Let me confess at the outset: I'm an Orthodox Jewish
fundamentalist. That seems to be the term these days for
those of us who believe in the divine origin and eternally
binding nature of the Torah and who endeavor to comply with
the requirements of Jewish religious law (halacha) --
as Jews have done for millennia.
In the eyes and words of some contemporary non-Orthodox
leaders, that conviction make some and Jews like me bad guys.
Admittedly, the men among us tend to favor black hats. All
the same, though, we are innocent of the pending charges:
that we see non-Orthodox Jews as something other than our
brothers and sisters, that we bear them ill will, that we
disparage the ideal of Jewish unity.
Those accusations stem largely from our opposition to changes
in Israel's "religious status quo," the compromise that
Israel's early leaders instituted in order to allow a
secular, socialist/democratic system of government to
simultaneously exist as a Jewish state. That modus
vivendi has always provided Israelis total freedom of
religion, but at the same time accommodated the Jewish
religious tradition in limited areas. For examples: A Jewish
school system is provided for those opting for it (with
secular schools for the rest); the Jewish dietary laws are
respected at government-sponsored gatherings and in the
military; and traditional halacha, through the medium
of an official rabbinate, is the arbiter of Jewish "personal
status" issues -- like marriage, divorce and conversion to
Judaism.
That latter accommodation, by virtue of the single standard
it maintains for accepting non-Jews into the Jewish people in
Israel, has helped prevent the emergence of multiple "Jewish
peoples" in the Jewish State for the past half-century.
Israel's need to embrace the Jewish religious tradition's
standards for personal status issues is no fundamentalist
plot to ensure Orthodox hegemony. It was originally laid out,
in fact, in a letter signed by, among other non-black
hatters, the Jewish State's "founding father" David Ben-
Gurion the secularist who would become Israel's first Prime
Minister. He realized that, without a single standard for
conversion, the Jewish people "would, G-d forbid, become
split into two."
Ben-Gurion's common sense insight -- that Jewish unity is
enhanced, not degraded, through the embrace of a single
standard acceptable to all -- is no less relevant today than
it was when Israel was founded 50 years ago.
What has changed is that the leaders of the American-based
Reform and Conservative movements have in recent years
decided to aggressively attack the single-standard common
denominator approach. Their attack has proceeded on two
separate fronts: in the Israeli courts, where they have
enlisted an activist judiciary in exploiting the absence of
express statutory authority for the religious status quo; and
in the court of public opinion, where they have attempted to
portray Israel as a theocracy controlled by religious
fanatics who treat non-Orthodox Jews as second-class
citizens.
Bad guys that we "Ultra-Orthodox" are, the Israelis among us
dared respond to the court rulings by . . . well, by doing
pretty much what the Americans would do were the U.S. Supreme
Court to suddenly determine a lack of adequate statutory
basis for a legal protection that had always been assumed to
exist. They asked their representatives in the Knesset -- the
counterpart of ours in the Congress -- to legislate it back
into existence. An uproar among Reform and Conservative
leaders ensued. Israeli legislators have been threatened with
persona non grata status in American temples, and the
Israeli government is being warned of a "break in relations
with" (read: "cessation of donations from") American non-
Orthodox Jews. And, just to remind everybody who the enemy
was, an advertisement on the op ed page of The New York
Times, not only referred to Orthodox Jews as
"fundamentalists," but included words like "hijack" and
"madness" to ensure that readers would visualize crazed eyes,
kaffiyas and Kalishnikovs instead of citizens appealing to
their democratically elected representatives. For good
measure, and to ensure the vitality of the old canard about
Orthodox Jews rejecting the Jewishness of non-Orthodox Jews,
the New Israel Fund, in the large headline of a full page ad
it placed in the same paper (and others), challenged American
Jews to "tell the Israeli government exactly what we are.
Jews."
Most amazing of all, in the very same breath that they issue
calls for multiple conversion standards in Israel -- the
surest path to multiple "Jewish peoples" -- the non-Orthodox
leaders declare "Jewish unity" their goal. And, of course,
declare us black-hatted guys The Enemy, implying that we
would deprive Jews of their freedom of belief when all we
seek is to have the Jewish State continue to officially
respect the standard for conversion that has kept the Jewish
people one nation for over 3000 years.
We hope, of course, that the Reform and Conservative laities
with neither swallow their leaders' rhetoric nor assume their
ill will, that our non-Orthodox brothers and sisters will
achieve objectivity and discern the long-term dangers in
their leaders' quest for immediate gratification in Israel.
Our prayer is that our fellow Jews will come to understand
that true Jewish unity comes not from feel-good diatribes but
from foresight; not from hysterical name-calling but from
rational stock taking; not from disparaging the past but from
respecting it.
