A panel of Israelis from different backgrounds agreed last week that Israel should be religiously pluralistic, but the panelists sharply differed over how to achieve that.
David Leichman, Avraham Infeld and Natan Golan, all of whom work with the S.F-based Jewish Community Federation in Israel, debated the “Who is a Jew?” issue and the rise of ultrareligious Jewry in Israel during a JCF-sponsored forum.
Rabbi Alan Lew, president of the Board of Rabbis of Northern California, moderated the event, at Peninsula Temple Sholom in Burlingame.
Golan, Infeld and Leichman, along with five other members of the JCF’s Amuta, or Israel volunteer advisory board, spent a week in the Bay Area meeting with JCF volunteers, beneficiary agencies and participating in last month’s Super Sunday.
Jerusalem-based Infeld, a South African-born Orthodox Jew, quipped, “In the U.S., when you have a fight about who’s a Jew, you cross the street, buy a piece of land and build a new shul.
“In Israel, there’s only one shul — and it’s the state. How do we separate religion from the state?”
At the heart of the controversy are two different approaches to religious freedom in a Jewish state, maintained Infeld, executive director of the Center for Jewish Zionist Education-Melitz and a founder and first chair of the JCF’s Amuta.
For secular Jews, he said, Israel is a place to be Jewish with “freedom from religion — not of religion.”
On the other extreme, he noted, the ultrareligious define themselves by their religion and their definitive distinction from the non-Jew.
This distinction keeps Judaism alive, in the minds of the ultrareligious, said Golan, director of the JCF’s Jerusalem office.
“What makes [the ultrareligious] tick is the total devotion to serving God,” he said. Secular Jews “may find it to be something out of 15th-century Krakow, but to them it’s fine.”
Golan, a member of a modern Orthodox synagogue in Jerusalem, described his upbringing as an ultrareligious Jew in London. “I went to a Lubavitch school, and we looked at nonreligious Jews as goyim. I never talked to one until I was 13.”
He emigrated to Israel at 16 and has modified his religious beliefs over the last 10 years. Today, “I am more pluralistic then I ever could have imagined.”
Still, he added, “Nobody really understands the ultra-Orthodox community, and this is what I consider the main problem.”
American-born Leichman believes that the lack of clout of Israel’s Reform and Conservative movements, which he characterizes as “broke and broken,” is a direct result of a lack of dialogue between the American and Israeli communities.
“[Progressive] Americans and Israelis don’t talk to each other. The Orthodox do,” he said.
Pointing to his ponytail, Leichman, director of the Kibbutz Gezer Seminar Center and a member of the JCF’s Amuta, noted that he is a product of the ’60s, and that his kibbutz follows its own alternative brand of observance.
He recalled an earlier meeting with audience member Rabbi Alan Berg, at a synagogue in the Berkshire mountains of Massachusetts in 1988, “and we were talking about the same issues.”
At that time, he said, the “Who is a Jew?” debate was big news in the United States. The issue centers around whether to define Jewish identity according to halachah (Jewish law), or by more liberal standards.
“The Reform and Conservative movements in the U.S. went crazy, and when [the debate] was dropped, they felt like they won the war,” he said. “They didn’t. The Orthodox dropped it, but for a price.”
The price was greater power for Orthodox parties in Israel’s Knesset. In fact, Leichman said the “Who is a Jew?” debate is a political, not a theological issue — one which should be addressed by lobbying the Knesset.
Many nonobservant Jews believe the way to ensure the continuance of Judaism is through the ultrareligious, he added. But he said the opposite is true. “A black beard, black hat and black coat will not do it,” he said.
Golan agreed that dialogue and education are key ingredients in promoting religious pluralism.
Infeld suggested yet another approach. “The people the Israeli government respects are the people who represent American federations,” and not the Reform or Conservative movements, which lack power in Israel, he said.