In Israel, Religion Is Reduced To Simplistic Categories
Is Israel Too Jewish?
Not black or white: Israel must take care to not make assumptions that Judaism belongs to the minority of traditional religious communities.
Last June, Jane Eisner participated in a private roundtable discussion at the Israeli Presidential Conference in Jerusalem about Israel’s Jewish identity. What came out of the talks was the sense that Jews in Israel and in the Diaspora face a similar challenge — how to be a modern people in a modern world while holding onto ancient tradition. This is the continuation of that discussion.
By Elie Kaunfer
Published September 06, 2013, issue of September 13, 2013.
I once had a student at Mechon Hadar, the egalitarian yeshiva I founded, who came from a suburb of Tel Aviv. She grew up in a family that did not keep Shabbat, go to synagogue, learn Torah or speak of God. She went to non-religious public schools and never considered herself part of the “dati” community. But she came to our co-ed yeshiva because she had spent some years exploring her relationship with God, learning Jewish texts and asking religious questions. Before she left for our school in New York, her brother warned: “If you become a hozeret bi-teshuvah (a secular person who becomes religious), I will sit shiva for you.”
We use labels to categorize people. It is simply easier to think of Jewish society as affiliated or unaffiliated, Reform or Orthodox — and in Israel, dati or hiloni, meaning religious or secular. But the convenience of labels is far outweighed by the damage of painting with broad brushstrokes. The fear of leaving your self-defined (or more often, other-defined) label can be crippling. This student was terrified that the only choice besides hiloni was dati – and that came with a host of assumed beliefs and associations she did not want to consider.
Israel is not too Jewish. It is too Jewishly labeled.
The variety of the capacity for human religious expression is far too broad to be captured well by any titles. In Israel last year, I spent considerable time with a man who spends his days working as a therapist. He advocates for Israelis to serve in the army and join the workforce. He had deep respect for my egalitarian yeshiva. He also lives in the Orthodox neighborhood of Mea Shearim, where he was born, wears a traditional black hat and coat, and is part of a Hasidic community. How would you label him?
http://forward.com/articles/183374/in-israel-religion-is-reduced-to-simplistic-catego/