From Yishai Fliesher, Editor of Jewish Press
Dear Rabbi Dana Evan Kaplan,
Thank you for your article in the Forward entitled “Losing Zuckerberg – Why Did Facebook King Move Away From Reform Judaism?” In the article you lament the intermarriage of Mark Zuckerberg and ask why a young man who comes from an affiliated Reform background would call himself an atheist and choose to marry out of our nation.
Poignantly you write: “For those in the Reform movement and for those who are committed to non-Orthodox American Judaism generally, we need to take the sudden interest in Zuckerberg’s personal life as an opportunity to perform cheshbon hanefesh, to take an accounting of our accomplishments and, as in this case, our failings.”
As one who taught Reform Hebrew school for many years at the flagship Temple Emanuel in Manhattan, I agree with your concerns that Reform Judaism is too lax, too undefined, as you write: “We failed Zuckerberg and will continue to fail young people like him because the pluralistic theologies of Reform Judaism articulated since the 1960s make it difficult to grasp what we Reform Jews believe on any given issue. Our faith is too amorphous… we have lost our way, ignoring scholarship in favor of any type of “spirituality,” no matter how vacuous.”
Indeed. Even in your own article you admit that as a Reform Rabbi you would not be comfortable asking a congregant to observe some form of the Sabbath or even refrain from marrying a non-Jew. These are two Jewish fundamentals, one dealing with the culture of Judaism, the other with the perpetuation of our nation, yet you feel powerless to call for adherence. And as a result, a young Jew whom you train grows up to be less of a Jew and more of a secular humanist and is it a surprise when you raise a secular humanist that he or she looks to marry a co-religionist of that faith and not the Jewish one?
But my critique is not about Reform’s rejection of classical Judaism, because that polemic has been hashed out time and again.
My argument is that in our times there are two separate tracks of Jewish continuity: Traditional Judaism and Zionism. The real failing of Reform Judaism is that it rejected both of them. You can reject one and still survive, but you can’t reject both and make it.
To remain Jewish in America, without the external aid of anti-semitism, there needs to be a glue which keeps ideology and peoplehood at the forefront of a young Jewish mind. The traditional Torah world has strong ritual, ideology and a social matrix within the community, making intermarriage almost impossible. But an American Jew who lacks tradition does not have much to separate him or her from a philo-Semitic American gentile and he or she is likely to end up marrying one.
So the question stands: barring the super-success of Chabad and other such religious movements on campus, what can deliver powerful Jewish identity to millions of young American Reform Jews?
Your conclusion, Rabbi Dana, is that Reform Judaism needs a new infusion of Judaism: “We need to ask ourselves why he [Zuckerberg] is apparently not committed to the God of his ancestors, and to take drastic steps to rebuild our religious ecosystem.”
I applaud your sentiment, but I am skeptical. Do you really think the Reform movement will abide a “Kosher-style” surge? And even if that infusion comes, do you think that it will be attractive to young people? Conservative Jewry, ostensibly more traditional, has not fared much better than Reform.
Permit me to suggest that there is a more natural and faster track to keeping young Reform Jews Jewish. Instead of trying to rebuild a ‘religious ecosystem’, how about steering our youth to take part in the rebuilding of the physical and social ecosystem of our people in our ancestral homeland? In other words, instead of pushing more Judaism in the Reform world, why not push more Zionism?
There is a future for Reform youth in Israel. In Israel, you can be a secular humanist and still remain Jewish because you will marry Jewish. Moreover, secular Israelis do not remain Jewish only by virtue of living in a Jewish society that is rejected by the neighboring gentiles. Being a secular Israeli is very much a Jewish cultural identity. Most secular Israelis connect to the beautiful narrative of being Israeli, fighting in the Israeli army, getting married under a Chuppah, having a family Seder, and building a home in the land of Israel.
Furthermore, Reform youth can buy into Israel because Zionism is a short leap away from the Reform conception of Tikkun Olam – what is more Tikkun Olam then building a model country in the Middle East? Reform youth can be galvanized to take part in building a Jewish country, especially if we show them that their input and fresh ideas are needed and respected. Israel has all they are looking for: from Yad VaShem to lively beaches, from great hospitals to great theater, from a great history to a great future. Send them over here and let them fall in love with the land, with the language, with the culture, and with each other.
Finally, this direction is not new or alien to the Reform movement – in the 40’s Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver was one of the most important American Jewish leaders and his work assured the support of the American Jewish community, and President Truman’s, for the establishment of the Jewish state. There are many streets in Israel named after him. Today, Rabbi Richard Jacobs, the newly elected President of the Union of the Reform Judaism of the United States, with his fluent Hebrew, strong ties, and vocal support for Israel, appears to be a leader capable of implementing this directional change. With Reform rabbis making inroads in Israel, and successful Reform Kibbutzim settling the land, the path is opening up for Reform youth to buy into Israel on a larger scale.
Had Mark Zuckerberg been told that the Jewish people have a mission to rebuild a Jewish state, and that his creative talents are needed, he may have harnessed his mind in that direction. He could have been a cyber-warrior in the IDF, or may have started a start-up in the start-up nation. Had he been offered an opportunity to take part in the most exciting project of the Jewish people in two-thousand years, he probably would have taken it. (Notice, by the way, how involved Mark was in the launching of President Shimon Peres’ Facebook page. It seemed to me that he was proud to be helping Israel and thereby expressed his pride in being Jewish.)
Rabbi Dana, with great respect to your admirable mission of bringing in more concrete Judaism back to the Reform, I think that Israel holds a lot more Jewish sex-appeal for the average teenager and college student, and it is an easier fit with their current non-observant mindset. If we care about keeping the next Zuckerberg in the fold, we must help the next generation choose life by plugging them into the exciting story of the Jewish State.
Looking forward to your response,
Yishai
@ BlandOatmeal:
Read Pure Jew hatred in Matthew 23 Here
@ BlandOatmeal:
Chicken or Egg? Cause and Effect, Historical: “Challenge and Response”?
Jews always considered Christians both heretical and later Pagan. It was the Christians who sided with Rome ratted out the Jews and caused Bar kochba to deal with them harshly even to eradicating some. In the midst of a revolt against the most powerful Empire in the World the Jews had to deal with cowardly traitorous Christians in their midst.
It was never love of the Muslims Persians or any other that drew the support of the Jews it was always a choice of who for the Jews was the least worst and who could effect best in their opinion a return of the Jews to their land. Christianity was always deemed the worst for the Jews and the strongest impediment to the return of the Jews. Replacement theology in Christendom was supreme even till today. Christianity is the negation of Judaism and Christians acted always to effect their own belief in their supremacy over the Jews.
The Real Story of Christmas Audio
The Real Story of Christmas article
@ BlandOatmeal:
Chicken or Egg? Cause and Effect, Historical: “Challenge and Response”?
Jews always considered Christians both heretical and later Pagan. It was the Christians who sided with Rome ratted out the Jews and caused Bar kochba to deal with them harshly even to eradicating some. In the midst of a revolt against the most powerful Empire in the World the Jews had to deal with cowardly traitorous Christians in their midst.
It was never love of the Muslims Persians or any other that drew the support of the Jews it was always a choice of who for the Jews was the least worst and who could effect best in their opinion a return of the Jews to their land. Christianity was always deemed the worst for the Jews and the strongest impediment to the return of the Jews. Replacement theology in Christendom was supreme even till today. Christianity is the negation of Judaism and Christians acted always to effect their own belief in their supremacy over the Jews.
The Real Story of Christmas Audio
Read Pure Jew hatred in Matthew 23 Here
The Real Story of Christmas article
@ the phoenix:
Read Jeremiah in context http://www.chabad.org/library/bible_cdo/aid/16010/showrashi/true
@ yamit82:
Yamit, you said,
Open mouth, insert foot. You have just excused the Christian nations for every outrage against the Jews. By your own words, the Jewish people have ALWAYS sided with the enemies of Christians; then they complain loudly when the Christians push back. What a stinking load of hypocrisy you are at times, Yam! No worry — just take a bath and come back. Overall, I enjoy talking with you.
Aryeh Said:
That is what I was thinking when I read the article.
@ yamit82:
dear yamit,
thank you for your last post.
on one hand.
and
jeremiah 13’23 (as i have explained it in the past)
on the OTHER hand…
perfect concoction for internal struggle…
@ BlandOatmeal:
My reply to you disappeared??? Again
@ BlandOatmeal:
I overlooked nothing nor am I apologetic for Jewish behavior against Christians who inherited The Land of Israel from Rome and thus I view them as Usurpers, Colonizers and occupiers of Jewish Land taken by force by Rome. Persians being neither Jewish, Muslim or Christian placed no religious value on Jerusalem although they must have seen a mirror religion to their Zoroastrian Faith in Christianity.
Arabs and Jews are closely related lingually, culturally and even religiously.
When comparing treatment of Jews under Christian and Moslem rule the Jews fared much much better under most Islamic rulers than they did under Christian ones. I know of no historical incident where Jews sided with Christians against Muslims but always aligned with Muslims against Christians.
The reasons are so obvious I don’t think I need to enumerate them for you.
Some history between Jews and Muslims
“Ephraim and the half tribe of Manasseh are there in the mountains over against the city of Mecca… They are strong of body and of iron heart. They are horse-men… They are mighty men of war. One is a match for a thousand.” said Eldad the Danite, in the 9th century, of one of the Jewish communities he had seen on his travels.
It was probably this community, and others like it, which two centuries earlier were among the North African and Arabian Jewish communities that participated in the turmoil of the Muslim conquests. The interactions between Jews and Arabs were always complex, with politics influencing the participants as much or more than religion. Thus, while there were instances of horrible enmity, it also seems that the Muslim armies of Mohamed were supported by large allied armies of Jews.
An Arab Muslim story gives a glimpse of the relationship between the Jewish warriors and Mohamed:
It seems that one day Mohamed had planned a battle against a particular city. Many said that the time was wrong, or that the city was too well defended.
At length, the commander of the Jews came into Mohamed’s tent.
“Tell me frankly, So that we can decide whether to leave or to aid you,” said the Jew, “Did you decide on this battle or did God command it?”
…For it is known to all that when Mohamed planned a battle, it invariably failed, but if God commanded it, then the armies of the Muslims were invariably victorious.
The Jews of Yemen also have a story about the aliance of the Jewish community and the armies of Mohamed.
Instead, a Moorish, Muslim army defeated the Visigoths in Spain a few years later (711 – 715 CE). Under Moorish rule, the Jews of Spain were liberated and returned to their rightful position in Spanish society (see Spain before the Expulsion).
You conveniently didn’t mention, Yam, that the Jews of Palestine were allied with the hated Muslims who persecuted the Christians, before the arrival of the Crusaders. That’s why so many of them died in Jerusalem, fighting alongside the infidels. As usual, your rhetoric is deeply footed in BS and half-truths.
@ the phoenix:
My short historical background was to show that till very recent times it was near impossible for most Jews to return to the Land for all of the historical reasons I listed plus the expense and the physical dangers involved in such journeys. Yet as I have shown hundreds even thousands of Jews did return over the centuries.
I have shown that the Jews even aligned with the Persians to wrest Jerusalem and most of then Palestine from the hated Christians who persecuted the Jews , defiled our holy sites and banned Jews from Jerusalem. We actually had physical sovereignty for several years before the Persians betrayed us to the Christians and the Jews were again massacred and our brief sovereignty short lived.
As to Rashi specifically not only did he know his Talmud by his quotes and writings he did not disagree nor did most of the rabbi’s and sages. It always came down to what was possible weighted against the risks to themselves and other Jews. They could not just buy or receive a free ticket on El Al in a few hours arrive in Israel and be given a place to live, free health care and a basket of goodies immigrants receive.
Today Israel is mostly self sufficient agriculturally and we have a modern industrial base..
In the 12th 13th and 14th centuries Jews could justify not returning to Palestine but not so today. The commandment to settle and live in the Land of Israel is not time constrained but applicable to all Jews in every generation. What was impossible was impossible but when it is possible each Jew if they do not choose to obey the commandment will face the judgement of his or her decision, or their children or grandchildren.
When G-d took the Hebrews from Egypt he didn’t say OK now you are free you can go live in NYC Paris London or Rome. The Jewish people is a National-Religious people whose fulfillment of purpose rests in the reclamation of Eretz Yisrael and in the Jewish institutions that govern it. Unique among the nations, only the Jewish people is a people for whom it is a religious and national obligation to establish an independent polity. As important to the physical reclamation of the land is the physical return of the Jewish people to the biblically promised lands of our forefathers.
G-d has promised the Jewish people the Land of Israel as the physical homeland for its national existence. Know also that there can be no other reasons for the establishment of a Jewish State other than for it to represent the totality of Torah thought and observance. Put more succinctly, the only viable Jewish state is a state in which Jews behave as Jews: that the law of the land is the Law of the Jews. There is no other way for one to justify the need for an independent Jewish polity.
Tehillim (Psalms) 105:44-45 states:
And He gave them the lands of the nations and the labor of the people did they inherit. That they might keep His statutes and observe His laws.
Simply put, G-d give the Jewish people a place and that place is the Land of Israel.
I suggest all 3 options: More Judaism or more Zionism or both.
@ yamit82:
dear yamit,
thank you for your 3 exposees of our nation’s history over the course of two mileneums. i am certain that quite a few people that read the israpundit blog, (myself included) WILL find a few priceless nuggets of information not known before….
BUT,
with due respect yamit…you have TOTALLY dodged the questions that i have asked yesterday…
just pointing it out…
🙂
@ the phoenix:
The jews did actually gain some form of national sovereignty in 614
Read my link below.
Part #3
The vengeance of the Jews was greater than their avarice
https://www.israpundit.org/2008/?p=14590&cpage=1#comment-49641@
@ the phoenix:
Part #2
During the time of the Muslims, life for the Jews here was for the most part easier than under the Christians.
In 1210, following the demise of the Crusaders, several hundred rabbis, known as the Ba’alei Tosefot, re-settled in Israel. This marked the emergence of the first Ashkenazic European community in Israel.
In 1263, the great Rabbi and scholar Nachmanides also known as the Ramban, established a small Sephardic community on Mount Zion which was outside the walls. Later, in the 1400s, that community moved inside the walls and they established the Ramban Synagogue which still exists today.
When Nachmanides came to Jerusalem there was already a vibrant Jewish community in Hebron, though the Muslims did not permit them entry into the Cave of the Machpela (where the Jewish Patriarchs and Matriarchs are buried). Indeed, this ban continued until the 20th century.
More Jews started to migrate to Israel following their expulsion from Spain in 1492. In the 16th century, large numbers of Jews migrated to the northern city of Tzfat (also known as Safed) and it became the largest Jewish population in Israel and the center of Jewish mysticism—the Kabbalah.
In mid-1700s a student of the Ba’al Shem Tov by the name of Gershon Kitover started the first Hassidic community in Israel. This community was part of what was called Old Yishuv. (Today, when in the Old City of Jerusalem, you can visit the “Old Yishuv Court Museum” and learn some fascinating facts about it.)
Another very significant event in the growth of the Jewish community of Israel took place in the early 19th century. Between 1808 and 1812 three groups of disciples of the great rabbi Rabbi Eliyahu Kramer, the Vilna Gaon , numbering about 500 people, came to the land of Israel. Initially they settled in Tzfat in the Galilee, but after several disaster including a devastating earthquake, they settled in Jerusalem. Their impact was tremendous. They founded several new neighborhoods (including Mea Shearim) and set up numerous Kollels (Yeshivot where married men are paid a monthly stipend to study Torah). Their arrival revived the presence of Ashkenazi Jewry in Jerusalem, which for over 100 years had been mainly Sephardi and had a huge impact on the customs and religious practices of the religious community in Israel.
By 1880, there were about 40,000 Jews, living in the land of Israel among some 400,000 Muslims.
@ the phoenix:
Part #1
There was never a period in the history of the Jewish people that some Jews were moved to return to the Land and some even succeeded.
The yearning for the land of Israel never left the Jewish people.
In other words, the land of Israel was always a place in the minds of the Jews where the Jewish national potential could someday be fulfilled.
From the time that the Temple was destroyed by the Romans in 70 CE, Jerusalem was leveled, rebuilt on the Roman model, and re-named Aeolia Capitolina. The land of Israel was re-named Palestine (after the extinct Philistines, some of the worst enemies of the Jews in ancient times.
From that time, Jews were barred from Jerusalem. The Byzantine Empire (the Constantinople-based Christian version of the Roman Empire) continued the earlier policy, and Jews were not allowed into Jerusalem until the Muslims conquered the Byzantines in 638 CE.
Once the Muslims took over the Land of Israel, they held onto it with the brief exception of the period of the Crusades. The Turkish Ottoman Empire held onto power here the longest: from 1518 to 1917. Yet, during all this time, the Muslims generally treated the Holy Land as a backwater province. There was no attempt to make Jerusalem, which was quite run-down, an important capital city and only a few Muslim dynasties attempted to improve its infrastructure (save for Umayyads in the 7th century, the Mameluks in the 13th century the re-building of the walls of the city in 16th century during the reign of the Ottoman Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent.) Similarly, only limited building went on in the rest of the land, which was barren and not populated by many Arabs. The only major new city built was Ramle, which served as the Ottoman administrative center.
@ yamit82:
Yamit,
I agree with you completely!
Please do not encourage Reform Jews to immigrate to Israel. Israel has enough problems with the Reform Rabbis who are here, siding with Arabs and fighting against the Yishuv.
@ yamit82:
i am REALLY trying to understand, and these are TRUE questions and not a ‘wise guy cracks’
do you suppose that rashi was not aware of this quotation?
and if so, what did he do living for the sixty five years of his life in troyes, france?
his contribution to judaism is quite unsurpassable…
so, then, is there some value to be gained from a/jew(s) living in diaspora or none at all?
and if it is ‘none at all’ how is rashi’s work to be valued?
and if there IS value, maybe the quote is too harsh?
@ Yidvocate:
The mitzvah Yishuv Eretz Yisrael= all the other mitzvot including Shabbat and Yom kipur. Where did you say you lived?
Mishne Torah, Sefer Shoftim, The Laws of Kings and Their Wars, Chapter 5, Halakha 12.
Source Halakha 12:
The Jew living outside the Land, constitutes the worshiping of idols because doing so denies the foundations of the Torah, i.e., the enactment of the Torah, and the living by the statutes of the Law. The project of enacting the Torah can only be legally accomplished in the Land as defined by the Law.
Now what Judaism do you prescribe for the reform movement? Seems to me that secular Zionism is close to the primary Torah ideal than all of the rituals practiced by Orthodox Jews in the diaspora.
To paraphrase Rashi: [Rituals and prayers of Jews living in the diaspora have no validity except so as to keep their practice and memory alive so that when the Jews return to the Land they will not seem strange.]
Reform Judaism is sick and dieing. It is not only Zuckerberg who has left, it’s thousands who are leaving continuously because they get nothing out of Reform Judaism. The worst thing that the Reform movement has going for it, is their deluded rabbis and leaders who somehow continue to insist that their ways offer a future to maintain and cultivate the Jewish nation. The blind leading the blind. Literally!
Israel drained the Diaspora. Earlier Jewish presence from Denmark to Iran made the nation resilient to persecutions.
Globalization allowed the anti-Semitic forces the global projection of force; Jews were annihilated all across Europe and in some Muslim countries, a hitherto impossible scale of massacre.
The state of Israel finished off the ancient Jewish communities abroad, and made world Jewry extremely vulnerable. Jews are already reduced to insignificance relative to rest of the world’s population. The famous Jewish riches, an important source and manifestation of our strength, faded in the era of oil wealth and public stock corporations.
That’s besides the rich Jews being the first ones to assimilate. A major Arab attack on Israel, not even nuclear, could wipe out the only sustainable Jewish community in the world in a matter of days.
Jews do not even exist in many countries where their communities flourished for millennia.
Jews are extremely vulnerable in Israel. Such a situation cannot continue for long.
In the globalized secular world, Jews cannot survive outside of Israel.
Even if the Israeli experiment fails, the Jews who stream out of the country will still preserve a post-shock sense of identity perhaps sufficient to guard them against assimilation until religious identity is acceptably redefined.
As far as I’m concerned, Zuckerberg is not Jewish. Zuckerberg has long renounced Judaism. He is a typical leftist un-Jew.
And what’s wrong with infusing a healthy dose of “Judism” into the G-dless realm of the “reformed” Jew. Is that not that alone that has kept us as a nation despite our exile for 2,000 years? With all due respect to Yishai (and much is due!) secular Zionism is as vacious as Reform Judism – a cut vine that can not survive beyond the 3rd generation. No, it is only the Torah of Israel that has kept us all this time. Remember that Zion is none other than the Bais HaMikdosh and Zionism our longing for its rebuilding and our ability to once again be close to our maker. Cultivating this desire is our only hope for salvation as a Jew.