The Council of Regional Presidents Goes to Israel
Dr. Raymond Goldstein, United Synagogue’s international president, is no stranger to Israel.
Since his election in 2005, he has gone there at least three or four times a year, a participant in the programs of a range of groups to which he belongs.
Still, the trip he took to Israel in mid-January stands out.
Dr. Goldstein was one of 39 visitors who spent at least a week in Israel with United Synagogue’s Council of Regional Presidents. There, the presidents or their high-level representatives, some of their spouses, and a few other members of United Synagogue’s national leadership met with Israeli politicians, studied at the Fuchsberg Jerusalem Center’s Conservative Yeshiva, davened at Masorti synagogues, picked clementines with a group that gives food to the needy, talked with immigrants, visited Tali schools, and had an overwhelmingly moving if exhausting experience together.
The council meets every year, but this is the first time in six years that the group had gone to Israel. They did so this year at the urging of Paul Kochberg, president of United Synagogue’s Canadian region and chair of the council itself. “I’m really committed to Israel, and I though it would be an important statement for the council to show its support both for Israel and for the Fuchsberg Center,” said Mr. Kochberg, who lives in Thornhill, Ontario.
Many of the group’s activities centered around Conservative and Masorti institutions. (The movement that in North America is called Conservative calls itself Masorti, or traditional, Judaism in the rest of the world.) The group stayed in Jerusalem, where they visited Machon Schechter, the Masorti movement’s rabbinical seminary, where North American rabbinical students learn during their year in Israel, and Moreshet Avraham, a Masorti synagogue whose members tutor disadvantaged children. “There’s also a weekly hot lunch program there for underprivileged children,” Mr. Kochberg said. “It’s all supported by volunteers; they bus children in from school and expose them to some religious experiences. It’s nothing heavy duty, but it I think that but for a program like this, the kids would get neither any religious training nor a hot meal.”
“The Masorti movement really is bridging the gap between the Orthodox and the secular in Israel,” he continued. “We went to a Tali school on French Hill in Jerusalem. They have a very active religious curriculum; my guess is that the vast majority of that student body would have no exposure to Jewish religious education if not for that school. My perception is that a lot of secular Israelis are interested in religion but they’re not interested in orthodox religion. I thifnk that the program and the institutions run by the Masorti movement provide an option that I hope will be acceptable to secular Jews in Israel.”
The visit to the Conservative Yeshiva at the Fuchsberg Center was eye-opening to many of the guests. The Center is the Israeli headquarters for North American Conservative Jews; it is a beautiful building that few of the travelers had seen before this trip.
“I was there last August, and I saw it then, but before then I had not seen it since it was in the middle of construction,” Mr. Kochberg said. “To see it in its completed form, with all the activity that’s going on, is nothing less than inspiring. The physical facility is just beautiful, and the educational facilities and opportunities there are terrific.”
The Yeshiva, one of the institutions that makes up the Center, is aimed at students who are studying Torah lishma, for its own sake. It does not grant degrees; it attracts students who range from immediately post-college to retirees, and it teaches them text seriously. The Council of Presidents guests studied, modified-chevruta style, in small groups, one or two visitors partnered with Yeshiva faculty. “The energy level in the room was incredible,” Dr. Goldstein said. That Friday night, the group stayed at Fuchsberg, joining in services at the campus’s Moreshet Israel. “Brad Artson” – that is Rabbi Bradley Shavit Artson, the dean of the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies at the University of Judaism in Los Angeles – “was with us,” Dr. Goldstein added. “He spoke about how we have to help our congregations by providing them with the right kind of leadership. He pointed out the same dilemmas that Jerry” – Rabbi Jerome Epstein, United Synagogue’s executive vice president, who along with his wife, Jane, was also on the trip – “and I had spoken about the night before. We are concerned about providing the right kind of environment for our most committed kids; we have to make sure that our synagogues are open to them and give them what they have learned that they need when they come to join our communities as young adults. We have to figure out how to encourage and embrace them and to bring them into our kehillot without making them feel strange, and without driving others away.”
One of the most emotional experiences they group had was a brief memorial service on Har Herzl. It was at the grave of Michael Levin, the young American Israeli Army volunteer who died this summer in the conflict in Lebanon. Mr. Levin had been a lifelong member of the Conservative movement, and he was posthumously named the USY Alumnu of the Year. His mother still works in United Synagogue’s Mid-Atlantic regional office. “It was very sobering,” Dr. Goldstein said. “David Keren, the director of USY programs in Israel, “spoke about his knowledge of Michael,” who had been on Nativ and so had lived at Fuchsberg. “He told us about Michael, and Michael’s desires, and about what it was like the day of Michael’s funeral.” No one’s eyes remained entirely dry, Dr. Goldstein added.
The group met privately with a number of politicians, including Prime Minister Ehud Olmert; former Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu, who leads the opposition Likud party, and Tourism Minister Isaac Herzog. During the meeting with Prime Minister Olmert, Rabbi Epstein told the prime minister that Conservative movement strongly objects to the changes in the Law of Return recently suggested by the Sephardic Chief Rabbi. Shlomo Amar had proposed that converts to Judaism might no longer to eligible for automatic Israeli citizenship; Prime Minister Olmert signaled “that he would be sympathetic to our cause,” Rabbi Epstein later reported, adding that the prime minister also promised that Conservative Jews would be included in any future commission established to look at Israel’s approach to conversion.
Both meetings went well, Dr. Goldstein said. “Netanyahu was very focused on statements about the threat from Iran being like the threat from Hitler. And we had a very good interaction with Isaac Herzog; we talked about ways in which we could help and they could help us help them in encouraging tourism.”
The Council of Presidents joined with Table to Table, an organization that provides food to people in need. “We spent a couple of hours picking clementines,” said Dr. Goldstein. They also toured the Supreme Court and joined in one of the country’s latest fads for tourists, a drum circle. They ate well, shopped well, and spent a great deal of time at the Fuchsberg Center.
The trip was led, arranged, and given life by Barry Mael, United Synagogue’s director of regions. Although it was intense, there also were some breaks for simple pleasures. “We went to a restaurant at the Carmel winery in Rishon Lezion,” Mr. Kochberg said. “It was raucous.
“We had fun,” he concluded. “We made a lot of the fun ourselves. Typically, I understand, when missions go to Israel people have family obligations; they peel off and disappear. Here, for the most part nobody left. We really stayed together, and everybody loved it.”
