thinking jewish

Close the Door Behind You

In any system of standards, rules and ordinances, it is to be expected that some people's red lines would we different than that of others. For example, for many, Health Care Reform without a public option is no reform at all.

His aversion to war makes him unpatriotic. Her support of that candidate makes her no longer a Liberal. A good brother would never do something like that.

In this complex, twenty-first century world of pluralities, it is a given that individuals will live their lives with differing expectations of others, different world views, and conflicting standards of behavior.

When these differences exist within a particular aggregation, conflict necessarily arises, as one's red lines excludes another individuals belonging in that group.

Take, for example, the Episcopal and Anglican church. The appointment of gay bishops in the United States has delegitimized the denomination in the eyes of its international body. Episcopalians, in the eyes of those opposed to homosexual recognition, are no longer Anglicans. They have left the bounds of acceptable behavior.

In a body-politic as complicated as the Jewish People, all this line-drawing becomes ever more labyrinthine.

One people, hopelessly divided.

Your kashrut standards are not strict enough for me. I won't pray in your minyan if you won't count women. You're a heretic. You're backwards. I'm closer with non-Jews than most of them.

At a point, I might just throw in the towel, go about my business, and not worry about all those other Yids out there. If I know that what I do is right and authentic for me, than what does it matter what other people think. It's there problem.

Pshita.

Lest we be so quick to brush off those Jews with whom it is most difficult to get along, the nagging voice of God chimes in. We are commended to love our fellow Jew. Every Jew is responsible for one another, the rabbis remind us time and again.

We stood together at Sinai, binding ourselves to a united fate. Like it or not, we are stuck together. We are not the Episcopal church.

Which is why, when I read articles like this, I get so red in the face.

A child, in Spain, dies. He had converted to Judaism. His conversion was overseen by a Conservative rabbi. The cemetery where he will be buried is Orthodox-controlled. The community turns to Shlomo Amar, cheif Sephardi Orthodox rabbi in Israel, to find out whether the boy is sufficiently Jewish to be buried in the cemetery.

On its face, I have no problem with any of these facts.

I would be hypocritical for criticizing one Jewish community's difficulty recognizing the status of another Jew. I myself would question the Jewish status of a convert who had not done mikvah, for example.

(I say this not to criticize those who converted without undergoing mikvah, or, for that matter, to say outright that they are not Jewish. Rather, I want to be upfront and affirm that I too, just like the Spanish community in question, have my own standards that are more stringent than the behaviors of other Jews.)

Every community has its standards and definitions. Every tradition evolves its own particular take on Jewish practice.

Fine.

I accept that, by and large, Orthodoxy does not recognize non-Orthodoxy (halakhic or not) as a valid or authentic take on the Jewish tradition. I disagree in the strongest of terms. But I do also recognize that Orthodoxy, by its own self-definition, cannot accept that which is non-Orthodox as legitimate. I am happy to engage with Jews even as they negate my authenticity. My pluralism allows for this paradox.

But theory in peoplehood hits a snag when we talk the real politic of actual people and actual circumstances and actual cemeteries, in this case, controlled by a particular Jewish sub-group.

Throw out my revulsion at the thought of a community responding to grieving parents by telling them their child needs to be buried on another side of a barrier. How we can find ways within halakha to respect people's dignity - or, a step further, how we are commanded to find ways to respect people's dignity - is the topic of another essay.

Let's set aside for a moment my wonderment that this Spanish community would have turned to an Israeli rabbi as their mara d'atra, their local authority. The Jewish people don't have a pope for a reason - different communities in different parts of the world have, for thousands of years, developed their own unique takes on the tradition in ways that only make sense for their locality. American Judaism will always, must always, look different from Judaism in Finland, Zimbabwe and Indonesia. That's how it always has been. But a treatise on this topic, beyond my brief introduction, will have to wait.

And let's not even get started about what I think about a person being written off entirely, not based on the particulars of his case or conversion, but, rather, the movemental label of his rabbi. This is politics, not halakha, let's be honest. But that, too, will await a later writing.

My real issue boils down to the following.

There must be a way for Jews to disagree on particulars of law and authenticity without entirely writing off other approaches entirely. It requires discomfort and flexibility and creativity, but the alternative means splitting the Jewish people. Literally.

In the case of our Spanish coreligionists, if a cemetery is controlled by Orthodox Jews who refuse not only to recognize non-Orthodox converts but also not to allow them to be buried with their Jewish family members, then non-Orthodox (the majority of world Jewry, I remind you) will have no choice other than to have their own cemeteries. A chasm splits the Jewish people apart.

And that outcome is at least better in the Diaspora than what happens here, in Israel. Hundreds of thousands of Jews, Israeli citizens, flee organized Jewish religion entirely because here, unlike the rest of the world, if Orthodoxy doesn't accept you, or recognize you, or like you, you have no alternative. So they fly to Cyprus to get married in non-Jewish ceremonies, or cling to their pork in Nazareth Elite out of principle. We have lost so many Jewish souls in this country because of the inability of the Orthodox rabbinate to think creatively and put a love for the Jewish people above their desire to impose their singular take on halakha upon everyone else.

The Jewish people is a real thing. But God will not ensure its continued unity. We don't need to agree on everything - just the opposite, disagreement and plurality is a good thing. But we do need to find ways to live together, to not write each other off from the onset. That's a commandment.

Orthodoxy need not compromise on its ideas or ideals, its practices or beliefs. But the necessary result of cases like this one in Spain is the splitting of the Jewish people.

And it is Orthodoxy which history will record as taking the first step out the door.

The Hardest Medicine to Swallow

Seemingly overnight, the warm air of Jerusalem's perpetual summer gave way to the cool wetness of winter in the Judean Mountains. Sweaters were pulled of drawers, hot tea is replacing daily Ice Cafes, and scarfs are all in style in this city in the hills.

There's something very harsh about winter here. The cold chills you down to your bones, and it's nearly impossible to warm up enough until spring. The stones absorb the near-freezing temperatures and radiate the chill back into the limbs of everyone who lives here. There is no cure for the chill. You just shiver your way through March.

There is no medicine to cure this freeze.

Not that there aren't other things that need curing, other ills that afflict this nation that are so in need of the right antidote.

Like this.

I write this as a lover of Israel, whatever that means these days. I am deeply invested in the future of this country, its people, and its politics. I love (almost) every moment I spend here, and, though not a citizen, gain more from this country's being than I could ever fully tally.

I want Israel to thrive. I want the vision to come into being. I want this place to be all that it is supposed to be.

But, as the State Department will now remind us, Israel is an incredibly intolerant country. Or, rather, Israeli society is incredibly intolerant. If you are not an Ashkenazi, Orthodox Jewish man, more or less, you're screwed.

Not to say that it is any more intolerant than most the rest of the world, what with head-scarf bans in France, the illegality of homosexuality in the Arab world, and the mere existence of most of the U.S. South. But this country's existential faux-paxs, combined with its in-your-face, self-rightious attitude, makes being any "other" especially difficult.

Not because the law is necessarily against you, though it often is, but because Israeli culture and social norms demand that everyone tell you clearly just how wrong you are. You're unlikely to face violence for being different here, but you're likely to be told by every passer by just how awful you and what you do are.

Or, when the law is actually against you, you are degraded to a second-class citizen, and all the humiliation that that may entail.

What is so saddening about this fact, is not that there is intolerance in Israel. Rather, the sadness stems from the fact that the image this country presents of itself, an image based on the dreams of what this country was once supposed to become, is that of a vibrant, tolerant democracy in the heart of the Middle East.

This is the place where Jews and Arabs, people of any religious background, are supposed to be entitled to protected rights. This is the place where strangers dance the horah around orange groves, and sing on the streets while eating falafel and drinking coffee.

If only...

The Jewish homeland which is a light unto the nations, an example par excellence for the rest of the world, has a long way to go. That's an understatement.

Which is why such an honest assessment from the likes of the State Department is to be celebrated, not attacked. Anyone who kids themselves into believing that Israel is a mini-America, a land of refugees given inalienable rights, a tolerant pluralistic society in an otherwise hostile land, has their head in the sand. Anyone who declares that Israel's intolerance is a by-product of its sixty-years war and is, therefore, excusable, has some soul searching to do.

But anyone who sees this intolerance and uses it as an excuse, like any other, to throw up their hands and walk away, is being lazy, and taking the easy route out. My obligations to the Jewish people run to deep to not care when the Jewish state is missing its potential. My obligations to God are to important to give up on half of my people.

So I salute this report as a statement of truth shining light on an otherwise oft-ignored reality. Friends need to call each other out once in a while. This is one of those times.

Some may want to cry foul, but that's only because they know the truth, and cannot swallow it.

In Mishna Avot, Rabbi Simeon ben Gamaliel teaches, “On three things does the world stand: on justice, on truth, and on peace, as it is said, 'Execute the judgment of truth and peace in your gates (Zech. 8:16),'”.

And didn't rabbi Hillel teach the non-Jew that our tradition could be summed up as "What is hurtful to you, do not do to your neighbor. All the rest is commentary, go and learn it,"?

Rabbi Hillel was right. So too was Simeon ben Gamaliel. These are not blind words. They actually mean something.

Now, as much as ever, it is time to take our tradition seriously.