14/5/97

The ReCon reckoning

    There is an answer to the perennial question "Who is a Jew?"
    It's a Jewish answer: "Who can say?"
    The Orthodox believe they have the answer to both: "We" and "Us." No apologies.
    Now, the Reform and Conservative movements have come up with a response of their own: "$$."
    Demure no longer, the ReCon component of our exhaustingly disputatious tribe is madder'n hell about the government's support for Orthodox exclusivity regarding conversions, the straw that finally broke this Jewish camel's back. No more blank checks to the State of Israel, they say: what, we should provide funding for haredi yeshivot while our Israeli brethren can't scrounge gruschim for our own institutions? Brilliantly logical that they should funnel their own money to their own interests.
    The ReCons' laden devotees in America are tired of being diminished and discredited by a cadre of stern rabbis on the other side of the world. The shock for them is that, with governmental collusion supporting the issue, the ReCons are left to stare at their delusions: they are not, as they may have thought, influential in Israel.
    Now, they're saying to the people who run this country, you've gone too far. Cut us out of this circumcision business, and you've bitten off more than you can chew. Or something like that.    
    This is an interesting confrontation between incongruities: a weak majority versus a strong minority; American democratic values versus Israeli theocratic realities; religious freedom versus political wheeler-dealing; "us" Jews versus "them" Jews (or, depending on your predilections, "them" versus "us").
    It'll get really interesting if the ReCons carry through their threat, and put their money where their pout is.
    There are two approaches they could take to establish influence in this country. Let's call them (a) and, ah, what the heck, (b).
    (a) They believe they have justice and reason and morality on their side, but so what? They don't have political clout here, and nothing else counts for much here except, maybe, money.
    And money they have. They let us have lots of it, naively assuming their donations make them investors in a partnership with this country, believing we appreciate every hundred million.
    Imagine one day UJA in New York calls the Jewish Agency in Jerusalem. "Unprecedented year. Beyond our wildest dreams. You wouldn't believe what we collected for Israel this year."
    "Nu?"
    "Five hundred big ones."
    "Million?"
    "Uh, no."
    "Billion?!"
    "No. Five hundred dollars."
    "Must be the recession."
    "No, the repression. Diaspora Jews are mad, mad, mad, and they're not going to take it anymore. They say something about building a Jewish state with their own interests in mind."
    "No kidding. Where?"
    "You're sittin' in it."
    All they have to do is create a nationwide infrastructure -- social, cultural, religious, educational, economic -- thus winning popular admiration and support, a successful method used by street-wise Shas. 
    Think of what an alternative school system would do to enhance the influence of the forlorn Reform and Conservative sects. A hundred schools, from Metulla to Eilat, with high academic standards, preaching both enlightenment and Jewish tradition -- and absolutely free, funded entirely by diverted donations.
    Such a system already exists (except that it's no more free than the rest of Israel's expensive free education) in the 30 Tali schools. Conceived and supported by the Conservatives, Tali is popular enough to maintain waiting lists so long, you pretty much have to register your child as soon as he's born. 
    Starting with free daycare, vibrant socio-cultural programs and a no-nonsense primary-secondary system offering enriched education on a par with Diaspora Jewish schools, non-Orthodox Israelis would go gaga.
    Conservative and Reform here is more traditional than abroad. They could easily fill a crying need for quality -- let me rephrase that: quality education in the vast niche between the secular and Orthodox streams.
    Of course, the last thing the haredim want is their hated rivals stealing kids away from their grasp and inculcating them under the guise of "Jewish tradition."
    The Jewish Agency would be frantic. The secular school system would scramble to adapt. The haredim would be tweaked when the government starts saying "But on the other hand...." And those nice bareheaded yidn who fly here once a year to check on their plaques would find they have, finally, some influence here.
    Then there's (b): instead of sending their money, a million of them could bring it, as immigrants. Instead of building schools, they could populate them. Instead of demanding their rights as Zionists, they could win them as Israelis.