A quiet “Jewish renaissance” is happening in Israel and has been for the last ten to 15 years in ways that were “unexpected in form and size.”
So contended Rabbi Benjamin Segal, 67, former president of Melitz-the Centers for Jewish and Zionist Education in Israel and former chair of the Masorti [Conservative] Movement in Israel.
Segal told an audience of about 20 people at Lake Park Synagogue on Oct. 4 that Israelis all over the country are finding and creating ways to study Judaism and traditional Jewish texts. But they are doing this in ways that are small, grassroots, local, and not under the control of any “roof organization,” he said.
Moreover, these efforts do not demand that participants become observant in any particular way, “not one inch,” he said. Rather, he said, they are the “expression of a hunger” among many supposedly “secular” Israelis that Judaism and Jewish texts “should be available to me.”
This phenomenon has become significant enough that a book in Hebrew was published about it last year, “The Jewish Renaissance in Israeli Society: The Emergence of a New Jew,” written by Yair Sheleg, a researcher at the Israel Democracy Institute. And the phenomenon has been going on long enough for Sheleg to contend that it is “not a fad, but a fact,” said Segal.
“This did not exist 20 years ago,” said Segal. Moreover, at that time “no one would have predicted” that any such thing would happen, he added.
• Some 40 “Batei Midrash,” houses of study or “secular yeshivas” have appeared around Israel. Most of the participants come to them once a week, and their teaching staffs are either secular or mixed secular-religious.
• About 30 “kehillot lomdot” or “learning congregations” now exist. Most of them exist just for members to gather and study, though “a few of them have started to have services,” Segal said.
• Between 17 and 20 “mechinot” now exist. These are secular parallels to programs that allows religious young Israelis to study for a year before entering the Israel Defense Force for the mandatory military service. The difference is that the mechinot teach western philosophy and modern Hebrew poetry as well as Jewish texts.
See the full article in the November edition.
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