{"id":303925,"date":"2010-02-10T13:12:04","date_gmt":"2010-02-10T18:12:04","guid":{"rendered":"tag:blogs.rj.org,2010:\/rac\/\/2.2441"},"modified":"2010-02-10T13:16:07","modified_gmt":"2010-02-10T18:16:07","slug":"galilee-diary-whose-wall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/303925","title":{"rendered":"Galilee Diary: Whose wall?"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Marc Rosenstein, originally published in Ten Minutes of Torah<\/a> and Galilee Diary<\/a>.
\n<\/i><\/p>\n

\nThe Council of Progressive (Reform) Rabbis in Israel views the Western Wall as an area that does not represent the Jewish attachment to God, the experience of prayer, or modern Jewish thought… For the Reform Jew the Wall may be a place of historical connection, but it does not have any place in a Reform theology.
\n<\/p>\n

-Responsum of the Council of Progressive Rabbis in Israel
\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

It takes me about four hours to get to Jerusalem by public transportation; not a great distance as distances go in the world – and merely a fraction of the distance to the North American Diaspora. And Jerusalem is very familiar to me from living there and visiting frequently over the years. I even remember it before the unification of the city in 1967. Yet sometimes it looks, in my “peripheral” vision, like another world. And since it is the “center of the world,” and the capital of Israel (depending on whom you ask), it represents Israel in the eyes of the world. Thus, sometimes it seems that the Jews of Boston and Omaha and Phoenix are more involved in the symbolic events occurring in Jerusalem than are we Galileans. You might say that Jerusalem looks to us like Washington DC looks to a Montanan: What’s all the fuss?<\/p>\n

This mismatch comes to mind in the wake of the most recent installment
\nin the ongoing jousting match between the ultra-Orthodox and the
\nliberal movements in Jerusalem: violating a court order, the Women of
\nthe Wall, a group of women who pray every Rosh Chodesh at the Western
\nWall, took their prayer out of the Robinson’s Arch area that had been
\ndesignated for them, and held it in the open plaza behind the
\n“official” prayer areas at the wall. One of them even put on a tallit<\/i> –
\nand was promptly arrested (and released after a few hours
\n“interrogation”). The repercussions have been continuing for weeks,
\nalmost entirely among liberal Jewish organizations here and abroad.
\nMost Israelis, who are not affiliated with these movements, are not
\nvery interested in what seems to us to be a test-case for religious
\nrights of a significance equivalent to Rosa Parks’ historic bus ride.
\nIndeed, they can’t imagine why a woman would want to put on a tallit<\/i>
\nanyway.<\/p>\n

In a climate of public discourse that can best be described as
\na conversation of competitive victimhood, we liberal Jews have jumped
\nin with gusto. There is no group in Israeli society that doesn’t see
\nitself as victimized by those in power: Arabs, the ultra-Orthodox,
\nresidents of the periphery, settlers, peaceniks, the anti-religious,
\nthe state as a whole, etc., etc., – and now, Reform and Conservative
\nJews. And to highlight one’s victimhood, it is generally useful to
\nlabel the other side as an archetypal oppressor (Nazi, Taliban, Iran
\nare common epithets). The trouble is that since everyone is busy
\ncultivating his\/her own particular victimhood, no one really has
\npatience for or interest in anyone else’s. So we find our cries of
\n“gevalt<\/i>” being mostly ignored. Moreover, in a country whose declaration
\nof independence begins “In the Land of Israel the Jewish people
\narose…” it is not entirely self-evident to most people that we are
\nall “endowed by the Creator with certain inalienable rights.” The
\nhistorical and ideological bases of Israel and the United States are
\nquite different from each other. The problem of the Women of the Wall
\nis not just a case study in the individual’s right to free religious
\nexpression in a neutral, secular democracy. It is rather a call to set
\nforth a vision of what we want the Jewish state to look like as a
\nJewish, democratic state.<\/p>\n

As long as we Reform Jews speak the language of secular
\ndemocracy and claim moral authority as a persecuted minority – so long
\nwill we continue to be considered an irrelevant nuisance here. Our
\nstrength is in offering a meaningful alternative at the level of the
\ncommunity, the school, and the synagogue, in realizing the vision of –
\nand modeling – a Judaism that can meet the spiritual needs of the
\ncitizens of a modern state and can live in harmony with democracy.<\/p>\n

It is too easy to say what we don’t want (religious
\ndiscrimination) and too difficult to say what we do want (i.e., do we
\nreally want Israel to look just like the United States? If so, how will
\nit be a Jewish state?). We need to be the visionaries of a state that
\nlacks them in our generation – not still another group of victims vying
\nfor headlines and sympathy.<\/p>\n

Rosh Chodesh Adar <\/i>is Monday, February 15, and
\nthe Women of the Wall will gather to celebrate at the Kotel<\/i>. To follow
\ntheir story and for more information, visit http:\/\/urj.org\/israel\/wow\/<\/a>. <\/b><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Marc Rosenstein, originally published in Ten Minutes of Torah and Galilee Diary. The Council of Progressive (Reform) Rabbis in Israel views the Western Wall as an area that does not represent the Jewish attachment to God, the experience of prayer, or modern Jewish thought… For the Reform Jew the Wall may be a place […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4316,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-303925","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303925","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4316"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=303925"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303925\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=303925"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=303925"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=303925"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}