BEHIND THE HEADLINES Intermovement group urges dialogue on pluralism issues

NEW YORK, Dec. 17 (JTA) — A group of prominent Orthodox, Conservative and Reform Jews has issued a public appeal encouraging the work of a committee in Israel charged with resolving the seemingly intractable conflict over religious pluralism. The group of 18 rabbis, academics and lay leaders was brought together by Shvil HaZahav, an organization founded by modern Orthodox Rabbi Shmuel Goldin, of Englewood, N.J. Goldin’s work initially focused on promoting pro-peace process attitudes in the Orthodox community. He started the interdenominational group last January, when friction between liberal and Orthodox Jews in the United States began to explode amid the push for Israeli legislation to codify Orthodox control over conversions in Israel. Participants in the dialogue group, which has been meeting quietly every several weeks, are affiliated with the centrist Orthodox-run Yeshiva University, the Conservative movement’s Jewish Theological Seminary and the Reform movement’s Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, related denominational organizations and individual congregations. They are urging that their model of interdenominational trialogue be replicated in other communities. “There are some other communities that have contacted us, but their attempts are still pending,” said Goldin, whose group means “golden path” in Hebrew. “By going public and attempting to say that this is working for us, we hope to encourage it in other places,” he said. According to participant Rabbi Eric Yoffie, president of the Reform movement’s Union of American Hebrew Congregations, “American Jews must move beyond their differences and engage their brothers and sisters in civil dialogue. Only then will we begin to develop a genuine understanding of each other.” Another participant, Anne Lapidus Lerner, vice chancellor at JTS, said, “Our trialogue has demonstrated that American Jews can engage in civil discussion with those who have different — frequently fundamentally different — religious points of view. “To achieve mutual understanding, there must be conversations all over the United States just as we established here. “So, too, must there be religious dialogue among Israelis” and “between American Jews and Israelis,” she said. In a related development, the Conservative movement this week issued a memorandum to its rabbis and other congregational leaders outlining its position on the current negotiations in Israel. Those talks are being held by a committee led by Israeli Finance Minister Ya’acov Ne’eman, an Orthodox Jew, and include the participation of several Orthodox members as well as one representative each from the Reform and Conservative movements. After several missed deadlines, the committee is now facing a Jan. 31 deadline to come up with a way to resolve the demands of the Conservative and Reform movements that the government of Israel recognize their rabbis’ authority over matters of personal status such as marriage, divorce and conversion, while it conforms with Orthodox requirements that a traditional interpretation of Jewish law not be violated in doing so. The Conservative movement statement was written by Rabbi Jerome Epstein, executive vice president of its congregational arm, and Rabbi Joel Meyers, executive director of its rabbinical organization. They are urging their constituents to communicate their feelings to leaders of the Israeli government, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Ne’eman and Knesset members Natan Sharansky and Alexander Lubotsky. It also urges Conservative Jews to express their feelings about the progress, or lack thereof, on religious pluralism, to local Israeli consuls general, and to write op-ed essays for publication in their local newspapers. The statement says that “while there are no guarantees” that the Ne’eman Committee will be able to develop proposals acceptable both to the Conservative and the Orthodox, “we are committed to working with this process through Jan. 31.” It also outlines the way the Conservative movement, known in Israel as Masorti, is working with the Reform movement. Though the denominations are lumped together in the minds of many Israelis, there are significant differences, including the fact that the Reform movement permits its rabbis to officiate at intermarriages and same-sex unions, while the Conservative movement does not. Because together the two movements represent approximately 85 percent of affliated American Jews, the Conservative movement’s leaders say that “it is by working together on this issue that we can most forcefully maintain our own identities while, at the same time, articulate our common demands for religious rights in Israel.”