An American lawyer from Los Angeles can come to Israel and
discuss
the daf yomi with any of hundreds of avreichim
in
Yerushalayim. A university professor from Australia can ask a
question
that touches on matters of life and death of an octogenarian
scholar
in Bnei Brak and follow his recommendation without a second
thought.
A young woman from England can marry a young man from
Amsterdam and
the couple can live happily ever after in Ofakim -- because
they
share key values at the focus of their lives. This is what Am
Echad
-- One People -- means in practice.
A yeshiva boy can walk into any yeshiva in the world and feel
at home.
Any religious Jew can walk into any Orthodox shul in
the world
and immediately feel that he or she needs no introduction to
the order
of prayers. If it's Monday they will read the Torah; if it is
evening
they will daven ma'ariv. And yes, those who need to
can even
go and schnorr money in any religious community in the
world,
knowing that if they are legitimate they will get a
sympathetic ear
and whatever help the community can afford.
Not so long ago, every Jew understood that this is the core
of the
Jewish people, the common heritage and culture that is
focused on
Torah. We can be less observant or more observant, closer to
Torah
or farther from it. However, it is one's relationship to
Torah (or
lack of it) that defines one as a Jew. There is no Jewishness
without
the common Torah.
The universalist education that is given by the State of
Israel has
eradicated this feeling. Although Israel remains probably the
only
Jewish community in the world today where just about everyone
who
thinks he or she is Jewish, really is Jewish (this is
patently not
true in Russia and there are many problematic cases in
America after
three generations of extensive intermarriage) the lack of
understanding
and familiarity with the basic facts of Jewish heritage are
threatening
this community as well.
Even when talking to the Am Echad delegation, Minister of
Justice
Yossi Beilin repeated his boorish proposal to remove matters
of personal
status completely from rabbinic control. What a simple,
practical
solution -- from his point of view. Let everyone make his or
her
own choice. Everyone will still be able to go to the Rabbanut
to get
married, and those who wish otherwise can do as they wish.
No doubt the vast majority of Israelis who get married will
continue
to go to the Rabbanut. It is certainly not the chareidi core
that
we are worried about, nor the religious nor the peripheral
"traditional"
Jews. It is Yossi Beilin and his friends who do not even know
what
they are rejecting who will suffer the most.
Those who marry, intermarry and divorce indiscriminately will
soon
wall themselves off from the rest of the Jewish people. The
potential
familial link is in many cases the last thing that binds
these people
to the rest of Jewry around the world. They think like non-
Jews, eat
like non-Jews and many even feel closer to various non-Jewish
communities
than to many Jewish communities. Yet they still have their
Jewish
heritage in common with the rest of the Jews.
It was Shlomo Hamelech who showed so dramatically that the
one who
is truly concerned will not watch calmly as the children are
torn
asunder. Even the proposal to maintain a reliable
genealogical database
is intended to preserve Jewish unity, not undermine it. We
cannot
accept a proposal that will tear living flesh from the body
of the
Jewish people.
