World
Flag Debate from page 25
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26
May 24 - 200'?
mitzvah.
"I don't want them in my sanctu-
ary," he said.
Varon, a noted playwright and
performer whose mother was born in
Jerusalem, says he has "a very strong
connection to Israel." That's not the
issue.
"For me, the religious quest is a
searching for the universal and eter-
nal. I don't see a place in that search
for the nation-state he said.
Ultimately, Perry Teicher said,
putting up or taking down the flag
should not be seen as the end of the
discussion; it should prompt conver-
sation.
"You have to focus on what are the
Israel programs on campus, what's
the campus discourse on Israel and
the Mideast:' he said. "You can't just
do that by throwing up an Israeli flag,
and that's the end of it."
Individual Decision
call
year@$56
they did not want the Israeli flag at
the event.
"I could understand if they didn't
want the memorial at all, but to
honor the prime minister of Israel,
who was assassinated, how could you
not have the flag?" she asks.
In the end, the flag was displayed
after what Toran characterizes as a
long and bitter debate.
Congregants sometimes take mat-
ters into their own hands. Or Shalom,
a Jewish Renewal congregation in San
Francisco, meets in a Conservative
synagogue that displays the American
and Israeli flags in its sanctuary. Or
Shalom leaves them in place, but
some congregants take them down
for their family members' life-cycle
rituals.
Or Shalom member Charlie Varon
had the flags removed for his first
son's bar mitzvah and will do it again
in August for his second son's bar
JN
o Jewish stream has an
official policy on whether
synagogues should
display the Israeli or American
flag. In any case, it's unlikely the
Reconstructionist movement would
dictate a decision to its individualis-
tic member congregations.
Left to their own devices, these
congregations have varied prac-
tices, providing a microcosm of the
greater American Jewish commu-
nity.
Temple Beth El in Newark, Del.,
hangs the Israeli and American
flags on either side of the bimah. "I
say that although we are loyal citi-
zens of the U.S., Israel is our spiri-
tual homeland," Rabbi David Kaplan
explains.
Some, like Congregation Shalom
Rav in Austin, Texas, don't display
either flag. Some, like Congregation
Dor Hadash in San Diego, Calif.,
display both flags, but not on the
bimah.
Some congregations use
another congregation's space and
simply maintain existing prac-
tices. Congregation Shir Hadash
in Milwaukee rents space at a
synagogue that displays Israeli and
American flags in the room, so they
keep the flags up.
Most people say the issue never
arises. But that's not always the
case. The Jewish Reconstructionist
Congregation in Evanston, III., took
down its Israeli and U.S. flags about
five years ago in response to a con-
gregant's petition to the synagogue
board.
"He said they were political sym-
bols and the sanctuary is sacred
space," Rabbi Brant Rosen recalls.
"It got in the way of people's
prayerful concentration, especially
when they were up on the bimah, on
either side of the ark."
The board "had a good, healthy
discussion," Rosen says, and the
decision was not unanimous. But
the flags came down.
Then there are the creative types.
Temple Beth Or in Miami displays
the Israeli flag, the American flag
and what Rabbi Rebecca Lillian
calls "the Planet Earth flag," which
shows a photo of Earth taken from
space.
The flags hang at every syna-
gogue service and event. The idea
of removing them, Lillian says, has
never come up. Li
- Sue Fishkoff, JTA