Many Waze to Join the Story

I got back from a week in Israel a few days ago and I’m going to reflect on that but first I want to share something that happened to me a few weeks before I went.

Platform for Egalitarian Prayer at the Kotel

I had finished officiating at a funeral and got in my car to drive from the chapel to the cemetery ahead of the funeral procession.  While in the HOV lane of the Long Island Expressway, I saw the tire air pressure light go on and heard noises.  For no great reason I decided to ignore both indications until the noises grew significantly louder.  I then pulled all the way over to the shoulder, got out and realized one of my tires was completely shredded almost down to the rim. 

After I called the hearse driver, after the entire funeral procession pulled over so he could pick me up, after the sad burial, after I called AAA, after a very nice AAA guy came to replace the tire with the donut, after I called an auto shop in Great Neck, I plugged the address of the auto shop into Waze, the awesome GPS app pioneered by Israelis that tracks traffic, police activity and stalled vehicles and could probably also order you a felafel on the way.

As I prepared to leave the shoulder, the automated narrator on Waze said, in her characteristically measured tone, “stalled vehicle on the side of the road.”

I know this may sound strange to you, but I got a little nachas when I heard that.  I was like, “wow, that’s me!  I’m the stalled vehicle!”   I mean, I’ve always heard about other stalled vehicles but I’ve never actually BEEN the stalled vehicle.  She was talking about me, by golly.  I was a part of the story.

I hope you’ll forgive the somewhat unconventional introduction to my topic. 

Inflated or deflated, streamlined or sidelined, we want to feel like we’re part of the story.

        Minha with colleagues in a park opposite the Shalom Hartman Institute

For a Jewish person, the need to feel part of the Jewish story is larger than we tend to imagine and we often rush to critique people's motivations before we try to understand them.  

I’d like to share a few examples from my recent, brief time in Israel that illustrate the intense, creative approaches that Jews of a variety of backgrounds, with a variety of ideological perspectives, are using to help them feel authentically a part of the Jewish story.

First example.  I spent my time as part of a cohort of rabbis studying, praying, discussion, schmoozing at the Hartman Institute in Jerusalem, a creative, pluralistic organization seeking to transform Jewish life. 

We tend to spend most of our time in Jerusalem but there are exceptions and this time, we spent a day in Tel Aviv with Rani Jaeger, a Hartman Fellow who focuses in Zionism, education and Israeli identity.  He took us on a tour of the neighborhood where he grew up, on and around Rothschild Boulevard in Tel Aviv.  He took us to his parents’ apartment.  Rani grew up in a home that would typically be described as hiloni, secular.   His father is a physicist, his mother is a literature teacher. 

The apartment has wall to ceiling bookshelves filled with books on all conceivable subjects. 

What Rani shared with us is that so-called secular Israelis are increasingly interested in finding meaning and connection through Jewish tradition. They don’t want the chief rabbi telling them how to be Jewish.  They don’t want to feel constrained by Jewish laws that they find irrelevant.  But they do want to be part of the Jewish story – they just want to do it in their own way. 

Rani Jaeger, Hartman Faculty, sharing his perspective on Jewish Renewal in Tel Aviv 

Rani was one of the founders of Beit Tefila Yisraeli, the Israeli congregational community that sent a delegation to us this past Hanukkah, that holds services all year long but is particularly well-known for their summer services Friday afternoon at a communal gathering place on the Tel Aviv beach. 

Interestingly, the first time they met there, it was because they couldn’t find a synagogue space to host them.  So what began as a default situation ended up becoming a sensation.

Rani told us that the experience of working with Beit Tefila Yisraeli confirmed what he intuited all along, namely that many Israelis who do not consider themselves to fall into the category of dati – religious – are hungering for the spirituality that Judaism provides.  They want to be part of that story.

Second example.  There’s been a lot of drama over access to the Kotel – who prays there, how prayer is conducted there.  Recently, after much negotiation, a platform near Robinson’s arch has been designated as a permanent place to be used for egalitarian prayer and greater access will be created linking it to Robinson’s arch and the rest of the kotel area.

Some feel that the Reform and Conservative movements have been sold a bill of goods, that in effect they have accepted access to a small, relatively isolated section where women and men can pray together and women can participate fully in exchange for giving the ultra-Orthodox control over the “real” part of the kotel. 

Some feel that those advocating for women and men to be able to pray together have sold out the Women of the Wall, many of whom wish to have women continue lead to lead prayer for women alone.

While I hope that Women of the Wall will gain full legal ability to hold services the way they wish, and while I thoroughly bemoan the ultra-Orthodox hegemony in most of the Kotel area, I think there’s value in having a place where men and women can pray together and where gender is not a barrier to full participation.  In other words, a place where those of us who value such prayer can feel like we are part of the story, part of the story of the Jewish people who value that place, in Jerusalem, as a holy place.

Along with the growth of creative Jewish commitment on the part of so-called secular Israeli Jews, this is an important development.

Final example.  On Tuesday, our cohort of North American rabbis (and one Australian rabbi) joined with a cohort of Israeli rabbinical students who are committed to Jewish pluralism for prayer and conversation.

We began by praying together.  I was asked to join with two Israelis who are very involved with leading prayer – one connected to the kibbutz movement, the other involved with Jewish religious poetry, or piyyut –and to help lead a service. 

Though we didn’t do much planning (forgive me – but this is an approach that you see Israel – יהיה בסדר yih’yeh beseder – it’ll be fine!), I was specifically asked to contribute one piece.

I thought – why not bring something uniquely North American to the service?  I wasn’t sure what that would be.  While in Florida with my family, we were listening to music and a new Justin Bieber song came on.  The song is called "Love Yourself" and it’s about ending a relationship that has not been satisfying.  And I started to think that the melody could be used for a particular prayer.  And I worked it out in my head.

And I introduced it and I said, this is sort of playful and a bit of a risk but why not.

The Israeli rabbis thought it was fun and it worked pretty well.

I share this with you because the reactions of my Israeli colleagues, to this and in general, suggest that Israelis are more receptive to what American Jews have to offer than they used to be.

And I also share it because as American Jews, we also want to find our way in the story.  We want to find creative ways to be American and Jewish, to take the amazing freedom and opportunities that this great land presents and to be Jewish in ways that are compelling to us.

And more and more, I’m realizing that here, in Israel and elsewhere, it’s not that people don’t want to be Jewishly engaged – most people really do – young and old, they really do – they – WE – just want to do it in ways that work – and that includes an appropriate mix of tradition and innovation like it always did.

Aaron and the elders climbed the mountain where Moses had been in order to join him.  And according to the Torah they saw God – ויחזו את האלהים vayehezu et ha’Elohim.  Rashi wonders how it was that they survived – after all, they’d been told that they shouldn’t even touch the mountain – if they did, they’d get zapped.  And he says that God was planning to punish them later.  But Ramban, who asks the same question, has a different answer.  The people who climbed the mountain had good intentions.  They weren’t storming the mountain out of hubris or animosity, they were climbing because they wanted to have the powerful experience of being in God’s presence.  They wanted to be part of this story that had cosmic and communal repercussions.  

And so I say to each of us:  We should continue to figure out how to be part of this great drama with multiple acts from Abraham and Sarah's time to the present.  And we should continue to oppose those who want to prevent us form joining the story in our own way - at the Kotel, in Tel Aviv, in Great Neck.  And we should assume the best intentions in one another as we encourage each other to find the most compelling ways to be part of this extraordinary story.

Originally shared at Temple Israel of Great Neck on February 6, 2016, Parashat Mishpatim