It is a travesty for Conservative Jews to remain on the sidelines of the tremendous historical achievement that Israel represents. Conservative Judaism has a great deal to contribute to Israeli society by offering an alternative Judaism to that of the corrupt and domineering Orthodox establishment and by advocating for a Western democratic stance, which does not come naturally to Jews with Eastern European or Middle Eastern roots. Liberal American Jews should cease to support Israeli institutions espousing values that are in conflict with their own. The Chief Rabbinate of Israel should be dismantled, while other religious legislation should be preserved.

I believe there are at least four cogent reasons why Conservative Jews ought to be active in Israel on a large scale.

First, Israel embodies a unique historical achievement which remains undimmed after forty years: namely, the reversal of two millennia of national homelessness. The recovery of political sovereignty in the very land in which it was lost to the Romans in the year 63 BCE is a singular expression of unbroken historical consciousness steeled by religious faith. What is more, Israel's sterling record of commitment to democracy, political stability, absorption of refugees, social equity, agricultural development, scientific excellence, cultural creativity, and military prowess, compiled under the most adverse conditions, is unmatched by any other state founded after the Second World War. For Conservative Jews to observe this adventure from the sidelines is a travesty.

Second, Israel still represents the most potent force for unity in a secular age in which the Jewish people is deeply fragmented religiously. Israel stirs the emotions of secular and religious Jews alike, especially in moments of crisis...

The Vision We Can Offer

Third, as Conservative Jews, we are in Israel to offer an alternative Judaism. The vast majority of Israelis have been religiously disenfranchised, severed from their spiritual roots. To be sure, they are secular by choice, but also in part by lack of choice. How many Jews would be left in the open society of Canada or the United States if Orthodoxy were the only religious option? The national definition of Jewishness in a Jewish State has concealed the catastrophic failure of Orthodoxy to expose some eighty percent of Israeli society to even a modicum of religious vocabulary, study, and observance. And the more introverted and coercive it becomes, the greater the alienation. The introduction of genuine religious pluralism is vital not only to improve Israel-diaspora relations, but also to reconnect Israelis to Judaism. The inroads into Israeli society that we have already made, convince me that Conservatism is ideally suited for that historic task.

Fourth and finally, our deepening involvement in Israel is motivated by loyalty to democratic ideals. The pervasive political ethos of modern Jewry since the emancipation has been democratic and not authoritarian for very good reason... Today Jews in the diaspora remain viscerally committed to the political culture of Western democracy.

The contempt for this political culture in Israel among certain Right-wing circles, and among all too many young people, was voiced for the first time in recent history by Meir Kahane. In addition to Kahane's poisonous legacy, the messianic temper that infected the yeshivot of religious Zionism bred a nationalism that perverted both Judaism and Zionism. Joshua suddenly became the most sacred book of the Bible, and settling the land became the supreme mitzvah of Judaism. Palestinians were recast into Amalekites, halakhah superseded human rights, and Judaism became incompatible with democracy.

As Conservative Jews, we must loudly reaffirm that Judaism and Right-wing extremism should not be countered by legal restrictions on free speech, but by a resounding consensus articulated in resolution that Israel's democracy is firmly rooted in the millennial experience of Jewish self-government and in the history of Zionism.

Seizing the Moment

The challenge of the present moment is immense. Widening rifts, both political and religious, between Orthodox and non-Orthodox in America and in Israel, cannot be papered over by hollow appeals for rhetoric of unity.

In March 1997, the Union of Orthodox Rabbis in North America issued a statement stigmatizing Reform and Conservative Jews as religious heretics. The timing of this reckless statement clearly reveals that it was hatched in Israel, a diabolical attempt to discredit and delegitimize Reform and Conservative Judaism (which together represent eighty-four percent of synagogue-affiliated Jews in America) just as long as conversions became the subject of Knesset deliberations. But the conversion crisis currently wracking the Israeli government is not the result of a 1995 Supreme Court decision showing that the Chief Rabbinate enjoys no monopoly on conversions as it does on marriage and divorce. On the contrary, the crisis is rooted in the Law of Return passed by the Knesset in 1950.

At the heart of that noble piece of legislation lay two distinct definitions of Judaism, one dictated by Jewish law and the other by the history of the Holocaust. The law gives voice to the Zionist ideal – that every Jew born of a Jewish mother or converted to Judaism has the inalienable right to settle in Israel. But the law also takes cognizance of those non-Jews who were swept up in the murderous dragnet of the Nazis by virtue of marriage or descent and suffered the fate of a Jew. Hence the law admits to Israel the spouse, children, and grandchildren of a Jew, including their spouses, as long as they are not a member of another faith community.

What kept these two definitions of Jewishness (by faith and fate) from flying apart was a Zionist Chief Rabbinate that at one time made conversion easy. Today, unfortunately, the office and its rabbinic courts have fallen into the hands of the ultra-Orthodox, who ruthlessly conspire to do everything in their power to amend the Law of Return by obstructing passage from one status of Jewishness to the other (witness fewer than 350 conversions in 1996). A few years ago, a number of Russian Jewish families approached the Conservative movement in Israel out of desperation to convert their adopted non-Jewish children, which was duly done. Despite the parents' fervent wish to create Jewish households, no official rabbinic court would lift a finger without extracting a promise that these families become strictly Orthodox.

The supreme irony of Zionist history is that the founders of Israel who fled an intransigent Orthodoxy in eastern Europe ended up relinquishing all control of Judaism in the Jewish State to that self-same Orthodoxy. The only difference between the Union of Orthodox Rabbis and the Israeli Chief Rabbinate is that the former dared to sate overly what the latter believes covertly. No Chief Rabbi visiting the United State would ever set foot in a Reform or Conservative synagogue. Yet Israel will never remain the center of world Jewry, as it should, if the State becomes exclusively identified with but one denomination in modern Judaism. To play that role responsibly, the State must be Jewish, not Orthodox. Conservative Jews must become political and social activists. Toward that end I propose the following four point action plan:

First, Reform and Conservative Jews should stop funding all ultra-Orthodox organizations and institutions for whom religious pluralism is anathema. It is critical that North American Jews begin to hold yeshivot in Israel accountable before they fund them. The economic base of much of the yeshiva world is to be found on this continent. Yet not all yeshivot are alike. Some are bitterly anti-Zionist, and some are ultra-nationalist. All benefit from a muddled nostalgia that prompts donors to give to institutions they would not want their children to attend. American Jews must stop making contributions to people who privately treat our religious beliefs with disdain and derision.

Second, the promotion of religious pluralism in Israel for Jews must become a top funding priority for UJA-Federation. The concept of Jewish pluralism is alien to Israel, because the country was founded and settled by Jews from Eastern Europe and the Middle East who had never gone through the emancipation experience. Religious movements are the inevitable consequence of political freedom and social integration. The communal structure of American Jewry is predicated on religious pluralism because the Jews who built it hailed from Central Europe where emancipation had already begun to take root. The irony today is that Judaism in the diaspora in far healthier than in the Jewish State. As note above, the absence of religious choices has estranged the majority of Israelis from any meaningful relationship to the history and culture of the Jewish people. The introduction of genuine religious pluralism is certainly possible. Perhaps as a harbinger of things to come, the faculty of Tel Aviv University decided recently to build on campus a panoply of three synagogues (Reform, Conservative, and Orthodox) rather than a single, exclusively Orthodox synagogue.

Third, it is time to dismantle the Chief Rabbinate and its network of courts. Sustained by political alliance between cynicism and fundamentalism, the system is today without a scintilla of moral worth. In 1994, twenty percent of the Israelis getting married went abroad to circumvent the monopoly of the Orthodox establishment, often to undergo only a civil ceremony. I am not calling for the abrogation of legislation for religious purposes (kosher food, Shabbat, autopsies, archaeology, the prohibition against raising pigs) or for religious privileges (the local religious councils and education), though in each instance fundamental changes are in order, but rather for decoupling the State from a dysfunctional ultra-Orthodox rabbinate. The first two types of legislation express the Jewish character of Israel, the third governing rabbinic jurisdiction makes it narrowly Orthodox.

Finally, this campaign against the stranglehold of ultra-Orthodoxy must be carried out irrespective of the peace process. One thing is sure, the minions of Shas, Agudat Israel, Degel HaTorah, and even the National Religious party will not be deterred from advancing their cause openly and surreptitiously, no matter how tortured and protracted the reconciliation with the Palestinians may be. At stake is the ultimate nature of the Jewish state. Israel will not long survive wholly secure or sectarian. Its welfare begs for a religious center for whom piety and sanity are not polar opposites.

Questions for Discussion

1. Do you agree that Reform and Conservative Jews should stop funding yeshivas and other organizations run by those who are not committed to religious pluralism?

2. Schorsch maintains that “Judaism in the diaspora is far healthier than in the Jewish State.” Respond to this statement on the basis of your familiarity with each, and in light of your own vision of a healthy Jewish life.

3. Schorsch contends that legislation imposing certain religious standards on all Israeli citizens in areas such as kosher food, Shabbat, and autopsies should be preserved. To what extent to you believe Judaism should be legislated in the Jewish state?

4. Schorsch proposes a number of things that Conservative Jews should not do in regard to Israel. Are there also “positive commandments” for the Conservative Zionist implicit in his statement, or that you believe should be promulgated?

This article also belongs to the following subjects:
Zionism > Zionism Revisited

Have your say! Post your comments on this article.

Only registered users can post their opinions. If you are a registered user please login. Otherwise, you can register.