Speak Up For Pluralism in Israel - Pinehas 5772

Every time I go to Israel, I am reminded of the normalcy of life in the Jewish State.  Here are a few of my notes from my most recent visit, two weeks ago.

1.  One of the nights during my stay there was an all-night festival in Tel Aviv called “Laila Lavan” (“White Night,” also Israeli slang for pulling an all-nighter). There were free concerts in many places all over the city, including one featuring a French pop group called Nouvelle Vague that also featured women strutting in front of the stage displaying the latest fashions from French designer Jean-Charles de Castelbajac.  There was a silent dance party in Rabin Square, where hundreds of younger Israelis tuned into the music, courtesy of live Djs, on their smartphones and danced under the stars and the impressive light show (I couldn’t get mine to work, but maybe that’s because I’m over 30), and a gaggle of Israeli reggae bands on the beach. I wandered through the city on foot before calling it a night at the geriatric hour of midnight, but the noise floating into my rental apartment was so loud that I had to wear earplugs to fall asleep.

2.  While purchasing French-language books for my kids at La Librairie du Foyer, a French-language bookstore in Tel Aviv, I got into a conversation with the owner about language acquisition.  She grew up in France but married a sabra; although she spoke French with her Israeli children, she lamented the fact that their French vocabulary was limited. I lamented the fact that there are no French bookstores in New York, and so I visit this store whenever I am in Israel.
   
3.  The hot political topic of my visit was the hubbub surrounding the deliberations of a government committee that was considering enlisting Haredim (so-called “ultra-Orthodox” Jews) as well as Israeli Arabs into the Israel Defense Forces or some other national service option. The current situation is that there are more than 50,000 Haredim who should be serving, a black-clad army in itself.

One of the essential features of the Israeli personality is to avoid being a “freier,” the Yiddish word for “sucker,” and the fact that these tens of thousands of young men who avoid army service by being enrolled in yeshivot has always irked secular Israelis.  For much of the past half-year, a Tel Aviv-based protest movement dubbed “Mahaneh ha-Freierim,” or “Camp Sucker,” has kept this issue in the spotlight as the committee has deliberated.

4.  In other news, former Prime Minister Yitzhaq Shamir died and was buried. A few rockets from Gaza fell in the Ashkelon area; nobody was hurt. An Israeli court sentenced a Filipina kindergartener and her mother, who had overstayed her work visa, to leave Israel within three weeks. The Haredi man who allegedly defaced Yad Vashem by spray-painting insults to the memory of the Shoah was arrested.


These are just a few items, but I could go on. Every time I return to Israel, to the soothing Mediterranean beaches and kafe hafukh (the Israelified version of cappucino, but to describe it as such does not do it justice) as well as the traffic snarls and high cost of living, I am reminded that the news coming from Israel to the States affords us such a narrow view of Israel. The reality on the ground is quite different.  Israel’s streets are alive with people; cultural offerings permeate the air, and life in all its glorious, Middle Eastern complexity goes on.

What is not normal in the Jewish State is Judaism.  Unlike the United States, or really any other nation in the world, there is an official Judaism, that of the increasingly hard-line Chief Rabbinate, often referred to simply as the Rabbanut.  Rabbis who work for the Rabbanut are paid a small government salary, and only their work is recognized by the State; in particular, non-Orthodox rabbis (such as myself) are not recognized, and only within the last few months a Supreme Court decision has allowed a handful of them to receive money from the government for working in their communities.  This last bit has particularly upset the Rabbanut.  Those of you who were here last Shabbat may recall that I mentioned the incitement against non-Orthodox rabbis and non-Orthodox movements by one of Israel’s chief rabbis, Rabbi Shlomo Amar, in calling for a protest against the Court’s decision.

In response to Rabbi Amar’s letter accusing non-Orthodox rabbis of being terrorists who trample on the Torah and who have wreaked destruction on Diaspora Jewry, the Jerusalem Post editorial board suggested, under its masthead, to eliminate all government subsidies for rabbis in Israel.  This would disenfranchise the Rabbanut and allow all Judaic offerings to be presented to Israelis on a level playing field, just like they are everywhere else in the world.  Certainly, the Jerusalem Post is not the first to make this argument; I have been hearing it as a kind of trope for the last decade or so, although it seems to me that the anger and frustration against the creeping “haredization” of the Rabbanut in Israel and the Diaspora is steadily growing.

Change will not come so easily, however.  The vitriol evident in Rabbi Amar’s letter is but a foreshadowing of the ways in which the Rabbanut will lash out when it feels threatened.  But that does not mean that we should not seek change.

One of the striking moments of today’s parashah, Parashat Pinehas, is the story of the five daughters of Zelophehad, a man of the tribe of Menasheh.  Zelophehad has no sons, and his daughters plead with Moses that they should inherit their father’s land instead of some other male relative.  Moses, unsure of what to do, takes the question to God, who agrees with the women that they are, in fact, entitled to receive their father’s land, even if it is only for one generation (i.e. until their is a male heir).  It’s a small comfort, I know, buried in a sea of patriarchal Israelite and rabbinic tradition.

But the important thing here is that the daughters of Zelophehad spoke up. They saw an injustice, and they raised their voices in protest. And the inheritance law was immediately modified to account for their situation.

There are a couple of ongoing protests in Israel right now – not only in favor of recruiting the haredim, but also an attempt to revive last summer's social protests against cost-of-living. Change occurs when people speak up.

Let’s consider for a moment how the Conservative movement came to embrace egalitarianism.  In many congregations here in America, beginning in the middle of the 20th century, women began asking to participate in Jewish life.  Here at Temple Israel, Rabbi Mordecai Waxman opened the door to women’s participation in the 1970s by having his wife Ruth called to the Torah as the maftirah, the one who chants the haftarah.  My childhood congregation became egalitarian in a much more offhanded way: one weekday morning in (I think) 1976 when there were nine men in the room and one woman, Rabbi Arthur Rulnick looked around and said, “We have a minyan.”  In the 1980s, the call to egalitarianism reached the center of the movement, when the faculty of the Jewish Theological Seminary voted to ordain female rabbis, much to the chagrin of the Talmud department, which was then stocked with traditionalists.

Ultimately, the halakhic argument that enabled the ordination of women rabbis, crafted by Rabbi Joel Roth in 1986, considered that although women have not classically been considered obligated to the performance of positive, timebound mitzvot (that is, mitzvot that must take place during a certain time frame, and are phrased in the manner of “thou shalt,” rather than “thou shalt not”), there are many sources in rabbinic literature, in the Talmud and elsewhere, that allow or even require women to fulfill some of these mitzvot.  We have studied them here in various contexts; here is just one that I will share with you now:

ת"ר הכל חייבין בציצית כהנים לוים וישראלים גרים נשים ועבדים ר"ש פוטר בנשים מפני שמצות עשה שהזמן גרמא הוא וכל מצות עשה שהזמן גרמא נשים פטורות

Our Rabbis taught: All are obligated to the mitzvah of tzitzit: priests, Levites and Israelites, converts, women, and slaves.  R. Shimon exempts women, because it is a time-bound positive mitzvah, and women are exempt from all time-bound positive mitzvot.

The dissenting opinion is from one rabbi; the rest agree that women are in fact obligated to wear a tallit.  So why do women not wear tallitot today?  Sources such as this have been sitting on the Jewish bookshelf for centuries, ignored and/or bypassed by deeply-entrenched custom, and it was not until 20th-century American Judaism saw the need for change that they were put to good use.

Today’s Israeli chief rabbinate has its roots in Ottoman Turkey and the British Mandate period, and borrowing from the British model of elected (and hence politicized) rabbis, represents a curious merger of synagogue and state.  Add to this mix the millions of sheqalim doled out to those rabbis with the State’s imprimatur, and the result is an unfair system in which Israelis (and Diaspora Jews who are in any way involved with Israel) are not just discriminated against, but downright delegitimized by the Rabbanut. Weddings performed by non-Orthodox rabbis in Israel are not recognized by the State.  Conversions performed there and abroad, even by some Modern Orthodox rabbis, are not recognized.  Some non-Orthodox olim (immigrants to Israel) have been asked to prove a connection to an Orthodox ancestor to demonstrate that they are halakhically Jewish.  Women who wish to wear a tallit at the Kotel, the Western Wall, a mitzvah which is mandated by the Talmud, are arrested by police.

While the principle of the rabbi as halakhic decisor and teacher in the community is a long-standing tradition in Jewish life, nowhere in Jewish tradition does it teach us that rabbis should have a governmental status. On the contrary, Pirqei Avot warns us in multiple places to steer clear of the secular authorities (e.g. 2:3):

הוו זהירין ברשות--שאין מקרבין לו לאדם, אלא לצורך עצמן:

Be wary of the authorities!  They do not befriend anyone unless it serves their own needs.

In recent years, as the Rabbanut has moved rightward, it has accelerated the pace at which we in the non-Orthodox world (which includes about 80% of North American Jewry) are increasingly seen as not Jewish, not to be trusted, unable to marry or be buried in Jewish cemeteries in Israel.  There are those in Israel and abroad who are working to change this situation, but change will not come soon enough until more of us speak up.

For the sake of kelal Yisrael, the unity of the Jewish people, this is an untenable situation.  Now is the time for us to begin the call for the end of the Rabbanut’s stranglehold on Jewish spiritual life.  Now is the time for us to call on the Israeli government to end its official association with the Rabbanut.  Send an email to Prime Minister Netanyahu’s office directly through their website.

Here is something to think about as we consider the strength of benot Tzelofehad: we must speak up for pluralism in the whole Jewish world.  Shabbat shalom!

(Originally delivered at Temple Israel of Great Neck, Shabbat morning, 14 July 2012.)

Pinehas 5771: Why Egalitarianism Still Matters

Many of you know by now that I grew up with just a handful of Jews in a small town - so small that we had to bring our own garbage to the municipal landfill because there was no curbside pickup, that local decisions were made at old-fashioned town meetings, and that our yard was bordered by a dairy farm, a horse pasture, and a still-functioning cemetery that dated to the Revolutionary War. We drove 20 miles back and forth to our Conservative synagogue in Pittsfield, Massachusetts several times a week.

By the time I was aware of Jewish life, our synagogue was already egalitarian. (By the way, the rabbi who had overseen the change to egalitarianism in the mid-1970s was Rabbi Arthur Rulnick, who spent a number of years at Woodbury Jewish Center after leaving Pittsfield.) It was completely normal for me to sit with my family, for my mother to get called to the Torah and be in the regular rotation of gabbaim, for my sister to celebrate her bat mitzvah on Shabbat morning, and so forth.

I had heard that in some communities elsewhere, men and women were separated, but that seemed far away and irrelevant to my Jewish experience. I took egalitarianism for granted; it was an integral feature in the fabric of my Jewish life, and anything otherwise would have seemed alien.

Fast forward to the present. I now live in a largely-Jewish New York suburb with no fewer than 18 synagogues and at least two miqva-ot. Of those 18 synagogues, 14 are not egalitarian. This non-egalitarian reality is far more present today than it was 100 years ago in American Judaism. And that is why we need to be clear as to why we embrace equality in Jewish life.

One of the passages that we read in Parashat Pinehas this morning, the one about the daughters of Zelophehad, has some bearing on the relationship between Jewish law and women. To briefly summarize the story, Zelophehad was a member of the tribe of Menasheh who had five daughters and no sons. Although property is handed down from father to son, according to laws set out elsewhere in the Torah, the daughters of Zelophehad plead with Moses and El’azar, the Kohen Gadol (high priest), to allow them to inherit their fathers’ share in what will become their tribal territory. When consulted by Moses, God favors the daughters, and then a new law is introduced whereby women can also inherit, even before the deceased’s brothers. The story is remarkable for several reasons. One might make the case that it contains the seed of egalitarianism. But we’ll come back to that.

First, a little history and a little halakhah.

According to noted historian Dr. Jonathan Sarna of Brandeis University, mixed-gender seating (that is, men and women seated together) is a distinctly American Jewish development. In the 1860s, while Reform Jews in Germany still sat separately in synagogue, like their Lutheran countrymen did in church, American Jews began to adopt mixed seating after the widespread Christian norm in this country. By the middle of the 20th century, mixed-gender seating was prevalent across all the American movements; even many Modern Orthodox congregations sat together as well. (It was not until the 1980s that the Union of Orthodox Congregations began to pressure their mixed-seating congregations to put up mehitzot, to draw a clear distinction between moderate Orthodox and traditional Conservative congregations.)

The Conservative movement’s Committee on Jewish Law and Standards (CJLS) addressed the issue in a teshuvah (rabbinic responsum to a question of Jewish law) in 1941, in which they permitted the practice based on the fact that “the prevailing attitude about the place of woman in modern society is making it increasingly difficult to maintain the traditional policy of isolation towards women in the synagogue.” In other words, this committee of traditional rabbis said, times have changed, and so have social norms. The committee permitted individual rabbis to allow mixed-gender seating according to their own judgment, even though it seems that the members of the committee were personally against it.

Although seating women and men separately is a long-standing minhag / custom, it is not halakhah / law, and it is not found stated clearly in rabbinic sources prior to the 13th century CE; even Maimonides, who details synagogue construction in his Mishneh Torah, does not mention the mehitzah (barrier between men and women found in almost all Orthodox synagogues).

In subsequent decades, the Conservative movement gradually pursued an egalitarian agenda. In 1955 they had passed a teshuvah allowing women to take aliyot (be called to the Torah, although presumably few did at the time), and in 1973 they permitted counting women in a minyan. Finally, after several years of heart-wrenching dispute, 1983 brought the well-known Roth teshuvah allowing for the ordination of female rabbis, and the Jewish Theological Seminary’s faculty voted to admit women to the Rabbinical School.

In each case, the teshuvot examined by the Law Committee found a halakhic basis on which to permit the forward movement. For example, the permissibility of women’s aliyot is indicated in the Talmud, even though it states that “we do not do this because of the honor of the congregation.” In a world where women can hold the highest political offices, be CEOs, doctors, lawyers, judges, and so forth, calling a woman to the Torah can only bring honor to a congregation.

However, the issue would never have been addressed had there not been efforts on the part of the women to bring it to the table. In the case of mixed seating, for example, Sarna cites an anecdote of women at Adas Israel Congregation in Washington, DC who boldly started sitting downstairs with their husbands, against synagogue policy.

Now, back to the daughters of Zelophehad, about whom the midrashic collection Sifrei comments (responding to Numbers 27:1 in today’s parashah):

Vatiqravna benot tzelofehad:
The daughters of Zelophehad approached:
Since the daughters of Zelophehad heard that the land was divided amongst the tribes, but not to the women, they gathered to consult.
They said, “The mercy of God is not like the mercy of flesh and blood [i.e. men]. Men are merciful to men more so than to women, but God is merciful to all, as it is written [here quoting Psalm 145, which we know as Ashrei], “Verahamav al kol ma’asav” (His mercy is extended to all).”

The motivation of Zelophehad’s daughters was to ensure that they were treated properly, that they received that to which they were entitled. And they had to ask for it, to bring their case all the way to the top. Had they not pursued their rights, they would not have received their father’s land.

And their case was a landmark! Immediately after the story, the Torah amends its own law to say that when a man has no sons, his daughters inherit his property.

And this is the way it has always been in Jewish tradition: women who want to participate in Jewish law as men do must pursue it.

Dr. Elisheva Baumgarten, in her visit a few weeks ago for the Lillian Schiowitz Memorial Lecture, presented our congregation with several wonderful lectures about women’s roles throughout Jewish history. If you missed her appearances that weekend, shame on you!

Her best lecture was the one after Shabbat services, when she pointed out that there is evidence that a number of women donned tefillin in the Middle Ages in Europe. Although there is no proof supporting the oft-told legend of Rashi’s daughters’ having done so, nonetheless it was indeed an extant practice, especially in the higher economic strata. Rashi’s grandson and bar plugta, one with whom he often disagreed, Rabbeinu Tam, points out that a woman who puts on tefillin should say the berakhah, just like a man.

As with the case of the daughters of Zelophehad, the women forced the issue by entering an area of law from which they had been excluded. And this is just how egalitarianism unfolded in the Conservative movement.

And, of course, we are still evolving. The need and desire for egalitarianism, especially in this period of rightward movement within Orthodoxy, is still with us. Temple Israel is a haven for equality here in Great Neck, and as such we must continue to revisit and refamiliarize ourselves with the principles that validate the ways in which we express our Judaism. Nothing should be taken for granted.

And that applies to everything that we do here. One message that we learn from today’s parashah is this: we have within our hands the capability to shape our tradition such that it is more meaningful, more powerful, and more helpful to all of us.

In one of the teshuvot from the Law Committee about mixed seating, Rabbi Jacob Agus quoted Ahad Ha-Am:

“Some day perhaps we may feel the need of a new tradition: we may want to understand the natural process of its evolution. We may then have a new Maimonides, who will codify the law from the historical point of view, not on the principles of an artificial logic, but on the basis of the order in which the various laws emerged in the course of an age-long development.”

He is here more or less supporting the Positive Historical School that became the Conservative movement, and then he goes on to criticize secularists, or perhaps even the Reform movement of his day:

“Instead of critics who declare that the Shulhan Arukh [the authoritative 16th-century code of Jewish law] is not our Torah, we may have a new type of exegete, whose aim will be to discover the source of its prescriptions in the psychology of our people, and to show why and how they grew out of the peoples’ material conditions and mentality, or were adopted from the outside, under strength of need or favor of circumstances... But, we shall no longer feel compelled to regard all the minutiae of our inherited tradition as laws and precepts binding on us everywhere and for all time.” (Ahad Ha-Am, Essays, East and West Edition, p. 70.)

His point is this: we have an allegiance to our tradition and its laws. But we are also modern people, with the need to reinterpret for our times in a historical, social, and psychological context.

For me, it could not be any other way.

Shabbat shalom!

(Originally delivered at Temple Israel, Shabbat morning, July 16, 2011.)