Special Interview a Reform Shul Grows in Jerusalem

A potentially violent, highly-charged confrontation in Jerusalem on Simchat Torah between an Orthodox rabbi and his followers and congregants of a Reform synagogue has unexpectedly enhanced the impact of the Reform movement in Israel, says Rabbi Levi Weiman-Kelman, the Reform rabbi of Kehilat Kol Haneshama.

The incident, in which Orthodox Rabbi Eliahu Abergil, the Sephardic Chief Rabbi of the Baka quarter of Jerusalem, and about 25 of his followers entered the tiny Reform synagogue, shouted expletives at the women dancing with the Torah along with the men and tried to take the Torah out of the synagogue, took on national and international overtones.

The severity of the incident was exacerbated when, in a radio interview, Israeli Sephardic Chief Rabbi Mordechai Eliahu asserted that “There is no freedom of worship in Israel. There is only one Torah, and it is forbidden to recognize the legitimacy of any other way of religion.”

“For the Chief Rabbi of Israel, a state employe, to say that there’s no freedom of religion deeply offended — outraged — the citizens of the State of Israel who believe that theirs is a democratic country,” Weiman-Kelman said in an interview with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “That made your average secular Israeli feel that it was a personal attack” and not just on the Baka synagogue, he said.

INCIDENT EXPLODES AN ORTHODOX MYTH

Following the incident and the statement by Eliahu and Religion Minister Zevulun Hammer who also supported the Orthodox stand, the media was “just flooded,” said Weiman-Kelman, and “there was just a hunger for information about the Reform movement in Israel.” The incident, he added, “really exploded the Orthodox myth that Reform belongs in America and doesn’t have a place in Israel.”

Another windfall resulting from the incident, Weiman-Kelman said, is that there are people in Israel who now say, “There is an alternative” to Orthodoxy. “They identify with the Reform movement as a religious alternative.” However, he added, “That doesn’t mean they’re all running out and joining a Reform synagogue, because there’s a difference between identification and affiliation.”

EFFORTS TO INAUGURATE AN EGALITARIAN SYNAGOGUE

Weiman-Kelman punctuated his interview with the JTA with moments of silence and thoughtfulness as he recalled the incident and its aftermath. The 33-year-old rabbi — who is the son of Rabbi Wolfe Kelman, executive vice president of the Rabbinical Assembly of America (Conservative) — was in New York this week as part of a nationwide tour to garner financial support for his synagogue, which has totally outgrown its present premises, a small room in the Baka community center which serves as an arts and crafts center on Sundays and a food cooperative the rest of the week.

Weiman-Kelman, who was ordained at the Conservative Jewish Theological Seminary of America, took his Conservative upbringing and his penchant for Havurah-type prayer service together with his personal dynamism to the Conservative movement in Israel with a plan to inaugurate a new, egalitarian synagogue in the Baka quarter. He made aliya in 1979.

The Conservative movement, however, was not receptive at the time to his request, he said. He therefore approached the World Union for Progressive Judaism — the Reform parent body in Israel — and was warmly embraced. With $100 seed money and two classified ads in The Jerusalem Post and the Hebrew-language press, Weiman-Kelman gathered 40 people for Rosh Hashanah services in 1985. His congregation now numbers 150 members. This past Yom Kippur 250 people showed up for services in the small room in the community center that holds only 30 people. The overflow prayed in the hallway, he said.

Originally ensconced in a room at the Labor Party clubhouse in the Baka neighborhood, the small but growing congregation of mostly English-speaking immigrants was ejected from the premises by the Labor Party, Weiman-Kelman said.

He noted that the action was prompted because the Party realized “that in the future it may be dependent on the religious parties to make a government. So it is not going to do anything to in any way offend the Orthodox religious parties.” He added that the Labor Party “is by and large silent in the response to the attack on my synagogue.”

‘UNPRECEDENTED LETTER OF APOLOGY’

Immediately following the incident, which attracted heavy media coverage in Israel and abroad, Abergil publicly apologized after Weiman-Kelman filed charges against the Orthodox rabbi. The charges included incitement to violence, attempts to steal the Torah, and offending the Reform congregation’s religious feelings.

Abergil, who also apologized to the entire Baka neighborhood, wrote “an unprecedented letter of apology” in which he referred to Weiman-Kelman as a “rabbi,” the “first time in the history of the State of Israel” that this was done, Weiman-Kelman said. Since the incident, Abergil has not bothered the congregation, and Weiman-Kelman dropped the charges against him.

After the incident and the publicity, Jerusalem Mayor Teddy Kollek “made this amazing statement” that he was willing to help the Reform synagogue get a building for its congregation. Following up on Kollek’s recent trip to the U.S. to raise money for synagogues in Israel — a trip paid for by modern Orthodox groups — Weiman-Kelman felt the time was ripe for him to do the same for his synagogue, and thus his own trip to the U.S. where he visited seven cities.

Time is of the essence, he said, because local Jerusalem Orthodox rabbis, with the exception of Abergil, have vowed that there will never be a Reform congregation in Baka.

A VEXING SITUATION

But why should this be, he asked rhetorically. “My taxes that I pay in Israel go to meet the religious needs of all citizens of the State of Israel, with the exception of the non-Orthodox groups,” Weiman-Kelman said. “In other words, if a group of Moslems want a new mosque, they go to the Ministry of Religion and they get money for a mosque. If an Orthodox rabbi wants to start a shul, he goes to the Ministry of Religion and he gets money to start a shul. If a group of Reform Jews get together — olim — they get nothing.”

A test case the Reform movement has before the Israeli Supreme Court, Weiman-Kelman said, is that of the right of a Reform rabbi to perform authorized marriages in Israel. This is the longest case before the court, he said, five years since it was first presented.

Weiman-Kelman said his long-term objective is to win over secular Jews who feel cut off from religion. Right now, he said, “there is tremendous anger in the Israeli public against the Orthodox rabbinate, because Israelis are by law forced to conform to Orthodox religious requirements, even though they’re not in the slightest bit Orthodox.”

The bottom line of the Reform movement’s fight he said, “is freedom of religion.”