By Rabbi Dow Marmur
JERUSALEM — Israel isn’t only changing the Jewish people, reflected in the ever more complicated relationship between it and the diaspora. It’s also changing Judaism. The book I’m currently reading, so far only available in Hebrew, gives its English title as The Israeli century and the Israelization of Judaism. The author, Yossi Shain, is a professor at Tel Aviv University. Two other books on my shelf which I hope to read soon are written by Micha Goodman, one of the brightest stars on Israel’s intellectual firmament, and Amotz Asa-El whom readers of the Jerusalem Post would be familiar with. Both books are variations on Shain’s theme. All three appear to look at Israel in the context of Jewish history.
I don’t think that anybody knows what this new Judaism will look like, but it seems pretty certain that it’ll be different from the versions we’re familiar with.
It won’t be secular in the way many of the early pioneers who helped to build Israel envisaged it. It won’t be religious in the conventional sense, but resemble more the kind of religiosity articulated by Marcello Gleiser, the Brazilian-born American academic and recipient of this year’s Templeton Prize in religion. Though he’s Jewish, he doesn’t seem to be concerned with Israel. Yet the way he fuses religion with science suggests that he may be pointing to a version of Judaism that may emerge here.
It won’t be Orthodox. Though the number of Orthodox Jews appears to be growing, mainly but not only because of the high birth rate in Orthodox families, the kind of political grip that the Orthodox establishment is having on Israel isn’t likely to last if Israel is to last. Orthodox politicians are doing their utmost to squeeze as much as possible out of the state for the benefit of their institutions, but it’s difficult to imagine that this modern state will sustain this situation indefinitely.
It won’t be liberal. Reform Judaism (unlike Conservative Judaism) may thrive in the United States but it’s not likely to conquer Israel, despite the existence of more than a hundred Reform rabbis ordained in Israel and many Conservative and Reform congregations up and down the country. Reform and Conservative Judaism are authentic Jewish responses to diaspora existence, but Israel needs something different. My hope is that religious liberals will be in the forefront of this new Judaism.
I’m reflecting on this today during Israel’s own High Holy Days. They started last week with Yom Hasho’a, Holocaust Memorial Day, followed today by Yom Hazikaron, the Memorial Day for the fallen who defended Israel to survive and thrive as it does now. Tomorrow is Yom Ha’atzmaut, when we’ll celebrate the miracle of the return of our people to the land of our ancestors.
Rabbi Donniel Hartman has recently written about these three events as a sign of Israel’s new understanding of Jewish suffering and Jewish sovereignty – neither as martyrdom nor as triumphalism but as a new way of looking at ourselves and at the world in which we live. Though he refers to “Israeliness” and the unique way in which Israelis mark the Holocaust – how they remember those who gave their lives for the country, and how they celebrate the existence of Israel – he doesn’t explicitly suggest a new form of Judaism that I believe is emerging here. But we may already discern it in the three events mentioned above, even if we don’t know yet its full extent.
It’s likely to take a generation or two before we can articulate “Israeliness” and much longer before it becomes part of normative Jewish self-understanding. But it will come – and renew us all!
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Rabbi Marmur is spiritual leader emeritus of Holy Blossom Temple in Toronto, Canada. Now a resident of Israel, he may be contacted via dow.marmur@sdjewishworld.com