Werd to the Wise.

Rabbis for Human Rights

“My line of work involves lots of formalities, lots of coffee. But I’m showing Palestinians another face of Israelis beyond the army, maybe the only other one they see.”

Rabbi Yehiel Grenimann works for Rabbis for Human Rights (RHR) in the Department of Human Rights in the Occupied Territories. As head of the department, he oversees the annual olive harvest, where RHR is known for dispatching volunteers to act as human shields protecting the Palestinians from settler vandalism and assault. He is also involved in issues surrounding land rights, home demolitions, and the separation barrier. Beyond the territories, RHR is works across Israel in economic justice, human trafficking, access to education and health services, and rights for the stranger, the orphan, the widow, the Ethiopian, the single mother, the foreign worker.

RHR began in 1988 by David Forman, a reform rabbi who had marched with Martin Luther King and protested the Vietnam War. In the wake of the First Intifada, Forman joined with Conservative and Orthodox rabbis who felt the same need to fight for human rights not only in America, but also in Israel. They worried about the Israeli army using security as a justification for crossing moral lines.

Over twenty years later, the organization now claims 150 ordained rabbis and rabbinical students as members, branches in the UK and America, and full education, social justice, and legal departments. RHR runs educational seminars for schools, army groups, and politicians, interfaith projects, and a Human Rights Yeshiva, where students turn to traditional and modern Jewish texts to bear on questions of human rights.

It is an impressive organization, but meeting with Rabbi Grenimann raised several questions. Why Rabbis for Human Rights? Why not Jews for human rights or people for human rights? What are Jewish values, really? Jewish texts include all sorts of opposing arguments and values. When you can mine the texts according to your agenda, what does Jewish values really mean? Are Jewish values any different from human values? And why are only twelve out of the 150 affiliated rabbis orthodox? What does this say about Orthodox Judaism and maybe religious conservatism more broadly?

Rabbi Grenimann ended with a reminder, perhaps a case of preaching to the choir in a program called Tikkun Olam. “If Torah becomes an enclave for you and you’re a rabbi not expressing your opinion on morality, then you’re not doing your job. The Torah is about rights for human beings. Betselem elohim (in G-d’s image). All humans are equal before G-d. To me, that’s the reason that Jews are in the world. To be a light unto the nations. We must fight for these principles.”

A Better Place: It’s Electric.

The Visitors Center is housed in an old oil tank. Model cars line the showroom. Comfy seats surround tables with iPads. A staircase ascends to a conference room and the reception desk. The theater showing their promotional film uses recycled car seats.

This is A Better Place, a venture-backed American-Israeli company creating the infrastructure for electric cars. The company got its questionable name from a question posed at the 2005 World Economic Forum of how we can make the world a better place by 2020. “End our dependency on oil,” Shai Agassi, the CEO of the company, answered.

Instead of gas, these cars run on recyclable lithium ion batteries. A fully charged battery will last 120km before it runs low. Tired (or empty) batteries can be changed at a switching station, where a robot will switch the battery in less time than it takes to fill a tank of gas.

Agassi launched A Better Place in 2007. Since then, they have deployed networks in Israel, Denmark, the US, Australia, China, France, and Japan. There are two pilot projects in Tokyo and San Francisco deploying electric taxis throughout the cities.

Sitting behind the wheel, the car looks exactly like other cars. But it feels different. It is silent, making the same amount of noise when the car is off as it does when it’s on because there’s no engine. And it’s smooth, feeling no difference when accelerating or slowing because there are no gears to change. 

I love the way it glides, that it has little environmental impact without sacrificing quality. That’s nice. But they still have much to do. They need more charging and switching stations built, more cars sold. They need to make it more affordable, to be able to reach those who cannot discount cost-effectiveness. I’d like to think that in another decade or so, by the time I need to consider owning a car (if ever), electric cars will have replaced the gas-guzzlers crowding the highways, that we will be taking serious efforts to end our dependency on oil, and that these marginalized vehicles will be the norm.

“When I close a book, I open life…”

…Book, let me go.
I won’t go clothed in volumes,
I don’t come out of collected works,
my poems have not eaten poems—
they devour exciting happenings,
feed on rough weather, and dig their food
out of earth and men.

I’m on my way with dust in my shoes
free of mythology:
send books back to their shelves,
I’m going down into the streets.
I learned about life
from life itself,
love I learned in a single kiss
and could teach no one anything
except that I have lived
with something in common among men,
when fighting with them,
when saying all their say in my song.

-Pablo Neruda, Ode to the Book

A Secular Yeshiva

As part of this year, I am learning in BINA’s secular yeshiva. A secular yeshiva. What does that even mean?

Answering that needs a bit of history first. The whole idea of BINA and the question of Jewish pluralism in Israel more broadly goes back to the Status Quo, which in Israel refers to the specific political agreement between the religious population and secular political parties to preserve the Jewish character of the state while allowing the secular to proceed as they wished. When Ben-Gurion made the agreement with the ultra-Orthodox back in 1947, it meant that Shabbat would be the Israeli day of rest, all state kitchens would be kosher, the Orthodox rabbinate would preside over all life-cycle events, and full educational autonomy for the religious. Today, it means that over 40,000 yeshiva students are exempt from army service. It means any wedding or Bris in Israel not presided over by an Orthodox rabbi is unrecognized. It means that there are tens of thousands of children going through ultra-Orthodox schools without knowledge of any non-religious subjects and therefore unable to join the workforce and contribute to the economy. Instead, they will drain the economy through government subsidies to continue studying in religious schools.

BINA is aimed at the secular Israeli population who sees Judaism as this Orthodox rabbi who doesn’t pay taxes or serve in the army. In Israel, either you’re secular, or you’re religious and by religious, they mean (ultra-)Orthodox. This leads to lots of semantic confusion. We say secular and we mean devoid of religion; they say secular and they mean non-Orthodox. But BINA is trying to change the images of both the religious and the secular, who are oppositely marked as somehow less, empty, heretical and hedonistic. BINA faces secular Israel and asks, “What is Judaism for you exactly? What does being a Jew mean to you?” It seeks a pluralistic Judaism, many answers to the same questions.

BINA was established following the assassination of Yitchak Rabin, which exposed the huge societal gaps between the religious and secular in Israel. But it was also a Jewish murder. As a result, it was a time when many secular Israelis questioned the Jewish narrative and value system. According to Eran Baruch, the Executive Director and Head of the Secular Yeshiva, the goal of BINA was to “create an institute for Jewish study and action where the conclusion won’t be to murder Rabin.”

For Baruch, Judaism means three things: loyalty to tradition, dynamic change, and a driving purpose/mission. This is reflected in the curriculum of the Secular Yeshiva, which combines study with social action through text study with local empowerment projects. The physical location of the yeshiva in Neve Sha’anan next to the Central Bus Station, one of the most plagued neighborhoods in the country, is deliberate. It is a reminder of the widow, the orphan, the blind, the homeless, the African refugee, a reminder of our commitment to action. They house programs like mine, like the high school/college gap year program, the Israeli pre-army preparatory program (Mechina), the army program that consists of study within army service (Gar’in), and the post-army program. Baruch sees successful graduates of these programs as “studying, being active in their community, keeping shabbat and holidays, and caring. I want them to care.”

Refugee seder

It wasn’t until recently that I realized how new and different BINA is. As a product of the conservative movement and American Judaism more generally, I always took Jewish pluralism for granted. I didn’t understand how unique American Judaism was until I cam here and saw the polar opposites of Jewish identity in Israel. It’s sad in a way. That either you embrace religion fully and build your life around it or you denounce and ridicule those who do. BINA gives hope for those who have fallen in the chasm.

But BINA is the first of its kind and the increase in the number and diversity of its programs reflects a growing need in Israel. This past winter, a second secular yeshiva opened in Jerusalem. “Imagine ten secular yeshivas all over Israel in a decade,” Baruch tells us. “There will be a change. Maybe I’m too optimistic but sometimes you reach a tipping point and the situation in Israel is reaching a tipping point with the secular and Orthodox. It won’t be too long or too far.”