Pluralism in its full diversity
The New Jew, the fascinating series on KAN 11 in which actor and comedian Guri Alfi explores different movements and choices in Judaism, should be compulsory viewing for all those who negate Conservative, Reform and other movements within Judaism. In the past, expressions such as “Jews by choice” referred primarily to converts. They too appear in the series, but the prime message from Hassidic to Reform Jews in America is that we are all Jews by choice, because we all choose whether to identify and how to identify.
The joke about two Jews and three opinions has been a sad truth among Jews from biblical times on. We can’t agree on politics, we can’t agree on religion, we can’t even agree on how to defend ourselves when we face an existential threat. Even ultra-Orthodox groups are far from homogeneous, make their own rules, and sometimes condemn not only Reform and Conservative Jews, but also other ultra-Orthodox Jews whose practices might differ from theirs. Possibly the most interesting comment in this fascinating documentary series is Alfi saying that in Israel, he, as a secular Jew, took his Judaism for granted, but during the year that he lived in America, he celebrated Shabbat and made kiddush.
In other words, he became Jewishly aware, which he had not been in Israel, even though he was not exactly ignorant of Jewish laws and traditions. In the first episode of the series on Monday night, it was interesting to hear him admit to things he had never heard of before spending time in America, which brings to mind the importance of the secular yeshivot in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem where students learn much of what is taught in Orthodox yeshivot, but are not pressured into religious observance. However, many do move up a rung or two or even more on the ladder of a religious lifestyle.
Those who condemn religious pluralism are, in fact, encouraging assimilation. Is it not better for Jews to identify Jewishly at any level than not at all? Demographically, the Jewish world has not yet caught up with pre-World War Two numbers. By reaching out to Jews who are on the verge of assimilation, many may be brought back into the fold. By condemning non-Orthodox movements within Judaism, the ultra-Orthodox are exiling whole communities in which women who are Jewish according to Jewish law, who are the DNA transmitters of Jewish identity, are among those who are being negated. Who is to say what exactly constitutes authentic Judaism beyond what we read in the Bible?
Among the many sponsors of The New Jew series is the Ruderman Foundation, which has long been advocating for the inclusion in mainstream society of people with disabilities – especially actors, singers, musicians, technicians, et al. in branches of America’s entertainment industry. Toward this aim, it has approved a $1 million grant to the Academy Foundation of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for an initiative that champions new perspectives on filmmaking and film history as well as an accessible and equitable experience for audiences of all backgrounds. Diversity is the keynote of The New Jew series.
■ FOOD FOR THOUGHT is provided not only by Alfi as mediator for diversity, but on the local front by Eran Singer, whose television news feature on unrecognized Bedouin villages illustrated one of Israel’s marks of shame. There are no schools in these villages, health services are negligible, the roads are not paved, there are no social or cultural outlets, there is no electricity and no infrastructure for computers or television. Garbage is scattered and piled high. Why has this been allowed to continue for so long?
There is no way for the people who live in these villages to escape the cycle of poverty. They are never going to live anywhere else, and it’s unlikely (Mark Neyman/GPO)
that Jews will want to live among them. So why not recognize them, install all the necessary infrastructure and give them the tools for a better quality of life and a promising future? Some academics from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev try to help them, but they can’t get very far without government support.
■ AS WAS the case last year, this year’s Presidential Award for Volunteerism will focus on people who selflessly gave of themselves during the coronavirus crisis. The difference is that last year, it was a very modest ceremony in which an extremely limited number of people participated, and no two prize winners were in the room at the same time. This year, all being well, the award ceremony is likely to return to its regular format in which the 12 winners will be accompanied by family, friends and colleagues from volunteer organizations.
After all, if President Reuven Rivlin could host several hundred diplomats and religious and lay leaders of non-Jewish communities on Israel
Independence Day, he can surely host a similar number of people who are members of volunteer organizations. Rivlin met this week for the first time with the committee that will examine the nominations for the awards. The committee is usually headed by a former chief of general staff. This time it’s Lt. Gen. (Res) Gadi Eisenkot, who declined to enter the political arena, but was very happy to receive this particular mission.
■ THOSE OF his former congregants at Chicago’s Kehilat Jacob Beth Samuel who may have lost touch with Rabbi Ze’ev Shandalov, may not know that he and his wife and their three daughters made aliyah 12 years ago and live in Ma’aleh Adumim, where he teaches at AMIT Eitan Boys’ School. A native son of Chicago, Shandalov spent his last 10 years in America as rabbi of the synagogue which he had been attending since he was 11 years old. He’s been a teacher, educator and lecturer for 22 years, and now, as an outgrowth of assisting in a literature class, is able to add the word “author” to his CV.
The lessons inspired him to write more than 50 liturgical poems, known as piyutim in Hebrew. With the encouragement of the powersthat-be at his school, he turned the poems into book form. It’s a full-color volume, with lucid explanations of each liturgical poem. It’s his first book, and he’s both proud and nervous about it. The book, Zemirot A’zamer B’Fiyut, contains 16 of the poems. It is written in Hebrew with very clear explanations and colored illustrations.
Though fluent in Hebrew, Shandalov is obviously much more at ease when speaking English, and therefore the promotional lecture tour he will be doing for the book will be in English.
■ OLD SOLDIERS never die, they simply fade away is the stanza of an old military folk song that sadly rings true in the case of Jean Frydman, a resistance fighter against the Nazis who, at the age of 15, jumped from a train taking Jews from Drancy to Buchenwald. After the war he was the co-founder and manager of the Europe1 radio station. He was a successful businessman who exposed the fascist past of French foreign minister Andre Bettencourt, and an ardent peace activist, who died without fanfare on March 13 at his home in Savyon at the age of 95.
Although his death was widely reported in the French and British media, it received minimal coverage in Israel, with the notable exception of YNet. This week, a much wider biography of Frydman – who collaborated with Serge Klarsfeld in hunting down ex-Nazis, was the close friend of both French and Israeli leading politicians, and was one of the organizers of the peace rally attended by Yitzhak Rabin on the night of his assassination – appeared in Yediot Aharonot.
The writer was journalist Iris Lifschitz Kliger, the step-daughter of legendary journalist and survivor of Auschwitz and Ravensbruck Noah Kliger, who died in December 2018 at the age of 92. It was no surprise that she, of all the paper’s journalists, should pay tribute to Frydman, who like his friend Noah Kliger – a member of Yediot’s editorial staff for 60 years – never forgot the horrors of his youth, and was engaged in numerous activities to preserve and perpetuate the memory of the Holocaust.
■ THERE’S GOOD news from Hadassah Medical Center this week. Celebrity chef Shalom Kadosh, who suffered a serious head injury last month when struggling with a thief in a gas station where he had stopped on the way to his daughter’s wedding, has regained consciousness after being sedated for almost four weeks. Kadosh, the executive chef of the Fattal Hotel Chain, has for decades prepared culinary masterpieces for monarchs, presidents and prime ministers. He is still in a critical condition and needs to remain in the hospital for some time to come, but is now on the road to recovery.
■ JOURNALISM CAN be a dangerous profession, and not just for war correspondents. Suleiman Maswadeh, the Jerusalem District reporter for KAN 11, covers everything and anything that happens in Jerusalem including the anti-Netanyahu demonstrations, the haredi demonstrations against both police and Arabs, and more recently the altercations between haredi and Arab youth, as well as Jerusalem’s notoriously racist La Familia.
Caught in the middle of such a clash in Zion Square on Wednesday night, Maswadeh was among the injured, but like a true professional did not allow this to interfere with what he had been sent to do, and was also back at work, this time on Reshet Bet radio, before 8 a.m. on Thursday.
He is among the busiest of reporters on the public broadcasting network, and while it is pleasing to see that an Arab reporter is being accorded prime-time exposure on television almost every night, given the amount of time that he spends on the job and the variety of events that he covers, one can’t help wondering whether he is simultaneously being exploited.