Singing in the Rain      (April 2007)

For years I have heard about the Shabbat services at Kol Haneshama, Jerusalem’s Reform synagogue led by Rabbi Levi Kelman. Everyone says if you are in Jerusalem on Shabbat, you must daven at Kol Haneshama. So last month, when I accompanied four members of Ner Tamid on a Jewish Agency trip to Israel, I made it clear when discussing our Friday night plans that I was going to Kol Haneshama. I was not alone. Following our half-hour walk from the hotel (there’s something about being in Jerusalem that makes taking a cab on Shabbat “sinful”), as we entered the worship space I immediately saw no less than ten people I knew among the 500 gathering to welcome the Sabbath. This was the place, to be sure.

The service was pure delight. No sermon. Hardly any talking or announcing, people came simply to sing and pray, usually both at the same time. There wasn’t any dancing or fanfare, just a room full of people with one purpose in mind—to welcome Shabbat as a community. Admittedly this was a somewhat special weekend (although all weekends have something special going on in Jerusalem). It was the annual convention of the World Union for Progressive Judaism, so many rabbis and lay leaders from liberal congregations throughout the world chose, as did I, to be there that night. But in this throng of enthusiastic worshipers was one man who clearly seemed out of place.

Sitting diagonally across from me, to my right, was an Orthodox Jew. His white shirt, black pants and coat, black kippah and medium-length scraggly beard kind of gave him away. “What’s he doing here?” I wondered. Not that he wasn’t welcome, but there is hardly an acre in Jewish Jerusalem that is wanting for an Orthodox synagogue. It’s not like he couldn’t find a traditional shul nearby. In fact, there were several in the neighborhood. By the same token, he wasn’t participating either. He just sat there. Never opened the siddur (prayerbook). “Maybe he was a spy?” I secretly mused. “Maybe he was here to see what all the fuss is about?”

Indeed. The fame of Kol Haneshama in particular, and the intrigue about Reform Judaism in general, is so pervasive throughout Israel that it stretches—no doubt—even into Orthodoxy. At least among those honest enough to admit the possibility that alternative forms of Jewish expression—namely liberal Judaism—have value if not validity. In fact — as Rabbi Uri Regev, Executive Director of the World Union, reported at the recent conference — in a recent poll of Israelis asking what kind of synagogue they would choose to attend, 40 percent responded a Reform congregation, more than two times the percentage of any other choice. And, I believe, this is just the beginning.

Earlier that week our group traveled up to Oranim, a bastion of Israeli secularism that is the college of the kibbutz movement. There we heard of an extraordinary phenomenon: small circles of chiloni (secular)—even anti-religious—groups who have been gathering regularly to pray and study Torah. They could not bring themselves to use the traditional siddur; they even wanted to excise the name of God from their texts. But their need to form community within the context of ritual was so compelling that they now gather weekly to celebrate Kabbalat Shabbat. Okay, so they compose their own prayers. But is that really any different than those of us 40 years ago when we invented the “creative” service? Are their gatherings not the same as the Chavurah movement of the 1970s?

What I think we are witnessing here is the irrepressible need of people to connect to something spiritual. From the most alienated to the most observant, to be human is to feel the need to transcend beyond the mundane to discover and experience the sacred in ways new and compelling. Yet for that to happen, the walls of Religion must be open and flexible and mutable. Especially in Israel.

The future of Judaism in the Jewish State absolutely depends on the ability of liberal Judaism to thrive in that extraordinary place. The work of the Israel Movement for Progressive Judaism (which is the Israeli counterpart of the Union for Reform Judaism) is at the very heart of this great awakening in the land where our people first discovered sacred possibility. But it is simply insufficient for us to applaud from afar. It’s not enough to just go there and pray with them and tell them what a good job they’re doing. Reform Judaism in Israel cannot survive without our help. Unlike Orthodoxy, Reform gets no financial help from the government. Unlike Orthodoxy, Reform congregations have to purchase their own land and pay for their own buildings. And because synagogues are “free” in Israel and therefore Israelis have  no experience with synagogue “membership”, unlike Orthodoxy, Reform communities in Israel cannot survive without acts of generosity.

They need us.

I invite you to consider becoming an overseas member of either one or both of our partner Reform congregations in Mevaseret Zion and Modi’in. (Overseas memberships usually are about $180 per year.) Like Kol Haneshama, these two congregations are doing essential work in bringing disaffected Jews back into the synagogue. You can be a part of their revolutionary efforts to restore religious expression as a relevant and meaningful part of daily life in Israel. And know that your efforts will make a profound difference in getting traditional Jews to see that maybe there is more than one way to be authentically Jewish while allowing the secular Jew to feel empowered to simply walk into a synagogue. Who knows, they might even find themselves praying in the same synagogue one day? In Israel anything is possible. Especially Jerusalem.

Jerusalem is, as anyone who has ever been there will attest, a magical place. If I had forgotten that then I relearned it last month. Walking back to the hotel from Kol Haneshama that Friday night, maybe a little more than a mile — in a steady rain — the melody of their Lekha Dodi (which we sing quite regularly here at Ner Tamid) could still be heard on our lips. On that night the rain was irrelevant. On the contrary, it was wonderful. Because it was Shabbat in Israel. That night the rain tasted like honey.

Anything we can do to help others experience that feeling is mitzvah.

To learn more about supporting our partner congregations in Israel go to these links or speak with Rabbi Kushner:

KAMAZ, Kehilat Mevaseret Zion: http://www.kamatz.org/e/index.html

YOZMA, the Reform congregation in Modi’in: http://www.yozma.org.il/eng/index.htm

IMPJ, The Israel Movement for Progressive Judaism: http://66.165.157.151/English/default.htm

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