Friday, June 1, 2012

Libi b’mizrach - My heart is in the east

Libi b’mizrach - My heart is in the east. Yehudah haLevi

Later this month, our Director of Education and I will be leading the first Temple Sholom congregational trip to Israel (at least during my tenure as Rabbi).  It will be a small trip, my family, an extended family celebrating a grandparent’s upcoming 75th birthday, and the Temple Sholom trip co-chair, David Richmand.  It will hopefully be the first of many trips, perhaps every other year, to bring members of Temple Sholom to Israel to connect themselves with the land and people of Israel - our family in our ancient homeland.

This trip is not Temple Sholom’s first attempt to travel as a group to eretz Yisrael.  In the past, there have been many difficulties - who has been free to travel when and, of course, the cost.  All of us know how expensive air travel has become and traveling to and in Israel is even more costly during the busy tourist seasons.  So why is it worth the trip?

First of all, let us set aside the survival reason - the reason that BirthRight Israel uses to justify its push to get every Jewish young adult to travel to Israel (at no cost to them): Surveys and statistics have shown that a meaningful Israel experience tends to increase the rates of lifelong affiliation with Judaism.  Although this reason is important and a great impetus to get a huge number of people (including many of our Temple Sholom college students) to travel to Israel, it is not compelling to those of you reading this article.  After all, you are members of a synagogue already and, further, dedicated enough to actually read the monthly bulletin.  You are already affiliated.  You already make time and resources available for Judaism to be an important part of your life.

So, why travel to Israel?  Admittedly, the Reform movement has always had fundamental issues with the modern State of Israel and our relationship to that state.  One could argue (and I have) that Reform Judaism and Zionism were mutually conflicting answers to the question of how Jews should react to their emancipation in 18th and 19th century in Europe.  On the one hand, Reform Jews said that there was a way to be Jewish and be a fully integrated and participating citizen of the nation in which one lived.  That way was to push Judaism into the box of “religion” and eliminate all vestiges of nationality.  Zionism, a little later, came to the opposite conclusion: the best way for Jews to survive in Europe was to establish an actual nation for their national identity.  Only then would their rights and identity be respected in a nationalistic (and often Christian) Europe. Religion and ritual practice were left out of the consensus, but all groups agreed on a modern nation-state.  It was only in the 1930’s, when the dream of a sovereign state of Israel was near to becoming a reality, that the American Reform movement adopted a platform (The Columbus Platform of 1937) which allowed support for a Jewish State - and a large group split off because of this plank.  Our second ambivalence comes from how non-Orthodox Judaisms are treated in the current state of Israel.  There is a divide between the secular and the religious in Israel (not to be confused with the Ultra-Orthodox) and our “brand” of Judaism does not have any of the rights given to more Orthodox streams.  (That, by the way, is changing.  In late May, a Reform women Rabbi was acknowledged by the Attorney-General and added to the state payroll as a rabbi - like members of the Orthodox rabbinate.  See irac.org for more details.)

As Americans, we are also ambivalent about the Palestinian situation.  Most of our wars are fought overseas, so, excepting 9/11, we have little first-hand experience of the danger of attack on our own homes and persons.  Americans tend to root for the underdog, and we forget that this tiny geographic entity is surrounded by enemies who still refuse to treat with them.  Israel is a victim of its own success - military and economic.

However, the basic fact is that WE ARE JEWS.  Israel is the JEWISH STATE - the place where our story began, the place that we mention at the end of every seder and in every service.  There is, as there was not for two thousand years, an actual Israel to which we can and do refer.  Reading about Israel in the newspaper or on-line, watching reports on TV is not enough.  If we wish to put ourselves in relationship to the state of Israel; we need to meet and talk to Israelis, we need to see how and where they live; we need to breathe the air, eat the falafel, and stand on the ground where Abraham, Deborah, David, Huldah, Judah Maccabee, Hannah, Akiva, Maimonides, Joseph Caro, David ben Gurion (and even Madonna) have stood.  We need to create our own connections, through our own interactions and physical memories, if we want to create that bridge between Israelis and Jews in the Diaspora.  (Israelis need to do this too, as many do not understand why we would not just make aliyah and move to Israel if we wanted to be real Jews.)

We engage our Judaism in our family and in our community.  We are supported and learn more about who we are with others.  Our family and community in Israel is the same - we need to meet them to learn about ourselves.  We need to connect ourselves to Israel to understand how to be American Jews.

I look forward to all of us sharing our experiences when we return - and traveling with you on the next trip, or the next...

b’shanah haba’ah b’Yirushalayim - next year in Jerusalem?

Rabbi Abraham