Rivlin hosts pluralistic study session ahead of Tisha B’Av
Leaders from all major movements, as well as secular scholars, learn together about Jerusalem in bid to calm intra-Jewish tensions
President Reuven Rivlin hosted on Thursday a pluralistic religious study session with Reform, Conservative, Orthodox and secular scholars at his residence in honor of the Tisha B’Av holiday.
Tisha B’Av is the traditional day of national mourning on the Jewish calendar commemorating the destruction of the two Temples in Jerusalem in antiquity, as well as numerous catastrophes that befell various Jewish diasporas, including the 1492 expulsion from Spain and the liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto during the Holocaust. It begins this year on Saturday night and continues until Sunday at sundown. Observant Jews will spend the day fasting.
Thursday’s study session marks the second year in a row that the event is hosted at the President’s Residence.
It was conducted together with the Jerusalem-based think tank Jewish People Policy Institute (JPPI), and centered on the theme, “Remembering Jerusalem.”
Tel Aviv-based writer and editor Shmuel Rosner, who chaired the event for JPPI, welcomed the hosting of a pluralistic religious event by the country’s president.
“We believe it is essential for the Jewish world to get used to normalcy, where all Jews from all walks of life can sit together and share what we have in common, and not just bicker,” he said.
“The second year is, in essence, more important than the first. Normalcy is more important than being a pioneer.”
The event comes amid ongoing disputes between various Jewish religious streams, including the Reform and Conservative movements whose adherents live mostly in the United States, and Israel’s Orthodox state rabbinate.
Under Israel’s restrictive religious laws, a hold-over from Ottoman times, only state-recognized and funded religious functionaries may conduct weddings or conversions.
Tensions have boiled over repeatedly over the demands of some liberal Jewish religious groups to allow egalitarian prayer at the Kotel, Jerusalem’s sacred Western Wall, which is administered by the state rabbinate as an official synagogue and thus requires that visitors and worshipers observe Orthodox rules when praying at the site.
The religious controversies are seen both in the US and Israel as creating a wedge between these two largest Jewish communities in the world.
Last year, Israel’s Minister for Religious Services David Azulai, a lawmaker from the Haredi Shas party, told Army Radio that “the moment a Reform Jew stops following the laws of Israel [i.e., Jewish religious law], let’s say that there is a problem… I cannot allow myself to call such a person a Jew.”
President Rivlin himself caused a similar affront three decades earlier, when as an MK in 1989 he visited a New Jersey Reform synagogue and likened its prayer services to idolatry.
The latest effort was launched after Rehovot Mayor Rahamim Malul canceled a city-backed bar mitzvah ceremony for autistic teens sponsored by the Masorti movement, the Israeli affiliate of the American Conservative movement. The mayor’s move came after he learned that the ceremony was to be performed by a Masorti rabbi.
The Diaspora Affairs Ministry headed by Jewish Home leader Naftali Bennett suggested that the ceremony be held at the President’s Residence, and Rivlin agreed. Well-known Orthodox Rabbi Benny Lau would join the event as well.
Even then, the event was not without its hiccups, with the Masorti movement complaining that its official program bore no mention of the Masorti movement’s Rabbi Micki Goldstein, who hosted the event.
On Thursday, Rivlin sought to frame the Tisha B’Av study session as an effort to bridge these divides and past tensions.
“Disagreements must be held with respect, with persistence and with attention, and never with flippancy or hypocrisy,” he said at the opening of the session.
“I hope that if we learn this lesson, to be honest with those who share our covenant, with those with whom we have disputes, then we will be able to overcome sectarianism before it overcomes us…. I am sure that all of us have something to learn from you,” he told the diverse group of speakers.
Yizhar Hess, the executive head of the Masorti movement in Israel, welcomed the effort “in light of the events of the past few months, and what is going on all over the world, especially for Jews.”
“I am very proud that our President supports such pluralistic endeavors. [Unlike] other world leaders, our leader believes in a real democracy,” he said.
Natan Sharansky, chairman of the Jerusalem-based Jewish Agency that has hosted many of the efforts to resolve the Kotel tensions and other disputes between Israeli and diaspora religious leaders, dwelled on each side’s importance to the other.
“In the toughest of times and the happiest of times we say ‘Next Year in Jerusalem.’ Under the Chuppah [wedding canopy], we say ‘If I forget thee, oh Jerusalem….’ [This] is more than a discussion over how we can all pray together at the Kotel, much more.”
The scholars who delivered talks at the event included Israel Prize laureate and renowned Jewish thought professor Eliezer Schweid, educator and former head of a secular post-high school religious studies program Noam Dan, Hebrew Union College Associate Professor of Liturgy and Midrash Rabbi Daliah Marx, Schechter Rabbinical Seminary Dean Rabbi Avi Novis-Deutsch, and Rabbi Jeremy Stavisky, principal of Jerusalem’s Himmelfarb High School.
While tensions at the Kotel were not resolved at the gathering, participants welcomed its message.
“It was great,” said one, “but there is much more work to be done.”
