TORONTO — Religious pluralism in Israel is an issue that is important not only for Conservative, Reform and secular Jewish Israelis, but also for their Orthodox counterparts, according to a Bar-Ilan University professor who was in Toronto recently.
Gerald Cromer, right, who teaches criminology, said in a Feb. 4 lecture
at Beth Torah Congregation that all four groups are suffering for its
lack.
His presentation was co-sponsored by Canadian Friends of Bar-Ilan University and the New Israel Fund of Canada. Cromer is a member of board of directors of the NIF (a social justice organization in Israel), and a founder of a modern Orthodox congregation in Israel. He is also involved in a number of liberal Orthodox groups.
Drawing on his lay experience rather than his academic expertise, Cromer – a 63-year-old native of London, England who has been teaching at Bar-Ilan since 1972 – said that Orthodox Jews should be against “the doctrine of [religious] coercion,” under which the Orthodox rabbinate in Israel has sole authority over key Jewish religious rites including birth, marriage, divorce and burial.
Such coercion is “more and more moving into the hands of the ultra-Orthodox,” and modern Orthodox Jews are suffering from it in many ways, he said.
As evidence, Cromer cited nascent talks about the need to set up alternative Orthodox rabbinical courts to deal with the issue of Jewish divorce, because of “tremendous difficulties that ultra-Orthodox rabbis are putting in front of people.”
As well, he said, this year for the first time the haredim have spoken out against a ruling of Israel’s first chief rabbi, Rabbi Abraham Isaac HaCohen Kook, regarding the shmittah year (every seventh year, including the current one, during which observant Jews let their land lie fallow). This has resulted in conflict between haredim and modern Orthodox Jews, Cromer said.
Rabbi Kook’s ruling, known as cheter mechirah, allows Jews to sell their land to non-Jews during the shmittah year so that they can still cultivate it.
The second reason for Orthodox Jews to be against religious coercion, Cromer said, is that it “gives Orthodoxy a very bad name.” It leads to animosity and a feeling of not wanting “anything to do with any of it” among non-Orthodox Jews who find it hard to distinguish between religion and religious coercion, he added.
Pluralism is not the same thing as tolerance, Cromer stressed. Tolerance implies a willingness to put up with the other side, but pluralism suggests that everyone has something to offer, he explained.
The good news, he said, is that “after a long period of time when things Jewish were not attractive to people, there is in Israel in many ways an important, interesting, spiritual search going on.”
In Israel today, there are many organizations and movements trying to create non-Orthodox options for being Jewish, Cromer said. People are searching for meaning, and in many cases are looking for it “in a Jewish spiritual direction,” he added.
In addition to Jewish themes that are beginning to emerge in film, art and pop music, secular Jewish activity – including study of Jewish texts, secular prayer meetings and a secular yeshiva – is growing, he noted.
Also, the Reform and Conservative movements, which used to be regarded as being from outside of Israel, are becoming “more Israeli” in their membership and their leadership. “As they do so, the likelihood of their success and the likelihood of them having an influence on society will grow.”
Although some of his fellow Orthodox Jews may not welcome the trends, Cromer said they have to see them as an opportunity instead of a threat. “What I’m talking about is a basic change in mindset.”
The worst thing that can happen to Judaism in Israel “is not that people are against it, but that people are indifferent to it,” he said.
A spiritual search among non-Orthodox Israelis can help Orthodoxy in two ways, he said.
“Certain people will search and find that Orthodoxy is the right way for them.” Also, he added, other alternatives, aside from having value in their own right, will “give Orthodox Jews the kind of learning from the other that American Jews so excel at.”
[Jay Brodbar photo]