As ‘Other’ Judaism Grows, So Does Peril

The moment he saw the charred walls and melted plastic chairs in his daughter’s Reform Jewish nursery school, Daniel Geffen knew he was looking at arson. And he knew why.

He wrapped his arms around his 3-year-old to shield her from such a disgrace on her first day of school. He did not tell her someone had set fire to her classroom and that he was certain the crime was committed by an ultra-Orthodox Jew opposed to their kind of Judaism.

“She wouldn’t have understood about conflicts between different groups,” he said. “The only thing she would have absorbed was that someone hates her.”

A month after the fire at the Gan Kamatz in the Jerusalem suburb of Mevasseret Zion, police still have not identified the arsonist and the case remains under investigation. But there is little doubt among leaders of Israel’s small liberal Jewish movements that the fire in the early hours of Sept. 1 was an attack on Reform and Conservative Judaism.

Most Orthodox Jews find such violence abhorrent and would see it as a violation of Jewish law. But liberal Jewish leaders see incidents like this as part of a pattern of assaults on their streams of Judaism. They say they have escalated since the Orthodox political parties made a strong showing in last year’s national elections and became a key part of the government coalition.

The Reform and Conservative movements, which account for the vast majority of American Jews, represent a tiny minority of Israelis--perhaps fewer than 10,000 families in a country of 4.7 million Jews. Most Israelis describe themselves as secular or non-practicing Jews; most observant Jews in Israel call themselves Orthodox.

Rabbi Avraham Ravitz, a member of parliament from the Orthodox United Torah Judaism party, estimated the observant, Orthodox population to be at least 1.5 million, based on the fact that religious parties won about 700,000 votes in the last national election. He dismissed the liberal movements as “very small.”

“I saw them advertising for services on the High Holy Days. Just the fact that they have to make advertising for prayers is something. But they offered 20 places around the country. You’re talking 20 places against 20,000 regular synagogues,” Ravitz said.

Israel’s chief rabbis have taken a harder line on Reform and Conservative Judaism. They liken the movements to “a plague” and liberal rabbis to Islamic suicide bombers destroying the Jewish people. Ultra-Orthodox extremists call them “Nazis,” “whores” and “Christians.”

Twice this year, on the Shavuot and Tishah b’Av religious holidays, groups of liberal Jewish men and women who tried to pray together at Judaism’s holiest site, the Western Wall, were attacked by Orthodox Jews hurling garbage and epithets; Orthodoxy forbids men and women to pray together. In the second incident, the liberal Jews were evicted by Israeli police after a Religious Affairs Ministry official insisted that a mixed service violated regulations.

Ravitz was critical of these attacks, as he was of the nursery school arson. “Of course, I am against this type of act. It is not our way. I also think it does not serve the battle we have with them. It serves them,” he said.

Strength Brings Risks

Liberal Jewish leaders see these attacks as both a symbol of their success and a foreboding. The movements are growing and trying to extend their influence via the courts, legislature and their own schools and synagogues. This is drawing the wrath of those Orthodox Jews who see themselves as standard-bearers of thousands of years of Jewish tradition.

The liberal Jewish leaders conclude that the stronger their movements become, the greater the risk of violence from those who perceive them as a threat.

“Small, mixed groups have participated in egalitarian services at the wall as far back as the 1970s and no one paid attention,” said Conservative Rabbi Ehud Bandel. “Why the change? Because until now we were seen as small and insignificant and could be ignored. But the Orthodox establishment has realized we endanger their monopoly, that more and more Israelis are looking for an alternative.”

Rabbi Maya Liebowich, a founder of the Mevasseret Zion Reform congregation and nursery school, adds that the school was burned because “somebody doesn’t want us influencing the minds of small children. . . . I am very worried to think we have reached this stage. I am worried that the worst enemy we have is within.”

The liberal Jewish movements want respect and equal rights in a country that does not understand them. They say they offer a more open, democratic and egalitarian form of Judaism to those who reject the all-or-nothing approach of the Orthodox. They see their greatest potential for growth among Israelis who call themselves secular but still keep Jewish holidays and traditions.

The problem is that even secular Israelis believe “real” Judaism is Orthodoxy and are dismissive of the liberals. “The synagogue I don’t go to is Orthodox,” secular Israelis commonly joke.

Reform Rabbi Naamah Kelman isn’t laughing. “I am angry that the secular have abdicated their role in creating Israeli Judaism,” she said. “There is an unholy marriage between the secular and Orthodox, with the Orthodox saying, ‘You be Israelis and we’ll be the Jews.’ ”

Orthodox rabbis have held a monopoly over Judaism in Israel since the founding of the Jewish state in 1948. When Kelman emigrated from the United States 21 years ago, she recalls, there was not even a word in Hebrew for Reform or Conservative Judaism.

The movements have since taken the titles mitkademet, which means progressive, and Masorti, or traditional. But Kelman notes that there still is no Hebrew word for a woman rabbi. According to the Orthodox, there is no such thing.

Kelman dons a skullcap to perform a bat mitzvah--a coming-of-age celebration for girls. She covers her head with a kippa and wears a prayer shawl to lead services heralding the Jewish New Year. The Orthodox do not recognize her right to perform any of these rites or even the bat mitzvah celebration itself. Under Orthodoxy, only boys may have a bar mitzvah to enter manhood and take on the laws of Judaism.

The Reform movement--a product of the Enlightenment--was founded in Germany in the 1830s as a response to Orthodoxy; Conservative Judaism followed about 30 years later in Eastern Europe.

“Judaism as we know it today, ultra-Orthodox, modern Orthodox, Reform, Conservative, Reconstructionist, they are all different responses to modernity. . . . The question is how to remain Jewish in modern times, and each stream answers this differently,” Kelman said. “The ultra-Orthodox build walls. Insularity, guarding the faith. That is one response. The modern Orthodox say you can be a Jew in the modern world, study in the university, belong to the army, as long as you accept the weight of Jewish law and 100% commitment to this lifestyle.

“The Conservative movement,” she continued, “says we need more changes but based on Jewish precedent. They find legal and historical justification, and rabbis act as a collective. . . . The Reform movement from its inception realized that people make decisions based on a personal sense of autonomy and will not necessarily bend to the collective. The Reform say, there are Jewish norms and practices; there is no commanding enforcer.

“The Orthodox,” she noted, “say, God commands and we obey. . . . The Reform say, we are in an ongoing dialogue with God that started with Abraham. . . . There is an ongoing interpretation of Jewish law,” she said.

Orthodoxy Rules

But in Israel, Orthodoxy rules. The Orthodox run Israel’s religious authority, the rabbinate, which allows only Orthodox rabbis to perform conversions, marriages and burials. Reform and Conservative rabbis challenge this by performing hundreds of weddings each year, but the rites are not recognized by the government, and so most couples also undergo a civil marriage abroad to become “legally” wed.

This irks Galia Kaspi, a teacher in Ramat Hasharon and an immigrant from Los Angeles, who notes that Halakha, or Jewish law, does not even require the presence of a rabbi for a marriage; only an exchange of rings and vows and witnesses are necessary. “My brother is a Reform rabbi in the United States and he came here and married us, but according to some people we are not married,” Kaspi said.

Liberals are fighting passage of a conversion bill before the legislature, which would write the status quo--Orthodox control over conversions--into law and stymie the movements’ push for equal rights.

The Orthodox make up Israel’s local religious councils and even though Israel’s Supreme Court has ordered them to seat a Reform member in Jerusalem, Haifa and Netanya, they have refused to do so. They see Reform and Conservative Jews as agents of assimilation, peddlers of a diluted faith that is not Judaism. The liberals not only let men and women pray together, but may drive to shul on the Sabbath, break strict Kosher dietary laws and marry out of the faith--steps on the path away from Judaism, the Orthodox insist.

To rabbis like Ravitz of United Torah Judaism, everything outside of Orthodoxy simply is not Judaism.

“The problem is, they want to force us to believe Judaism is something you can offer at the supermarket. They call it pluralism. We don’t believe the Jewish faith or religion is pluralistic. . . . In religion, you are talking about absolute ideas,” Ravitz said.

Yigal Barazani, a member of the Mevasseret Zion municipal council from the Orthodox Shas party, added: “Reform is not a religion, it is a culture. It is a strange culture. . . . They do not accept the religion of Moses. They have no commandments and prohibitions. Their culture allows everything and what it prohibits, any society prohibits. What they do is a mockery of Judaism. Either you keep the rules or you don’t.”

Barazani opposed the Mevasseret council’s decision this year to grant public land to the Reform congregation for a synagogue and community center. The Jewish state commonly provides public land for synagogues. There are 32 Orthodox synagogues in Mevasseret, a mixed community of about 17,000 residents.

‘Resorting to Tricks’

Council leader Eli Moyal said the first meeting to discuss the land grant was broken up by “religious people of various affiliations.” The meeting turned so hostile, he said he ended it before it led to blows.

“There were all kinds of pressures to stop us from giving the land, including pressure from Cabinet ministers whom I won’t name. We had to resort to all kinds of tricks so the chaos would not reoccur in the second meeting. I set the meeting for 7 p.m. but actually started it at 6 p.m., so that when the opponents came the decision was already approved,” he said.

Still, the Reform congregation got only half the land it had requested.

Aliza Landau’s first experience with the hatred directed at Reform Jews in Israel was at the explosive council meeting. A Polish immigrant who saw her father and brother killed in the Holocaust, Landau was dumbfounded when an Orthodox Jew turned to her and yelled, “You are not a Jew.”

“You can say many things to me, but somebody tells me I am not a Jew and I can strangle him,” Landau said.

Discrimination against Reform and Conservative Judaism may be felt most intensely by Americans and other immigrants from the West, where they were minorities as Jews but their form of Judaism was more widely accepted.

“We feel doubly punished,” said Rabbi Levi Wyman-Kelman, Naamah Kelman’s brother. “Most of us made aliya [immigrated] because we were committed to being Jewish. We gave up a high standard of living because of our Jewish identity, and we come here and are attacked for not being Jewish. It is very painful for us.”

The irony is that Reform and Conservative Jews often are more committed to their Judaism in Israel than they are abroad, said Wyman-Kelman: “People usually join congregations based on convenience in North America, and the Reform tend to be the least demanding. To be a member of a Reform synagogue in Israel is the least convenient. You have to explain yourself to your neighbor. There’s an Orthodox synagogue on every block, but you have to find a non-Orthodox synagogue. It requires an extra ideological commitment.”

Progressive Jewish leaders want to challenge the opposition with a bill for religious freedom that they are drafting and hope will be introduced in the legislature. Meantime, Reform and Conservative Jews would settle for a little more tolerance.

As Geffen dropped his daughter off last week at the newly renovated Mevasseret Zion nursery, the immigrant from Los Angeles noted: “I don’t think that to express yourself as a Reform or Conservative Jew should present a danger.

“If the Orthodox believe they are right, they should promote their Judaism and live it, but don’t try to coerce me. Let me live Judaism the way I believe it should be lived.”