Unholy Alliance
by Jonathan Rosenblum

Why has the Reform movement, through its Israel Religious Action Center (IRAC), 
chosen to ally with the ultra-secularist group Am Hofshi in the latter's efforts 
to prevent a religious outreach center from opening in the Israeli town of Rehovot?

For years the Israeli Reform movement has presented itself as the antidote to the 
alienation of secular Israelis from their Judaism. The movement portrays Israeli 
society as divided by an absolute chasm between religious and secular Jews. 
That portrait conveniently ignores the fact that all studies of the continuum of 
religious observance in Israel show that 80% of Israelis are far more observant 
than the average Reform Jew in America.

If IRAC director Uri Regev were really concerned with the religious alienation of 
secular Israelis, he would be the most enthusiastic supporter and not a fierce 
opponent of Lev L'Achim, the outreach center's sponsor, which has been teaching 
Torah in Rehovot for 35 years. At present, 200 Jews come to study with partners 
in the town's Lev L'Achim study-hall each week, some every day. 
(The present study-hall, incidentally, is located in a far more secular 
neighborhood than the almost completed new center.) 
Another 1,400 Jews regularly attend Lev L'Achim-sponsored lectures, and the 
organization offers dozens of classes in Rechovot and surrounding communities 
every week.

So why has the Reform Movement allied itself with an organization whose unsavory 
tactics include falsely telling neighborhood residents that the new center would be 
a refuge for drug addicts and Jewish wives fleeing their Arab husbands? 
The suit against Lev L'Achim has nothing to do with advancing the IRAC's goals of 
religious tolerance and pluralism, but rather the opposite.

This is not a fight against the religious establishment, but against a privately 
funded outreach organization. The Israel Religious Action center is not promoting 
religious expression, but seeking to stifle it. Far from encouraging religious 
tolerance, its ally Am Hofshi is one of Israel's leading purveyors of hatred, 
and has not yet to find a synagogue or religious institution whose presence it 
could tolerate.

My guess is that simple jealousy lies behind the Reform movement's odd choice of 
allies. Both here and in America, the movement has created extremely professional 
press and public relations offices. Virtually no issue in the Jewish world can 
pass without a lengthy comment from Regev or his American counterpart Eric Yoffie. 
In addition, the movement can claim an unbroken stream of successes in the Israeli 
Supreme Court.

Yet after winning every public relations and judicial battle, the Reform movement 
has barely made a dent in Israeli religious life. Even some of the movement's 
most ardent supporters, like Amos Oz and A.B. Yehoshua, hasten to note that 
no one should expect to find them in a Reform temple in the near future.

The Orthodox are, by contrast, complete schlemazels when it comes to public 
relations. They simply don't get it.

Instead of creating huge public relations offices, their money goes to yeshivas 
and seminaries, chesed (social service) organizations, and outreach efforts. 
Nothing is closer to the heart of the Orthodox community than the latter. 
From the creation of Chinuch Atzmai in the 1950s to the present, no undertaking 
has been dearer to American Orthodox Jews than the building of religious schools 
in Israel for children from traditional and secular families.

Consider the results. Nine years ago, Rabbi Avraham Pam, the Rosh Yeshiva, 
or dean, of Yeshiva Torah Vodaath in New York, pleaded with American Orthodox 
Jews to build Torah schools in Israel for the influx of immigrants from the 
former Soviet Union. Today 9,000 children from Russian-speaking families are 
registered for 28 "Shuvu" schools, including five middle and high schools. 
Another 6,000 attend Shuvu camps each summer. Keeping this huge network going 
requires more than $5,000,000 in private contributions a year.

Two years ago, the Gerer Rebbe and Rabbi Aharon Leib Steiman, respectively 
leaders of the Chassidic and Lithuanian yeshiva worlds in Israel, 
traveled together to America to start a development fund to build new 
Torah schools for children from non-religious families. Again, millions 
were raised, and eight new schools and 32 kindergartens have resulted so
far. At the same time, Lev L'Achim undertook a mass school registration 
campaign that has registered thousands of children. And all this is dwarfed 
by the phenomenal growth of the Shas school system.

In short, Orthodox Jews believe in the Torah and its power to transform lives, 
and they can think of no greater mitzvah than giving regularly with astounding 
generosity in order to introduce their fellow Jews to Torah.

Reform lacks a comparable confidence in what it is offering. Therefore the 
movement spends millions on large press offices and teams of lawyers, 
as if the Israeli Supreme Court or Madison Avenue could somehow mandate 
Reform belief.

A memoir by Meira Leah Scott, a recent Harvard law school graduate, in the 
summer issue of Jewish Action, captures nicely why Reform cannot provide what 
people ultimately seek in religion: a connection to God. 
Scott began her religious search with liberal Judaism, the only form of 
Judaism of which she had ever heard. Initially she was attracted by the 
fact that nothing she found there was likely to give offense to previously 
held views or "intrude on 'regular' life," allowing her religiious activity to 
"ebb and flow according to whatever inspiration [she] could muster and [her] 
social calendar." Eventually, however, she began to wonder "where was God in 
this religion" in which man appeared to be constantly readjusting 
"the boundaries of appropriate religious existence?" She found herself unable 
to shake the intuition that "religion has to be something mandated by God and 
appropriate for all aspects of a person's life," not something one can 
"check in and out of . . . on any given day," and that every activity must be 
significant in God's eyes. Finally, she was introduced to two Orthodox rabbis, 
who invited her repeatedly for Shabbos and showed her how Torah Judaism responds 
to those intuitions.

If you want to know why Uri Regev has chosen to join forces with Am Hofshi, 
the answer is Meira Leah Scott.