8 | JANUARY 25 • 2024 J
N

PURELY COMMENTARY

guest column

Putting Context in a Different Context
A 

small confession: 
I wrote some of 
what you’re about to 
read months ago, following a 
magical week at the Shalom 
Hartman Institute in Jerusalem. 
I intended 
to share the 
enriching context 
I’d gained with 
the wider Detroit 
community.
Then Oct. 7 
happened. 
We emerged 
from Simchat Torah into 
sadness and uncertainty 
that words cannot measure. 
One word in particular, 
“context,” seemed particularly 
insufficient. For some in the 
anti-Israel camp, it became 
a euphemism for justifying 
or de-emphasizing murder, 
kidnapping and sexual 
assault. For those of us who 
support Israel, context felt at 
best superfluous, at worst a 
distraction.
Yet as the war grimly passes 
its 100th day, it’s becoming 
clear that the complex 
challenges facing Israel require 
context, the real kind, more 
than ever. So I find myself, 
more than ever, wanting to 
share what — and how — I 
learned at the Shalom Hartman 
Institute last summer.
Shalom Hartman, based in 
Israel and North America, is 
a think-tank and education 
center focused on issues 
of modern Jewish identity 
and peoplehood. You may 
be familiar with its English-
language podcasts, such 
as Identity Crisis and For 
Heaven’s Sake. In Israel, it runs 
two high schools, a center for 
shared society and a rabbinical 

ordination program. On an 
annual basis, it invites rabbis, 
college students, gap year 
students, Jewish educators and 
lay leaders from all over North 
America for intensive learning 
seminars. Detroit attendees this 
year included Rabbi Ariana 
Silverman from the Isaac 
Agree Downtown Synagogue 
and Rabbi Aaron Starr of 
Congregation Shaarey Zedek. I 
participated in the Community 
Leadership Program, geared 
toward lay leaders, with 
encouragement and support 
from my synagogue, Adat 
Shalom, and was joined by 
Larry Winer of Oak Park and 
Noah Tepperman of Windsor.
Israel was already beset by 
internal tensions last June, yet 
within Hartman’s campus we 

calmly examined ideas. Have 
you ever been on an airplane 
as it ascends through stormy 
weather? There’s a moment 
where the buffeting suddenly 
calms; flashes of lightning and 
foreboding mist give way to 
blue sky; and you can calmly 
study the clouds below you. 
This is how it felt to walk from 
the intense heat of Jerusalem’s 
streets, with its political 
signage and noisy protests, 
into Hartman’s majestic Beit 
Midrash, high walls stacked 
with Jewish books.
The theme of this year’s 
Community Leadership 
Program, Judaism in a 
Liberal Age, was something 
of a misnomer, at least to 
those predisposed to think of 
“liberal” as the contemporary 

political camp. Here, the 
term was framed as the basic 
commitments of modern 
Western civilization. The core 
question of the week was 
whether Judaism and liberalism 
can, truly, coexist. Can liberals 
embrace ancient Jewish notions 
of obligation, sacrifice and 
mystery? Can committed Jews 
wholeheartedly embrace liberal 
ideals of pluralism, individual 
rights?
These aren’t hypothetical 
questions. They were, in fact, 
the essential ones being asked 
last summer, when Israel 
was teetering on a civil war 
between liberal, largely secular 
Israelis and its increasingly 
illiberal, largely religious 
government. It was no less 
relevant to an American Jew 
like myself, loyal both to the 
ideals of the pluralistic society 
in which I live and the tug of 
my ancient people. 
The question has become 
more urgent now, as Israel 
fights for its existence against 
the worst elements of the 
Middle East while also trying 
to preserve its commitment to 
Western and Jewish values, and 
American Jews find ourselves 
increasingly isolated (and at 
times conflicted) in supporting 
this fight.
We examined these 
questions as Jews have for 
millennia — rigorously and 
with an openness to multiple 
conclusions. Torah must mean 
more than “... a beautiful line, 
an instructive spiritual or 
moral idea” but also “ideas 
that might sound ... archaic, 
oppressive ... that we have a 
hard time believing anymore.”
I found myself, in one 
session, connecting deeply 

David Zenlea
Special to the 
 
Jewish News 

David Zenlea with other Community Leadership Program attendees 
Larry Winer of Oak Park and Noah Tepperman of Windsor.

