lovely smiling images was a profound sadness. She ended her book with these words:
“…my life of motherhood, the painful, that is smashed to pieces, sick and wounded….I thought it was a temporary matter, but the years are passing and time isn’t healing, and the pain doesn’t stop.” http://www.timesofisrael.com/before-suicide-woman-penned-book-about-her-ordeals-in-ultra-orthodox-world/ – see also http://forward.com/news/343780/ex-hasidic-womans-suicide-book-rattles-ultra-orthodox-world/
Meni told me that there are hundreds and perhaps thousands of former mostly young Haredim in their 20s living in Israel who have left their communities over the years. It is unclear what is causing the increasing number of suicides in this unique population, though it is clear that many had been disowned by their families. Some may have suffered depression before they left, and many experienced as children sexual abuse and later as adults spousal abuse.
Meni made a film called “Sinner” which won the “Best European Short Film” in the Venice Film Festival, Italy 2009. (the 27-minute film can be viewed here in its entirety – http://www.meniphilip.com/english/Sinner.html)
There is one underfunded organization in Israel called Hillel (not the same as the college organization) that offers help and support for ex-Haredim. Meni received such support as did Esti who had volunteered there and where Esti and Meni met and became friends. Additionally, there are two more small but important organizations that were established by Meni’s good friends after the deaths of two young “Yozim” (those who leave) a few years ago. One is called “Uvacharta-And Choose” (see https://www.facebook.com/uvacharta/?fref=ts) and the other called “Out for Change – Yozim l’shinuy” (https://www.facebook.com/yozimleshinuy/. The first focuses on social support, and the second focuses on educational assistance. Neither receives financial support from the government.
The Reform movement’s Israeli Religious Action Center (IRAC) assists individuals who leave Haredi communities through its social justice program Keren B’chavod. Israeli Reform Rabbis tell me that the Reform movement’s 45 synagogue communities around the country are open to any ex-Haredi Jew who seeks support and comfort.
May Esti’s memory be a blessing.
12 Tuesday Jul 2016
Eight months ago, following two years of intense negotiations between representatives of the Reform and Conservative movements, the North American Jewish Federations, Women of the Wall, and the Ultra-Orthodox Chief Rabbi of the Wall, an agreement was reached to create an independent egalitarian prayer space in the Southern Kotel Plaza.
The agreement stipulated that this plaza would be designed by a leading world architect and would be equivalent in size to the traditional Northern Kotel Plaza. The liberal streams and Women of the Wall would control and oversee how prayer services would be conducted without interference from the Ultra-Orthodox or Chief Rabbi of the Wall. A common entrance to the plaza would be shared by all worshipers with equal sight lines to the Northern and Southern Plazas.
Right-wing ultra-Orthodox extremist rabbis and their communities have risen up in protest using incendiary rhetoric and threats.
Prime Minister Netanyahu, though stating that the entirety of the Jewish people must feel “at home” in Israel and at our holy sites, has back-pedaled and sought to reopen negotiations that would effectively kill the original agreement. Our leadership has told him that a deal is a deal and that any change now is unacceptable.
The Prime Minister is fearful of losing the ultra-Orthodox parties in his government and being forced either to form a new government or to call new elections. There are times, and this is one of those times, that the best interests of the Jewish people are more important than cow-towing to an extremist minority.
Our movement leadership, frustrated by the Prime Minister’s and government’s inaction, has decided to take this matter to the Israeli High Court.
In the meantime and until the egalitarian plaza can be built, the liberal coalition will conduct prayer services in the large Kotel Plaza. Our leadership this week warned the Prime Minister that we fear violence against us by the ultra-Orthodox. In a letter to the Prime Minister, the liberal coalition stated:
“We expect that the police will protect us as we exercise our legal rights, and we are stating plainly that absent a clear and a strong response, the current wave of incitement and violence might lead to bloodshed, as seen in the streets of Jerusalem during last year’s Pride parade…” At the Gay Pride parade in Jerusalem last year, 16-year-old Shira Banki was stabbed to death by an ultra-Orthodox Jew.” (“Reform, Conservative Leaders to Netanyahu: Incitement Against Us Could Lead to Bloodshed” – by Judy Maltz, Haaretz, July 11, 2016 – http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/1.730200):
It is time for Prime Minister Netanyahu to fulfill his pledge to world Jewry and allow the design and construction of the Southern Kotel Plaza to begin.
Note: I serve as National Chair of the Association of Reform Zionists of America (ARZA), the Zionist arm of the American Reform movement representing 1.5 million American Jews.
10 Sunday Jul 2016
Lutheran Pastor Martin Niemoeller was arrested by the Gestapo in 1938 and interned in Dachau until 1945. After the war he said:
“In Germany, the Nazis first came for the communists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist. Then they came up for the Catholics, and I didn’t speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time there was no one left to speak for me.”
I agree with Deborah Lipstadt in her Forward piece (see below) that Donald Trump is probably not an anti-Semite but that he has internalized anti-Semitic attitudes, which are far worse. At the very least, he is grossly insensitive to our historic and religious experience and what animates Jewish fear. His recent posting of the 6-pointed Star (of David) over a pile of cash in criticizing Hillary Clinton reminds me of the Chassidic story about the Rebbe who asked his disciple one day if he loved him.
“Of course I love you!” The Chassid said.
“Do you know what hurts me?” the Rebbe asked.
“No – I do not.”
The Rebbe explained: “If you do not know what hurts me, how can you say you love me?”
One can legitimately argue that Mr. Trump didn’t initially realize that his use of the Star (of David) was hurtful and insulting to Jews. Almost immediately someone in his campaign removed the 6-pointed star and replaced it with a circle. That would have been fine in my book, his campaign borrowing images from a white supremacist website notwithstanding. But Mr. Trump didn’t allow the issue to subside. In Cincinnati before thousands of supporters and a national audience, he criticized his own campaign and his Jewish son-in-law saying that the star-image should never have been taken down in the first place because it isn’t the star of David.
Mr. Trump says he loves Jews. He says he loves women. He says he loves Hispanics. He says he loves Mexicans. He says he bear no animus towards Muslims.
Really!?
Mr. Trump is an equal opportunity offender of just about everyone.
In this last week’s Torah portion, Korach, our sages noted that Korach‘s great sin was that he divided the people against each other. That has marked Trump’s campaign from the beginning and we ought to judge him the way Judaism judges Korach, as a rabble rouser whose egotistical quest for power blinded him to the needs of everyone else. Is this what we need in a President?
There are so many decent Republicans in this country, thank goodness, who have quietly decided they cannot vote for this man for President. That being said, why have so many of them chosen to remain silent? Why has there not arisen a strong and vocal ground swell of protest coming from millions of decent Republicans?
Rabbi Joachim Prinz spoke to the thousands assembled on the Washington, D.C. Mall in August 1963 and said:
“When I was the rabbi of the Jewish community in Berlin under the Hitler regime, I learned many things. The most important thing I learned under those tragic circumstances was that bigotry and hatred are not the most urgent problem. The most urgent, the most disgraceful, the most shameful and the most tragic problem is silence.”
Dr. King offered essentially the same message:
“We will have to repent in this generation, not merely for the vitriolic words and actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence of the good people.”
Yes, I acknowledge that Hillary Clinton is an imperfect candidate for President, but her imperfections fade into the ether when compared to the depth and expanse of the moral failings of Donald Trump. Hillary Clinton has demonstrated over the course of her entire adult life a deep concern for and activism on behalf of the most vulnerable people in our society and world – women, children, the powerless. I see no such moral sensibility in Mr. Trump’s life or career.
See:
Trump’s vigorous defense of anti-Semitic image a ‘turning point’ for many Jews
By Jose A. DelReal and Julie Zauzmer, Washington Post, July 8, 2016
“Donald Trump’s vigorous defense of an image widely regarded as anti-Semitic has alarmed many Jewish Americans, who are growing increasingly fearful that someone who could be the next president is willing to stoke the kinds of stereotypical attacks that have haunted Jews around the world for generations.”
Is Donald Trump’s Inadvertent Anti-Semitism Worse Than the Real Thing?
By Deborah Lipstadt, Forward July 7, 2016
“Trump is like a drug dealer who sells the stuff and urges others to use it, while he never touches it himself. Because he is not an anti-Semite, he fails to grasp that he is engaging in traditional anti-Semitism.”
Note: The viewpoint expressed in this blog represent my own only, and do not represent any religious institution or organization with which I am affiliated.
29 Wednesday Jun 2016
Though rabbis have to be very careful when speaking and writing in support of Hillary Clinton, which I have decided to do in this presidential election for the first time since I was ordained a rabbi in 1979 (note: rabbis cannot speak from the bimah to advocate for a particular candidate, nor can we use our institutional stationary to endorse a candidate, nor our synagogue email address, nor any official venue in our synagogues and religious institutions lest we cross a line and violate our synagogue’s non-profit status as a 501C3 entity), as individuals we can speak out as long as we indicate that we are doing so as individuals.
I have not endorsed candidates for any office before (local, state and national), though I have spoken out on moral and ethical issues as related to public policy matters, and will continue to do so.
I have been tutored by rabbis far wiser than me, however, that in the case when a candidate is clearly a bigot and whose policy positions are contrary to most every position the liberal American Jewish community advocates, that we must speak against such a candidate with every fiber of our beings. The American Reform movement through the Union for Reform Judaism (URJ) representing 1.5 million Reform Jews, our social justice commission and the Religious Action Center (RAC) in Washington, D.C. (our movement’s social justice arm in the nation’s capital) has passed and advocated for many years through many resolutions on matters effecting economic justice, the environment, civil society, civil rights, embracing the stranger and immigrant, fair criminal justice reform, sensible gun control, condemnation of racism, misogyny, mocking the disabled, homophobia, and advocating on behalf of diversity, religious pluralism, and Israel’s safety and sustenance as a Jewish and democratic state.
In one recent poll, though Hillary Clinton was ahead by 11 points against Donald Trump in a two-party two-person race, when adding the Libertarian Party and the Green Party to the mix she was ahead by only 1 point – a virtual tie. Those other two parties will be on most ballots, and so we who protest everything that Trump is and stands for ought not assume that Hillary Clinton will win the presidency based on polls that consider only the two large political parties.
I am not one of those ‘Bernie or Bust’ folks who hate Hillary Clinton to a degree that is, frankly, confusing to me.
Recognizing that Hillary could well be our next President, a year ago I decided to read as much as I could about her. I read three critical biographies as well as two of her memoirs, and I have come to the conclusion that she is a principled public leader, driven by her faith from childhood and her high school years in a church youth group, and as smart and experienced a public servant as there is or ever has been in our national life. She is no doubt flawed and she has made some mistakes, but so are we all flawed. We are not electing a Pope. We are electing a President.
It is also clear to me that Hillary learns from her mistakes, even if she is not as publicly forthright as I or others would like to see her be when she does so. I do believe that she is decent to her core.
I know and respect people who have been supporting Bernie Sanders, and I understand why and respect them for their passion as I respect Bernie for his larger vision. I have always found him honest and refreshing. I also know people who don’t like Bernie and hate both Hillary and Trump, and have decided in disgust to sit this election out to avoid feeling corrupted themselves in supporting a candidate they do not like. I do not understand the depth of venom with which these folks despise Hillary. It does not seem normal, warranted or healthy to me.
I would urge those who refuse to vote for Hillary Clinton to think again and consider that their sitting this election out or their voting for one of the other third and fourth party candidates in protest could result in the election of a President Donald Trump.
I am particularly worried about millennial voters (ages 18-36) who have flocked to Bernie Sanders in large numbers. Surveys indicate that young people do not vote at the same rate as older people, which is one of the reasons that the Congress and Senate are now run by right-wing Republicans. Had young people voted in state races in 2000 and 2010 when legislatures redistricted according to the national census and according to which parties were in power (gerrymandering is legal but corrupt) and had they voted in the mid-term congressional races (the last time Democrats earned 2 million more votes than Republicans and lost the House of Representatives anyway), policy coming out of Washington, D.C. would be very different today.
This is an election that cannot go to Trump, and it is up to all of us who see him for who and what he is to do everything we can to elect Hillary Clinton as President.
Important disclaimer and note: I speak only for myself and not for my synagogue, its members or any other organization.
15 Wednesday Jun 2016
The following three articles describe well the paralysis in Israel relative to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the meaning of the inclusion of Avigdor Lieberman’s Yisrael Beytenu party in the ruling Israeli government coalition, and Netanyahu’s failure to act on an agreement forged between the Reform and Conservative movements, Women of the Wall, the North American Jewish Federations, and the ultra-Orthodox Chief Rabbi of the Western Wall.
Jane Eisner observes, “there is something deeply psychological happening here, a profound refusal to see the world as others see it, and to acknowledge the lasting harm that nearly a half-century of occupation is doing to both peoples. It’s painful to watch a nation I love rule a people who are suffering, and not to know how to persuade either of them to move beyond their state of entwined paralysis. The contours of a diplomatic solution have been known for years. What the United States, the Europeans and other advocates have not found is the effective psychological tool to ignite action. This is most true for the Israelis and especially Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has repeatedly found excuses to maintain and strengthen the occupation while denying the way it is diminishing Israel’s moral standing in the world and corroding the soul of its own people.”
http://forward.com/opinion/israel/342289/forget-diplomacy-both-netanyahu-and-abbas-need-some-serious-therapy/#ixzz4BYKTTHfv
Leslie Suser, always a keen observer of Israeli politics, does not disappoint. This 2400 word analysis describes the ins and outs of the recent negotiations between the Prime Minister and Opposition leader Yitzhak Herzog resulting in a last minute Bibi switch from moderation to extremism in the appointment of Avigdor Leiberman as Defense Minister, a move which stunned Israel’s security and military establishment. Suser reviews not only the events leading up to the inclusion of Yisrael Beytenu in the government coalition thus making it even more right wing, but the political reaction by former members of the Likud who Bibi forced out of the government, and efforts to create a centrist block to bring down this government and run as a group against Netanyahu.
http://www.jpost.com/Jerusalem-Report/Bibis-Gamble-455255
In light of the encroachment this week of the Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem in the new Southern Kotel Plaza meant as an egalitarian prayer space for Reform and Conservative Jews and Women of the Wall, the Prime Minister has a choice, and Rabbi Yoffie (the former President of the Union for Reform Judaism and now a columnist at Haaretz) lays out that choice in strong words that Netanyahu will certainly understand.
“Let’s imagine that Israel had a prime minister with some principles. I am talking about a prime minister who cared about keeping his word; who had genuine respect for all of Judaism’s religious streams; who knew that the only way to deal with Jewish religious bullies and blackmailers is to call their bluff; and who understood that Israel’s task is to strengthen all Jews, whatever their religious outlook, who are fighting to keep the idea of Torah alive.
If Israel had such a prime minister, we might imagine him saying in a statement, following his meeting last week with leaders of the Reform and Conservative movements, that enough is enough: The compromise that his government had endorsed on prayer arrangements at the Western Wall would be implemented immediately and in its entirety.”
http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.723440
13 Monday Jun 2016
The Shavuot experience I am about to describe was taking place at precisely the time of the terrorist attack in Orlando. The contrast of our experience against that hate crime is stark and devastating. I am posting this reflection only 24 hours after the carnage as a way to counter spiritually, emotionally, morally, and Jewishly the desecration and destruction of life and community that terrorism and violence represents.
The three speakers, Jews by-Choice, at our Tikun Leil Shavuot celebration told our community that they do not feel that they had left anything behind when they converted to Judaism. Rather, Judaism had become already an essential part of their identity by the time they underwent formal conversion.
Some had been married to a Jewish spouse already for years once they converted, but they were already living a Jewish life at home and in the synagogue and identifying with the Jewish community and people.
Others had met the love of their lives and decided before marriage that they wished to create a Jewish family and convert.
One grew up in Salt Lake City with a Mormon background and roots in America reaching back to the days of the pilgrims.
Another was born and raised in Texas as a Roman Catholic.
A third came from a non-religious home in the Midwest.
Each was attracted to Judaism because of our tradition’s emphasis on critical thinking and openness to questioning our faith tradition’s ideas concerning ultimate issues of life and death, faith and God. They loved our people’s commitment to family, our tradition’s emphasis on high ethical living and the value we place as a people in performing acts of loving-kindness, on caring for the most vulnerable, on social justice and tikun olam. They are inspired by our people’s great thinkers and activists – Rabbi Akiva, Rambam, Isaac Luria, Martin Buber, Rabbis Heschel, Kaplan, and Cook. They identify with our historic struggle with God, and our aversion to accepting by rote any religious dogma.
They spoke about their feeling fully accepted for who they uniquely are in our liberal Jewish community. They understood, appreciated and identified with our concerns about preserving Jewish particularism and advancing our universal aspirations, that we care for and take responsibility for the character of own Jewish people and the rights and dignity of the “other.”
As we reflected on the meaning of covenant as it manifested at Mt Sinai and throughout the writings of our sages, and expressed in the Book of Ruth, these Jews by-choice understood that at the core of our people’s covenant with God is love, and love, and love, and love, and love some more – and that true religion must bring people together and not tear them apart.
As I sat and listened to these moving personal stories, I was deeply moved and inspired. We broke into chevruta discussion groups of 3 and 4 people to reflect about the transformative and transcendent moments in our lives and about how those experiences changed us and moved us forward on our respective Jewish paths, I heard that these people loved having found a liberal Jewish community that embraces without judgment and with full acceptance who they are as men and women, LGBTQ and straight, the faithful and the atheist and agnostic, the young, middle years and old.
When we reconvened, I observed how very different Jewish identity is today as compared to a century ago, and how much more embracing it has become of the uniqueness of the individual, but also that today Jewish identity is not a given.
Whereas the immigrant generation of our parents, grandparents and great-grandparents felt in their kishkes that they were Jews, many liberal Jews today come to Jewish life not from the shtetls and the pale of European Jewish settlement, nor from tightly bonded Sephardic and Middle Eastern Jewish families and communities, but from outside the tradition altogether. Consequently, every Jew must make the choice to be and do Jewish, and that takes learning and active engagement with Jewish communal life.
The words of Ruth to her mother-in-law Naomi after the death of her husband and two sons, one of whom was married to Ruth, go to the heart of Jewish tradition: “Do not urge me to leave you or to return from following you. For where you go I will go, and where you lodge I will lodge. Your people shall be my people, and your God my God.’” (Ruth 1:16)
Ruth’s love and commitment to the devastated Naomi healed them both and clarified the nature of the covenant forged between God and Israel at Sinai and between each of us – that we are a people meant to love and embrace each other, to care for each other and about each other, and to create and nurture communities that are worthy to stand in God’s presence.
Note: I am grateful to my colleagues Rabbi Michelle Missaghieh and Rabbi Jocee Hudson who conceived of and promoted this Shavuot experience.
03 Friday Jun 2016
This past week the leaders of the Israeli and American Reform and Conservative movements and Women of the Wall met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Jewish Agency Director Natan Sharansky to emphasize how frustrated North American and Israeli non-Orthodox Jewry, including Women of the Wall, are with the delay in moving forward on constructing an egalitarian prayer space at the Southern Kotel Plaza following the January government agreement with all parties including the Chief Rabbi of the Wall that this would occur.
As the story below in the Forward indicates, the PM is committed to this plan, but the ultra-Orthodox members of his government want a renegotiation of the agreement they already signed only five months ago.
This is first and foremost a story about free and equal rights for Reform, Conservative, Women of the Wall, and non-Orthodox Jewry at the holiest site in Judaism. But it is more importantly a story about religious liberty in the state of Israel. The Muslim and Christian communities enjoy that freedom, but ironically we Jews do not. To date, all religious rights have been dominated by the ultra-Orthodox. The Orthodox has every right to observe Jewish tradition according to halacha and their interpretations, but they do not have the right in a democratic state to tell other Jews how to practice their Judaism.
The great strength of Jewish religious community in the United States is that each religious stream does what it wishes according to its interpretation of the tradition without government interference. It is not (yet) the case in Israel. And this is what the struggle at the Kotel is really all about.
Reform and Conservative Rabbis still do not have the right to marry and bury Jews in the Jewish state. Our religious streams receive no funds from the government, except for specific projects, as do the Orthodox to the tune of a billion shekels annually. The right of Israelis to marry civilly is also not given, and so hundreds of thousands of Israelis who do not wish to live as Orthodox Jews must leave the state to marry their beloved.
Many in the Knesset understand what is at stake, but they are by and large NOT in the ruling right-wing coalition, and so they do not have the numbers of Knesset members necessary to open Israeli democracy wider to accommodate the religious rights of all Jews there.
The Kotel agreement is symbolic and real at the same time. It is a message to the American Jewish community that we are one people that shares with Israel a strong personal and communal relationship to the people, land and state, and a spiritual and religious connection to our people’s holiest sites.
Prime Minister Netanyahu and JAFI Director Sharansky understand this, and they are to be commended for striving for years to bring about this agreement at the Kotel that would insure the rights of the non-orthodox communities to pray at our holiest site without interference from the ultra-Orthodox rabbis. Now is the time to move forward notwithstanding the threats from the Haredi community. Their political courage, will and understanding of the legitimate needs and desires of world Jewry hang in the balance.
See the Article in the Forward: “Benjamin Netanyahu Says He’ll Keep His Promise, Orders New Prayer Podium for Western Wall” http://forward.com/news/israel/341777/benjamin-netanyahu-says-hell-keep-his-promise-orders-new-prayer-podium-for/#ixzz4ATXvkhJD
The Israeli government will order a permanent bimah , the elevated platform on which a prayer leader stands, to be built in the southern section of the Western Wall holy site as a signal to American and Israeli non-Orthodox movements that it is serious about implementing its plan for an egalitarian prayer space there. The gesture comes at a time when American and Israeli non-Orthodox leaders are fuming over the plan, which was approved by a government cabinet in January, but has stalled amid ultra-Orthodox protest.
27 Friday May 2016
We Jews are an intense and nervous people. We feel our politics deeply, this year being no exception.
It’s safe to say, I think, that the vast majority of the American Jewish community has been rattled by the thought of Trump reaching the White House.
I’ve been asking myself for some time (I’ve posted two blogs on this theme in the last week alone, indicative of my anxiety), what does the Trump candidacy mean for us Jews?
First, the positive – yes, there’s a positive.
Not in some time have I sensed Jewish communal solidarity against Trump. From a Jewish values perspective, Trump represents the worst of our people’s values concerning justice, compassion, welcoming the stranger, and concern for the most vulnerable in our community. His is a dog eat dog world of ego and power, of immodesty and braggadocio. Yet, having said all this, it’s possible to feel a measure of gratitude to The Donald for his bringing most of us Republican and Democratic Jews together. And so, as Shabbat falls shortly, let us sing – Hineh mah tov u-ma nayim shevet achim gam yachad!
Now the bad news – In a recent Huffington Post article, it was revealed that American Nazis and the KKK regard Trump as their standard bearer, just as do some right wing Jews and many members of the ultra-Orthodox community.
I don’t know whether Trump is an anti-Semite. One might think that given his roots in New York, his years in real estate, his second home in Palm Beach, a converted daughter and a Jewish son-in-law, that we have nothing to worry about, that he loves the Jews. He said so! Yet, Trump brings up old anti-Semitic canards left and right, such as saying a few months ago to a room full of wealthy Republican Jews that they probably won’t like him because they’re used to buying candidates and he doesn’t need their money.
Then there’s Sheldon Adelson who plopped down $100 million for Trump’s campaign (I guess he needs the money now!) after deciding that Trump will be a right-wing advocate for Israel like himself, and there are also many members of the Republican Jewish Coalition who prefer Trump over Hillary.
I don’t believe that history necessarily repeats itself so much as themes reverberate that are disturbing to the Jewish memory of the rise of Nazism in the 1930s. Times are different. We have a state of Israel today and we aren’t victims nor vulnerable as we were in Germany eighty years ago.
Yet, Trump’s call to indiscriminately bar all Muslims from our country, calling Mexicans rapists and criminals, sending 11 million non-documented Hispanic immigrants out of the country, his uber-testosterone-locker-room misogyny and sexism, his condescension to the disabled, to prisoners of war, and his cavalier and dismissive reductionist assaults on the accomplishments and lives of his opponents calling them Pocahontas, Lyin’ Ted, passive Zeb, little Mario, crazy Bernie, and crooked Hillary, would be ridiculous if it weren’t so insulting and disturbing.
What does Trump’s candidacy mean relative to the state of Israel? He said that he will be a neutral deal maker between Israel and the Palestinians because, after all, he’s a businessman and makes the best deals. Of course, he doesn’t understand the complexities of the Middle East, its history and challenges, being the Grand Marshal of New York’s Israel Day parade notwithstanding.
The Clintons, on the other hand, have proven themselves to be great friends of the people and state of Israel. In critical biographies of Hillary and in her most recent memoir “Hard Choices,” it’s clear that she knows Israel’s leaders well, considers them friends, respects, understands and supports the state of Israel as few American leaders can claim to do.
A nechemta (a word of comfort) – If history is a guide, Hillary will earn upwards of 80 per cent of the Jewish vote in November, and in that sense the election will be good for American Jews, assuming she wins, which I expect. Additionally, our overwhelming support for Hillary Clinton could isolate Adelson and the Republican Jewish Coalition who have revealed themselves to be out of step with the dominant Jewish values held by American Jews and with the vast majority of the American Jewish community.
* The Jewish vote has gone with the Democratic party in all presidential elections in the past 92 years by significant majorities: 1924 (51/29), 1928 (72/28), 1932 (82/18), 1936 (85/13), 1940 (90/10), 1944(90/10), 1948 (75/10), 1952 (64/36), 1956 (60/40), 1960 (82/18), 1964 (90/10), 1968 (81/17), 1972 (65/35), 1976 (71/27), 1980 (45/39), 1984 (67/31), 1988 (64/35), 1992 (80/11), 1996 (78/16), 2000 (79/19), 2004 (76/24), 2008 (78/22), 2012 (69/30)
Note: The views I have expressed here are my own and do not represent the views of my synagogue or any other organization.
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