U.S. Reform Judaism Leader Denounces Netanyahu Policies

By Nathan Jones

As a result of the 1995 assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin by a religious Jew, most Americans are aware of the ideological chasm that divides religious and secular Jews in Israel—even to the point that pessimists on both sides predict escalating violence, if not actual civil war. The fault line does not necessarily correspond, however, with the political lines that divide what used to be called the Labor coalition from the Likud bloc or, roughly, the supporters of land-for-peace from those who say “not one inch” for peace.

In fact, there are rabbis who instruct Israeli soldiers that it would be a crime against their religion to countenance giving up any land for peace, and other rabbis who instruct soldiers that it would be a crime to disobey an order from their Jewish commanders, even if the order is to remove Jewish settlers forcibly from lands they have seized.

Few Americans are aware, however, of the fractures within the multi-faceted U.S. Jewish community. Of America’s 5-to-5.5 million self-defined Jews (roughly 2 percent of the U.S. population), perhaps half are affiliated formally with a synagogue. Perhaps four-fifths of the affiliated Jews identify with conservative Judaism or Reform Judaism, with the rest divided between the various sects of Orthodox Judaism.

Superficially, at least, members of such “liberal” Protestant Christian denominations as Episcopalians, Presbyterians and Lutherans are struck by the organizational similarities between their own churches and synagogues of Reform Judaism, which developed in the United States.

Members of America’s diverse Jewish community are the first to admit that sometimes it seems that the two resolves that hold them all together are a determination to keep alive in the world’s consciousness the memory of the European holocaust, in which about half of Europe’s pre-World War II population perished, and to support Israel, the Jewish state in which many of the Holocaust survivors built new lives for themselves.

Now, however, instead of being at the center of American Jewish unity, Israel also is becoming a source of division among them. The first issue is Israel’s law of return, which automatically grants “Jewish nationality” to Jews from anywhere in the world who choose to settle in Israel. A problem arises, however, with converts to Judaism, many of whom are spouses of Jews.

The Israeli government recognizes conversions by Orthodox rabbis, but not by Conservative or Reform rabbis—meaning the overwhelming majority of rabbis in the United States. The issue is further complicated by the problem of Jewish descent. Orthodox and Conservative Jews maintain that Judaism can only be passed through the maternal line. Children of a Jewish father and non-Jewish mother must undergo “conversion.” Reform Judaism does not make this distinction.

The issue broke into the mainstream U.S. media recently with the story of Sen. William Cohen, the Clinton administration’s new secretary of defense. The son of a Russian Jewish father and an Irish Catholic mother, he was preparing for his bar mitzvah when an Orthodox rabbi told him that he could not participate in the ceremony without first being “converted” to Judaism. He was so angered that he abandoned the religion entirely.

Reform rabbis point out that if the rabbi in the Maine town where Cohen grew up had been of their denomination, Maine would have had a Jewish senator and the U.S. now would have a Jewish secretary of defense. More pertinent, however, is the fact that the Israeli government, too, does not recognize children of non-Jewish mothers as Jews, and also does not recognize their “conversion” by anyone other than Orthodox Jewish rabbis. All this is crucially important to immigrants from the United States to Israel. It involves not only access to “Jewish nationality,” but also residence in about 90 percent of Israel, which is under restrictive covenants barring non-Jews from living, working or owning property there.

The issue has been one of growing acrimony between American Jews, who credit themselves and their political clout not only for the annual gifts by Jewish individuals to Israel, said to total about $750 million annually, but also for the huge additional annual package of U.S. grant aid and loan guarantees to Israel, which in 1997 totaled more than $5.5 billion. Why, Conservative and Reform Jews ask, should they continue such generosity to a country that does not grant them full equality with other Jews?

Israeli leaders respond that the threads that hold religious and secular Jews in Israel together are frayed enough. Tampering with Jewish religious law by secular leaders would break up the present Israeli government, which depends upon the participation of Israel’s powerful religious parties. It could destroy whatever is left of Israeli national unity. Besides, Israeli leaders point out, although U.S. Jews express deep interest in and concern for Israel, very few actually emigrate there. So the benefits of raising the divisive issue in Israel would be far outweighed by the hostility it would engender there.

Now Rabbi Eric H. Yoffie, president of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, representing the Reform Jewish movement, has brought the dispute into the open with a Dec. 13 speech before the annual meeting of the union’s board of trustees in Los Angeles. Yoffie specifically charged Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu with a failure of leadership that has exacerbated differences between Israeli and American Jewish leaders, brought Judaism into contempt to the benefit of “relentless and aggressive secularism,” and has increased political tensions in the Middle East.

Although Reform movement leaders in the U.S. generally supported the peace policies of Israel’s Labor Party, they kept their own counsel during and immediately after the May 1996 Israeli election in which Netanyahu defeated the Labor Party prime minister of Israel, Shimon Peres. But, Yoffie said, it is time to end the moratorium on criticism of Netanyahu’s administration because his policies are threatening the Middle East peace process.

“What Israel’s government has given us is inflammatory statements by the prime minister and expansion of settlements.” Yoffie charged. “It also has given us uncertain relations with the United States and growing tension with the most moderate elements in the Arab world, including King Hussein, a traditional Netanyahu ally.”

Referring to Netanyahu’s approval of the construction of hundreds of homes for Jewish “settlers” in the occupied West Bank, his statement that the Israeli government will expand Jewish settlements in the Golan Heights, which Israel captured from Syria in 1967, and the warning by President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt that settlement expansion will destroy Israel’s relations with its Arab neighbors, Yoffie said Netanyahu’s “troubling” decisions come at a time when nuclear weapons are expected to spread to other Middle East countries in addition to Israel within 10 years.

Yoffie said that with the loss to the Palestinians of support from the now collapsed Soviet Union, the major threat to both Israel and moderate Arab states in the Middle East comes from Iran and Iraq.

“This means that Israel needs to renew and strengthen her peace with Jordan and Egypt and to extend peaceful relations to an increasing circle of Middle Eastern countries,” Yoffie said. He added that he did not know if Netanyahu would be “astute” enough to change course.

Yoffie said the purpose of his speech was to “sound the alarm” not only over the danger to the peace process, but over religious issues as well. “There is a great religious crisis out there, and Israel is part of that crisis,” Yoffie said. He accused Netanyahu of not standing up to the dangers posed both by ultra-Orthodox Jews and rampant secularism.

“Most of Israel seems to be in the grip of a relentless and aggressive secularism” that includes many of the “less attractive elements of American culture” such as pop music, soap operas and video arcades, Yoffie said. “When you walk past the Tel Aviv McDonald’s on Friday night and observe throngs of Israeli teens, you cannot help but wonder if this is Israel’s future.”

He said that if Israel betrays its religious heritage by adopting “Torah-free Judaism” it will have no staying power. Similarly, he said, “utterly fanatic” Jewish Orthodoxy is not the answer. He said there are more than 100,000 Russian immigrants who have obtained Israeli citizenship but cannot be married by the Orthodox rabbinate because their Judaism is not recognized.

Yoffie added that although tens of thousands of Russian Jews would like to “convert” to comply with the tenets of Orthodox Judaism, the Israeli rabbinate permits only about 400 conversions annually. Similarly, Yoffie said, nearly 10,000 Israeli women who want divorces cannot get them because the rabbinate also controls divorce in Israel, where a woman cannot divorce without the consent of her husband.

Yoffie criticized Netanyahu, who is not personally observant, for doing nothing to rein in Israel’s Orthodox rabbis. “Even if he could do nothing practical for us, an enlightened voice from Israel’s highest-ranking elected official would have set the tone for tolerance and the possibility of change,” Yoffie maintained.

The U.S. rabbi saved his harshest words for Israelis rabbis. “The greatest tragedy of all is that the ultra-Orthodox have caused an entire generation of Israelis to view Judaism with contempt,” Yoffie said. “Religious coercion…compromises Israel’s appeal to the idealism of young Jews everywhere.”

Israeli government leaders pay attention to comments by U.S. Jewish leaders, who lobby Congress for vital U.S. military and economic aid. It is not clear, however, how seriously Israelis take such criticism, since they believe the Jewish rank and file in the U.S. will support Israel, regardless of what U.S. Jewish leaders say.

In fact, many Jews in both the U.S. and Israel believe that since support for Israel holds the American Jewish community together, it is only by continuing such support that American Jewish lay and religious leaders can hold on to their present power on the American scene. Yoffie’s shot across the bow may therefore have little or no effect on the course Netanyahu charts for the Israeli ship of state.

SIDEBAR

Christians Call for a Shared Jerusalem Heritage, Hope and Home of Two Peoples and Three Religions

Jerusalem is a sacred city to Jews, Christians and Muslims—the Children of Abraham. All long for Jerusalem to be the City of Peace. For most of its history, the fate of Jerusalem was determined by war. Now the ancient hope for peace can become reality through negotiations.

Israeli leaders hold that Jerusalem should be Israel’s capital under the sole sovereignty of the State of Israel. Palestinian leaders hold that traditionally Arab eastern Jerusalem should become the capital of a new State of Palestine.

As Christians committed to working for peace, we support a negotiated solution for Jerusalem that respects the human and political rights of both Palestinians and Israelis, as well as the rights of the three religious communities. We urge Jews, Christians and Muslims to open dialogue on these issues.

Jerusalem at peace cannot belong exclusively to one people, one country or one religion. Jerusalem should be open to all, shared by all…two peoples and three religions.

We urge the United States government to call upon negotiators to move beyond exclusive claims and create a Jerusalem that is a sign of peace and a symbol of reconciliation for all humankind.