Rabbi Ellenson's letter from Jerusalem
February 29, 2004
7 Adar 5764
Dear HUC-JIR Community:
In the first chapter of his Hilchot B’rakhot (Laws of Blessings),
Maimonides wrote, “If a person recites a blessing in the heart
alone, that individual does not fulfill the obligation that is required
for the recitation of a blessing.” Maimonides understood that
the promptings of the human heart must find active expression if
a blessing is to be realized. It is in this spirit that I tell you
of my recent trip to Israel from where I just returned last week.
On the Friday of my arrival, my friends Naamah Kelman, acting dean
of our Jerusalem School, Elan Ezrachi, and Marion Blumenthal, a
member of the HUC-JIR President’s Council, picked me up at
Ben Gurion Airport. As Shabbat was quickly approaching, we drove
directly to Haifa where I was to see – for the first time
– the Leo Baeck School, founded by Dr. Meyer Elk and guided
and nurtured for so many years by Rabbi Robert Samuels. As President
of HUC-JIR and as one devoted to Liberal Judaism in Israel, I wanted
to see this famed school and learn of its workings and its accomplishments.
I already knew that 1600 children attended the junior and senior
high school programs there, but I learned that thousands of residents
of Haifa – Jews and Arabs alike – are served through
the community center, the sports center, the early childhood education
center, and other educational outreach initiatives for children
and adults alike. In addition, Leo Baeck houses the Ohel Avraham
Progressive Synagogue and the Lokey International Academy of Jewish
Studies. This Academy houses numerous study programs that will –
among other things – bring college-age students, starting
this year from abroad, to complete their first year of university
education in Israel.
Leo Baeck is a remarkable institution in every way and Rabbi Samuels
has passed over the reins of leadership to the very capable Dan
Fessler, who now directs Leo Baeck and at whose home we had Friday
night dinner. However, before our Shabbat seudah that night I was
greeted by our talented and energetic HUC-JIR Israeli rabbinical
student Ofek Meir, who serves as Director of the Lokey Academy,
and given a tour of the entire campus. Following the tour, Shabbat
enveloped us and I was not emotionally prepared for the Kabbalat
Shabbat and Ma’ariv service that was to follow. Over two hundred
Israelis came to Ohel Avraham that night, including scores of young
families with their children and teen-agers.
The service itself was introduced and led by Ofek Meir, who is
a gifted musician, and the spirit can only be described as exuberant.
Everyone participated and the voice of Jews joining together in
song and prayer was exhilarating. The rabbi of Ohel Avraham is Dan
Pratt, who also serves as the Rabbi of the Leo Baeck Schools. Dan
was my student at HUC-Jerusalem in 1998, and it was wonderful to
have this reunion with him. Dan possesses a warm and outgoing personality,
and he bears his knowledge with ease. He and Ofek along with other
leaders and congregants have created an intensely joyous tefilah.
It was an incredibly powerful and moving experience, and I was able
to see with my own eyes the flowering of a culturally distinct expression
of Progressive Judaism on Israeli soil that night.
The next morning, the renaissance I had seen the night before was
once more evident. Naamah, Elan, Marion and I were blessed to attend
the bat mitzvah of Eleh Esther Shadmi Wertman at Nahallal, a secular
moshav adjacent to Haifa. The residents of Nahallal are the descendants
of secular halutzim – pioneers who settled Eretz Yisrael at
the beginning of the twentieth century, and they are heirs to a
fiercely anti-religious heritage. Shabbat morning services had never
before taken place at Nahallal and a Torah scroll had never before
appeared there. Such indifference to if not hostility towards religious
expression are not atypical of the non-religious legacy that has
been bequeathed to so much of the secular Israeli landscape.
However, the winds of change are blowing and on Saturday morning
we witnessed a new chapter in the ongoing development of Jewish
religious history. In the late 1980s, a group of secular kibbutzniks
and moshavniks decided to explore and mine the resources of Jewish
tradition, for they believed that moreshet yisrael (The Spiritual
Heritage of the Jewish People) did not belong to the ultra-Orthodox
alone. They established Hamidrashah, a study center for the exploration
of the Jewish literary and religious heritage that has grown exponentially
over the years – to the point that thousands of “secular
Israelis” have now and will continue to engage there in the
study and exploration of Judaism from their own perspective. A native
Israeli expression of Judaism is in the process of being born through
their experimentation, and the phenomenon of Jewish spiritual renewal
and creativity that the participants in Hamidrashah embody are among
the most exciting as well as promising developments in Israeli Jewish
religious life today. The persons involved in Hamidrashah are intensely
intellectual, and they are highly passionate about their right to
draw upon the religious content of Judaism both past and present
while creating a Judaism that speaks in a contemporary Israeli idiom.
Two of our Israeli rabbinical students – Ofer Beit-Halahmi
and Chen Tzfoni – have emerged from Hamidrashah, and Chen,
along with Naamah Kelman, officiated at the services on Saturday
morning, while Marion read from the Torah. Many of the persons in
Hamidrashah have formed strong attachments to Congregation B’nai
Jeshurun in New York, and the spirit of B’nai Jeshurun was
surely present in Nahallal that morning.
Eleh’s parents are remarkably warm and talented persons,
and her mother Sarala has played a pivotal role in Hamidrashah.
However, it was her parents as well as Elah’s exposure to
the Reform Movement in Denver during their years on shlichut there
in the 1990s that led Eleh to make the decision that she wanted
a bat mitzvah upon her return to Nahallal. Eleh was not only the
first person in the history of her family to celebrate a bat mitzvah
– she was the first person in the history of the moshav to
celebrate the occasion of having arrived at the age of mitzvot through
the observance of such a ceremony at the moshav itself!
Music abounded at the service, and Chen movingly led prayers with
such ease and depth of spirit that one would have thought such services
were a routine occurrence on the moshav. The siddur prepared for
the bat mitzvah was marked by the significant inclusion of modern
Israeli poetry, and the liturgical promise inherent in this literature
was never more apparent. Eleh herself, as well as her parents and
grandparents – Israelis who hail from every part of the Diaspora
– spoke movingly of what this occasion meant and Eleh read
expertly from the Torah. Seldom is one privileged to have such a
rich Jewish religious experience. The role that HUC-JIR can and
does play in making possible the unfolding of a liberal Jewish religious
spirit in the State of Israel was never more apparent to me than
it was that Shabbat. We are fortunate to be part of a generation
that has the opportunity to make such a difference.
That Saturday night we returned to Jerusalem, and I had the pleasure
of dinner with my friends Garri and Uri Regev, Executive Director
of the World Union for Progressive Judaism, and their children Yoni
and Liron. Yoni is completing his service in the Israeli Defense
Forces, and Liron will graduate high school this June and enter
the IDF shortly thereafter. Once more, I was reminded of how different
our lot is here in the Diaspora from the destiny that marks the
lives of our brothers and sisters in the State of Israel.
The next morning, a bombing near the Inbal Hotel in Jerusalem destroyed
the upbeat and joyous mood that had up until then marked my trip.
I was having breakfast a the YMCA with Iri Kassel, the professional
head of the Israeli Movement for Progressive Judaism, when our meal
was shattered by the sound of sirens. Iri and I returned immediately
to the College-Institute and we learned that all our students were
unharmed, though eight Israeli lives were taken in the attack and
countless more were wounded. Naamah Kelman and I met with the American
students shortly thereafter, and a brief yet sober conversation
took place. It was decided that all students present in Jerusalem
– both North American and Israeli – would meet that
night for an extended period of discussion and reflection on the
meaning of their presence in Jerusalem at this time.
That afternoon, Naamah and I traveled to Tel Aviv where I visited
Beit Daniel and Rabbi Meir Azari. My intention was to speak with
Meir and to see for myself first hand the remarkable growth that
has taken place at the Tel Aviv Synagogue that Meir has guided and
that our friends Ruth and Gerry Daniel have made possible through
their largesse these past years. The synagogue was buzzing with
activity even on Sunday, and I had the opportunity to meet and talk
with a dozen more of our Israeli rabbinical students at lunch. The
range of their activities is astounding. Three HUC students work
as interns at Beit Daniel alone, while the others work in every
part of Israel as well– in synagogues, community centers,
and educational institutions. These students are unusually mature
and talented persons, and they have been steeled and tested by the
reality of Israeli life. At the same time, they have maintained
their idealism and they are determined to create a meaningful expression
of liberal Judaism in Israel as well as a just Israeli society.
I left Tel Aviv that afternoon feeling as I had when I left Haifa
and Nahallal on Shabbat – blessed to be part of such an enterprise
and inspired by such committed persons possessed of such positive
and enduring values and spirit.
Nothing that had taken place up until that moment on this trip
fully prepared me for the discussion that was to unfold that night
between our Israeli and Diasporan students. Over sixty students
gathered together that evening for several hours to discuss the
events of the day, and the feelings they possessed about this year
in their education as future Jewish leaders and about the meaning
of their being in Jerusalem and the State of Israel at this time
flooded out of them. In my introduction to the conversation that
was about to ensue, I asked the students to speak about and attempt
to articulate that which was in their hearts and I requested that
each person listen to and respect the words of each of their colleagues
and friends. I do not know if I can fully do justice to the dialogue
among our student that then took place nor do I believe that I can
fully capture the depth of emotion that was expressed that evening.
I can only say that it was a moment of great intensity, and all
who were there will never forget that evening.
Our Israeli students opened the discussion, and they each spoke
passionately about what the presence of the North American and Australian
students meant to them. One student – capturing a sensibility
articulated over and over again by his Israeli compatriots –
candidly described the sense of abandonment he and other Israelis
had felt in 2002 and 2003 when the ravages of the Intifada caused
so many Diasporan Jews to leave or refuse to come to Israel. The
presence of the Diasporan students in Jerusalem at this moment made
him feel that he was no longer alone, and restored his faith in
the notion that Jews constitute a family. For this he could not
thank them enough.
Our Diasporan students then described in equally emotion-laden
terms – in so many ways and with so many different shades
and tones of meaning – what the year as well as that day had
meant to them. They confessed their anxiety while simultaneously
affirming a sense of Jewish history and common Jewish destiny –
even as some indicated how much they disagreed with many Israeli
governmental policies – that bound them to their brothers
and sisters in Jerusalem and Israel.
Laura Baum, one of our gifted first-year students, gave voice to
the sensibilities that marked so many of her classmates the previous
night when, in her sermon at Monday morning services, she spoke
to her peers and proudly noted that this was “a time when
we have come together so powerfully as a community to support each
other.” She confessed that “there are days when I question
what I am doing here, in rabbinical school and in Jerusalem.”
While Laura maintained that “living in Israel is a blessing
in my life,” she truthfully admitted that there are also times
“when [living here] does not feel like a blessing, but more
like a burden.” She then went on to say, “When we value
something, when it is sacred to us, we want to convey that to others.”
At such moments, when “I wonder why I am here, I remind myself
that my being here is what is important – I let my hand teach
my heart. We are working together as a community as we begin to
process what is going on around us, and to make sense of it as future
leaders.” Laura cited the words of the first century sage
Elazar ben Azariah, who asserted, “’He whose wisdom
surpasses his good deeds, to what is he compared? To a tree whose
branches are abundant, but whose roots are few, and the wind comes
and overturns it.’ This year we are growing many branches
– our knowledge and our wisdom are constantly expanding. But
I also hope that we are growing roots through our act of being here
– that what we do here grounds us.” Laura wisely noted
that the task of education is always a “work in progress”
whose goal is to “strive for peace and wholeness.” Yet,
this goal can only be realized “bit by bit.” In words
of wisdom and admonition, Laura observed, “The journey to
Jewish religious leadership is more than an individual spiritual
quest. We are part of a people. By being here, we show our communities
on other continents that we not only have an interest in, but a
visceral personal connection to the State of Israel – we demonstrate
this by being here.”
My stay in Israel concluded with a lunch that afternoon with my
teacher and friend Rabbi David Hartman, and subsequent day meetings
with the Board of Governors of the Jewish Agency at the Dead Sea
as well as a wonderfully engaging afternoon at Kibbutz Tzuba where
the largest class of 10th and 11th grade teen-agers in the history
of the Eisendrath International Exchange Program of the Union of
Reform Judaism – 66 in all – is present. The exuberance
and hope that mark these teen-agers is so life affirming, and I
am certain that these maturing young Jewish men and women are destined
for lives of Jewish leadership and commitment. They will bring the
values of Judaism to life in the world, and HUC-JIR and other institutions
will have the ongoing blessing and task of providing instruction
for them.
However, it is our current students at HUC-JIR upon whom I focus
as I conclude this letter. On that Sunday night in Jerusalem, all
the students – Israeli and Diasporan – thanked one another
for their presence. Their sense of connection to one another was
so apparent, and the reality of Jewish peoplehood across cultures
and continents so palpable. My entire experience this February in
Israel – however challenging – left me with a sense
of optimism and hope, joy and excitement. Our students – Israelis,
Americans, Canadians, and Australians -- understand that persons
are “not born into community as if by fate.” Rather,
they understand that God calls them to the task of forging such
community. To witness their struggles and their accomplishments
is a privilege. To have a part in supporting such an enterprise
is a blessing.
B’virkat shalom – with hopes for Peace,
David Ellenson
