November 13, 2007

Israel Office

• Protecting Palestinian Olive Groves Yields Fruitful Results
• New Coalition Promotes Rights of Israel's African Refugees

SHATIL

• German Delegation Learns about Immigrant Youth-at-Risk from SHATIL
• SHATIL Staffers Share Conflict Resolution Lessons in Northern Ireland

Weekly Message

This past weekend, my havurah, Fabrangen, celebrated its 36th anniversary. Havurah, in our lexicon, means community, and Fabrangen comes from the Yiddish word for coming together. Fabrangen's roots are in the political activism and religious searching that occurred during the late 1960s and early 1970's. And the lessons of Fabrangen in the United States may hold the key to successful religious pluralism in Israel.

By the time I joined the Havurah in 1982, the focus of communal attention was on the weekly Shabbat service and the core principles of "egalitarian" and "participatory" were well-established. Thus, the havurah has no rabbi, no cantor, no president, no denominational association and (less out of principle, but practical reality) no building. Services are led by community members, many of whom joined Fabrangen with limited Jewish education and with no knowledge of the Hebrew language; over time, they have become confident service leaders, even in front of the 500 worshipers who join us for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.

Listening to the reflections of the community's founders and perusing articles written about the early days, I was struck by how attitudes toward the state of Israel divided the then relatively small community. Rob Agus, the driving spirit of the new community, believed in the importance of affirming a strong American Jewish connection to the State of Israel, even while criticizing specific Israeli policies. Others were more ambivalent, either because they sought to affirm a Jewish identity for progressive Jews living in the United States separate from Israel or because they were profoundly disappointed with the political direction of the State of Israel in the early 1970s. The establishment Washington Jewish community, which initially supported Fabrangen with a seed grant, declined to renew the grant because of concerns about the nascent community's perceived antagonism toward Israel.

Today, these arguments are long-forgotten. Fabrangen's connections to Israel are personal and profound; our prayers and discussions reflect a sincere commitment to the State of Israel and a genuine concern about the political direction of a country we care deeply about. Not surprisingly, I feel at home in such a community.

The evolution of our 36-year-old community experiment offers lessons for Israel. In recent years, several new communities have formed in Israel to provide an outlet for expressions of Jewish identity among new immigrants and others. These communities consciously do not associate with existing denominations, as they seek to develop their rituals, approaches to learning about tradition and mechanisms for providing communal support to those less fortunate. Rather than force them into a specific mold, we at NIF are supporting these communities, from a congregation for newly-affiliated Russian immigrants to Israel's first-ever secular yeshiva, as they experiment and evolve. Thirty-six years from now, or much sooner, we hope that the seeds we are planting will evolve into well-established communities of Israeli Jews who are comfortable with their indigenously developed forms of Jewish identity and communal practice.

In this week's NIF News, we report on the safe conclusion of the olive picking season in the West Bank. We also feature the inaugural rally of a new coalition supported by NIF, which seeks to ensure the rights of Israel's growing number of refugees from Africa. SHATIL reports on a German delegation who visited Israel to learn from the Jewish State's immigrant absorption experience and two SHATIL staffers' recent trip to Northern Ireland where they shared lessons on conflict resolution.