Reply To: Pew Research Study: The Good and the Bad

The following was published on Arutz Sheva’s website on 5/31/11.

Yad L’achim: ‘Kids in Secular Schools Don’t Know Shema’

Days before the holiday of Shavuot, Yad L’achim called for more action in promoting Jewish identity among schoolchildren in Israel.

Days before the holiday of Shavuot, the head of the Yad L’achim organization, Rabbi Sholom Dov Lipschitz, called for more action in promoting Jewish identity among tens of thousands of Jewish schoolchildren in Israel.

Now, granted, I don’t know how scientific his observations are, but I’d generally be one to accept what he says as a reasonable description of the situation in Israel.

“In Israel, it is not uncommon to hear secular Jews rebuking Conservative and Reform Jews for not following halacha.”

They say that in Israel, the synagogue the chilonim don’t go to is Orthodox. I happen to believe in pluralism as an ideal. Not all Jews may be observant in a way ideal to Orthodox folks, but it is certainly better for people to go to some synagogue and pray than to go to no synagogue at all. And, the idea that a person will be antagonistic towards all Jewish denominations while still viewing Orthodox as most legitimate is absurd. Attacking other Jews and protesting Women of the Wall doesn’t make a person a good Jew (or a good person, for that matter). This is a mentality that needs adjusting.

OTOH, I think the fact that Yesh Atid is bridging the divide is enormously positive; the idea of a place like Pardes, or the bet midrash at Hebrew University, or the various secular yeshivot (such as the one founded by MK Dr. Calderon) is wonderful. I studied at a pluralistic yeshiva in Manhattan, and believe that Torah should be available to all Jews.

At the end of the day, though, I do not believe that secular Israel, with its many problems, will be our saving grace. There are no easy solutions.

And, yytz: Halakha, for better or worse, is not the be all end all of determining Jewishness in a non-theocratic society. In America, for whatever it’s worth, Jewishness for the purpose of these studies is generally defined by the individual’s self-identification. There are other factors and modes of identity at play.