Martin Ben Moreh has an almost religious fervor about not being religious.
At the same time, the Scottish-born Jew and longtime Israeli is equally zealous about the need to educate secular Jews about Judaism.
Ben Moreh heads up Meitar, a Jerusalem-based program that tries to teach nonreligious Israelis about Jewish history, philosophy, rituals and other traditions without necessarily letting religion slip into the equation.
“Judaism is a civilization of 4,000 years,” said the 53-year-old Ben Moreh on a recent publicity and fund-raising visit that included a talk at Palo Alto’s Congregation Kol Emeth and meetings with potential Bay Area donors. “It’s not a religion. It’s a civilization.
“We’re all legitimate heirs to the treasures of the Jewish world,” said Ben Moreh, who received $40,000 in funding from the S.F.-based Jewish Community Federation.
Noting that six out of 10 Israelis consider themselves secular, Ben Moreh said that doesn’t mean they should ignore the rich cultural offerings that Judaism offers.
To ensure that young Israelis don’t, his 6-year-old program is working in 45 state schools throughout Israel, educating teachers and students alike about Judaism.
With a staff of 10 and a team of 50 freelance academic specialists, Meitar offers training programs on such subjects as Jewish identity, festivals, b’nai mitzvah, moral dilemmas in the Bible and Jewish perspectives on gender equity.
Currently, the nonprofit program — its Web site is at www.meitar.org.il — is providing inservice training to about 1,000 teachers. Those efforts are expected to provide instruction to some 9,000 students across the country, Ben Moreh said.
The program’s backers include celebrated Israeli writer Amos Oz.
Without talking about theology, “We’re saying, this is yours. This is your heritage. You don’t know anything about it.”
That’s a shame, says Ben Moreh, noting that “our culture is opening, questioning, curious.”
It also has a rich ethical tradition, with a strong emphasis on such currently meaningful social justice themes as tikkun olam, healing the world, he said.
In a b’nai mitzvah training program, Meitar takes what it calls a “problem-oriented” approach. Students are encouraged to study and discuss questions and dilemmas from the Bible, Talmud and other texts and apply them in ways that are relevant or meaningful to their lives.
As examples, he cited two students who’d received b’nai mitzvah training through Meitar. As a result, one student went on to discuss Martin Luther King Jr. for his bar mitzvah and the other talked about Dostoyevsky’s “Crime and Punishment” at her ceremony.
He described b’nai mitzvah as Jewish coming-of-age ceremonies that don’t necessarily have to be religious events.
“That’s your birth-right,” he said. “We’re giving them the basic cultural ingredients.
A recently launched program will introduce Jewish culture to whole families of immigrants from the former Soviet Union now living in Ashdod, a city near the Mediterranean Sea that is home to 60,000 Russians.
The project will include study groups about culture and history along with film and theater clubs and celebrations.
Ben Moreh said Israel’s population includes some 1 million Russian emigres who, in many cases, never learned about Judaism in their native land.
Ben Moreh, who speaks English with a blended Scottish brogue and Israeli accent, describes himself as “a nonreligious person steeped in Judaism.”
He grew up as Martin Morrison in Glasgow, where his parents helped establish an Orthodox synagogue but led mostly secular lives. He adopted his Hebrew name meaning “the son of a teacher” after moving to a kibbutz in 1970.
As a child in Scotland, “I never felt religious,” says Ben Moreh. But at the same time, he did feel Jewish.
“The dining table was alive,” he says of the debates that frequently took place in his home. “That’s Judaism to me.”
Meitar, according to Ben Moreh, has strong implications for Israel’s largely secular population of young people, particularly given the ongoing struggle to quell violence rocking the country.
“It’s not enough to fight,” he said. “You have to know what we’re fighting for.”
He cited a survey in Israel that found 43 percent of the population identified itself as nonreligious in 1999, up from 38 percent in 1990.
The idea behind Meitar could have potential applications in the United States as well, he said, pointing to the large numbers of American Jews who consider themselves secular.