Community Views
Editor's Notebook
When A Dream
Becomes A Nightmare
A Hero Who Is Not
Seeking Attention
RABBI SHERWIN WINE SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH NEWS
PHIL JACOBS EDITOR
Who is a Jew?
That question is
an obsession in
the Jewish world.
Right now, the
Knesset of Israel
is debating that
issue for the
umpteenth time.
A bill is before
them which would legislate that
Jewish identity is only what Or-
thodox rabbis say it is.
Being an officially recognized
Jew is no trivial thing in a Jewish
state. It provides access to imme-
diate citizenship, Hebrew educa-
tion, welfare support, army service
and the right to marry anoth-
er Jew. Needless to say, Re-
form, Conservative and
secular Jews are very agitat-
ed and very angry.
This controversy coincides
with the centennial of the Zion-
ist movement. In 1896,
Theodore Herzl published The
Jewish State, the "bible" of
modern Zionism. One year lat-
er, in Basel, Switzerland, he
mobilized his enthusiastic fol-
lowers and established the
World Zionist Organization.
Herzl's vision was of a Jewish
state that would be modern,
secular and democratic. Tra-
ditional rabbinic authority
would be honored, but it would
not rule. Theocratic government
demanded by biblical and talmu-
dic norms would not prevail. All
citizens would be free to arrange
their own lifestyles.
Zionism was a movement of na-
tional liberation. The Jews were a
nation, with the right to a nation-
al territory like all other nations.
Membership in the nation was a
function of national loyalty and
commitment. It was open to any-
one who wanted to be a national.
Jew. Turning over Jewish identi-
ty to the rabbis was like turning
over American identity to Protes-
tant clergy.
The politics of Israel compro-
mised the Herzl vision. Like the
British mandate, the new Jewish
state swallowed whole the me-
Sherwin Wine is rabbi of the
Birmingham Temple.
dieval Ottoman Turkish millet,
the system of the group identity.
In this system, every citizen is clas-
sified in accordance with a fixed
number of religious identities.
While there are several Christian
categories and several Muslim cat-
egories, there is only one Jewish
category. Once you are assigned
to a particular religious group, you
are a "prisoner" of that group and
the religious authorities that gov-
ern it. Marriage, children, death
and group identity are in the
hands of the clergy. No civil mar-
riage or burial is allowed. The Hin-
du caste system is the closest
analogy to this condition.
Ben-Gurion and the Labor gov-
ernment sanctioned this compro-
mise. They wanted Orthodox
support— and coming from East-
ern Europe, they did not really
know what it meant to live in a
modem, secular, democratic free
state. Limiting the power of the
Orthodox clergy was more their
style than separating religion and
government.
While the Herzl vision was re-
inforced by the revival of Hebrew
as the national language and by
the pioneering efforts of secular
kibbutzim, the inability to deal
sensibly with the role of the Jew-
ish clergy on the business of the
state led to consequences that the
founders wanted to avoid. If the
Orthodox rabbinate has the right
to control marriage, divorce and
group identity, then it may also
have the right to supervise lifestyle
and education.
The secular lifestyles of most Is-
raelis made most of these impli-
cations uninteresting at the
beginning, but the Six Day War
changed the secular picture. Right-
wing secular nationalists made a
political alliance with the Ortho-
dox rabbinate and won political
power in 1977. Orthodox immi-
grants poured into the Jewish
state. The children of the secular
kibbutzim entered the consumer
culture and lost the passionate
convictions of their parents. The
Orthodox agenda now entered ag-
gressively into the political life of
the nation. Millions of shekels of
state money were given to Or-
thodox institutions; Orthodox
rabbis entered into the secu-
lar state school system and
were given the freedom to
teach. Orthodox reasons were
now provided for the refusal
to give up the West Bank and
Gaza. The Herzl vision began
to fade, especially because the
war with the Arabs made any
confrontation with the Ortho-
dox appear to be national sui-
cide.
The present bill before the
Knesset is the fruit of this de-
velopment. It is all one with
the collapse of the peace
process under the Netanyahu
government; Israel is moving
in the direction of a clergy-domi-
nated state. Most Israelis do not
want this development. But they
are so absorbed by economic and
defense issues — and sufficiently
cynical — that they offer no effec-
tive resistance. The irony is that
everything will be reversed, that
the Jewish state will fall into the
hands of the people who initially
resisted political Zionism and the
Herzl vision.
Jewish identity in Israel will
now exclude thousands of Russ-
ian immigrants, the children of
mixed marriages who want to be
national Jews, hundreds of
Ethiopian immigrants who insist
they are Jewish and do not wish
to surrender to the Orthodox rab-
binate and dozens of Reform and
Conservative converts who want
to unite their talents and destinies
DREAM page 23
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mat
Do You
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Who is responsible for paying for
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gres fail the U.S. citizenship test?
To respond: "So, What Do You Think?"
27676 Franklin Road, Southfield, MI 48034
Miriam Lange
has spent her
life learning of
the miracles
and heroes in
the Bible and in
Jewish life.
When she
was called on
last Monday to
perform a heroic deed, it's prob-
ably not the kind of thing she
would equate with a Ruth or an
Esther.
Yet, by and large, she helped
save several Jewish people, lit-
tle ones to be exact. She saved
generations.
In this week's Jewish News,
staff writer Lynne Cohn reports
on how Miss Lange and
Ganeinu school bus driver
Clarence Martin saved the lives
of some 16 small children when
a fire spread from the vehicle's
engine to the passenger com-
partment.
Heroism is something that
comes in many different ways
and descriptions. How many of
us who joke that we would pass
out at the sight of blood could
hold it together long enough to
rush an injured child or friend
to an emergency room. How
many stories have been told of
husbands who get squeamish at
the discussion of childbirth, but
don't even think twice about
helping their wives in the de-
livery of their babies during an
emergency.
A friend once delivered his
baby in the parking lot of Sinai
Hospital. He had his tallis in the
car and used it to bundle up the
baby. Better yet, the birth hap-
pened on Father's Day.
Flames to
extinguish, flames
to be fanned.
We've seen even more com-
plicated stories of people jump-
ing off bridges into icy waters to
rescue drowning crash victims.
You name it, real-life stories car-
ry a certain drama to them.
Many can relate to Miriam
Lange. She had the spirit that
we all hopefully share when she
grabbed sleeping children and
evacuated them from a bus that
was going up in flames.
It's later on that we step back
and cry, ask for help from
friends or family members and
thank God.
"I just acted," said Miriam
Lange. 'When it was over and I
realized what happened, then I
started shaking away. I looked
at the bus, and I thought, 'This
can't be our bus!"'
She said that it took a couple
of minutes to evacuate that bus.
In less than five minutes, it was
consumed by flames. She and
Mr. Martin saw the fire begin to
lick its way from the engine into
the driver's compartment.
"I take everything in stride,"
she said. "That's what Hashem
wanted to happen. Thank God
the bus was in a neighborhood,
not on a main road somewhere.
It was just the right moment,
the right time, and anyone else
would have done the same
thing. The thing is I have al-
ways had this fear that in a
state of emergency I'd panic."
Burned-out bus.
Miriam is a teacher at the
Ganeinu School, which is locat-
ed in West Bloomfield, and
teaches children from pre-nurs-
ery to second grade.
Miriam Lange seems embar-
rassed by all of the attention
she's getting. Indeed, she's been
written about in the daily news-
papers and has been on the TV
news as well. Parents of some of
the children have showered her
with gifts. There's even a plaque
that hangs on the wall of her
house thanking her for her act
of heroism.
If you ask Miriam, she'd prob-
ably tell you that her definition
of being a hero isn't so dramat-
ic. Heroism in her life is for par-
ents to point their children to a
Jewish life through Jewish ed-
ucation in the classroom and at
home. Heroism for Miriam
Lange is to honor God. Heroism
to help a child learn how to be-
come a good person.
That's really saving the souls
of Jewish children.
Burning buses are nothing to
make a slight remark about.
But Miriam Lange knows
there's plenty of rescuing yet to
be done. Sometimes the fires
aren't restricted to buses.
The acts of heroism are real-
ly more mundane. Yet in the
long run, a kind word, tzedakah,
prayer, learning about the
Bible's Jewish heroes — that's
the fire we don't want to extin-
guish. Yet it takes a hero to
make it all real. Miriam Lange
is one of those heroes. 0
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