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Rebbe on the Road: Budapest 12/20/03 “Contemplate the candle: It has at its heart a dark spot. All Enlightenment grows from a seed of mystery.” R’Kook The dark spot, or seed, was revealed by a passionate woman from Croatia and then equally so via the representative from Lithuania: “Rabbi. Is there a compelling reason to remain Jewish?” “Are we really doing our students a favor by helping them to remain Jewish?” And spoken by a Bulgarian with visible relief, “We’re so glad you didn’t include participants from The Ukraine. Our situation is very different, we are so few we’d be overwhelmed.” All three comments occasioned many heads nodding in agreement. Why would bar/bat mitzvah teachers, tutors, mentors and spiritual leaders from thirteen Central European regions be raising such questions? This place certainly looks current. Our hotel is ultra-modern. The JCC here has a computer skills center par excellence. Although there was a high terrorism alert for this, our teaching site, and the Israeli embassy; so the center’s otherwise glorious glass roof did give us the willies. The place was often wondrously full of Israeli-dancing youth, young families and card playing elders. Speaking of modernity, just recently Romania, Bulgaria, Moldova and Ukraine signed a commitment which created Europe's largest, cross-border wetlands protection and restoration initiative, the "Green Corridor for the Danube." In fact, Budapest has many synagogues, a rabbinical school, Jewish museum, and perhaps 20,000 Jews who actively identify and another 60-80,000 who could. However, our seminar has been carefully designed by JDC to serve the vast array of smaller Central European Jewish communities, among them Bosnia, Serbia, Croatia, Montenegro, Czechoslovakia, Estonia, Latvia, Poland and more. Even a senior educator from Bombay was present. New cultures have lengthy learning curves for overseas teachers like myself, hmm, what is going on here. Budapest’s geography is strikingly delineated by the Danube, which since glacial times bifurcates Buda and Pesht. The two sides have five lovely bridges to re-connect them. Buda’s hilltops are crowned with a huge sprawling castle and terraced with renewed ornate buildings of eras past. On the side where I’m working, Pesht, are many elaborate architectural gems from the Parliament to the Dohany Synagogue. I’ll only get to the latter and the ornate Music Academy because it seems our carefully wrought teaching plan is going to require constant fine-tuning. Shoah memories pervade the Jewish ghetto beside where we are comfortably quartered in an ultra-modern hotel. Because Hungary sided with Germany, her Jewish citizens survived til 1944. Then, in six weeks 600,000 Jews perished as the Nazis reached peak frenzy and efficiency. The apartment blocks here are the sequential walls of the ghetto, large gates stand open in archways for traffic to pass. During the war as people starved inside sealed ghetto walls, the courtyard beside the great Dohany synagogue was piled high with corpses in the tens of thousands. This, the largest and probably most stunningly beautiful synagogue in the world survived the war because the British were reluctant to bomb religious institutions, which the Nazis knew. The Nazis used it as their headquarters here, setting their broadcast antennas atop its domed turrets. We’re not in Kansas, Toto. It soon becomes clear that most of our participants have neither had a bar/bat mitzvah nor witnessed one. Few can read any Hebrew, I believe none knew trope. The idea of helping their students to write divrei Torah that touch upon their lives is received as innovative, exciting, inviting.. Looking past the p’shat, the simple meaning of the text, into metaphor and symbolism, radical and – intriguing, raising a real hunger and hope. Initially indifferent or hostile on the subject of religious services, when they experienced a few examples of how decode the portals to higher consciousness within the prayers and to see the spiritual infrastructure, they wanted to stay after hours to learn more. The seed in the darkness trembles with the energy of impending growth. It takes some distance in time to conceive the Shoah as another part of the eternal darkness in which the buried seed is again being fertilized, to realize our people’s pain again is decomposing and releasing new energy. After a decade of involvement in the now dramatic reinvigoration of Jewish life in the Former Soviet Union, I'd not connected the awesome, tiny tendrils of awakening that we first experienced there with what might be the situation here. Those who oppress Jews through the ages realize little that they are compressing our G*d sparks into an ever denser, more potent fuel for knowledge and growth. We contain this fossil fuel which, when fully realized will illuminate the human future as our souls pour through Torah and offer a lamp for living, B'H". On our five-person teaching team is Rabbi HaCohen, noted author and Chief Rabbi of Romania. A twinkling-eyed mensch, he knows issues within this group that I forget to expect. One in particular, is that many in the East have never heard of women rabbis. I thought we were past that point in history! But, bless R’HaCohen, he deftly leapt them past their shock by striding across the room with outstretched hand to welcome me in a robust voice: “Rabbi Milgram – so glad to meet you.” While jaws actually dropped, later that day two women feel the need to inform me: “We don’t believe in women rabbis where we come from.” Rabbi HaCohen’s talk centered on increasing the participation of women and girls through bat mitzvah, which he strongly condoned if held during Kabbalat Shabbat sans Torah reading. Some jaws dropped again, others tightened. A western woman reporter called out with indignation: “With your solution, we still won’t count…not for minyan, not for coming to Torah? Not just our girls, but our boys won’t count. You know what I’m talking about, who is a Jew!” The bigger problem over here is intermarriage. With essentially no one local to fall in love with in your own tradition, in these Eastern European communities, halachic Jews are getting few and far between. Hundreds of thousands of FSU Israeli immigrants fall into this category too. “A mass solution has to be established for this generation,” he declared, “we don’t have it quite yet, but it will come.” So as not to travel on Shabbat, a few of us attend a Friday night service in an apartment-turned-shul at a small new orthodox group. The group has “progressed dramatically,” we’re told, the women no longer have to sit in a separate room, we get to sit at the back of the living room behind strung two layers of sheer curtains. The melodies are Carlebach and the hazzan’s voice sweet and heart-felt, present are several male Israelis who are medical students here and three local women who chattered behind us while we sing-in Shabbat joyfully. Also on our teaching team are Shulamit and Moshe Turpaz of Israel’s modern orthodox ritual and life cycle support and resource group ITIM.org. They are dynamic, fun, creative and apparently haven’t dealt with a woman rabbi before. Moshe makes a point of passing me the cup to make Kiddush at our seat on Shabbat at one of the area kosher restaurants. The food is good but later we’re pretty shocked to notice signs were posted along the other three walls saying that women are not to sing, Why? Kavod hatzibur. For the honor of the community? Oy. We were virtually the only guests, so I guess that’s why no one stopped us. Despite this strict halachic signage, despite having prepaid, we are asked to be sure to pay now…hmm, we musn’t sing, but on Shabbos payment is requested? A Reform group has formed in Budapest, but since the other two groups won’t officially recognize it, neither will the government! To count as a religious group they’d have to file as a new religion. This is not an uncommon situation in Europe. Similar groups have formed in Prague, Amsterdam and I'm sure elsewhere. I’ve learned from my work in the NIS to view splinter groups – whatever part of the spectrum in which they arise, as new seeds that bode a real, creative, strong Jewish future – IF watered, fed, and supported, as is the case in the NIS. We offered teaching methods to them and principles for sharing basic Judaism in a way that enters the spirit and kindles an ever more engaged Jewish life. Mission enough. We were adjured not to introduce "radical" ideas that could rattle their rabbis back home. Despite our teaching team's respectful caution, when the students tackled their roles for a bar and bat mitzvah simulation they blew that lid off. Wanting to see a woman rabbi fully in action, they insisted that I lead a brief service, then one of the reps from Prague (a city of 2500 Jews) staged her bat mitzvah girl as having two mothers and a transsexual father. No one seemed fazed; they too live in the real world. For them gay, lesbian and transexual Jews aren’t novel – but women rabbis and bat mitzvahs were! The literature for b’nei mitzvah shown us by the rep from India describes bat mitzvah as “a party to celebrate the girls’ coming of age, nothing more." And a woman leading services? "It seemed so natural, why were we ever so concerned?" was the consensus. Our goal is maximum empowerment of the participants. We teach them Gardner’s nine intelligences and help them to contemplate the best ways to work with bar/bat mitzvah students as individuals. They consider the importance of spiritual mentoring a young person on his/her journey. We reveal the powerful infrastructure of Shabbat services and the Kabbalistic metaphors. IMHO, helping Jews to create their own indigenous interpretations in the light of their own changing times matters most, just like we create for ourselves in our own denominations and idioms back home. I have no agenda for the Jews here to do like we do. With the questions being asked and hearts so open, it is for us just to become transparent like water, and then to advise and encourage and reveal the skills of experiencing Judaism as a system of meaning for living. The seed? It is ever-growing, it is born of the Tree of Life. Every community a menorah. Every soul a branch carrying Light. With love and Shabbat Hanukkah blessings for joy and loving connections, Reb Goldie ----------------------- ReclaimingJudaism.org For seekers and teachers of meaning for living through a Jewish lens Bmitzvah.org For a more meaningful and memorable bar/bat mitzvah |
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