Shoftim 5770 Justice for non-Orthodox Rabbi Hillel Athias-Robles 14 August 2010

This week our Torah portion is called Shoftim, Judges, and is at the end of the book of Deuteronomy. As you can guess from the name, it contains many laws relating to the judicial system, stipulates the creation of cities of refuge, and contains regulations for ethics during warfare. Within this collection of laws, we have special stipulations relating to future Israelite kings. The king may not collect many horses, cannot have an exaggerated harem of wives, nor excess in gold and silver, and must have a copy of this "Teaching" (i.e. the Torah) beside him, on his night table. That means no royal Lamborghinis with Middle Eastern plates parked outside Harrods.

Within the Torah's warning against the acquisition of too many horses, a curious clause is added, "he shall not keep many horses or send people back to Egypt to add to his horses since the Eternal One has warned you, 'You must not go back that way again' " (Deuteronomy 17:16). From this the rabbis in the Talmud derived a prohibition forbidding Jews from settling in Egypt. For the Talmud, the severity of this prohibition was not one to play around with. In one of its passages, it describes the opulent mega-shul of Alexandria, which allegedly had to capacity to house 1.2 million worshippers. Talk about a hyperbole! Flags were needed to signal everyone when to say amen. Talmud then says that all of them, this whole ocean of people, were killed by Trajan in punishment for living in Egypt (Sukkah 51b). Maimonides, the great medieval legislator who for a time needed to live in Egypt because of persecutions, would even sign his name: Moshe ben Maimon, he who transgresses the prohibition ‘You shall not go back on that way again’.

It was, therefore, a prohibition not to be taken lightly. But what is at the heart of this prohibition? To me it is simple. Why go back to a place where you will be oppressed, worthless, where your rights won’t be respected, where you will always be a second class citizen? Why live where you are not wanted? To do so manifests a lack of self-worth, of dignity. In a similar vein, the rabbis once made a decree forbidding Jews from returning to Spain after the expulsion in 1492. Perhaps an exception can be made for Marbella and Tenerife. They have by now almost become a British colony.

We have now entered into the month of Elul, the month preceding the High Holydays. Traditionally it is a time of reconciliation, when one approaches all those from whom one has become estranged. This week a letter emerged, penned by Rabbi Shlomo Amar, the Orthodox Sephardi Chief Rabbi of Israel, as an Elul message to fellow rabbis under him. So what was his message on this very spiritual time?

"Those who call themselves liberals and reformers and their friends and supporters" brought us to "our spiritual low point," in which violence is rampant immodesty is acceptable, and assimilation is at a high even in Israel”.

"They now have their claws in the nation of Zion, and are trying to impose the lifestyle of other nations on us. They established legions of warriors in the Land of Israel, whose purpose is to remove Torah from Israel."

Claws? Wow, maybe I should get a manicure! These views which Rabbi Amar expressed are not isolated. The Ya’ated Neeman newspaper, the official newspaper of Degel HaTorah, which forms part of the Knesset Coalition under the name of United Torah Judaism party, recently described us as a “bunch of clowns disguising themselves as ‘Jews’”.

What saddens me most is that with the Charedi hold on Israel and the Chief Rabbinate’s monopoly on Israeli civil society, such views are part of the very fabric of the Israeli legal system. We become horrified at thinking that at some historical stage it was forbidden in many countries to conduct interracial marriages. Yet today, in Israel, people of different ethno-religious backgrounds cannot wed legally, or even Jews can’t marry each other if they don’t have the kosher certificate of the Charedi Rabbinate.

Harrowingly, these positions have become acceptable even to secular Israeli politicians, who through the Rotem Bill want to give full power to the Chief Rabbinate on conversions and issues of status. That means that our non-Orthodox conversion will have no validity, and those who do not fit the Rabbinate’s definition of Jewishness will effectively be completely disenfranchised from Israeli society (and that is only if they are even allowed into Israel!). The Bill has of course been postponed for six months, but in this time frame the ultra-Orthodox members of the coalition, together with the secular Russian Israel Beitenu party, are lobbying and scheming to get the bill passed. Talk about odd bed-follows!

Never mind that we the non-Orthodox represent 85% of Diaspora Jewry!

I personally have always had a strong love and commitment to Israel. As soon as I turned 17, when I was legally allowed to, I applied for aliyah. I was enchanted by the Zionist dream, by the thought that daily my feet would tread on the footsteps of Abraham. I was so proud of my Israeli nationality, putting my Costa Rican passport aside and never even considering renewing it. I was now an Israeli!

But the current situation awakens troubling thoughts within me. How can I be proud of a country that doesn’t want me? Whose laws seek to eradicate us and push us aside? How can we Diaspora Jews continue to support and work for the building of Israel, when it screams at us that its earth is not ours? I think of Egypt, of the prohibition against longing for a land that will treat you as second best. Has Israel become our Egypt?

Nevertheless, the thought of the Land of Israel is greater than all the fundamentalists that try to rule it, greater than the corrupt institutions that defile her. The Land of Israel is a place of prophetic visions, whose air is meant to be drenched with hopes of justice and peace. In this dark hour, we cannot give up on Israel. We must fulfill the mitzvah of pidyon shvuim, redeem the land from its captivity. Then the Land will truly be the haven we have longed for so many millennia. We must fight for an Israel that will live up to its expectations, a land that will welcome all who seek her embrace, where all will live equally and in peace, with inalienable rights, Arabs, Jews, all different kinds of Jews, Muslims, Christians, each under his or her fig tree. Tzedek tzedek tirdof, our parasha tells us, “Justice, justice you shall pursue, so that you may live and take possession of the land which the Eternal One your God is giving you”. We can clearly see that our right to live in the land has as a caveat that we create there a society of justice. It is therefore time for us to pursue true justice in Israel.