Israel – Jewish Theological Seminary

Expanding the Conversation: Roy Peled

Beth Mayerowitz — Thu, 22 May 2025 21:07:15 +0000

What does it mean to be a Jewish and democratic state?

In this episode, Dr. Roy Peled—legal scholar and former youth activist—reflects on the legal and political forces shaping Israel’s identity. Speaking at the Israel at a Crossroads convening, Peled traces the unfinished story of Israel’s constitution and the impact of Basic Laws on minority rights—especially the Arab minority. With clarity and nuance, he unpacks the political forces behind the Nation-State Law, the shifting role of the judiciary, and the tensions between national identity and democratic principles.

Peled brings both scholarly insight and personal conviction, inviting listeners to engage deeply with questions of power, belonging, and constitutional change in Israel today.

Discussion Questions

Constitutional Identity
Dr. Peled discusses the absence of a formal Israeli constitution. What do you think are the implications—positive or negative—of defining a state’s identity without a written constitution?
Majority and Minority
Peled highlights a lack of clear vision for the role of the Arab minority in Israel. How might a state balance national identity with full inclusion of minorities? What models from other countries, if any, come to mind?
The Role of the Courts
What tensions emerge between legal decisions that protect individual rights and those that shape public or national identity? How should courts navigate these tensions?
Nuance in Debate
Dr. Peled criticizes the polarization of conversations around Israel, both in Israel and abroad. What helps you hold space for nuance when discussing Israel’s identity and minority rights?
Personal Values
Dr. Peled identifies as a Zionist who believes in equality and democracy. How do your personal values shape how you engage in conversations about Israel? What assumptions do you bring to the table?

Show Notes

Video

speaking at Israel at a Crossroads

Further Reading

Basic Law: (Originally adopted in 2018)

TRANSCRIPT

Ellie Gettinger

Welcome to Extending the Conversation, a podcast series that brings the Jewish Theological Seminary to you. The series focuses on the messages that emerged from Israel at a crossroads navigating religion, democracy and justice. A convening that took place at Gates in April 2025. I’m Ellie Gettinger, director of outreach for the Center for Lifelong Learning, and I will be curating the series, which will highlight key messages from the convening itself with insights from our panelists that were recorded separately.

This episode features Dr. Roy Peled, a professor from the Haim Striks School of Law, College of Management Academic Studies in Rishon LeTsiyon. He spoke during the session, “Majority Rights for Minorities: Assessing the Nation-State Law.” Dr. Peled detailed the evolution of Israel’s Nation State Law, beginning with the Israeli Declaration of Independence.

Roy Peled

What is not often known is that one lines there says that as of this declaration, May 15th, 1948, the state will be run by interim institutions, which will be replaced by regular institutions in accordance with a constitution, That will be approved no later than October 1st, 1948. Now, you all know Israelis you know, we’re not known for our punctuality, but still we’re way off here.

What I want to raise here is why that happened and the reason that that happened. There are several reasons. Like any historical development, but it has much to do with David Ben-Gurion. I think one of the greatest men to walk the earth, but not flawless. There are a few explanations you’d like power and the Constitution always limits your powers.

That’s one explanation. But one that’s more important for our purposes is the idea that Israel is in the making that you don’t want to carve in stone its nature. It actually had less to do with the Arab population that nobody thought a lot about then, and more to do with the ultra-Orthodox, which Ben-Gurion wanted on board, and was afraid that defining the nature of the state, answering questions about equality, equality for women, equality for different streams in Judaism will push the ultra-Orthodox off board.

And therefore, he said, we can do without a constitution that we don’t really need, that let’s not sort of shake, shake our relationships at this point. So there was a commitment for a constitution and it never happened, at least not in the form of an actual constitution as you knew it from here. What happened was in 1950 that the Knesset decides to go forward step by step, as they called it, and work on chapters of the constitution.

And each chapter that will be agreed upon will become what we call today a Basic Law, beginning 1958 up to 1988. The Knesset confirmed nine of these Basic Laws on the constitutional component that every constitution has. So. So the equivalent of Articles one, two and three of your constitution, we had in those nine Basic Laws the judiciary, the executive, the legislature, capital, Jerusalem, etc., etc..

What’s important to say is that all these basic laws, although some of them were controversial, the one in Jerusalem, for instance, were always bipartisan. You know, we have more than two parties, but in American terms bipartisan, we’re agreed upon across the political spectrum. 1992 we have the first two basic laws that deal with human rights again, the equivalent of maybe your Bill of Rights.

These two are confirmed by a bipartisan majority. Notice, for 22 years later there is no Basic Law. And why is that? After the 1992 Basic Law, the Supreme Court had a series of decisions that struck down laws, mostly upsetting the Orthodox parties Aryeh Deri, the leader of Shas following that said, if it would be suggested to turn the Ten Commandments into a basic law, I will vote against it because I have no idea how the Supreme Court will interpret it.

So for many years, this whole project was put on hold and there were no basic laws legislated. When the recent right wing governments became more confident in their ruling the majority, they began to think it’s actually maybe a useful tool to have. And in 2014, this basic law about a referendum in case of withdrawal not important for our case, other than it was the first that passed on a strict coalition-opposition vote.

So all coalition members in favor, all opposition members against. And that was also the case with the second basic law to be enacted since basic law, Israel, the nation state of the Jewish people, which we’ll get to in more details.

Ellie Gettinger

Let’s get a sense of Dr. Pollard’s background to better understand how he became involved in this topic. You tell us a little bit about what your role is.

Roy Peled

Our talk here brings me to previous lives going all the way back to my youth in Hashomer Hatzair youth movement where I led Israeli Palestinian youth projects from the West Bank. But then as I became an academic and engaged in constitutional law teaching, the issue of minority rights in Israel was very center dealt with that a lot of talk about minority rights in Israel, in the States like to American students in Europe.

So this is sort of a combination of past activism and current academic interests.

Ellie Gettinger

Returning to Dr. Pellets talk. He considers the perception of the Arab minority in Israel.

Roy Peled

So I want to say a few words about conflicting visions on the status of the Arab minority since or through these points in history that I mentioned for many, many years.

The state of Israel doesn’t really ask itself what is our endgame in terms of our relationship with the Arab minority. It’s just not a question. There is an administrative question how we handle Arab localities, how we handle opposition Arabs in politics. But there’s no sort of in-depth discussion of their role in the country that begins to change with the Oslo Accords and not from the Israeli side, but actually more from the Arab side.

Well, from both sides, I’d say in these ways, Arabs begin to say to themselves, Wait, wait, wait, wait. Israel is going to strike an agreement with the PLO. And where does that leave us? The PLO is representing only the Palestinians outside of Israel per se. Not not officially, but in practice. That’s what they’re discussing about with the government of Israel.

The government of Israel insisted, and I think rightfully so, But this creates a problem that the PLO does not represent Israeli Arabs and that nothing about Israeli Arabs is part of this process. So Israelis Arabs begin to ask themselves, where does this leave us? And are we is anyone representing us? Are we deserted by our leadership in both senses of the national one, the PLO and and the Israeli government and something else happens.

Maybe it’s sort of a backlash to that is the Jews also begin to worry. They insist that anything that has to do with Arab-Israelis is an internal political matter. But as voices rise opposing or raising these questions, some Jews begin to feel well. So if there is now going to be a Palestinian state, I’ll give you a spoiler. That never happened even. But the sense was at the time that this may happen. And then there are claims for binationality of Israel. Where does that leave us? Is this going to be a solution of a one and a half Palestinian state and half Jewish state? So there begins to be more discussion about this nature come the year 2000 riots.

Again, very, very conflicting views. But Arabs were 12 Arabs were killed by the police in riots. That one has to say were very violent and cut off the country for a while. Arabs see they’re treated by the police not as protesting citizens, but as enemies as terrorists. Jews begin to think that way. There is a significant force within the country that challenges what we never thought about and took for granted that we basically own this place and serious security threats.

This leads to an interesting development in 2006, different Arab organizations for different initiatives within the Arab sector create what is known as the vision documents, saying, look, we think needs to be the relationship between the state and its national Palestinian minority. Each of them has a different voice, but basically they talk about either binationality or French version of Republicanism where all citizens are equal, but they present the Jewish majority with a vision, not one I necessarily like, any of them, but a well-argued and well thought through vision I had the time was asked to serve as a research assistant for a team of academics in Tel Aviv University that was brought together to respond, to put on the table the Jewish vision for the state’s relationship with its minority. We met for first four or five times and they just couldn’t agree on how to present a vision for the relationship between the state and its minority.

Ellie Gettinger

How are these conversations going on in Israel? And who’s at the table?

Roy Peled

Can I say something before and how it’s going on in the state?

Ellie Gettinger

Please, because I’m not sure it’s going on as much in the States,

Roy Peled

I have nothing to say about how often it happens. But talking about quality rather than quantity. I don’t there and don’t think it always happens on the highest quality. Even in academia, there is lots of simplicity, lots of labeling. It’s of sort of flattening of the discussion into preexisting narratives about either antisemitism on the one hand or settler colonialism on the other.

And normally people jump to the extremes, and that’s sad. And that doesn’t let people learn anything, which I have to say, I don’t I was I think what we had here today was in contrast to that, and I was very happy to see the audience sort of engaged on a deeper level. Does this happen in Israel? Not enough.

And in similar ways maybe to the problems here, but more out of fear or out of deep emotions that lead the discussion? Very few people on both sides, I think, but I’m more familiar with the Jewish side, are really willing to put themselves in the shoes of, for instance, what it’s like to be a minority in a Jewish state.

And people are very defensive. So they think that the moment I’ll acknowledge that it’s not the best experience, I’ll be required to give up my hopes for a Jewish state, or I’ll have to denounce Zionism or a sort of avoiding that back home. So people you don’t think that maybe, okay, I can I can accept that there are some problems.

And now let’s sit down and talk our way to more nuanced solutions. And it’s not everybody’s up in arms.

Ellie Gettinger

In his talk, he expands on the role of the courts in promoting minority right now.

Roy Peled

This also played out in the courts. And I want to mention two quick cases that the present very different notions of the relationship between the state and this minority, the Ka’adon case in 2000 is a case where a citizen, a nurse from village of Baqa al-Gharbiya, wants to improve his life standards, mostly the education of his daughters, and he wants to purchase a piece of land at a nearby community that’s being set up.

He goes there and he’s told, he look like a nice guy, but we don’t accept Arabs here. And he goes to the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court, you know, not very long and not very complicated cases says no, that can fly. These sorry communities are erected on state land and the state cannot discriminate between Jews and Arabs. There are few complexities there because the Jewish agency is involved in how the lands were purchased to begin with.

The basically the Supreme Court says, no, and it’s a almost unanimous decision. I want to mention Justice Mishael Cheshin, because justice question is considered not rightfully, by the way, but is considered a conservative judge. Some stages even in this current judicial overhaul. He was the hero of the right. Again, I don’t think that for good reasons, but he is known for very lengthy and heated opinions.

He writes a one-line opinion in this case. He says in receiving their rights from the state, the petitioners were discriminated against and deserve a remedy from this course. That’s all this decision. So I want to contrasted with the second case in 2002, Adalah, which is very important legal NGO fighting for equal rights of Arabs in Israel, petitions to the Supreme Court against five municipalities that have a sizable Arab minority, and they ask the courts to force these municipalities to have Arabic on all their street signs, next to Hebrew, obviously. The court in this case accepts their petition. Justice Cheshin, which I mentioned a minute ago, is in the minority and thinks it should be rejected. And the difference is that this case is not about civic equality for the individual. This case is about the presence of the Arab minority in the public sphere. And Justice Barak, together with Justice Dorner in, say, the Arab minority is a native minority.

It’s not like immigrants from Russia, for instance, and it has the rights for its culture. And its language, of course, is part of its culture to thrive in its homeland. Justice Cheshin says maybe so, maybe not. But it’s not something for the court to decide. If it were a civic problem of an individual, if someone would get lost because he can’t find his way, because there are no sense I’d ruled in favor of him.

But the petitioners made it very clear and they did, that this is a political question that they want the court to back their right to be present in the Israeli public sphere. And justice question thinks that that is very different from Ka’adan. So there are conflicting visions here within the legal establishment, I’d say, about what equality for the minority means.

So we come to the Nation-State law and here maybe I’ll give it. There’s nothing unusual about the Nation-State law. You think about constitutions, many of them have a preamble saying this is the identity of our state. And if people basically accept the idea that Israel is a Jewish state, it could be under also, I think, many different circumstances, a very reasonable opening for a constitution.

It’s not unusual methodologically to have a preamble that says this is the character of our state. There are, however, some substantial issues I’ll mention for the lack of any reference to equality, exclusive national self-determination. We need to say it doesn’t say that only Jews have a right to self-determination, but to national self-determination. The change in the status of Arabic and the question Jewish of governmental support for Jewish settlements.

Now we have to remember the political background here is, as I mentioned earlier, sort of a growing insecurity of Jews in the legitimization of the idea of Israel as a Jewish state. You could debate how justified those fears are. I think that they are a result of some fearmongering. On the other hand, if you think six blocks south of here, those fears got some support in recent times.

So that’s sort of on the Jewish psyche. It’s also a time where there is growing demands, as Mr. mentioned, for integration of Arabs into politics. And this is for the far right, a way to poke the Arab parties in the eye, to say, we want to remind you that you are not equal citizens in this country. We want to make sure that everybody remembers its nature.

And as I said, if you look at the text, I don’t think that’s an impossible text. If you look at the context, that delivers a very different message. That’s the political motivation. It’s also an anti judiciary, political motivation, and the initiators say it very clearly. The court preferred along the years the Democratic part of the states definition on account of the Jewish part.

And we want to change that equilibrium. We want to bring the Jewish part to be more dominant. There is a petition to the Supreme Court against this law, and the Supreme Court, as I think anyone could expect, checks the petition, but says a few important things. And you have to remember this is a petition against a constitutional amendment.

So legally, it’s not a simple thing at all. But the Supreme Court says, look, the laws says that Arabic will be a language with a special status. That is actually in the signage case. I mentioned earlier what Justice Barak Chief Justice Barak said that Israel is the primary official language in the state, but Arabic is the language of a sizable native minority deserves a special status.

So there is no real change in reality there. And actually, in a way, it’s a recognition of the collective right of the Arab minority. The law talks about the governments supporting Jewish settlement, and some people try to argue that that is an overruling of the Ka’adan case. But actually, I have to say that in the bill, the draft bill, it said that the government can support separate settlements.

That was changed, that could not go through the Knesset, which again is a good sign. The Knesset wouldn’t legislate something. Talking about segregative settlements. It did say Jewish settlements in the court says, you know, let’s see what that means in the future. It may mean like a Jewish state, a community who whose culture is Jewish. But clearly and by the way, even some of the initiators of the lawsuit, clearly any Arab can live in a Jewish community.

It’s not an idea to segregate them, maybe sort of more intentional religious communities. We don’t know. Let’s wait to see how that is used. So the court interprets the law as very benign. Now, it’s been used by some judges as a leader. First of all, the number one use of this law since then is by Jewish criminals petitioning the government not to extradite them because of the clause, the state’s commitment to protect Jews.

But that never succeeded. There were a few cases where judges in the lower instances used the court once to deny Arab petitioners who asked for support of the reimbursement on expenses of students driving to Arab schools somewhere else from their municipality. And the lower instance judge said, Well, the municipality has the right to be a Jewish settlement and it doesn’t have to support that.

But that has been overruled, I have to say. Not the outcome but the argument. So the the impact was not dramatic officially. That said, there are social implications, right? There is a message coming with this bill. It was not necessarily embraced by the judiciary and not necessarily embraced by parliament, but definitely pushed by certain factions in the parliament that says we want to remind you who’s the boss, and that has all kinds of effects.

Also, lawyers say on our willingness to fight the state in some fronts out of fear, future interpretations of this law will be very problematic. And the courts are changing what happened so far is not necessarily what will happen.

Ellie Gettinger

In this moment of heightened political rhetoric. How can we temper our responses in dealing with something as politically charged as minority rights in Israel? If you could nuance the conversation. These are the things that I want people to know in order to get to that gray area. What would you want to present?

Roy Peled

So one would be I myself am a Zionist. I believe strongly that there is no reason that a Jewish state identified as such should not exist and at the same time be democratic. But to begin with, I want people to understand that not everybody has to believe that, and that when people question that, that doesn’t immediately turn them to illegitimate, antisemitic.

Some people argue that out of antisemitic views, but definitely not everybody. And by saying you can only enter the discussion if you accept that you’re limiting the discussion way more than necessary and you’re losing just lots of people you can talk to. So that’s one thing. The other is that there are many different ways to think of a Jewish state.

It’s easier here in the States to explain that a Jewish state isn’t necessarily a halachic state, but quite a few Israelis think that they don’t really want the restaurants to be closed on a Saturday or not to be able to go to a movie on Shabbat. But they sort of implicitly accept that there is some inherent preference to Jewish religious or Orthodox or ultra-Orthodox practices in the state of Israel and I don’t accept that.

I think that we need to remember that a Jewish state can mean many different things and that we sort of have to break the nexus between the culture of the state, its its symbols and its laws and its use of of force, of power, and that not everything with our Palestinian citizens is a zero sum game that we can give space to Palestinian aspirations for a better life.

We don’t have to accept any of their demands if there is such a thing as there. There are many different pastimes or political leadership. Not municipal, not local. National leadership is often quite radical. I have my criticism of it. I don’t expect many of their arguments and demands from the state. But that’s fine. I don’t have to. And I and I can acknowledge their issues, their problems. The harm that the state inflicts on them without having to submit myself to all their demands.

Ellie Gettinger

In closing his comments at the convening, Dr. Peled begins talking about how change can happen. Spoiler alert he comes back to the question of the Israeli constitution.

Roy Peled

Nothing is going to change without a political change. Good things happened in the civil service in the past decade. At the same time, horrible things happened on the political level and there was an ongoing, escalating rhetoric against the Arab population in support of, if not explicitly, definitely implicitly, Jewish supremacy and no real change in the current. That can happen without change on the political level.

That said, and if that happens, we do see signs of more willingness, political integration of Arabs. Conflicting signs sometimes. But that that is also there. We do see a more economical integration again, mostly because of the civil service, understanding how crucial this is for the state, not for the minority. I mean, they’re not mutually exclusive, but the motivation was how important it is for the state.

And at the end of the day, if we really come to an actual Israeli constitution, it will have to answer the question which some may not want to deal with, but will never settle in a sort of secure and sense of coming to an actual permanent nature of the state without giving some sort of recognition one way or another to the fact that there are not just non-Hebrew speaking citizens in Israel, but an actual national minority within the state.

Ellie Gettinger

Where do you find kind of hope or promise in this challenging moment?

Roy Peled

I have to search very thoroughly to find it these days. I find it, so one, as I said in there and the current Arab leadership and how it responded to October 7th and in lots of local initiatives between Arab municipalities and Jewish ones in the civil society on the political level, in in more willingness than in the past to accept the need for integration.

We saw that in the so-called change government by Bennett Lapid. But then we have to say Bennett was here last month in Columbia and said that he won’t repeat that, that the government needs to be composed of Zionist parties. Now, again, I’m a Zionist. I want Israel to be honest, but that doesn’t say that it has to be exclusively Zionist.

I can’t say I hope because I think even as a political statement it’s harming, but I hope that will change. Let’s say if people like him are back in power, I think that in the long run, after years that the courts have sort of got us used to the idea that equality is part of our Constitution, that we see more Arabic in the public sphere, that we see more Arabic, not just as sweepers, but as doctors and heads of departments in hospitals and in high ranking civil service positions.

People are more open to that. I think with the right leadership and with a bold leadership, things can change rather quickly.

Ellie Gettinger

Thank you so much. The need for a constitution and the challenge of ensuring rights without one came up repeatedly at the convening. Israel at a Crossroads. Dr. Roy Peled provided an excellent framework for understanding these complex issues, and particularly in addressing the shift in the passage of Basic Laws since 2014. I keep going back to the question. He turned back on me. How are we in the U.S. talking about minority rights in Israel?

Thank you for listening. This audio was recorded at the 91�첥 Convening, Israel at a Crossroads. I hope you will expand this conversation, sharing your concerns and questions, and maybe this podcast with friends and family members. If you want to see complete footage of this session or of any of the sessions of the meeting, Israel at a Crossroads.

You can find a link on our website jtsa.edu/podcasts. Look for the “Expanding the Conversation” icon. Each episode includes discussion questions for individuals or groups to consider and links to our speakers, organizations and publications. If you would like to attend a Convening, you can find information about our upcoming programs at jtsa.edu/convenings

I’m Ellie Gettinger, director of Outreach for 91�첥. This podcast was produced by me with technical support from Chris Hickey, director of New Media. This is a production of the Jewish Theological Seminary. No part of this podcast may be reproduced or transmitted in any form without the written permission of the Jewish Theological Seminary. The views expressed here in may not be those of the Jewish Theological Seminary.

Expanding the Conversation: Seth Farber

onlinelearning@jtsa.edu — Thu, 22 May 2025 20:56:37 +0000

In Israel today, the question of “Who is a Jew?” is not only legal—it’s deeply personal.

In this episode of Expanding the Conversation, Rabbi Seth Farber, founder and director of Itim, reflects on the intersection of religious authority, individual identity, and democratic values. Drawing from biblical narratives, courtroom battles, and grassroots activism, Rabbi Farber explores how Israel’s religious bureaucracy impacts the lives of citizens at every major life cycle moment—marriage, burial, conversion—and what it will take to create a Jewish state that welcomes all Jews.

Discussion Questions

“Mi Eilah?” – Who Are These?
Rabbi Farber frames his talk around Jacob’s biblical question, “Mi Eilah?” as a metaphor for how Israeli institutions question Jewish identity. How does this question resonate today, especially for converts, immigrants, and those outside the Orthodox mainstream?
Pluralism and State Power
What are the implications of having state-controlled religious institutions in a democratic society? What models might reflect a pluralistic vision of Judaism in Israel?
Conversion and Inclusion
What does the episode reveal about the experience of Jews by choice in Israel? What does it say about the boundaries of community and the authority to define Jewishness??
Judaism and Zionism
Farber argues that Judaism is not an afterthought in the Zionist story, but central to it. How do you interpret the relationship between Judaism and Zionism today?
Hope and Responsibility
Despite the bureaucratic and legal challenges, Rabbi Farber speaks of being “blessed to live in this moment.” What gives you hope when thinking about Jewish identity and the future of the Jewish people?

Show Notes

Video/Image

speaking at Israel at a Crossroads

Further Reading

Seth Farber “” JTA (July 10, 2017)–Farber referred to this article in his talk.

Transcript

Ellie Gettinger

Welcome to Expanding the Conversation, a podcast series that brings the Jewish Theological Seminary to you. The series focuses on the messages that emerge from Israel at a crossroads navigating religion, democracy and justice. A Convening that took place at 91�첥 in April 2025. I’m Ellie Gettinger, director of outreach for the Center for Lifelong Learning, and I will be curating the series, which will highlight key messages from the convening itself with insights from our panelists that were recorded separately.

In this episode, we hear from Rabbi Seth Farber, the director of Itim. Itim means Passages in Hebrew. It is an Israeli advocacy organization dedicated to building a Jewish and democratic state in which all Jews can be full Jewish lives. In both his remarks and our conversation. Rabbi Farber explored the many ways the religious establishment impacts personal decisions, particularly around high stakes moments like weddings, burials and conversion.

He opened with a biblical story about family coming together and the challenges in reuniting.

Seth Farber

Let’s be honest, our people are dysfunctional. We always have been. And because of that, I’d like to take you to a moment in our history where we sought for just a moment to address the dysfunctionality. After generations and generations of not just not getting along, where brothers, tried to kill each other, where brothers dismissed each other for who they were.

The family finally comes together at the end of the Book of Genesis. After all this tragedy and all this trauma for a moment, if just a moment, everybody is together. Joseph is told the Book of Genesis in chapter 48. Having brought the family together, Joseph is told your your father is sick. Joseph takes his two sons, Menashe and Ephraim, to meet his father, ostensibly for the last time. Jacob is told your son, the Viceroy, his children are coming before you. Jacob proceeds to tell Joseph a concise form of Jewish history. He kind of rewrites Jewish history, forgetting about all the bad stuff except for the loss of his wife. God appeared to me in Canaan.

He blessed me. He promised me I would be a great nation. And then I’m like, just. And like every story that we’ve known until now about the dysfunction of the family. Jacob promises, Joseph that the family will come together again. A kibbutz galyuot, The returning of the exiles of sorts. Of course, it happens in exile.

Your two sons who were born here in Egypt, your two sons who were born in Egypt. They will be mine. Everybody will be together again. Then the Bible gets to what I perceive to be the seminal verse of the Book of Genesis, something that’s so instructive for the discussion of Jewish pluralism in Israel.

Having promised Joseph that his two sons will be Jacob’s. The Bible records vayar Yisrael b’ne Yoseph Jacob looked out at the two sons of Jacob, who he’d just promised were going to be his. And he says two words vayomer, Mi Eilah? Who are these? This isn’t just an informational question. It’s an existential question. When Jacob looks at the story of the family coming together, it’s alien to him.

Think about the scene for a moment. Imagine what Joseph’s children look like. They probably got up that morning. They put on their Egyptian best, and I could only imagine that Jacob thought the Joseph sons would come with their Rambam in one hand and their Shulhan Arukh on the other hand. Mi Eilah, is the question that’s being asked over and over and over again the state of Israel, thousands of times every week.

Who are you? You know what they say about Israel. We love aliya and we hate olim. It’s much more than that. We can’t stand the fact, we meaning the Jacobs. We can’t stand the fact that this vision of the family coming together doesn’t look like what we thought it was going to look like by any means. But if the question of mi eilah isn’t just an informational question, if the question of Jewish pluralism is not just a question of information, it’s also a question of of existential character.

And the response of Joseph is particularly instructive. Jacob looks and says mi eilah, vayomer Yosef el aviv. Joseph looked at his to his father and said b’nai hem asher natan Elohim bazer. This has three parts to it, first: These are my children. That’s the first piece of it. The solution to a dysfunctional family. A family that doesn’t get along. A family who refuses to respect it is to acknowledge we’re all part of this. The second thing is: These are not just my children. I know they don’t look like the way you thought they were going to look. I know that you didn’t think that this is the way Jewish history is going to play itself out.

This is part of a much, much bigger story. One that you, Jacob, don’t understand. You’ve lost your perspective. It actually has a double aspect because it’s not just it’s a bigger story. It’s a bigger story that God planned. If all the Jews don’t look exactly like you, Jacob, that’s not because people didn’t turn out the way you thought they would.

It’s because that’s part of God’s plan. There’s a bigger story here than you see. And for those who remember. Traditional interpretations were in the Midrash and subsequently in Rashi. If you remember that text, Rashi says, Joseph, I love this line that Joseph pulled out his Ketubah with ready pulled out his marriage document with Osnat the daughter of Potiphera, right. The priest of On. I know, I know my ketubah doesn’t look like your ketubah. But that doesn’t mean it’s not a ketubah. And then there’s an amazing pause in this story, because if the first question is the transition from informational to existential and the second question is known and the saying, the response is there’s a much, much bigger picture out here.

And our solution to the diversity of our people is not to deny them who they are, but to embrace them for who they are and who could they could be. The biblical text records Bring them close to me. I wish to bless them. This third dimension is actually the most dramatic. It requires a demand from Joseph, also something we have to meet somewhere for Jacob to bless. Joseph has to move as well.

The story of Jewish pluralism in Israel is a painful story. It’s a painful story that has a dramatic history, a history of a series of bad decisions, of horrifying decisions.

What I do Itim, We’re trying to effect rectify the situation. We’ve helped more than 100,000 families navigate the labyrinth of Jewish life in Israel. People who came to the Jewish state and said, I want to live Jewish. You think after 2000 years we’d get that right? But quite the opposite. Over and over and over again, Whether you’re an immigrant from the FSU, from the former Soviet Union, or an immigrant from the states, or you grew up in Israel, day after day, people are asking mi eilah, Who are you? We know you are, but who are you?

Ellie Gettinger

ITIM, as an organization, was entirely new to me. In our conversation, I wanted to get a better sense of the organization. Can you describe the work that Itim does?

Seth Farber

We have a pretty robust legal division. 30 people work and we have four departments. One department is just an assistant center that’s helped more than 100,000 families over the years as they navigate. And we’ve represented people in all sorts of systems, in burial and marriage and divorce.

And conversion is a very strong area in which we have, and that allows us to filter up the kind of systemic issues that are that are problematic in Israel at any given time. Is there anybody you go to will say, if you have a problem call Itim when the issues filter up, then we have a legal division that basically tries to take things systemically when we see ills in society and things that the religious establishment I say more than the rabbinate, it’s the religious establishment. This could be the rabbinical courts. It can sometimes be even the Interior Ministry. When we see them overstepping their bounds or doing things that actually are detrimental to what our perception of what the Jewish state should be.

We also have a policy division where we work with the decision makers in Israel. Whether it’s the tenacity of someone is in the case at full time or someone who’s not a lobbyist, but someone who is discussing the issues and understanding the issues and making sure that our voice is heard in committee meetings.

Some of the issues are taken care of on the municipal level, the legal division in the and the policy division of Itim. They basically try to change things systemically. Vision is where we started talking about it at the beginning, and that’s our conversion. That we started a seven or eight years ago.

We now have something like 70 rabbis that are supportive of it and 46 rabbis that are converting on a regular basis. We have conversions every week and we’re certainly the largest converting group outside the state of outside of the rabbinate of the state of Israel. We’re the largest in the world. We’re now we’re in outright competition with the rabbinate, I like to say.

And I and I and I believe it. Our goal is not to continue to do this forever. Our goal is to negotiate with the state of Israel, the religious establishment, to create a different style religious establishment that provides people with choices. And if they want to convert the way the rabbinate is converting, great. If they want to convert the way we are great.

And I think there can be different channels. But the ways people can choose how to live their Jewish lives.

Ellie Gettinger

Getting back to his talk, Rabbi Farber details some of the ways in which people are looking for additional channels for their religious lives.

Seth Farber

We just finished a study. We interviewed 400 families that went through Israel, through rabbinical courts.

It’s one of the streams and it’s in order to get married in Israel, you have to go through the rabbinical courts to either prove you’re Jewish, if you’re an immigrant from the former Soviet Union primarily, or if you want to get divorced. We asked couples if you knew what you were going to go through, would you get married again?

40% said wouldn’t want to do it. That’s a tragedy, it’s a failure. It’s not a failure of the religious authorities. It’s a failure of the Zionist enterprise we were taught. I think it was a mis-teaching that Herzl and Ben-Gurion were the great threat to traditional Judaism. That’s what they taught us in Hebrew University, in graduate school. They taught us that Zionism was considered the great threat to Judaism.

One of the things we’ve learned since October 7^th, is that Zionism and Judaism actually have a capacity to go together specifically when there’s no religious coercion. It’s not just that these individual stories of heroes, young men and young women and older men and older women who in the face of incredible catastrophe, sought to express their Jewish lives.

It’s a symptom of the fact that people in Israel feel strongly about their Judaism. Jews in Israel want to express their Judaism. So how can it be that 87% of Jewish Israelis say they have very, very little confidence in the religious establishment? But what I’m really here to tell you is not the horrifying stories I see every day, and I’m here to tell you is not only is there hope, but there’s real hope.

Sometimes we have to go to the courts. Sometimes we have to argue the case. Sometimes we have to work on regulations. But the most important thing is we have to tell a big story, there is a big story going on right now. My parents both ran from Europe. They’re both survivors. My father was smuggling arms for the Haganah in 1947 in Berkeley.

I grew up here, with most of you screaming: One, two, three, four. Open up the Iron Door. Five, six, seven, eight. Let my people immigrate. I got to Israel and I thought we had made it. And then I realized the social fabric of Israel, the opportunity to forge ahead with what Rabbi Greenberg calls the Third Era in Jewish history, not only in his terminology of a new covenant, but a Third Era in Jewish history, where we’re now determining what Judaism is going to look like for the next millennia.

That’s incredibly, incredibly powerful. And there are signs in every way that things are changing. The chief rabbi, the new chief rabbi who’s been in power for four and a half months. I met the previous chief rabbis in the first year of their term. Once or twice we said we would meet all the time. Never happened. The present chief rabbi, has met me already four times.

He’s agreed to sit on panels with me. There’s a dialogue going on. Something’s changing. Not just in the leadership. Something’s changing in the Israel, body politic, people are recognizing they’re waking up that Judaism is important to them and they’re not going to suffer anymore. The ills and the failures of a religious establishment that keeps on asking mi eilah, Who are you?

We’ve been incredibly, incredibly successful in the courts, even this morning. We’ve been incredibly successful. If I I’ll just give you one example. If you open up the website of the Religious Council in Kiryat Motzkin, a small town northern Israel, you will find there an apology from the chief rabbi of Kiryat Maskin to a mikvah attendant. Four years ago, he called on the phone and said are you were make for attending to works for me.

And she said Yes. And he said, Are you the Ethiopian? And she said, Yes. And he said, When did you convert? And she said, I didn’t convert. He hung up the phone and he sent out a WhatsApp to his community saying which made it to her as well, because she’s a member of one of the ultra-Orthodox synagogues in Kiryat Motzkin.

And that said, if you went to the mikveh with the Ethiopian attendant, please ask a rabbi if you have to go again. I’m not telling you that the horrify you. I’m telling you that to tell you after four years, the apology arised and that mikveh attendant was hosted by the chief rabbi of Israel two weeks ago in his office, where he apologized on behalf of the state of Israel for the way she was treated.

So, yes, sometimes we have to use the courts and sometimes we have to use policymakers and sometimes you have to use the press. Some things are changing with more and more people are saying Here I’ll get to my last point. We’ve represented all sorts of people in court, Maxim, Maxim and Alina Sarnikov

Maxim and Alina made aliya because of you. You’re responsible for them, more than the people of Israel. They made aliya the 1993 and second grade. They went to school in. They both went to second grade in Ashkelon in P.S. 3 They grew up together. By the time they were 16, there were a couple. By the time they were 18, they drafted together Maxim in Aliya because his mom is Jewish, Alina, mainly because her dad is Jewish.

They went to the army and they said to aliya, you’re never going to be able to get married to Maxim unless you go through a conversion. The Army has a conversion program, as many of you know. Today, in Israel, 6% of Israel’s Jewish population is not a halakhically Jewish. In Maxim and Alina said We want to be part of this.

So Alina went through the conversion program in the Army, and Alina has a conversion certificate from the chief rabbi of Israel. And years after right at Maxim and Alina’s Wedding, which I performed under the auspices of the Chief Rabbi. And you’ll hear why in a minute at their wedding when the major television station in Israel came to film us.

Maxim looked at the camera. He said, You know, when they dropped me and I’m in field intelligence, they dropped me on the side of the Litani River in Lebanon. He said, No one question my girlfriend’s conversion. But in 2012, when they came into Ashkelon, Rabbi Bloi, he was the chief rabbi of Ashkelon, said, I don’t accept the army conversions.

She said, I’m holding a conversion certificate of the chief rabbi of Israel. And he said, I don’t accept and go to the rabbinical courts. The rabbinical court supported her standing, but it didn’t make a difference for Rabbi Bloi, I assure you, when he tells the story, he doesn’t call me Rabbi Farber. And in the end, in 16 Rabbinates and 40 soldiers were being told, even though they’d converted under the auspices of the chief rabbi, not talking about private conversions that I’m involved in.

I’m not talking about non-Orthodox, I am talking about conversions of the Chief Rabbinate. They wouldn’t accept. And we sued we sued the Chief Rabbinate to recognize their own conversions. Only Kafka could make that up. I can’t. What I’m telling you is because we went to court, because we weren’t willing to let anybody say mi eila anymore. Today in Israel, every rabbi and it has a registrar that registers converts there.

It’s not legal not to register converts. We’ve changed things, and this is my takeaway. It’s an existential problem. People are challenging people’s identities. We need to work towards a place where people say by name, These are my children. This is part of a bigger story. There’s an unbelievable story that we are blessed to live in this generation. We are blessed, all of us, people living in Israel, people living here in North America, in the former Soviet Union, in South America and in Europe and in Australia.

We’re blessed to live in a moment where our family is coming together and we can’t for even a moment give up the dream of what it means for our family to come together. And I’ll leave you with one sentence let no one tell you in the area of religious pluralism that Israel is 76 or 77 years old, Israel is 77 years young. There’s no reason to think we would have gotten it right by now. Things have happened. There’s been changes in our community, but it’s up to us and our children to change that. We’re young enough to change things. We’re doing it.

And together we’re going to move this project forward. Community initiatives are the bread and butter of what has to happen in Israel for things to change. There’s a dual movement that has to happen. I believe very strongly in community initiatives and even kind of stepping out. It’s no secret in Israel, following multiple attempts to change legislation in one area that’s particularly close to my heart, which is the issue of conversion to Judaism.

We started the first, Yediot Aharonot, the largest Israeli daily, called it the first rebellion of the Religious-Zionist community. And following a whole set of procedures where we tried to change legislation of how conversion works in Israel, the National Conversion Authority. We simply this is how by the way, I know I’m Israeli because we just decided to create facts on the ground and just started converting our set right.

We just started performing conversions ourselves was the first time the religious Zionist community had moved out of the dream that somehow the Chief Rabbinate was the be all end all. So I understand that the notion and by the way, today we’re doing 30% of the Orthodox conversions in Israel. As a startup with a budget write, the budget of the national conversion authority is 146 million shekel per year.

Earlier, our budget for this particular program was about two and a half million shekel a year, and we’re doing 30% even with a number of initiatives that are all certainly not just worthy, but highlight the power the community initiatives can take, can take off. And I think there’s also a need to force the hands of the religious establishment to tell you two stories about October 8th that I was involved in.

Okay. One more successful than the other, in my humble opinion can We were in a serious state of shock after Simhat Torah, not unlike you. We convened in our office. I have 30 people working with me, nine or ten lawyers, and we had a meeting on Zoom the next day and we said, What are the points that we can leverage what our work is to help the situation right now?

I sent off three letters to the chief rabbi and the ninth or 10th. I don’t remember which day it was. The first one related to burial. I was very involved almost ten years ago in arranging a new system of burial in Israel that allows soldiers who were killed in the line of duty, who weren’t halakhically Jewish or weren’t able to prove it, but who were fighting in the Israel Defense Forces to be buried, so to speak, within the fence.

There was a modus operandi that was created that enables soldiers who were killed in the line of duty to be buried. I come back to those words that I use all the time, not just with dignity, with respectfulness is a response to the need of the community. Earlier, the Chief Rabbi, I said it’s simply inconceivable given the fact that 6% of Israel’s Jewish population is not halakhically Jewish, that there weren’t people in the Nova Festival who either aren’t halakhically Jewish or studying for conversion, and we need to come up with a way. Now, a directive needs to come after you office now that says, just like we we bury soldiers like that, they were able to be buried.

Second letter I remember was a few days later related to the issue of mikvah. And this is such an important issue for me because I want to understand what makes Israel different than any other example we’ve ever had in the last 2000 years.

If you look at a local mikvah here in the States, so the average number of people let’s just talk about women for now who visit that mikvah, I don’t know, 100, 200, 500, the number of women who use Israel Israel’s because every year is 600,000. Okay. That is a staggeringly high number. Do you need to have a policy that people can come through the front door and have access?

And we’ve sued the state of Israel to allow women to have autonomy in mikvahs and not to have to use the attendants that are provided by the rabbinate. And we’ve changed the law multiple times. So on the 13th, the 14th of October, when there was a massive call up and there were 300,000 men who were slowly leaving their homes and there were sirens going off and just about every community in Israel.

And then our office started getting calls from women who said, I’m too scared to go to the mikvah. I have kids at home and my husband’s been called up and what am I supposed to do? And I sent off a letter to the chief rabbi, and I said, Hey, it’s an emergency. We need to open mikvahs for us during the day, which is traditional a lot of practice is not generally done unless is in the time of emergency.

And we wrote a whole brief explaining why this was a time of emergency. Now, the first letter I got back from the chief rabbi said, No, no, no, we don’t need to do that. And there was a series of letters back and forth until the 30th of October and 30th October. I got a letter saying after we’d already opened, the mikvahs was in every city during the day.

I got a letter thanking us for the initiative to open mikvahs for us. On the other hand, when it came to the burying of people in the Nova. The response I got was, We know how to answer it. We know how to deal with that, don’t worry. And I kept on writing in my letters. You can see there’s going to be desecration of God’s name.

Someone is going to be buried outside the fence. And the question is, is Judaism going to be a moment that sanctifies God’s name or is going to a place that horrifies God’s name? Desecrates God’s name? And the truth is, we lost that battle. There were two people, two families. But I’ll just tell you one follow up story, because it’s so it’s tragic and it’s beautiful at the same time.

There were two families were buried outside the fence because of that. Now we’re in the middle of sponsoring legislation that will demand that anybody killed in terrorist incidents, that they will receive the same treatment, whatever their, you know, bonafides. So they will be buried because the family wants buried in the Jewish cemetery in a halachic way that doesn’t hurt anybody else.

We didn’t win that battle. Well, it’s much more important is that there was a sense that something has to change here. There has to be a recognition of the significance of this moment. This is not a shtetl anymore. Not us living in Israel, not you living here. Something dramatic has changed. From my perspective, something beautiful. Incredible. What generation gets the opportunity to change Jewish life for the next millennia?

So it goes slowly and it goes from the bottom up, but it also goes from the top down. People always ask me, What’s in your toolbox? And the answer is a stick and a carrot for not able to change the way an institution that exists and has gigantic budgets available to change the way they think. And we’re not going to be successful even if we do all the bottom up.

And if we don’t do the bottom up, we’re certainly not going to be able to change the way they think.

Ellie Gettinger

Let’s talk a little more about your toolbox. What are the other ways that Itim is delving into religious disparity in Israel?

Seth Farber

Just issued a long 88-page report where we did something that no one’s ever done before, which is we followed the money of how the Kotel is funded.

Ellie Gettinger

What did you find?

Seth Farber

We found out that they’re operating and it’s a governmental agency, like a semi-governmental agency, but they’re not meeting just about any of the criteria that the government says that they have to meet to do this. I’ll just give you one example and forget about the we just got we discovered some really interesting things about the Kotel.

One is that it turns out that you can have a bar mitzvah on the inner sanctum of the Kotel, but only if you give a certain amount of donation to the Kotel Authority. That doesn’t seem right for a semi-government organization that seems, you know, dead wrong. So we found that, again, that’s even the way their organizational structure works.

At the head of the Capital Authority is a rabbi who’s been there for many, many years. And governmental agencies are supposed to have turnover and boards and a review and, well, oversight. All those things are not happening in a way that they should be. So that’s something we’re trying to promote again in a time where there wouldn’t be war.

Some of the other things that are going on in Israel that are shaking the core of Israeli society, these things would become we’d be able to fix things much quicker than we are able to do now.

Ellie Gettinger

In the Q&A, Rabbi Farber addressed the importance of developing a welcoming environment for those who convert to Judaism.

Seth Farber

And every year in Shavuot, in our office, we have a bet who’s going to be the first person to come along in the press. If Ruth was truly converting today, she wouldn’t be accepted, right? Every year there’s like a pool in the office. If you’re asked a historical question. So I think the jury’s still out or we don’t. Right. Or Halakhah doesn’t always speak the language of what we perceive to be historical truth, the historical development of certain halakhot. You know, we the jury’s still out.

We simply don’t have enough concrete information. And even if we had the historical information, we still don’t have enough capacity to we we sublimateourselves at a certain point, a certain process and that doesn’t mean it’s not dynamic. Quite the opposite. The question of what determines in general how someone converts and the extent to which conversions are accepted or not.

This is the Achilles heel of our generation. I’m being nice. The Israeli Chief Rabbinate, they’ve is completely twisted halakha. You might remember, because I became famous for publishing the blacklist of the rabbis, who the Chief Rabbinate rejected when they were with. They we agreed in court that they would give us the list of rabbis they accepted, and he sent me the list of the rabbis they had rejected.

Judaism is so committed to making sure that converts are fully embraced by our community. The way we know that someone who is not observant is still part of the Jewish community. We learn that from the convert, according to the Talmud in Masechet Yevamot. Where the convert is the paradigm for the person, not only do we not check after them when someone converted, we don’t start asking questions at all.

So what does it mean that Alina, the rabbi of Ashkelon, wouldn’t accept this conversion? What does it mean that we have lists of rabbis in this institution for generations of rabbis who were committed to Halakha? What does it mean that all of a sudden, the moment it comes on 91�첥 stationery or RA stationery, it’s it’s automatically rejected? What kind of absurdity is that?

I say with full confidence, because I’ve seen it happen the other way for political reasons. I’ve seen the chief rabbi himself certified conversions that came out of conservative synagogues in North America because there was a family relative involved. That kind of hypocrisy is not acceptable if we believe that we’re not a shtetl anymore. If we have enough confidence to get up and say something new is here, we’re in a new era in Jewish history.

We have a sovereign state and we’re proud of the Judaism of that sovereign state. We’re not embarrassed about it. We don’t start doing backroom deals. That’s what we did. We were in Fill in the blank. This is our moment of expressing a Judaism that embraces our diversity. I feel strongly and I think you’re with me. And this doesn’t compromise on our not our values or our principles at all.

We do not compromise on our principles. And for me that means halakhic principles, but we don’t allow a small group of men, and I make it very clear men. We don’t allow them to rewrite 2000 years of halakhic history to fit their interests that we’re just not going to allow anymore because that is not just the destruction of Judaism, it is the destruction, the denial of God’s hand in history.

Ellie Gettinger

As we wrap up. Is there anything that you would like to add?

Seth Farber

Look, I think it’s really important for listeners to know that the situation isn’t bad. First of all it’s unbelievable that we’re in a Jewish country and we have Jewish marriage, we have Jewish burial. And the government’s funding that. I am not an advocate of total separation of church and state or synagogue and state, as the case may be.

People think, after all the bad stuff you’ve seen in all the corruption, shouldn’t we just, you know, break? And I don’t think there are simple solutions to complex problems. We want to have a Jewish and democratic state, and I think it’s actually a great opportunity of our generation. It’s an opportunity for the last 2000 years. Wow. This is unbelievable.

I do believe that we have to provide people with more opportunities and more choices. And I think people will vote with their feet. I think people now are just voting with their feet to leave. I’d much rather see people vote with their feet to stay, not just leave physically, but like to get married outside of Israel. They get divorced outside their habitat to get married outside the religious councils and more, but more importantly, for the Zionist enterprise to survive and thrive.

People don’t think. They think this is an afterthought, Judaism and Zionism. And I think it’s quite the opposite. I think it’s actually at the core of the story. And one of the things I’m working on now is trying to promote that narrative, that bigger narrative, the story of this really affects every Jew everywhere. I’ll put it this way, people often talk about the three denominations, so I have three denominations, also.

My three denominations are people who want to live in the past. They think nothing happened in 1948 or 67 or 76 or whatever that you choose. Nothing’s happened. We just have to. We just were in there. It’s Israel, but yeah, we’re basically to do the same thing. People only care about the future, whereas they say whatever happened the last 2000 years was a big deviation from Jewish history. Jews were not their homeland.

Now we’re back and let’s pick it up from where we came from. The development of halakha, the relationship to the Jews and the Diaspora, all those things are secondary to, you know, building the land. And there’s a third group that says we have to build a future based on them. Once you break it down those lines that I think the differences between, let’s say the religious, Zionist Orthodox that I subscribe to or the, you know, Masorti movement, they’re there.

They were all in the same place. So we can argue about the differences and the the nuances, but I think we’re all part of that third denomination. I think that’s the denomination that’s most necessary in this generation. Again, as as an Orthodox Jew, I feel like that’s part of the divine plan. We’re going to build something for the Jewish people.

It’s different than anything we ever knew before, and therefore the models we have to work on, the models that we have, and we can’t forgo all the not just the beauty of the last 2000 years, but the responsibility of the last 2500 years. But even given that we have an opportunity to build something very new and hopefully it’ll happen in our lifetimes, you know, that’s the hope.

Ellie Gettinger

Thank you so much, Rabbi Farber, for sharing your thoughts with me. In this episode, I gained insight into the political levers at play in creating a more pluralistic Israel. Rabbi Seth Farber kept returning to the question of mi eila, Who are these? I appreciated his work in providing better answers to this question and his very detailed perspective on how to push Israeli society forward.

Thank you for listening. I hope you will expand this conversation, sharing your concerns and questions, and maybe this podcast with friends and family members. If you want to see complete footage of this session or of any of the sessions of the meeting, Israel at a Crossroads.

Expanding the Conversation: Rakefet Ginsberg

onlinelearning@jtsa.edu — Thu, 22 May 2025 20:48:48 +0000

What does Jewish pluralism actually look like in Israel today?

In this episode of Expanding the Conversation, Rakefet Ginsberg, Executive Director of the Masorti Movement in Israel, reflects on how Israelis are redefining religious identity and reclaiming spiritual space—from the egalitarian Kotel to public Yom Kippur services in Tel Aviv. Drawing on her work at the grassroots level, she offers stories of coexistence, struggle, and hope, and makes a compelling case for expanding access to Judaism that is both meaningful and inclusive.

Discussion Questions

Pluralism in Practice
Rakefet Ginsberg described the egalitarian section of the Kotel as a space where diverse Jewish expressions coexist. What does this tell us about how pluralism functions outside of formal policy? What challenges and opportunities does this model present?
Ownership of Judaism
Ginsberg emphasizes the need for Israelis to “take ownership” of their Judaism. What might that look like in practice—for religious, secular, and traditional Jews?
Building Trust Across Difference
How can trust be built between communities with vastly different religious worldviews? What lessons can we take from Ginsberg’s conversation with Rabbi Eliezer Melamed?
The Role of Institutions
What role should state institutions like the Chief Rabbinate play in defining or regulating Jewish life in Israel?
Sources of Hope
In difficult times, Ginsberg points to community, song, prayer, and memory as sources of hope. What spiritual or communal practices sustain you in moments of challenge?

Show Notes

Video

speaking at Israel at a Crossroads

Further Reading

Rabbi Eliezer Melamed “” Weekly Article Revivim (July 24, 2021)
Rabbi Daniel Gordis “” Israel from the Inside (October 9, 2022)

Transcript

Ellie Gettinger

In this episode, we hear from Rakefet Ginsburg, the executive director and CEO of the Masorti Conservative Movement in Israel, Rakefet spoke at a session entitled “Religious Pluralism in Israeli Society,” where she focused on the ways in which Israeli society is engaging in questions around pluralism.

Rakefet Ginsberg

Bechol dor v’dor hayah vadam lirot et haetzmo k’ilu yatzan Mimitzrayim, every generation a person needs to see himself like he’s the one who got out from Egypt.

And I thought Every generation we have to fight for our freedom in different ways, in different levels. This is our time. We’re doing that and we’re doing that in different ways. It’s pretty hard and sometimes make you feel like there is no point to find the government with it, to fight to the institutions, although we do that together as coalitions.

And I want to say and we probably going to refer to that, the fact that there are coalitions who can have Orthodox organizations, Reform, Conservative, even secular organizations that deal with Jewish pluralism in Israel today. And I think it means something about what we feel compared to what the government actually does or do not necessarily do. Since the Masorti movement is I want to say that as a grassroots organization that work on two levels. One, we work with communities around the country and we work for the Israeli society. We’re here here in Israel to work for and make Israel a better Jewish, pluralistic, democratic state, not just for Conservative Jews. For Israelis.

The Masorti movement, in my eyes as CEO, is a vehicle for that vehicle that help Conservative Jews but help Israelis all over the country. They don’t have to sign as a Conservative Jews. They just need to be Israelis who want to enjoy from their Jewish life, pluralistic Judaism, egalitarian Judaism in Israel, we’re the address for them. And we want to be an address for them. We knew and we know today more than ever, that we can change things on the ground.

I want to tell you one story about the Kotel. We have a small part at the Kotel that is an egalitarian, that is called ezrat Yisrael. I hope all of you visit there. If you haven’t yet, please make sure that in your next visit in Israel, you’re there. This place was built because of a lot of pressure. And the pressure came mainly because American Jewry thought we’re coming to Israel and we have no place the Kotel.

We can’t have an egalitarian prayer. It started, by the way, with Conservative rabbis that started this fight. It took years and years to achieve that. And it’s not what we dream of. We wanted to have a place that’s going to be big enough and going to be nice enough and going to be able to host everybody. But we got a place that is small and has a very horrible platform.

But there is a platform and the Masorti movement runs this place to give other religious services on the ground there. So it’s a beautiful archeological garden that the government gave and said, okay, we give you the platform, but that’s all from this point, you’re by yourself and we use this place for prayers and we use this place for services of bar and bat mitzvah.

And it started with a few families that came from North America and some families that came from South America. And every year and every month, we saw more and more people. And today I’m not talking about the wartime because this is a really different thing with all the flights. You all know that it’s much more complicated. But let’s say September 20, 2023, okay, just before the war, when we’re talking about an average busy Monday and I’m saying busy because we have 40, four zero services per day, per day.

There is no synagogue in the world that can hold 14 services per day, 40 services per day! Now, you would think, okay, they’re all North Americans. No, they’re North Americans and South Americans. And third, our Israelis, Israelis that maybe never heard the word pluralistic Judaism. Okay. But they practice by fact, pluralistic Judaism, because when they can choose, they realize there’s another opportunity.

There is an opportunity for me to have a service for my child, a bar mitzvah or a bat mitzvah for my children in an egalitarian way. And the beauty of this place is that we have six services at the same time. One table conservative family with a woman rabbi next to her reform bar mitzvah with a man rabbi next to them.

And while they’re an Orthodox family, that’s a bat mitzvah and they use the table as a separation. Then they stand from both sides of the table. And near them a secular family from Nahariya that have a service for their child. And another one that comes from Beersheva. And this is an educational moment that I can’t even describe.

When they realized that the service just next to them by the woman rabbi is actually pretty similar and it’s by the halakhah. And this girl that reads the bar mitzvah, she writes beautifully from the Torah. I don’t have to teach them what egalitarian Judaism is at that moment. They know what egalitarian Judaism is. I don’t have to talk about pluralism at that moment, since there are more and more organizations, more and more places.

We’re getting to more and more people and not just the Masorti movement. We do that, but other organizations do that as well. And bringing Judaism pluralistic Judaism, to people. So there’s a huge gap between what the government allowed us to do and the Chief Rabbinate that is so disconnected from everything that’s going on, on the ground must tell you, you just need to see the elections, how they run the elections for the Chief Rabbinate to understand that Israelis has nothing to do with it, how people really feel about their Judaism.

And I think this whole term of the last three years, two and a half years, showed us that more and more Israelis actually think we don’t need the ultra-Orthodox to hold Judaism for us. We want to take ownership of our own Judaism. It’s not going to be the same way, but it’s going to be ours. And I think for many, many years, Orthodox ultra-Orthodox were afraid from Judaism that’s going to be different from them in Israel. And by that they got a lot of power and it got a lot of budgets. And now it’s a system that holds itself. We can and we should keep fighting this system. We should fight this system as coalitions. But one of the most important thing is we need to decrease this fear that people will be less afraid from the different Judaism that they see near them.

We see Hilonim secular people in Israel, which is a tricky term, but let’s say Hilonim in the Israeli term because they’re afraid from those systems sometimes we talk about, you know, let’s have a service in the school or something like that for one of the holidays. And there are like really a real okay with a rabbi getting into our school.

It’s not going to make our children now super Orthodox, and they want to eat at my home tomorrow. We need to get their trust that we’re not changing them. We’re actually giving them the opportunity to take ownership of their Judaism. By that, it’s a process that this society is afraid from that side and this side, that afraid from this side.

And we happen to be many times in the middle that we’re thinking, okay, where do we belong? What do we do with that? But that’s exactly our role to make sure that we can decrease this fear. Ultra-Orthodox kids, mainly with their teachers, came on motzei Shabbat that was to Erev Tisha B’av to the egalitarian Kotel, took the whole place, put the message, sign the middle, and started to pray in a very loud way that the actually didn’t let us pray.

And we come every Shabbat, every evening of the Shabbat, have to pray at the egalitarian Kotel. And they actually took our took the only place that we can have. We could have an egalitarian prayer there. It was horrible because the words that were there is like, we’re fighting for religion, we’re fighting This is this is a religious war.

Now think about the Tisha B’av, Kotel. You’re standing there with the stones. You know, you see the destruction in front of your eyes and they’re talking about hatred, you know, among Jews. It was a horrible, horrible night. No prayer can be accepted if something like that happens. I mean, no God can hear a prayer that comes by interfering or arresting other Jews from praying.

And those videos were all over the media. Some rabbis started to write short notes. Maybe we had to rethink how we do that. We have to rethink if this is our way. And one rabbi wrote, I saw this video of this woman saying, no prayer is accepted like and I saw it again about and I thought, this is an opportunity.

And I called him. I won’t tell you the whole story. That can take us 3 hours. But it’s it’s it’s a very interesting way. How they accepted me eventually was Rabbi Eliezer Melamed that is very known among the Orthodox community. And I got to his house and I thought, it’s going to take us 20 minutes. I’m going to say thank you for saying what you said.

And he’s going to say, Yeah, okay. And that’s it. And I was there for three and a half hours and we were talking for three and a half hours. Now the talk was very open and very direct. I didn’t try to be anybody else than just myself and say, This is who I am, This is why I do that.

And he asked very directly, he said, Why do you go to the Kotel? And I said, Look, I have three boys. They were born in Israel and raised in Israel. I want them to feel that Israel is their home. They can live anywhere else in the world and they’ll be fine. But I want them to feel that Israel is their Jewish home no matter what.

And if you eliminate us from the Kotel, the most important thing and for me personally, my grandparents met at the Old City in Jerusalem. So for me it’s like this is really family home. If you take me for this place and say to my children, That’s not your place, you have no place here.

What actually you mean by that? What’s the next generation future going to be here? We’ve talked a lot about a lot of things. And I said I’m a pluralistic Jew. He immediately said, I’m not. I said, I think the truth is, among a lot of people, a lot of ways to practice Judaism. He said, no, I don’t think so. I think you’re wrong.

But I understand one thing you’re doing that because you really feel that this is an important thing for you and you’re doing that for the next generation and you’re doing that. And I get it that you want your children to feel at home. I want that for my children as well. This, after three and a half hours, was the only thing that we could agree about.

All the rest we thought, though, I thought about women’s leadership. You know, everything was different. This was the only thing that we said, I want my children to feel at home. You said, I want my children to feel at home. And this is my commitment that your children are going to feel at home and vice versa. That was a beginning.

At the end of these three and a half hours, I said, Can I? I came there without telling anyone. It’s a long story, but then said, Can I tell or write about this meeting? He said, Yes. It wasn’t an easy thing at the beginning. Like, Are you sure? Tell people that you met a friend here.

A month later, he wrote an article that says, Leave that part for Conservative and Reform Jews. Let them do that in their own way. We disagree with their way, but we’re respected and we understand that that’s their way to connect their Judaism. He was not sure when we’ve met. He was sure that I’m doing that just because I want to interrupt him, because I want to, you know, put my finger in his eye, like I’m doing that in purpose just to make him angry because I don’t want him to practice his Judaism in his own way.

And when I said, I don’t care about where you practice your Judaism, I care about how I can practice my Judaism. I care about the fact that I want my children to feel that they can practice their Judaism in their way. This is a moment of trust, and I’m talking about it because I think we’re so afraid. They’re afraid of us.

The fact that I’m not afraid from them doesn’t mean that they are not afraid of me. We need to build trust. We need to work on it. And we need to have more and more Israelis that can take ownership of their Judaism. And by that, we can show that we’re not trying to make this state a democratic with no Judaism.

Judaism is part of what this country must be about, a body without a soul. It must be there. But still, the fact that we’re there with pluralistic Judaism is not against them, is not, instead of its side by side with. And this is something for a lot of people hard to accept because you have to give up on power.

You have feminism worked for years to be accepted by men, and it takes time. It’s not an easy thing automatically to just let it happen, but it’s a process and the process needs to come from both sides. One of the things that we’re seeing that when we grow and we have more and more people that getting married outside of the Chief Rabbinate, the Chief Rabbinate become more strict.

But at the same time, we hear the terminology, we’re going to be more open. We in this, but eventually we make the revolution. Kids just don’t get married through the Chief Rabbinate. So the revolution is here. We should change the Chief Rabbinate’s, right. Married in in our I.D.. If I don’t get married through the Chief Rabbinate, we should change it.

But at the same time, we have more and more people that understand the Chief Rabbinate is not Judaism. The Chief Rabbinate is an institution, and we shouldn’t let this institution to defined our Judaism. And we have to take ownership of our Judaism. And Israel can and must be Jewish, pluralistic, democratic state, because our people are going to make it like this.

We’ve started to do a service of Yom Kippur. We’re doing a Neila, and now we’re doing not just Neila, but we’ve started with Neila in Habima Square. Habima Square is the biggest city square in Tel Aviv, I think the biggest in Israel. It’s a huge place. And we had a rabbi there with two people and we thought in several to one, we thought they probably going to be like ten people, maybe 15 will join, but at least we’re going to we’re going to have some kind of presence, especially because we’re talking about years that this whole debate of do we have a mehitza are in their public area.

We don’t have a mehitza outside. Let people see that there is an option without a mehitza to have a Jewish service outside there. Thousands of people were there, thousands of people. The funny thing is, I have tons of I never had so many videos from a career like I have from it. Think about it. People who took video on Yom Kippur at the city square for prayer.

But that’s exactly the people that come. Those are Israelis that if you ask them to join a synagogue, they’ll say, if you’re asking them who they are, what’s their identity? They’ll say, I’m Hiloni, okay, I’m secular. But that’s exactly the Israeli. I want to say a little bit political term because it’s easy for us to say if you don’t drive on Shabbat, you’re you’re a religious If you do drive on Shabbat, you’re secular.

But actually it’s much more wider and more complicated that as everything in life, it’s not black or white. And many, many Israelis do kiddush, Shabbat dinner, the bar mitzvah. Okay, They don’t consider themself as religious, but they still practice something in Judaism and want to connect. And by having this service at Habima Square, people that could just join and felt like it’s mine because it’s in my area, I can get there with my child to see and touch a tefilla and suddenly it’s ours.

And many people that I’ve never knew before, and some of them are celebrities, wrote they after, like this is a Judaism that I want. I don’t think they’re going to join the majority movement tomorrow, unfortunately. I wish they were. They need and want to connect, even though they consider themselves as Hiloni because knocking on a door synagogue is something else for them, having a religious and spiritual life, it’s much more important for them.

And they want their children to understand, as I said before, why do they live in Israel eventually? It’s not an easy place to live, to choose to live in. And those who choose to live in Israel not do that just because it’s comfortable or they were born and just stayed. You need to have something in addition to that.

And something in addition is your roots. And if you don’t connect to your roots, then we may lose those roots. Israelis understand it even if they think this religious organization or this Orthodox institution is not for me. They need to find a way and our role is to offer those ways.

Ellie Gettinger

I wanted to dig in a bit more into the Neila service, particularly in thinking about the challenges and opportunities in marketing pluralistic Judaism. You gave a description of the Neilah service. What are other ways that that it’s like becomes a branding exercise to say that this is also Judaism and we are here as part of Judaism?

Rakefet Ginsberg

I want to start with saying that the whole split between Hiloni and the Dati in Israel, I think it’s a very political split. I know a sociological. A lot of people thought, you know, you’ll say hiloni, dati and masorti, which means you’re somewhere in between. But the way we the way we describe it is actually you drive on Shabbat, you don’t drive in Shabbat, you relate to Judaism. That’s the middle. The majority in every sociological research says that the majority in Israel are masorti. Maybe it’s not masorti like at Noar, almost all these like the majority movement, but actually they are masorti.

And when you think about the Masorti movement, you think, okay, what’s the difference? What do I actually look for when I see or talk about those differences? So many times the egalitarian issue is the difference, but I think the Israeli society 20 years ago, 40 years ago, is not the Israeli society that we see today. I grew up in an Israeli society that thought that a woman cannot be a pilot.

I grew up in an Israeli society that women could not be in a combat unit, and we broke this ceiling glass and we found that there are possibilities. And actually, why not? And when we have this opportunity to do that in a halakhically way more and more people say, especially more and more women say, why not if that’s an option?

And I don’t belong to start with to an Orthodox synagogue or an Orthodox community, then I can bring my values to my Judaism and I can combine and find a way that’s going to fit my ways. Now, a lot of Israelis think about synagogue as the Orthodox institution that they don’t want to belong to because that means that they’ll have to keep Shabbat in their way or they can do only one thing and not another, or maybe wear a dress or have a, you know, cover their head and then they get into a place that they don’t have to apologize for who they are.

They can come with their shorts and sneakers and they can be who they are. And they don’t have to pretend like there’s somebody else and connect their children. And I think more and more Israelis look for this kind of way. So being at a city square or a place that is open, have no walls, you don’t have to ask for permission.

You can just join or leave whenever you want. It’s a way that’s respectful for them, that respect the fact that they are not necessarily going to do everything or nothing. It’s their way to do whatever they choose and people need those opportunities. And we are here to offer those opportunities.

Ellie Gettinger

As she wrapped up her talk, Ricafort owned the current challenges and talked about the importance of hope in times in which there are so many issues affecting Israelis society.

Rakefet Ginsberg

Hope is a hard thing, really hard. And there are days that you wake up in the morning and what’s going to happen tomorrow. We need to make sure that we’re going to be okay. If we relate to our history, this is part of our resiliency. If we think about we were of a day, we were slaves in Egypt, but eventually we got out.

We’re the hostages square every day? And we were there for Purim every day at 5 p.m. service of circle of prayer and singing together and just hold the hope together. One, because we understand that we can do that by ourselves. Nobody can do that by himself. We need community. And being together is being a community. And second, because praying and singing together give us hope and singing is religious ritual as well.

Sing, Lu Yehi. It’s like let it be an American “Let it Be” for many people. That’s that’s a prayer. That’s a way to hold hope. We all need this spiritual thing. We were there on Purim, reading the Megillah together and knowing that eventually it ended with a happy end. That gives us hope. Our history gives us hope. We belong to a nation that survived, which means we have it in our genes, not just in biological genes.

We have it in our spiritual genes. We have it in our cultural genes. The ability to survive and get through this. It’s not easy, but it can happen and it will happen to us. Reminding that every day to people, to ourselves, that spiritual thing that we as a religious organization can bring to people and need to bring to people today, that’s our that’s part of our role in times of war.

We can fight, but it’s not less important than fighting because those hostages will be back, not just because of a deal. The fact that we will have a deal is because we hope and believe that they must and can come back home. If we want believe that it can happen. It will never happen. We need our politicians to do their their role, but we need to our role as well.

And the role is to hold this hope to make sure that everybody remember that we can. And it is possible to make this place a better place, that we can have better democracy, that we can live in peace one day. Peace is not black or white. It’s a process. Different levels of we can do that and we will do that.

That’s our role as religious organization

Ellie Gettinger

in closing our conversation, we talked about hope, but also the practical reality of funding. There’s so many hurdles and there’s so many challenges because of kind of entrenched power, money, all of those pieces. Where are you finding moments of hope in this in this process?

Rakefet Ginsberg

It’s hard to say. The more days that you think, my God, it’s getting worse than days that you feel there’s a hope in terms of funding, You can see that it’s getting better. But I think even the Israeli government today fund services outside in a city square in different places, some services that are more open and traditional, not necessarily not necessarily religious, the way with the Israeli government today understand that people will connect one way or another and there is a need to reconnect people in a way that’s going to be more set and going to give them the opportunities.

It’s not like a funding. It’s not when, especially when we look at the Chief Rabbinate or even at the Kotel, we don’t talk about the same the same amounts. I mean, the the gap is horrible.

Ellie Gettinger

I mean, it’s not even in the same ballpark.

Rakefet Ginsberg

You’re right. You can’t really compare like like, like group that plays in them in their backyard.

Like you’re going to give them something, but you won’t really give them the real money.

Ellie Gettinger

Maybe a flat ball.

Rakefet Ginsberg

Okay, I’m going with that. But it’s not. It’s definitely not what we want to see. It’s not an equal funding. We can’t even talk about it yet, but we’re talking about funding. It’s hard

Ellie Gettinger

And that’s new. Just being able to talk about it.

Rakefet Ginsberg

I’m not sure it’s totally new, but we’re saying that more and more out loud. It doesn’t mean that it’s going to happen tomorrow with this government. It’s not going to be easy. I’m not sure that any other government going to do the change dramatically. It’s a process, but it’s a process that we have to believe in. And eventually I don’t think there is an other option.

Eventually, we will live in a country that will be democratic, Jewish, pluralistic, and we must make it like this. And even though we are going to expect and we should expect some of disappointments along the way, it’s still something that we have to hope for and still something that we have to fight for. Good to have small winnings here or there, but eventually it’s going to happen.

A meshiah will come.

Ellie Gettinger

It was really great to hear from Rakefet Ginsburg today. She drew amazing mental pictures of what pluralism in Israel can look like. Just consider a busy day at the egalitarian section of the Kotel, which has hosted 40 different services in one day, or the thousands of Israelis gathering in a public square for Neila. I appreciated the opportunity to explore what pluralism could look like and does look like in Israel.

Expanding the Conversation: Dahlia Scheindlin

onlinelearning@jtsa.edu — Thu, 22 May 2025 20:32:45 +0000

How far can a democracy bend?

In this episode of Expanding the Conversation, political strategist and public opinion expert Dr. Dalia Scheindlin explores the urgent challenges facing Israel today. Recorded live at 91�첥’s Israel at a Crossroads convening, this talk examines three major dilemmas: the war in Gaza and the West Bank, the future of Israeli politics under Prime Minister Netanyahu, and the country’s democratic resiliency. Scheindlin discusses possible outcomes—from political stagnation to regional diplomacy, political change, and constitutional reform.

This episode offers essential insight into Israeli democracy, public opinion, and the role of civil society, while also addressing how American Jews can meaningfully engage with Israel’s current reality.

EMBEDDED LINK

Discussion Questions

1. Crossroads of War and Occupation
Dr. Scheindlin outlines two divergent paths regarding Israel’s military presence in Gaza and the West Bank. What do you think are the long-term implications of each path for Israel, Palestinians, and regional stability?

2. Crossroads of Politics
She speaks of the possibility of elections becoming less meaningful due to erosion of democratic norms. What indicators do you think signal a democracy in decline? Are those indicators present in Israel today?

3. Crossroads of Democracy and Constitution
Dr. Scheindlin argues that Israel needs a formal constitution to define equality, the source of legal authority, and citizenship. How might the absence of a formal constitution affect public trust and civil rights in Israel?

4. The Role of Civil Society
In her talk, civil society mobilization is described as a primary source of hope. What lessons can be drawn from the way Israeli civil society has responded to government actions since 2023?

5. Diaspora Engagement
Dr. Scheindlin emphasizes that American Jews must “learn the situation for real” and bring their democratic values to conversations with Israelis. How can American Jews engage responsibly and effectively with Israel’s internal struggles? What tensions exist between solidarity and critique when it comes to Diaspora-Israel relations?

6. Personal Reflection
Which of the crossroads Dahlia Scheindlin identifies—war, politics, or democracy—feels most urgent to you? Why? What gives you hope for Israel’s future? What are you most concerned about?

Show Notes

Video
- speaking at Israel at a Crossroads
Further Reading
- Scheindlin, Dahlia. , Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter, 2023.
- “.” Foreign Affairs (November/December 2024)

Transcript

Ellie Gettinger

Welcome to Expanding the Conversation, a podcast series that brings the Jewish Theological Seminary to you. This series focuses on the messages that emerged from Israel at a crossroads. Navigating religion, democracy and justice. A convening that took place at Gates in April of 2025. I’m Elie Gettinger, director of outreach for the Center for Lifelong Learning, and I’ll be curating the series, which will highlight key messages from the convening itself with insight from our panelists that was recorded separately.

In this episode, we hear from Dr. Dalia Scheindlin, a political strategist and public opinion expert in Israel. She wrote the book The Crooked Timber of Democracy in Israel, which was published in September 2023. She was asked to sum up two days of intensive discussions and provide insight into where Israel is going, an incredibly high bar when you consider the breadth of discussion throughout this convening. From culture to trauma to pluralism, memory rights, democracy, just to name a few of the themes that emerged. In her talk, she introduced three potential crossroads and which directions the Israeli government and its people could choose to take.

Dahlia Scheindlin

I was charged with kind of trying to figure out how to sum up both a bit of the conference, but particularly sum up the situation of Israel right now.

And we decided to focus on what I see as the three most important areas of life in Israel right now, which I see as a matter of three dilemmas or three sets of crossroads. And, you know, we can all pretty much at any time, anywhere, you can say, you know, we’re at a crossroads. But I think that it is more realistic now than ever.

It’s really exactly where we are. The paths that we’re on are fundamentally different from things that came before and in those three areas are the situation of the war, the situation of Israeli politics, which is always fun for people. But it is actually our real life. It’s not just fun and the situation of democracy and all of those things.

I’m going to try to outline the pathways. Okay. Looking at where this country and society seems to be going at present, as I see it in my analysis. And what is the alternative? And that I see as the crossroads that we face on each of these areas. On the issue of the war, So where do we stand now?

The path that we’re on at present is the path that is being led by the current government. As you all know, the war restarted in full as of I believe it was the 18th of March. Then the prime minister and the defense minister are speaking very consistently in recent days about about taking territory in Gaza, and they say they use the term in Hebrew lakahat.

They’re just saying we’re going to take territory. And the defense minister actually used the term nitzaref. We will join that territory. It depends on which day in which statement you look at. But they are talking about this increasingly openly. And so if there is not a cease fire, an end to the war, that seems to be where the government will be taking the current campaign in Gaza.

And ironically, even as I was, I wrote my notes and I left from 111th Street to walk over here this afternoon. And by the time I got here, there was another communique from the prime minister saying we are taking a whole new swath of a kind of corridor in Gaza right now. So this is not theoretical. This is the pace of these kinds of statements coming from the prime minister and his ministers has been accelerating.

We see also very, very open statements about encouraging Palestinian emigration or expulsion from Gaza. Usually the language is emigration, voluntary emigration. But of course, under conditions of the war that make life essentially impossible in Gaza, especially if there is no reconstruction. And so it’s very hard to see that as anything other than a forced emigration. All of that will lead to a situation where if Israel takes control and establishes policies that that advance emigration or expulsion on some level, what we have heard other government ministers talking about actually for about a year, at least a year now, I think I first noticed it in January 2024 is the possibility of establishing a military government

in Gaza. Our finance minister has been discussing this again from the beginning practically, and I think it will be inevitable if the war doesn’t end. And of course there are other ministers in the government backed by certain communities who have been advocating from the start to reestablish settlements in Gaza. Anecdotally, every few weeks nowadays we hear about people trying to infiltrate like Israeli Jews trying to sneak into Gaza.

It seems strange. Why would a civilian just try to sneak into Gaza when it’s, you know, a destroyed war zone? Well, because they want to kind of establish a little foothold. I should also point out that in the West Bank, there has been a very significant military operation going on since, by my count, about an 18th roughly of January, shortly after the ceasefire went into effect, which is the second such very extensive military operation in the heavily populated cities, an area A that has been nominally under Palestinian Authority control for to some extent over the years.

But these extensive military operations are very widespread. They have not ended at this point there. The military operation in Jenin, the Jenin area, Tulkarm area are ongoing, in addition to expanding settlements in general throughout the West Bank. And so what we see is something like and this government, by the way, has let me go back to the early statements of this government when it was established before the war.

The government was established in late 2022, and its founding document outlining its principles says essentially declares an intention to establish Jewish control over all of the areas of the land of Israel, including Judea and Samaria. That’s written in the government’s own agreement. So that is the path of this government, the country. Having said that, also, we should remember that Hamas still exists.

Hamas has not been replaced or destroyed. It has been severely weakened. It has been severely incapacitated partly, but it has also been recruiting more. And I think just a few hours ago, there were also rockets fired from parts of Gaza. So what we see is essentially if this path continues, there will be extensive control over Gaza, possibly some form of annexation, including them alongside the de facto annexation within the West Bank.

And we will see an ongoing insurgency by the remnants of Hamas, which will constantly try to rebuild itself. That’s the current path. There is an alternate path, and this is the crossroads we’re talking about with relation to the war and in that alternate path. We’ve seen this play out in its initial stages. There will be some sort of a cease fire.

We saw the first stage of the cease fire. That was in another scenario, the negotiations that are sometimes happening, sometimes not. I mean, there mediate. It’s a mediated process, right? There’s not direct negotiations, but they reach some sort of the next stage of the deal, which involves eventually the release of all of the Israeli hostages being held by Hamas in Gaza and in return, ultimately a permanent cease fire and withdrawal of most forces, at least from Gaza.

I think that if we’re really looking at alternative path with relation to the war and the conflict with the Palestinians and occupation, that early stage of ending this phase of the war, a second stage which involves hostage release and a cease fire, a permanent cease fire, would then lead to a bigger process, a longer term process, which would have to have the complete commitment and participation of Israel’s allies, the United States.

Who knows if this government is committed to that or not. It’s hard to know what this president wants with relation to Israel, but let’s say there is a longer term process that involves involvement, commitment of the U.S., of Arab states who are allies of Israel, the possibility of normalizing with other Arab states, particularly Saudi Arabia, and of course, the European community, who is always committed to advancing some sort of political framework.

And I think that we should assume this will involve regional normalization deals and regional participation with Israel and other Arab partners that supports a diplomatic resolution of the conflict with the Palestinians in a way that ends occupation and leads to Palestinian self-determination in some form. When I say in some form, we don’t know. Certainly it’s not going to be something immediate.

It will be a process. But the question is whether it’s a real process or what. Some of the language now talks about an irreversible process, and that will probably happen in the form of a Palestinian state, what we call a two-state solution in some form. Personally, I think the old version of a complete international division and a hard partition cannot happen anymore.

I don’t see how it would be implemented. I do think it will be two states in a partnership based association, something like a confederation along the lines of the European Union, but again, backed by, I think, a number of outside actors who will either support and lead this process or maybe even try to pressure the sides to get to this process, because I don’t think hard partition can really happen.

I think you will have two states that end up, you know, cooperating and having an association where they deal with the core issues together economy, security policy, natural resources, public health, residency and citizenship. But ultimately you have this alternative pathway, the step to resolving the immediate conflict leading to a longer term process for comprehensive resolution, which will never happen under the current government.

And that brings me to the second major crossroads, which is Israeli politics, because the current government will not take the second path. The current government is well on the way towards the first path. So what is the chance for a change of government? Let’s go through the two scenarios. One path in that crossroads is that Netanyahu will stay in power. After October seventh, there was a lot of talk about Israeli kind of analysts and even people who said he’ll never survive this after this disaster. And here we are. So he manages to stay around. Now, how could those things happen? One, the original coalition that won the elections in November 2022 had four parties. Now they’re actually five parties because two of them broke up.

But those parties could still win an election just as they are. They could. It’s unlikely based on current polling and not just current polling, but polling ever since January 2023. So within about a month after the government was elected, this particular coalition had lost its majority in surveys. But they’ve been very consistent and by contrast to pretty much every other country, when a war breaks out, the first thing you see is the rallying effect, right?

Support for the government goes way up. In Israel, we had the opposite effect. Support for the government collapsed. The current government, the parties of the coalition, held 64 seats out of 120 in the Knesset. All polling showed them in the mid 40 seat range, so they had lost about a third of their votes as a coalition. Netanyahu’s personal ratings in all surveys collapsed to the lowest I’ve seen him, I think, really at any time in the last 20, sorry, let’s say 15 years, he fell 20 points behind all other competitors on a personal level and trust in the government in a generic sense went down to below 20%.

The Likud itself lost about half of its support in surveys, and that situation was very stable for about the first six months since about April 2024. Polls consistently show the government has it has recovered to where it was before the war, not to where it was in the November 2022 elections. So those parties of the coalition are now polling at around 52, 54, 55 seats out of 120.

They still don’t have 61. But that’s not that. That’s not so far by the time of the next elections, which will probably be held in late 2026, the government, having passed a budget, stabilized itself, brought in more parties to the coalition, now is a bit bigger. So by that time they could still simply win an election along the lines of the original parties of the coalition.

And that’s one way Netanyahu stays in power. Another way is that the original parties of the coalition Likud, Shas, Torah Judaism and the combination of Religious Zionism and the Jewish Power Party, maybe they can’t win in a majority. Maybe they only get 50 to 53 seats like they’re getting in surveys now. But as we say in Hebrew Elohim Gadol, there are lots of parties.

In Israel, we often have 35 to 40 parties running in elections. We often have between eight and 13 that enter Knesset. And Netanyahu is the most seasoned politician in Israel, and he knows better than anybody how to orchestrate the political system. Who knows? He might find new coalition partners and manage to get a majority after the elections. And the last option, which I think is a long shot, there could be a way to postpone elections and simply not hold them, at least as scheduled.

I think it’s difficult because we have a basic law, and it’s one of the few articles in the basic laws of Israel, and this article about the date of elections is entrenched by a two thirds majority in the Knesset. You need 80 members of the Knesset to change the article that specifies that elections should be held after four years.

But there are ways to change it, and it’s not impossible that the government would try those interpretations. Or simply put, so much pressure on the kinds of civil liberties that you need to have meaningful elections, that the elections are no longer as meaningful because the opposition has been stifled and people’s ability to run or parties are more easily rejected in the political system.

And this is what we’ve seen in some of the other countries facing democratic decline, not something as crude as canceling elections altogether, but simply making them less meaningful by having less space within civil society to form opposition, to express opinions, less free media, etc.. That’s one path for Israeli politics or the other path. Okay, I don’t like predicting ever, but I think I feel pretty comfortable predicting that there’s not going to be a left-wing victory in Israel anytime soon.

However, most likely the parties that are doing very well in all surveys throughout this time are right wing parties in terms of their security approach. They are right wing in terms of oftentimes they have a strong militaristic approach. They are nationalist, but they are not religious parties per se. Certainly they’re not messianic or fundamentalist theocratic parties like. And those are the parties that are doing very well.

Party the party run by Benny Gantz, the party of Avigdor Lieberman. Right. Yisrael Beiteinu is also doing very well in survey research. And so those are the parties that could possibly win a majority of the parliamentary seats, in addition to parties of the center parties of the left. What’s interesting, actually is the party representing the Israeli left right now is polling at around 13 or 14 seats.

The leader of that party Yair Golan, merged two smaller left-wing parties and in the last in the current Knesset, those parties only held four seats and now they’re polling at 13-14, which is an interesting dynamic in itself. But all of those parties together could possibly win a coalition majority, especially if they put another Arab party into the coalition.

Israel did it once in terms of independent Arab parties. It wasn’t that long ago. It was deeply controversial and it led to some backlash. But I think from a Democratic perspective, what could be more Democratic than having parties represented in the governing coalition who represent Israel’s biggest national minority?

Ellie Gettinger

Let’s go to my conversation with Dalia Scheindlin where we spoke about these on the ground political realities.

Dalia Scheindlin

What does support for Israel mean to you? What it really means is knowing Israel and knowing Israel means knowing its communities. The the distinctions between the different communities, respecting the different experiences of those different communities. And I think I would avoid any assumption that one voice or one community represents everybody. It’s not like that anywhere in the world.

So when people say, well, my Israeli friends tell me, check your Israeli friends, I mean, even Israelis shouldn’t be saying that. Of course, you know, until they understand something about the dynamic of public opinion. I am a public opinion researcher, so I’m very attuned to the very, very deep divisions within Israeli society. And they are so deep, they are fairly unified over certain themes in Israeli life right now.

For example, there is a very significant consensus, actually, I shouldn’t say consensus. There’s a significant majority of about 60 to 70%. And it can sometimes be over 70% or just under 60% who are pretty much want a deal to bring back the hostages who are being held by Hamas in Gaza under any terms. That’s not a consensus, right?

A consensus would be something like over 80%. I would call it a consensus, quite a consensus that there are very significant majorities on certain key issues like that. But in terms of the vision for the country, in terms of, you know, the path forward, there are very, very deep divisions. And you can say there’s a majority who, for example, would prefer to preserve Israel’s judicial institutions and democracy, because there is in every survey, the test these things, it’s not big enough to call it a consensus.

And that’s why the country is so deeply divided. There is a large minority who support what the government is doing. And so therefore, you had these kind of pitched political battles that have brought the country to the brink of disaster. And if people fail to realize that they are not truly loving the country, they think that they are loving.

Ellie Gettinger

Let’s return to her talk at the convening where she provided insight to the current government’s policy on expansion.

Dahlia Scheindlin

If they want to take an alternative path to ultimately decide that Israel is not committed to territorial expansionism right now, by the way, Israel is not only de facto in many ways annexing the West Bank and laying the groundwork for annexation in Gaza.

But Israel also has a military presence right now in Syria and in Lebanon. The government has stated that it does not plan to evacuate those positions any time soon. So it looks very much like there’s an expansionist kind of vision and a different path with a different Israeli political leadership could decide that that is not Israel’s goal and it is not Israel’s interest, and that Israel would prefer to keep its global membership among democratic allies, leverage those allies, or be pressured by them because they’re not going to be as sophisticated as Netanyahu in avoiding pressure from allies if there is such pressure.

And they might decide that Israel actually needs to make a decision with relation to the Palestinians, which is something it’s never really wanted to do, or at least not totally name, other than the attempts to negotiate which have not come to fruition in past years. Both sides bear some responsibility for that. You know, this ending point for the second scenario of politics leads us to what I think is the deepest dilemma at all, and that’s Israel’s constitutional crisis.

Okay? It is at a crossroads. We’ve been in a permanent constitutional crisis that evolves and adds new elements or new dimensions pretty much every few months. It never stopped. If you hear people say, well, the war ended, the judicial assault, it didn’t. It just changed form. I’m happy to talk about how, but that’s the one path that the government has basically put before our eyes.

In January 2023 by announcing the judicial reforms. The other path is what I call reconstitution of Israel. And what I mean by that is, a, that Israel needs a constitution, a formal constitution, not because I think constitutions can solve every problem. We’re talking the United States of America right now. And you have a great constitution and you have a lot of problems.

But I do think that the Constitution, in a bigger sense, like with a small C, a constitutional way of thinking, forces Israel to make decisions that it has not wanted to make since its establishment. One of the first biggest decisions that Israel has never really made is where does the source of authority come from? From above? Or is it from the people?

In a democracy, the source of authority is supposed to be come from the people. That doesn’t mean you can’t be religious. It doesn’t mean you can’t have a character of the state that is defined by the Jewish identity on some level. But what is the source of the authority of the state? There has never been a consensus about it, and as a result, you have specific communities who never felt themselves bound by the institution of the law.

The question of equality has been excluded from Israel’s primary legislation when it comes to the basic equality of all citizens. It does not appear in our basic laws. The basic law of human dignity and liberty was only passed in 1992. Okay, up until then, we had no formal primary legislation for basic human rights, and even then it doesn’t explicitly say equality.

It didn’t say it, and then it was amended two years later to include a reference to the Declaration of Independence. And as the Supreme Court noticed in its hearing, it was argued in the Supreme Court, in the hearing just over the reasonability clause back in July 2024, inclusion of independence is hotly disputed. All of this is by implication.

So I think the question of equality has been left out of Israeli law. Of course not by accident, but because of these political dilemmas that began, you know, from the moment of independence and now never actually making a decision on this or depending on the courts, for example, depending on Supreme Court interpretation, A) leaves everything open to interpretation. B) puts the Supreme Court in the position of being attacked and politicized, and C) makes citizens wonder if it’s truly an ethos of Israeli society. So a constitution forces you to at least make a decision about that. A constitution doesn’t force you, but should prompt a discussion and a decision about where Israel’s borders are. What are Israel’s borders? We have some peace agreements, but even a peace agreement with Jordan, if you actually try to figure out what is the border between Israel and Jordan and is it a hard international border, who owns that border?

Is it sovereign territory? It’s the West Bank. So where are Israel’s borders? And once you have defined borders, you also define who’s a citizen. And people inside those borders should have equal rights that I just talked about. And people who are not within Israel’s borders should not be controlled by Israel. The pretty basic distinction that we understand for all other states.

And finally, the question of a Jewish state. You know, the old equation of either have to be Jewish or democratic, or you are Jewish and democratic. The idea that defining Israel as a Jewish state must come at the expense of democracy and equality. I don’t see that. And I think that we see in other societies that our nation states with a national identity that can name a national identity alongside the commitment to the basic principles of democracy, equality of all citizens, basic human rights, and numerous examples of constitutions from around the world that also name the rights of collective rights of minorities in their country, even if they define themselves with a national identity.

It involves reducing the Jewish the Jewish state part of it to character, culture, things that are inclusive, that don’t exclude necessarily other cultures within your community, rather than a definition of a Jewish state that is institutional, institutionalized and exclusive. So those are the dilemmas that if Israel is ready to make them, it can reach a constitution. And then I think it will have the foundations on which to build a sustainable democracy.

Ellie Gettinger

Where are you finding hope right now?

Dahlia Scheindlin

The possibility of collaboration and coalition building in Israel in particular. And I can look at other places too, but it has come through an extraordinarily extraordinary mobilization of civil society. And civil society can be this kind of abstract term. But what I mean is people, regular people, people who are not elected officials, people who are not political figures, people who are not even necessarily party members, certainly not party activists or leaders, and many people who never were even that engaged before in public activity.

But we’re talking at the level of hundreds of thousands of Israelis who have taken to the streets since January 2023 in the name of, first of all, protesting the government’s policies to try to undermine judicial independence. But basically, even if they’re not constitutional, law scholars realizing that the identity of the country is at stake, and certainly any potential for building a genuine democracy in Israel is being crushed by those policies.

And so they were simply not going to let it happen. And so what you see is, you know, hundreds of thousands of people who went out not once, not twice, but almost every day, and then, of course, massive demonstrations every week throughout 2023, which was already extraordinary. And new organizations were formed, a new coalitions. And, you know, a lot of reaching across other sorts of smaller divisions.

So that people could simply agree on the immediate priority, which was to stop that plan. And they managed to slow it down. It’s been very it was very tough struggle all year. But then the war broke out. What you saw at that time was, you know, similarly an incredible, you know, incredibly elaborate mobilization of the same forces and additional forces even across further political aisles to support the Israeli society where the state was fundamentally absent after October seven, certainly for the first months in dealing with the displaced people and dealing with reservists and dealing with hostage families and took months for the state to actually be there, they were able you know, people were able to build on the structures that had been developed that they had developed during 2023 to cope with that. And we’re seeing all of those same forces combining now to try to protest the government’s avoidance of any sort of a cease fire that would bring about the release of the remaining hostages and to protest its continued assault on the institutions of democracy in Israel.

I just want to point out that it’s really no longer just about the threat to the judiciary. This is an all systems assault on all gatekeepers in Israeli society. There’s just it’s in every single possible field, including the ones that make big headlines like the government trying to fire the attorney general, the head of the Shin Bet security services, or at very micro levels that not as many people think about, like trying to replace lower level figures of professional levels of government with loyalists and all the while expanding Israel’s annexation of the West Bank in practice and openly, you know, grabbing territory in Gaza and saying so and so.

All of these are going to combine to lead to a very dark direction. An Israeli society, I wouldn’t say is going out to protest necessarily for peace and love, because it’s a very hard time right now. But they are certainly realizing that the assault on Democratic institutions and the assault on what they see as Israeli democracy, I think we have to be much more cautious about that term, you know, really at the brink right now.

And so that has that movement has combined under the umbrella of getting the hostages back, which they see, as you know, in some sense fundamentally related. Netanyahu doesn’t want to give up, get the hostages back, not that he doesn’t want them back, but he won’t make the necessary compromises in terms of a ceasefire to get them back because he would lose his government and he would lose power without that government and that government wants to undermine, if not outright destroy, democratic checks and balances and ultimately the democratic character of society.

So all of that, you know, incredible energy in the street is the main source of hope. What’s worrying is that seems to be the only source of hope. There does not seem to be any real leverage from within the political system to oppose the current government. People are trying, regular people are trying.

Ellie Gettinger

At the end of the session, Dalia was asked about the role American Jews can play within Israeli society.

Dahlia Scheindlin

People often ask me, What can American Jews do? And I say, First of all, learn the situation for real. You know, not to accuse anybody of not knowing the situation, but if you really understand this stuff, I would imagine that you’ll see a lot of commonalities and understand that there are things that American Jews would, you know, would find completely anathema to their way of thinking about politics.

I think American Jews are in a different position from Israeli Jews. Having lived as a minority in America. The major waves of immigration, the late 19th and early 20th century Americans are aware of how well liberal democracy has served Jews and how well it has served them, especially in solidarity with other minorities. And that’s why American Jews have been so prominent, I think in the civil, civil rights and civil liberties communities and preserving democracy in America, especially those that involve solidarity with other communities.

So I’d like for that to be a sensibility and an understanding that American Jews bring to Israel, I mean, physically bring to Israel, come to Israel and tell Israelis that.

Ellie Gettinger

Thank you for listening. Throughout the series, we will be introducing audio from the meeting. Israel at a Crossroads. Each episode will highlight another speaker from this program, Dahlia Sheindlin laid the groundwork for the myriad of issues that divide Israeli society. While no one has easy solutions to these problems, the panelists throughout the convening did a wonderful job of finding points of possible interactions and engagement. I hope you will expand this conversation, sharing your concerns and questions, and maybe this podcast with friends and family members. If you want to see complete footage of this session or of any of the sessions of the meeting, Israel at a Crossroads.

Meeting the Moment: Urgent Questions for Israel and American Jews

onlinelearning@jtsa.edu — Mon, 19 May 2025 20:20:30 +0000

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Part of our spring learning series, Israel at a Crossroads—Expanding the Conversation

With Dr. Arnold M. Eisen, Chancellor Emeritus and Professor of Jewish Thought; Rabbi Ayelet Cohen, Pearl Resnick Dean of The Rabbinical School and Dean of the Division of Religious Leadership; and Rabbi Gordon Tucker,  Vice Chancellor for Religious Life and Engagement

In a time of deep internal division and existential challenges for Israel, what are the most urgent issues facing the Jewish state today—and how can American Jews meaningfully engage? Professor Arnold M. Eisen, Rabbi Gordon Tucker, and Rabbi Ayelet Cohen of 91�첥 had a thoughtful and wide-ranging conversation based on the themes that emerged at the Israel at a Crossroads Convening. Together, they explored how Jewish values can guide us in responding to this critical moment: bridging divides, sustaining hope, and strengthening our collective future.

About the Series

This series builds on the discussions from 91�첥’s Israel at the Crossroads convening, bringing 91�첥 alumni into conversation about the evolving challenges of Israeli identity, culture, and collective resilience. Through explorations of art, spirituality, and national memory, we will consider how Israeli society navigates questions of belonging, pluralism, and meaning in this complex moment. By engaging voices from across disciplines, Expanding the Conversation seeks to illuminate the ways individuals and communities are shaping Israel’s cultural and spiritual landscape today.

Healing Together: How Those in Trauma Provide Care for Others

onlinelearning@jtsa.edu — Mon, 12 May 2025 20:07:06 +0000

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Part of the series, Israel at a Crossroad — Expanding the Conversation

With Rabbi Naomi Kalish, Harold and Carole Wolfe Director of the Center for Pastoral Education, 91�첥, and Rabbi Annabelle Tenzer, Chaplain at Hadassah Hospital-Ein Kerem

Trigger Warning–this program includes descriptions of violence and trauma.

How do individuals experiencing trauma find the strength to support others in crisis? Rabbi Naomi Kalish, Harold and Carole Wolfe Director of the Center for Pastoral Education at 91�첥, discusses this and other topics withRabbi Annabelle Tenzer, chaplain at Hadassah Hospital-Ein Kerem. Together, they will explore how trauma survivors can also serve as caregivers and highlight key organizations working to provide emotional and spiritual support. This conversation offers insights into resilience, compassion, and communal care in times of crisis.

About the Speakers

Rabbi Naomi Kalish is the Harold and Carole Wolfe Director of the Center for Pastoral Education and assistant professor of Pastoral Education. Prior to coming to 91�첥, Rabbi Kalish taught clinical pastoral education (CPE) at New York–Presbyterian Hospital (NYP) to students from diverse religious, denominational, national, and cultural backgrounds. Rabbi Kalish has served on the Interprofessional Education Faculty at Columbia University Medical Center, where she has taught a course, Spirituality and Healthcare, to students in diverse healthcare educational programs. She has taught chaplaincy and pastoral care courses and programs for the Academy for Jewish Religion, Yeshivat Chovevei Torah, Yeshivat Maharat, and 91�첥.

Rabbi Annabelle Herciger-Tenzer serves as a chaplain at Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem, where she offers spiritual care to patients, families, and staff. She previously worked at the hospice of the French Hospital in Jerusalem, supporting individuals and families at life’s most tender moments. Ordained as Rabbi at the Schechter Institute in Jerusalem where she certified in spiritual care, she offers an approach grounded in Jewish tradition and enriched by decades of personal and professional experience.

About the Series

The “Art” ofZionistThoughtandIsraeliIdentity

Beth Mayerowitz — Tue, 29 Apr 2025 12:48:10 +0000

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Part of our series,Israel at a Crossroads—Expanding the Conversation

With Rabbi Matt Berkowitz, President-elect, The Schechter Institutes, Inc.

On January 29, 1902, Boris Schatz wrote a letter to Theodor Herzl about establishing an art school in Palestine; in 1903, the two met in Vienna and Schatz pleaded the case for a revolution of visual art that would accompany the nascent Zionist Movement.  He received Herzl’s blessing, and that meeting led to the founding of the Bezalel School in 1906.  Art became a powerful language for the national aspirations of the Jewish people. 

In this session, we explored classical works of pre-State and Israeli art that reflect the ethos of the Zionist vision.  Visual art and the artists behind these creations were in animated conversation with classical and modern Zionist voices.  We reflected on the extent to which the material artistic culture of Israel reflects and engages compelling spiritual and national visions of Zionism and a State for the Jews, in light of current events and the ways artists and cultural institutions are responding to this moment.

Rabbi Matt Berkowitz is the incoming president of Schechter Institutes, Inc., Jerusalem, and is an artist and founding partner of Kol HaOt, a studio project that weaves art and Jewish learning together in compelling and cutting-edge ways.  He was ordained by and worked for 91�첥 of America for 24 years.

About the Series

Israel at a Crossroads – Expanding the Conversation

onlinelearning@jtsa.edu — Tue, 08 Apr 2025 14:48:42 +0000

Mondays, April 28 – May 19, 2025
1:00–2:00 p.m. ET

The ‘Art’ of Zionist Thought and Israeli Identity
In honor of Yom Haatzmaut
with Rabbi Matt Berkowitz (RS ’99), incoming president, Schecter Institutes, Inc.
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Israeli Society:
Between Cohesion and Fragmentation
Implications for Jewish Peoplehood
and American Jewry
with Dr. Elan Ezrachi (Kekst Graduate School, ’94)
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Healing Together: How Those in Trauma Provide Care for Others
with Rabbi Naomi Kalish, Center for Pastoral Education and Rabbi Annabelle Tenzer, Chaplain, Hadassah Hospital-Ein Kerem
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Meeting the Moment: Urgent Questions for Israeli and American Jewish
with Dr. Arnold M. Eisen, Chancellor Emeritus and Professor of Jewish Thought; Rabbi Ayelet Cohen, Pearl Resnick Dean of The Rabbinical School and Dean of the Division of Religious Leadership; and Rabbi Gordon Tucker, Vice Chancellor for Religious Life and Engagement
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Israel – Jewish Theological Seminary

Expanding the Conversation: Roy Peled

Discussion Questions

Show Notes

TRANSCRIPT

Expanding the Conversation: Seth Farber

Discussion Questions

Show Notes

Transcript

Expanding the Conversation: Rakefet Ginsberg

Discussion Questions

Show Notes

Transcript

Expanding the Conversation: Dahlia Scheindlin

Discussion Questions

Show Notes

Transcript

Meeting the Moment: Urgent Questions for Israel and American Jews

About the Series

Healing Together: How Those in Trauma Provide Care for Others

About the Speakers

About the Series

The “Art” ofZionistThoughtandIsraeliIdentity

About the Series

Israel at a Crossroads – Expanding the Conversation

Mondays, April 28 – May 19, 20251:00–2:00 p.m. ET

Mondays, April 28 – May 19, 2025
1:00–2:00 p.m. ET