June 22, 2006
NOBODY EXPECTS THE ISRAELI INQUISITION:
Honoring Our Religion (The Forward, June 23, 2006)
The quarrel that erupted this week between Moshe Katsav, president of Israel, and Rabbi Eric Yoffie, president of the Union for Reform Judaism, could easily be dismissed as a case of wounded pride, an inconsequential squabble over symbols without substance. But that would seriously understate the gravity of the dispute. In refusing to address the leader of Reform Judaism as "rabbi" — and in publicly stating that he would behave the same way toward any other rabbi who isn't Orthodox — the president of Israel has deliberately and directly denied the legitimacy of the religion followed by the majority of American Jews. Symbolic it may be, but there's nothing inconsequential about it. [...]It is true, of course, that Reform and Conservative Judaism face far more substantive burdens in Israel than the way their leaders are addressed by a man who is himself a figurehead. Reform and Conservative rabbis cannot perform legally valid marriages or divorces in Israel. They face rank discrimination in funding, zoning and a hundred smaller procedures. Even conducting their prayers at the Western Wall, Judaism's holiest site, poses humiliating obstacles. These disputes have been going on for decades, and have become part of the very fabric of Israel-Diaspora relations. Successive Israeli prime ministers have acknowledged the distress caused to Diaspora Jews by the disenfranchisement of their leaders, but each has professed powerlessness in the face of Israel's political realities. Commissions and task forces have risen and fallen. Israeli courts have handed down one deadline after another for their political system to address its own contradictions. All in vain.
Until now, however, the dispute usually was conducted with some measure of common courtesy. At the very least, the leaders of American Judaism could expect to be received by the leaders of Israel with a modicum of civility. The current president of Israel seems unable to summon even that.
American Judaism isn't. Posted by Orrin Judd at June 22, 2006 3:55 PM
Well, reform judaism isn't a "religion" distinct from Judaism, and no one, least of all Israel, denies that Jews who belong to reform temples are Jews.
Posted by: David Cohen at June 22, 2006 4:22 PMA ridiculous tempest in a tea cup. It's no less prudent for Israel to separate its religious leaders from its governing body than it is for Moslem nations to do the same. Render unto Caesar . . . is no less a truism in the modern world than it was in biblical times.
Perhaps it's time, actually long past time, for Jews to define themselves as separate from their religion. If a "Jew" converts to Shintoism, is he no longer a Jew? Does he become Japanese? Of course not.
Posted by: erp at June 23, 2006 8:19 AMSo Jews are a race?
Posted by: oj at June 23, 2006 8:22 AMI don't know. That's what they have to sort out.
Posted by: erp at June 23, 2006 9:50 AM