Michael’s Bar Mitzvah

July 18, 2009

Beit Daniel has become a welcoming spiritual home for me. I enjoy the ruach (spirit) of the leadership and the Shabbat morning regulars (of which I have become one!). I have also come to appreciate the intentionality of the family and friends in attendance for the bar mitzvah (I was in attendance for only one bat mitzvah). As I previously described, one goal of Beit Daniel is to provide a touchpoint for Israelis who are just learning their way in a state where religion and spirituality are defined or some might even say hijacked by the Orthodox. Something was different about today’s simcha. The bar mitzvah boy wore a bright white linen blazer, his father and younger brother were in blue blazers, and his mother also well dressed. When the entire family, grandparents and assorted cousins, was called to the bima for the passing of the Torah from generation to generation, there was not a pair of blue jeans among them. After the chanting of the Haftorah, the chaotic tossing of candy, and the scurrying of the children to collect the candy, Michael began his devar and it was in English. He spoke beautifully about the lessons of Jeremiah on loyalty to family and to God. He carried this idea of loyalty into a discussion of the meaning of being Jewish and Israeli. Afterwards, I learned from him that he was born in the U.S., and attends a Shechter Day School in Manhattan. He visits Israel each summer. I do not know what drew his Israeli parents to live in New York. Michael and his family reflect two important challenging issues. First, Israel’s only real resource is its human capital, so in order to continue to thrive, the state needs to figure out how to develop and promote opportunities such that it does not remain a net “exporter” of human capital. Although I have not been involved with universities here to any degree, my impression is that this problem is reflected their acutely, in that universities have not grown to accommodate the graduates who wish to become researchers and/or specialists. There of course has to be a natural limit, the entire country has a population of only 7 million, so this tension between seasoned expertise on the one hand, and the opportunity for growth and new creativity on the other is keenly felt in Israel. Second, there is a real tension between what it means to be “Jewish” and what it means to be “Israeli.” At a minimum, 20% of the population is Arab in origin, so a sizable fraction of Israel is not Jewish. Given that Israel is the state of the Jewish people, what does it mean to have a state that is informed by Jewish tradition and Jewish law, even though not a theocracy? The history of the Jews, our aspiration and yearning to return to our homeland that was realized in 1948, was a shared theme, a central part of the identity of the Jewish people. After 60 years of statehood, the question of what it means to have a state for the Jewish people is more complicate, more riveting, and more compelling, not less so. How do the Jews of the world and the Jews of Israel see and share their Judaisms (intentionally plural)?