On One Foot: Joshua Hammerman's Blog

Author of "Embracing Auschwitz" and "Mensch•Marks: Life Lessons of a Human Rabbi - Wisdom for Untethered Times." Winner of the Rockower Award, the highest honor in Jewish journalism and 2019 Religion News Association Award for Excellence in Commentary. Musings of a rabbi, journalist, father, husband, poodle-owner, Red Sox fan and self-proclaimed mensch, taken from essays, columns, sermons and thin air. Writes regularly in the New York Jewish Week and Times of Israel.

Showing posts with label conversion. Show all posts

Monday, February 26, 2024

In This Moment: Becoming Jewish; Humash with Rashi? How About "Israel with Joshi"

In This Moment

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It's been more than a week since my last dispatch, a break that was quasi intentional. In part, it's just been a very busy week for me, one that took me to Chicago for the funeral of my cousin, Ken Avick. Ken, a superb artist and kind and gentle soul, died at the age of 78 of ALS. Despite his many misfortunes, he never dwelt on the "why me?" Instead, he brought hope to many people through his courage and eternal optimism. I officiated at his funeral, just as I did for his twin brother Jeffrey, who died of AIDS in 1999 and was memorialized in our sanctuary. Jeffrey spoke here in 1993 about his coping with HIV. He said, "The God that I learned about in my home was a God of love, understanding, mercy and reason. That God has given me real strength...His love for us is not measured by the absence of hardships. His love for us is the life he's given us."

But even had I not had an unexpectedly chaotic week (which included a quick visit with my sons, always a good thing), I still would have preferred to put the proverbial pen down for a few days, especially regarding Israel and Gaza. We all need to do that once in a while, as we strive to absorb what is happening and filter out some of the noise. From the beginning, I've cautioned people not to succumb to knee-jerk reactions, and it is now easier to do so than ever. We've taken our positions and held our ground. We've seen how so many of Israel's so-called friends have themselves fallen into old patterns of blame, but how Israel itself has not been entirely blameless - however justified in its pursuits.

So I took a few days away from my proverbial pen to absorb what’s been happening. And now I want to share some quick takes on where I think things stand now, in Israel and back here in the US. I model these terse bullet points after the most concise wordsmith of all time, the great medieval commentator Rashi, His comments on the Bible and Talmud were a veritable Twitter feed of key takeaways from any given verse, minus the grandstanding and hate-infested toxicity you routinely find on social media. In most traditional Yeshivas, no one studies the Torah without reading it through the prism of this commentator’s wisdom. Even in my Conservative Hebrew school, it was never just plain “Humash” (Torah); it was always “Humash with Rashi.”

So now, here’s something new for your virtual Jewish bookshelf. In addition to “Humash with Rashi,” I give you “Israel with Joshi.” Doubtless you will not agree with all of my points, but that's OK. Let's have a conversation, bullet point by bullet point.

A ceasefire would be good. Even a lengthy one, but unless it includes two items, the war cannot be considered over.

The two items are: a release of all the hostages and Hamas relinquishing control of Gaza.

Those two items should be enough for Israel to declare "Mission Accomplished." That means the other stated Israeli goals, such as completely destroying Hamas or degrading 100 percent of its military infrastructure, may not be possible. To cling to those would be counterproductive, because Israel needs US support and Biden has political problems, not just among Muslim voters. Many Americans have become increasingly uncomfortable with the demonstrable suffering of the innocent people of Gaza.

Yes, Israel is held to an unfair double standard, but in this case it has been given an enormous degree of latitude to conduct this war as it sees fit. We do not really know the extent to which the military plan has been executed successfully, but it's troubling that the results are not yet conclusive. We'll know Israel has won when the Egyptians, Saudis and Qataris show Hamas the door.

It is increasingly clear that almost no one outside of the Iranian orbit (and American college campuses) likes Hamas or tries to justify the crimes that Hamas has committed. That increasingly includes the people of Gaza.

So the goal of removing Hamas from power and release of the hostages should be doable - but only if Israel shows a real willingness to consider long-term political solutions that include two states. I don't think anyone has the right to expect Israel to agree to a concrete timeline or any other specifics at this point - just not to dismiss it out of hand - and please God, to stop all the talk about resettling Gaza.

Prime Minister Netanyahu has done just the opposite. It almost seems like he is playing to his old cronies in Washington in trying to make things more difficult politically for President Biden, while also trying to boost his own street cred among right wingers in his own country. Where have we seen that before? Even though Bibi has been scorched by Trump, he feels he can manipulate him with flattery and will do anything to get him back into power. Autocracy loves company. Too bad for him that the GOP is not in a position to boast about its unconditional support for Israel when they are the ones blocking Israel funding as we speak, and when they are hoping to foster tension between Biden and people of color while at the same time courting people of color (in the most offensive ways imaginable).

Prime Minister Netanyahu needs to be replaced as soon as possible. Here's a Joshi exclusive: I actually agree with some of his current positions. If the non-political IDF assessment is that Israel needs to go into Rafah to degrade Hamas leadership and further the war aim of removing Hamas governance, and can do it with minimal civilian casualties, I agree with Bibi that they need to do it. If a narrow buffer zone in Gaza will enable Israelis to return to their homes with a little more security, I'm all for it.

Bibi needs to go because everybody hates him, and he's become an easy excuse for people to express contempt for Israel. The problem with "It's Bibi who's bad, not Israelis," is that when Israel pursues legitimate military goals, the point person explaining them cannot be someone with zero credibility who is clearly looking foremost at own political survival. If Ganz and Lapid were speaking on behalf of Israel right now instead of Bibi, Smotrich and Ben Gvir, Israel's case would be getting a much fairer hearing. Even on 60 Minutes, where this week's feature on Gaza was very disheartening, given the degree of human suffering that has undeniably occurred there - no matter who is responsible - and the fact that Israel can't evade all responsibility for it.

To state unequivocally that there will never be a Palestinian state, in the face of decades of consensus, is inflammatory political grandstanding unworthy of a serious world leader.

I also think that this is the wrong time to unilaterally recognize a Palestinian state, which would be seen as a reward for terrorism.

But unilateral US recognition could be a carrot for a series of actions that would permanently sideline Hamas, demilitarize this state militarily AND ideologically (education, no celebration of terrorism, etc) and return all hostages, along with the Saudi initiatives and a regional Marshall Plan.

This war is the worst thing that has happened to the Jewish people since the Shoah in large part because Israel can no longer be seen as a safe haven and bulwark against antisemitism. That aura of invincibility that has protected us at least since1967 has turned out to be an illusion. And as soon as that discovery occurred, the crazies came out of the woodwork, there, here, everywhere. Yes, hatred of Israel and hatred of Jews are enmeshed, even if it is also true that not all criticism of Israel is antisemitism. We've seen the truth and it is terrifying. Not as terrifying as the 1930s, but as bad, at least as the late 19th century. Pogroms in Russia, the KKK here, Dreyfus in Paris: Theodore Herzl took one look at it all and realized that the Jews needed a state of their own. He was right then and that same is true today.

To thrive, or perhaps even to survive at all, the Jewish people needs both a strong, secure Israel and a secure, independent - and strongly Zionist - diaspora.

This means that deterrence must be restored, ASAP. That means Hamas cannot be governing Gaza when the fighting stops. Hostages should be home. Everything else chould be on the table - buffer zones, security forces with or without Israeli boots on the ground, Palestinian governance, and West Bank coordination too.

Then the Saudi-US-Israel plan could bring much greater stability of the region and stand up to Iranian disruption. Which is where we were heading on October 6.

Yes, for the betterment of the Jewish people and the world, Israel, the Saudis and US need to be a bulwark against Iranian and Russian nihilism.

That nihilism has sadly metastasized here in the form of Trumpism. For that reason, Trump and his enablers may profess support for Israel, but in truth they only support Israel's far right wing, and primarily for Christian nationalist purposes. That is among the many reasons why a Trump return to the White House would be an existential threat to Israel, the US and democracy throughout the world, and why the Ukraine - Israel - Taiwan aid package must be passed, in some form (and of course humanitarian aid to Gaza is important too).

The term bulwark is found in the Bible in reference to the citadels of Jerusalem, for instance in Psalm 48:13.

"Walk about Zion, and go round about her: tell the towers thereof. Mark well her BULWARKS, (armenoteha - אַרְמְנוֹתֶיהָ) consider her palaces; that you may tell it to the generation following."

I believe that Israel, at her best, can be a bulwark against the ills that afflict our entire world, through technological, cultural, military and economic innovation and the unsurpassed resilience of her people. That has been proven perhaps more than ever over the past year. Israel showed us how to defend and preserve a democracy by organizing and taking to the streets, and how to nurture a traumatized populace faced with an existential war. We can only be awestruck at what the Israeli people have done. Now its current leadership needs to make way so that a new group, one worthy of the people it serves, can generate consensus on the hard decisions that need to be made.

If that can happen, a brighter future lies ahead, for Israel, for the Jewish people and for the world. We need to redouble efforts now so that "we may tell it to the generation following," that out of one of the great disasters in history, a brighter future emerged.

Here ends this edition of Joshi's Commentary.

Becoming Jewish

Ari Linder's life journey as been extraordinary, and that journey took them to the mikva a couple of weeks ago, to become a Jew by Choice. Thee conversion essay they wrote was so extraordinary that I asked them to share it with the congregation at services a few weeks ago. What follows is an edited print version. Below is an excerpt - see the whole essay by clicking here. Mazal tov to Ari!

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I can’t remember if it was Friday or Saturday, but I remember that I cried. Newly dating instead of being friends, I decided to join Leo in attending weekly shul services via Zoom. Leo asked me to turn away at a certain part (the amidah) when they’d need to do “prayer choreography”. They didn’t want to feel self-conscious. I turned away, thinking I’d take a moment to talk with whatever higher powers exist, and started with, “Hey G-d, it’s me….” And then I cried. I wasn’t expecting it. I’d prayed recently, sure, but only when following a specific prompt or attending a formal religious service. G-d and I hadn’t shared small talk or unstructured conversation in at least a decade. I felt like suddenly something bigger had turned its invisible body fully toward me, paused everything else it was working on, and given me its undivided attention. What do you say in that moment, early COVID-19 pandemic, when you suddenly feel like a kind energy entered your space? It felt both comforting and scary. I decided to keep carving out time for a personal spiritual connection and see where it went.

Pandemics are apparently great for learning about a new religion. Zoom services let Leo and I talk deeply about the content without bothering anyone. I could ask stupid questions. I could spend more time on a section without anyone knowing I didn’t turn the page. I could write down notes without learning that people don’t write at shul on shabbos. Zoom also made services into my own unique delight as Leo sang harmonies to Cantor Kaplan’s melodies. I had a private Jewish music concert twice weekly in our living room. Who could blame me for falling in love with both Leo and services?

It's perfect to remember now, one month before my wedding, the first dvar topic that hit me hard. Rabbi Hammerman asked us to examine if that day’s pandemic emergency “Break the Glass” feelings might actually have some positive “Breaking the Glass” components, like when we symbolically smash glass under the chuppah. I didn’t know what the wedding smash represented before then but the idea of reframing an emergency, seeing bittersweet instead of just bad, stuck with me. Relatable connections seemed more common in Jewish services than I remember experiencing when I explored other religions.

Childhood’s Catholicism taught me to strive to be like Jesus, a legendary, god-like human. “What would Jesus do?” But I feel the opposite of god-like most days. That perspective wasn’t relatable. What did it mean if I couldn’t be just like Jesus? My Jewish G-d feels more like a spouse or partner. We’ve dated. We decided where we both stand on different issues. I understand what G-d likes and G-d understands what I like, we compromise on many points, but we’re both happier together because we’re passionate about the same important things.

Judaism couldn’t ask me to be perfect because not even G-d is perfect. We can read about times when G-d got it wrong, or G-d overreacted, or G-d listened to a good human argument and changed Their mind. (And yes, that last reference to G-d used a gender neutral pronoun because being Jewish means my G-d isn’t exclusively male.) My Jewish G-d isn’t an angry grandfather in the sky monitoring my moves to see if I’m worthy. My G-d is someone who offered me a special relationship, negotiated what that will initially look like, and we’re both committed to growing this bond together.

Jewish leaders helped feed my growing spiritual bond. The Jewish rabbis and cantors I’ve met are so beautifully different from the other spiritual leaders I’ve known. Rabbis and cantors aren’t kept separately from society. Our leaders are allowed to be spouses, parents, partners, and (typical shul politics aside) normal humans like the rest of us. Jewish rabbis are committed to being our teachers. The great ones can prompt us to think, engage in the texts and writings, and form our own relationship to the material and our world. The best ones are skilled teachers who also listen and care and occasionally learn from us, too. Rabbi Hammerman invites community members up to share their own dvars. He even complimented 13-year-old Ethan on his bar mitzvah dvar, saying Ethan’s perspective was impressively new and worth sharing. Religious leaders praising a newly-minted adult for religious perspective? Ordination clearly wasn’t something that separates the best idea-havers from the rest of us.

So many Jewish community customs make sense for us not-god-like humans. There are important Jewish laws, but almost every law can be broken if human life is at stake. There are traditions for grieving, for being recognized as someone in grief, for supporting that person through grief, and for making sure they’re with other people every year on that grief-filled anniversary. Compare that to Catholicism’s two day grief process, or the 0-2 workplace bereavement days you’re lucky to get, and Judaism feels so much kinder.

Judaism doesn’t recruit (probably because others typically punish us for it) but I bet we’d be popular in a universe where we could. There can be something for everyone here. Our shul, and the one where Leo was raised, both allow children to play and be their spontaneous child-like selves during services. Kids don’t need to restrict themselves unnaturally into perfect mini adults. Jewish law entitled wives to certain respects and pleasures from their husbands. Ancient Jewish societies describeroles for every person – even atypically gendered folks like tumtum or androganos. Passover bravely embraces different people by highlighting 4 different “children” reacting to a story, and lovingly tells us how to adapt ourselves to their different needs. Even our heroes aren’t god-like. Sarah was considered too old to bear children, Issac became too blind to differentiate his sons, and short-tempered Moses had a speech impediment. But those respected leaders carried our people forward.

Click here to read the rest.

Wednesday, December 16, 2015

A Patrilineal Proposal: ‘Bath’ Mitzvah - Jewish Week

Tue, 12/15/2015

Joshua Hammerman

Special To The Jewish Week

image: http://www.thejewishweek.com/sites/default/files/images/2015/12/josh-hammerman.feature_por_300px.jpg

Joshua Hammerman

Thirty years ago Rabbi Irving (“Yitz”) Greenberg looked ominously at the landscape of American Jewry. With spiraling intermarriage rates and the 1983 decision of the Reform movement to allow Jewish status to be determined by the identity of the father, he peered into the future and asked, in a seminal essay in Clal Perspectives, “Will There be One Jewish People in the Year 2000?” He predicted that, “within decades, the Jewish people will be divided into two, mutually hostile groups who are unable and unwilling to marry each other.”

Rabbi Greenberg’s prognostication turns out to have been an understatement. If ONLY there were just two mutually hostile groups — for in fact the Jewish community has been divided into many more hostile camps, divided along halachic, ideological and political fault lines. Patrilineal descent is only one of the challenges we now face — but it is a big one, and now, a generation later, we are talking not in hypotheticals; we’re talking about real lives, an estimated 200,000 real lives, and counting.

Samantha (not her real name), a college student with a solid Jewish identity and a non-Jewish mother, grew up in a nearby Reform congregation where her family was very involved. She went on a Birthright Israel trip and fell in love with an Israeli guy, who then broke the news to her that most Israelis, including his own family, would not consider her to be Jewish.

Crushed by this revelation, she didn’t call her rabbi, who had never told her about the patrilineal descent issue. She called me, the Conservative rabbi across town, whom she had also known since childhood.

I made it clear that she should not feel ashamed or embarrassed in any way, that her Jewish upbringing had been solid and that we could rectify the situation relatively easily. All that would be required is a little dip into the ritual bath. I’d bring a few rabbis, we would sign a couple of documents, and that would be that.

Samantha took the patrilineal plunge and before she could dry off, her personal existential crisis was resolved, since the Israeli government would have to consider her to be Jewish — even though most Orthodox rabbis there would not accept my conversion.

I began to wonder whether there might be a way to reduce the pain for future Samanthas.

That’s when it came to me … the Bath Mitzvah.

The goal: for every 13-year-old to voluntarily immerse in a mikvah before her big day as a universally accepted part of the bar/bat Mitzvah experience.

OK, I know that at first glance might seem like the dumbest idea since the Betamax. But hear me out.

If Samantha had immersed before her bat mitzvah, the question of parentage would have been rendered irrelevant, since immersion is technically all that is required for conversion of a minor. For boys it’s more complicated, but since the vast majority of patrilineal boys are circumcised in infancy, that complication is minimized.

But to ask only patrilineal kids like Samantha to immerse, while giving their matrilineal friends a free pass, would be an insult to Samantha’s upbringing, and by extension, to the integrity of those movements that embrace patrilineality. There is enormous pressure on Conservative congregations to accept Samantha and the other patrilineals (and their children), yet to do so would create even more friction with the movements to the right. True, we could say that those movements don’t accept our conversions anyway, but that is precisely what the Reform movement said in the ’80s in their decision to go down the patrilineal path in the first place.

What we need is a way out that upholds the integrity both of Jewish tradition and all the religious streams. The stakes are enormous for all those who care about Samantha and her cohorts, who, if we don’t stop our bickering, will simply throw up their hands and walk away from Jewish communal life. At the very least, I hope my idea can inspire a dialogue that will lead to other initiatives.

As I envision the Bath Mitzvah, students would immerse either individually or as a class (yes, with bathing suits). Mikvahs would be preferred, but I can imagine enormous, community wide splash-fests in South Beach, Montauk or Santa Monica. Like the twinnings with Soviet Jews in the 1980s, this “dunk for unity” would link Jewish students of all backgrounds and become a meaningful component of the rite of passage, standardized and sanctioned by all the movements and supported by secular institutions like federations, JCCs and Israeli consulates. Curricula would be developed to explain how this simple act could unite the Jewish people. Perhaps the same funding partners that brought us Birthright Israel could incentivize this program by offering scholarships for family Israel trips.

Yes, there would be logistical concerns; compromise would be necessary on all sides. Conversion standards would need to be relaxed among the more traditional movements and those denominations currently accepting patrilineal descent would have to acknowledge the benefits of resolving a problem that they in part created.

There would be a number of ancillary advantages:

- Bath Mitzvah would send a clear message that we are all, in essence, Jews by choice;

- It would expose more Jews to the experience of ritual immersion without having to address, for the moment, more complicated questions regarding family purity;

- It would present a spiritual dimension to the bar mitzvah experience that is so often missing, marking it as a liminal moment — a symbolic passage through a “birth canal” of childhood to Jewish maturity;

- It would model for our kids — and for Israelis — how American Jews can work together for the common good, and how, in pioneering Orthodox feminist Blu Greenberg’s words, where there’s a rabbinic will, there’s a halachic way”;

- It would help transition American Jewry to a “post-gevalt” posture on intermarriage, redirecting our entire focus to fully embracing all Jewish children, including those of the 50 percent of Jewish millennials who grew up in dual faith families;

- Last but not least, it would enable Jews of different streams to more easily marry one another.

Not crazy about my idea? That’s fine.

So what’s yours?

Rabbi Joshua Hammerman is spiritual leader of Temple Beth-El in Stamford, Conn.

Thursday, June 23, 2011

"Who is A Jew??" AGAIN! Coping With the Shifting Nature of Jewish Identity

This week's CHUTZPAH Award goes to Interior Minister Eli Yishai, who is trying to restore the "Jewish" label to Israel identity cards, thereby dredging up the old "Who is a Jew" controversy. Read about that, see the tie to this week's portion and read a new responsum just passed by the Law Committee (Conservative Judaism's halachic arbiter) on whether congregations should take people at their word when they identify themselves as being Jewish.

We'll be talking about all of these at services this Shabbat. See the discussion materials by clicking here.

Thursday, June 24, 2010

Ask the Rabbi: Is it OK to Convert for Love?

Here is my latest response to an "Ask the Rabbi" question from About.com:

Q. I am writing to you because I was dating a Jewish man, though I myself am not Jewish. After breaking up a couple of times he came to the conclusion that it won't work because I am not Jewish. It hurts me to think that all of this is due to religious differences. I have offered to convert if it will make him happy, but both he and his family say that converting just because of him is not enough. I want to give our love a chance and make it work but I don't know where to go from here. Do you think that my conversion would be accepted in the Conservative faith if I only converted so that I could be with someone? Maybe if I tell his parents that a rabbi said my conversion would be "kosher" everyone will come around and things will turn out alright. I have no faith of my own and so converting to Judaism is not a spiritual struggle for me.

A. Absolutely! Let 'em know a rabbi says it's OK. Use my name. Give them my e-mail address. I'd be happy to talk to them, anytime.

While traditionally, a rabbi is required to discourage conversion, things have changed quite a bit in recent years. Some rabbis are even actively proselytizing, something we hadn't seen in the Jewish world since Roman times. And even those who maintain more traditional standards would have much more sympathy to your predicament than they may have had a generation ago. See the full response here.

Thursday, March 11, 2010

ACTION STILL NEEDED re: Conversion Bill

Recent Media Coverage of the Conversion Bill
Peres asks leading rabbi to compromise on conversion bill (JPOST 3/11/10)
'Don't open front against Diaspora Jews' (JPOST 3/10/10)
Gafni to Peres: UTJ told to resign due to conversion bill (YNET 3/10/10)
Why nobody's happy with conversion bill (JPOST 3/9/10)
A precedent for discrimination' (JPOST 3/9/10)

Statement from The Jewish Federations of North America

JEWISH FEDERATIONS URGE GOVERNMENT OF ISRAEL TO DIALOGUE WITH DIASPORA JEWRY ON PROPOSED LAW OF RETURN CHANGES
March 10, 2010

The Jewish Federations of North America, representing 157 Federations and 400 smaller Network communities, urges the Government of Israel to enter into dialogue with Diaspora Jews before making any proposed changes to the Law of Return, which allows Jews to migrate to Israel and become Israeli citizens.

Committees in Israel’s Knesset have begun debating a proposal to allow local municipal rabbis in Israel to perform conversions to Judaism. The proposed bill also includes a provision that could prevent a non-Jew who converts to Judaism, in Israel or in the Diaspora, from receiving Israeli citizenship under the Law of Return. Although we commend the Knesset for its initial rejection of the proposed bill today, this issue remains unresolved and is of urgent importance to our communities.

We implore the Israeli government to seriously consider the concerns and sensitivities of Diaspora Jews before acting on such proposals. Changes to the Law of Return could adversely affect many members of our community by preventing them from making aliyah and becoming Israeli citizens. Any action of this type would be an affront to world Jewry.

Leaders of the Jewish Federations movement today hand-delivered a letter to the Office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to express our concerns. Representatives in JFNA’s Washington and Jerusalem offices have additionally communicated our concerns to Israeli officials in Washington, New York and Jerusalem.

Members of The Jewish Federations of North America’s Large City Executive Committee also convened today to discuss these developments. Natan Sharansky, Chair of the Executive of the Jewish Agency for Israel, briefed the committee on the issue. Sharansky and the Jewish Agency stand in solidarity with The Jewish Federations of North America on this important issue.
Urgent Action Regarding Rotem Conversion Bill

We need your help on a matter of urgency concerning a bill that will come before the Knesset.

We have received word from our colleagues in Israel that a bill may be put forward for passage as soon as tomorrow which affects conversion and we need as many of us and our congregants to forward the following letter to Prime Minister Netanyahu and to your Israeli Ambassador.
The bill sponsored by MK David Rotem of Yisrael Beitenu, deals with both the authority of the Chief Rabbinate and matters of Conversion. The Rotem Bill concerns three matters:

1. It grants legal authority to the Chief Rabbinate for Conversions (while until now there was de facto recognition this gives legal recognition to the role of the Chief Rabbinate in this area) and would make it much more difficult for conversions to be performed by our Movement, by more “open-minded” Orthodox rabbis, and by Reform rabbis.

2. It provides for the ability of local rabbis in Israel to establish conversion courts. This is a good part of the bill of which we are supportive because it will potentially permit the establishment of more forward looking conversion courts. However, the first part of the bill passes, the Chief Rabbinate may declare these courts null and void, which would obviate any cause for our support.

3. Section 3 of this bill is highly problematic. Here is the summary of Section 3 by Reuven Hammer:

“Section 3 of the proposed conversion bill that we strongly oppose states that anyone that who entered Israel as a non-Jew and then converted to Judaism-either in Israel or the Diaspora would not be eligible for citizenship under the Law of Return. First of all this is exactly the case that we now have before the Supreme Court, asking that our conversions in Israel be recognized and citizenship rights granted to our converts. This is an attempt to go around the Supreme Court. Secondly, the wording is so vague that it could mean that if such a person had visited Israel at any time, no matter when, their conversion would not be recognized for citizenship in the future. Thirdly this would be the first time that Israel is officially making a distinction between one who is born a Jew and a righteous convert, something that we find deplorable and unsupportable in Jewish Law. Since our movement is the movement that is most involved in conversion in America and elsewhere, we and our congregants are the primary target of the bill. We urge everyone to make their protest known immediately to the Israeli government.”

WE STRONGLY URGE THAT YOU FORWARD THE FOLLOWING LETTER OR ITS EQUIVALENT TO THE PRIME MINISTER AND YOUR AMBASSADOR.

The Honorable Benjamin Netanyahu

Prime Minister of IsraelOffice of the Prime Minister
Jerusalem, Israel

Dear Prime Minister Netanyahu,

We write to request your immediate intervention to prevent passage of the legislation being brought forward by MK David Rotem

Passage of this bill in its present form especially section 3, will have the effect of providing for a path to alter the Law of Return or, at the least, cause undue hardship to anyone in Israel who has come from Diaspora communities and seeks conversion in Israel.

Sadly, this is reminiscent of those attempts in 1997 to enact similar legislation which ultimately led to the establishment of the Ne'eman Commission.

While we are supportive of your efforts to create greater accessibility to conversion courts in Israel and have done all we can to aid in this effort, the overall impact of the Rotem Bill will set back these efforts. Moreover this legislation will adversely impact the work of our Masorti movement and its members in Israel. This we cannot abide.

Even more regrettably, should this bill be enacted, it will exacerbate a widening gap between Diaspora and Israel communities, which we are all working very hard to avoid.

Therefore, we believe it is imperative that you, Israel’s leader, who cares so deeply about the well-being of our people, intervene and urge withdrawal of this bill.

The email for Prime Minister Netanyahu is: PM_ENG2@pmo.gov.il
For Amb. Oren’s office: info@washington.mfa.gov.il
For a list of other Ambassadors click here

Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Everybody's a Little Bit Jew-ISH (The Jewish Week, 5.28.09)

(Special to the Jewish Week by Joshua Hammerman - For related stories: Read more about Crypto Jews in these JTA stories: "Secret Jews of the Southwest" and "So you think you're a Crypto-Jew?"Also be sure to read Dina Kraft's report on efforts to turn Crypto-Jews in Spain into foot soldiers for Israel advocacy and Ben Harris' story on a Colombian native with Jewish roots who went from almost becoming a monk to being ordained as a Conservative rabbi.)

For ages we’ve been obsessed with the question, “Who is a Jew?” Perhaps we need to be asking instead, “Who isn’t?”

A team of geneticists has uncovered explicit evidence of mass conversions of Sephardic Jews to Catholicism in 15th- and 16th-century Spain and Portugal. The study, based on an analysis of Y-chromosomes and reported first in the American Journal of Human Genetics, indicates that 20 percent of the population of the Iberian Peninsula has Sephardic Jewish ancestry. That’s about 10 million people. While anti-Semitism remains pervasive and the Jewish population microscopic, there is a deep fascination with all things Jewish. “We’ve gone from a period of pillaging the Jews and then suppressing and ignoring their patrimony to a period of rising curiosity and fascination [about them],” said Anna Maria Lopez, the director of Toledo’s Sephardic Museum in a New York Times interview.

So while there are almost no Jews left in Spain, a residue remains, literally in their DNA. Everyone’s a little bit Jew-ish, even if almost no one is a Jew.

The suffix “ish,” indicating approximation, is increasingly popular among today’s youth, according to the language forum, “Wordreference.com.” Kids are constantly tossing it about: A movie is “creepish,” he looks “Europeanish,” the dress is “greenish” and the meeting begins at “five-ish.” In an age where fluidity is the norm, and everything, from the national debt to Arlen Specter’s party affiliation, is a moving target, we all need to learn how to go with the flow. Fortunately, we Jews are uniquely prepared to do just that: We already have “ish” in our name.

The Pew Foundation’s latest survey on the American religious landscape, called, “Faith in Flux: Changes in Religious Affiliation in the U.S.,” notes that Americans change religions almost as often as they change their underwear, with over half abandoning their childhood faith-group, usually before the age of 24.

Meanwhile, Synagogue 3000’s latest survey indicates that American Jews are foregoing secular and ethnic identification in favor of a more “spiritually oriented” — and therefore more fluid — self-definition. The survey notes that the presence of Christian, or formerly Christian, members in many Jewish households has led to a greater comfort level with spiritual ideas and language. While there are some forms of spirituality that are innately Jewish, the category lends itself to a blurring of boundaries between faiths. In the S3K report, Rabbi Rachel Cowan states that spirituality “helps me see that I’m not the whole story here, that I’m just part of something much bigger.” Bigger even than Jewish peoplehood.

Prior Pew surveys have shown how Jews have been more successful than other groups in stemming the tide of assimilation. But with sectarian lines dissolving rapidly, in a century or two, how many more millions of non-Jewish Americans will be searching their family trees for Jewish ancestry? On the other hand, how many non-Jewish seekers will stop off for a nosh at a Shabbat Kiddush on the road to Damascus and never leave?

Theodore Herzl was one of the most important Jews of all time. Yet none of his three children was Jewish and only one descendant, a grandson, was a Zionist — and he committed suicide. Nancy Pelosi has Jewish grandchildren. Eight of Moses Mendelssohn’s nine grandchildren were baptized. Thomas Jefferson reportedly had Jewish ancestors and African-American descendants. We’ve become the La Guardia Airport of faith traditions; so many coming in, so many going out.

Fiorello La Guardia had a Jewish parent, in fact, as does Sean Penn. There’s a cottage industry out there identifying famous half-Jews, including Web sites like www.halfjew.com and www.half-jewish.net. Who knew?

The Herzl family history was tragic, but no more so than the ancestry of King David. His great grandmother was Ruth, a Moabite, whose on-the-fly conversion following the tragic deaths of her husband and brother-in-law will be recalled on Shavuot this weekend. It is likely that Ruth’s simple loyalty oath would not be recognized as a conversion by the Israeli rabbinate today, which would place David’s Jewish identity into question as well. Since tradition holds that the Messiah will come from David’s seed, though, even the Israeli rabbinate would hesitate to go there.

A Midrash states that every Jew was present at Sinai, including all future generations. If David and Ruth were there, what about Fiorello, Sean and Jefferson? What about 10 million Iberians, whose only crime was that their ancestors were forced to convert? We can’t retroactively crop them out of the Sinai family picture.

I subscribe to traditional standards in determining Jewish identity, but the world has become far too complicated to ignore everyone else. So, yes, there are Jews, the ones who fall within normative halachic parameters; and then there are those who are Jew-ish, a group that includes many millions more.

The basis for Ruth’s avowal of loyalty was “chesed,” an unconditional love going beyond the letter of the law. We need to employ lots of chesed in reaching out beyond the scope of those who are Jews, to include also those who are generations removed from their last Shavuot blintz, to those who are Jew-ish.That’s because they need us. Judaism does have something unique to offer, something that goes beyond survival and adaptability. We are the ones, after all, who invented chesed.

As a census year approaches and we ponder how to tally our people, let’s think bigger — much bigger than simply counting those at the core or even those at the so-called periphery. Let’s look way beyond that farthest fringe, to those millions of once-were Jews, whose spiritual search will inexorably lead them back to our doors.

They may not be Jews ... but they are all Jew-ish. It’s in their DNA.

And all of them were at Sinai.

Tuesday, May 19, 2009

Historic Israeli Supreme Court Decision on Conversion

Today's watershed decision in Israel could pave the way for greater pluralism in the Jewish State. It impacts both Reform and Conservative institutions.

See the Jerusalem Post report here

A Dispatch from the Israel Religious Action Center

May 19, 2009

Dear Friends of IRAC,

Today is a very important day for Progressive Judaism and the cause of Jewish pluralism in Israel. IRAC just won a precedent setting case in the Israeli Supreme Court which says that the State has to provide equal funding for Reform and Conservative conversion classes.

The case itself may seem inconsequential but the implications are huge. This is the first time that the Court has declared that government funding must be provided to non-Orthodox Jewish religious services in Israel. The verdict was amazing, going well beyond simply requesting equal funding, and addressing the core issue of religious freedom in Israel. The three judge panel, including Chief Justice Dorit Beinisch, found the State's practice of favoring only one Jewish stream discriminatory and contradictory to the their responsibility to ensure freedom of religion, ruling "The duty of the State to pluralism is not only a passive duty, but an active one as well."

They also sited their previous ruling (Naamat and IRAC in 2002) that "Jews in Israel cannot be seen as only one religious sect." It is a hot day in Israel but we all have goose-bumps.

L'Shalom, Anat Hoffman