"We Wanted
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That's Why We
Joined The
Birmingham
An American immigrant struggles to take her
passion for Reform Judaism and women's
rights to Israel's religious councils.
ERIC SILVER ISRAEL CORRESPONDENT
The Birmingham Temple teaches taking
responsibility for your own actions. And that's some-
thing you're never too young to start learning.
PHOTO BY MEDIA/E. BARON
he atmosphere in Joyce
Brenner's two-story apart-
ment building near the sea
in Netanya, Israel, is pret-
ty strained these humid summer
days.
Brenner, a 57-year-old, New
York-born social worker, Reform
Jew and feminist, is at the epi-
centre of the latest Halachic
earthquake shaking Israel. Her
downstairs neighbor is Dov Dum-
brovich, the Orthodox chairman
of the local religious council, who
is defying a Supreme Court rul-
ing and refusing to let Brenner
take her seat on the council.
The court recently ordered
Dumbrovich to admit Brenner,
who had been nominated to the
council by the local branch of the
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THE JEVJEgH NEWS
militantly anti-clerical Meretz.
Religious councils are not rab-
binic bodies. Their role is to me-
diate, between the religious
bureaucracy and the citizen, who
has to turn to the rabbinate for
such services as marriage, divorce
and funerals even if he or she is
not an observant Orthodox Jew.
Members are chosen by the polit-
ical factions represented at city
hall.
Orthodox politicians accused
the justices of turning the
Supreme Court into "a branch of
a political party" and vowed to
force legislation through the Knes-
set barring Reform Jews from re-
ligious councils. The deputy
religious affairs minister, Arye
Gamliel, threatened to resign
rather than publish Brenner's ap-
pointment in the official gazette
(a legal requirement). In the con-
voluted world of Israeli theo-poli-
tics, Gamliel is the de facto head
of the Religious Affairs Ministry.
Joyce Brenner is an improba-
ble cause celebre. Her late father,
Eli Rothman, was an Orthodox
rabbi with a small congregation
in Brooklyn and a deep commit-
ment to Zionism. Brenner, now
divorced and a mother of three
daughters, took her masters and
doctorate at that pillar of Ortho-
doxy, Yeshiva University, where
she is still a visiting lecturer. She
made aliyah in 1976.
But she was a child of the re-
bellious 1960s as well as of the
rabbi's study. She turned to Re-
form Judaism as a young married
woman starting a family. "It was
the women's issues," she recalls.
"I wanted full equality in all as-
pects of expressing my religiosity.
It couldn't happen, it \Nrasn't hap-
pening, within the Orthodox com-
munity."
She settled in Netanya "be-
cause it's pretty. Here children
walk everywhere, they take their
bikes, and there's the beach. What
could be nicer?"
It was her feminism that
brought Brenner into politics, one
that in macho Israel had a pio-
neer taste to it. She helped found
an English-speaking women's
psychotherapy center in Netanya
that now has offices in Jerusalem
and Tel Aviv.
"Israel," she explains, "gave
those of us who came in the '70s
a chance to express ourselves in
a full and exciting way because
these services didn't exist here...
These were the issues that gave
us a sense of contributing to Is-
rael and of fulfilling- ourselves."
In Netanya she is just a reg-
ular member" of a small Reform
community. She became involved
with Meretz on the local level "be-
cause they are the voice of the is-
sues I want people to pay
attention to."
Why, with all this, does Dr.
Joyce want to serve on the town's
religious council?
"There's a lot of money dis-
bursed," she replies, "10 million
shekels (about $3 million) in a
town with almost 200,000 people.
Most of it is city money, and peo-
ple don't even know how it gets di-
vided.
`Td like to be the address for the
people who may need these ser-
vices and may not know how to
approach them, or are turned
away by official rabbinical ser-
vices," she adds.
She would also, however mod-
estly, like to be the women's voice.
"I can't presume to speak for Or-
thodox women," she admits, "but