2 min read
Reform Jews may not know whether to laugh or cry. Fortunately, the Hebrew calendar offers quite a conspicuous clue.
Next week is Tisha B'Av, when we mourn Jewish tragedies across history, including the destruction of the two Temples. The fast falls on the ninth of Av because on this day the Israelites wept - they were misinformed by the Ten Spies that the Promised Land was unconquerable. They cried and cried, and this date became a national day of weeping for Jews for all time.
Jews are familiar with misinformation and defamations like those of the Ten Spies. Last week, Reform Jews in Israel were dismayed at defamations made against them. An Israeli government minister declared Reform Jews are not Jewish. The following day, the minister was forced to apologise to Reform Jews in Israel and the Diaspora. "No one has a monopoly for determining who is a better Jew," he said. He explained Reform Jews are Jewish - although they are "sinners" and sins need to be expunged from the land of Israel.
David Azoulay, of course, is not any old government minister. The minister, who last month called Reform Jews a "disaster for the people of Israel", runs the Religious Services Ministry, which presides over marriage and burial. Reform marriage and burial are still not recognised in Israel.
For Reform Jews in Israel, hardened by the heat of religious hatred, and Reform Jews in the Diaspora, simply appalled by the comments, the answer, this week, might be to cry.
On Tisha B'Av we particularly mourn the destruction of the First and Second Temples in Jerusalem, which occurred over six centuries apart on the same day. Why were they destroyed? According to Talmud, the First Temple was destroyed because Jews were murderous, idolatrous and sexually immoral: quite a cocktail. Yet the Second Temple was destroyed for a different reason. While Jews were perfectly pious, they were guilty of sinat chinam or "baseless hatred". Talmud states baseless hatred is as bad as murder, idolatry and sexual immorality put together.
David Azoulay represents the Charedi Shas party and meticulously observes Jewish rituals, like the priests of the Second Temple, but his comments last week represented "baseless hatred". The man responsible for Israeli religious rituals and rites directly defamed hundreds of thousands of Israelis (nearly 10 per cent of Israeli Jews, approximately half a million people self-define as Reform or Conservative), as well as two million Jews in the US and 20 per cent of British Jews. Let us not forget secular and unaffiliated Jews and Orthodox Jews who value Jewish unity and peoplehood.
Of course, Reform Jews cannot cry alone. The comments by David Azoulay demand action. Already my Reform colleagues in Israel have agreed to roundtable talks attended by government ministers and representatives of different Jewish religious streams. The forum is permanent and should make ministers accountable for the defamation of non-Orthodox Jews, so common in the highest ranks of government.
We echo the outrage of Reform Jews in Israel, but in the Diaspora, our direct influence on the situation is, of course, limited. We believe the best recourse for British Jews is something we are already brilliant at doing: not defamation or petty parochialism, but cross-communalism. If we model this behaviour, it becomes increasingly difficult for Israel to justify its treatment of Reform and other non-Orthodox Jews - and easier for government and religious leaders to develop a more collaborative and constructive form of coexistence. The status quo is not satisfactory.
