National Scholar Updates

An Orthodox colleague recently created a controversy after writing a blog post explaining why he no longer recites the blessing shelo asani isha - thanking God for not creating him as a woman. Several Orthodox rabbis criticized this position for various reasons with one even questioning the author's right to call himself "Orthodox," ostensibly for deviating from the traditional liturgy through his omission. In the grand scheme of Orthodox Jewish history this rabbi's personal choice is relatively trivial. However, in the subsequent squabbling over one rabbi's legitimacy, the Orthodox rabbinate inadvertently exposes the inherent cognitive dissonance prevalent in the contemporary Orthodox community.

Contemporary Orthodox Judaism tends to resist innovation and change as a matter of principle. Preserving the authentic tradition is the highest priority, especially when faced with potentially corrupting external influences. For just one example, when confronted with the question of mixed seating in the synagogues, R. Joseph B. Soloveitchik exhorted the Rabbinical Council of America to "be ready to fight for an undiluted Halachah which is often not in the vogue."¹ The problem of course is that Jewish history is replete with exactly such instances when common Jewish practice has changed, either through adapting existing practice or introducing new innovations.

Consider one such example from the liturgy. In the section of morning blessings, the same part of the service which includes shelo asani isha - virtually all sidduim contain the blessing ha-notein la'ya'ef koach - blessing God for giving strength to the weak. R. Yosef Karo (1488-1575) opposed not only the recitation of this blessing (O.H. 46:6), but the legitimacy of its very existence stating, "since it is not mentioned in the Talmud, I do not know how this person had permission to create it" (Beit Yosef O.H. 46:6). The difference between omitting a blessing and reciting an unauthorized one is substantial; in the former one only does not fulfill a rabbinic obligation (T. Berachot 6:18) but in the latter instance one violates a biblical prohibition of taking God's name in vain (Shemot 20:6, B. Berachot 33a). And yet for contemporary Judaism, one such liturgical change is accepted if not required, while the other is deemed unorthodox.

The methods of how Orthodox Judaism selectively incorporates or rejects changes is beyond the scope of this essay. However, there is a more fundamental question which can be extremely uncomfortable for most traditional Orthodox Jews: are the boundaries and definitions for acceptable Orthodox Judaism objective or subjective? Based on the sanctimony emanating from Orthodox Judaism it would be reasonable to assume the former. But if there are objective criteria for Orthodox Judaism, then this criteria must not only be defined and defended explicitly, but more importantly applied consistently to every instance. This would mean that even well established "traditional" opinions or rabbis who violate this criteria would have to be held accountable to this standard, and perhaps be reconsidered as beyond the scope of Orthodox Judaism.

On the other hand, if the criteria for Orthodox Judaism is subjective, meaning it is a floating target meant to include or exclude as a need arises, then Orthodox Judaism is as arbitrary as the other denominations which they criticize. Despite the rhetoric of preserving Torah, if the criteria is subjective, then Orthodox Judaism is so only because its adherents say so.

To paraphrase John Adams, the question which Orthodox Jews must inevitably confront is if it is a religion of laws or of men. If the former, then the laws must be applied universally to exclude that which violates it and to accept that which falls within its range of acceptability, regardless of a an individual's stature or affiliation. But if Orthodox Judaism is primarily defined by its community, then the arbitrariness would be justified, albeit at the expense of its alleged adherence to being shomerei Torah.

This question must be addressed by anyone who ventures into the debate as to what qualifies as "Orthodox Judaism." But from my own experience I have found that the Law provides its own answer and the Men provide theirs.

1. Soloveitchik, Joseph B. "Message to a Rabbinic Convention." The Sanctity of the Synagogue The Case for Mechitzah: Separation Between Men and Women in the Synagogue Ed. Baruch Litvin Ktav 1987. p. 109

When Rabbi Marc Angel asked me to write an article for this issue of Conversations, an issue dedicated to a consideration of Orthodoxy and the State of Israel, I saw both challenge and opportunity.¹

Having watched and quietly cheered on Rabbi Angel’s efforts over the past several decades to help guide the world of the Orthodox rabbinate back toward its historic embrace of halakha as a dynamic, living, foundational force in Jewish life, and having established in my personal observance an approach toward praxis,² which some might consider post-denominational, I approached this article with a degree of trepidation, coupled with respect and anticipation. I spent several months consulting with friends and colleagues who share with me a liberal Jewish religious perspective and who have also made the sacred choice of aliya. These individuals are listed for informational purposes at the close of the article,³ but none of them bear any responsibility for the thoughts that I express or the conclusions that I reach. Such thoughts and such conclusions are solely my own.

A moment in time: Several years ago, I was sitting with two colleagues in the lobby of Jerusalem’s Crowne Plaza Hotel. We were tasked with putting together a tri-denominational program about life in Israel for a community event back in the United States. There we sat, drinking coffee, discussing our shared passion for the Atlanta Braves, crafting our approach to a program that would necessarily allow our religious differences to be visible. We determined that we would be honest, even as we would choose not to be confrontational. An Orthodox, a Conservative, and a Reform rabbi, all olim, could publicly demonstrate our love for Medinat Yisrael without making our conversation a zero sum game.

One of us mused: “If only a photographer from Yediot could capture this moment.” Three veteran rabbis with clearly different and strongly held religious convictions, sitting together in public, were comfortably discussing a community event in which we would respectfully and honestly enter into a public dialogue. And we felt that we were doing nothing extraordinary, because we all had come from an American culture in which such encounters are not all that unusual. But in Israel, our meeting might well have warranted front page coverage simply because local expectations here have become so vastly different.

A moment in time: On Rosh haShanah5771, we attended services with our family in suburban Westchester County, New York. The rabbi of our daughter’s Reform congregation announced that just one week ago he had received a call from the rabbi of a neighboring Young Israel congregation, with a warm invitation for the two communities to come together for a shared Tashlih service. Later that afternoon, the two rabbis conducted a beautiful joint sacred occasion in the presence of large representations from both communities, an occasion within which ahdut (unity) was embraced as an aspect ofteshuvah (repentance). We all understood that such moments did not occur regularly anywhere in the world. But the relaxed atmosphere testified eloquently to the reality that our worshiping together fit the broad parameters of that which is possible, acceptable, and even desirable within American expectations.

One of the most daunting challenges confronting many liberal Jews living in the State of Israel today is the overwhelming feeling that we share the most dismal of expectations about relationships between and among the various Jewish religious communities. Of course there are exceptions, but far too often we find negative expectations validated and reconfirmed by deeply troubling personal or public encounters. Those events unavoidably color and shape the manner in which we perceive and interact with each other; they become the fuel for self-fulfilling prophecies which cannot help but threaten the health of Israeli society and the viability of the Jewish state.

A moment in time: On the very day of our aliya, my wife Resa and I sat before the desk of the final pakkid on the second floor of the old terminal at Ben Gurion airport. Due to the intifada that still raged, we were the only olim being processed that day. The official, as he stamped our documents, conversationally asked Resa about her profession. She told him of her advanced degree in statistics and he nodded his head in appreciation. Then it was my turn. I told him in Hebrew that I was a Reform rabbi. He stopped, adjusted his kippah, and literally spat as he said: “You are no rabbi.” Welcome home to Israel, the paradigmatic setting for the pain and beauty of Jewish life.

Even as I write this essay (in October 2010), the Knesset remains embroiled in a bitter debate over the future of MK Rotem’s conversion bill. Most of us are profoundly concerned about the fate of the religious identities of some 350,000 Russian olim (and now their more than 90,000 children born in Israel). The Rotem bill as originally proposed probably would have offered some small degree of relief to what I view as the obstructionism and insularity of the Chief Rabbinate and of the bloated religious establishment regarding conversion, but amendments to the bill had introduced elements that managed to outrage members of the Diaspora Jewish community, including a number of key Orthodox leaders living outside of Israel. The Rotem bill has become yet another setting within which ties among various Orthodox and Hareidi establishments and those who wield political power in the state are being used to severely disadvantage the clear majority of Israelis who choose not to see themselves as part of those establishments. Inevitably, the dangerous psychological and spiritual distancing between Diaspora Jewry and Israel is intensified.

Expectations grow ever bleaker.

Other moments in time: I stood as a witness to the Shabbat afternoon parking lot battles near the Jaffa Gate. I personally heard the racist slurs crudely hurled by some Hareidi men at uniformed Ethiopian olim. I seethed as young Israeli police were called grotesque epithets dredged up from out of our people’s Shoah nightmare. I marched in protest over the arrest of women who dared to treat the plaza fronting the Kotel as a national shrine open to all Israelis, rather than as an exclusionary ultra-Orthodox synagogue. I counseled my kibbutz cousin’s children who had invited me to officiate at their weddings to “do the right thing” by going to Europe first to get “legally” married, since my more than 45 years of service to the Jewish people as a rabbi mean nothing in an Israel that has chosen to trade true pluralistic democracy for political expediency and religious hegemony, principle for power and funding. I comforted a woman colleague who had been slapped across the face by a dati woman who sought to punish her for raising her voice during Hallel as she stood near the Kotel.  

Expectations.

The descriptors (more often privately than publicly expressed) that emerge out of such declining expectations are, not surprisingly, bitter. Those descriptors, as expressed to me by most of those with whom I consulted, include but are not limited to words and phrases such as “abomination,” “nightmare,” “anachronistic,” “ridiculous,” “moral violence,” “absurd and grotesque,” “medieval,” “sinat hinam,” and “extortion.” These are responses to how some of us in Israel see our lives impacted by those Orthodoxies politically empowered and fundamentally corrupted by government.

The pain is real. Many of us who lovingly and out of deep ideological conviction chose aliya find ourselves emotionally torn. Not one would even consider abandoning our dream of being part of our people’s national re-birth, but the price—a serious price that we had originally reckoned in terms of family separation and financial limitation—now far too often also includes emotionally draining battles against efforts to delegitimize us, to marginalize us, to exclude us from mainstream communal life.

Research and advocacy groups such as “HIDDUSH—Freedom of Religion for Israel”⁴ regularly demonstrate with verifiable accuracy wide dissatisfaction among a broad spectrum of the Israeli electorate with the current status of formal and informal state/synagogue ties in Israel. Tension between so-called secular Israelis and the various Orthodox establishments in Israel are viewed by many today as the single most serious source of societal dis-ease.

A. B. Yehoshua’s writings often portray contemporary Jews as living permanently with a kind of divided personality. We Jews whose homes are in Israel are pathologically unable to be comfortable in Zion, yearning instead for the openness of a non-coercive, expansive, anonymous Diaspora. But those of us who dwell in the Diaspora are equally unable to be comfortable there, yearning instead for the richness and integrity of Jewish communal and personal life in Israel. Wherever we Jews are, there is always somewhere else where we would rather be. My personal psychological imbalance is somewhat different: I am comfortable in Israel, relishing the opportunity to live a full and wonderfully rich and satisfying Jewish life here, even as I work hard with so many others to try to disestablish the Chief Rabbinate, to separate out all formal ties linking the religious councils with government, to grant to all religious streams the right to conduct life-cycle events for those who are their adherents, and to permit and encourage those who embrace that unique phenomenon known as Israeli secularism to create their own meaningful rituals and celebrations without coercion or discrimination.

Resa and I have chosen to live in Jerusalem not just because most of the major international Reform organizations are represented here, but because our souls feel firmly rooted and nourished by Jerusalem’s air, by its history, by its promise. We have chosen to live in Jerusalem because of its endless opportunities to study with great scholars and to immerse ourselves in a richly variegated Jewish culture. But we are forced to confront daily and to struggle endlessly with those who would drain from that air the soul-sustaining oxygen of choice, who opt for coercion over conversation, who view loyalty to Torah as requiring an end to that eilu veEilu wrestling with text that had previously endowed the Jewish people with a vast storehouse of spiritual richness, who prefer fossilization to diversity within the halakhic process, and who have intentionally diverged from 2,000 years of religious teachers who had trusted the Jewish people in its pursuit of fidelity to the One.

One colleague pointed out that many of us are “anomalies” within Israeli society. We consider ourselves to be religious; but we are not dati’im. We maintain kosher homes; we observe festivals; we attend worship regularly; so we cannot be considered by others as hilonim. We feel that our chosen presence in Israel as citizens-by-choice is the result of a sacred act of aliya; but most of us are willing to support those who would cede sovereignty over parts of Erets Yisrael, if by so doing we insure the security and domestic well-being of Medinat Yisrael. Are we then religious Zionists, or are we not? Many of us are strong advocates of church/state separation in the United States, but accept the rationale calling for equitable state funding of ALL Jewish religious streams in Israel. Are we then religious liberals or conservatives? Many of us oppose what appears to be the ever-increasing Kotel-olatry that strongly interferes with our Jewish efforts (as per Heschel) to create palaces in time but not in space; yet we will battle ceaselessly against those who deny women the right to worship and to read Torah at the Kotel.

I know that all of the above means that we Israeli Jews must now struggle to create a polity that has never before existed: a truly democratic, pluralistic Jewish state strongly protective of the rights of all its minorities (including but not restricted to women, Arabs, immigrants, foreign workers, refugees, Jews by Choice, Reform and Conservative and Reconstructionist and secular/humanist Jews, gays and lesbians), infused with profound respect for and support of Jewish life in the Diaspora. Those personal inner divisions require me to strongly respect the achievements of Israel’s Orthodoxies as they rebuild a world of study and observance that was almost annihilated, that has produced great Rabbis and Hakhamim such as Rav A. I. Kook and Rabbi Ben Zion Uziel, and that made certain that Israel’s founders would not succeed in diminishing the presence of Shabbat and Hagim in the public sphere—even as I battle against government funding for private Torah-based schools that refuse to teach tokhnit haLiba in their curriculum (the government-mandated core secular curriculum, compliance with which impacts the degree of direct government funding for various school systems. The evolving content of this curriculum is a source of ongoing political and ideological struggle), who inculcate within their students the view that Torah law trumps civil law when it comes to national defense, who speak of those who disagree with their teachings as lacking in full Jewish identity, who regard tolerance of diversity as an intolerable sign of weakness, or who embrace mitzvoth bein adam laMakom to the often total exclusion of mitzvoth bein adam leHaveiro.

The future is not fixed, but then again neither is the past.⁵ As we make those choices that will define our present and texture our future, we come to shape, understand and validate our past. As for me, I am in love with Zion, but I am most certainly not at ease with Zion. I embrace the zekhut of living at such a time that I might contribute to the shaping of Israeli society, to help complete the process of the rebirth of the Jewish state. It is still possible to reverse the spiraling descent of our expectations regarding relationships among all of Israel’s religious streams and thus it is still possible to bring into the Israeli mainstream expectations of cooperation and mutual respect. It is still possible to strengthen the voices of the Israeli majority interested in crafting a pluralistic Jewish democracy. And it is still possible to build a Jewish homeland which will be compellingly attractive to my American grandchildren.

To everything there is a time. That time is now.

Notes

1.  It is relevant to note that I am a Reform rabbi, 71 years of age, who (together with my wife and life partner, Resa) made aliya from Atlanta, Georgia, on February 22, 2004. Our home is in Jerusalem. Our children and grandchildren all reside within the United States. They visit us, we visit them, and among us we gratefully support video cams, Skype, magicJack and a variety of Frequent Flyer programs. Through their parents’ choices, some of our grandchildren attend the Modern Orthodox Bi-Cultural Day School in Stamford, Connecticut, while others attend the Wilshire Boulevard Temple’s Reform Day School in Los Angeles. I am the immediate past president of the Association of Reform Zionists of America (ARZA) and a past chair of the National Rabbinic Cabinet of State of Israel Bonds. Currently I sit on the Board of Governors of the Jewish Agency, the Hanhallah of the World Zionist Organization, and the Board of Overseers of the Jerusalem Campus of the Hebrew Union College. Resa is on the Board of ARZENU and on the Board of the Women of Reform Judaism, where she holds the Israel portfolio; she has created more than 22 affiliates of the Women of Reform Judaism in Israel over the past two years.
2. Typically, for example, I pray Erev Shabbat at Kol HaNeshama (Reform) and on Shabbat morning at Shira Hadasha (egalitarian modern Orthodox). Twice monthly I study the Sfat Emet on Shabbat before Shaharit. I am drawn to the Kotel on Tisha B’Av, but only then. I regularly study at the Shalom Hartman Institute. I cannot imagine a more personally satisfying arrangement.
3. I express my gratitude to the following colleagues and friends whose thoughtful comments were of enormous benefit to me in the writing of this article. As noted above, I bear sole and complete responsibility for all of the views expressed: Rabbi Stacey Blank; Rabbi Shelton Donnell; Rabbi Shaul Feinberg; Rabbi Stuart Geller; Rabbi Miri Gold; Terry Cohen Hendin; Rabbi Richard Hirsch; Rabbi Naamah Kelman; Rabbi Richard Kirschen; Michael Nitzan; Dr. Barry Knishkowy, Rabbi Joel Oseran; Rabbi Henry Skirball; Matthew Sperber.
4. For the sake of full disclosure, I sit on the HIDDUSH steering committee.
5.  Alan Watts and others.

When we moved to Israel 30 years ago we sacrificed a number of things: living space (we exchanged a two-story home on a large plot of land for an apartment in a 10-story building) and the excellent, affordable, and personal medical care to which middle-class Americans had then grown accustomed. We also lost Sundays as days off.

What we gained made this all worthwhile: a sense of purpose, a sense of being part of something important that was bigger than ourselves, and, we thought, the opportunity finally to be part of the mainstream.

How did things work out? Rather differently than expected. Israel has grown much more prosperous over the years (if we did not mind the commute, we could sell our large apartment in Haifa and move to a lovely home in the Galilee); medical care here has improved dramatically, while the level of care for middle-class Americans has gone down and the price has gone up, both dramatically. Jewish education here remains problematic, but it is certainly not bankrupting parents, as it is in North America. The five-day week has reached Israel (when it was first proposed to the late Levi Eshkol he is reputed to have said: “First let’s see if we can get people to work for four days, before stretching it to five.”)—with Fridays replacing America’s Sundays as part of the weekend.

Two things particularly surprised us: we raised children with Israeli manners, and we certainly did not become part of the mainstream. Both of us grew up in rabbinical homes, with fathers active in Mizrahi and both fathers and mothers deeply involved in Jewish education, seeing all of the Jewish people as their responsibility. We assumed that we would find like-minded communities here in Israel. That did not turn out to be the case. Over the years we have lived here, the National Religious Party (Mafdal), the Israeli branch of the World Mizrahi, engaged in a long drawn-out act of suicide. No longer seeing itself as appealing to and seeking to represent all Jews, Ashkenazi and Sefardi, dati and non-dati, it first turned itself into the party of Orthodox Zionists, and, after the rise of Shas, into a party of Orthodox Ashkenazi Zionists; it then turned its gaze even further inward and turned itself into the party of the Orthodox Ashkenazi Zionist Settlers. It has now transmogrified into the extreme right-wing “Bayit Yehudi” party with three members of K’nesset (one of whom we know personally and admire as an individual), two of whom basically speak to each other only through the third.

One of us was here in 1967 as a volunteer on a border kibbutz before, during, and after the war and we both initially shared the widespread enthusiasm for settling the territories occupied during the war. After moving here in 1980, we more and more came to realize the folly of seeking to hold on to the “Greater Land of Israel” and drifted leftward politically, putting us out of synch with our neighbors, with most of our friends from synagogue, and, significantly, with the B’nei Akiva youth movement, to which our children belonged. Israel is a society of clearly defined groupings, with clear labels. We often had the sense that in the eyes of many of our fellow synagogue-goers, political “deviance” was a reflection of religious “deviance.” So much for becoming part of the mainstream!

Another issue that distanced us ideologically (if rarely personally) from our friends and neighbors was our growing discomfort with what is usually referred to as “religious coercion.” We very much enjoyed living in a Jewish State that was Jewish not only by virtue of the majority of its populace, but also because traditional Jewish holidays were national holidays and the public square used to be recognizably Jewish. It is not important in this context to point fingers of blame for this, but in our 30 years here the public square in Israel has grown ever more secular, ever more distanced from its Jewish roots, just as the religiously observant have largely retreated into self-made ghettos. From our perspective, attempts to force Judaism down the throats of Israelis have boomeranged. Whether that is indeed the cause or not is less important than the fact that the public face of Israel has changed beyond recognition in our years here.

Let us give one example of this phenomenon. When we moved here, our synagogue had a second minyan for kol nidre for our non-observant neighbors, and the entire neighborhood congregated around the synagogue, even if they did not come in. Nowadays, there is no second kol nidre minyan, no one hangs around the synagogue, and although most secular Israelis fast and do not drive on Yom Kippur (out of vestigial cultural identification), since the roads are almost entirely empty, they are taken over by kids on bikes and roller blades. That is the Yom Kippur these children will remember when they grow up: fancy bikes and empty roads as opposed to empty stomachs.

To simplify a very complicated process, over the years that we have lived here, Israel has become more and more like America (for good and for ill), and as it has grown ever more American, one might think that the ideological rationale for living here has grown weaker (after all, we came here to participate in the process of building a recognizably Jewish—culturally, not necessarily halakhically— nation, not an imitation North America). That our ideological Zionism has not become attenuated is, largely—it is odd to say—thanks to hatred of Israel in so-called progressive circles around the world. To our surprise, Li-heyot am hofshi beArtseinu—to be a free nation in our land—remains HaTikvah, the not-yet- realized hope, of the Zionist movement. Thirty years ago it seemed that the hope had been realized; over the last decade it has become clear that our hopeful dream is a nightmare for wide swaths of “enlightened” opinion around the world (and in “elite” circles in Israel). Suddenly, once again, to be a Zionist is to be a revolutionary, to go against the current.

Another surprise: Israel was meant to cure anti-Semitism; sadly, it has not. Only 60 years after the Holocaust, our generation is once again called upon to defend the right of Jews to live and to live as a free nation in its own homeland.

Living in Israel is once again more than simply making a living in Hebrew. We are challenged to show that the dream is worthwhile and attainable. For people like us, that makes living in Israel even more compelling than it was 30 years ago when we made aliya.

Preface

            “Jewish, not Israeli” is a phrase I found myself repeating to many a Palestinian this summer (the summer of May 2010, following my senior year of high school) at Seeds of Peace international conflict resolution camp. Although I was part of the American delegation, and by definition not an Israeli, I was often identified by Palestinian campers as the “other side.” But Israel is neither my birthplace nor my current home, so one need not have expected my beliefs to oppose Palestinian existence.

            Seeds of Peace is a nonprofit organization that brings together young adults from conflict areas in the Middle East and Southeast Asia to share their personal stories from the conflicts that often shape their lives. Two hours of every day at camp, a dialogue was facilitated among a group of about four Israelis, four Palestinians, two Egyptians, two Jordanians, and two or three Americans, when the campers had a unique opportunity to discuss the conflict on both a political and personal level. The rest of each day, the campers played sports and games or participated in lighthearted activities that allowed them to get to know one another outside their national identities.

            As a Jewish American, I often found it difficult to define my role in the dialogue sessions, as well as at other times among my peers. My connection to Israel had thus far been solely a religious one, and I had never explored the idea that perhaps I have an obligation to defend the land as a political state. I found that many of the Palestinians’ stories resonated with me on a personal human level. And while I did not necessarily always agree with their presentations, I had a deeper historical and national connection with the Israeli narrative. I felt that as a Jew I have some obligation to the State of Israel, although I could not define what that obligation is or whether the State of Israel has an obligation to me as Jew. 

            The tension I felt between the identities “Jewish” and “Israeli” led me to explore the perspective and self-identification of my Israeli friends who were at the camp. None of them practiced mitzvoth or Jewish customs; none had been educated at religious schools; their familiarity with Jewish texts, practice, and religious history was extremely minimal. Except for one or two Israelis in the program, the only defining characteristic of their Jewish was is the fact that they live in the Land of Israel. To most of them, being Jewish was not part of their national identity; rather, it is a religious heritage, and one hardly relevant to their lives. To these secular Israelis, to be a Jew means something different than to be part of the Israeli nation, the former being an abstract, religious identity and the latter being a tangible, definable political identity. When the dialogues would turn to the legitimacy of the State of Israel, Judaism was not factored into the equation by secular Israelis, because in their minds the two identities are separate. This tension between Zionism and Judaism can largely be explained by the fact that Zionism is an ideology that emphasizes a land with borders, and a government, while Judaism was originally defined first and foremost by an event that took place outside the land of Israel, and for the past 2,000 years has been about a relationship between a nation and God—whether that nation lives in the land of Israel or not.

            The Jewish nation is unique in its definition and establishment, and especially in its relationship to land. It began as a family, descended from Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob—defined primarily by blood—united by the events that took place after the Exodus from Egypt and ultimately forming a sovereign state following the conquest of the land of Canaan. Although the Jews became an autonomous nation within physical borders, the status of an Israelite was defined by descent. Therefore, the Jewish nation is a family that belongs in a land but is not reliant on a land in order to exist. There is no other case in which a nation is defined as a nation before it enters a land; every other nation unites as a nation as a result of geographical commonness. Philosopher Michael Wyschogrod, in his bookThe Body of Faith, articulates this unique quality of the Jewish nation.

The land had to be conquered. The result has been that Jewish consciousness has vividly retained the memory of the land as having belonged to others before it came to belong to Israel. Other nations do not retain such memories. Their memory does not go back to a time when they did not occupy their land. In fact, the national identities of other nations are land-bound identities. The nation is defined by the territory it occupies. But [the Jewish nation] comes into national existence before it occupies the land. It becomes a nation on the basis of a promise delivered to it when it is a stranger in the land of others. This awareness of being a stranger is burned into Jewish consciousness. The God of Israel is not a God whose jurisdiction is defined by territorial boundaries. (Wyschogrod, 220—221)

Wyschogrod further explains that what unites Jews is their familial descent from Abraham. As such, Jews do not internalize the common Western division between faith and nationality. To be a Jew is not merely to have religious obligations, it is first and foremost to be part of a family and nation.

Judaism is not a set of beliefs, however broadly that term be interpreted. A full definition of Judaism does, of course, involve a whole complex of ideas, beliefs, values and obligations posed by Judaism. The whole of the immense literary output of Judaism consists of the elaboration of just these ideas. But however crucial these are, they are, in a sense, superstructure rather than foundation. The foundation of Judaism is the family identity of the Jewish people as the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Whatever else is added to this must be seen as growing out of and related to the basic identity of the Jewish people as the seed of Abraham elected by God through descent from Abraham. (Wyschogrod, 57)

Because the Jewish nation is not defined by a geographical area but by a familial bond, it has been able to survive in exile for the past 2,000 years. Rabbi Meir Soloveichik has noted that “after they were exiled from the land with the destruction of the Temple in 70 C.E., [Jewish] nationhood remained intact for millennia, enabling a Jew born in 19^th-century Morocco to consider himself a member of the same nation as a Jew born in 19^th -century Poland.” The memory of—and the longing to return to—the land has also played a vital role in sustaining the cohesiveness of the Jewish nation through prayer and a collective ultimate goal, but it has never been the defining characteristic. As Rabbi Jonathan Sacks puts it, “there is a difference between where we are and who we are. Judaism is not wrong to see identity as a matter of birth” (Sacks, A Letter in the Scroll, 46).

            In the book of Exodus, Moses is one of the first Jews to struggle with his identity and with what it means to be a Jew. When God comes to him at the burning bush and assigns him his task of leading the Jews out of Egypt, Moses’ first question is “Who am I?” Moses is questioning the fundamental identity of nationhood. Who is he—what is his identity—that makes him qualified for such a job? He did not live among the rest of the Jews, was not brought up as they were, nor was he even considered one of them for most of his life. The only connection he had to his people was a familial one, and at this turning point in his life he questions the legitimacy or sufficiency of that connection. God answers him by explaining that He is the God of Moses’ ancestors, and, as Rabbi Sacks puts it, “Moses’ crisis is resolved and never reappears in that form. He now knows that he is part of an unfinished story that began with the patriarchs and continues through him. He may wear the clothes and speak the language of an Egyptian, but he is a Jew because that is who his ancestors were, and their hopes now rest on him” (Sacks, A Letter in the Scroll, 46). The Jewish nation is defined by ancestry, not by culture or location, and Moses’ return to his nation shows how strong the familial tie can be in holding a nation together. The Jewish nation has stayed alive without the bonds of language or homeland for hundreds of years, and Moses was the very first to demonstrate how powerful the bond of family can be in re-uniting a people.

            That Judaism is defined by a familial rather than a racial or geographical bond is evident in the conversion process. When one becomes a Jew, he or she severs all previous familial ties—her siblings are no longer her siblings, and he has neither a mother nor father; for he or she has joined a new family. Rabbi Meir Soloveichik, in his essay on conversion, “How Not to Become a Jew,” explains that “just like a born Jew, a convert is not only a coreligionist, not only a fellow citizen, but also a new brother or sister. In reciting Jewish liturgy, the convert joins all other Jews in referring to the Almighty as ‘the God of my fathers’; he means it, and he is meant to mean it, in more than a metaphorical sense.” For this reason, Rabbi Aaron Lichtenstein explains, conversion to Judaism is not a private religious baptism; it takes place in a Jewish court, because it is a citizenship hearing. Thus, Rabbi Lichtenstein notes, the biblical Ruth only informs Naomi that “your God will be my God,” after she first declared, “your nation will be my nation.” Because the Jews are a family, a child born to a Jewish mother will be a Jew from the moment of birth (unlike a child born to a Christian mother who becomes Christian upon baptism) until his death, regardless of his actions or beliefs. The Jewish people is the only people that is considered both a religion and a nation, and is not defined conventionally like any other faith or nation. This uniqueness gives the Jews a special role in both of mankind’s religious and nationalistic spheres.

            This familial connection, which overrides differences in language, culture, appearance, location, and even denomination, has allowed the Jews to remain a nation even while dispersed over the globe. And interestingly, as Michael Wyschogrod writes, it is the Jews’ definition of themselves as a nation without a land that allowed the land-based State of Israel to come into existence in the first place.

Modern Israel could not have come into being without it. Out of people of the most diverse cultural and national traditions, Israel created one people. To be more accurate, it did not create such a people but found one in existence. In the early stages of the Zionist movement, European Jews had little acquaintance with non-European, Sephardic Jews…Yet the viability of a state made up of such diverse elements was never brought into question. There was a bond among Jews that was deeper than all the differences, which turned out to be far more superficial than would have been thought. (Wyschogrod, 240)

But the nation that arose, the modern State of Israel, relies on borders and government and judicial systems. For 2,000 years, the Jewish nation was not defined by geography, but with the rise of the State of Israel, the two identities became intertwined and often confused. Jewishness had for ages provided the bond of family, religion, and nationality to Jews everywhere, but Israeli nationality, if not defined properly, can create a new set of definitions for what it means to be Jewish and create divisions among Jews. The elements of Jewishness that allowed the Jews to remain a nation without a land also enabled the birth of the State of Israel to succeed. But this new state by its existence invites Israelis to redefine their nationhood as land-based, and the nation to which they belong as Israeli rather than Jewish. This new identity and definition carries the danger that Jewishness will no longer be about nationality, and will be redefined solely as a religious vocation.

            This is precisely the tension I witnessed at Seeds of Peace among my secular Israeli friends. Several months after camp had ended, I went to Israel to investigate this dialectic that exists between the Jewish and Israeli identities. I interviewed several of my secular Israeli friends, to hear in their own words how this tension played out in their self-identification and their identification with their state and of their faith. Among the questions I asked were: What is Israel? What does it mean to be part of the nation of Israel? What does it mean to be part of the Jewish nation? And what nations did your ancestors belong to?

            When asked to define the State of Israel, Nili, a self-defined secular Israeli from Petah Tikvah who attended Seeds of Peace, explained that it is “my home. The place I was born,” and went on to say that being part of the nation of Israel means “you belong to somewhere, you have a place that you live and you have a place that is it for you, because I’m a Jew, it’s my country so [I] belong to it.” For Nili, being Israeli is her nationality that she says is connected to the fact that she is Jewish; but when asked what it means to be part of the Jewish nation, she responded by saying (translated from Hebrew), “I am not so connected to my faith because I don’t really do mitzvoth and all of that.” In other words, for Nili, her Jewishness is a religious matter rather than a national one; she added, however, that she understands that other Jews, as they travel all over the world, “feel as if they have a community, that they have people to rely on.” She understands the connection that Jews have, but does not include herself in it, because, to Nili, Judaism is separate from her national self-identity. She defines herself as Israeli, and although she acknowledges that being Jewish contributes to that identity—along with the fact that she was physically born in the state—she does not recognize that the identities are intertwined, and that the State of Israel’s existence is a result of the fact that the Jewish nation was able to stay strong and proud and connected throughout the centuries.

To Nili, nationality is her primary identity, and she does not feel as if she is part of another community other than the State of Israel. She sees nationality as being bound by land. I then asked Nili,

            “Where are your ancestors from, and what nation did they belong to?”

             “My grandparents are from Russia, and they were Russians, on both sides.”

            “But what nation did they belong to?”

            “Russian.”

She did not say they are part of the Jewish nation or of an ultimately larger community not defined by borders; her grandparents would have certainly defined themselves as Jews first and foremost, and would have been shocked to be referred to as Russians. Before 1948, Jews had a hard time being faithful countrymen because often their countries betrayed them, and they also had to struggle to hold on to their Jewish identities. Identifying with the Jewish nation was important for survival. My experience is that “Israeli” easily replaces “Jewish” for people who live in Israel who do not practice Judaism or make it a prominent part of their existence. Nili acknowledges that Judaism plays a role in her overall sense of self, but it is not center stage, and is just a component of her nationality. When asked what the purpose of the State of Israel is, Nili said, “To bring all the Jews to one place because there has always been anti-Semitism, and I think that they should all live in one place so that they can have a government and an army and so that they can protect themselves.” For Nili, Israel is a Jewish State so that the Jewish people can live peacefully. To her, the Jews need to create for themselves a nationality with government and autonomy like every other nation so that they can define themselves as every other nation does, with borders and a government. The irony is that the existence of the State of Israel, a testament to Jewish resilience, also enables non-practicing Jews in Israel to forget the long-standing uniqueness of the Jewish definition of nationhood, which does not rely on geographical commonness, into a land-based nationalistic one.

            Many of the other self-defined secular Israeli friends I interviewed came to conclusions similar to Nili’s. Nadav, a secular Israeli living in Tel Aviv, who did not attend Seeds of Peace, said that being part of the Israeli nation means “living and being part of the Israeli life, living in Israel,” and that being part of the Jewish nation means “living among other Jews and participating in life with other Jews,” with no mention of history or ancestry. Nadav very clearly separates the two identities on a very technical level; neither identity is reliant on the other. Like Nili, Nadav said that the purpose of the State of Israel is to create a solution to anti-Semitism and to bring all the Jews to one place so that they can “express themselves as a nation.” He acknowledges the role that the Jewish nation plays in the establishment of Israel, but still his national identity takes precedence over his Jewish identity. He describes his ancestors as belonging to the nations of Poland, Russia, and Hungary, in the same way that he belongs to the nation of Israel. “The same way the French are connected with France because it’s the land of their ancestors, a territory that they have an emotional connection with, that’s Israel for me.” Nadav views nationality as being strictly land-based and, although he sees a connection between his ancestors and his nationality, he is referring to his ancestors who actually inhabited the same land that he does now, not the ones who may not have necessarily lived in Israel; they do not provide for him a reason to be Israeli.

            Nadav goes on on to create a divide between his religion and nationality, explaining that government and statehood should only be influenced by religion “as long as it does not interfere with democracy. The existence of Israel as a modern nation-state separate from the Jewish identity ultimately leaves my friends with a contradiction: why should they be allowed to form a new nation in this specific land? If Jews are not defined by descent from Abraham, with whom God formed a covenant and to whom He promised the Holy Land, then by what right do modern Israelis in this century lay claim to this land with these borders?

            The contradiction that the secular Israelis pose for themselves became evident to me during my visit when I interviewed my fellow Palestinian campers from Seeds. As I noted, secular Israelis create a divide between their identity as Jews and their identity as Israelis when asked about how they define themselves and what it means to be part of each nation—but to some extent the Israeli identity requires Judaism for its legitimacy, and here these Israelis either contradict themselves or remain answerless. In contrast, my Palestinian friends ironically understand that Zionism is intimately bound up with the fact that all Jews share a national status, and that their claim to the land lies in Jewish history and in the religious longings of Judaism. I asked Fadi, a Palestinian living in the West Bank who attended Seeds of Peace, how he thinks the Israeli nation defines and legitimizes itself. When asked to define the Jewish nation, Fadi hesitantly answered “Israel,” because to him the identities “Jewish” and “Israeli” go hand in hand, and, although he knows that fundamentally they are different, he also knows that the Israeli identity relies on components of Judaism. When asked what Israelis say to defend their right to be in Israel and to what extent he thinks their claim is legitimate, Fadi answered that “their excuse is that the country was promised to them by God, I can’t deny or agree or say [it’s legitimate]… I don’t mind living with Jews, but not in this kind of way.” Fadi sees the connection that Judaism has to the State of Israel and refers to the people that he lives among as Jews, not Israelis. Similarly, Jalal, a Palestinian from East Jerusalem who also attended Seeds of Peace, defined the Jewish nation as “Israel” and said (partly translated from Arabic), “I think Israelis say, almost all of them, that it is the land that they are promised to be in by the Bible, that it’s written that it’s the promised land and that they have to be in it and protect it…”

            The Palestinians acknowledge the interconnected relationship between the Jewish nation and the Israeli nation, more so than my secular Israeli friends, because they know that it explains why Jews all over the world are allowed instant Israeli citizenship and why Israel was ultimately formed in the Middle East, and not in Uganda. Judaism has answers to all the arguments that question the State’s existence, even though they are not the only answers. The State was established for many reasons, such as to create a haven from anti-Semitism, as Nili and Nadav said, but the other reasons do not answer the questions that only a historical and religious claim to the land of Israel can.

            The Palestinian definition of nationhood is similar to that of secular Israelis—a definition that allows there to be a situation in which the nation could no longer exist. When I asked Fadi what it means to be part of the Palestinian nation, he corrected me and said that Palestine is not a nation:

            “If Palestine was a nation, it would be nice.”

            “Why isn’t Palestine a nation?”

            “Because it’s under occupation.”

            “What does that mean that it’s under occupation?”

“That a country under occupation is a country that is ruled by a different power other than its own people, including water resources, land, freedom of transportation.”

            “So it’s not a nation if it doesn’t have a country?”

            “It’s people…but it’s not a nation because it’s not a country.”

This definition of nationhood is completely based on land and statehood, a definition that the Jewish nation has never applied to itself until now. According to this definition, one that secular Israelis adhere to, nationhood is bound up with statehood, which 2,000 years in exile has proven not to be the case for the Jewish nation.

            What emerged in my interviews of secular Israelis is that at times, inability to account for the link between Jewish nationhood and Zionism causes the most secular Israelis to completely redefine the State of Israel and its purpose. Shahar, a secular Israeli from Jerusalem who did not attend Seeds of Peace, is a young woman who believes that being part of the Israeli nation means to “be ready to sacrifice yourself for others, to be ready to give up some of what you have so that others will be in a better situation.” Shahar completely separates her religious identity from her nationalistic identity. She said in her interview that she needs Israel for the same reason that the French need France and that the English need England—for reasons solely dependent on geographical circumstances. After Shahar explained that government should not be influenced by religion, I asked her how there could possibly be a Jewish state, and she answered that Israel is not a Jewish state but an Israeli state and that the Jewish religion is an entirely separate entity: “It began as a Jewish state but in my opinion [it changed], I don’t see it as a Jewish state anymore, it can’t stay like that… especially when the population changes so much.” Shahar completely redefines the State of Israel in a way that would not please most Jews around the world and even many of her fellow Israelis. When asked what is significant about the State’s location, Shahar explained that it is the perfect place to build a country—due to the “diversity of terrain, the location of Israel is so special. We have deserts and mountains and everything…the greenery in the North and the emptiness in the South it shows all the amazing things that can happen here.” This redefinition does not provide answers to the most difficult questions that face the young country today. According to Shahar, her immigrant grandparents should not be allowed citizenship anymore than a non-Jew from Asia. She could not answer the question of “why not Uganda?”

            Before the end of my trip, I had a chance to interview my self-defined religious Israeli friend Daniella from Jerusalem, who did not attend Seeds of Peace, and ask her the same questions that I had asked the secular Israelis. She immediately defined herself as “a religious, Jewish, Israeli” and as belonging to the “Jewish and Israeli nations, but more importantly the Jewish nation.” She explained that being part of the Israeli nation means (translated from Hebrew) “to care about the existence of the nation…To me to be Israeli feels like everything is on your shoulders, not every day, but we are always fighting to exist.” When asked what it means to be part of the Jewish nation, Daniella immediately responded that it is “the same thing. Jewish and Israeli isn’t the same thing but they have the same idea that we are united and in danger all the time and we always have to protect ourselves in order to preserve our nation.” To Daniella, Judaism requires as much protection as the State of Israel because they are both nations viewed in the eyes of the world as being intertwined. She views the two identities as needing protection from the same threats, acknowledging the close bond between the two and the fact that many components of the Israeli nation rely on the Jewish nation. She went on to explain that “I think all Jews should live in the State of Israel because all Jews should live together… in the Land of Israel because I believe in the Tanakh and this is the state for the Jews…. I know that we also need the state for [protection from anti-Semitism], but I don’t think that this is the main reason.” Daniella’s opinion regarding the Jewish presence in Israel poses no contradiction when asked what is significant about the State’s location: “I know it has to be here and not in Uganda, to me it is because the Tanakh says so.” Daniella also remains consistent in her opinion that all Jews have the right to live in Israel as she explains that her grandparents, although they are from Hungary, South Africa, Syria, and Romania, “they all share the Jewish nationality,” and so they all have an equal right to Israeli citizenship in the Land of Israel. She does not see the Jewish nation as a land-based one, but as a nation that wants to be based in a certain land.

            In May of 2009, Binyamin Netanyahu, the current Prime Minister of Israel, addressed the country and acknowledged the problem that many Israelis have with associating their heritage with their current way of life. He explained that the maintenance of historical ties can have a profound effect on the modern nation-state.

In the Book of Books—in the Bible—a subject that is close to my heart these days. It starts there. It moves through the history of our people: the Second Temple, the Middle Ages, the Enlightenment, leaving the ghettos, the rise of Zionism, the modern era, the wars fought for Israel’s existence—the history of Zionism and of Israel. A people must know its past in order to ensure its future… our existence depends not only on a weapons system, our military strength, the strength of our economy, our innovation, our exports, or on all these forces that are indeed essential. It depends, first and foremost, on the knowledge and national sentiment we as parents bestow on our children, and as a state to its education system. It depends on our culture; it depends on our cultural heroes; it depends on our ability to explain the justness of our path and demonstrate our affinity for our land—first to ourselves and then to others.

Netanyahu acknowledges the fact that in order for Israel to sustain its identity as a nation as well as its legitimacy it must take initiative to strengthen the ties between the heritage of the Israeli nation—the Jewish nation—and the new generation of Israelis.

            When reflecting on this experience, I was struck by differences between the opinions of the secular and religious Israelis. Although the visions and goals of both groups may be very similar, their approaches to fulfilling them are drastically different and can have many different consequences. For example, the secular Israelis who view Judaism solely as a religion and Israel solely as a land-based nation—two identities that are not fundamentally intertwined— may never be able to defend their presence in the Middle East, while religious Israelis who believe that the purpose of the State of Israel is primarily to provide the opportunity for Jews to live in the Land of Israel may wind up being insensitive to the claims and rights of non-Jewish Israelis who live in the land. Both identities are important and represent realities that the State of Israel must deal with and reconcile. Both categories of people feel strongly about their presence and the justifications for it, and although they present an array of arguments as well as contradictions, to quote Daniella, “we are all Jews and ultimately want the same things.” Although both approaches to Zionism have positive and negative aspects, the fact that the two cannot reconcile their lack of unity regarding self-identity poses a threat. A society that cannot explain itself cannot ensure its survival. The secular Israelis’ contradictory answers to my questions make me nervous that ultimately they will not be able to answer the larger questions that the world will ask: Why there? Why you? Who are you?

            By the end of the experience, I realized that the conflict that Seeds of Peace sets out to settle is just one of many problems that the State of Israel faces. The fact that there is such a large divide in both opinion and practice between secular and religious Israelis poses a problem regarding identity, self-defense, and self-sustenance. As someone who is good friends with both, I have come to the conclusion that both secular and religious Israeli Jews can learn from one another how to value the different approaches to nationality and create a more cohesive society, one better able to protect the land in the present and plant the real seeds of

As the head of the Center for Women's Justice, I encounter on a daily basis the intractable entanglement—the “Gordian knot”—of State and (Orthodox) religion in Israel. This union of religion and state supports a gendered society, infringes on the basic rights of women, challenges the democratic values of the State, and threatens to undermine Israel's integrity as the political expression of the Jewish nation.

Using some of the cases that have come my way at CWJ, I will illustrate the above and argue that the place of “Orthodoxy” in Israel should not be within the coercive sphere of the “state,” but within the voluntary sphere of “civil society,” alongside other expressions of Jewishness.

An Intrinsically Gendered Society

In Israel, the Chief Rabbinate Law of 1980 states that the Chief Rabbinate is authorized to give answers and opinions regarding Jewish law, to bring the public closer to the values of the Torah and its commandments, to issue kashrut certificates, and to decide who shall sit as rabbinic judges and as official city and community rabbis. The Rabbinic Courts Jurisdiction Law of 1953 (Marriage and Divorce) gives rabbinic courts sole jurisdiction over matters of marriage and divorce.[i] The Chief Rabbinate and the Rabbinic Courts are exclusively Orthodox, and they are gendered. Men and woman are not equal.

No woman serves on the Chief Rabbinate Council, or as an official rabbi of any city in Israel. No woman is permitted to sit on rabbinic courts as a judge.[ii] The Chief Rabbinate and its Rabbinic Courts are run by men. The Rabbinic Court Administration Office has tried to bar women from applying for positions as law clerks.[iii] In the Petah Tikvah Rabbinic Court, until recently, no woman sat in any position, even an administrative one.

Rabbinic Courts apply religious laws that discriminate between men and women. Women appearing before rabbinic courts have little say in their attempts to divorce their husbands. Grounds for divorce for women are few, if any, and are not mutual. [iv] If a woman refuses to accept a Jewish divorce (a get), the state has an specific exception to its bigamy laws[v] to allow him to marry another woman and continue with his life (heter-meah rebbanim). If a man refuses to give his wife a get, she can be bound to him forever.[vi]

This taken-for-granted gendered, and discriminatory, world of the Orthodox rabbinic courts trickles down into other parts of Israeli society in the name of pluralism, and tolerance. So, for example, Egged, the state bus company, had (until recently) allowed, facilitated, and enforced “separate” buses in which women were expected to sit at the back of the bus, separate, apart, and unequal to men.[vii] The Supreme Court of the State of Israel has barred women from praying at the Western Wall in prayer shawls and phylacteries and has, instead, delegated the women to a separate, but not quite equal, section of the wall.[viii]

The Infringement on the Bodies—and Basic Rights—of Women

In Israel, the state authorizes the Chief (Orthodox) Rabbinate and its (Orthodox) Rabbinic Courts to “discipline and punish”[ix] the bodies of women.

The Chief Rabbinate Office is responsible for monitoring, registering, and conducting all marriages between Jews in Israel. It requires all Jewish women, as a precondition to their marriage, to immerse in a ritual bath (mikveh); to undergo a course on when and how to conduct their sexual lives with their husbands; and to set a date of their wedding in accordance with their menstrual cycle.[x] The Chief Rabbinate issues directives that determine the way to operate the (state built) ritual baths that service (the bodies of) Jewish women, and has recommended that attendants refuse access to women who are single or divorced.[xi]

The Rabbinic Courts set and interpret all laws regarding divorce between Jews in Israel. According to those courts, adultery on the part of a woman is absolute grounds for divorce; whereas adultery on the part of a husband can be forgiven.[xii] The court sometimes conduct “sex” trials to try to bar a woman from engaging in sexual relations after marriage with a man who may have been her lover; and, should the trial prove the allegations true, the rabbinic court can direct the Ministry of Interior to note the fact on the woman's divorce ruling, thus literally branding her with a letter “A” and “outing” her lover on official state documents.[xiii] Should a Jewish woman commit adultery and bear a child of that illicit relationship, the court can conduct a hearing that will put such child on a blacklist that prevents the child from marrying another Jew (mamzer).[xiv] Moreover, under Jewish law as applied by Israeli Rabbinic Courts, a man can withhold a divorce from his wife indefinitely, infringing on her autonomy and freedom.[xv]

Challenges to the Values of a Liberal, Democratic State

By deferring to the (Orthodox) Chief Rabbinate and its Rabbinic Courts in all matters relating to marriage and divorce, the state infringe directly on the freedom of conscience of Israelis by subjecting them to religious irrespective of their religious beliefs, or lack thereof.

Israelis are not free to marry in the religious ceremony of their choice. Only Orthodox ceremonies are recognized by the state. Conservative and Reform ceremonies are not allowed, though many non-Orthodox rabbis conduct such ceremonies for their constituents despite the fact that those marriages will not be registered by the Ministry of Interior. (Members of Parliament have proposed to make such ceremonies specifically illegal.)[xvi] No civil marriage or intermarriage is conducted in Israel.

Israelis are also not free to divorce in a manner of their choice. Even if they married abroad in a wedding recognized by the state under the rules of reciprocity (thus managing to bypass religious coercion at the wedding stage), if both husband and wife are Jewish, the couple will find themselves back on the steps of the rabbinate at the time of divorce. Recently, a rabbinic court held that such a couple must undergo the religious get ceremony in order to be divorced, and even incarcerated the husband until he gave the get.[xvii] Such order was a gross infringement on the husband's freedom of conscience, not to mention his physical freedom, and ironically, in direct contradiction of halakhic decisors, both in Israel and the Diaspora, who have held that Jewish couples who marry in a civil ceremony do not need a get. The husband had agreed to the divorce and simply wanted a decision of the court declaring that he was no longer married.

Israelis are not free to follow their conscience when going to the mikveh. Recently a young high school woman studying at a well-respected Jerusalem High School asked CWJ to petition the High Court of Justice to order the attendants at the mikveh to allow her to use the facilities when the attendant refused her access because she was single.

A Threat to the Viability of the Jewish Nation-State

One can argue that the Israeli state has effectively, and perhaps inadvertently, rendered “Orthodoxy” as the established “church” of the state of Israel[xviii] or as its official state religion.[xix] This gives voice, authority, and validation to “Orthodoxy” as a reflection of the “Jewishness” of the Israeli nation state, while in reality the (Orthodox) Rabbinate and Rabbinic Courts are not at all concerned with the values and interests of the state,  but rather with what they feel are the values and interests of the pan-national, or tran-national, Jewish people/religion. And the two are not necessarily in sync.

Thus, for the sake of the integrity of both the Jewish people and the Jewish nation, I posit that it is necessary to separate the Jewish “nation” from the Jewish “people,” and leave the imagining of the Jewish nation to its own separate sphere and consideration. This separation is not an easy feat, conceptually or practically, and it is one that has challenged the mighty and great. In 1970, Judge Moshe Zilberg, pondering the question whether one could be a Jew by nationality but not by religion,[xx] could not find a way to separate the two conceptions. He wrote: Nation (leum) and People (am) are synonyms and have the same meaning.”[xxi]

Judge Haim Cohen, on the other hand, understood that one's Jewishness from a religious perspective is not necessarily the same as ones Jewishness from a national perspective and that, when imagining what is a Jewish nation, the courts or whoever else is doing such imagining, must be guided by considerations such as human rights and freedoms. He wrote:

The halakha has its place of honor… I can imagine other purely legal considerations, with basic constitutional consideration at the fore, among them basic freedoms and human rights, that must guide a court's steps when it will, in the future, have to decide the question of a persons “nationality.” All of these considerations are legitimate and must move the court, and even obligate it, to decide the issue in a way that is not consonant with laws of religion.[xxii]

A Jewish nation, Cohen seems to be saying, must, first and foremost, be one that is consonant with and sensitive to human rights and freedoms.

The Need for a Place in “Civil Society”

While I have made a strong argument to take the Jewish (Orthodox) “religion” out of the Jewish state and its coercive state apparatuses, I would also like to make a strong argument for nurturing and sustaining Jewishness in the “nation” sense as a reflection of the morals and values of the Jewish state. To do this I would not relegate the Jewish religion to the very private sphere of the individual and family. Instead, I would place Jewishness in all its manifestation, as culture/tradition/religion, in the very public sphere of civil society—the space inhabited by voluntary civic, social, and religious organizations and institutions.

I would like Jewish culture/ tradition/religion to flourish in the State of Israel, thus sustaining the Jewish nation. I would even suggest that the state support the various activities of the various civic and social expressions of Jewish culture/tradition/religion without preferring one expression of Jewishness over the other. Israel should become the Mecca for Jewish learning, writing, art, music, and religious denominations of all sorts, including of course Orthodoxy in all its permutations. In the public sphere, and subject to human rights and religious freedom, Judaism would be the cultural capital of all Jews, Israeli and otherwise.[xxiii]

No religion—whether the current Orthodox, or any other variation thereof, be it benevolent Orthodox, Open Orthodox, Reform, or Conservative—should be thrust on the citizen of a democratic state. Today's benevolent Orthodox is tomorrows fundamentalist. The democratic and liberal values of a modern state must allow for freedom of conscience, or reflections of Judaism that may not be the ones that we personally espouse. Only such pluralism and tolerance with keep us together. Forcing all of us into one narrow, square hole for the sake of supposed unity and uniformity, is not working. Instead, it is alienating the great majority of us Jews from both the state and the religion.

Haval, what a shame. We Israelis and Jews of all denominations, including the ultra-Orthodox, deserve a more hopeful, pluralistic, and tolerant reality.

On Changes in Jewish Liturgy

Options and Limitations

By Daniel Sperber

Urim Publications, 2010, 221 pages          

This is the second recent volume where Daniel Sperber, professor, rabbi, author of thirty books and more than four hundred articles, a leading expert on Jewish laws and customs, addresses what many consider deplorable treatments of women in Judaism.

The earlier book, Women and Men in Communal Prayer, treated the exclusion of women from being called to the reading of the Torah, called aliyot, in Orthodox Jewish synagogues. It offered the opinions of four prominent, well-respected, and articulate men, rabbis and scholars. Two, including Sperber advocated changing the current practice to allow women to participate more than presently. Two opposed the change. All four approached the issue from “halakhic perspectives,” meaning that the authors articulated opinions based on the precedents of past rabbinic rulings.

Sperber, as is his custom, presented a host of examples to support his view that the concept of “human dignity” should trump all arguments that disallow full participation of women in the Torah reading service. He did not contradict Jewish halakhah (law), but argued that the concept of “human dignity” is a vital part of halakhah. He uses the same historical halakhic approach in this volume. He shows that the law is not what people think.

This volume asks: can changes be made in Jewish prayers? Sperber examines many prayers, including the three blessings that are part of the introduction to the morning service, prayers that set the daily mood.

The origin of these “blessings offensive to women” is a statement by a second century CE rabbi in the Babylonian Talmud, Menakhot 43b:

It was taught: R. Meir says: A person (read, man) must say three benedictions every day, and these are they: “who has made me an Israelite (meaning, a Jew); who has not made me a woman; who has not made me an ignoramus.” Rav Aha bar Yaakov heard his son reciting the blessing, “Who has not made me an ignoramus.” He said to him: Why do you recite this blessing? Surely the ignoramus is also obligated in mitzvot.

Rav Aha advises his son to substitute “Who has not made me a slave.”

Should these prayers be recited as they are written because they are a Jewish tradition? Are they sacred because they were unchanged for two millennia and were repeated in this format by generations of Jews? Are Jewish prayers never changed? Sperber shows with dozens of persuasive examples, and with footnotes as long as the text itself, for those readers desiring further proof, in a dispassionate, scholarly, and easy-to-read manner that the answer to all of these questions is “no.”

He cites early talmudic sources showing that rabbis were sensitive to the feelings of women and disliked Rabbi Meir’s blessings. Remarkably, he discloses that the source of the blessings is not Jewish at all. Parallel Greek benedictions “are found in Greek classical sources, specifically in the writings of Plato and Aristotle, and in other Greek sources from the fifth century BCE,” some seven hundred years before Rabbi Meir.

                        Blessed are You Who made me an Athenian and not a barbarian.

                        Blessed are You Who has made me a man and not a woman.

                        Blessed are You Who has made me a free man and not a slave.

Sperber quotes many alternative versions of the Jewish wording written by rabbis who saw that “the Jewish prayers were deemed offensive to women.” He quotes also a host of examples of the changes made in other prayers. For example, he sites “nineteen (!) different versions of R. Meir’s first blessing, ‘Who made me an Israelite.’” He notes that our current prayer book changed Rabbi Meir’s blessing from a positive to a negative statement, “who has not made me a heathen” and that the prayer book has a new alternative version to “who has not made me a woman” that women can say, “who has made me according to his will.” So changes do occur.

In fact he sites many examples of changes, such as many different versions of the very important daily amidah prayers. He notes that different groups of Jews, Ashkenazim, Sephardim, Oriental, Chasidim, Mystics, and others have different wordings of prayers and even made substitutions. He cites the first Lubavitch Rebbe rewriting many of the prayers. He mentions the new prayers such as the prayer for Israel, America, Israeli soldiers, Israel’s Independence Day, and others. He tells about the insertions by poets of piyutim and tehinot, poems and supplications, into the prayer book and the changes made by printers. He reminds us that half of the Friday evening service, called Kabbalat Shabbat, is a sixteenth century invention of the mystics to Safed in Israel. He tells tales of mystics changing prayers so that the number of letters and words would suggest their notions of mystical lessons. He recalls that many prayers are different today because of Christian censors. These are just some of the multitude of alterations that he relates.

Thus, Sperber makes it crystal clear that past changes made in the prayer book show that changes are allowed. As an Orthodox rabbi, he concludes that a person should not “alter the text of the prayers in accordance with his current state of mind. Of course, this is not feasible, nor is it our intended message. We are speaking only of changes mandated by communal needs, major historical events or broad sociological changes.”

Is it enough, is it sufficiently sensitive and humane to allow women to say “who has made me according to his will” while encouraging men to thank God for not making them a woman?

No issue in Israeli public life arouses the range and intensity of emotions as does anything relating to Hareidim and Hareidism—the terms used for the “ultra-Orthodox” and their lifestyle. [1]  A typical discussion on any Hareidi-related issue is laden with ideology, dogma, and opinion, but short on facts, let alone hard data.

The sad reality is that most Israelis, including most dati-leumi (National Religious/ Modern Orthodox) Israelis, relate to Hareidim with a mixture of fear and loathing—and even hatred generated by that potent mixture. Hareidim feel much the same way about secular Israelis and, very often, about religious ones too. The mutual antipathy stems from the concern on each side that the other will seek to impose its views and lifestyle.

Yet this stereotyping tends to break down at the individual level. Thus, although the average Israeli will express strong negative views about Hareidim in general, s/he will often feel warmly toward Hareidi individuals he knows through family, community, or work connections. This is a positive and hopeful feature in a generally bleak picture, which carries important implications for the future—assuming Hareidim become more involved in, and even integrated into, the wider society.

That assumption is a critical issue—not just for the future of Hareidi society, but for the very existence of the State of Israel. I will argue here that the future is one of greater integration, but that outcome is far from assured. If the Hareidi sector of society adheres to the ideology of separation—which has been one of its bastions and sources of strength and which has, at least in some respects, intensified in recent years—then the tensions between the wider society and the Hareidim will be exacerbated, and the suppressed conflicts will likely become steadily more overt and possibly violent.

That negative scenario is much less likely, but it is essential to understand why. The reason is that the primary source of friction between the Hareidi and non-Hareidi sectors is no longer cultural, let alone ideological. In a postmodern society such as Israel, the acceptance of numerous lifestyles is increasingly the norm (even by Hareidim, as their self-defeating struggle against gay parades in Jerusalem illustrated very clearly). Most non-Hareidim therefore have no problem with Hareidism for Hareidim, although they obviously don’t like it or want it in their backyard. However, this acceptance is subject to two important conditions: that the Hareidim do not attempt to impose their values and life-styles on non-Hareidim, and that the Hareidi community and its lifestyle is not paid for by non-Hareidim. 

It is the first of the issues—perceived attempts by Hareidim to impose their mores and values on others—that generates most of the heat and light popularly associated with “Hareidi/ secular” clashes. Travel on Shabbat, gender separation on buses—these are the classic issues that have led to bitter and sometimes violent confrontations. But these are trivial matters in the wider scheme of things. At the macro level, the clash between the Hareidi sector of Israeli society and the non-Hareidi majority has been over resource allocation, which, in plain language, means money—but also manpower (because labor is also a resource, and a critical one at that).

As soon as the Hareidi/ non-Hareidi “clash” is put in those terms, it becomes more amenable to resolution. After all, in every country different groups and sectors of the population vie for “shares of the pie.” The competition may be between rich and poor, old and young, country versus city—each country has its own characteristics, but none is devoid of rivalry. In a democratic society it is the electoral process, which enables citizens to choose between the platforms of political parties, that provides a mechanism whereby that society decides how to divide up its proverbial pie. Each group’s starting point is that it deserves more, for whatever reason—but every group must relate its demand, either implicitly or explicitly, to its contribution to the overall society.

The Hareidi “Problem”—Burden or Blessing?

The singular feature of the Hareidi sector is that it bases its request for a growing share of the national pie on a contribution that the non-Hareidi majority does not recognize. The Hareidim claim, as an article of faith, that their contribution of studying Torah full-time is equal to, if not greater than, that of the majority who serve in the army and work for a living. For reasons that will be explored below, the non-Hareidi majority have acquiesced to an arrangement whereby Hareidi young men are not conscripted into the Israeli Defense Forces, nor do they join the labor force and engage in economic activity. Instead, they remain in a framework of institutions devoted to Torah study, encompassing secondary and tertiary education and developing into open-ended “post-graduate” studies in kollels for married men.

However, this acquiescence on the part of the political leadership of non-Hareidi Israelis does not reflect acceptance by them—let alone by the general public—of the principle that adult Torah study is an equivalent contribution to work and/or army service. Consequently, the growth of Israeli Hareidism has generated a widespread feeling that “the burden”—the financial burden of paying taxes, the economic burden of making the country self-supporting, and, above all, the physical/existential burden of defending the country—is not shared, and that the Hareidim do not pull their weight but rather live a parasitic existence, paid for and defended by their non-Hareidi compatriots. 

But since the highly democratic Israeli electoral system allows the Hareidim to express their beliefs and pursue their demands via political parties in the Knesset, and since the political system results in coalitions in which these parties are usually members—and since the Hareidi political parties’ primary raison d’être is to channel budgetary allocations to its constituency—the result has been that the Israeli public has continued to pay for the maintenance and expansion of Hareidi society.

To suggest that this is going to change is considered by most Israelis today as naive, ridiculous, or proof that the suggestor is detached from Israeli reality—or all of the above. Indeed, it is now universally accepted by informed and educated Israelis that the Hareidi population poses a major problem, even a threat, to the socio-economic well-being of the State of Israel—and hence to its existence. No serious analysis of the country, its society, economy and political structure, can or does fail to make this point. Even foreign analysts have “discovered” the Hareidi problem, which now features in analyses produced by the OECD and the IMF, as well as reports in the Economist magazine, The New York Times, and other important international news media.

The existence of so broad a consensus is a strong indication that the view it presents is very likely to be wrong. To the contrarian analyst, the only time you can be sure of anything is when there is unanimity among the experts about that subject. In particular, if the accepted wisdom is that something is a serious problem that seems intractable, then you can be fairly confident that it’s going to be all right. This general rule applies to the problem posed by Israeli Hareidism.

If I therefore move straight to the bottom line, my conclusion will be that the Hareidim are going to be integrated into the Israeli economy and, to a lesser extent, into Israeli society. This long and difficult process is already underway and is picking up speed. It is being driven by forces both from within Hareidi society and outside it, so that although the initial impetus for change may have been imposed on the Hareidim, today that is not the case. If anything the opposite is occurring: Change is being driven from within, by a new generation with a new mindset.

Last but not least, this conclusion does not mean that Hareidism is going to disappear, or that the Hareidim are going to become irreligious, or “Modern Orthodox,” or anything else. Hareidism of one sort or another is a permanent fixture within the spectrum of views and behavior that comprises Judaism, at least in the modern era. It can and will adjust, as it has done several times—despite the Hareidi mythology that they and their lifestyle are unchanging—and it is in the process of doing so again. This is tremendously good news for the Jewish people as a whole, for the State of Israel, and for the Israeli Hareidi community.

Mythology Meets Reality

Before analyzing the process of change underway, it is essential to review how we arrived at the current state of affairs. Along the way, we will discover how and why the process of change started some years ago.

The Hareidi problem, stripped of its emotional and religious over- and under-tones, boils down to one of demographics and economics and the relationship between these two areas. From an economic point of view, any society can afford—if it so chooses—to provide special privileges to a small group within it. In many societies, ancient and medieval, this group was the priesthood or clergy. The Torah itself adopts this concept by designating the tribe of Levi as the privileged group to be supported by the wider society in return for devoting itself to religious duties, both in the Temple and throughout the nation. Mainstream Hareidi ideology uses the Levites as an example and role-model for the position Hareidim wish to assume within Israeli society.

The concept of a small group of devoted scholars, engaged in keeping the flame of traditional Jewish study alive after the annihilation of the European Torah centers during the Holocaust, was accepted by Ben-Gurion and other secular leaders in the 1950s and provided the justification for the two key privileges granted the then-tiny Hareidi sector, namely the exemption of dedicated yeshiva students (and all religious girls) from army service and, even more importantly, the creation of a separate education stream for the Hareidi sector. At the time, these seemed to be minor concessions and did not attract significant attention; the cost, in social, military, and economic terms, was negligible.

However, two dynamics combined to change the relative position of the Hareidi sector within the wider society, and, consequently, to change the attitude of the silent majority of the population with regard to Hareidi privileges from one of passive acquiescence to increasingly vocal opposition. The first of these was demographic: Over time, the birth rate in the Hareidi sector rose dramatically, as this society adopted early marriage and large families not merely as social mores but rather as key cultural values. At the same time, the birth rate in the general population, especially the Jewish population, was declining as the immigrants from Europe and the Arab world adopted Western mores. The inevitable result was a steady rise in the relative size of the Hareidi sector within the overall Israeli population, from a negligible level at the foundation of the state to a small but noticeable minority by the 1970s.

This period—roughly the first three decades of Israel’s existence—is viewed today by many older Hareidim as a “golden age.” From their weak and marginal position in society, firmly planted in political opposition to the ruling Labor-left coalitions, the Hareidim were forced to struggle for anything they needed. Their small numbers and shared goals and needs forced them to work via a single political party—Agudat Yisrael—to protect and expand the privileges they had obtained. Their religious leadership, comprising a handful of outstanding personalities who had survived the Holocaust and were now dedicated to regenerating Hareidi life, focused their efforts on education as the means to produce a new generation committed to living by the old values and verities. Money was scarce, for the country as a whole and especially for the marginalized Hareidim but—as in the wider Israeli story—much was achieved, thanks to determination, focused efforts, and inspiring leadership.

In 1977, the second dynamic came into play. The “political upheaval” of May 1977 ended the hegemony of the Labor-left and brought to power a Likud-led center-right coalition. The new Prime Minister, Menachem Begin, invited Agudat Yisrael (AY) to join his government—and the invitation was accepted with alacrity. AY maintained that it could not accept ministerial positions because that would require accepting responsibility for government decisions and activities it could not approve of; instead, its representatives took deputy ministerial posts and other positions, notably the chairmanship of the Knesset Finance Committee, through which they became instrumental in making key policy decisions. More importantly, from the narrow sectoral perspective through which AY viewed its involvement in national politics, its entry into government and its prominent position in budgetary affairs allowed it to massively increase its access to funding for its institutions, educational and other.

The common perception is that from this point on, Hareidi power and influence rose steadily. This process was catalyzed by the deadlock between the two main political blocks that characterized Israeli politics through much of the 1980s and 1990s, and that allowed Hareidi parties to hold the balance of power and thereby to extract more concessions in return for their support. These concessions were almost always in the form of larger budgetary allocations, which gradually spread across a range of channels: the Ministry of Education provided budgets for the Hareidi school systems; the Ministry of Religion was the primary source of funding for yeshivot and kollels; the National Insurance Institute (NII), via its child allowances and other social welfare payments, became a critical source of funding for burgeoning Hareidi families; and, over time, a huge array of NGOs serving the Hareidi sector emerged, most of them reliant on government funding as their primary source of support.

To be fair, the process of tapping into the government budget to finance institutions and NGOs with a sectoral orientation was by no means a Hareidi monopoly. In the period from the late 1980s to the turn of the century, everyone got into the act, but the Hareidi parties were the acknowledged masters of this game—the biggest and the best.

Note that by this point it was necessary to speak of Hareidi parties in the plural. The old alliance of all the Hareidi groups under the AY umbrella broke down, once again under the twin forces of demographics and politics. There were now large numbers of people in each of the main sub-groups of the Hareidi sector—the Hassidim, the Mitnagdim (“Lithuanians”) and the Sephardim. The latter group not only broke away to form its own party but, under the leadership of Rabbi Ovadia Yosef and his chief lieutenant, Aryeh Der’i, launched an unprecedented  campaign that reversed the secularization process underway among Sephardic Jewry. Shas grew to become a mass movement, led by Sephardi Hareidim but attractive to a much wider public. Its relationship with the other mainstream Hareidi party, Degel Hatorah, is complex and multi-faceted, but the basic fact remains that Shas views itself as a Zionist party and as a full partner in the governing of the state. [2]

The process described above, of financing the growth of Hareidi education, welfare, and other systems from the state budget, was both the cause and the effect of Hareidi demographic and political expansion in the 1990s. It reached its climax in the “Halpert Law” of 1999, named after an AY Knesset member and foisted on another weak coalition in desperate need of Hareidi support in order to cling to power. The law changed the structure of child allowance payments from the NII so that, whereas hitherto the additional allowance for children under the age of 18 rose until the fifth child and then declined, now it would continue rising: each marginal child would bring in a relatively larger stipend. The obvious beneficiaries if this law would be the Hareidim—but also the Bedouin Arabs, where polygamous family structures existed and NII stipends enabled and encouraged high birth-rates.

The Halpert Law proved to be the high-point of Hareidi political power. But it is important to note that even in the late 1990s it was already apparent, both within and outside Hareidi circles, that Lord Acton’s dictum that power corrupts applied to Hareidim no less than to others. The most obvious evidence was the number of Hareidi Knesset members sent to jail for various forms of corrupt practices. Although I would tend to accept the Shas argument that its representatives, and Aryeh Deri in particular, were victims of a political witch-hunt inspired by the Ashenazi/ left-liberal “elites,” that doesn’t make them innocent—it just means they were picked on and picked off.

However, with the benefit of hindsight, it is clear that the peccadilloes of specific Knesset members and ministers were only the tip of a much larger iceberg. In effect, Hareidi political power resulted in Hareidi society becoming entirely dependent on the government budget. In other words, Hareidi Judaism—despite its proclaimed ideology of separation, self-sacrifice, and asceticism and its efforts to dissociate itself from Zionist ideology—turned itself into a branch of the Israeli welfare state. Nor did this happen by accident; the process became self-supporting  as more and more Hareidi leaders, their entourages and their institutions, became increasingly dependent on funding whose ultimate source was the government budget—and hence the Israeli taxpayer. True, there was an alternative source of funding, namely foreign donations. But after the fall of the Reichman brothers’ empire in the early 1990s, the illusion that one family had been designated by Providence to support the entire edifice of Israeli Hareidism was shattered. Foreign donations remained an ongoing source of support, but its role was increasingly to provide jam, while the bread and butter came from the Israeli government. The lesson of the rise and fall of the Reichmans seemed to be that no wealthy individual, however mind-bogglingly rich, could play the central role. The national budget was larger, more accessible and seemingly more dependable.

But government funding was earmarked for two main areas: education and welfare. As a result, both saw massive expansion. They became the focal points of activity for every entrepreneurially oriented Hareidi so that, sadly and ironically, they became the main “industries” within the Hareidi business sector. Furthermore, since the new generation of Hareidi entrepreneurs had neither experience nor formal education, management of the new entities was characterized by inefficiencies, superfluity, and corruption.

Educational establishments proliferated, each one of which was a business venture in an increasingly competitive market. The more successful entities, whether by design or by accident, became involved in real estate, catering and wedding halls, and other legitimate business operations. As for illegitimate activities, the reader is referred to the media and/or Google for more details.

The overall picture was one of rapid, headlong, and unplanned growth, in which the nimble and well-connected came out on top, while a wider class of political machers, public relations, marketing, and other consultants, along with the managers of the NGOs, emerged as an embryonic Hareidi upper-middle class. But there was nothing below them, other than a mass of yeshiva/ kollel families, dependent on meager stipends and living near or actually in relative poverty, as the cost of feeding, educating, and marrying off their numerous children consumed their small incomes. 

The Secular Backlash

The Halpert Law proved to be the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back. By pushing their political power too far, the Hareidim triggered a political backlash on the part of secular, middle-class Israelis, against what was commonly called “Hareidi blackmail.” Since the two big parties were unwilling to clash with the Hareidi sector directly, the protest movement found a new outlet in the form of a new party, Shinui, which not only called itself  “the secular list” but was openly and stridently anti-Hareidi. Its leaders were indeed anti-religious, but most of its supporters were probably not; they, too, were concerned with money rather than ideology, above all with who paid taxes and who received benefits—as well as with who served in the army and did reserve duty and who didn’t.

One of the most remarkable of the many political parties to shoot across the Israeli political firmament, Shinui may arguably be regarded as the most successful. In its first election effort, in 1999, it won six seats, a highly respectable performance, but not enough to change the balance of power. But by the next general election, the country was in a very different position. The hopes of peace and security prevalent in 1999 had been dashed by the second intifada and the suicide bombing campaign, while the prosperity engendered by the high-tech dot.com boom had been expunged by the “tech-wreck” and a global recession. These, coupled with the impact of the suicide bombings on the domestic economy, had plunged Israel into the longest and most severe recession in the country’s history. Tax revenues plummeted—but expenditures continued to rise, as the welfare structure created in the 1990s was impervious to the ups and downs of the economy. The result was a massive budget deficit and a financial crisis in 2002, which occurred against a background of serial suicide bombings and an Israeli counter-offensive against the Palestinian terrorist groups—Operation “Defensive Wall.”

There had been serious tensions between Hareidim and secularists in 2000 over Prime Minister Ehud Barak’s “secular agenda” and what Hareidim perceived as excessive Supreme Court activism. But the events of 2002 exposed the Hareidi sector to an unprecedented degree: they paid little tax but received a disproportionate share of the government’s expenditure and, as usual, they played no role in the military campaign. All this made Shinui’s message resonate widely so that, with the help of a vigorous and nasty election campaign, the party won 15 seats in the election of February 2003, making it the third-biggest party in the Knesset and an obvious coalition partner for the Likud—which, led by Ariel Sharon, had won a tremendous victory, garnering 40 (out of 120) Knesset seats.

The election outcome enabled Sharon to turn Israeli politics on its head and build a coalition in which all the Hareidi parties—including Shas, to its amazement and horror—were excluded. Sharon appointed Binyamin Netanyahu as Finance Minister, with the seemingly Herculean task of pulling the battered economy into shape, and these two used their parliamentary majority and the atmosphere of dire crisis to rapidly legislate a series of sweeping reforms. In addition to rationalizing the tax system to generate higher revenues, Netanyahu homed in on the expenditure side, which was plainly out of control. Inevitably, justifiably, and predictably, he took a machete to the sprawling welfare system that had been constructed and of which the Hareidim were the prime beneficiaries.

In the course of 2003–2004, the overall amounts of government funding to the Hareidi sector fell drastically, probably by one-third, perhaps even more. The main blow was the slashing of child allowances, but the yeshiva stipends and other elements were also pruned. Not surprisingly, the Hareidim came to call this development “the Netanyahu gezeros” (decrees, a term usually applied to anti-Jewish laws by gentile anti-Semitic regimes). The alternative would have been to admit that they and their leadership had, through greed, short-sightedness, and sheer stupidity, set themselves up for this disaster. But whatever label is used, this was the watershed event that marked the end of the Hareidi welfare-state society that had been constructed over the previous three decades.

The sheer scale of the implosion in funding caused massive distress for many Hareidi families and forced many institutions to merge or close altogether. Objectively—and if the government’s aim was indeed to incentivize Hareidim to move from welfare into the workforce, as it claimed—then the cuts should have been phased in gradually, over a period of 5-10 years. But the immediate need was to stem the hemorrhaging in the national budget and, in this context, the swollen welfare budgets were the obvious targets. The result was traumatic—and that trauma set Hareidi society on a new path.

From Crisis of Confidence to a New Model of Hareidism

The immediate task facing the Hareidi leadership in the wake of the so-called gezeros was to address the crisis as best they could. In practice, beyond an emergency fund-raising campaign, the pain could only be eased gradually, as the Israeli and global economies began to recover. But the situation began to improve perhaps faster than might have been expected. The domestic scene changed: Shinui imploded in a welter of internal feuding and corruption charges, and soon disappeared entirely from the political scene—as far as its voters were concerned, its mission completed. Subsequent governments recognized that the cuts imposed by Netanyahu had been too drastic and allowed some increases in child allowances.

Meanwhile, a new development was sweeping the economies of the main developed countries where large Hareidi centers had developed. The greatest real-estate boom ever seen was minting millionaires seemingly by the minute, and a rich new vein of foreign funding opened up. For five years, from 2004 through 2008, unprecedented sums of money poured into the Israeli Hareidi sector, not just in the form of donations, but also as investments in real-estate and other businesses. The wider Israeli public was largely unaware of this, but anyone walking through the Hareidi quarters of Jerusalem and other Hareidi population centers could hardly fail to notice the surge of construction activity.

Once again, however, as with the Reichman saga 20 years earlier, the hope that foreign sources could replace the Israeli government in whole or part proved illusory. The real-estate crash in the United States and the subsequent financial and economic crisis in the West wiped out many of the new Hareidi tycoons, and, together with a series of scandals within the Hareidi Diaspora, served to eliminate key sources of funds, with the inflow drying up much faster than it had expanded.

Nor was the new money, even when it was available, a true replacement for the funds lost via the “gezeros.” Donations went via intermediaries, who generally took a hefty cut for themselves, to institutions and organizations, wherein a new Hareidi executive class began to emerge and adopt a lifestyle to match. The government money, or what was left of it, went to individuals and families who desperately needed it—although they then had to turn to the charity organizations to supplement it.  Thus the real-estate driven prosperity of 2004–2008 aggravated the existing income and wealth gaps within Hareidi society, with the majority of the Hareidi poor being left steadily further behind.

Meanwhile, even as the chimera of Diaspora real-estate money came and went, far-reaching changes were taking place in Israel, both inside and outside of the Hareidi sector:

• Beginning in 2003, the Israeli economy began what was to become its longest-ever period of economic expansion. Although the global crisis of 2008 hit the Israeli economy too, its impact was short and after two tough quarters, the economy bounced back and resumed its growth path. In hindsight, the period 2003–2010 can be seen as “seven fat years” in which Israel surged ahead and prosperity became widespread. However, massive income and wealth gaps developed, with Hareidim and Israeli Arabs standing out as the two main population groups left out of the party.
• If the economic success story is well-known, the extraordinary developments in Israeli demography since 2003 are not. Yet the data are official, regularly updated, and clear-cut. They show that a) since the slashing of child allowances the Hareidi birth-rate has trended lower (as has that of the Bedouins); b) the birth-rate among non-Hareidi Israelis has steadily risen; c) the birth-rate among Israeli Arabs continues along its long-term declining trend.
• Within the overall economic success story, the single most important datum is not widely known. This is that the participation rate in the labor force has risen steadily and is now at a record-high level of 58 percent. This rate is still extremely low by Western standards, but the upward trend is the critical factor. One of the causes of this improvement, perhaps a central one, is the increase in the rate of participation among Hareidim, including Hareidi males.
• Within Hareidi society, major changes are underway. Three, in particular, need to be highlighted, relating to a) politics, b) sociology, and c) psychology. Space only permits presenting these in “headline” form, but each is worthy of close examination.

Hareidi politics: The evidence of a crisis of leadership in Hareidi society is most evident in the political sphere, where it can actually be measured. The most obvious evidence is the failure of the Hareidi parties to increase their representation in recent elections, despite surging growth in the Hareidi voting population. This suggests that Hareidi votes, especially younger ones, are leaking away to non-Hareidi parties—a suspicion supported by reading of the Hareidi and non-Hareidi media and by anecdotal evidence. In addition to voting patterns in general elections, the faction- and personality-based feuding within the Hareidi political scene—the municipal elections in Betar and Jerusalem in 2008 are outstanding examples—is forcing many young Hareidim to the conclusion that their interests are not being promoted by traditional Hareidi parties. More generally, the shrinking of government support has revealed that Hareidi politics has become entirely focused on obtaining government funding and providing jobs through patronage, and has shed its ideological underpinnings.  Now that Hareidi parties are unable to provide sufficient funds or jobs to answer their constituencies’ needs, they have lost their validity and with it, increasingly, their support.

Hareidi sociology: The “gezeros” left  most Hareidim over the age of 35 with insufficient income to support their large families—and without education, training, or any practical means of finding jobs in the wider economy. Overnight, they became a “wilderness generation”—and the Hareidi leadership has not been able to provide systemic solutions to the crisis. The conclusion drawn by many younger Hareidim—especially those who are, for one reason or another, uncomfortable with or unsuitable to the yeshiva/ kollel lifestyle—is that they must look out for themselves. Specifically, they must be able to earn a living. This is fuelling a steady increase in the number of young Hareidim attending colleges and even universities, as well as vocational courses, in a broad range of fields. These efforts are being funded and guided by, inter alia, the Joint Distribution Committee, numerous individual philanthropists, and institutional philanthropies from overseas, as well as various Israeli government ministries and agencies—including most branches of the IDF.

 This means that the front line of Hareidi integration into Israeli society is now the labor market—but also that serving in the IDF, after yeshiva and perhaps some kollel study, is acceptable. The envelope is being pushed steadily outward, both in quantitative terms—the number of people involved—and in qualitative terms, meaning the kinds of things they do.

As this process moves forward, it is creating a genuine Hareidi bourgeoisie—people with real jobs and businesses that create income and wealth, rather than party apparatchiks and “welfare entrepreneurs” whose business arena is the Hareidi “hessed” empires that are the hallmarks of the sector’s poverty and welfare-dependence.

Hareidi psychology: This point is based more on subjective impressions than hard data, but it seems to me both correct and a logical accompaniment to and outcome of the preceding points. In Kennedy-style terms, we can speak of the torch being passed—more correctly, seized—by a new generation of Hareidim, who have come of age in the twenty-first century, tempered by terror and war, disciplined by a severe financial but also spiritual crisis, proud of its ancient heritage, and unwilling to impose on the next generation the ideals of genteel poverty on which it was brought up. Furthermore, this new generation sees and feels itself to be entirely Israeli, an integral part of the multi-cultural mosaic that is the State of Israel today. Unlike their grandparents, they feel no need to molder on the margins of society, and unlike their parents, they do not carry an inbuilt inferiority complex vis-à-vis secular or religious Israelis. Many of them are beginning to realize that they have much to give to the wider society and also much to learn from it, because—contrary to what they were told in school—they and their leaders do not have all the answers. Above all they are convinced, on the basis of what they have seen both in Israel and among their peers in the Diaspora, that it is possible to live a Hareidi lifestyle and yet interact, where necessary, with the wider society.

These new trends are the antithesis of the old-style welfare-state Hareidism. The battle between the two is ongoing and will take time to resolve, but the global reversal of the welfare state model ensures that the old system is doomed. The future of Hareidism lies with the new generation, which is engaged in a live experiment of adapting its lifestyle to a new socio-economic reality.

The track record of Hareidim in adapting to new circumstances is a good one. Furthermore, the overwhelming majority of the wider Israeli society, including the government and the main institutions of the state, are strongly supportive of this effort. How exactly it will turn out cannot be known—because the future is unknown. But too much hangs on the outcome of this effort, for the Hareidim, for the strength and cohesion of the State of Israel, and for the future of the Jewish people, for it to fail.

“Then you begin to give up the very idea of belonging. Suddenly this thing, this belonging, it seems like some long, dirty lie ... and I begin to believe that birthplaces are accidents, that everything is an accident. But if you believe that, where do you go? What do you do? What does anything matter?”
—Zadie Smith, White Teeth

Going off the derekh is one of the greatest epidemics facing the religious Jewish community today. You would be hard-pressed to find a frum family untouched by this phenomenon, whether it is a child, sibling, spouse, cousin, friend, or schoolmate who has left religion behind. In the wake of the individual leaving is a tempest of emotions—confusion, guilt, anger, hurt, and sadness.

All too often, the religious Jews left behind are focused on their pain, their hurt. “How could my child do this to me?”Alternatively, anger and bitterness lead to blame. “There is just something wrong with him.” “There are problems with the community.” But neit¬her of these attitudes is constructive. If we want to cure this spiritual disease, we have to turn these questions on their heads.
We must look at the situation from the point of view of the person who has gone off the derekh. We must ask ourselves instead, “How does he/she feel?” We must ask ourselves, “What could I have done differently? What can I change to help him/her return and prevent any similar future occurrences?” Only by asking these difficult questions and facing their (often painful) answers head-on can we learn what we could do differently the next time and, if we are lucky, we will learn what we need to know to help bring them back and to offer healing.

Freedom without Limits

In Yiddish, going “off the derekh” is called “freiing out,” from the German word frei, to be free. When religious Jews leave the practice of their religion, they are “free”—free to eat or drink anything, free to do anything at all on Shabbat, free to socialize with and date any person they want. Suddenly nothing is forbidden. Suddenly there are no limits.
But how free is freedom without limits? And how good does it feel when it is accompanied by rejection from all that you once knew and loved? The life of the frei is no utopia. They discover very quickly that a life of freedom from religious restrictions is not the paradise they once envisioned.

They have spent their lives as a part of something bigger: not just a family, but an entire community where they belonged. Now where do they fit in? Their friends and family are on a mission to bring them back—and if not, they simply no longer have things in common. In some cases, they feel anger and bitterness toward their family and previous lifestyle. They feel confusion, shame, and guilt for hurting their family and friends.

Yet, how can they fit into a world of which they have never been a part? They have limited shared background, no shared memories with people outside of the religious community, and no friends to turn to. They have been educated to believe that everything they are now doing, along with the people they are doing it with, is wrong.

The freid-out individual may still want to connect with family, but he/she is left in conflict. Can such a person go to his parents’ house for Friday night dinner and enjoy his mother’s chicken soup and challah—or will it end in a fight when he leaves to see a movie with friends? Freid-out people want the best of both worlds, but no longer know where they stand.

Freiing out is a long and difficult process. Beginning to understand the pain and emotional tumult involved is the first step to healing—and to learning what we can do differently to prevent it happening in the first place.

Why People Go Off the Derekh

“Children’s nerves are easily affected; great care ought to be taken to avoid any disturbance in their lives, until they are practically mature. But who realizes that for some boys at school an undeserved imposition may cause as much mental anguish as the death of a friend will later on? Who really appreciates that something quite trivial may cause in certain immature minds an emotional upset which may in a very short time inflict incurable damage?”

—Guy De Maupassant, “Looking Back”

The reasons people go off the derekh are as varied and individualized as the people themselves. Each person’s unique set of life experiences, personality, strengths, and weaknesses contribute to his/her ultimate decision to leave religion. Nonetheless, the reason one leaves can generally be placed into at least one of six main categories.

Religious Misery

People do not voluntarily give up something they enjoy. If Judaism is bringing happiness and fulfillment into someone’s life, they will not leave it behind. Remember, we all find happiness in different things, so what attracts you to Judaism might not attract someone else. In fact, it could even repel them.

On the other hand, if you can figure out what they like about Judaism and you make that a focus for them, they will not want to leave. You have to make their passion your priority, regardless of whether or not it is a passion you share.
People going off the derekh are often angry or depressed. If you see a child, a student, a friend, or even yourself in one of these states for an extended period of time, these are warning signs. You need to respond right away. Find out what the underlying problem is. If a person is miserable in any sort of Jewish context, they are at risk.

Judaism can be an overwhelming religion. It controls what and when you can eat, what you can wear, and even with whom you can socialize and how. So logically you might be tempted to think that it is this avalanche of restrictions that eventually snows people under. But it is not so.

The reality is that the small things often cause the most suffering. Instead of wishing he could eat bacon cheeseburgers at McDonald’s, your at-risk child is more likely wondering why he can’t eat at his friend’s home, which, although kosher, is not kosher enough.

The solution? Pick your battles very carefully. How important is the battle overall if you bear in mind that by winning you could be losing in much more significant and long-term ways?
When you have a dispute with your child, change your priorities. Instead of focusing on being right and teaching them to be just like you, ask yourself how you can make them happy. This does not mean compromising on morals and values, but on finding a way to help your child or friend maintain a positive connection with Judaism and with God.
For example, if you know music resonates with a person, find music they can connect to that will convey your message. If they enjoy studying, find a text that addresses the issue. And at the end of the day, remember to always pick your battles wisely.

The same applies to adults. For instance, a married man may want to go to university and study for a degree, but he is stuck working a simple job amidst a Hassidic community that doesn’t approve. Or the newly married ba’alat teshuvah living in Tzefat who occasionally wants to go to Tel Aviv and watch a movie but her husband forbids it. I know both of these people. Sadly, they both grew frustrated and left their families and communities.

I do not mean to advocate what is right and wrong when it comes to how we choose to observe our Judaism. However, we must realize and accept that often it is these types of things that build up the religious misery experienced by individuals going off the derekh.

Role Model Discredit

Being a religious Jew is not a simple decision that affects only the individual who practices religious Judaism. When you wear the garb, walk the walk, and talk the talk, suddenly other people look to you as a role model. Deciding to be religious is a conscious decision to be a role model, like it or not.

Think about it: You never encounter someone who says, “Oh, that guy just stole something! All secular people are thieves!” However, you do hear people say, “That man with the black hat and beard just cursed me for dressing differently. Those religious Jews are so judgmental!” When you decide to present yourself as an observant Jew, you are representing the entire Jewish people.

There are two levels of role model discredit: discrediting only what a person says, or simply discrediting the person or institution as a whole.

When a child constantly disagrees with a parent, he or she is unlikely to discredit the parent as a person, but will almost certainly discredit what the parent says. If this occurs, it is not irreversible. If the parent can learn to look into the child’s point of view and can show this, the child can still respect the parent, even if he or she persists in disagreeing. The same applies for a judgmental friend or spouse.
However, when there is not such a strong personal investment as there is between a parent and child, or between spouses, as in the case of an educational system, it is easier simply to discredit the person—or the institution—as a whole. If a child is a member of a Jewish baseball team and his or her teacher or principal tells the child this is not acceptable and that they should be spending more time studying, it is easy for the child to discredit the entire system. The child may think, “I love baseball. I make so many friends and get exercise. But if Judaism is against baseball, then maybe Judaism is not for me.” Once again, the individual religious person becomes a representation of the entire system.

The above example may not apply in a Modern Orthodox community, where it could be acceptable to play in a sports league. But this example can apply to anything that is slightly out of the norm in relation to the particular community, such as joining a Jewish scout troop or taking up surfing.

Adults can also discredit their rabbi or religious mentor, if he (God forbid) ends up in prison for crimes such as fraud, child abuse, or theft. When this happens, it can create a mountain of emotional turmoil as the individual reflects on the years of hypocritical teachings they listened to.

Complicating the matter further is the issue of respect. Respect is only given in return for respect received, or when it is earned. Unfortunately, children often do not feel respected in a religious setting. The teacher who chides his student for playing baseball will almost certainly lose any respect the child previously had for him if baseball is fundamentally important to the child.

If you are dealing with an individual who has lost respect for you or is discrediting what you say, you must first rebuild their trust and regain their respect. Only once this breach in relationship is repaired can you begin to work on bringing the individual closer once again to their Judaism.

Being Prejudged or Labeled as Frei

The self-fulfilling prophecy is a very real danger. A study was done in which a teacher was given a classroom full of remedial students. Instead of being told they were remedial, however, both the teacher and the students were told they were in a special class for gifted students. Astoundingly, in spite of previously diagnosed learning disabilities, all the students in the class performed at a gifted level.

The converse is also true. When we are told repeatedly that we are stupid, we will begin to think we are stupid. And if we think we are stupid, we will begin to act stupid.

So, too, with the person who is told they are freiing out. They may not think of themselves as frei just for wearing jeans or eating non-cholov yisroel ice cream in a Hassidic community… but if the world begins to tell them they are, they will begin to believe it. And once they believe they are freiing out, they will begin to do more frei things. Because, after all, if they are frei anyhow, they might as well!
Too many people have said, “Going to university makes people frei out” or “Joining the Israeli army will make you go off the derekh.” This is the wrong message to send! Saying any career, hobby, or passion will lead to freiing out is a dangerous message. Not only can it lead to role model discredit, as discussed above, but it can also force a person to make a difficult decision: to choose between their passion and their Judaism.

Before you ever say the words, “You cannot do that and still be frum,” or “What you want to do is not a Jewish profession,” or “If you do that, you will go off the derekh,” make absolutely sure that you know what you are talking about. You may be planting the idea into the person’s head that they need to go off the derekh if they want to do the things that they love, as opposed to allowing them to try to think up a way to pursue their interests and still keep their Judaism.

Instead of planting the idea in the person’s head that he or she must go off the derekh to do what he or she loves, try asking the person how he or she plans to keep up with Judaism when they do it. Or, better yet, help the person think of ways. How can you work Judaism into that person’s passion? Unless the person is pursuing something very extreme or dangerous, such as drug use or pursuit of another religion, there is almost always a way to fit Judaism in. You just have to find a way to do it—and to help your friend or family member find that way, too.

Rejection and Conditional Love

Perception is everything. The day outside may be bright and beautiful, but if a person is blind, she will still say it is dark. To her, it is dark, and it does not matter that the sun is out.
All too often, we focus on what the objective reality of the situation is, but this is the wrong attitude to take. We can argue all day with the blind woman that it is bright out, but it will not change the fact that to her it is dark. Her subjective perception, even if at odds with scientific empiricism, is her truth and her reality. If we want to deal with her, we must accept that and treat it as reality.
Normally, parents love their children unconditionally. I cannot ever imagine my son doing anything that would take away my love for him, and I am sure other parents feel the same. Yet, through our actions we can convey a different message.
Imagine a home where Torah study is strongly rewarded. The parents praise their children when they spend time studying Torah or succeed in Torah-related pursuits. But then when their children excel in something unrelated, such as music, art, sports, or other secular studies, they ignore them—or worse, tell them they should be studying Torah instead.

Of course those parents are proud of their children. Of course they want them to succeed. Of course they love them. But what message are they sending?

Judaism should be a source of joy and security for a child, but in a home like the one I just described it becomes the opposite. It becomes at best a burden for the child to bear, at worst the child’s competition for a parent’s approval and affection. The child begins to feel the parents’ love is conditional. If they don’t feel they can meet their parents’ expectations—or don’t feel they even want to—then they begin to feel rejected. This starts the child on a downward spiral, often ending in depression. Once the child is depressed, they are vulnerable and their Judaism is at risk of declining.

But this is not true only in a parent-child relationship—it is true of any person regarding their relationship with the community as a whole. Any person who feels rejected by the wider Jewish community, or only loved by the community at certain times, is at risk just as that child is.

The solution is to show love at all times, not only when the child, spouse, student, or friend shows interests in common with yours. Of course, show pride in Torah study achievements. But, even if it is hard, also show pride in the mundane, worldly things in which the individual has taken an interest.

If your child is not interested in doing the things you want him or her to do, try thinking of new ways to phrase things. Have you ever told your child, “You must come to shul and daven; you cannot go play outside now”? Perhaps you could rephrase it as, “I need you to sit next to me while I’m in shul. I have a hard time keeping up with the hazzan, and I need you to help me!” Instead of telling your child to sit and study Torah, sit down and study Torah yourself—then tell your child you are having a hard time understanding and need his or her help. Try to think of something positive that will make your child happy to do it. As a bonus, your child will feel respected and needed.

Finally, never use anything related to Judaism as a punishment. All too often, parents and educators use Judaism in the wrong way, which gives the child negative associations. Telling a child to copy over the bentching (grace after meals) for talking during bentching will certainly not give them warm, fuzzy feelings toward these texts.

Dysfunctional Home and Abuse

It may seem obvious that abuse would lead to someone going off the derekh, but often it is overlooked. Abuse comes in many forms, some of which are not so obvious. It is one thing if parents beat their children or someone sexually abuses them, but what about emotional or psychological abuse? What about spousal abuse? What about a home that is simply “dysfunctional”—where the parents fight all the time, or are divorced?

Any type of abuse or dysfunction, whether overt or hidden, is a major risk to a person’s relationship with Judaism. As with any abusive situation, there are a few strong and enlightened individuals who are able to overcome this, but the majority of people cannot. For anyone abused, especially by a parent, spouse, teacher, member of the clergy, or even a member of the community, it becomes increasingly difficult to separate the religion that person supposedly stands for from their negative and harmful actions. Similarly, a child growing up in a dysfunctional home, although not abusive, is at risk when Judaism is a large part of the home life, and the home life is problematic. It is easy to confuse the two of them.

Sadly, many people refuse to have anything to do with Judaism on account of past abuses. One man, although in his 60s, still insists that Judaism cannot be a very good religion to follow if his grandfather, who wore a black hat and beard, could beat his children and grandchildren in such a violent way. The outwardly religious grandfather represented to this man everything that Judaism stands for and—even as an adult and even with his grandfather dead for over 40 years—he cannot emotionally disentangle the two.

Even if victims of abuse can be rational enough to see that their abuser and their religion are not intertwined, their Judaism is still at major risk. Victims of abuse often suffer from low self-esteem and feelings of rejection, and are prone to depression and anxiety, all of which are risk factors for freiing out. Children in dysfunctional homes are also likely to feel these same emotions. Additionally, they may not receive the love and attention they need when their parents’ energies are pointed elsewhere.

Abuse must be dealt with before addressing anything relating to religious observance. A professional should be involved if the victim needs counseling to help with the recovery process. Sadly, however, many people live in denial. Parents who fight constantly, for instance, may refuse to admit to themselves that theirs is not a happy home. Unfortunately, when this occurs, the denial is likely to continue, even when (God forbid) the child is out doing drugs with friends.

The Mind

The mind is a powerful creative force in our lives. It has the power to do some truly extraordinary things and to enable us to accomplish unprecedented feats. Unfortunately, it also has the power to control and harm us, even when we are not aware of it. This is because our subconscious mind is constantly working, making associations and influencing our emotions and reactions.

Have you ever felt unexplained anxiety, fear, or paranoia? Have you ever felt negative feelings toward someone who has done you no harm, or given you no reason to dislike him? What about feeling highly stressed by a seemingly benign situation?

All of these are reactions that may be governed by our subconscious mind. It does not matter if the fear has a basis in reality or not. Perception is reality for the person who is experiencing it. To the child who is afraid of the monster under the bed, it is very real no matter how many times you explain that monsters do not exist.

Often when we have either strongly positive or strongly negative experiences, our subconscious mind forms associations. My grandfather fought in the Second World War, where he no doubt saw and experienced many traumatic things. From then on, he was terrified of flying and would never set foot in a plane. His fear of flying was real for him, even though we tried many times to explain that statistically planes are much safer than cars.

This is true also when it comes to Judaism. Negative experiences can color our reactions. If a child has had bad experiences with being forced to wear a yarmulke, for instance, he may not only try to avoid wearing one at all costs, but he may also feel an unexplained dislike for anyone he sees wearing one. He himself may not even understand why he feels this way.

This problem is compounded by the rigid system imposed by many religious groups. In the Chabad Lubavitch system, for instance, a boy is expected to attend yeshiva (with no secular studies), followed by more yeshiva, bachur shlichus, Smicha, marriage, one year of kollel, and then shlichus (to work in a Jewish community). Boys growing up in this system are often taught this is the only option available. They feel pressure to conform, especially if they are from a prominent family or they want to get a good shidduch. But what of the boys who don’t fit in?

To the individual who recognizes where this path is heading, it is no longer a subconscious matter and it becomes even stronger as he becomes more aware and conscious of the situation.

Not everyone is cut out to follow the same path. Some men can sit and study Talmud all day every day of their life and feel content and fulfilled… but not everyone is like this. Boys who do not fit the mold may slowly feel more and more anxious and stressed, sometimes without even understanding why. A girl may feel stressed by having to conform to a path of getting married at a young age and starting a family, when really she prefers to wait to marry and perhaps go to university.

When pressure builds up, without being confronted or released, eventually it will “explode.” When it does, these boys and girls are left running for the nearest exit. Instead of maintaining their Judaism and simply following a different path, they leave their Judaism altogether. They just didn’t know there was any other way.

Children of ba’alei teshuvah have yet another stumbling block before them. They frei out much more frequently than children of frum from birth (FFB) parents. Why? Because they have no family precedent when it comes to this rigid path set before them. Children of FFBs are often following the same road their parents, grandparents, and other relatives took, and so are more comfortable with it. But children of ba’alei teshuvah look at their parents and their extended families and see them all following completely different paths. They will then be less comfortable conforming to the path set before them.

Be very careful not to give children (or anyone, but especially children, who are most impressionable) negative associations with Judaism. What may seem like a small thing to you as a parent or educator could have a huge impact on the child or student in their relationship with the matter later in life. Learn to recognize the warning signs within yourself and your friends and family. If you have unexplained negative feelings toward something or someone within Judaism, stop and ask yourself why. Take some time out for quiet reflection and see if you can trace it back to an experience in your past. At least then, if you confront it, you can begin the healing process.

Maintaining Individuality

The secular world is a vast and enticing place. With individuality as one of the core values embraced by secular society, how can we expect Jewish youth, no matter how cloistered their existence, to remain unaffected? Yet Judaism is a religion designed to roll with the punches; that’s how it has survived so many centuries. So how do we fit individuality into a seemingly conformist religion?

The first, and most important, thing to realize is that Judaism is not as conformist as your own group would have you believe. In Judaism, unlike Christianity, we do not believe that just because I am of a certain group, God will only accept my worship, while everybody else will be rejected or eternally punished. When it comes down to it, our disputes are minor. All major Orthodox Jewish groups agree with one another on a great deal of points.

Unfortunately, we spend our time arguing about and focusing on that minor set of differences. You don’t hear Jews sitting around arguing about whether or not we should give more tzedakah, invite more guests for Shabbat, and visit the sick more often. You don’t hear people debating if it’s necessary to study Torah, go to shul, and keep kosher. What we do hear are arguments about whether or not the Lubavitcher Rebbe is moshiach, the style of a hat, shietle, or kippa, and how many call-ups there should be to the Torah on a Shabbat morning. But in the main, these are issues that are in constant change when we compare them to the overarching beliefs central to the Torah.

Judaism is in constant evolution on the peripheries. However, at its core it is unchanging and it is on this core that we must focus.

If a child, student, or friend chooses to follow a slightly different path in Judaism, embrace it. Sure, you may have 1 percent in which you differ, but you have 99 percent in which you agree—and that’s pretty good! In our family, we have many different strains of Orthodox Judaism, from Chabad to Belz to black-hat Yeshivish. If you relax and let individuals find their uniqueness within the 1 percent of differences, hopefully they will not need to seek it in the other 99 percent.

The Modern World

Of course, there are many temptations in the secular world to which we and our children will inevitably be exposed. The question is in our management of them. Some things in the secular world are indisputably dangerous, while others actually stand to benefit us, even as religious Jews.

Clothing

Many sects in Judaism adhere strictly to a certain dress code. Males must wear black pants and white button down shirts, a certain color of socks, or a certain kind of kippa. Some groups will tell girls they cannot wear certain colors. But if an individual chooses to do something outside of the norm, you have to ask yourself, is this outside of halakha or just our minhag?

We Jews have always moved around and this has affected our manner of dress. The Jews in Russia wore streimels and long kappatas because it was freezing cold outside. The Jews in Africa wore turbans, hijabs, and long flowing robes to keep cool. Some groups of people, such as the Jain people in India, have lived in the same location for thousands of years and so have not needed to change their way of dress—but this is not true for us.

It is true that we are supposed to maintain our own style of dress and not follow after the non-Jewish fashions, yet what does this really mean? We are taught that if all the non-Jews begin to wear a certain color of shoelaces, we should not change the color of ours. But we are not told we are not allowed to use shoelaces! They are practical and useful for tying shoes onto feet and we are permitted to use them.
Too often we see people going off the derekh because of what I call “black hat issues.” They struggle within a community that puts so much focus on the brim size of a hat or even as silly as the frame style of a pair of glasses. Some people leave their Judaism behind because of trivial matters such as these and how they have affected them growing up.

Modern Media

In the modern world, it seems that communication is everything. From books to television to the Internet, we as religious Jews must confront a variety of secular influences contrary to our Jewish values. What should we do? What can we do?

The first step to addressing these outside influences is to ask ourselves about their benefit. What positive uses does this instrument have? How can it be used to improve our lives? How can it strengthen our Judaism? Or, conversely, will this damage our Judaism?

A lot of people like to blame the blandishments of the outside world as causes for people going off the derekh. However, the welcoming world is not at fault. It only permits the process to take place. It is a lot easier today for people to move away from the Jewish community and establish themselves in a secular world then it was ever before in history. Instead of pointing the blame at the secular world with its inventions and influences, we need to decide on how best to manage it within our own society. We need to figure out what we can do differently.

Dealing with Someone Who Is Off the Derekh

How do we respond if someone in our family is going or has gone off the derekh? How do we interact with them when they seem to be rejecting everything our beliefs stand for? One thing is clear: We cannot help them heal and bring them closer again to Judaism if we cannot open the lines of communication. That must be the first step.

If, as we explained above, the single greatest cause for going off the derekh is depression, anger, or general unhappiness with Judaism, then the single greatest way to bring people closer once again is to make Judaism a source of joy. Judaism is a religion that is conducive to joy and happiness. It does not encourage severe deprivation or require its adherents to fast for an entire month out of every year. It does not necessitate vows of silence or celibacy. There are no hot coals to walk over, no self-flagellation, no beds of nails. Instead, there are candles to light and songs to sing. There are big family meals and a strong sense of community. Judaism is equipped with absolutely everything we need to create a joyful atmosphere.

The problem comes when someone is discontent with some part of Jewish ritual or observance. If we can identify what is making a person unhappy, we can infuse that part with happiness. The individual who does not want to go to shul finds it uninteresting and unfulfilling. Could another shul be found with a different style of davening? Compelling them to go to a shul where they are bored will underscore their negativity. Jewish practice needs to be rewarding and meaningful.

Shower your children with love and affection. Give them a regular gift better than a weekly allowance: your time. Spend time with your children doing normal, fun things. Find out what they enjoy and do that with them, whether it is going camping or kayaking, doing arts and crafts, or even learning some new musical instruments and forming a family band. Bonding with your child will create a positive relationship whose power cannot be underestimated.

In nine out of ten cases where children have gone of the derekh they felt the parents put religion before them. There is the story where a Rav went to be menachem avel (comforting mourners). The house of the deceased was filled with Jewish religious books, yet all the children were obviously not religious. The Rav asked them what they thought of all their father’s Torah books. The children replied, “These books were our competition for time spent with our father.”

Take the time to listen and try to understand your child (or your friend), even if you initially disagree. It may take some time to gain enough trust from your teenager for her to open up to you, but when she does, sit quietly and listen; do not judge. If she tells you that she feels like you don’t understand her, don’t argue and tell her you do, just try to accept that she feels that way. Ask her what she thinks can be done to improve or resolve the situation. If she has somewhere to turn, a shoulder to cry on, someone to lean on in a difficult situation, then she is less likely to turn away from Torah when her beliefs are put to the test.

Pick your battles wisely. When you see what you perceive to be a fault in someone, think again before you approach them. Remember, you may succeed in getting the person to change his kippa for one that may be more kosher to you—a velvet one for a knitted one, or a knitted one for a suede one—but keep in mind, the individual may be in the middle of a battle that is trying to blast the kippa totally off his head.

Instead, find a way to put a positive spin on the situation. Maybe your daughter does not enjoy staying in shul during Torah reading, but she is happy to run a program for children. Maybe your friend comes to shul every Shabbat but never walks inside. He does not like to daven, and instead volunteers as security. Find a way to get them involved in something positive and fun from their point of view, and you’re on the right path to getting them to stick with their Judaism.

Make the very language you use positive: Stop saying what should not be done, and start saying what should be done. Give your child some action to grab onto and focus on. Find ways to permit things rather than prohibit them. Instead of taking the muktza toy away on Shabbat with a, “You cannot play with that on Shabbat,” hand the child another toy and say, “You can play with this toy now.” Instead of saying, “I hate having to interrupt my afternoon to pray minha,” try saying, “I get to take a break in the middle of my busy day to relax, refocus, and reconnect.” If you start changing the language you use, you will be amazed at the positive impact it has on both your own outlook, and on the people around you.

Allow for some individuality. Not everyone fits the mold and not every road is the right one for every person. All too often communities present themselves and their way of doing things as the one and only true way to serve God. But this is not so! Judaism is a diverse religion, with many ways to serve Hashem available. If we make this known to our children, students, and friends they will not feel trapped within a system they do not fit into. They need to know and trust that they can make a choice to do things a bit differently and still be accepted. In this way, they can follow their own individuality while still adhering to their Judaism and feeling themselves a part of the community.

One thing many communities can do better to this end is to embrace spirituality. All too often there is so much emphasis placed on prayer and ritual observance that the spiritual and emotional aspects are glossed over or ignored completely. For most people who frei out, emotions are a huge part of the reason they go off the derekh. So why not embrace the emotional ties to God that spirituality can help forge? Spirituality is the reason why so many great teachers, from the Ba’al Shem Tov to Rebbe Nachman of Breslov, advocate going into the fields to pray. For many people, being alone in nature confronts you emotionally with the power and majesty of God. Just going through the motions is not enough. Spirituality imbues ritual with passion. We need to make shul a place of spiritual experiences, not just somewhere to conduct rituals.

One of the most beautiful things about Judaism is that it embraces and encourages people to ask questions. Education about our faith is the main goal of the Pessah seder—and one of the vehicles used is by asking questions. (Incidentally, the Pessah ritual also incorporates storytelling, song, food, and prayer, thereby catering to many different types of learning.) People today are asking more and more questions. As Jews, we have to learn to answer the tough questions like, “How do we know God created the world?”—and not just belittle them if we feel we do not know how to respond. If people feel safe and secure in asking hard questions, and they get the answers they seek, they will feel their faith has a foundation and it will be more likely to stand rather than fall. Judaism is not a religion of blind faith.

We also need to work on our educational systems. Education on issues such as why we believe what we believe and why we do what we do (hashkafa) gives children a sturdier foundation. Education on middot teaches them how to behave and why. Yet, these topics are virtually non-existent in most yeshivas. It is all well and good for children to sit and learn Gemara, but this is worth very little if they do not know how to act or why to believe. Try adding a class on hashgaha peratit (divine providence), bitahon, or emunah to student courses and you may find yourself inspiring your students like never before.

Finally, we need to focus on ourselves. While it is important for us to concentrate on the people in our community who are freiing out, we also need strong supports in order to deal with situations as they arise. Form groups of people who are concerned, groups of “People Who Care.” (Topics like “Dealing with Children at Risk” often result in a debate about what it means to be “at risk” and whose child is more at risk than another, which is counter-productive.) Parents need to be able to lean on one another for support, and to offer ideas and suggestions. Together, we can find solutions.

Spring 2013

We are very pleased to announce that beginning June 1, 2013, Rabbi Hayyim Angel will serve as National Scholar of the Institute for Jewish Ideas and Ideals. A remarkable scholar and teacher, Rabbi Hayyim Angel will dramatically increase the programming of our Institute by offering classes, serving as scholar in residence in communities throughout North America, organizing public conferences, conducting seminars for Judaica teachers…and more. Along with his work for our Institute, he will be expanding his teaching at Yeshiva University.

This dramatic new development has been made possible through the generosity of major supporters of our Institute who are also devoted admirers of Rabbi Hayyim Angel’s outstanding qualities as teacher and lecturer. This is a tremendous step forward in our Institute’s ongoing efforts to foster an intellectually vibrant, compassionate and inclusive Orthodox Judaism.

The well-known author, Naomi Ragen, recently wrote an article in praise of our Institute. “The truth is, something good is happening in Orthodoxy….The Institute for Jewish Ideas and Ideals is one of the prime movers of the Orthodox Spring….The Institute has been publishing an influential journal called ‘Conversations’ in which distinguished Orthodox rabbis and personalities express a wide cross-section of eye-opening opinions…encouraging a new kind of leadership.” Rabbi Hayyim Angel typifies this new kind of wise and creative leadership.

As we enter this new stage in the life of our Institute, we invite your added support and commitment.  Together, we can move forward to shape a better Jewish future.

SPECIAL BONUS:  Those who contribute $165 or more before June 20, 2013, will receive a complimentary copy of Rabbi Hayyim Angel’s new book surveying the Prophets and Writings of the Bible; Contributors of $1000 or more will also receive a copy of Dr. Pinchas Polonsky’s new book of commentaries on the Arfilei Tohar of Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook; Contributors of $5000 or more will also receive an additional special publication.

All contributors will receive the satisfaction of being the Institute’s partners in promoting an intellectually vibrant, compassionate and inclusive Orthodox Judaism.

Shalom uvrakha,

Rabbi Marc D. Angel

Poet Robert Bly speaks of two periods of “opening” in human life, roughly between 18 and 23 years of age, and then again sometime in one’s mid-40s. The first of these coincides with our college years, a time of notable openness to new ideas, new ways. It was as a freshman at Yeshiva College that I was introduced to serious religion, and I became an enthusiastic participant. My engagement lasted only five years. I was very much in love with the Orthodox life, the practices, and the learning. But for better or worse I had a philosophical conscience.

I entered Yeshiva in 1960. Having no substantial Jewish education--I don’t count the horrors of pre-bar mitzvah Hebrew School--entered (what was then called) JSP, the Jewish Studies Program. The program was led and inspired by Rabbi Morris Besdin, a wonderful human being, gifted educator, and incisive interpreter of the Ramban. Rabbi Besdin was strikingly undogmatic; he loved good, even impossible, questions, so long as they were the product of honest probing. That Orthodox religion could be a source of such intellectual richness was something I never expected—and equally so, the deep spirituality in the air. I felt as if I had come home and to something I had not known to exist.

At the same time I was troubled by the ambitious truth claims of Orthodoxy. Beginning with belief in God and continuing from there, I was less than sure about any of it. Philosophy¾something equally new, equally wonderful ¾was of great help here. My introduction was provided by a visiting student from the University of Toronto, Sydney Goldenberg. There were lots of wonderful late nights in Ruben dorm talking through the thorny questions of faith.

As my engagement with traditional Jewish life intensified, and especially as I was introduced to the joys of Talmud, my theological worries fell into the background. I simply loved the life, the learning, and the community. I spent three years in JSP, and then moved to Rabbi Aharon Lichtenstein’s shiur in the regular yeshiva program. Rav Lichtenstein modeled what I took to be a very advanced form of religious engagement: intellectual rigor combined with an almost breathtaking humility. I felt a sense of privilege learning in his presence, not to speak of under his guidance. Religion, for Rav Lichtenstein, enhanced the human project; serious religion and serious humanism—a dream.

The Orthodox world to which I was exposed suited my political and social instincts pretty much perfectly. This was in the early 1960s, before many of us were awakened to issues about the engagement of women. But the atmosphere I lived in¾others at YU lived in different worlds¾exuded a sense of fairness and decency, a sense that serious human concerns would never be dismissed in the name of religion. Looking back, it was a world of the 1960s (minus the excesses of that period), and Rabbi J. B. Soloveitchik was its inspiration and spokesperson, a golden age of Modern Orthodoxy.

After five years of college¾I had extended college to devote time to Talmud¾I entered the semikha program and the Kollel. But for reasons or causes that I only partly understand, my theological concerns were again becoming prominent. The summer after college and before semikha I was teaching Talmud at YU’s Camp Morasha by day and obsessing by night about theology. By the end of the summer, I knew that I had to leave the semikha program. I had thought through (and under and over) my belief in God to the extent that, as I would have put it, (and this is only a little embarrassing) a just God would understand why I could not believe.

I started dating Barbara Lipner during my Yeshiva College days. Our families were next-door neighbors in Spring Valley, NY; we had met when I was 13 and she was eight. The Lipners were the only Orthodox people in the neighborhood and I spent many Shabbat meals with them. When I left religious life Barbara and I parted ways but then unparted them a short time later. Our marriage¾now 44 years old--was respectful of our religious differences and mutually supporting. Still, our differences, and especially raising children in the light or shadow of such differences, required discussion, work, attention.

And then, in my 40s--Bly’s second opening--religion exercised its magic a second time and I became a real ba’al t’shuvah. (I refer here not to fervor but quite literally to a return to something I had left.) Not that I had resolved my philosophic issues. But life was taking me in new directions that were not to be denied, and I took on the project, personally and academically, of making sense of my religious life. [1] In writing this I am struck by the energy it must have taken, the sort of stress that is part and parcel of such life changes. But that’s not how I experienced it; it was a time of new beginnings.

My wife reports that there was a day she was walking past the dining room, saw me with tefillin in place and actually did a double take. And I can imagine what it seemed like to my philosophy colleagues: One day I was thinking about the philosophy of language--exploring concepts of reference and meaning¾the next day about God. Perhaps this is why God created tenure.

What sorts of things, what sorts of life changes, might move a 40-something atheist academic toward Orthodox life? I’ve addressed the question more fully in an essay, “Man Thinks, God Laughs,” in my book, The Significance of Religious Experience.[2] There I spoke about various life events that contributed to my change in religious orientation. Here I provide only a sense of the new direction of my thinking and feeling.

As a young man, taken with philosophy, Talmud, and such things, the life of intellect was very much a first love. So much so that while there was a place in my life for music, poetry was beyond the pale. I remember trying to read A. J. Heschel, the twentieth-century poet/philosopher of Jewish religious life; the work was inaccessible, far too poetic, too mushy. By my mid-40s, though, my Jungian shadow had begun to emerge: I found myself reading poetry, amazed that I could, stunned by its power. Heschel became available and with his help, religion in a new key. Rationality seemed to pale a bit; Heschel’s emphasis on awe seemed to capture something essential to the life of the spirit.

My atheism, if that’s what it was, did not involve any sort of disdain for religion. I remember arguing with a friend at Notre Dame about the matter. My practice was to use the adjective, “religious,” as a sort of honorific; he, with Marxist sensibilities, the opposite. My atheism was a metaphysical position; I couldn’t wrap my mind around the supernatural. But my finding spiritual power, meaning, solace in religious life didn’t feel like it had anything to do with belief in another realm, removed from the natural world. It’s true that God remained a puzzle; the central idea of religion was what I found the most difficult. But as I gained more than a foothold, it seemed more and more natural for the idea of God to be elusive. After all, I mused, there is a substantial religious intuition that when we try to think about God we are over our heads, out of our depth. Lots of people supposed that God has to come first, then some form of religious life. I was increasingly at home in religious life, even prayer; but lost about what it was I was talking about. Buber comments that it is one thing to talk to God, and quite another to talk about Him. One who attempts the latter reaches beyond his competence.[3]

And so my thinking about religion, about religious life, about God, began to take on a direction. I met Charles Taylor, a traditional Catholic, at a conference in which we both presented material. I asked him about the more theoretical aspects of his religious commitments. “I’m an orthodox Catholic,” he said. “I believe every bit of it, but I have not much of an idea what it means.” And this was not, I believed, an evasion. Overstated perhaps, under-explained, but not an evasion.

My first sojourn in Orthodoxy was a gift of hessed. I showed up in Washington Heights (of all places) and there it was, almost waiting for me. The second time around it was very different. The world had moved to the right in politics and religion. A kind of yeshivish Orthodoxy had become something of the norm, for which the black hat is not a bad symbol. A moment of confusion: early in this period my family was away at a Pessah hotel. I was walking through the corridor, to the shul, walking behind a group of men of various ages, all wearing large black hats. But their conversation was not that of b’nei Torah. I was learning my way around the new world.

The world seemed to have shrunk spiritually and ethically in the intervening period. In America, and noticeably among my students (largely Christian), religion grew stronger but seemed less open, more evangelical (or in our vocabulary, more eager for outreach). The religious humanism with which I had so strongly identified seemed less in evidence. Religion seemed both on the move and more identified with right wing political and social attitudes.

When I was at YU, the learning was at the core of my religious life. And returning to the life, I was eager to return to the learning. I never forgot how to learn; the mode of thinking was deeply inscribed. But Aramaic and the text of the Gemara was another thing; I had only been involved for a few years. And trying to find a havrutah was now a serious challenge.

Learning opportunities were in a way abundant; daf yomi, for example, had become widely available. But the learning that I knew and loved was very different. (Rabbi Moshe Chait, z”l, my former JSP teacher and mentor who had become the Dean of Jerusalem’s Yeshivat Chaftetz Chaim, later told me¾we were discussing daf yomi¾that he was once encouraged to take a speed reading class…and he failed.) Where was I to find a learning partner? I tried a Kollel of Lakewood mushmakhim in Los Angeles. Their offer¾if I wanted a one-on-one havrutah¾was for 20 minutes a week. Twenty minutes! A local rabbi in Los Angeles told me that he could arrange a havrutah. My excitement was short-lived¾seconds¾he immediately added that I would have to pay for it. Not only that but I had the sense that he was thinking about doing it himself. I felt quite confused by all this and seriously considered paying. But Rabbi Chait advised against it.

Rav Chait once told me that the boys in YU were nowadays “not like you fellows were.” I asked what he meant. “They don’t know how to challenge stubbornly, to fight their way to clarity.”[4] I said, “They are frum.” I was thinking about a conversation I had with my brother, about my son who was then about 10 years old and in Little League baseball. I was lamenting my son’s lack of aggressivness. “Of course he’s not so aggressive,” my brother said. “He’s so sweet. You can’t have it both ways.”

During our travels Barbara maintained her observance. Shabbat was a family holiday. But strange things happened in our super-galut world. If we ever make the movie, it will feature prominently a scene of me flagging down a bus in western Minnesota during the winter. It had a shipment of kosher meat from Minneapolis. Among our memorable Sukkot stories: My father-in-law built us a heavy wood sukkah in Minnesota. It protected us from the wind, but we still needed down parkas and a camping heater. The first year we spent there, before the advent our own sukkah, a colleague from biology built a sukkah more or less in Barbara’s honor; he said it was something he always wanted to do. I, severely lacking in the gifts of carpentry, helped him, as it were. A non-Jewish friend looked at the sukkah and commented that he now understood why they didn’t let Jews into the carpentry union. Some of the places we lived lacked anything like a Jewish community. Others lacked Orthodox shuls, or lacked ones in which Barbara felt comfortable.

In 1989, before my return to religious life, I moved from the University of Notre Dame to the University of California, Riverside. I was motivated by a lifelong dream, to help build a first-rate philosophy department and a graduate program that I would have enjoyed as a student. We moved to Redlands, California, a lovely orange-grove town, with more of a Jewish community than anything nearby and a small Conservative shul. My observance grew during this period; as time went on I would sometimes daven for the amud and sometimes give divrei Torah. But I was never at home in the Conservative environment, not even when I was barely observant. It seemed like thin soup with only a taste of the real thing.

After a number of years in Redlands, Barbara wisely saw that we needed a more focused Jewish community, and we moved to Los Angeles. By this time, I had found my way back to observance. We joined a Modern Orthodox synagogue that was halakhically, socially, and politically congenial. But as my engagement intensified, it became difficult to daven there. There was so much talking and the rhythm felt all wrong: rushing through the most important parts of the tefillah, taking enormous amounts of time for more conventionally appreciated aspects of the ritual. Tefillah in a local yeshiva was more satisfying, until it came time for the talk. So I would attend one synagogue and then the other.

For over 15 years, I have been going every summer to Jerusalem. It started with a letter I wrote to David Hartman, z”l, with whom I was acquainted from the old days. I explained my situation and expressed a desire to connect with his institution, especially with its annual philosophy conference. Hartman invited me to the next conference and I have been a regular ever since. Part of what we do at the Hartman conferences is to study talmudic texts; these are mined for their political or social content, but are not studied in depth. And so I sought a more intense learning experience during my visits to Jerusalem. And here a funny story ensues.

The year after my first Hartman conference, I contacted an old YU friend who was teaching at an Israeli yeshiva known to be on the liberal end of the Orthodox spectrum. I asked if I could come the following summer for 10 days to study at the yeshiva. The plan was to go to the Hartman conference and then to the yeshiva. I was told that I could … but a condition was imposed: that I did not speak to the students. It was a bit titillating to feel like a dangerous character. But what were they thinking? Would I use a discussion with students to insert questions in their minds? Why would I do that? A simple question addressed to me would have allayed such concerns. But life is strange, and I moved on.

Subsequently, an old and wonderful friend of mine from YU, Rabbi Yitzhak Frank, mentioned that he had met Rabbi Chait, who asked about me. I told Yitzhak the story of my recent experience. He laughed and volunteered to speak with Rabbi Chait about finding me a havrutah. Rabbi Chait also laughed, and then suggested that he would be happy to help. Strange that a more Hareidi yeshiva was less concerned about the danger I posed.

Thus began my havrutah with Rabbi Menachem Diamond, one that continues to this day. We spend two to three weeks every summer, two to four hours a day depending on his teaching demands. It began as a kind of tutorial. The first day I learned with Menachem was like basic training in the military. I was completely winded after an hour. But over the years, our learning, supplemented by various havrutahs in Los Angeles, has turned into something closer to a real learning partnership. It has become one of the most important highlights of my year.

My summers in Jerusalem, sometimes with Barbara but often alone, were and often are magical. The time often has a monastic quality: solitary and focused on the spiritual. Central has been my relationship with Yakar synagogue, especially with its late Rabbi, Mickey Rosen, z’l. Rosen was or is an unforgettable character, a man of spiritual intensity, so focused on his relationship to God and on the orientation, the stance that this relationship engendered, that he failed to notice many of the things that are prominent for many of us. Davening with him was a privilege and I think he taught me by example how it is to be done. He often davened be-yehidut in the mornings, to minor-keyed, second movements of classical compositions. His religious devotion stood alongside his deep commitment to an ethical stance that was inseparable from his relationship to God.

Twice a year he gave a sermon on unsere; on how our collective self-absorption blinds us to our ethical shortcomings. This would not have been problematic for his Jerusalem congregants, except that his case in point was the Israeli treatment of the Palestinians, which he took to be unacceptable. He would lose a lot of people twice a year, but his musical gifts drew them close after a short time. The davening in Yakar was breathtaking, a few hundred people in a small enclosure, singing their hearts out in spontaneous harmony. The music began some years ago, I believe, as the sort of Carlebach minyan that has now become almost normative. But Mickey was not seeking a routine; he was seeking intimacy with God, and so the music was dynamic, alive to the state of his soul.

Here are two illustrative incidents. One Shabbat afternoon during se’udah shelishit (which at Yakar meant very little se’udah, but lots of intense music) an American (without a kippah) wandered into the darkened room. It was as if he were an actor playing the evil son of the Seder. “Why do you folks bother with all these little silly, picky details?” he asked. Rabbi Rosen looked at him, unruffled, “It’s the way we express our intimacy.” The comment took me a year or so to assimilate fully. It seemed to me to suggest a new way to think about the hukim, more generally about mitzvoth and their details the point of which are obscure.

A second incident: I gave a lecture at Yakar on the thought of Wittgenstein, a terribly difficult but profound thinker. Perhaps I should not have volunteered to do so, and I was not happy with the lecture; Wittgenstein is simply too difficult to try to unravel in an hour or so. During the question period, someone asked a penetrating question about which I needed to think. So I paused and thought about it a moment and responded. Several hours later, Mickey and I were visiting a friend in a hospital and the friend asked how my lecture went. I told him that I wasn’t happy with it. Mickey commented that he didn’t know about that, but that when someone asked a good question, I paused for a full 30 seconds before replying. The report was meant as a high compliment.

There is an aspect to my religious attitude, to my religious being, that I hesitate to highlight here. I am not an Israeli and so I speak very hesitantly about Israeli politics and policy. This is not because “if one doesn’t live there and share the risk, one should not offer opinions.” Indeed, when Ehud Barak sought compromise, right-leaning American Jews did not hesitate to criticize in very strong terms. They did so out of care and concern for Israel. My hesitation instead reflects my belief that unless one lives in the country, day by day, one’s perspective is partial and limited. When I am in Israel for even a few days, I feel an intangible sense of an enlarged perspective. So viewing things from a distance, even if it has some advantages, has serious disadvantages. At the same time, Israel is my other home, one that I love and honor, one about which I feel an enormous pride, a place whose history and policies are of great interest and concern. It has always seemed strange in the extreme that criticism of the State’s policies are seen by some as disloyal or as indicating a lack of support. This is not the place for the sort of extended discussion that the matter deserves. But I do feel an obligation to read, to think, to learn, to support policy where that seems right and to criticize forthrightly when that is what is called for.

A final word about the religious life for which I am so grateful, actually about the question of how to describe that life, and how to describe myself as a participant. There are some words, “Impressionism” comes to mind, that are introduced into the language by opponents or critics of the designated movement. “What you are doing is mere impressionism” was originally hardly a compliment. But the term stuck and eventually was adopted by those we call the Impressionists. “Obamacare” is another. And “Orthodoxy” in the context of religious Judaism is a third. The word literally means “correct belief” and its appropriateness to our religious ways seems to me questionable. Perhaps it’s no worse than “Judaism,” which suggests an ideology, an “ism.”

________________
[1] See my book, The Significance of Religious Experience (Oxford University Press, 2012), a collection of essays written over a 15-year period, all aimed at the project mentioned.
[2] Oxford University Press, 2012.
[3] As Larry Wright would put it.
[4] I’m reconstructing our conversation.