Torateinu ARZA: Unto Zion Shall Go Torah

Torateinu ARZA with
Rabbi Josh Weinberg, ARZA President,
with Rabbi Rick Sarason,
and Rabbi Bennett Miller, ARZA Chair

When I open Outlook each work day, I find a an e-mail from the URJ's Ten Minutes of Torah. Some days I read it with great interest. Other days I know I won't have time and set it aside for later. This morning - with one son on his way to a NFTY regional event and the other working out and doing errands (he is cooking Shabbat dinner tonight) - I decided to come into the empty office and finish a project, put away the Chanukah decorations and clean off my desk. But first e-mail.

One day each week, Ten Minutes of Torah is about making Israel Connections. Rabbi Josh Weinberg, the president of ARZA (Association of Reform Zionist of North America) was the author from Wednesday. I was struck by his words. In part because I can visualize the places in Ben Gurion Airport (NTBG) her describes. In part because of the power of a congregation her sharing a Sefer Torah with a new Reform community in Israel. And in part because of the reaction of the elderly woman at NTBG to seeing a scroll in the hands of another woman.

I share this as a Shabbat gift for those who didn't see it. You can see the link after Josh's name to discuss the article on RJ.org. That is the blog of the Reform movement where the article is posted online. I urge you to make any comments there so you will be part of a much larger conversation.

Shabbat Shalom!

Ira

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Torateinu ARZA:
Unto Zion Shall Go Torah
By Rabbi Josh Weinberg
Discuss on RJ.org

Moses received the Torah from Sinai and gave it over to Joshua. Joshua gave it over to the Elders, the Elders to the Prophets, and the Prophets gave it over to the Men of the Great Assembly.

Pirkei Avot 1:1

Dan, the official in customs, told me to have a seat with my Torah and wait. Well accustomed to Israeli bureaucracy, I immediately knew I should have canceled my plans for the rest of the day. When Dan returned, offering me a cup of coffee, I knew I was in for it. Surprisingly, within 10 minutes, having signed the necessary paperwork and paid the required fees, Torateinu ARZA (Our Torah to the Land) and I were cleared to leave.

As I headed into the arrivals hall, cradling the Torah, Dan asked, "So, is that a real Torah?"

"Absolutely," I responded.

"A great mitzvah…" he called out with a wink. Even the customs official understood the importance of our work to bring the gift of Torah to Kehilat Sha'ar HaNegev, a fledgling Israeli Reform community.

In the back of the hall, near the vending machines, I took the scroll from its box, passing it carefully to Yael Karrie, Kehilat Sha'ar HaNegev's student rabbi . Amidst swarms of Orthodox Jews, we weren't sure how a woman holding a sefer Torah would fare, but we needn't have worried. No sooner did Yael take the scroll than an elderly woman, her head covered in a scarf ran up to us, asking if she could kiss the Torah, exclaiming, "May it bring good things for the people of Israel!"

Traditionally, when we take the Torah from the ark during services we chant these words from the Book of Isaiah: "From out of Zion comes Torah." With the arrival of this particular sefer Torah, we can modify Isaiah's words to these: "Unto Zion shall go Torah."

Generously donated by Congregation Beth Israel of San Diego, Torateinu ARZA, an initiative of the Association of Reform Zionists of America (ARZA), had traveled throughout North America for nearly six months - from west to east, from San Diego to the Negev - visiting dozens of congregations and events on its way to Israel. Recently, I was honored to walk with Torateinu ARZA on Shabbat morning at the joint URJ-HUC-CCAR board meeting in Cincinnati and to be granted an even greater honor: to receive the Torah upon its arrival home - at Israel's Ben Gurion Airport. It has since arrived at Kehilat Sha'ar HaNegev, the congregation that will be its permanent home in Israel.

As we celebrate the last day of the Festival of Lights, may this Torah be a symbol of much needed light, unity, and good will in Israel. Let it show the world that the Reform Movement is building a strong and growing presence in Israel, that we are committed to making Torah accessible to all Jews, and that our congregations place Torah at the center of their existence.

This spring's World Zionist Organization elections have the potential to enhance recognition of the Reform Movement in Israel, help our communities to thrive, and demonstrate that there are many ways to be religious in Medinat Yisrael. If you haven't already done so, 
please pledge to vote in the upcoming WZO elections. 

Rabbi Josh Weinberg is president of ARZA.

The Real Hannah Senesh

Joshua Weinberg is the President of the Association of Reform Zionists of America (ARZA). And he is awesome. Right now he is working to get people to take a pledge to vote in the upcoming elections for World Zionist Congress. It is really important that we participate and make our voices heard. Today he posted this on the RJ Blog and 10 Minutes of Torah. It is not about the elections, but about how Israel might fit in our Jewish identity. Enjoy!

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The Real Hannah Senesh
By Josh Weinberg

It was 70 years ago this week, according to the Hebrew calendar, that a young Jewish girl named Hannah Senesh was executed by firing squad by the Hungarian-Nazi police force. She had been captured after parachuting into Europe with a group of Jewish paratroopers of the Haganah who were sent to rescue Jews from the Nazi war machine.

At the age of 23, Hannah Senesh became an epic and heroic figure largely due to the letters, poems, and diary entries she left behind, exposing to the world her deepest thoughts and feelings. Not long after her death, one poem that she had composed during a walk from her kibbutz, Sdot Yam, to the ancient Roman ruins of the port city of Caesarea (1 km to the north) became her most famous. Known to most as Eli, Eli, the poem Halikha LeKesariya (A Walk to Caesarea) was set to music by David Zehavi and proceeded to be prominently featured at virtually every memorial ceremony for the Holocaust and for Israel’s fallen – deliberately linking the two to forge a linear narrative in the young Israeli psyche.

While the classical Zionist narrative claimed Senesh as one of its own – total assimilation only to find redemption in her aliyah to the Land of Israel (Palestine at the time) – we now know that there is much more to her story than previously understood.

Just as the great Zionist visionary Theodor Herzl’s own upbringing (in the same city as Senesh) begs a deeper inquiry into the struggles of living a both Jewish and modern life, and that the Dreyfus trial was for him a tipping point rather than a great awakening, so too must we dig a bit deeper into Senesh’s own spiritual and evolving Jewish identity.

On September 18, 1936, a teenaged Hannah Senesh wrote:

I’m not quite clear just how I stand: synagogue, religion, the question of God. About the last and most difficult question I am the least disturbed. I believe in God – even if I can’t express just how. Actually I’m relatively clear on the subject of religion, too, because Judaism fits in best with my way of thinking. But the trouble with the synagogue is that I don’t find it at all important, and I don’t feel it to be a spiritual necessity; I can pray equally at home.

Later on November 2, 1940, she continued this sentiment by saying:

I was never able to pray in the usual manner, by rote, and even now neither can nor want to. But the dialogue man holds with his Creator…is what I, too, have found. I see the sincere, inner link, even if it comes through struggle within myself and through some doubt.

From reading her diary, we learn that her Jewish identity was much more complicated than often presented. Her struggle with belief, faith, prayer, and observance lead us to appreciate a deeper and more complex outlook on her life, challenging the classic Zionist narrative. Senesh reflected in her life on what many of us may be searching for today. Her worldview and outlook on Israel and Judaism is one that can resonate with those struggling to find the balance between our national, ethnic, and religious identities.

For many Israelis, the discovery that she was not definitively secular, and that she struggled deeply with personal religiosity, may come as a shock. But it is also a welcome call to say that it’s okay to question, to have a grey area, and that there are many ways to be religious. Our Reform movement in Israel is ready right now to engage such seekers; to offer meaning to those for whom the polarizing dichotomy between “secular” and “religious” no longer answers their needs. Based on Senesh’s example, this struggle has been occupying the minds of Zionists and young people for many decades.

While many of Senesh’s writings were published and now feature prominently in Israeli and Diaspora ceremonies and liturgy, one amazing discovery came to light only two years ago. Sixty-eight years after it was written, the poem Hora L’Bat Golah (Hora to a Daughter of the Exile) was discovered in a drawer. Senesh wrote the poem in 1943 while she was being trained for her mission to parachute behind enemy lines.

Hora to a Daughter of the Exile (Translation by Elie Leshem)

A hora, roaring, tempestuous, blazes around me
With the mystery of rhythm, gladdening and forging,
It tugs at my body and heart
The foot marches, the back quivers, the song is ignited, a searing chorus
Dance and song, a wordless prayer,
Hail to the future, hail to creation

But then a figure flutters before my eyes
My arm has escaped my friends’ embrace
My heart spurns the tempestuous singing,
Far and near it consumes me whole

Blue eyes Such a bewildered glance
A sad silence and a stubborn mouth
The stillness grows in me I remain standing
Alone, in a crowd of a hundred, her and I

Click here to listen to the song composed for this poem.

On this 70th anniversary of her death, communities across Israel and throughout our Israeli Reform movement will be marking her life and contributions. I encourage our North American movement’s congregations to do the same. Let’s dedicate time to highlight the person she was and the legacy and challenges she left for all of us.

This Shabbat, sing Eli, Eli not in a somber, mournful tenor, but in a celebratory and upbeat tone, since this is a prayer offering thanks and praise for life’s natural wonders that should never cease. On the 70th anniversary of this important hero, let us re-examine her life, her hashkafa (outlook and personal philosophy), and her contribution to Jewish life.