January 23, 2025

I am beginning to experience that familiar sense of sadness I get when I know I am close to leaving Israel. Believe me, I love my life at home in the US. I love my family. I love where we live, and I love our congregation. It is just the way it is: When I am not in Israel, a part my hearts longs.

Another incredibly meaningful day. We started with Joel, magnificently guiding us around Herrodia. This is King Herrod’s architectural marvel, a royal fortress and lavish palace upon a human-made hill. From there we could see all parts of the West Bank, which gave Joel the chance to thoroughly explain the modern-day complexity of the Territories, the Settler Movement and the Palestinian yearning for statehood. Like yesterday, this is too complex to explicate in this space. You will have to come on the 31st to hear more about the contours of this specific tension.

From there we did something we have never done as a TBJ group before. We went to the Office of the Chief Rabbinate and met an Ultra-Orthodox (Haredi) rabbi, named Yehoshua Feffer. Beyond the issues of war and peace with our neighbors and the bubbling up once again of the judicial crisis; many of you know that there have been and are deeply troubling tensions between the Haredi world and most of the rest of the country. When the State was founded in 1948, the very small population of Haredi Jews appealed to David Ben Gurion to be able to rebuild their community that been nearly devastated in the Holocaust. They advocated for exemption from the army and financial assistance to be able to study Torah full time. Ben Gurion thought it important to rebuild all parts of lost Jewish communities. At that point, that meant only 400 military exemptions. Now, that number is well over 60,000. Indeed, the Haredi community has been incredibly successful in rebuilding and procreating. They have thousands of yeshivas throughout the country and they now number 1.7 million of the population. And so, there is great resentment amongst secular and other religious communities that the Haredi community does not produce economically; nor do most of them serve in the IDF. More, they do anything they can to remain separate from the rest of Israel to maintain the purist form of Judaism as they see it.

Rabbi Feffer was remarkable. He explained his own evolution as a Haredi Jew. He absolutely supports the thriving of their community. He believes in their rights to practice the Judaism to which they aspire. And he believes that other parts of Israeli society should respect them. HOWEVER, he believes also that the Haredi community have fulfilled their original goal of building up from the years of decimation. They are flourishing in number and in practice. He now believes that it should be mandatory that they serve in the army. He doesn’t think it’s fair that other Israeli parents send their kids off to serve, while their children get to be home at the Shabbat table weekly. More, he believes that their children should study secular subjects as well as religious, so they can be active providers in the Israeli economy. He believes their constriction is both unhealthy for Israeli society and for the Haredim themselves. He is unabashed in these beliefs privately and publicly. He represents a small, but growing circle of Haredi leaders who believe the same. This circle takes a lot of heat from their own for such advocacy. But they are steadfast in their convictions. He gave us such hope for a mitigation of this significant tension in Israeli society that will ultimately tear the national fabric apart if not solved. Before I left, I invited him to come to America and speak to our congregation. He hugged me tightly and said, “Rabbi Matt, that would be my privilege.” I don’t care much about titles, but only twice in my rabbinate have I been addressed with honor, the title of Rabbi by an Ultra-Orthodox rabbi. We all felt seen and heard for our practice of Judaism and we saw and heard his. Hope!

We ended our day with one of the most moving evenings I have ever experienced in Israel with any group. We thought it imperative to start to sew cultural life back into our solidarity missions; just like Israelis are trying to do in their own lives. And so, we invited one of the rising Israeli music stars to perform a private concert for our group. Her name is Raz Shmueli. Joel and I “found” her when we went to see Shlomo Artzi (the mixture, as Matt Turk suggests, of the Israeli Paul Simon, Paul McCartney and Bruce Springsteen) last summer and winter. She plays in his band. What moved us right from the beginning of the show was how moved she was by the fact that we come here during a time of war. She prepared not just her music, but sewed it all seamlessly into her life story, as it intertwined with the story of Israel both before and after October 7, 2023. She spoke poignantly, used video and of course her extraordinary musical talents. She asked for and received dialogue between her (and her band) and us. It was absolutely magical and profoundly moving. We were all captivated both by her music and by her humble sensitivity. I am a bit of fanatic when it comes to Israeli music and so, I think the group caught a glimpse of their rabbi’s concert personality. Yes, I was both hooting and crying. She too agreed to come and play for us at home. And she too didn’t leave until she hugged us all. Wow! It really was one of the finest evenings I’ve ever spent here. Video and pictures below.

You are just getting up at home. We are beginning to prepare for Shabbat in Jerusalem.

Thank you again for staying with us and on behalf of our group, we wish you Shabbat Shalom and love from Jerusalem.