Since I returned from last week’s meeting of the Council of Jewish Federations’ General Assembly in Indianapolis (the G.A.), I find myself answering the same questions over and over again.
*What was the weather like?
*Are there really Jews in Indianapolis?
*So what happened at the G.A.?
Well, the weather served to remind me why I left Philadelphia 13 years ago and moved to the Bay Area.
The Jewish population, while not the size of Philadelphia’s or even San Francisco’s, is a respectable 10,000, including the Jewish mayor, Stephen Goldsmith, whose 8-year-old daughter welcomed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Hebrew.
As for the conference itself, its message can be summed up in one word — pluralism.
Session after session dealt with this issue, as did all the major plenary speakers like Netanyahu; his Labor Party opponent Ehud Barak; Avraham Burg, head of the Jewish Agency; and Ya’acov Ne’eman, Israel’s finance minister and chairman of the committee dealing with the pluralism question.
For the most part, the major speakers came to assure everyone that there is a good chance the pluralism issue will be resolved — if the various religious movements show flexibility. But that’s a big if. Nobody wants to bend too far in showing their flexibility on an issue that goes to the heart of the future of the Jewish people.
Just how important the pluralism issue is depends on whom you want to believe or which branch of Judaism you belong to.
David Landau, the Orthodox bureau chief of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in Jerusalem, said during one of the many concurrent G.A. sessions that no matter what happens on the pluralism issue, Israel-diaspora relations already have been severely damaged.
“Stop; think before you are at the point of no return,” he pleaded. He warned that the battle over pluralism has led too many American Jews to abandon their support for Israel because they now view the Jewish state as an “Iran, both fanatical and obscurantist.”
But in another G.A. session, Ruth Calderon, the founder and executive director of Alma Hebrew College of Studies in Tel Aviv, praised American Jewry for caring enough to fight for pluralism in Israel. Calderon, who chose to be married in a secular ceremony in Cyprus because the Orthodox establishment would not condone her plans for a Jewish egalitarian ceremony, said she felt the pluralism debate was enhancing Israel-diaspora relations on a people-to-people level.
Who’s right?
As Landau sees it, the pluralism battle was manufactured by America’s Reform and Conservative movements, which wanted to change the way Israeli Jews have practiced their religion from the day the state was born 50 years ago.
Some critics have gone so far as to charge that the motivations of the Reform and Conservative movements are political — that they are trying to overthrow the Netanyahu government because they are unhappy with the progress of the peace process. Although such accusations weren’t made from the dais during the G.A., they reverberated in discussions in the hallways of the huge Indianapolis Convention Center.
Championing the battle for Israeli pluralism, Rabbi Eric Yoffie, president of the Reform movement’s congregational arm, the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, spoke out at the G.A.
He reminded journalists that the Reform movement had been fighting for recognition for years, including the period when Labor governments were in power. He said the issue only came to a head now because 120 people who underwent a Reform conversion in Israel are being denied recognition as Jews. At the same time, the Orthodox establishment has refused to obey a Supreme Court order to allow women to serve on the religious councils that govern each municipality’s religious practices.
Yoffie said he would be satisfied if both issues were resolved. Optimally, he looks forward to the day when Reform and Conservative rabbis can perform marriages and other lifecycle ceremonies in Israel. But those proposals are not on the table at the moment.
To protect the non-Orthodox conversions, the Reform and Conservative movements have threatened to go to the Supreme Court. If they do, the Orthodox religious parties say they will push through a Knesset law that will give them the legal authority to make religious decisions in Israel, which they have done in practice for 50 years.
Ne’eman and Netanyahu both said they were optimistic a settlement could be reached. But in asking everyone to be flexible, Netanyahu pointedly added, “I suggest that those who divide us go elsewhere.”
So in a nutshell, those were the highlights of the G.A. in 30-degree Indianapolis.
The 4,400 G.A. participants — mostly lay leaders and professionals from Jewish federations throughout North America — heard the issues during the myriad of sessions and continued the discussion in hallways and over meals.
The only one unheard from is you, the average Jewish newspaper reader.
How do you feel about the pluralism issue? Is it dividing Israel-diaspora relations or bringing us closer together?
Are the Reform and Conservative movements correct in fighting for pluralism, or are they doing this for political reasons?
Where do you stand?
Let us know. Send us your opinion as a letter to the editor, but keep it to 200 words or less so we can print as many as possible.
And just think. You can be heard on this issue without having to endure the Indianapolis weather.