To be progressive in Israel...

Disclaimer: I will probably ramble a lot in this post.

For background knowledge, please refer to Wikipedia's entry on the Reform Movement, because lets face it, where else does background knowledge come from?

As many of you know, I work at a synagogue preschool that is part of the "Reform Movement for Progressive Judaism in Israel". Yeah, that's a mouthful. Wikipedia seems to have various theories on why in Israel the Reform Movement and Progressive Judaism go together. I wonder about this a lot.

First of all, lets think about how the Reform Movement started for a moment. It was a movement to make Judaism not tied down by halakhah and religious practice. As Wikipedia tells us:
Rabbi W. Gunther Plaut writes "there is no such thing as a Jewish theological principle, policy, or doctrine." This is because Reform Judaism affirms "the fundamental principle of Liberalism: that the individual will approach this body of mitzvot and minhagim in the spirit of freedom and choice. Traditionally Israel started with harut, the commandment engraved upon the Tablets, which then became freedom. The Reform Jew starts with herut, the freedom to decide what will be harut - engraved upon the personal Tablets of his life." [3]
The way I always understood it, the Reform Movement made being Jewish more cultural. Not that it claimed Judaism was not a religion, just that anything Jewish was done more out of a sense of tradition and not religious obligation.

In Israel, if you are Jewish you are one of two things- dati (דתי) or chiloni (חילוני). And then there are charedis (חרדים), but lets keep things simple for now. They really like labels here. As much as I tried in my years of college to avoid using labels, they are all over the place here. And it's not just the labels that get to me- it's the boxes. During my first year at Hebrew U I would often wind up davenning shacharit at school between my first two classes. There I was, an American, with a history degree but in a social work program (Israelis don't really get liberal arts degrees for the sake of having a liberal arts degree), wearing pants, and praying regularly. Huh? No box for me. Since I never really spoke with my classmates, I never had any explaining to do. I have friends who know I wear pants but pray every day and some who probably don't. For all I know they try to put me into a box too, but it's just never an issue.

Now I work with native Israelis every day. It is not only that I work with native Israelis, it is that I do so at a preschool affiliated with a synagogue. So it's a religious preschool, but not, because it's part of the Reform movement. What does that mean? I ask myself that question a lot. Not too many people in the school seem to really have a grasp on what the movement is all about, what role the school has, and what is expected of the teachers as teachers in a Reform preschool. While the school is affiliated with the synagogue, most of the families with children in the preschool rarely if ever attend services and other programming. It used to be a requirement for admission to the preschool and is no longer, though the director and board members are working on ways to integrate the two bodies more and make the preschool more a part of the synagogue.

After an excruciating three month wait after my interview, I was called in for a final interview to meet with the director and the lead teacher I would be working with (pending her approval). The teacher, a woman in her 40's who immigrated from Belarus about twenty years ago, asked me how as a religious person I would handle working in a Reform preschool where most people did not practice Judaism the way I did. I responded that being from Boston, which I've noticed in retrospect is very unique. In Boston the different Jewish communities all get along. They all do stuff together. There's just no other way to put it. People tell me it's all those liberal academics. Who knows? I'm just grateful I was raised the way I was. The lead teacher seemed a bit skeptical, but thankfully the director is familiar with the community and assured her that I would be fine.

After a hectic year of six day work weeks, constantly being sick, and three graduate school courses, I am in my second year at the gan and much more conscious of the actions and opinions of those around me. I am also much more prone to being irritated by said actions and opinions. After years of avoiding labeling myself, I often find myself forced to do so. So okay, I am a דתיה, a religious person. But what about my coworker who worries about getting all her cooking in time for shabbat but would drive to her friends if invited out for a meal on shabbat? Or my other coworker who almost always travels on shabbat but always does הפרשת חלה? But what most astounds me at my workplace is that my coworkers seem to simply forget that I'm דתיה. Apparently, it is not tattooed on my forehead. When they first met my father and saw that he was wearing a kippah, they were surprised that he is religious (and I don't think it was because they had previously thought that my being religious was a divergence from how I was raised). I try not to eat at breakfast at gan because seriously, I just don't care to stuff my face with bread every morning, and every day they ask me why I'm not eating. Whenever I'm not eating because it's a fast day, they get this look of shock on their faces. "Oh, right, you do that sort of thing, okay then." On a side note, I was recently saying ברכת המזון (blessing after eating) to myself while standing on the curb waiting for a ride with two classmates (one Israeli and one Arab- see previous post) and realized how uncomfortable I would feel doing that in front of my coworkers. They are also seemingly surprised each and every time I mention shabbat meals I'm going to, hosting, and worrying about having time to cook for. Does me wearing pants really throw them off that much!?!?

Another example- once the day's staff consisted of me, the first coworker I mentioned, and a teacher who usually works in another gan who spent just over ten years working in a Reform synagogue preschool in New York. We were discussing how once during the year there is a special service in the adjoining shul for each of the older classes. The teachers are expected to attend. For me this will be no problem, as I live around the corner, and will probably hop back and forth from the shul next door that I usually go to. But what about the teachers who live farther away, don't necessarily have cars? My coworker said to the other teacher that she wonders what this other teacher did when her class had the service last year. Then she said that she didn't even understand how this teacher, a דתיה (for lack of a better word) teaches in the gan I work at at all since it is not a gan for דתיים (I keep using the Hebrew word because saying "gan for religious people" messes up the point I am trying to make, as I hope I eventually make clear). The teacher who spent time in the US explained that it really doesn't matter and where she worked that was often the case. The teachers can practice Judaism one way and work in a community where things are done differently. If you have an open mind, it's not a big deal at all. I just sat there listening, and again thinking that she was forgetting about me. The conversation started out between the three of us, but she only raised this issue with the other Israeli and not with me. I don't think she would ever think to ask me how I feel about it.

Now finally on to what I really and truly do not understand about the place I work at and the movement in general. How are members of the Reform Movement for Progressive in Israel different from חילונים ("non-religious Israelis"). Are they simply חילונים who go to shul every week? Who attend lectures at centers like the one I work at? Does one have to consciously be a member of the movement in order to be considered one? In the US, despite being anti-labels, I still consider myself a part of the Orthodox community. That doesn't mean I consider myself a cookie cutter copy of everyone else in the community, but it is still the community I identify with and that others would associate me with regardless of how I felt about it. I feel like my coworker who religious observant-wise is probably a lot like the members of the synagogue where I work would be astounded and possibly insulted if I made that comparison.

One of my conclusions is that what places like where I work provide is a community for Israelis who are less observant than the typical "דתי" Israeli (I hate terms like "less observant"... lets say "people who do less Jewish practices on a regular basis). In America there is a synagogue for almost everyone- especially Jews with similar lifestyles to חילונים. The Reform movement is much more clear in America. It is much more cultural and less religious. In cultures, there aren't obligations. There are demands the community may place on you, but they aren't really obligatory. The Reform synagogues match that mentality. In Israel, Judaism IS the culture- for everyone. The Coca Cola bottles and public buses had Happy Chanukah written on them for the past week. From Thursday you wish everyone a shabbat shalom when you say goodbye, even if shabbat for them will be watching movies all night and going to the beach the next day. This reality is what influences thousands of people to make aliyah every year (though not me- while the buses on Chanukah make me smile I have other reasons for being here, but that is for another post). It also has some unfortunate repercussions, one of which being that if someone is searching for a community, a synagogue in Israel is not the place to find one. While you might get to see friends in shul every week they are simply places to pray and rarely have any community building programs in place (and those that do are recent developments).

Once I thought about it that way, the existence of the Reform Movement in Israel begins to make more sense, even though I'm still not convinced it should be associated by name with the Reform Movement in America. The cultures in the two places are just too dramatically different from each other. Okay, on to the second part of the name. In Israel, it is the Reform Movement for Progressive Judaism. Maybe the "Reform Movement for Progressive Israeliness" would make more sense. It is a movement that brings Israelis together who don't want to be shoved into the חילוני or דתי boxes- who take family trips to the zoo on shabbat but want to be part of a community that makes Jewish traditions a part of their active lives. It provides a framework and communal atmosphere for developing a Jewish identity as part of an Israeli one.

A couple staff meetings ago one of the educational directors of the movement came to speak to us about a pamphlet they just completed of a curriculum for the movement. I was so glad to find see this sort of thing in print form as I never really understood what the educational goals of the gan were, though I am sure the end of the year party my class had about how everyone keeps shabbat in their own way that had absolutely no mention of attending prayer services would not necessarily be in line with those goals. The stuff in the pamphlet wasn't so surprising to me. They chose things like lighting candles, blessings on food, and mitzvot about behavior among people (בין אדם לחברו) and wrote out ways to teach these things to different age groups. In addition to preschools like mine, there is a growing network of elementary, middle, and high schools aimed at filling the gap between religious and non-religious public schools in Israel (ממלכתי and ממלכתי דתי). This is again what I think is more an example of Progressive Israeliness than it is of Progressive Judaism. The schools are very much like the Schechter Day Schools in the US. They teach religious practice but leave things more open ended. I'm a fan. I just hope it doesn't just turn into another box to squish Jewish Israelis into (though I guess if a society is going to be dominated by boxes, I suppose the more the better.

I finally got inspired to write this blog post (a somewhat organized mumble jumble of various rants from the past year) after a conference I was forced to sit through on Monday of Chanukah. The conference was at a place like the one I work at in Tel Aviv. It was teachers at preschools that are part of the movement. Pretty much everyone there felt very strongly that we should be on vacation like any other teacher and not forced to sit through lectures, but sadly we had no say in the matter. The theme of the conference was תפילה (prayer). I am still unclear on what the goals of the conference were. From what I gathered, it was to provide an opportunity for us teachers to learn more about ourselves as people and not just talk about our work all day. I found the lectures themselves kind of boring, the sing-a-long at the beginning annoying, and the ride from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv with my coworkers excruciating (I left a bit early and traveled back on my own- worth the money I had to spend). I hoped the conference would help me understand the movement better, but then realized that while I might have been the most different person there, it was not apparent at all which teachers actually identify with the movement.

Between being bored, not being the type to talk about my feelings with strangers, and the language barrier, I pretty much spent the entire time sitting quietly watching the scenes unfold before me. This was a few days after the devastating fires up north and the day it finally rained, so much of what was said had to do with that. The feeling in the air that rainy day was absolutely phenomenal. Everyone was happy. Everyone was expressing their thanks to God that the rain had finally arrived, that the fires could finally end, and that the country could be healed and be nourished. It was the opposite of what had been felt the previous few days when the nation was devastated, the sadness palpable. Rain is like Chanukah. All the Jews in Israel celebrate Chanukah, and all the Jews in Israel (well everyone really) celebrates rain. If it wasn't Chanukah, I wouldn't have been surprised if the buses had said "Happy Rainy Day" on them. Rain is a cause for celebration. When talking about תפילה, everyone agrees that rain is something to be prayed for.

Experiencing this expression of unity was awesome- this is what it means to be an Israeli. Sadly on the flipside, there was a lot of putting into boxes. There was a lot of "they do that but we do this". One woman said how the דתיים had a whole prayer event at the Kotel to pray for rain (part of a day of fasting) as an example of our prayers finally being answered and another responded "well the fire came first, and then the rain, so how do we know whose prayers are being answered?". It sounded a bit cynical. Also the first woman phrased her comment as talking about the other- a totally separate group of people. Why does it matter who prayed where? Why can't she just say "a large group of people prayed at the Kotel"? I constantly got the sense that the people around me felt a need to specify what type of Jew/Israeli they were talking about. Is being general so taboo?

The Reform Movement in America promotes social justice over halakhah, being a light onto the nations as a nation of good deed and not as a nation performing religious commandments (at least the way I see it). I think this is a beautiful thing. While I feel strongly about how I practice Judaism, an adherence to religious obligation, and continuing ancient traditions, I believe that what it really comes down to is being a good person, respecting oneself, and caring for others. I feel that my religious practices help me be that person, but that there are many ways to get to that point and that open mindedness is crucial for maintaining the greater Jewish community. The Reform Movement in America has done an excellent job making תיקון עולם, social justice, a priority for all the different denominations. In Boston it brought all the different congregations together, and they were mentioned as exactly that- congregations. The emphasis was that different synagogue communities were working together, not that Reform, Conservative, and Orthodox Jews were finding something to agree on.

As I was getting at before, being progressive means different things in different societies. I still do not quite understand why the movement in Israel refers to itself both as Reform and as Progressive. The Reform Movement when founded was something very unique to Europe and America. It does not quite work the same way in Israel. I do understand why they would call themselves progressive, though how they are and will be progressive is very different from how the Reform Movement is progressive in America. Everyone has the right to choose how they want to be, but I think it is great that these "in between" Jews in Israel can be part of a community that serves their lifestyle and interests. I just hope that having an "in between", having something that isn't just דתי or just חילוני, will create a spectrum from one to the other, a spirit of open-mindedness, and not just another box to put people into. That would be progressive indeed.

הגיד לך אדם מה טוב ומה ה' דורש ממך כי אם עשות משפט ואהבת חסד והצנע ללכת עם אלוקיך. –מיכה ו:ח

(While looking for a place I could copy and paste this verse from I came across this. Like buses wishing me a Happy Chanukah, it's things like this that get me excited about living in Israel.)