Greetings from Jerusalem.
For the third summer in a row, my family is privileged to spend the
month of July in Jerusalem, where I join the faculty of the Bronfman
Youth Fellows, an outstanding, pluralistic learning program for 26 high
school juniors. For more than twenty years, Bronfman Youth Fellows in
Israel has been modeling tolerance and pluralism among faculty and
youth, along with providing the extraordinary experiences throughout
the country of Israel that makes this program a real success. Though a
"busman's holiday," the work is truly a blessing.
Jerusalem in the summer is a very special place. The early morning
streets are abuzz with children heading to summer camp and concerts are
offered every evening of the week (including three performances last
week by former CBE Yachad faculty members!). Newspapers carry coverage
of ongoing negotiations between the Obama Administration and the
Netanyahu government over new directions in the peace process, while
restaurants offer the classic, refreshing summer treat of watermelon
and feta cheese and any walk down Emek Refaim Street has American
rabbis bumping into each other and catching up. I should add that
several congregants and board members are here as well, mixing work and
Hebrew study with vacation. The ability to travel back and forth with
such ease is a blessing only 60 years old, and for a land that bears
the weight of thousands of years of history, this is truly a blessing
to behold.
I'm struck every year by the number of Reform rabbis I see here each
summer, clearly an affirmation of the importance of spending time here
each year, but also a testimony to the uniqueness of Jewish life here
in Israel. While it's true that the continued institutional bias in
Israel is toward "traditional" or Orthodox Judaism, Progressive Judaism
is flourishing here in the capital as well as in a number of locations
throughout the country.
Kol Haneshama, the Reform Movement's flagship synagogue founded by
Rabbi Levy Kelman, is a great example of burgeoning Progressive Judaism
in Israel. For twenty-five years, Rabbi Kelman has been changing the
face of Judaism in Jerusalem, one person at a time, by building an
open, tolerant, expressive community for non-Orthodox Jews, and that
idea has penetrated a number of liberal Orthodox communities as well.
Traditional egalitarian minyans have developed here in Jerusalem making
the variety of religious expression among Jews a real inspiration. My
family visited the grandmother of some Brooklyn friends and this
wonderfully vibrant woman told us proudly of her membership in both Kol
Haneshama (Reform) and Shira Hadasha (egalitarian Orthodox). She
simply enjoys herself too much in each place to be made to choose!
That same day I was with the Fellows and my own children at an
archaeological dig beneath Mount Scopus in East Jerusalem. We were
sifting through the excavated remains from the first and second Temple
period that had been dug up by the Muslim authorities on the Temple
Mount in order to make room for an expanded mosque there. As part of
the ongoing struggle for narrative hegemony, the Waqf or Muslim
authority, dumped the archaeological material in a garbage heap, hoping
to deny any Jewish claim to that historic site where also stands the
Dome of the Rock and the al Aqsa Mosque. But students of history and
archaeologists have worked tirelessly for the past five years to
retrieve the rubble from various dumps throughout the city, sift the
remains and catalog their findings. For two hours I sifted with
Audrey, Lois and Minna and we found pottery, mosaic tiles, jewelry
beads of glass and gold, bone, flint stones and imported marble dating
as far back as the second Temple period and into the pre-Islamic
Byzantine era.
My own religious views harbor no aspiration for a return of another
Temple and the restoration of the sacrificial system. The great sage
Maimonides summed it up quite well in the early middle ages when he
argued that the sacrificial system represented but an evolutionary
stage in the overall worship system of the Jewish people. But the
Jewish presence on the Temple Mount is historically undeniable and the
idea of setting the record straight so that we can learn from our past
was an inspiration for our participation in this dig.
Of course, nothing in Jerusalem is apolitical, so we used the occasion
to teach the Fellows and my daughters about the ways in which partisans
use history (or the destruction of history) to legitimate one point of
view over another. While we sifted, the early evening Muslim prayers
began. Not unlike Jews (two Jews, three opinions) a number of muezzins
from surrounding mosques sounded their call to worship. The sounds
were intoxicatingly beautiful and one of my daughters began imitating
the prayers, singing along. What an image: a young Jewish American,
spending her third summer in Israel, sifting remains from two thousand
years ago, while Muslims pray to God in the background.
Such moments make me quite hopeful for peace, actually; the uncommon
beauty of Jerusalem, its endlessly fascinating people and eternal
rhythms of life and history. This year, CBE will have again a chance
to travel as a group to Israel, to see firsthand this truly
extraordinary place. I hope you'll join us!
By Rabbi Andy Bachman
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