viewpoints »
s
point continued from page 8
promised the Mikvah Bill will have no
impact on women, but it is difficult to
see how those promises can be any-
thing more than mere words. What
would prevent a mikvah attendant,
even one who is acting independently,
from imposing her view on the wom-
en’s immersion process?
But even as we are pained by
recent events, we must take a posi-
tive perspective. The current battles
are a result of the fact that more
open-minded Israelis and Jews in the
diaspora are demanding change. The
Rabbinate feels its control slipping
away. Recent moves by the ultra-
Orthodox are an attempt to maintain
its stature.
We must sustain our fight. We
must also recognize that we are in
this together. The secular Israeli
population is unwilling to accept
the Rabbinate’s monopoly. Over the
years, a growing number of younger
members of the National Religious
community have begun to oppose it,
too. And we are likewise seeing a new
generation of ultra-Orthodox who are
beginning to at least feel uncomfort-
able with this monopoly.
Real change takes time. But this
is a battle that, if won, could ulti-
mately turn Israel’s stormy relation-
ship between religion and state into
a more docile one that benefits all
Jewish people.
*
Yair Sheleg is the director of the Religion and
State program at the Israel Democracy Institute.
counterpoint continued from page 8
the restoration of the Holy Temple
upon the Temple Mount, and the
overwhelming majority of liberal
Jews do not pray daily at all. They
are not coming on aliyah, neither are
Israelis interested in their revisions
of Judaism — there are less than 100
liberal congregations in all of Israel,
serving less than 0.4 percent of the
Jewish population.
Liberal leaders themselves
acknowledge that they are demand-
ing the government spend millions
of dollars and irrevocably compro-
mise archaeological sites simply
for “recognition.” If so, one must
ask why they are willing to dis-
rupt the attitude of American Jews
toward Israel in order to make these
demands at this time.
Recent Pew Research Center
surveys provide the answer: The
American liberal movements are col-
lapsing here in their North American
home. They claim to represent the
dominant voice of American Jewry;
certainly, they must accept primary
responsibility for the 70-percent
intermarriage rate among non-
Orthodox Jews and the failure of
the plurality of Jews under age 50 to
identify with any Jewish denomina-
tion. Only 25 percent of American
Jews are members of a Reform or
Conservative congregation, and their
median age is 55. They have lost the
next American-Jewish generation.
Why are these movements spend-
ing an inordinate amount of time
and money to change Judaism in
Israel, rather than educating and
influencing their youth, working
to guarantee that their grandchil-
dren care about Judaism? If they
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truly care about the Jewish future,
they will not besmirch Israel with
unfounded accusations of limitation
on Jewish practice, but encourage
their own to visit or even live there
and learn for themselves — both
about Israel, and about Judaism.
This is all the more true when it
comes to Sheleg’s second topic, the
issue of Jewish conversion. The State
of Israel adopted traditional standards
to determine Jewish identity in order
to preserve Jewish unity so that the
grandchildren of Orthodox and lib-
eral Jews might marry without seri-
ous investigation of each individual’s
Jewish heritage. The liberal move-
ments have already necessitated this
in America, with sometimes tragic
consequences. Importing this to Israel
will permanently divide the Jews of
the Jewish state.
In the end, it is clear that Sheleg’s
statement to the media is notably
more accurate than his opinion
piece: There is no “ultra-Orthodox
offensive,” but rather an effort by
liberal movements to enact drastic
changes in Israel to draw atten-
tion away from their self-inflicted
decimation at home in America. It
is incumbent upon them not to try
to change Israeli Jews in a way that
draws them away from Jewish tradi-
tion, but to change American Jews
in a way that draws them toward it.
That should be, after all, the goal of
any Jewish movement.
*
Rabbi Yaakov Menken is director of Project
Genesis – Torah.org and the co-editor of Cross-
Currents.com, an Orthodox online journal.
Rabbi Pesach Lerner is executive vice president
emeritus of National Council of Young Israel.