Judaism and Its Differences

First off, all the way from Israel, I want to wish my amazing mother a very happy birthday!

Yesterday, we struggled with the conflict of faiths in Jerusalem and saw how Jerusalem is in fact the city of three religions.  Today, however, we struggled with an even more important and internal conflict with the Jews living in Israel.   This is the issue of living in Israel, in a Jewish state, but believing in different forms of Judaism. Today, we saw the real spectrum of Judaism in Israel. We started off the day by hearing from Rabbi Andy Sacks, who represented the Masorti Movement (the Conservative Movement in Israel), and he told us about the future of the Masorti Movement in  Israel.  He discussed how the issues of the Masorti are hurting because of how the courts control all other issues regarding marriage, conversions, and divorce.

We then took a 10-minute bus ride in the cold and rain to a mainly Charedi neighborhood in Jerusalem to see how Charedi life in Jerusalem was different. For us as students, this was a chance to get a peek into a side of Judaism that some, if not most of us, have never seen. There, we met with Yehoshua Weinberger, who spoke on behalf of his community. He gave us a tour of an all girls' school. Walking into this meeting with Mr. Weinberger, a lot of my classmates, including myself, did not know what to expect and we did not know exactly what we were going to hear, as many of us had many questions for Mr. Weinberger. As we got off the bus, Jamie told us that in order to respect the community that we were about to walk into, boys and girls needed to walk separately.   Although, I was a bit skeptical in doing so, I reminded myself of a theme that I have brought myself back to many times on this trip, which is to respect others even though I did not agree to their way of doing things.   Mr. Weinberger gave us our tour and then talked with us about the issues his specific community believes in and how the stereotype of "Charedi" has been given at times a bad name. Our grade really pushed Mr. Weinberger to really think about the issues and I believe many people in the grade, including myself, took away a better understanding of not only his views but a better understanding of what we believe as Conservative Jews.

After our talk with Mr. Weinberger, we then had a nice lunch on Ben Yehuda. After lunch, we found ourselves back at the Fuchsberg Center discussing our final end of the spectrum for today. We met with a representative from Women of the Wall.  This an organization that was founded by women who go to the Kotel every Rosh Chodesh and daven together. Although, I personally had some issue with this organization, I believe that the conversation with the representative from Women of the Wall strengthened my own beliefs. After a very intense day of back and forth between the internal conflict of Jews in Israel, our grade had a chance to relax and play some games with our Israeli staff members, Eyal and Danielle. We then went to have our final speaker of the day, a representative from Tav Hevrati, an organization that strives for social justice for people with disabilities in Israel and specifically justice for workers in restaurants.  This was the end of our speakers for the day and we all got to blow off some steam and headed over to Emek Refaim for dinner and a lot of schmoozing time. Personally, I got to have dinner at an awesome Italian restaurant with my cousin, Rachel, who is in the army in Israel. It was great to see her and hear from her and to hear what she is up to in the army.

These past couple of days have been very intense on every level for every single person in our grade. There is a feeling in the air with everyone that our time as high schoolers and our time at CJHS is in fact coming to end.   The time we are spending with our friends and the class of 2012 in the holiest of lands is something we will never forget. I touched on the theme of respect, a theme in which not only Israelis and Palestinians are working on, not only a theme Jews in Israel are working on, but this a theme for us a grade.   We have come together and shown not only our staff, but our community at home that what we have here in Israel is something special. On days like these, I sit down and thank my parents so much for sending me on a trip of a lifetime and a trip in which I feel more educated about the issues of conflicting visions of Judaism. As I sat at Aroma (the Israeli version of Starbucks, just ten times better) with our tour guide Jamie, Jonah and Benjy Forester, we discussed the idea of respect and the question of what is our purpose as Jews if we live in a land in which Jews can't get along and how do we expect to have peace with the Palestinians, if we as Jews can't even get along.

What a day it was!

Posted by Aaron Freeman