Dr. Julius Mark, senior rabbi of Temple Emanu-El, New York, expressed the belief tonight that Israel is ready for a Liberal type of Judaism. Large numbers of Israelis, he said, are “indifferent or hostile to the Jewish religion, which to them means the Orthodoxy they have rejected.”
Rabbi Mark was one of three spiritual leaders who participated in a symposium on “Religion in Israel,” which was held under the auspices of the American Zionist Council at the B’nai Jeshurun Community Center. The other speakers, representing the Conservative and Orthodox branches of Judaism, respectively, were Rabbi Ben Zion Bokser of the Forest Hills Jewish Center, and Rabbi Emanuel Rackman of Congregation Shaaray Tefila of Far Rockaway.
“It will not be an American-type Reform or Conservatism,” Rabbi Mark said, “but a religious outlook that will grow out of Israel itself. In the meantime, they need guidance, but it must come not from American rabbis or laymen who come to them as foreign-supported missionaries whom they resent, but from dedicated men who have come to Israel to stay and who will throw in their lot with them.”
To many Israelis, he said, “indifference to religious ideas, forms and practices have developed into outright hostility toward the official rabbinate, because they feel that its political influence was interfering with the processes of democracy.”
“They are looking for something to fill a void in their souls, “Dr. Mark continued. “This something cannot be imported from abroad. It must arise out of their own lives and their own experience. The Liberal movement in America can provide the leadership but it cannot be the leadership of a temporary sojourn in Israel, but the dedicated leadership that is willing to share permanently in the life of the country.”
Rabbi Bokser declared that Israel’s religious problem derives chiefly from the domination of extremist groups: the ultra-Orthodox Neturei Karta and the Jewish secularists.
“The struggle for religious revitalization in Israel, “Dr. Bokser said, “will involve a far-flung program of activity. It will involve a shift in emphasis from politics to education. The religious forces in Israel are today organized as political parties centering their attention for the most part on Parliamentary battles. The exigencies of politics have often forced those parties into actions that have proven embarrassing to the cause of religion. Religion, moreover, on its deepest level, cannot be legislated. It must be fought for in the human heart, through persuasion and not through coercion.”
Rabbi Rackman asserted that Orthodox Jews is America are concerned because of the lack of religion on the part of many Israelis. “If the anti-religious forces prevail in Israel, they will do more to alienate the Jews of the rest of the world from themselves and their government, than a thousand American Councils for Judaism could ever do” he stated.
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