4 Different, Entertaining, and Frightening Pieces on Trump (i.e. Drumpf)

06 Sunday Mar 2016

Posted by in American Politics and Life, Ethics

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Dear Readers:

You’ve no doubt been reading and watching the spectacle that is Donald Trump and his impact in the primaries.

You may have already had your fill – for me, I’m endlessly curious!

Regardless, here are four pieces that I’ve watched/read in the last week that address different sides of this phenomenon.

Watch John Oliver (if you haven’t already) for sheer entertainment coupled with sobriety. Either watch before you read the other items in order to put you in a good mood, or after you’ve read the other three to lift your spirits – or both!

The Lakoff piece is an important analysis by one of the keep observers of the American scene about who Trump appeals to and why.

Maureen Dowd is classic Maureen Dowd.

Leonard Pitts is also important, but in a slightly different way.

Only God knows where this is all going. I haven’t a clue!

Cheers?!

Drumpf – John Oliver – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnpO_RTSNmQ

Why Trump? – Huffington Post –  George Lakoff, The Huffington Post – http://www.huffingtonpost.com/george-lakoff/why-trump_1_b_9372450.html

The GOP’s destruction of its own party- Leonard Pitts Jr March 4, 2016 4:39 PM , Miami Herald – http://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/leonard-pitts-jr/article64076442.html

Chickens, Home to Roost  Maureen Dowd, New York Times‎ – March 4, 2016 – http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/06/opinion/sunday/chickens-home-to-roost.html?_r=0

 

These are fighting words -Reform Jews Are in for More Humiliation at the Israeli Government’s Hands – Haaretz

04 Friday Mar 2016

Posted by in American Jewish Life, Ethics, Israel/Zionism, Jewish History, Jewish Identity, Women's Rights

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I usually don’t print entire articles from other news sources in this blog, but this piece from Haaretz today is important for the Reform and Conservative movements in America and Israel to read. Unless you subscribe to Haaretz, you won’t see it. I encourage everyone to subscribe. Haaretz is Israel’s equivalent of the New York Times.

Secondly, please see my blog from Israel last week in which I review the experience of being part of a collective of nearly 300 Reform Rabbis from around the world who gathered at 7:00 am on Thursday morning for Shacharit and Torah reading at the new egalitarian prayer space at the Southern Kotel Plaza that the Israeli government approved several weeks ago.

Our leaders, Anat Hoffman (Chair of Women of the Wall and Executive Director of the Reform movement’s Israel Religious Action Center), Rabbi Gilad Kariv (Executive Director of the Israel Movement for Progressive Judaism) and Rabbi Rick Jacobs (President of the Union for Reform Judaism) were right when each urged us immediately after our service to keep the pressure on the Israeli government to fulfill its commitment to build this new space lest the reactionary religious and political forces in Israel, the right-wing and ultra-Orthodox political parties have their way and scuttle this historic agreement.

This piece in Haaretz today is demonstrable proof that they have already begun to battle the government’s agreement. We American Zionists who care deeply about Israel as a Jewish and democratic state must stand against them and insist on the rights of all Jews to pray as they wish at the holiest site in Judaism, and to abide by the principles of democracy that govern the Jewish state.

Reform Jews Are in for More Humiliation at the Israeli Government’s Hands

Unless the movement gains some influence in the Knesset, liberal Jews will never dislodge the ultra-Orthodox hegemony in Jerusalem.

By Anshel Pfeffer Mar 04, 2016 – Haaretz Correspondent

Last Shabbat was a rare moment of Israeli bliss for the Reform movement’s Central Conference of American Rabbis. In Israel for their annual convention, they spent the weekend in Tel Aviv, being feted in synagogues, meeting local dignitaries and attending a special morning service at the city’s museum. Pumped by the feeling of suddenly being part of the Israeli consensus, some of them even ran the Tel Aviv marathon.

The oldest mistake in Israeli politics – one made so often by non-Israelis and Israelis alike – is to think that the right-on progressive vibe of Tel Aviv reflects in any way the rest of Israel. But the U.S. Reform leadership has been here enough times not to make that mistake. Its weekend on the coast was welcome respite and looks great in a gushing press release, but the real question remains what happens in Jerusalem.

This time around, some of the leaders at least were lulled into thinking there may actually be a change afoot up in the Judean Hills. For the first time, their visit to the capital also included a festive prayer at the foot of the Western Wall – and there were no ultra-Orthodox protesters on hand to jostle female rabbis wearing tallitot and rainbow-colored kippot. For this visit came weeks after the eagerly anticipated agreement to establish a new progressive, egalitarian and mixed-gender prayer space at the southern end of the Kotel, separated from the Western Wall plaza and its ultra-Orthodox (or Haredi) hegemony.

But even if that morning made them feel like the paratroopers liberating the Western Wall in the Six-Day War, there was still a battle awaiting them in West Jerusalem. Their leaders had greeted the agreement as “historic” and, at last, a formal Israeli recognition of non-Orthodox Judaism. But the forces arrayed against them were formidable. They should have realized what they were up against when, three weeks earlier, Prime Minister and Likud chairman Benjamin Netanyahu hadn’t reprimanded his own party’s tourism minister, Yariv Levin, for describing Reform Jewry as “a waning world” and accusing them of responsibility for assimilation and the disappearance of American Jewry.

Netanyahu made do with an anodyne statement that Reform Jews “are part and parcel of the Jewish people.” Netanyahu, of course, received the rabbis cordially in his office but, tellingly, his press officers failed to release any photographs or press releases regarding the meeting.

Meanwhile, the rabbis and ultra-Orthodox politicians that Netanyahu relies upon to maintain his narrow, 61-member coalition afloat were ramping up the rhetoric on a daily basis. The Reform movement was accused of ruining Judaism, of selling out its values and of ultimately not being Jewish but “idolators” – as Rabbi David Yosef, a member of the Shas Council of Torah Sages, said this week.

When the prayer space deal was signed at the end of January, the assumption was that the ultra-Orthodox parties would strenuously object but not turn this into a coalition-busting issue. After all, the deal had left their domination of the main Kotel area – which had been contested for years by the Women of the Wall group – intact.

But on Thursday, Religious Services Minister David Azoulay (Shas) told a gathering of rabbis that as far as he is concerned, the matter is yehareg ve’al ya’avor – to be killed rather than transgress, the halakhic definition of a commandment that a Jew must be prepared to die for (usually reserved only for the sins of murder, idolatry and adultery/incest). Azoulay may have gone farther rhetorically than his political and religious masters wanted, but the signal was clear: Netanyahu will have to mollify them.

Some time in the next few days or weeks, rabbis and politicians will gather in the Prime Minister’s Office. The Reform movement will not be represented there. The Western Wall agreement will be amended so that the new prayer area will be defined as some general heritage enclosure for public use, with no formal religious or spiritual connotations. Gone will be any recognition of non-Orthodox streams of Judaism. The Haredim will be able to tell their public that they have seen off the Reform menace. In phone calls to the United States, ministers will try to explain to the Reform leaders that nothing has really changed and assure them that the new section of the Wall will still be at their disposal. It is still a “historic” achievement, they will say.

If they try to object, they will find very few allies. At most, a handful of Meretz and Zionist Union MKs will put out a weak chorus of protest, probably no more than a few posts on Facebook. The leaders of the center-left parties – Isaac Herzog, Yair Lapid and Moshe Kahlon – will remain silent. All of them know that to have any hope of replacing Netanyahu in the foreseeable future, they will need at least one of the ultra-Orthodox parties in their coalition, and there are simply no votes in supporting the Reform struggle to make such a gesture worthwhile.

The Reform leaders will be facing a difficult dilemma. Either accept the downgrading of “their” Western Wall, hand the ultra-Orthodox yet another victory and continue convincing themselves and their members that they can still turn the new site into a bastion of Jewish enlightenment in the heart of Jerusalem. Or reject the new formulation, thus opening up a formal breach between them and the Israeli government, and admit that for all their declarations of a “historic” achievement recently, they are as powerless as ever in Israel.

It doesn’t matter how many times the Reform movement has been humiliated by Israeli politicians: The frustration of the leaders of the largest Jewish movement in the United States remains as bitter as ever. “How do you ask Jews around the world to support Israel politically, economically, socially … and at the same time you have these ministers who say to our people, ‘You’re not really Jewish’ or ‘You don’t have a place here in Israel’? That incongruity is a real problem for us,” the exasperated Rabbi Steven Fox, the chief executive of the Central Conference of American Rabbis, told The Associated Press.

He knows the answer though. You continue doing so because the only alternative is to sever ties with Israel, its government and most of its society – who, despite decades of effort, have yet to warm to non-Orthodox Judaism. Outside of Tel Aviv, that is.

There are those whispering in Netanyahu’s ear that, actually, the Reform movement isn’t such a great lobbyist in Washington, either. Just look whose children are joining anti-Israeli groups like J Street, they say. They won’t stay loyal Jews anyway, much better to invest in those you can trust, like evangelical Christians. Netanyahu is a much more cautious politician than he’s given credit for; he won’t burn bridges, but he certainly won’t go out on a limb either. Ultimately, he will always give the ultra-Orthodox what they ask for.

So, after their all-too-brief “historic” moment, the political reality for the Reform movement is about to reassert itself in Israel. When Winston Churchill said in 1944 that the Vatican would object to the Soviet Union’s plans to dominate Roman Catholic Poland, Joseph Stalin retorted, “The Pope! How many divisions has he got?” The Reform movement, whatever influence it may have in the United States, has no fingers in the Knesset. Unless that changes, it will have no choice but to come back again and again for more humiliation in Jerusalem.

 

The Orchard of Abraham’s Children – Towards the Creation of a Shared Society

29 Monday Feb 2016

Posted by in Ethics, Israel and Palestine, Israel/Zionism, Jewish History, Jewish-Islamic Relations, Stories

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There are at least three nursery schools in that have Jewish and Muslim children enrolled together. One is in Jaffa, a mixed Arab-Jewish town, alongside Tel Aviv.

One day this past week, I went to visit along with 30 American and Canadian Reform Rabbis as part of our CCAR annual meeting in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. We gathered in the school’s backyard garden and playground near a chicken coop with very raucous roosters. The school is aptly called “The Orchard of Abraham’s Children.”

Ihab Balha is the school manager, and he greeted us warmly. He’s in his early 40s, is tall with cascading long black-gray hair framing his handsome olive-colored face. He wore the long white robe of a Sufi mystic. He speaks beautiful Hebrew and he told us his unusual story about how this school came to be created.

Ihab grew up in the house in which the school welcomes the children each day. He is one of four or five children of a loving Palestinian Arab Muslim family. However, his father’s love only went so far. He hated Jews with an uncommon passion, and he taught his children to hate Jews as well.

When Ihab was 16, he attempted to fire-bomb a synagogue. When he was 20, he encountered Jews for the first time with a group of Palestinian friends. Each side took the opportunity to release their pent-up venom and rage toward the other. Something strange happened, however, in the verbal assaults. Ihab and the others (Jews and Arabs both) wanted more opportunities to be heard and to listen. Soon, they realized that their bigotry was not rationally based, that there was humanity in the other and that they shared far more than they had ever imagined. That realization launched them into a dialogue series that transformed them.

Ihab didn’t initially confide with his parents that he was participating in these conversations nor that his attitudes about Jews were changing. At long last he told his parents, but there was a serious fall-out with his father. They did not speak nor see one another for the next five years, a painful time for the entire family. For comfort and wisdom, Ihab turned to Islam and the Quran, and he became a Sufi mystic.

After the 2nd Intifada in 2002, Ihab attended a discussion between an Imam and a Rabbi, both of whom had lost children because of the violence. In 2006, Ihab helped to organize a conference of Muslims and Jews that was attended by 5000 Palestinian Arabs and Israeli Jews at Latrun on the road between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, the site of an historic battle in the War of Independence. Around that time, Ihab reconciled with his parents. In 2008, his family made pilgrimage to Mecca.

At the age of 35, Ihab met and fell madly in love with Ora, an Israeli Jewish woman. They married two days after they met, and he struggled with how to tell his parents. Because Jaffa is a small town and his family is well known, everyone knew that he had married but no one knew who was his bride.

Ihab and Ora decided to introduce her to the family without revealing that they were, in truth, married. He brought her home along with a group of Jewish and Palestinian Arab “friends,” the first time Jews had ever set foot in the Balha home. Ihab’s father told Ora and the other Jews how he hated and resented Jews who he believed had stolen so much from the Palestinians during the 1948 War. He did like Ora – a lot.

His parents kept asking Ihab why they had not yet met his bride and when that would happen. At last, when cousins came to visit from Holland, using them as a buffer, one of the cousins told his parents: “You have met Ihab’s wife. She is  there (pointing at Ora)!”

Ihab’s father exploded: “You Jews have stolen everything from us, and now you steal from me my son!?”

Ora said, “I love your son.”

Ora was soon pregnant with their first child, and she and Ihab decided that they wanted to raise their son with Israeli Jews and Palestinian Muslim Arabs. They envisioned starting a nursery school but needed a building. Ihab’s parents volunteered their house. Today, the school has 200 children who come every day . They call the school “The Orchard Of Abraham’s Children.” Ora is the Director and Ihab is the Manager. Ihab’s father visits the kids each day and is a loving “grandfather” to them all, Arab and Jew.

This story is remarkable in so many ways, most especially because it shows the transformation that can be experienced by enemies, and about what happens when we listen and seek to understand the “other.” It’s about learning the other’s narrative, and how empathy and compassion are critical in the building of friendship, community and a shared society.

After Ihab shared his remarkable story, I said to him: “Ihab – Your have experienced  great pain!”

“Yes,” he said, “but also great joy!”

The Best of Israeli Reform

27 Saturday Feb 2016

Posted by in Holidays, Israel/Zionism, Jewish Identity, Musings about God/Faith/Religious life, Social Justice, Women's Rights

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The Israeli Reform movement has come a long way these last 25 years. Thirty percent of all Israelis now have a positive impression of the Reform movement, whereas a generation ago no one knew it even existed. We’ve risen in the Israeli public’s esteem because our rabbis and congregations are liberal, Jewish, open-minded, loving, socially progressive, responsive to people’s personal, spiritual and social needs, and they offer a way for Israelis to be Jewish in a movement that is not orthodox that’s positive, appealing, relevant, and meaningful.

Last Shabbat I joined with 20 American Reform rabbis in a short twenty-minute bus ride to Kehilat Kodesh v’Hol in Holon for Kabbalat Shabbat services and a pot-luck community dinner. Holon is just south of Tel Aviv. Other rabbis traveled to Reform synagogue communities in Haifa, Zichron Ya’acov, Kiryat Tivon, Caesaria, Netanya, Even Yehuda, Ramat Hasharon, Tel Aviv, Gezer, Gadera, and Nahal Oz. There are now 45 congregations spread strategically throughout Israel from Haifa in the north to Sderot in the south.

The name “Kodesh v’Hol” has a double meaning. Hol means “sand” (Holon is near the beach) and it means “secular.” Holon is a middle-class secular city of 190,000 Israelis. The congregation’s young rabbi is smart, warmhearted, talented, and charismatic. Rabbi Galit Cohen-Kedem, the mother three (her third child was born three weeks ago) who was ordained by the Hebrew Union College in Jerusalem a year and a half ago, began the community as a student in 2009. She explained that she and her congregants want to bring holiness to a highly secular community; hence, Kodesh v’Hol.

I ought to mention, lest I be accused of un-ascribed bias, that my synagogue, Temple Israel of Hollywood, enjoys a sister-synagogue relationship with Kodesh v’Hol. However, even if I didn’t already feel a warm spot in my heart for Galit and this community, after last evening I would be immensely excited about what is happening there. They celebrate Shabbat every other week. There are educational programs for families and children. They are sponsoring several families on the welfare rolls who are not part of the congregation, and provide food and support for those in financial distress. And, they have created a public elementary school that emphasizes all subjects from a liberal Jewish perspective that is Israeli and Jewish.

Kodesh v’Hol rents space for services in a community center for seniors during the week. Simply furnished with two large rooms and a back yard where the kids played, the service was in one room that accommodated 75 people and the pot-luck dinner was in the other. We lit candles and parents and their small children gathered beneath a large talit as the community sang the Priestly Benediction. HUC Rabbinic student Benny Minich, originally from Crimea and now an Israeli, led the music. Before we sang Kiddush, Galit invited forward a new oleh from St. Petersberg, Russia, to sing. Constantine is a trained opera singer. Who would have thought that there in Holon we’d be treated to kiddush led by a Russian trained tenor!?

I spoke with one of two co-chairs of the community, Heidi Preis, a young mother of four in her early to mid-30s, and a Sociology PhD candidate at Tel Aviv University who is writing her doctoral dissertation on women and the birth experience as well as the experience of prostitutes working in Tel Aviv. Where Heidi had the time to do all this and be a co-chair of this community I haven’t a clue. But she is the caliber of the people who are building this community; socially conscious, sophisticated, thoughtful, openhearted, smart, and community centered.

We asked some of the members what they had found in this new congregation that was so appealing. Heidi’s mother said that though she had been a member of a modern orthodox synagogue near Jerusalem for most of her adult life, she fell in love with Galit and moved over to this community. The positive and joyful energy there was palpable.

As we walked back to the bus to return to Tel Aviv, we rabbis were abuzz with excitement about this community and its future. No one doubted that Kodesh v’Hol would, within only a few short years, have its own building (it receives no money from the government as do Israeli Orthodox communities for their synagogues and schools) and would grow dramatically as more and more Israelis discover it and make it their home away from home.

This morning the entire conference celebrated Shabbat at the Tel Aviv Art Museum. Rabbi Judy Schindler (the daughter of the late Rabbi Alexander Schindler, the former President of America’s Reform movement) was our prayer leader along with HUC-Jerusalem Cantorial Student and composer Shani Ben Or, and composer, keyboardist and guitarist Boaz Dorot, as well as a violist and a percussionist. The music was beautiful and engaging, from the very best of Israeli and American composers and song writers as well as Yemenite, Libyan, Bulgarian, and classical Israeli music, plus a new nigun composed by Shani and Boaz especially for this occasion. Did I say that Shani sings like an angel and that she intends to become the first cantor-rabbi ordained in Israel by the Hebrew Union College (there are 100 Israeli born rabbis serving the Reform movement here now with 10 being ordained annually. All have positions serving the Israeli community!).

There’s so much that can break and deaden the heart here, but there’s also so much to warm the heart and expand the soul. It was the latter that transported me on this Shabbat and I’m grateful to our sister Reform movement in Israel, the Israel Movement for Progressive Judaism, and its inspired rabbis and lay Israeli leadership. It is now an Israeli movement, and it is catching fire.

The Israeli government’s agreement to create an egalitarian and pluralistic prayer space under Robinson’s Arch in the Southern Kotel Plaza that is equal in size to the Northern Kotel Plaza (the traditional Western Wall site) but controlled by Women of the Wall and the Reform and Conservative movements (see my earlier blog) all, taken together, suggest that a tipping point has been reached for liberal Judaism in Israel.

The harsh incitement coming out of the ultra-Orthodox community and aimed directly at Reform Judaism suggests that, indeed, we now represent an important alternative that is meaningful, enriching and affirmative for Jewish identity and observance in the state of Israel threatens Orthodox hegemony over the life of all Israelis. We American Jews and all Jews in the Diaspora ought to take pride in what is taking place, and be as supportive as we can be.

“Two States of the Jewish People”

26 Friday Feb 2016

Posted by in American Jewish Life, Ethics, Israel and Palestine, Israel/Zionism, Jewish History, Jewish Identity, Social Justice, Uncategorized, Women's Rights

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Our 330 Israeli, American, Canadian, and European Reform colleagues of the Central Conference of American Rabbis after Shabbat will conclude a week of meetings in Israel. We’ve spent time in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv and have traveled far and wide around the country.

It’s increasingly my feeling that there are at least two “states of Israel” here: the “state of Jerusalem,” an inspiring, ancient and modern mess dominated by right-wing ultra-Orthodox and settlers movement Jews who want to establish a new Jewish kingdom to replace the democratic Jewish state of Israel to be  controlled by them, the most reactionary elements in Israeli society today.

The other “state of Israel” is the “State of Tel Aviv” composed of politically middle-left Israelis, propelled and sustained by the liberal spirit of democracy, openness, and inclusivity where differences between people and cultures are celebrated, where Palestinian citizens of Israel have equal rights, where LGBT Jews are accepted, where women are treated with respect and dignity, where Reform and secular Jews live and thrive as envisioned by Israel’s Declaration of Independence, and where the spirit of the nations also is embraced.

The common concerns of most Israeli Jews and Israeli Palestinians in both “states of Israel” are security on the one hand and social justice on the other.

The income gap has widened and the numbers in poverty are growing. Though there have been some gains since the 2011 social justice movement that brought hundreds of thousands of young and middle class Israelis to camp out in tents on Rhov Rothschild in Tel Aviv, the cost of living has risen and most Israelis are working harder and longer for less.

Israelis in the middle-left respect Zionist Union opposition leader Isaac Herzog as a decent and honest man, but believe that he will be successfully challenged for leadership in the next Zionist Union election. His proposal to separate Palestinians from Israelis while retaining the hope of a two-state solution reflects the Zionist Union’s recognition that security is the number one issue on Israeli minds. However, even those who like Herzog wonder where his moral voice is. Why, they ask, is he not talking about Palestinian suffering and only about Jewish suffering? Where is the universal thrust in his liberal Zionism? Why is he not calling for immediate negotiations for a two-state end of all claims resolution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict as a matter of Israeli enlightened self-interest and as a moral necessity?

I spent a day and a half with colleagues visiting a High School in Lod that is dramatically improving educational achievement and bringing hope to more than 1000 Palestinian Muslim high school students. We visited the Arab Jewish Community Center in Jaffa that brings together Israeli Palestinians and Israeli Jews to learn about each other. It has numerous programs to assist unemployed Palestinian Arab women, and fights against the humiliation that comes with Arab security profiling. There are language courses in Hebrew and Arabic, choirs of Arab and Jewish children singing their hearts out, and classes teaching the Jewish and Arab narratives of the conflict. We visited the only Arab-Jewish preschool in the country located in Jaffa and created and led by a married Palestinian Sufi-Jewish couple in which 200 two-five year old children and their families learn together and develop community and friendship. We visited in Modin with leaders of the Reform movement who have formed bridges all over the country between Arabs and Jews.

Every time I visit Israel my hope in this grand experiment and miracle of the Jewish people is restored and strengthened. We hear so much bad news about what’s happening here in the media, and we who passionately support the peace movement and the two-state solution can become frustrated by the deterioration of conditions. In despair, many think to throw up their hands and turn away. But, there’s an expression – “B’Yisrael y’ush lo optsia – In Israel, despair is not an option.”

Not only that, but there’s still so much good here being done by so many people, causes, NGOs, Reform synagogues, foundations, and the Israel Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism that we need only to stay focused and strong for Israel’s sake.

To those who believe that Israel is a “failed experiment,” as I heard by one prominent and respected Jew in the pages of Tikkun this past week, I have this to say – you are tragically wrong. Israel is and will be our people’s greatest HOPE.

330 Reform Rabbis pray at the Southern Kotel Plaza

25 Thursday Feb 2016

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

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When 330 Reform Rabbis met this morning at 7 AM to pray Shacharit and read Torah at the Southern Kotel Plaza, it was a moment none of us is likely ever to forget. This was the first major service at this new pluralistic and egalitarian site since the Israeli government passed a law calling for the development of a new prayer space.

After the service, Anat Hoffman, Chair of the Women of the Wall, noted that there are seven different species of plants growing through the cracks in the stones, and we liberal Jews are now the eighth.

We men and women stood together at the Kotel for the first time in my living memory, all wearing kippot, tallitot and some donning t’filin on a  temporary platform over the ancient toppled stones of the Temple that was destroyed by Rome two thousand years ago. Below us as well was the original Roman street. As we prayed, we could hear the chirping of birds as they flew through the plants growing out of the Wall. The sun was shining brightly and my colleague Rabbi Zach Shapiro told a medieval midrash written in the form of Aesop’s fables but with Biblical and Talmudic teachings.

A mouse wished to marry the sun, but as he sought to propose, a cloud came between him and sun; so the mouse sought to propose to the cloud, but the wind drove the cloud away; so the mouse sought to propose to the wind, but a wall came between the mouse and the wind; so, the mouse proposed to the wall.

Here we stood before our people’s ancient Wall, united as a people with God as if in a marriage, praying in an egalitarian minyan, men and women singing out loud together. One of our Israeli women Reform rabbis of Congregation Har El in Jerusalem chanted melodiously from this week’s Torah portion, Ki Tisa.

This Knesset’s Kotel legislation and our service represent an historic shift in the state of Israel. For the first time, the Israeli government recognized the legitimacy of religious pluralism. No longer will the ultra-Orthodox community control prayer services at the Southern Kotel for liberal Jews wishing to pray as we wish.

Rabbi Rick Jacobs, the President of the Union for Reform Judaism, spoke about the meaning of this historic shift and reminded us that the rabbis of the Talmud blamed the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem in 70 CE on sinat chinam, baseless hatred between Jews. The ruins of Temple laying beneath us exactly as they fell 2000 years ago are a constant reminder of the importance of ahavat Yisrael, love for the people of Israel.

Rabbi Jacobs said that we Reform and Conservative Jews, Women of the Wall and Jews from North American Federations are “not against anything.” We are “for Klal Yisrael (the whole community of Israel).” We respect the Orthodox right to pray at the Northern Kotel Plaza the way they wish, and we insist on the right to pray as we liberal Jews wish at the Southern Kotel Plaza.

Rabbi Gilad Kariv, the Executive Director of the Israel Movement for Progressive Judaism, told us that when the new area will be completed it will occupy 900 square meters, equivalent in size to the prayer space of the Northern Kotel Plaza. When entering the upper plaza there will be clear sight lines of this Northern Plaza. He noted, as well, that the Kotel is not just a holy site but a national site. Israeli soldiers will be inducted into the IDF here and new immigrants will be given citizenship here, and men and women will stand together before now forbidden by the Chief Rabbinate of the Wall.

We hope that modern Orthodox families will wish to hold services here according to their custom.

Sadly, already there is a strong, angry and negative reaction from the ultra-Orthodox community. More than 500 posters have been put up earlier this week in Meah Shearim and other ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods that include the following words:

“Zaakat G’dolei Yisrael – We are shamed. Disgrace has covered our faces. Strangers have come into My Temple, Beit Adonai. The cry of the great rabbis of our time is that the Western Wall is to be desecrated and trampled upon. The Reform movement intends to sink its claws in the Wall of Jerusalem…We must hurry and fight the Lord’s battle against this hemlock and wormwood movement that has brought the fall of many and taken a huge, deathly toll. This monster is worse than all the secular people we know. In their actions they bring chaos into the world and increase the power of Satan, God forbid…We must unite as an un-breachable wall against our arch enemies that want to enter the Reforms into all areas of religion.The Reform shall shatter us to splinters and split us into factions. An abomination, unwanted by all, it shall be burnt in fire and consumed outside our camp and not enter the Holiness.”

We will not be deterred, cowed or intimidated. Tragically, these ultra-Orthodox Jews are engaged in committing the same sin of sinat chinam (baseless hatred towards fellow Jews) that brought about the destruction of the Temple. Theirs has become a world of hate. Ours is a world of inclusivity and love. Their response is merely an indication of how significant is this government position and the success of Reform and Conservative Judaism in Israel today.

Amen! Sela!

Charedi Knesset member’s slandering of Reform Jews ignites backlash from fellow members

25 Thursday Feb 2016

Posted by in Israel/Zionism, Jewish Identity, Uncategorized

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Hareidi MK Israel Eichler’s comparison of Reform Jews to mentally ill patients diminishes not only Reform Judaism but all who suffer mental illness and who struggle with disabilities of all kinds.

The best response is to quote from Knesset members representing eight different political parties who addressed today 330 Reform Rabbis representing 1.7 million Jews world wide at a special meeting of the Israeli-Diaspora Knesset Committee.

MK Isaac Herzog (Zionist Union and leader of the opposition): “I congratulate all of you for the recent decisions on the Kotel to create an egalitarian and pluralistic prayer space and the Supreme Court decision giving rights to Reform and Conservative converts to use state sponsored mikvaot. The decisions of the Israeli government and the High Court of Justice are not acts of kindness. They are based in Jewish responsibility and democratic principles, which is what the state of Israel is meant to advocate. Religion in the state cannot be monopolized by the ultra-Orthodox. You in the Reform movement are our partners and will always be our partners.”

MK Tamar Zandburg (Labor): “Those who are a provocation are those who prevent religious freedom, not those who demand it!”

MK Tzipi Livni (Tenua): “There is an excitement today because you Reform Rabbis have come to the Knesset. Judaism is about values, about being inclusive and not being closed by hatred. We are one Jewish world family. Every Jew must be made to feel at home in the state of Israel because Israel belongs to the entire Jewish people.”

MK Amir Kohana (Likud): “A Jewish state should not be halachic. We cannot do to others what has been done to us. We should not slander each other. We need more respectful discussion. Israel is the home for all the Jewish people.”

MK Rachel Azariah (Kulanu): “Every day all the tribes of Israel awake each morning hoping that another will disappear; but no one will disappear. We’re all here. Our task is to create a country where everyone has a place around the table.”

MK Dov Khanin (Arab List): “One of the great struggles in the state of Israel today is the struggle for democracy, which is under serious threat. We need to stop the censorship which is contrary to the foundations of the state.”

MK Michal Biran (Labor): “We are partners. We share the same Jewish and Zionist values. Our democracy must fight against racism, discrimination and bigotry.”

MK Nachman Shai (Labor): “The Hareidi MKs don’t understand democracy.”

MK Michal Michaeli (Meretz): “Judaism isn’t just for people dressed in black. People who call you names don’t understand Judaism or democracy. You are partners in our struggle.”

MK Michael Oren (Kulanu): “Zionism is faith in the nation state of the Jewish people. We are committed to implementing the government’s agreement at the Kotel.”

Zohir Balul (Zionist Union): “As the only Arab MK in a Zionist party, I want to say that you [Jews] deserve a nation state and the Palestinians too deserve a state. How is it possible that Jews can recognize that they suffer and that the Palestinians do not? I cannot deny the pain of a Jewish mother or the pain of a Palestinian mother. Do not overlook the universal values we share.”

MK Yair Lapid (Yesh Atid): “Jewish pluralism means that there are various ways to explore our souls and to be on the journey of being a Jew. We are part of you and we bless you.”

It should be noted that no Orthodox or right wing member of the Knesset attended this committee meeting nor addressed us.

Rabbi Gilad Kariv, the President of the Israel Movement for Progressive Judaism, made an important point in telling the story of the funeral of Richard Lakin who was killed in a knife-attack by a Palestinian terrorist. Rabbi Gilad officiated at the funeral in a Hareidi cemetery. Though Richard was a Reform Jew and a member of Kol Hanishama synagogue in Jerusalem, he was lowered into the grave by Hareidi Jews.

This is what ought to be the relationship between our different streams, not that articulated by MK Israel Eichler (United Torah Judaism).

At the conclusion of the Committee meeting, the 330 Reform Rabbis and the members of the Knesset all stood and sang Hatikvah. It was a very moving and powerful statement of solidarity with the Jewish democratic state of Israel.

 

Is the Two-State Solution Viable? 330 Reform Rabbis at the CCAR Conference in Jerusalem

23 Tuesday Feb 2016

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

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I had the privilege today of introducing two programs at the CCAR Conference in Jerusalem that convened 330 Reform Rabbis from Israel, the United States and Canada, Europe, Australia, and South Africa. Both sessions addressed the issue of the viability of the two-state solution.

The first was moderated by Dr. Reuven Hazan, the head of the Political Science Department at the Hebrew University, and included MK Hilik Bar, the Secretary General of the Labor Party and Deputy Speaker of the Knesset, and Elias Zananiri, the Vice Chairman of the PLO Committee for Interaction with Israel Society.

The second featured MK Benny Begin, a geologist and member of the Knesset (Likud) and the son of the late Prime Minister Menachem Begin.

I framed the program with these words:

No issue divides the Jewish people as much as the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. As tensions flare in this infantifada (as it is called with knife wielding Palestinian children attacking innocent Israelis) and hope seems dim for any kind of progress or negotiations, the Labor Party lead by Isaac Herzog decided in the last couple of weeks that it was officially parting with the two-state solution in the near term. Instead, MK Herzog recommended that Israel build a security fence that separates Palestinians from Israelis in Jerusalem and elsewhere.

This decision is a challenge to Labor MK Hilik Bar’s outline ,once supported by Herzog, for a final status, ‘end of all claims’ agreement between Israel and the Palestinians resulting in a two states for two peoples resolution of the conflict.

This proposal resulted from MK Bar’s two years as the Chair of the Knesset Caucus to Resolve the Arab-Israeli Conflict (otherwise known as “Two States Caucus”). Bar denied that Herzog had given up on a two-state solution and that his proposal to build the fence was purely a security measure to stop young Palestinians from attacking Israelis.

Though the Zionist Union still supports a two-state solution, the Palestinian Authority says it is too late and that it would refuse to sit down with any Israeli leaders without pre-conditions and without an outside mediator. However, serious Israeli and American Jewish critics of the Palestinians argue that on at least two occasions in the past fifteen years, the Clinton-Barak-Arafat Camp David negotiations in 2000 and the secret 36 meetings between former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas in 2007. Yassir Arafat backed out of the Camp David talks and Abbas backed out of his negotiations with Olmert saying that the gaps between Israel and the Palestinians were still too wide.

These critics claim that the Palestinians were never serious about an end of conflict agreement. All the while settlements continue to expand and new settlements dot the entirety of the West Bank. Jewish neighborhoods now surround the city. Taken together the establishment of a contiguous Palestinian state is increasingly more difficult to effect.

Israeli President Reuven Rivlin rejects a two state solution and instead has suggested a confederation of two states, Israel and Palestine, with two governments, two constitutions, and all security overseen by the IDF extending from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.

The questions before our speakers are these:

Is it too late for a two-state solution? Is a two-state solution still viable and the preferable option? Is there an alternative to a two-state solution? What happens to Israel’s democracy and Jewish character if the two-state solution does not come about in the near future or down the road?

The first panel of speakers all agreed that there is no solution other than a two-state solution because Israel will either cease t be  a democracy or it will cease to be a Jewish state.

The Palestinian representative claimed to want a state of Palestine living securely alongside Israel.

MK Begin argued that the Palestinian leadership can never and will never accept the legitimacy of the Jewish state of Israel in Eretz Yisrael, and that a two-state solution would be an existential threat.

The speakers represented the variety of opinion in Israel itself and among the 330 rabbis present. The CCAR affirms that a two state solution is the only way for Israel to preserve its democracy and its Jewish character.

The Two-State Solution is Not Yet Dead!

15 Monday Feb 2016

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

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Thomas Friedman’s NY Times op-ed (Feb 10 – link below) expresses his exasperation with Israel and the Palestinians and his conclusion that the two-state solution is dead. His piece stimulated a lot of debate and conversation this past week in American Jewish pro-Israel circles.

Friedman’s argument comes in the wake of the apparent break-down of the Oslo peace process, months of knife-wielding Palestinian children and teens against Israeli civilians, a new proposal to deal with the terror by Israeli opposition leader Yitzhak Herzog who advocates building a fence that would separate the populations, and a proposal by Israeli President Ruvi Rivlin to create a confederation of two states under Israeli sovereignty.

However, before everyone takes any of these proposals too seriously, I believe it is still too soon to hammer the final nail in the coffin of a two-state solution. Shaul Arieli argues this point in his recent Haaretz op-ed: “The Settlement enterprise has failed,” (link below). Arieli’s cites the facts that because Jews comprise only 13.5% of the West Bank’s population and occupy only 4% of the land in the West Bank, that “the settlers have failed to create the appropriate conditions for annexing the West Bank.”

Then there’s Isaac Herzog’s security proposal made in direct response to Israeli fears of Palestinians attacking them everywhere. Though his proposal is a short-term panacea (the number of attacks this last month are significantly fewer than previous months), it is not a long-term plan. Herzog has affirmed that he still believes that a 2-state solution is the only way Israel can remain democratic, Jewish and secure. He offered his plan as a way simply to control the violence.

I get it. Israeli fear is palpable. I felt it myself in October when I was there for the World Zionist Congress. Terrorism terrorizes. That’s the entire point. It’s brutal and indiscriminate. But, Herzog’s proposal isn’t a solution to Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It may even make a two-state solution more difficult to achieve because of the route the fence takes and what license it gives to settlers to build more settlements in areas that are contested, especially in Jerusalem. The benefit of his proposal, however, is that settlement construction outside the fence would cease.

President Ruvi Rivlin’s idea (he never believed in a two-state solution) is to create a confederation in which there would be two states, Israel and Palestine, with a defined border, two parliaments, two constitutions, security police in both, but one army, the IDF, that would control everything between the River and the Sea. There would be a shared infrastructure such as a common electricity grid and shared water resources.

Rivlin’s idea is, on the surface, appealing especially for many Jews and Israelis because it would eliminate the need to move large numbers of settlers from their settlements in the West Bank and maintain security over all the West Bank. Israelis living in the West Bank, wherever they are, would remain Israeli and vote in Israeli elections though living in Palestine, just as Palestinian Arabs would be citizens of Palestine and vote in Palestinian elections, but live in greater Israel under the complete sovereignty of the Jewish state.

President Rivlin’s plan is for an inherently unequal confederation. The problems in the plan include how to keep Jewish national zealots from building more settlements in the new state of Palestine, how to get agreement from the Palestinians to live under IDF control, what limitations would be placed upon returning Palestinian refugees, and what arrangements would be made in Jerusalem for Palestinians over their own population?

President Rivlin’s ideas, surprisingly, have attracted the support of the principle Oslo architect and left-wing former Deputy Prime Minister Yossi Beilin, among others.

There is also the position of the national religious settler movement led by Bayit Yehudi Leader Naftali Bennett. These people believe that Jews have the God-given right to settle anywhere in the land of Israel, that there is room only for one state between the River and the Sea, Israel, and that Palestinians can never be equal citizens of Israel.

There is no current viable solution on the table. The PA refuses to meet with Israeli leaders without international interlocutors. The Israeli government won’t meet with any Palestinian leader who demands agreement to preconditions.

What do we in the West do?

First, we have to continue to support the state of Israel, its people and its security needs. There are many Jews who are throwing up their hands and want to turn away. We can’t do it. Israel belongs to the entire Jewish people and what happens there effects us here. Israelis need us as we need them – we are one people!

Second, we have to continue to support Israel’s democracy and its commitment to equal rights for all its citizens, Jewish, Arab and other.

Third, we have to remind ourselves that anything that makes a two-state solution more difficult to achieve is a threat to Israel’s future viability, security, democracy, and Jewish character.

Hazak hazak v’nithazek! Be strong and let us strengthen one another!

The following articles discuss the various options confronting Israel and the Palestinians:

“The Many Mid-East Solutions” – Thomas Friedman, NY Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/10/opinion/the-many-mideast-solutions.html?_r=0

“Jeremy Ben Ami Responds to Thomas Friedman” – NY Times Letter to the Editor
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/12/opinion/the-only-mideast-solution-two-states.html?_r=0

“The Settlement enterprise has failed” – Shaul Arieli, Haaretz
http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.685926

“Ruvi Seeks a Solution – The President stands up to the Prime Minister and charts a way out of the tribal morass engulfing Israel” – Leslie Susser, The Jerusalem Report
http://www.jpost.com/Jerusalem-Report/Ruvi-seeks-a-solution-443904

7 Israeli Human Rights Groups Protest New Knesset Bill Against African Asylum Seekers

10 Wednesday Feb 2016

Posted by in Israel/Zionism, Jewish History, Jewish Identity, Social Justice

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On February 8 the Israeli Knesset passed a new law that will allow asylum seekers to be detained for 12 months in the Negev Desert’s remote Holot detention center. The law has been condemned by seven Israeli human rights organizations:

“For the fourth time, the Knesset approved a failed policy that helps no one, and wastes the taxpayers’ money. Taking away a year of an asylum-seekers’ life, sending them to Holot Detention Center and forcing them to start their life from scratch when they are released, continues to violate their rights and also continues to deepen the misery in South Tel Aviv and elsewhere.”

The seven organizations are Hotline for Refugees and Migrants, The Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI), The Aid Organizations for Refugees and Asylum Seekers (ASSAF), Physicians for Human Rights – Israel, the African Refugee Development Center (ARDC), Kav-L’Oved, and Amnesty International.

Instead, these groups say that

“There are other options the government can choose: Invest capital intended for imprisonment into infrastructure and services improvement in communities housing an asylum-seeker population; Issue work permits that would allow for the regulated community dispersal across the country, and Integrate asylum-seekers into the labor market for industries where we are continuing to import foreign workers from other countries. In addition, the government should be reviewing asylum requests in accordance with international standards.” (The Hotline for Refugees and Migrants Bulletin)

In October 2013, from Jerusalem I wrote to explain what motivated these Eritrean and Sudanese asylum seekers to escape their countries of origin on foot through hundreds of miles of arid desert to reach Israel: https://rabbijohnrosove.wordpress.com/2013/10/29/eritrean-and-sudanese-asylum-seekers-in-tel-aviv-israel-journal-part-vi/

In October 2015, I wrote again from Jerusalem following an overwhelming vote by the World Zionist Congress, the parliament of the Jewish people, where I was an ARZA delegate, to grant these destitute refugees asylum status in Israel: https://rabbijohnrosove.wordpress.com/2015/10/23/wzc-resolution-on-eritrean-and-sudanese-asylum-seekers-in-israel-jerusalem-report-2/

And today, I write not only to support these seven Israeli human rights organizations in their work on behalf of these refugees, but to say that I believe that the majority right-wing government of Israel has done an injustice to these people and has acted contrary to Jewish prophetic and rabbinic values of compassion and treatment of the stranger.

I understand the reasons why advocates of the law have taken this position. Many South Tel Aviv residents are angry that these refugees have taken over their neighborhood. Some claim (falsely) that the refugees have brought an increase of crime to Israel based on several highly publicized criminal acts by individual refugees. Studies show, however, that there is far less crime from this refugee population relative to their numbers than from Israelis themselves.

MKs have argued that granting asylum will encourage a large wave of refugees seeking safe haven in the free and democratic Jewish state to come from Africa and other Middle Eastern nations. The Israeli government, however, has now completed a security fence extending the entire length of the southern border to close that once open border and prevent more refugees from entering Israel.

It seems to me that fear of the “other,” of the stranger and the unknown is what has motivated this vote. Yes, Israel lives in a violent corner of the world, and with all the Palestinian terror against innocent Israelis, fear is justifiable and every sensitive human being, and Jews in particular, have to appreciate the stress and strain that Israelis live with every day. I was in Israel when the knifings began and I too felt the fear. I’ve lived there during the Yom Kippur War and I know the fear that the entire nation felt. And I was in Israel during the height of the suicide bombings in March, 2002 and feared even leaving my hotel. Israelis have every justification to be afraid and to take all reasonable actions to protect themselves from violence.

But these refugees are not violent. They ran for their lives. That ought to have been the central issue before the MKs after all the other concerns were dealt with. It seems to me that they were.

All these Eritrean and Sudanese refugees (who are already in Israel) need is a safe haven from two of the most brutal dictatorships in the world until such time that conditions change in their nations and they can return home, which is what virtually all of them want. In the short term, they want to work in hotels and the Israeli service industry or do work that foreign nationals are doing in the hundreds of thousands in Israel.

Every other western democracy grants political asylum to those who can demonstrate a well-founded fear of persecution should they return to their country of origin. Israel does not, except of course, for Jews, and this is one of the great contradictions that Israel embraces.

This most recent Knesset vote is therefore deeply disappointing and distressing. The only positive I can glean from what has taken place is that these seven human rights groups, Israel’s Reform movement, along with many Members of Knesset  who voted down this law have by their positions sustained the dignity of the state of Israel as  a democracy and Jewish state thus fulfilling Israel’s core mission to be, as the prophet Isaiah preached 2700 years ago, an or lagoyim, a light to the nations of the world. Kol hakavod v’chazak v’eimatz!