According to the Sages of the Talmud, sinat hinam, causeless hatred, among Jews destroyed the Temple. We no longer have the Temple, but 50 years since the Six-Day War, the Kotel (Western Wall), our last remnant of the Temple, stands at the center of sinat hinam that poses great danger to the Jewish people. This week, we began the “three weeks” in which we contemplate our communal divisions, culminating in the fast of Tisha B’Av (Aug. 1 this year). This year, we have plenty of fresh material to reflect upon.
The June 25 decision of the Israeli Cabinet to freeze a historic agreement on access to the Kotel for egalitarian worship and to designate conversions in Israel as the exclusive domain of the Haredi (fervently Orthodox) Chief Rabbinate sent shock waves throughout the Jewish world. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu leads a shaky political coalition that relies on Haredi political parties for his political survival. At the same time, Netanyahu sees himself as “leader of the Jewish world.” It was in this capacity that he spearheaded a commission led by Natan Sharansky, head of the Jewish Agency, to recommend a Kotel compromise in January 2016, in which the government would designate the south section of the Western Wall area near Robinson’s Arch as an official, state-sponsored prayer space for non-Orthodox worship. In order to placate the Harediparties, Netanyahu threw liberal Jews under the bus.
The Haredi Chief Rabbinate’s monopoly on conversion is even more egregious. There are some half-a-million Israelis who immigrated from the Former Soviet Union (FSU) who are not Jewish according to traditional Jewish law. In Israel, matters pertaining to personal status — such as marriage, divorce and burial — are relegated to religious bodies. Immigrants from the FSU came to Israel under the law of return. They serve in the IDF and live lives as Israeli Jews. Yet, in order to get married they must convert, and in order to convert they must demonstrate commitment to stringent Orthodox observance before the non-Zionist Chief Rabbinate. Israel’s failure to break the Haredi stranglehold on Jewish life in Israel has significant long-term political and security consequences.
Since June 25, leaders from the Jewish Federation system and from across the denominational spectrum in the Diaspora have put the Israeli government on notice that our communities are no longer to be taken for granted.
As Rabbi Julie Schonfeld, executive vice president of the Conservative Movement’s Rabbinical Assembly said, “There’s a notion that there’s this group of Reform and Conservative Jews who you can deride and insult all you want, and that there’s some other group called Israel’s base of American Jewish support that is part of American support [for Israel], and that those are two separate groups.” Rabbi Schonfeld further said: “Israel doesn’t seem to get that they’re the same group. But Israel’s base of support in the U.S. at the very top levels are people for whom the Kotel and the conversion bill matter, and it not OK to lie to them.”
Rabbi Schonfeld here alludes mainly to American Jewish leaders who are on the front lines of Israel advocacy. However, the boorish decisions of the current government threaten not only the support of current American Jewish leaders, but especially the future leaders of our community. It’s hard enough advocating for the State of Israel as a beacon of democracy in a troubled region when the unresolved conflict with the Palestinians exposes Israel’s undemocratic rule over millions of Palestinians in the Occupied Territories as a stark Achilles heel for a liberal democracy. It’s hard enough that younger generations of Jews are checking out of Israel engagement altogether because they lack the nostalgia of the older generations that fought the wars and drained the swamps. Younger American Jews are much more influenced by the prism of democracy and civil rights and do not draw inspiration from present-day Israel in this regard. Layered on top of the complex Palestinian issue, the Israeli government sucker punches non-Orthodox Jews. I fear that Netanyahu’s act of short-term political survival will haunt the Jewish people for many years to come.
Rabbi Edward C. Bernstein, who lives in Boynton Beach, is a chaplain at Vitas Healthcare and president of the Rabbinical Assembly of South Florida.