Charedi rabbi explains why he opposes the Western Wall deal
JERUSALEM — Charedi Orthodox Jews agree with their non-Orthodox brethren on one thing: The future of the Jewish people is at stake in the debate raging over who controls the Western Wall and conversion in Israel.
Other than that, though, there is little common ground.
According to Nachum Eisenstein, the chief rabbi of eastern Jerusalem’s charedi Maalot Dafna neighborhood, Reform and Conservative Judaism threaten to undermine the survival of the Jewish people.
“The reason why Judaism is the only religion that survived throughout thousands of years and all the massacres and all the attempts to destroy it is that the ours is the only religion that has always been the same, the way it was given to us on Mount Sinai,” Einstein said in an interview. “Who gave you, the Conservative and the Reform, the authority to make up a new religion?”
The Israeli government’s suspension last week of a deal that would have expanded a non-Orthodox prayer area has sparked a crisis in Israel–diaspora relations that some are calling unprecedented. Major U.S. Jewish groups, led by the Reform and Conservative movements, rushed to Israel to complain that the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had caved in to charedi Orthodox interests and insulted the Jewish majority that does not subscribe to Orthodoxy.
They also railed against a government-backed bill passed the same day, and since shelved, to grant Israel’s charedi-dominated chief rabbinate a monopoly over all conversions performed in the country.
But like much of his charedi community, Eisenstein welcomed the Western Wall decision as a victory over non-Orthodox Jewish meddling. And he said that the subsequent tabling of the conversion bill was a setback in the same battle.
Interior Minister Aryeh Deri, speaking last week to lawmakers from his Sephardic Orthodox Shas party, explained his camp’s resistance to non-Orthodox Judaism as a question of preservation.
“We have nothing against Jews in any place they may be,” he said. “They are all our brothers. Our fight is against the approach, this ideology which is attempting to bring a new Judaism here, is trying to destroy everything that we built here over the years.”
Charedi leaders often warn against the pernicious influence of non-Orthodox Judaism in Israel and disparage “Reformim,” as they call its adherents in Hebrew. Although as few as 5 percent of Israelis subscribe to Reform or Conservative Judaism, according to Pew, about half of Jewish Americans identify with one or the other.
Under pressure from the charedi political parties in the governing coalition, last Sunday Israel essentially withdrew its support for the Western Wall deal. Non-Orthodox Jewish leaders reacted with outrage.
“We love the State of Israel and will continue to,” Rabbi Rick Jacobs, the head of the North American Reform movement, said at the Knesset on June 26. “But we will not sit idly by while the State of Israel delegitimizes us and frankly says to the Jews of North America and the Jewish of the world, ‘You do not matter.’”
The Jewish Agency, which brokered the Western Wall deal on behalf of the Israeli government, took an unprecedented public stance against its reversal, and major Jewish groups warned of an erosion of support for the Jewish state. One prominent American Jewish philanthropist briefly threatened to suspend his donations to Israel.
But Eisenstein, who immigrated to Israel from Chicago decades ago, doubts the sincerity of the protests, saying they were about politics, not religion. He said Reform and Conservative leaders do not represent their constituents, who generally “don’t pray,” and anyway prefer to be part of Orthodox prayer when they visit Israel.
“Just a few leaders, carrying big salaries, want to use the Kotel to get recognition,” he said. “It’s a joke to say their people want a place to pray.
“Who are their people? They’re people who pay their membership fee to the Conservative or Reform temple, and they come once a year for the High Holidays, or maybe to make a bat mitzvah for one of their children.
“They go to a nightclub to mix [genders] and find women who dress inappropriately. When they come to the Kotel, the people want to come and visit a holy place.”
As far as concerns about a loss of American Jewish backing for Israel, Eisenstein said, “Anyone who threatens to withdraw his support from Israel doesn’t really love the state anyway.”
In contrast to non-Orthodox leaders, Eisenstein said, Israel’s chief rabbis and charedi politicians had acted in accordance with deep-seated sentiment in his community by rejecting the Western Wall agreement. He said the Western Wall’s rabbi, Shmuel Rabinowitz, had made a mistake by initially backing the agreement, as had any charedi politicians who may have consented to it.
“We did not agree to any compromise,” Eisenstein said. “Anyone who agreed to compromise, you have to speak to him. Who gave him the authority to do that? Every Orthodox Jew feels that we were left this Wailing Wall, which is the only remnant that we have from the holy Temple, and every Orthodox Jew feels it’s his responsibly to make sure the holiness of the wall is observed.”
Non-Orthodox Jews have visited the pluralistic prayer space at the southern end of the Western Wall, popularly known as Robinson’s Arch, since Israel recognized their right to do so in 2000. In 2013, Naftali Bennett, in his capacity as diaspora affairs minister, built a larger platform there as part of what he called an interim solution. Bennett last week said the platform still would be expanded and made more permanent.
Asked about this ongoing supposed desecration, Eisenstein said that charedi opposition to the Western Wall deal fundamentally was about staving off state recognition of non-Orthodox Judaism. The Western Wall agreement also called for an interdenominational Jewish committee to oversee the non-Orthodox section, which charedi critics felt gave non-Orthodox movements an unprecedented say in Israel’s religious affairs.
The conversion bill was meant to head off this kind of recognition. It requires the government to recognize for immigration purposes only conversions in Israel overseen by the chief rabbinate. Although the bill would affect only the small number of foreigners who convert to Judaism in Israel each year, and not non-Orthodox conversions performed overseas, it would grant a degree of Knesset recognition for the first time to the chief rabbinate’s de facto monopoly on deciding who is a Jew.
From an Orthodox perspective, Jewishness is matrilineal and does not depend on observance. But non-Orthodox converts are not considered Jewish, and marrying any non-Jew is prohibited by Jewish law. While charedi Jews are more than capable of keeping track of Jewish bloodlines, Eisenstein said, most Israelis would be dangerously confused were the state to begin recognizing Reform and Conservative conversions.
“Jews living in Israel don’t want intermarriage,” he said. “Charedim aren’t afraid of it because we won’t marry such people.
“But secular Jews won’t be smart enough to differentiate them from real Jews, and they’ll intermarry. It’s a terrible thing.”
The non-Orthodox movements, for their part, say that the crisis in Israel is not intermarriage but indifference. By controlling marriage, divorce, and conversion, and promoting laws that limit commerce, transportation, and entertainment on Shabbat, the chief rabbinate has alienated the nearly half of Israelis who call themselves secular. Reform and Conservative Judaism, they argue, offer secular Israelis an alternative for exploring Judaism on their own terms.
Eisenstein, who chairs an international charedi rabbinical group that pushes for stricter conversion standards, said the chief rabbinate’s conversion authority already was not up to snuff. Since he worked there years ago, he said, it has been taken over by more lenient Orthodox rabbis from the religious Zionist movement.
“What you call charedi, I don’t call charedi,” he said. “I have a higher standard.”
JTA Wire Service
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