Jerusalem, July 1962.

I’m about to be unmasked. It started last night at the house of Reb David Cohen, “the Nazarite” as he is called here, because of the vows he has taken to refrain from cutting his hair, drinking wine, or speaking on the Sabbath. We had just finished a lesson in Rabbi Kuk’s The Lights of Holiness when a short, balding man pushed his way through the crowded dining room that serves as a combination synagogue and classroom. As he stood there, whispering to the Nazarite and nodding in my direction, I knew the conversation had to do with the announcement this week that I am to be the first Administrator of the Hebrew Union College in Jerusalem—a “missionary,” according to the Orthodox press, bearing a brand of Judaism even more dangerous than Christianity. I suppose I’ll soon be frozen out of these sessions at Reb David’s home and I’ll miss them, for the Nazarite is the man who edited and arranged most of the books of Abraham Isaac Kuk, the first Chief Rabbi of Palestine. But I am even more concerned about the reaction of Zvi Yehudah Kuk, the son of the former Chief Rabbi. The next time I go there will somebody whisper to him, too, and say that a Reform Rabbi who studies with Zvi Yehudah Kuk is for that reason even more dangerous?

_____________

* * *

“I’m glad you’ve come. We must fight the Orthodox.” a leader of the Reform movement in the U.S. told me yesterday at the King David Hotel. “We’ve got to break this combination of church and state.”

Should I have informed him then and there in the bustling hotel lobby that I haven’t the slightest desire to fight the Orthodox? That usually I find more spiritual authenticity in a decrepit synagogue in the Meah Shearim quarter than in a dozen convocations of clean-smelling, well-dressed liberal Jews at the Fontainebleau in Miami? That establishing Liberal Judaism here has very little to do with the doctrine of the separation of church and state?

Explanations and qualifications do no good. There is no point in my continued protests that the Hebrew Union College School for Bible and Archaeology has as its aim nothing more (at least so far) than setting up a program for graduate studies. No one, either in Israel or in the U.S., takes this claim at face value. Here the project is looked upon with deep suspicion as a tactical move—the first action in a campaign to establish a “beachhead for the Reform movement in Israel” (otherwise, “Why did they build a synagogue in the school?”). The truth is that I am supposed to do “something” about the religious situation here. But what? Nobody has told me, and I myself don’t know.

_____________

October.

My children are having their troubles in “adjusting” to Israel, and I’m afraid inspirational talks about the land’s Biblical associations don’t help. My eldest, a seven-year-old boy, and my six-year-old girl go to a tzrif—a two-classroom shack which is the public school of our neighborhood. The boy, who knows a bit of Hebrew, is making a valiant attempt to catch a few words in class and stays after hours trying to copy his assignments from the blackboard. The six-year-old girl sits in her class with utter incomprehension and pours herself with pathetic energy into the color drawings. The four-year-old has withdrawn completely, despite the efforts of the teacher. When she gets home, it takes a while before she even begins speaking English.

Anyone who wants to learn about basic human needs ought to watch children who have lost the power to communicate. And communication is the problem here, where large segments of the population cannot converse with each other—except in the most limited way. No wonder tempers are short.

_____________

* * *

Last night I took my family to meet Zvi Yehudah Kuk in the small room where we had spent so many hours talking about his father’s ideas. Again, the problem of communication. But something came through—the warmth and utter sincerity of this white-bearded rabbi with the twinkling brown eyes. He told them a story based on the Biblical portion of the week—and it didn’t seem the occasion to explain why I had come to Israel. But I must tell him soon, before somebody else does.

_____________

November.

We attended Friday evening services at the Liberal congregation in Jerusalem last night. What can be the matter? The prayers were orderly, dignified—and boring. It’s not the fault of the rabbi, who is learned and capable, nor of the congregation, which chants loudly and in perfect unison—as if displaying its accomplishments to the visitors. Strange how aesthetic effects, so natural in a congregation outside of Israel, are here so painfully out of place. That goes for the organ, the black robes of the rabbi, the pastoral greeting of synagogue functionaries as they stand at the doorway when the congregation leaves—all perfectly acceptable in France or America, but not here. Six years ago I convened the first meeting of these “Circles for Progressive Judaism,” as they call themselves. Now there are three Liberal congregations in the country—one in Jerusalem, one in Kfar Shmaryahu near Tel Aviv, and the third in Nazareth. Haifa has a congregation associated with the Conservative movement, though here where the service is completely in Hebrew, distinctions between “Reform” and “Conservative” are quite meaningless.

None of these congregations seems to attract the native-born element of the population. The sabra peeks in curiously now and then, but he doesn’t come back. The leaders wonder what can be done to make the services more attractive. More changes in the prayer book? A better organ? A nicer building? I doubt it. The only thing that will ever attract the native-born Israeli to the synagogue is the sense that what is being said and done there is real—the sense of God real, the prayers real, the effect on the congregation real.

Anyway, I’ve found a little synagogue on a winding side street not far from our house. It’s terribly dirty. By afternoon, the stench of the urinals—the water is evidently not flushed on the Sabbath—becomes almost unbearable. But I try to sit near the windows and I’m happy. The synagogue consists of five small rooms, each with its own Ark and variety of prayer book. Thus, there are five congregations praying simultaneously every day. On the Sabbath, a sixth prayer-quorum made up of latecomers takes its place in the hallway. The result is a startling mixture of accents, costumes, and faces. There are Hasidim in the yellow caftans that proclaim descent from old. Jerusalem families; Sephardic Jews in black conical hats and striped Arab-style robes; blond ear-locked children running about with darker little descendants of the “eastern” communities; and a sprinkling of European immigrant types.

I like it, but I can’t get my children to the six-in-one synagogue, as they call it. The crowding, the disorder, the smells are too much for their suburban American upbringing. What is it about our Judaism that insists on associating the “authentic” with bad smells, and “sterility” with decorum and cleanliness? A fine question for the Administrator of a shining outpost of Liberal Judaism.

_____________

* * *

I knew, of course, that things would change when Zvi Yehudah Kuk found out, but I had been hoping that his father’s well-known love even for atheistic pioneers would extend to a Reform rabbi in Israel. It was evening, we had just finished a class in the Kuzari of Yehudah Halevi, and I began my confession hesitantly, first saying that I hoped we could still be friends after he had heard me out.

As I talked, his face grew more and more serious. The school, I kept saying, was nothing more than a school, and I concluded lamely, “They could have sent somebody worse.” He did not appear convinced. Our friendship, to be sure, would remain unchanged, but as for the Hebrew Union College—its work would “require clarification.” Nevertheless, Zvi Yehudah did seem to be relieved when I assured him I had no plans for forming an Israeli congregation, and we parted with the usual warm handshake.

Two days later, one of the boys from the yeshivah told me that Rabbi Kuk wished to see me. I came to his house the next evening with apprehension, and I was right. He had undoubtedly conferred with others in the interim, for he no longer patted my hand or sat close to me as we talked. Instead, he read me some paragraphs from two letters his father had written. One was to an Orthodox Jew in Australia who had asked for advice. There were two synagogues in his town, the Australian Jew explained—one Orthodox where the sexes were separated, and the other traditional, but with mixed seating. The rabbi of the Orthodox congregation was, however, a public desecrator of the Sabbath and a man known to be unobservant. What the Australian Jew had wanted to know was whether he should continue to attend the Orthodox synagogue despite the blatant hypocrisy of the rabbi, or join the other congregation. Rav Kuk’s answer had been unequivocal: Any attempt to seat men and women together was absolutely forbidden! The second letter was even stronger in tone, denouncing the spreading “plague” of organs in synagogue services.

Though I had never had any illusions about the elder Rabbi Kuk’s feelings on such matters, I was taken aback by the violence of the language. This was an aspect of Kuk that I had not come across before. His son must have sensed my shock, for he made an effort to explain. Reform Judaism, he said, has its place outside Israel, in the galut, but never here, in Jerusalem, at the Center. His voice trembled at the thought. It was a historic fact, moreover, that the Reform movement had been responsible for the assimilation of large Jewish communities in Europe. I had no opportunity to ask why, in that case, there was such religious indifference in Israel which, up until now, had never known Reform.

It was clear that Zvi Yehudah was not interested that evening in hearing my opinions. But later I did ask him what he thought of the controversy over the B’nai Israel, the Indian Jews who had emigrated to Israel at the urging of the Jewish Agency, and who were in the news that week because their religious status had again been questioned by Chief Rabbi Nissim. As religious Jews, Zvi Yehudah said, the B’nai Israel should not object to having their ancestry investigated, or to undergoing ritual immersion if that was necessary for acceptance by the rest of the Jewish community. It was the political parties, he insisted, who were making all the trouble.

This discussion with Rabbi Kuk made me feel that perhaps it is time I stopped apologizing for Liberal Judaism. I love and respect Rabbi Kuk, but I know in my heart that a literal application of rabbinic law is wrong in cases like this. The Orthodox have no monopoly on integrity—though they tend to put the rest of us on the defensive—and their attitude toward groups like the B’nai Israel suggests that we Liberal Jews may have a real function in this country.

_____________

December.

A month has passed and the H.U.C. building is still not completed. I spend most of my time shouting at carpenters, fighting with the telephone company, engaging in protracted and maddening negotiations with various government agencies. Recently, there was the affair of the Reform prayer books. Having discovered that we would need some two hundred for our upcoming March convocation, I made my way to the offices of the Ministry of Religion to which I had been referred by Customs (“they handle all religious items”).

Facing me in the outer office was a man with a yarmelke and a beard, who ushered me into an inner office where what seemed an identical man with identical yarmelke and beard sat sipping a glass of tea. When I explained my errand the pleasant sound of the sipping turned into a gurgle, followed by a profound silence. I said nothing, realizing his predicament. How could a faithful Orthodox Jew and representative of the Ministry of Religion authorize the import of a heretical item like Reform prayer books? Finally, the official recovered sufficiently to inform me that the Minister of Religion was unfortunately in Tel Aviv. But perhaps I could come back the following day.

I did. This time there was no tea, but a good deal of mumbled interrogation about the ultimate purpose of the prayer books. Had the Minister of Religion returned? No, he was still out. But why had I come to the Ministry of Religion in the first place? Book import licenses could be obtained from the Ministry of Commerce. “Religious books also?” I asked.

“Did anyone ask you?” he countered.

I got the point, and returned to my office to make an appointment with the Ministry of Commerce, where the next morning I found an official differing from his colleagues at the Ministry of Religion only by the absence of a yarmelke and beard. He sipped his tea and I repeated my story once again.

“You want Reform prayer books—for the Reform synagogue?” Why had I come to him when prayer books were clearly the concern of the Ministry of Religion?

I summarized my interview with the Ministry of Religion. The official shook his head doubtfully. The matter would have to be “discussed.” I should return “later in the week.”

But when I did return, my official was out because of illness and there was no one in the office who could help me. Two days later I checked in once more. My official had by this time recovered, but he still had no decision for me; in the interim I could fill out an application form (in seven copies). There would, however, be “difficulties”: did not these prayer books contain Hebrew script? I admitted that they did. In that case, the official said triumphantly, why couldn’t they be printed in Israel? The Israeli government had no interest in importing Hebrew books from abroad.

I was stumped, but years of experience in dealing with New York taxi drivers came to my rescue.

I took out my pencil and little black book.

“What is your name, sir?” I asked in my steadiest voice.

“What do you need my name for?”

“There might,” I prodded, “be some people interested in the name of the person who refuses an import license for religious prayer books.” My official was now clearly disturbed. The matter “still needed clarification.”

Two days later, the arrangements were made.

_____________

* * *

I have discovered a red-bearded genius of twenty-six whose name is Adin Steinsaltz. He comes of a secular background, holds a degree in mathematics from the Hebrew University, and teaches both nigleh, Jewish law, and nistar, Jewish mysticism, with a skill and clarity of exposition that are amazing. I often go with him to the private homes and synagogues where he gives lessons, and afterward we spend hours together unraveling the technical terminology of the Cabbala. Much of the Cabbala, it seems to me, is basically an analysis of the human psyche, and of its relationship with the needs of the body. But everything it has to say—about how the flow of the life juices can be impaired or the creative process hampered—is locked up in forms of thought that are no longer intelligible to us. To release these meanings takes a mind that can span the ages. Steinsaltz has that kind of mind and is therefore looked upon with suspicion by both the secular “enlightened” world (because he is an Orthodox rabbi and has long red sidelocks) and the Orthodox world (because he is a first-rate mathematician and has many secular associations).

On Thursday evenings, Adin instructs a group made up of members of the Jerusalem intelligentsia, whose motivation, they insist, is “scholarly” rather than religious. White-haired Professor Hugo Bergmann of the Hebrew University is there, following the text with a little index card. Zalman Shazar is another regular student, and after class I sometimes give him a ride home in my jeep. We talk gingerly about the college and about Reform Judaism, and Shazar (like most of the old guard in Israel) continually reiterates his preference for “the real thing”—the fervor of the Hasidic shtuebel—or nothing.

_____________

* * *

This week in Jerusalem has seen a number of celebrations marking the death 150 years ago of Shneur Zalman, the “old Rebbe,” who founded what is called today the Lubavitcher movement—the strongest of the Hasidic sects still extant. The Lubavitcher movement is graced by an assortment of hangers-on who, when they are “in the mood” for religion, will occasionally attend gatherings, sing a few songs, then return easily enough to their usual style of life. Most of those observing the anniversary of the Rebbe’s death at the Yeshurun synagogue were of this nostalgic variety. The few real Hasidim with their beards and innocent eyes seemed quite out of place.

The first speaker was the octogenarian, Rabbi Zevin, who read a speech that nobody understood, into a microphone that wasn’t working. Then Adin spoke, trying hard to achieve that “flame of spirit” which Hasidism prizes so highly. But his voice is much too soft. Shazar, who closed the meeting, was something else again: a speaker in the grand manner. “What happened,” Shazar thundered down at us, pushing his broad-brimmed hat further back on his head and thumping the pulpit as he went along, “what happened that day when Mendel of Vitebsk and three hundred rabbis went to Israel, while Rabbi Shneur Zalman turned back to assume the yoke of organization and financial support for the movement? What did they say to each other on that day of parting?”

This was the first time I had ever seen Shazar in action, and now I can believe the stories they tell about him in younger days. It was dangerous, the veterans say, to sit in the front rows when Shazar spoke. Not only could his table-pounding upset the water glass, but he would occasionally throw the glass itself out into the audience, following it with sundry articles of clothing—his hat, jacket, or belt. In latter years his oratorical powers have been confined largely to funerals, and he is reputed to be able to produce at a moment’s notice a full file on every member of the old guard. A few years ago an old-timer died and for some reason Shazar was not invited to deliver the eulogy. People reported that they had never seen him look so glum—indeed, as if he were at a funeral. “It’s good to have somebody like that around,” one sabra told me. “He adds historic dimension to our lives.”

Shazar’s well-known attachment to the Lubavitcher movement has made him its unofficial emissary to the Israeli government. At 770 Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn, the Lubavitcher headquarters, his connection with Mapai and Ben Gurion is viewed as a providential arrangement allowing the Rebbe to penetrate high Israeli circles.¹ This concept of “secret lines” fits in with the Lubavitcher movement’s image of itself as an underground movement slowly but surely conquering the Jewish world.

For a time, I think, I was their “line” to the Reform movement. I would get messages from the Rebbe “suggesting” that I be present when a question like church-state relations came up for discussion. But since my connection with the Jerusalem School, word has come to me that I have fallen from grace, and I regret it. When I return to the U.S. I must remember to tell the Rebbe that while I was here, I at least blocked the purchase of an organ for the synagogue.

_____________

* * *

Some real activity is about to start at the college at last. A few of us are working on plans to set up a kind of exploratory conference, which we have tentatively called “Seeking Paths”—a title sufficiently non-commital for our purposes. (One must be careful here about invoking the term “religion,” for to most Israelis it is synonymous with Orthodoxy.) Martin Buber is one of the people we are trying to persuade to participate, and so the other night—a cold rainy night—my wife and I went to visit him in Jerusalem.

The housekeeper led us into the foyer and Buber appeared at the glass doors of his study to invite us in. The light was dim and the room overheated by a round kerosene stove.

“I know you, do I not?” he said looking at me closely. I reminded him that we had met several times in that very room. He beckoned us to a small table while he brought up a chair for himself and placed it so that he could look directly at us. I asked how he was feeling.

“Better. But for illness at my age, one needs doses not only of antibiotics but of faith and humor.” He looked closely at me and then at my wife.

“Do you see? I’m not so difficult to understand, am I?” My heart sank. Some time before I had sent Buber a copy of my book in which I recorded a meeting with him and commented that he, the philosopher of the “dialogue,” has not really succeeded in communicating with his own people or even his students. I had hoped that the paragraph would escape his notice, but apparently it hadn’t.

“All you have to do is listen, really listen,” he repeated, “and you will understand.”

I feared the evening might be a difficult one and tried to get the conversation back to faith and humor. What did Buber mean by these terms?

“Faith is difficult, and therefore one needs humor. And humor has something to do with a sense of the moment that is passing, floating.” He paused, as if thinking. “But also, I believe in eternity.”

What was eternity?

“I know that eternity is not infinity, though what it is I cannot understand. Nor can I understand infinite numbers, yet I do believe in them. All I know is that nothing is more certain than death. I do not believe in immortality, but I do believe in eternity. With death I enter into eternity. Do you understand? That is faith.”

I mentioned the coming seminar and told Buber we wanted to visit his home on Sabbath eve and sing him a song. He appeared puzzled.

“We want to bring you a gift, to sing you a song—as Hasidim might to their Rebbe.”

He was surprised and, it seemed to me, touched. His voice was softer when he spoke again. “Do you have any more questions? No? If not, I have something I want to tell you.”

To my surprise, he picked up a copy of my book which had been lying on his desk, the pages obviously marked in preparation for our meeting. Slowly reading the relevant lines with a magnifying glass, he proceeded to refute some of my points. At one time, he conceded, it might have been true that he was isolated from his countrymen and students, but the situation had changed—today most of his visitors are Israelis, and his books, those on philosophy if not on Judaism, have been translated into Hebrew and are almost as popular in Israel as they are abroad. He went on to other “mistakes,” and finally, to my relief, closed the book.

“You know,” he said with a half-smile, “the Hasidic masters had a mochiach—a rebuker, whose job it was regularly to criticize them.”

I reminded Buber of the “Seeking Paths” meeting, and he agreed to take part on two conditions—the questions were to be “real” and not “dialectical” (“the kind that men and women ask themselves at two in the morning”) and the questioner must try to speak “personally,” to say something about himself.

Buber leafed through some papers on his desk and I asked about his writing. He was attempting, he told me, to write about certain crucial incidents of his life, but writing was like talking. He had to visualize the person before him.

He spoke very quietly, as if to himself, and did not look at us. “You know,” he said, “I don’t like my early books, the ones I wrote before the age of twenty-five or so. I did not become a person till late, till almost forty.”

_____________

* * *

My children have brought home the Hanukah menorahs they made at school. They know all the songs and understand most of the words. Even the four-year-old is beginning to speak, though she still pulls the neighbor’s child by sheer force toward the game she wants to play. Only one thing is missing from the holiday preparations—the traditional blessings. It seems to be official policy not to teach religion in the public schools.

On the other side of the “religious” ledger in Israeli public schools is a detail which utterly amazes me. In doing his sums, my little boy makes use of a kind of “T” symbol that I had thought all this time must be the European way of indicating the plus sign. Today a neighbor told me that this sign was used in place of a cross. And that the early traffic markings in Tel Aviv also avoided the cross symbol until modern urban demands triumphed.

_____________

January, 1963.

The “Seeking Paths” conference was a success. Some sevently people, most of them from villages and kibbutzim, came together and found themselves able to talk. There were teachers, professors, army officers, and a few high government officials. The absence of publicity and prepared “opening speakers” caught everybody by surprise. It meant that there was to be no organizational exploitation. It was not, that is, to be one of those “dialogues” where both speakers and organizers are more interested in the press release than in listening to each other. What resulted was some three days of personal “confessions.”

There was only one sour note—the Sabbath eve with Buber. Maybe the fault was ours—nobody asked the kind of questions that people ask themselves at two in the morning. There were even some foolish questions. But Buber didn’t do anything to relieve the embarrassment which everyone felt that evening at the lack of communication.

_____________

* * *

The “Seeking Paths” Conference is having tangible results. A second meeting is scheduled for before Shavuot to discuss “the minimum basis for reviving festivals and holidays in our day.” Also, requests to use the building have come from unexpected sources, including the army which wants to hold courses in archaeology. To my surprise, they don’t seem worried about what the Chief Rabbinate will say. Even more intriguing is the group of sabra vegetarians who will be meeting here on Saturday nights, ours being the first center, it seems, that agreed to have them. Of course, Judaism has always had a “thing” on food—a conviction that what goes into the stomach has an effect not only on what comes out of the mouth, but on what happens in the soul. I had known that a large number of young people in Israel were interested in vegetarianism, but I hadn’t dreamed that there were so many factions among them. One member of the group told me that recent troubles at a vegetarian kibbutz in the Galilee stem at least partly from the fact that many of the members take their citrus fruits after, rather than before the meal, which leads to arousal of the emotions and to “strains” (that can be countered, he assured me, only by the eating of seeds). But I like these young people who gather every Saturday evening to dream of a society where “each man shall sit under his fig tree and none shall make them afraid.”

_____________

* * *

Crisis with my vegetarians. Hechal Shlomo—the center of the Chief Rabbinate—has invited them to hold their meetings in nearby facilities belonging to the center. They have even been offered financial aid. As a result, the committee that was working with me on plans for a Sabbath weekend at the college did not show up for the last meeting. There is little I can do about it. Since most of these young people come from traditional religious homes, I had suggested that their Sabbath services at the college be along completely traditional lines. I had even asked a student from Rav Kuk’s yeshivah to preside, and the latter had promptly reported to the authorities about the “dangerous trap” which was being prepared for these youngsters by the Hebrew Union College. I seem to have stumbled inadvertently on a way to force religious officialdom to take an interest in neglected groups here—simply offer them the hospitality of the Hebrew Union College.

_____________

* * *

The crisis swells. Yesterday two of my vegetarians came to tell me that their leader, David W., is really a Christian missionary in disguise. They urged me to be on my guard against him, and departed, evading my question about our interrupted plans for the Sabbath services.

This morning, W. appeared with his side of the story. He is indeed interested in Christianity (he brought me a tract purporting to be a lost gospel of the New Testament that stresses vegetarian food habits along with fasting and emetic treatments), and sees no contradiction in being an Orthodox Jew and at the same time admiring certain of the teachings of Jesus. He had said as much to the youths who had visited me on the preceding day, whereupon the yeshivah student at whose home they were studying had sprung up shouting that it was the duty of every Jew to stone the heretic.

_____________

February.

After a two-day trip to Ein Gedi in the Negev, I returned to Jerusalem tonight for a scheduled discussion of Liberal Judaism with some Hebrew University people. I should have stayed at that lush green oasis, for there is little I could tell the “intellectuals” about Reform Judaism; it was they who told me. One university instructor was of the opinion that the growth of synagoguges in America was the result of the McCarthyite era, when Jews felt they had to “belong,” or be labeled subversive. Another suggested that Reform Judaism grew out of the fact that modern Jews were too “weak” to undertake the more demanding commitments of Orthodoxy. The consensus was that Reform Judaism, in America especially, was a social and not a religious phenomenon, and that the religion it offered had nothing to do with the historic Jewish religious faith.

There were many in the room who described themselves as “non-religious.” When I asked whether their “non-religion” meant a total absence of interest in or connection with God or with prayer, many denied that this was the case, but they all agreed that you either accepted the “full package” or nothing. They could not acknowledge as authentic a religion which asked individuals to distinguish between those elements which had lost their value and those which were still relevant and binding.

It was a not unfamiliar analysis—I have myself preached sermons along similar lines. But as I listened to them, the thought occurred to me that this “all or nothing” approach can be a very easy way of stilling personal religious doubts. It sets up as the only “real” religion a religion that is obviously impossible—hence no effort at all is necessary. As to this easy distinction between “religious” and “social” impulses—who is really equipped to judge whether the hunger of an individual for attention is a religious or a social need?

Like other Liberal religious commentators on the Israeli scene, I have always gone out of my way to deny any intention of “importing” alien modes, and to agree that the forms of religious activity here must be one-hundred-per-cent Israeli. But privately, I’m no longer so sure. I am coming to believe that Israel might benefit from those very aspects of American congregational life that elicit sneers of derision even from American rabbis—the sisterhood, the men’s club, and the social work and pastoral functions of the rabbi.

_____________

March.

Yiddish has replaced Hebrew as the Holy Tongue—who would have thought it? Friday evenings, Steinsaltz studies with a group of Hasidim in my six-in-one synagogue. They insist that he teach in Yiddish, though he is a native-born Israeli and “breaks his teeth” on the language. What a trick of history—Yiddish, the Diaspora creation, is now the Holy Tongue of the Orthodox world, while Hebrew is its secular language.

_____________

* * *

The plane chartered by my congregation in South Orange arrived two days ago, and Sabbath eve we had a brief service at the Hebrew Union College synagogue.

Most interesting was the reaction of the tour’s Israelis guides to what must have been their first glimpse of Reform Judaism. The Israelis had never seen a Reform havdalah service before and they appeared moved—by more, I think, than the service alone. These American Jews were friends, not just fellow worshippers, and they had succeeded in creating a unit of social life called a congregation.

A message was waiting for me at the end of the service. One of my vegetarians was downstairs, with news that there had been a rebellion in the ranks and most of the group wanted to return to the college. Could they come back and resume their Sabbath eve parties?

I am, of course, delighted but I suspect the real reason for the change of heart is that we allow mixed folk dancing after the meetings. (I am more than ever convinced that there is a vast and fertile field here for congregational work along American lines. The present Israeli youth program, for instance, with its emphasis either on political or “scout” programs, excludes many young people. If it were up to me, I’d start projects of all kinds—congregations, study groups, “seeking paths” conferences, vegetarian religious clubs, anything to fill the present spiritual vacuum.)

_____________

* * *

Eighteen Indian Jews of the B’nai Israel community have just spent the Sabbath at the college on the invitation of one of our rabbis. How could Zvi Yehudah Kuk have said that their predicament is the result of politics? These people are hurt—“grievously wounded with a wound that will never heal,” as one of them put it. I confess I was unprepared for their urbanity and cultivation. Many are college-trained, and they speak perfect English along with two or three Indian dialects and some Hebrew. One distinguished-looking man was a retired member of the Indian civil service, another was a homeopathic doctor who could not get a license to practice in Israel, and was now working, he said shamefacedly, as an “ordinary laborer.” There were also a number of young people, some of whom had come to Israel over a dozen years ago with Zionist youth groups. All were dark-complexioned with strikingly fine features.

Before dinner a white-haired man with a gentle voice was persuaded to conduct the brief Sabbath service in the synagogue. They used the Italian-style Sephardic rite, and, except for the young people who had grown up in Israel, everyone knew the prayers by heart. Here and there a lovely touch of India appeared. At certain points in the prayer, for example, they would reach out with their hands “to grasp the blessing and bring it to the lips.” Later during the Sabbath meal, they again chanted the prayers with feeling and grace. These people give the impression of a genuine spirituality; their ties to Judaism seem more profound than are those of the North African community, for example. All the more reason for their sense of a “grievous wound.”

After the Sabbath meal, there was a discussion. One of the leaders, a young librarian from the Hebrew University, briefly summed up the B’nai Israel affair—the latest in a growing roster of such “episodes.” The year before, a young man of their community and his bride, who came of another Eastern group, had asked the local rabbi in Elath to marry them. The latter had refused, on the ground that the religious status of the B’nai Israel was in doubt. This provoked such a violent protest that the Ministry of Religion, generally unswayed by public opinion, found it necessary to work out a face-saving compromise. Members of the B’nai Israel wishing to marry, the Minister decreed, could report to specially appointed registrars who would investigate their genealogy “as far as possible” to insure that their forebears were Jewish, and had been married or divorced according to Orthodox Jewish law. In the opinion of the Minister of Religion, the problem was solved.

But of course it was not. The B’nai Israel complained of the indignity being visited upon them—no other community in the State of Israel is subjected to such an investigation—and cited their proud record of having maintained their Judaism intact for almost two thousand years in the temptingly tolerant atmosphere of India. Now, with the encouragement of the Jewish Agency, they had emigrated to Israel, and what was the result?

The speaker went on to place the responsibility for the situation on Chief Rabbi Nissim. He declared that there was a longstanding feud in India between the Baghdad community and the B’nai Israel, and that Rabbi Nissim, an Iraqui Jew, was not above carrying on a personal vendetta.

Chief Rabbi Nissim is the man who, some years ago, conducted a much-publicized “crusade” among the non-religious kibbutzim, offering a pound to any kibbutz child who could sing Adon Olam. Even among the Orthodox, there are few who acknowledge him as a scholar or religious thinker, but the office of the Chief Rabbinate here is so entangled with political and personality questions that these considerations are not the decisive ones. Altogether, I have the impression that even in religious circles, there are many who would not be averse to seeing the office itself abolished.

The B’nai Israel problem has obvious ramifications extending far beyond this particular community. If the criteria now used against the B’nai Israel were to be applied to the descendants of European Jews in Israel, or for that matter to native-born Israelis (not to speak of Jews living in Europe and America), a huge proportion of the population would be placed outside the “legitimate” ranks of Judaism. This question has not yet been seriously raised, but it is clear that soon it must be, for Orthodoxy here must polarize toward the right. No Orthodox rabbi is worried about whether a Liberal religious Jew approves of his religious decision. But he does worry about what the more orthodox rabbi will say. Hence, every question of religious law here sooner or later gets posed in its most extreme form.

_____________

* * *

On Friday I drove to the Orthodox B’nai Brak community outside of Tel Aviv where Rabbi Ashlag conducts a kind of continuous seminar in the Zohar that I had long been wanting to visit. Arriving half an hour before the chains were put up closing the streets to traffic on the Sabbath, I raced first to Rabbi Ashlag’s house where his wife told me that I was indeed expected. Then I ran to a nearby hotel, rented a tiny room and was told at what hour the electric lights automatically shut off and where the key would be left. Hurrying back to the rabbi’s house, I found him seated at a long wooden table with some twenty men, ready for their lesson in the Zohar.

Rabbi Ashlag seemed uneasy in the seat he had inherited from his father, a Cabbalist of profound learning who had published a commentary on the Zohar, and who in his writings had eloquently argued the case for spreading the knowledge of Jewish mysticism among the people. Only the “inner” approach could attract this generation, he had said, and hence the time had come to disregard the traditional warning about passing on the “Teachings of the Secret” to more than a chosen few. His son had taken over the elder rabbi’s work, organizing well-advertised lessons in the Zohar in Tel Aviv and Haifa, as well as in B’nai Brak, where he was also trying to build a synagogue and yeshivah. But the enterprise wasn’t going well. Several of those seated around the table were on the border of senility, and the others seemed to have come mainly out of curiosity.

Rabbi Ashlag, a brown-bearded man with nervous dark eyes, did his best to act the part of the Rebbe, flanked by his two sons, one a husky six-footer in the traditional black silk caftan, and a younger boy wearing Lord Fauntleroy-like black stockings and knickers. They too tried to play the role of the royal princes in traditional Hasidic style, but there was missing that charismatic connection between the Rebbe and his Hasidim without which the play is meaningless.

About ten in the evening we returned to the rabbi’s home where a magnificent Sabbath meal was served, and the play around the table was continued in high form. Instead of the usual two, there were six chalos in front of the rabbi, according to the mystic formulas of the holy Ari. The elder son lifted the brimming wine cup and placed it in his father’s hand for the Sanctification. The women sat quietly at one corner of the table, watching the men carrying on their rituals. The younger son recited his blessings, then offered a limp handshake to the rest of us, and Rabbi Ashlag discoursed on the importance of mystic studies.

After sunset the next day, I returned to make my donation to the synagogue, and Rabbi Ashlag promised to get in touch with me in America where he would shortly be visiting to raise money for the yeshivah on which he had set his heart. I did not tell him that I was a Reform rabbi.

_____________

* * *

Purim. There has been a theological crisis in the Reform synagogue over the reading of the Megillah. Several of the lay readers felt that the Megillah represents lower-level Judaism—rejoicing in the destruction of enemies, etc. Rabbi Zaoui and I were quite content to rejoice: Jack Cohen, good Re-constructionist that he is, had theological reservations but preferred sticking to tradition, and the decision was to compromise. Sections of the Megillah will be read, but without the traditional blessings.

I think it was in reaction to this theological discussion that I sought out Reb Arele’s Hasidic synagogue in Meah Shearim on Purim night. Reb Arele and his Hasidim make Hechal Shlomo, seat of the Chief Rabbinate, seem a vanguard of Reform. When I arrived at about nine in the evening there were only some two dozen Hasidim left in the huge, newly built, and still unfurnished synagogue. They pressed in on both sides of the narrow table, avidly watching their Rebbe. Plates of food were brought, passed, or rather grasped, by eager hands and placed before Reb Arele who would then sample a spoonful or two and chew slowly, while his Hasidim hung breathlessly on every swallow as if the salvation of their souls depended on it. When the Rebbe pushed a half-full plate aside, it was seized and the particles of food devoured within seconds by the Hasidim. Occasionally, he would call out somebody’s name and hand him a spoonful of food—a very special honor.

Several young boys sitting on the window sill above were still wearing Purim masks over their faces and false beards, adding a Voodoo touch to the scene. And through it all, a Hasid stood on a table nearby scraping away at a violin, his adoring eyes fixed steadily on his Rebbe.

Leaving the synagogue, I was nearly run down by a bicycle on whose handlebars one long-bearded Jew sat singing and whistling madly, while another long beard pedaled him recklessly through the narrow street crowded with Purim strollers. They had both fulfilled the rabbinic injunction commanding every Jew on Purim to drink until he is unable to distinguish between “Blessed be Mordecai and cursed be Haman”—a law to which the theologians of the Liberal synagogue in Jerusalem should pay more attention.

_____________

* * *

The college’s first convocation is over, and they tell me that it went well.

The American ambassador opened the ceremonies with the announcement of a grant of money from the U.S. government for the Jerusalem School; Ben Gurion followed him, his white-haloed head barely reaching above the speakers’ table, his voice shrill and strong as ever, and his words directed at least partly to the pillars of Reform Judaism who had come to Jerusalem for the first board meeting of the college ever to be held outside the U.S.: “I am first a Jew and only second an Israeli.” Then Nelson Glueck, with some good sentences—“From Sinai to Cincinnati to Jerusalem is a long way . . .” The honorary degrees were awarded, the cameras clicked, the choir sang its final number, and the procession waited while Ben Gurion stopped to shake hands with Abba Hillel Silver in the audience. Not a sign of an Orthodox demonstration; I think we were all a little disappointed.

The Sabbath services were pleasant, and my sermon was too long, though its theme was simple. In Israel there is time and energy only for the essentials—preparedness, security, survival. If Reform Judaism can prove itself “essential” in Israel—as real in a man’s life as his worries about military security, or money, or food, or clothing—then and only then will it find a place. In short, it is not the Israelis who are being tested here, but Reform Judaism itself.

A few more days more and I’ll be back home. In many ways it will be easier. For one thing, I won’t have the strain of shuttling back and forth between two worlds—the Hebrew Union College and Reb Arele’s Hasidism. Yet I have come to wonder whether a certain amount of spiritual schizophrenia may not be valuable. The Cabbala has an image of God’s grace descending and even being assisted by the “pull of opposites”—the right and the left, the masculine and the feminine, the quality of harshness and the quality of mercy. But the Cabbala, too, insists that there are times when what is apart must come together for at least a passing moment of unity. Otherwise, the apparatus cannot function, and the life force is meaninglessly scattered and dissipated. Of course, I’m not sure that the unity of suburban Jewish life is what the Cabbala had in mind.

_____________

¹ Now that Shazar has become President of Israel, the Lubavitcher are presumably even more certain that the whole thing is providential.