One of the privileges of being the Dean of the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies is my annual trip to Israel. Each winter, I have the chance to visit with our 3rd year students, pursuing our course of studies in Jerusalem. I use the time to meet with leaders of Conservative Judaism in Israel, to confer with rabbis and scholars from other streams of Jewish life, and have a chance to speak at a variety of yeshivot and institutes while I’m there. It is both a joy and a great privilege to be able to spend time in Jerusalem.
Of course, the highlight of the visit is our students. This year there are 13 Ziegler Rabbinical students studying in Jerusalem. Most of them are at our 3rd year program housed at Machon Schechter, where they are loving their learning and delight in the opportunity to study with their counterparts from our sister seminaries in Buenos Aires, Budapest, New York, and Jerusalem. The value of the unity that they experience during this year, and the advancement of their Hebrew and text skills, and the deepening of their knowledge of Israel are immeasurable. It was a joy to be able to spend time with them and their spouses, and I am so proud of all that they are accomplishing during their time in Zion.
The joy in the students’ achievements is tempered by the realities that Israel and Israelis continue to have to endure. The level of violence and terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians (and foreign workers in Israel) continues unabated. While I was there, would-be terrorists attempted to cross from Egypt, and others were arrested in the north. The escalation of violence from the Palestinian Authority, and the lack of a firm response from the Palestinian Government is a continuing outrage, just as the resulting suffering of Israeli and Palestinian civilians is a tragedy. As a result of this deliberate violence and terror, Hamas, Fatah and others have succeeded in creating terrible economic loss for Israel’s economy. I was saddened to see so few tourists in Jerusalem, although there were UJA/Federation missions that continue to provide concrete demonstrations of American Jewish solidarity and also help to bring tourist dollars to Israel’s hurting economy. These visits are, alas, a drop in the bucket.
This year’s visit lacked the unifying theme of other years. Instead of a single focus, I came back from Israel with a series of thoughts and impressions that refract a nation too complex and too nuanced to be reduced to monochrome or a simple sound bite. Whatever else Israel might be, it is certainly dynamic, passionate, and multifaceted. What remains constant is the wonder of watching the Jewish people wrestle with the realities of sovereignty, with taking their place as a nation state in a world that is often violent and focused on power. The miracle – of Hebrew as a living language, of Jews living a public and communal experiment in Jewish expression – is undimmed with the passage of almost 60 years of the Israel’s existence. Challenges in affirming diverse Jewish communities (religious and secular, European, African, Asian and Middle Eastern, Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform, the role of men and women, civil equality and the religious place of gays and lesbians) remains a serious issue for contemporary Israeli culture. Finding consensus for the role of Israeli Arabs, and seeking a solution to the impasse with Palestinians is still a high priority for Israel’s future. And looming in the background is the health of Israel’s environment. On all these issues, Israel is a locus of vibrant and sometimes strident debate. I pray that out of these heated debates will emerge light and clarity, no less than heat.
What I’d like to offer is less a political commentary, which I am hardly qualified to provide. I’d like to share the powerful feelings that moments in Israel inspired in one loving rabbi:
LINKING THE GENERATIONS: Having grown up relatively non-observant, I took on the mitzvah of tefillin (phylacteries) as an adult. I recall telling my grandmother about the first time I saw someone wrapping himself in tefillin, and her surprised and encouraging response: she went into her closet and emerged holding a brown paper bag that contained her father’s (my great grandfather’s) worn set of tefillin. A year ago, a dear friend arranged to bring my tefillin to Jerusalem, where a sofer (scribe) installed new Hebrew scrolls, rendering the tefillin kosher for ritual use once again.
This year, I brought those tefillin to Jerusalem. Imagine the power of standing on the balcony of my hotel, with a view of the Old City of Jerusalem and its walls, as I wrapped myself in my tallit (prayer shawl), strapped my great grandfather’s tefillin around my arm and across my forehead, and began to recite the ancient prayers that faithful Jews have recited throughout the millennia. I had the sense that my great grandfather had taken his precious tefillin, with all that they embody, and passed them across a chasm of a few generations until they could be lovingly received, and again become a vessel for connecting to God many decades later.
In a sense, that link across the ages is precisely what being in Jerusalem means too. As I wore my great grandfather’s tefillin and recited the same prayers he would have recited each morning, I thought about what this moment would have meant to him and to his contemporaries – how they had prayed for the chance to see Jerusalem as the vibrant center of a sovereign Jewish community, and how he must have doubted whether he would have a great grandchild for whom these mitzvot and tefillot would still speak.
I stood in his presence, and through his eyes I could see the miracle that Jewish continuity is, the unlikely miracle that Jewish Jerusalem remains.
THE MASORTI (CONSERVATIVE) MOVEMENT IN ISRAEL: Once again, I had the pleasure of addressing the Rabbis of the Rabbinical Assembly of Israel. To hear, through them, of dynamic communities of native born Israelis, and of newer Israelis from Argentina, the former Soviet Union, Morocco, Yemen, Ethiopia, and elsewhere was to have the chance to see the miraculous migration/return of the Jewish people to our ancient home. And to see these talented and determined rabbis providing a path back to Jewish tradition, a path that is both faithful to our heritage while open to the best of modernity, that was an inspiration to me no less than the magnificent views of the Old City from my hotel balcony.
Among the wondrous achievements of the Masorti Movement is a national program to assist special needs children in celebrating becoming bar and bat mitzvah. The woman who runs this program, Judith Edelman-Green, is among the kindest and wisest people I’ve ever had the privilege to meet, and her work is truly holy work. Every year, thousands of children and their families, told they have no room in their own communities, are welcomed and celebrated in moving religious ceremonies.
As inspiring as these congregations and these programs are, I was saddened to learn that the general economic constrictions that harm all of Israel’s economy are especially difficult for the Masorti Movement and its rabbis. Surely, those of us in North America who love Israel and who have found a spiritual home in this form of traditional Judaism that integrates the best of modernity need to be more forthcoming in our support – physical and financial – of these wonderful sages and teachers, and of their kehillot (communities).
A LAND SPACIOUS AND GOOD: I had two opportunities to leave Jerusalem to visit other parts of Israel. The Birkat Ha-Mazon (prayer after meals) speaks of Eretz hemdah tovah u’rhavah, a land that is goodly and broad. My trips outside of Jerusalem reminded me of Israel’s beautiful open spaces.
My college roommate, Jeremy Benstein, made aliyah soon after graduation, and he and his family live in the north, in Tivon, a bucolic community on the rolling hills of the Carmel region. On Shabbat, we walked around a magnificent local park. It was a pleasure to see Israelis enjoying the tranquility and the beauties of the region. Northern Israel is lush and green, and the sounds of Israeli children playing in safety were especially joyous to me. Elisheva (Jeremy’s wife) is doing encouraging work on multiculturalism in the north, and Jeremy is working on issues of environmental ethics that link Jews and Arabs in common cause for a land they both love. As always, I found their commitment and their vision a source of renewed hope.
On another afternoon, my teacher, hevruta, and friend, Reb Mimi Feigelson, took me outside Jerusalem to a magnificent vista called Mizpe Masuah. On its heights, we had a view of central Israel stretching out as far as the eye could see. Cultivated fields and natural hillsides in every direction, and I could feel the intense love of the land that found expression in Israel’s prophets and in the poets of contemporary Israel. Lost in the violence and the headlines is the continuing beauty of the Land of Israel, and beauty that remains a compelling source of spiritual wisdom even now. As Mimi and I sat in silence, watching the sun set over this ancient and beautiful land, I thought of the generations of Israel’s sages who drew inspiration from this place, and who retreated to the wilderness when they wanted to hear God’s voice more clearly. Reciting Mincha (the Afternoon prayers) as the trees faded from green to gray to black, and the beams of sunlight stretched thin through their branches, it is impossible not to feel the presence of the Ancient One, Who’s creation remains a mystery and Who’s land remains a gift.
Shabbat Shalom.