Negating the Diaspora at our
peril
Reform leader Rabbi Rick
Jacobs sees that the community in the United States is no longer giving blind
and unquestioning support to Israel. Not only has Israel ceased to be a source
of pride for them, in many cases it is causing discomfort.
Rabbi Rick Jacobs, head of the Reform Judaism
movement in North America, recently called on Diaspora Jews to protest Israeli discrimination
against women and the non-Orthodox. Speaking at the recent General Assembly of
Jewish Federations of North America, Rabbi Jacobs also called on Diaspora Jewry
to open the discussion of Israel to a wider range of opinions. Some people
consider Jacobs' remarks to be courageous. Others see them as impertinent and
arrogant - yet more "proof" of the Reform movement's indifference to
Zionism, especially in the United States.
Only someone who has close contact with Diaspora
Jewry in general, and with liberal Reform Jewry in particular, understands that
Rabbi Jacobs is speaking out of concern and a sense of responsibility to ensure
the connection between Israel and liberal Jewry of North America. Our lives are
entwined with the lives of Diaspora Jews in the United States. We seek their
support in times of crisis, as well as their lobbying of the American
administration on our behalf. We benefit from their money, particularly in strengthening
public services that the government is abandoning. Reform donors help medical,
cultural and welfare institutions. In times of peace and war (such as the
present time ) - they support every Israeli citizen, regardless of religious or
political worldview.
Rabbi Jacobs' remarks express concern for the
unraveling relationship between world Jewry (particularly American Jewry ) and
the State of Israel - a matter that should be of concern to all of us. Rabbi
Jacobs sees that the Reform community in the United States is no longer giving
blind and unquestioning support to Israel. On the contrary, its questions are
only growing in number. Not only has Israel ceased to be a source of pride for
them, in many cases it is causing discomfort. When you are a Jew living in
America and are exposed mainly to criticism of the State of Israel in matters
of religion and state, the doubts gnaw away at you.
It is difficult for me, as an Israeli, to see
the one-sidedness, the ignorance and the double standard in the media coverage
of Israel and its actions. At the same time, these reactions do not change at
all the reality in which we are living, and about which Rabbi Jacobs warns:
Israel's domestic conduct and the destructive relationship it maintains between
religion and state.
The discrimination among religious streams in
the country (Orthodox, Conservative and Reform ) has no parallel anywhere in
the world: the fact that I have no guarantee that my tax money which is
distributed among clerics will be transferred, at least in part, to the Reform
congregation to which I belong; the fact that the only rabbi who can preside as
the rabbi of a locality - whose salary is paid from my tax money - is an
Orthodox rabbi, who for the most part will want to keep me out of the public
space; the fact that my children, when they marry, will not be able to have
their nuptials performed by a Reform rabbi - male or female - and be recognized
by the state as married. (Absurdly, the State of Israel prefers to recognize
the signature of a Christian municipal official on a marriage certificate than
that of a Reform rabbi. ) These are but a few examples.
At the same General Assembly in Baltimore where
Rabbi Jacobs spoke, journalism and political science Prof. Peter Beinart argued
that since liberal Jewry in North America supports human rights, this public
will not support Israel as long as Israel is perceived as being a human rights
violator.
The State of Israel cannot close its ears to
what Rabbi Jacobs and Peter Beinart are saying. On the eve of the Knesset
election in Israel, the time has come for us to use the vote we are given to
express our position on the issues that will determine our fate and our
relations with Diaspora Jewry. This is a necessary stage in the realization of
the very core of the Zionist vision, as we believe in it and as we find it
expressed in the words of our national anthem: "Our hope is not yet lost -
To be a free nation in our land."
The author is co-chair of the Department of
Diaspora Activities in the World Zionist Organization, and former associate
director of the Reform movement in Israel.
