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.
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
