Understanding Israeli Reform and Conservative Movement

The biggest advantage of getting in touch with other communities and ways of thinking that it challenges your familiar ways of perceiving your home reality. Upon return, one might want to change the home reality or at least to find the islands of comfort that he or she encountered abroad.

The Reform and Conservative Judaism - which, according to a poll by the Israeli Democracy Institute do enjoy the support of 7% of the Israeli population - are gradually entering the religious scenery, where the main actors are the Orthodox and Haredi representatives. The orientation of secular, kibbutz-born Israeli towards those movements are part of a larger return to religiosity, but in a way which turns it back definitely to the 'all-or-nothing' mainstream. 

The Israeli Reformation, a publication by Haaretz offers a good introduction into those relatively new religious trends, through article written mostly by regular journalists at the publication, among which Anshel Pfeffer.

Although the Reform and Conservative Movements are active in Israel for decades, in the last years, there is an increase of its presence, in places like Modi'in, Beer Sheva, or the newly privatized kibbutzim. In comparison to the US-breed movement, it has a predominant Zionist orientation, and does not receive any state support - as in the case of the 'official' Judaism represented by the Rabbinat. There are synagogues whose conversion programs are certified by the Ministry of Interior but still because of the Rabbinat, it does not allow the new converts to marry in Israel - which means that they can do a civil marriage in places like Czech Republic or Cyprus. Partnerships were created with non-religious schools and many Israeli with a secular background, prefer to attend the religious service by them, instead of the other gender-separated alternatives. It speaks English and Hebrew, but also the Spanish of Latin American countries, such as Argentina, whose recently emigrated to Israel Jews are largely secular.

The booklet it is a good overview of the main trends and includes those movements into Israel's bigger religious picture. It does not approach directly the frequent conflicts such as the issue of the Women of the Wall (WOW) and other administrative and political problems. But the reader can have a good start for a further investigation into the main actors and the current religious debates.

Book Review:The Saturday Wife by Naomi Ragen

'She needed someone to fall in love with, someone who would destroy the channels through which her life flowed, allowing her to irrevocably change direction'. 

I never had such a bad feeling about a book character. Delilah, the woman main character of The Saturday Wife by Naomi Ragen, an author I've read previously, is a kitsch Jewish Emma Bovary. An enchanteress, with no sense of worth and direction, keen to jump on the wealth ladder but unable to because of her social status and, I dare to say, intelligence, she is despicable. No values, no evil per se either, an opportunist with fake expectations and not a pinch of self-awareness. A victim of an environment of overzealousness and permanent suspicion of human nature that she cannot escape. A vulgare creature hungry to achieve a little bit of normality while acquiring some top brand clothes and bags.

Although going through the yeshiva schools, she couldn't care less about the modesty values but unable to make the big step of leaving the stringencies of her Orthodox community.

The story in itself makes sense: a girl from a modest religious background, without a status, trying to fulfill the dream of a good Jewish wife marrying up a rabbi - which given her yichus - lineage which determines at a great extent the chances of finding a good match - did great. But she wants more, she wants the big mansions with swimming pool and expensive jewellery when all she got was a very modest apartment in Bronx, within walking distance from the shul - synagogue - where her husband with a modest intelligent despite his illustrious background - was supposed to take over from his respected grandfather. Being a rabbi's wife - a rebbetzin - means lots of social and moral obligations that she can hadly fulfill. She is pushing her poor husband, Chaim, to take the position at Ohel Aaron Congregation in Swallow Lake, where no serious learned man would go. But the drama continues as she wants more and is never happy. Her major project, besides befriending the convert American wife of a Jewish Russian con magnate from the fictional Turdistan - which in English urban dictionary means toilet or latrine - is to donate luxury bags to victims of terror attacks in Israel (can it get any more idiotic?).

On one hand, there are a lot of truths to be told about the stringencies of the Orthodox Jewish life, the limited place of the women and the huge expectations done, about the absurd fences around the Torah - including in terms of head covering and women modesty in general - built by rabbis in the last decade, and the striving for excess among successful Jewish families - with safari-themed bar/bat mitzvas and other excessive investments which are rightly 'the opposite of everything Judaism valued and cherished and taught'. Those considerations are slipping into the story, with a mix of references of various kinds - both Jewish and non-Jewish - but the author's voice sounds too doctored and although available are disturbing the narrative. Why not introducing those issues as part of the story itself?

On the other hand, the characters themselves and the story are coping with way too many loopholes. There are characters coming and going into the story, as consistent as thin as piece of paper. There are a lot of incoherencies of the behaviors of the characters as well. Delilah is living in an Orthodox community and barely covering her hair? She is a mother living in an Orthodox community and can she so easily just escape being part of various motherhood circles which are so common and hard to escape? Her in-laws are completely absent which given their status is hardly realistic. For both Chaim and Delilah, their family connections seem to loose that you might think both of them are in fact recently returned to religion not born religious. After having a boyfriend - something inconceivable in the religious world, but necessarily impossible - and even having intimate relationships with him she is repeting while praying during the screening of a Star War episode in a public movie theater? And all the secular references - including Delilah's penchant for Broadway musicals - are so easily taken, no regrets, no second thoughts as she grew up listening to Britney Spears instead of Shabbes niggunim all her life. And so on and so on. Last but not least, my purchased Kindle edition has embarassing mispells.

To be honest, I've expected more coherence from a well-aclaimed author. Her truths are good for a non-fiction book or an article about women in Orthodox Judaism - I agree with from many points of view. I met women behaving like Delilah at a certain extent and now I can understand them better, but the character she ends up with is too much and doesn't make sense both humanly and from the literary point of view.

Overall, was disappointed about The Saturday Wife and I can hardly give more than a 2.5 rating. However, would explore more of Ragen's books soon as her ideas are too interesting to not follow up, by giving another try to her works.

About the Tremendous Work of the Joint in Romania

If not the Joint - short for the Joint Distribution Committee - the fate of the impoverished Jewish communities in Romania would have been much worse. Zvi Feine, JDC country director for Romania for 20 years, including during the terrible communist years, is sharing unique memories and testimonies about those times and the hard work of dealing with the bureaucratic restrictions and supervision of the communist regime on one side, and the local agenda of the representatives of the Jewish communities on the other side. Partnership, Challenges, and Transitions. Jewish Communal Service in Romania and Poland published by Gefen Publishing House has not only a historical value, but the experiences shared in over 600 pages are important as a guidance for any individual and organisation active in the field of Jewish communal work. 

For a shorter amount of time - six years - Zvi Feine also took over the direction of JDC Poland and the experiences in mirror of the two countries are very diverse as we are dealing with different historical contexts and a completely different profile of the Jewish community.

JDC is the world's leaing Jewish humanitarian assistance organisation whose mission is to 'relieve hunger and hardship, rescue Jews in danger, create lasting connections to Jewish life, and provide restoration and long-term develomnet support for victims of natural and man-made disasters'. Anti-Semitism was not specificially within the range of topics of JDC, therefore no wonder that this issue is barely addressed in the book. 

The Joint's budget for the Romanian Jewish communits was the largest in Eastern Europe for the period between the late 1960s and early 1990s and the organisation continue to be active to these days. Romania had a relatively unique position within the Eastern block during the Cold War, as the only communist country that had maintained uninterrupted relations with Israel since 1949 (but also had a Palestinian 'embassy' while Ceaucescu was a good friend - mouth-to-mouth kisses kind of - to Arafat). 

The fate of the Romanian Jewish community during communism is complex and hopefully one day there will be a honest historical investigation of it. Navigating the tensions and the dangers while guaranteeing the continuity of a community reduced at a great extent to its elderly was a complicated task. Some compromises were on the table but their impact and need thereof were hard to figure out on the spot. The late Rabbi Moses Rosen, for instance, helped the Socialist Romania to achieve the onst favored nation status from the US in 1967 in exchange for Ceaucescu's consent to legitimmize Jewish educational activities for the children in the local community. Corruption and bribery were often the easiest way to make your things done and besides the 'classical' packs of cigarettes Kent - the symbol of overall corruption in the communist and democractic Romania as well, local communists also had a taste for matza or kosher wine that they expected as an 'Easter present'.

But on the ground, in the local communities, the Joint had a tremendous work ahead: offering the proper medical and basic welfare assistance to the elderly or people living in abject poverty. It was one of the greatest mitzvot to help those people in need, regardless of their religious situation or affiliation. 

Zvi Fein's book makes it a great collection of memories that will help, one day, to write the history of the Jewish community in Romania during communism and to better understand their survival, against all odds.

Rating: 4 stars

Explaining Israeli Judaism

Explaining to Jews from Diaspora as well as to non-Jewish audience, what does it mean to be Israeli and particularly the Israeli interpretation on Judaism is not easy. Sometimes is not easy to understand either. Part of the discussions are often getting stuck on particulars which endangeres the outline of the bigger picture.

#IsraeliJudaism. Portrait of a Cultural Revolution by Shmuel Rosner and Camil Fuchs is one of the best books about this new cultural phenomenon: being Israeli. Shmuel Rosner is senior fellow at the Jerusalem-based Jewish People Policy Institute and Camil Fuchs is a Tel Aviv University professor of statistics and pollster whose opinions are often read in the Israeli media - especially those days in the electoral context. 

With a focus on the big picture and the main cultural trends, based on various opinion polls made among both Jews living in Israel and diaspora, it explains at a great extent the dramatic differences that are often reclaimed and hardly accommodated between Israeli and other Jews. Such a cultural conflict takes place not only from afar, but manifests tragically when Jews born in diaspora are trying to make a living in Israel. 

Defined by the authors as 'a start-up enterprise in the service of the Jewish people' Israel evolved as a 'one big field experiment for Jewish culture'. The identity is not settled and has its specific dynamism whose specificities and cultural markers are clearly outlined by the authors. It follows the chore identity values of the predominant groups within Israel: Haredi, national-religious and secular. From a group to another, those values are in conflict and each and every one of the group appears to rather prefer to set clear borders instead of interacting with each other. Personally, I might think that members of the national religious group, inspired by the writings of Rav Kook who outlined a certain openness towards all the Jews are by far the most open to other influences and interactions with secular and Haredi publics. However, as the latest elections demonstrate, the national religious block is going through a serious crisis therefore too much focus on specificities will hijack the main focus of the research anyway.

As Prof. Yeshayahu Leibowitz, quoted in the book mentioned, the Jewish religious law was not written for a Jewish state. What happened in the last 70 years was a permanent adaptation of traditions - as diverse as those brought up by the Jews from Ethiopia, Romania or China - to the challenges of modernity while maintaining a permanent religious background checking and in some cases pressure too. Public transportation is not working on Shabbat and there are no civil marriages in Israel, but there are restaurants open in Tel Aviv on Shabbat and many secular persons would do the bar mitzva of their sons although that's the only way they will go in a synagogue in years. When you are living in Israel, you feel Jewish. In Diaspora you struggle to keep your identity, including under the permanent anti-Semitic pressures. There are sometimes two different realities that are often coming in conflict.

This book helps a lot to understand the root of the conflict while accepting that identity is not given, but a dynamic process. Being 'Jewsraeli' might have a completely meaning in a decade time. Electoral cycles and old and new elites might outline a direction or another. The elections about to hapen tomorrow might contribute to such a change too.

Rating: 5 stars

Asking the Right Question

In the last online issue of the Tablet, there is a very challenging article by one of my favorite contemporary American Jewish authors, Dara Horn, about a topic which unfortunatelly will never get old and obsolete: the reactions to outside anti-Semitic pressures. 

We have the story of Purim versus the story of Hanukkah, both narratives successful, but as Viktor Frankl said in Man's Search for Meaning: 'Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of human freedoms - to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way'. Which also means that some people might decide to be on the wrong side of history. Everything is about making choices, assuming it, no matter what. 

An episode of this long story is Yevsektsiya, an institution created in the Soviet Union, designed by Jews from very learned educated (including religiously) families that helped the local authorities to destroy Jewish life - schools, Hebrew-speaking institutions, religious centers. In Horn's words they were looking to make the other Jews 'cool' - I so don't like the term, but it suits ironically the context and the circumstances -, in the long tradition of court Jews. In the end, they ended up in Siberia, a dirty prison cell, a bullet in their head, in the best case scenario completely isolated.

I've heard and meet all my life such people in Eastern Europe. People that willingly accepted to be 'cool' part of an establishment that from the very beginning hated them. Deeply. They were never accepted but used and abused. People that turned against their own people, wrote extensive reports for the 'intelligence' services against their people, sometimes their relatives too. Nothing new under the son, as under the Greek Empire, there were many notable Jewish families that encouraged the same behavior and openly repudiated their religion - including by practicing foreskin restoration for the sake of the Hellenic 'beauty standards'.

Most of them ended up like the Yevsektsiya members, dead - both spiritually and physically. Those who survived the communist times and caught some fresh democratic air, were just a shame for themselves and their community. No one really wanted to deal with them and they didn't look keen to ask for forgiveness either. In many respects they failed, as the communities and synagogues they tried to destroy were still there, against all odds.

Purim and Hanukkah are two sides of the story that I both loved and which offered to those people two noble alternatives. Either be like Queen Esther - be part of the establishment but save your own people - or like the Maccabees - fight openly against the oppression. I've meet many Queens Esther but always secretly envied the Maccabees. Smart is to know when the spirit of the times requires you to be Queen Esther and when the Maccabees.

But although I listen or read stories of assimilation and integration, observed people blindly involved in their activities and their dismise - or disparition, Dara Horn raises a very important question: Did those people find actually the integrity they 'so desperately wanted'? 

This question it's the key and as usual, a question is completely enlightening the whole context. It completely changes the perspectiv and challenges the mindset. Personally, I know that the Queen Esthers were driven exactly by those integrity values. The rest, it remains to be found, if ever.

The 'Spies of No Country'

There is so much discussion in the late decade in Israel about the need to insert the fate and story of Jews from the Arab lands into the national narrative. It is a topic which creates polemics, unusual approaches and passion, a lot of it. Although right now, the situation is naturally improving, with a higher rate of inter-marriage between European and 'Mizrahim', as well  as a co-existence in the larger, religious realm - especially in the 'settlements' the academic and factual research is still half-way. There are so many stories and histories that need to be told and recollected. It is a long and delicate process that will probably require a serious reconsideration of the original state narrative. The only condition is to be considered on an academic, less emotional and more realistic perspective. Discrimination - it was an probably persists. Alienation - it was there too, especially for the first generation relocating to Israel. Frustration and misunderstanding where as well. However, besides various political and social stereotypes, the things moved in a direction that doesn't necessarily correspond to the initial plan of the founders of Zionism.

Matti Friedman, in his latest book Spies of No Country. Secret Lives at the Birth of Israel expressed very clearly this new reality: 'Israel in this century makes sense only through a Middle Eastern lens, which is one reason that Westerners find it harder and harder to figure out. Trying to navigate today's Israel with stories about Ben Gurion and pioneers will work only slightly better than trying to navigate today's Manhattan with stories about Thomas Jefferson and pilgrims. New stories are needed to better explain this plan'.

The book - based on intensive documentation, interviews and new declassified files at Israel's military archives - is mostly about the fate of 4 different Jews from Arab lands that in their early 20s become spies for Israel. They were the 'mista'aravim' - the ones who become like Arabs, initially part of a section created by the Palmach. 

One might expect secret encounters, special transmission tools and a lot of adventures. In fact, they were the most 'atypical' spies you've heard about: most of the time, they were selling school supplies from a kiosk in Lebanon. Some even visited the family members left in the towns they were sent. Their work is taking place in a time when neighbouring Arab armies invaded the then 'Palestine'  - an aspect willingly obliterated from the contemporary discussions about the pre-1948 Israel. At the same time, they were also keeping an eye on the Germans that at the end of the war found refuge in those countries -  especially Syria and Egypt were safe heaven for many members of the Nazi scientific  establishment. 

Why the stories of those four 'mista'aravim' are important? Matti Friedman doesn't want to demonstrate anything, to support or reject any theory. He offers information about facts and situations that may help a better understanding of Israel and the complex political and social layers of life in the Middle East. I've seen lately a lot of 'theories' trying to demonstrate how the state of Israel was created because of the Shoah. But after WWII was over, Jews from the Arab lands were forced to leave their homes in Bagdad, Tehran, Beirut, Aleppo and Damascus following violent pogroms against them. They used to share bread together, but the situation changed and the new state had a 1% growth of the population every 10 days following this exodus (according to Friedman). The longing for Zion was not an 'invention' of the Shoah survivors, it was an everyday life reality of the holy prayers of Jews from all over the world.

Jews from the Islamic world brought to Israel a completely different approach to religion - especially compared to the fierce atheists of the kibbutzim - but also a perspective on co-existence which deserves further development.

The Spies of No Country has opened the door to a serious fact-based academic-driven discussion at the end of which one might figure out a completely different reality and a more complex history of Israel and the Middle East in general.