Polarized or Unified? Depends Where You Look

Deanna and I spent July in Israel.  I participated in the Rabbinical Assembly convention, as well as the first part of the Rabbinic Leadership Initiative of the Hartman Institute in Jerusalem, which describes itself as a center of transformative thinking and teaching that addresses the major challenges facing the Jewish people.

Those who have spent time in Israel know that it is teeming, exciting and dynamic. 

When I was praying on our balcony, I couldn’t concentrate so well because there was construction going on, starting at 7 am, right across from where we were staying.

But I smiled to myself when I got to the phrase Bonei yerushalayim, acknowledging God’s role in the building of Jerusalem. 

There I was, praying about building Jerusalem while the crew across the street was actually doing it.

Building is taking place everywhere you look, as it always has.  Urban planners are urging greater building within the borders of Jerusalem so that a green belt, traversed by a relatively new bike path, can be preserved.  

Neighborhoods are being built and rebuilt, new urban spaces are being constructed.  Jerusalem’s version of the high line in NYC is the walkway and bicycle path on the former train tracks.  Many people joke that travel will be much faster now that it’s taking place on bicycle, as compared with the old train that took 2 ½ hours to get to Tel Aviv.

For now, I want to address a single theme, namely:  Although it often seems that Israel is more polarized than ever, with increasing disparate elements and more animosity between different groups, if you look more carefully you see  the emergence of much cooperation despite differences.

First, the polarization.  

At the end of Tisha b’Av, a Jewish man was killed walking from the Kotel toward the Damascus Gate.  The Jew committed no offense whatsoever.   He may have been more prudent to have walked to the Jaffa Gate, but walking to the Damascus gate was hardly a capital offense.

On Jerusalem’s light rail, which runs through a diverse array of neighborhoods, a Jewish man lunged at an Arab who was on a date with a Jewish woman.   The situation was witnessed by journalist and Hartman Fellow Yossi Klein Halevi, who, when he asked the man to calm down, was told, “How can I calm down?  He’s taking our sister to his apartment to rape her.” 

Animosity between Jews and Arabs often seethes beneath the surface and erupts from time to time in violence.  So does animosity among Jews who have different visions of what norms should govern Israeli society.

The young man on the train thought that he should enforce Jewish law as he understood it.  He saw it as his obligation to protect the woman, even though she did not ask for the help and, by all appearances, was part of a consensual couple.

As versus the mindset of Yossi Klein Halevi who, given his acceptance of Israel as a democratic society, called the police and identified the attacker for further questioning.

The rifts, between Jew and Arab, and among Jews, are not going away any time soon. 

I was asked not to enter the Arab market after 1 pm on a particular day in Ramadan, since the police feared for my safety as a Jew.  They explained that tempers sometimes flair during the fast, so I’d be better off walking elsewhere.

The gathering of Hareidi Jews to heckle and throw eggs at the women of the wall on Rosh Hodesh was documented and widely disseminated.  Some secular Israelis associate such repulsive behavior with the wider Orthodox community, leading to generalizations that are inaccurate and thoroughly unfair.

So you hear all of that and think, what a pleasure! When can I book my airfare?

But that’s not the whole story, not at all. 

First of all, you notice, when you hang out in Israel for awhile, that there are many cultural assumptions shared by all Jews, despite the fact that the polarization often gets the most press.

Even the so-called secular Jews in Israel are pretty Jewish, if you measure by awareness of the Jewish calendar and basic Jewish norms.

For example, we saw an Israeli episode of Master Chef, a spinoff of the American show where chefs compete with one another to create a meal based on a theme.

The theme for the Israeli episode we saw was Shavuot.

The contestants had to create Shavuot meals.  They all understood that to mean dairy meals and one of the contestants was interviewed during the process and said, “The holiday of Shavuot means a lot to me.  I grew up in Germany and I converted to Judaism.  And Shavuot, because of the story of Ruth the Moabite joining the children of Israel, has always been associated with the righteous convert."

Master Chef is generally not a Jewish production, but because it’s in Israel, it’s Jewish on multiple levels.  The culinary, calendrical and spiritual are all intertwined.  

So there is a shared core of cultural assumptions among a wide range of Israeli Jews and I could give multiple other examples – including the following:

At 5 pm, deliberately pre-sunset, there is a weekly gathering at the former train station in Jerusalem for an abbreviated Kabbalat Shabbat service with musical instruments that draws people with and without kippot, some drinking beer while listening, some singing and clapping. 

The kippa-wearing Jews may or may not have regarded this as a legitimate service, and many may well have gone to a more traditional service at sunset, but they were there, and perhaps they’ll come back.

I bring these vignettes to indicate that the religious landscape is much more complicated than one might initially think and that there are instances of shared experiences across ideological lines.

And all this is gaining political traction which has positive implications.  The participants of the Hartman program heard a talk from Knesset Member Rabbi Dov Lipman that underscores that there is movement toward cooperation among Jews with different ideologies and perspectives.

Rabbi Lipman was ordained by Ner Yisroel, a right-leaning Orthodox yeshiva in Baltimore, and he’s now part of the Yesh Atid (“There is a future”) party led by Yair Lapid, who considers himself secular.  Another member of the party leadership is Ruth Calderon, who did her doctorate in Talmud at Hebrew University and who established a yeshiva to expose secular Israelis to Talmudic study.

Dov Lipman has taken a lot of heat form the ultra-Orthodox community for his insistence that Hareidi schools over a core secular curriculum, a LOT of heat. 

So here you have a self-described Hareidi Jew serving in the same Knesset party as a female Talmudic scholar with a secular background who taught Talmud as part of her opening Knesset speech to a group that included Hareidi men.

This collaboration has begun, among other things, to fuel a systematic reconsideration of Hareidi education which will, in my opinion, have a positive impact on Hareidi society in particular and on Israel society in general. 

And there is also collaboration between Jews and Arabs that should be noted, much of it focused on bringing the next generation together.

The Hartman Institute sponsored a day of tiyulim, trips, to various places and with various purposes.

I went on a bike tour to see the relatively new bike path that I referred to earlier.  The plan, when it is completed, is that it will circle the entire city.

We passed through Jewish and Arab villages and we also saw a school, located in a south Jerusalem neighborhood that brings Jewish and Arab children together. 

Deanna went up north to see other cross-cultural initiatives at work, including a circus that features Jewish and Arab children who rehearse and then perform together.

Now imagine the literal and symbolic power of these children relying upon each other to spot, support and actually catch one another.  Imagine a Jewish girl reaching out to catch an Arab girl in mid-air, and vice versa.

And imagine how differently they will regard one another, when the experience is over, than they might have regarded one another before.

So – on the one hand, the polarization, the mistrust and the violence continue.  But on the other hand, the trend toward understanding and collaboration, within the Jewish community and between Jews and Arabs, is picking up momentum like never before.

We’ve been reading Moses’s final addresses to the people as they appear in the Book of Deuteronomy, passages that contain an encapsulation of past events and an extended charge to the people as they were preparing to enter the promised land.

I am reminded, again and again as I read these passages, about how much the dissemination and application of Torah depends on human leadership.

Centuries of rabbinic leaders chose to limit the application of the law we read this morning which directs parents of a stubborn and rebellious son to identify him as such so that the community can put him to death.  The rabbis limited this law to the point where it was never applied.

By contrast, the rabbis chose to expand those laws which guarantee sustenance for the ani, the poor, for the ger, the stranger, for the yatom v’almana, the orphan and the widow.

Pages of Talmud limit the application of the law against the rebellious son and maximize the application of the laws that support the marginalized and vulnerable within and beyond the community.

How Torah is interpreted has always been up to Jewish leaders in synch with the ultimate needs of their respective communities, and that should still be the case.

Whether we use Torah to increase animosity or to find common ground despite differences is as up to us today as it was thousands of years ago.

I’m heartened by the steps toward collaboration among Jews of different perspectives that I saw while in Israel.

I’m inspired by the steps toward shared learning and cooperation between Jews and Muslims that I saw as well. 

I hope that, increasingly, Jews, Christians and Muslims will interpret their scriptures in ways that yield cooperation, rather than mistrust and violence. 

Let us set as much of an example as we can.

We often chant the phrase etz chayim hee, referring to Torah as a tree of life.

The tree of life – teeming, sacred, creative life – is alive and well in Israel.  Polarization continues, but the many instances of collaboration are, thankfully, gaining momentum.

Originally delivered at Temple Israel of Great Neck on August 17, 2013