Two weeks ago, the Masorti Foundation, chaired by Alan Silverstein, led an inspiring mission to Israel. Among the participants were our RA colleagues - Michael Siegel, Neil Sandler, Shalom Lewis, Rob Tobin, Amy Katz, Menachem Creditor, Scott Glass and Seth Sternstein - along with Masorti Foundation Executive VP David Lissy, Masorti t'nuah executive director, Yizhar Hess, and members of the board of the Masorti Foundation.
We should be proud of the work that our Masorti institutions and staff are doing in Israel - we are thriving programmatically! We now number 55 kehillot and havurot. We have seen new or expanded buildings in Omer, Kfar Saba, Karmiel, Kfar Vradim, French Hill, Modi'in, Zikhron Yaakov, Herzliya, Raanana, Tel Aviv and several other locations.
We witnessed the exciting dedication of a permanent "home" for the NOAM Tel Aviv chapter and we have two dozen NOAM chapters in the country with hundreds of students! NOAM serves not only children of members of our kehillot but hundreds of unaffiliated Jews. MAROM, the university student movement, has blossomed from 1500 to 2500 during the past 18 months and continues to grow with students from unaffiliated families. The mission visited one of several "Ayaleem", student communities in the Negev and the Galilee, committed to restoring a pioneering Zionist spirit to these demographically crucial areas. Our MAROM students provide the Jewish programming so it has our Masorti hashkafah.
Our colleagues serving Masorti kehillot are incredibly dedicated and a new generation of young rabbis (including, Sabras, Latin Americans, and Anglos) are bringing amazing energy and creativity to the t'nuah --- Chaya Baker who serves the kehillah in French Hill, Elisha Wolfin in Zikhron Yaakov, Yoav Ende at our own Kibbutz Hanaton, Hagit Sabag in Beer Sheva, Dubi Haiun in Haifa, Reuven Resnick in Karmiel, Ary Glikin in Herzliya, Jeff Cymet in Tel Aviv, Gustavo Szurazki in Ashkelon among others.
In our kehillot, the members (remember in Israel, synagogue membership is counter-intuitive), exhibit remarkable passion for their shuls. The core groups are activists committed to reaching out and transforming Israeli society through Yiddishkeit. Their ganim serve the entire neighborhood by the hundreds. The kehillah rabbis often mentor teachers and serve as a Judaic studies resource at the local TALI school. De facto, they become the rabbi for hundreds of families in local schools.
Our rabbis officiate at hundreds of life-cycle events for their communities and become the focus of adult Jewish education in their communities. The t'nuah sponsors batei midrash in our kehillot which serve hundreds of unaffiliated Jews. A prime example of our work is Kiryat Bialik where our colleague Mauricio Balter estimates that his efforts directly impact upon more than 8000 people of all ages each month with services ranging from performing groups for teenagers to a "thrift" store and extensive social service programs.
The very nature of being a Masorti "kehillah" has tremendous implications. Synagogues in Israel which are government supported serve primarily as batei t'filah (primarily for men). Masorti kehillot are pulsating with a wide range of activity for prayer, for study, for socialization, for social activism, for cultural programs, for Ganim, for NOAM, and so much more.
Secular and self-styled "Masorti" Israelis feel comfortable for the very first time when they enter a Masorti kehillah. For the first time, they see religion practiced by fellow-Jews who are like them socio-economically, are often their neighbors and have similar personal and professional interests.
The inequities from the lack of religious pluralism have presented themselves in recent days. The outrage generated by the arrest of a religiously committed Masorti Jewish woman, Nofrat Frankel, at the Kotel -- for the "crime" of wearing a tallit and holding a Sefer Torah with Women of the Wall. We met with Nofrat, a humble, moral and genuinely inspiring person! This injustice was compounded one month later by the arrest at the Wall of activist, Anat Hoffman.
We were shocked once again by the arson committed against the Masorti synagogue building in Arad (much damage was done, but the trauma was even greater). All of these dire events remind us that Orthodox institutions receive hundreds of millions of Israeli tax dollars each year, while Masorti and Reform religious institutions are virtually excluded from most government funding. (Some money does flow to the t'nuah via the Jewish Agency, thanks to the efforts of our Movement's delegates.)
Three thousand Orthodox rabbis are employed annually by the government.
Aspiring Orthodox synagogues receive both land and a building at government expense. For Masorti and Reform keihllot however, it is rare that either land or especially a building are provided. Even then, once approved, often the process is caught in a bureaucratic morass (e.g., the case in Kfar Vradim where we were privileged to participate in the cornerstone ceremony).
We met with deputy prime minister, Dan Meridor, to advocate for Masorti.
He acknowledged the justice of our cause. As reported in The Jerusalem Post, Meridor said he was upset by a recent incident at the Western Wall in which a woman was arrested for praying with a tallit and Torah scroll. He did speak with the rabbi of the Wall, Shmuel Rabinovich, about this injustice but failed to change his mind:
"The truth is that there is no equality between religious streams in Israel," Meridor said. "There is no free market.
"What happened at the Western Wall bothers me. It doesn't have to be a synagogue. It is a national site. I would change the status quo if I could, but it cannot be done with the current coalition."
Regarding conversion, "Who knows what would have happened had Ruth the Moabite tried to join the Jewish people now, with the way the rabbinate handles conversions?" he said.
The bad news is that MK Meridor reflected despair and defeatism, saying "there is nothing that can be done, given the reality of coalition politics."
He remembered however, that singular exception was during the "Who Is A Jew" controversy in the 1990s, when American Jewry "raised hell."
Meridor's candid admission should be a call to action for us. We must redouble our efforts to advocate on behalf of, to raise funds for, and to give encouragement to the full agenda of Masorti Israel's exciting institutional life.
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