There was widespread outcry at the end of July after hundreds of Charedi protesters rained abuse on the batmitzvah ceremony of an American girl at the Western Wall in Jerusalem. It was the latest unseemly incident at the sacred site, which in recent years has become a focus for inter-Jewish divisions.
Non-Orthodox movements in the diaspora have been left frustrated by the failure of the Israeli government to implement an agreement to extend the egalitarian enclosure at the Wall. The controversy at the Kotel remains “a bleeding wound”, Israel’s Minister of Diaspora Affairs, Nachman Shai, told a gathering in Basel last month to mark the 125th anniversary of the first Zionist Congress in the city.
Religious disputes are not the only issue weighing on the mind of the veteran Labour politician. He has spoken before of the risk of a rightward-turning Israel growing apart from the more liberally minded sections of the diaspora, particularly from American Jewish youth.
His sensitivity to diaspora views was evident earlier this year. Israel’s president Isaac Herzog criticised the Board of Deputies when it reacted to the brief visit to the UK of the far-right leader of Israel’s Religious Zionism party, Betzalel Smotrich, with a tweet in blunt Hebrew telling him to “get back on the plane”. But Dr Shai’s response was more sympathetic to the Board, saying that there was “no place for racism anywhere”.
In Basel, he reiterated his calls for Israeli politicians to pay greater attention to diaspora Jews. “It is our duty, as a state and as a government, to integrate the voices of world Jewry into the decision-making process within the state of Israel,” he declared. “Many of the decisions we make in Jerusalem affect not only the citizens of Israel but Jewish communities around the world alike.”
He also advocated a “reversal” in Israel-diaspora relations, which should concentrate not on what the diaspora could do for Israel but on what Israel could do to strengthen the diaspora.
Many Israelis would probably accept that Jews abroad might want a say on religious issues such as access to the Kotel or the recognition of converts. However, they might less be enamoured of Dr Shai’s idea that outsiders should be listened to more widely. He has previously predicted that American Jewry would set up a lobby in the Knesset to get across their views to Israeli politicians.
Nachman Shai
Worried about tensions between Israel and the diaspora: Israel's Diaspora Affairs Minister Nachman Shai (Getty)
His concern rests on the traditional belief that Israel and diaspora communities remain bound by ties of peoplehood. Kol Yisrael arevim zeh lazeh, “All Jews are responsible for another,” says the Talmud.
But not everyone takes that bond as given. More than 30 years ago, the historian David Vital, in his book The Future of the Jews, forecast growing divergence between the Jewish state and the diaspora.
World Jewry was an “archipelago of discrete islands” with Israel in a “class by itself”, not least because its Jewish citizens were members of a nation, while in the diaspora Jewish association was voluntary, he argued. “By establishing a community which differs in quality and ethos from all the others, it has gone far already to deprive the Jewish people of one of its central myths: the myth of unity.”
When Dr Shai himself was asked in a podcast interview four years what Israel and the diaspora had in common, his answer was interesting. “We want, all I believe, to make the world a better place. That’s the famous tikkun olam.”
He might have suggested a shared sense of history or memory. But rather than turning to the past, he was looking ahead; tikkun olam, though it might be a contentious notion to some, entails a sense of mission that draws on religious sources, a distillation of prophetic ethics.
What’s notable too, is that the modern idea of tikkun olam, like so much else, is something that developed within American Jewry rather than Israel. Which raises the question that when Dr Shai calls for Israel to support the diaspora, what exactly is it contributing.
There’s no doubt that our community has benefited from Israel’s vitality as a Jewish centre. Hundreds of our youth go to study at yeshivot or seminaries or other institutions every year, returning with greater knowledge and commitment. Israel is a major training ground for our rabbinate.
Higher institutions which teach Talmud to women have helped in their empowerment. Israel is at the forefront of the application of halachah to medical science and technology.
However, if you are looking for an inspirational new movement or a transformative Jewish idea that has emerged out of Israel, it is hard to think of one. While Israel has certainly nurtured influential rabbis such as the Lithuanian leader, Yosef Shalom Eliashiv, or Sephardi Chief Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, it has not produced figures that have made an impression on the wider Jewish public such as the Lubavitcher Rebbe or Jonathan Sacks.
The only genuine new movement may be the quasi-messianic religious nationalism of the post-’67 settlers — and that would hardly commend itself to many diaspora Jews.
Perhaps the state is still too young and its people have necessarily turned their energies elsewhere. Perhaps the conditions of Jewish life are so specific to Israel that developments would not easily travel. Or perhaps the seeds of religious innovation are quietly germinating underground, ready to spring forth in future generations.
