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CONSERVATIVE JEWS' EMBARRASSMENT
Failure to support Israel programs shows back of hand to Israeli cousins
by Alan D. Abbey, YNET, June 29, 2005
| The following recent op-ed article
from the Israeli press expressing support for the work of the Masorti
Movement was written independently and not at our suggestion. While we
do not endorse every statement made in the article, we appreciate the
writers' endorsement of the importance of our work. |
Alan D. Abbey is
Editor and Managing
Director of Ynetnews
|
It's an embarrassment and an outrage that the Masorti movement, the Israeli version
of North America's Conservative Jewry, has had to fire staff , including 10-year
veteran director Rabbi Ehud Bandel, the movement's public face, for a shortage
of funds.
The embarrassment is not the domestic movement's. In some ways it is a victim
of its own modest successes. It has just ordained its 62nd rabbi in Israel, and
involvement in its youth and student programs is continuing to grow.
The red faces should belong to the 1 million or so Conservative Jews in North
America, one of the richest and most successful but self-satisfied agglomerations
of people the Jewish world has ever seen.
Their failure to support their cousins in Israel is basically the back of the
hand to a community attempting the most difficult of all mergers: that of modernity
and tradition in a country that seems to want to embrace either, but not both.
Let's back up a little. Masorti - the name means traditional and is associated
with the root word both for transmittal and message - has been seeking to find
a place in Israeli social, political and religious spheres for decades. It has
worked hard and long to establish itself in the face of active and even vicious
opposition from the Orthodox religious establishment that garners the lion's share
of governmental financial, legal and bureaucratic support.
Struggling for government support
The Jewish state has long subscribed to the canard that only Orthodoxy (and its
even more intolerant ultra-Orthodox spinoff) is the "legitimate" Judaism. It's
a belief the Orthodox have worked long, hard and cynically to foster both here
and in North America.
Non-Orthodox streams such as Masorti and Reform (called "Progressive" here) have
struggled to get even the most basic level of support from the government, such
as land on which to build synagogues (In a country in which the government actually
owns more than 90 percent of all available land, the government is virtually the
only source of real estate.).
Now is not even the place to get into the systematic way Masorti and Progressive
rabbis have been kept off local religious councils or otherwise out of the mainstream.
It has always galled me that the Conservative rabbi who conducted my wedding ceremony
in New York state could not have done so in the Jewish state.
Building communities
Masorti has focused on building communities throughout the country, and has eschewed
the more overtly political track taken by Reform's Israeli arm. Firing Bandel
was in step with the plan to spend more time on grassroots activities than political
ones. That's a debatable strategy, but it has had its successes, including growing
congregations and youth groups in many of Israel's smaller cities, as well as
vibrant synagogues in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.
Especially because of that, it behooves Masorti's American cousins - the Conservative
movement - to help with funding and political support. Weak-kneed Conservative
religious organizations in the U.S. have been positively wimpy when it comes to
flexing political muscle. Orthodoxy and their fellow-travelers have shown no such
hesitation.
The only way to get anything in Israel is to show political strength and mental
toughness. It's no surprise that so-called "religious" political parties have
been in existence for decades. Fed up with decades of prejudice and being short-changed,
Sephardic Jews in Israel, even those who are not religious, rallied around the
Shas Party. Once it showed an ability to get votes, the money and ministry positions
in coalition governments began to roll in.
With the American Conservative movement in disarray - the impending retirement
of Jewish Theological Seminary chancellor Ismar Schorsch threatens the organized
arm of Conservative Jewry even more - it is even more incumbent upon individual
Conservative American Jews and their congregations to come to the aid of their
cousins here.
Masorti Jews need money, visitors, olim and a willingness from American Jews to
speak out on their behalf when they meet with Israeli government officials.
Rich Conservatives have been willing to put their names on lavish buildings throughout
North America, and a few token spots in central Jerusalem. But those buildings
will fall empty and still - and none will flourish elsewhere in the Jewish homeland
- if they don't stand up now for what they profess to believe - that modernity
and tradition can be melded. The Jewish state needs no less.
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