Support Reform Rabbis in Israel

Israel is still a work in progress. At just sixty-one years old, Israel is still defining itself and tackling the challenges of Jewish state sovereignty in the twenty-first century. One of Israel's ongoing challenges is the role of religion in the public sphere. Lacking the strict separation of "church" and state that we have in America, Israel struggles to balance democracy and pluralism with the presence of an official state religion, Judaism. Many rabbis, for example, are state employees. That has put the state in a quandry: who is to be considered a rabbi and who in the state (or the world) gets to set the standards. The case of my colleague, Rabbi Miri Gold, is a good example. Prof. Avraham Melamed, chair of the Israel Movement for Progressive Judaism, and Rabbi Ada Zavidov, chair of Israel's Union of Progressive Rabbis, describe her case:

Rabbi Miri Gold has served as the Rabbi of Birkat Shalom congregation in
Kibbutz Gezer since her ordination as a Reform Rabbi by the Hebrew Union
College in 1999. Sixteen other local rabbis serve the area of the Gezer
regional council and receive a State salary. Rabbi Miri Gold, who serves the
entire region, is not recognized by the State because she is a Reform rabbi.
Out of the thousands of rabbis recognized by the State of Israel there is
not a single Reform rabbi!

In 2005 The Israel Movement for Progressive Judaism filed an appeal with
the Israeli Supreme Court through the Israel Religious Action Center (IRAC),
demanding that Rabbi Miri Gold is recognized by the State. The court has ordered
the State to present the criteria according to which rabbis are recognized. To
this day the State has not replied. This fall we hope that the State will
present an equal and just set of criteria, such that is accepted by the Supreme
Court.

Please sign the petition through the Israel Religious Action Center demanding the State of Israel officially recognize Rabbi Gold and provide her with the support given to all other rabbis in her position. For another example of the struggle over Reform Judaism in Israel, see this article describing the Reform movement's successful lawsuit against the Ministry of Religious Affairs.

What I'm Reading: Ariel Sabar

I am almost done with this book and I recommend it highly. It is the true story of Yona Sabar, a Jewish Kurd who was born in a remote town in northern Iraq. He and his family were airlifted to Israel as part of Operation Ezra and Nehemia - the massive airlift of Iraqi Jews to Israel in 1951. These Kurdish Jews were among the world's last native speakers of Neo-Aramaic. Most of these people were also illiterate and had no written records. The language basically disappeared within a generation of their arrival in Israel. Yona's love for learning - especially language and texts - translated into his successful rise in the halls of academia. Today he is a professor at UCLA and one of the only experts on the Neo-Aramaic of his childhood.

This book is so compelling, however, because it is told by Yona's son, Ariel, as he attempts to understand his identity and his father by researching the family history. The story is a glimpse into the world of the "Lost Tribes" of Israel. It is also a tale of the founding of the state of Israel and a story of how far Jews have moved in such a short time. While the Sabar epic is more extreme than most, it is our collective narrative on many levels: lost homes, lost languages, lost hopes and relationships left behind with dizzying speed but still somehow connected to us - even when we least expect it. I don't want to ruin it for anyone but "My Father's Paradise" has the "losing my religion" feel of "Foreskin's Lament" with a more interesting and fantastic plot and without the biting sarcasm.

The book has received national awards and critical acclaim. See the author's website: http://www.arielsabar.com/. Read the book and tell me what you think.

Next books in line: "Broken," a memoir about addiction and recovery (recommended by a college friend); Pat Buchanan's "Churchill, Hitler and the Unnecessary War" (recommended by David Gold); a book on how to play bridge better; and one of my wife's detective-spy pageturners.