Commenting on a verse in the Book of Jeremiah (16:11) about the ancestors who’ve forsaken God, the midrash makes God say: “Would that they had forsaken Me but kept My Torah.” 

I thought of it last Shavuot night in Jerusalem where, like everywhere else in Israel, a large number of people, many young and neither observant nor believers, flocked to hundreds of study sessions to celebrate the Festival of the Giving of the Torah. Jerusalem even published a map to guide people to the many places where Torah was being taught that night. 

Rabbi Donniel Hartman, the president of the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem, wrote about the phenomenon in The CJN last month. I see this hunger for study and the desire to learn what our tradition has to teach as a sign of a genuine search to create an indigenous Israeli form of Judaism that goes beyond ritual observance, political expediency and denominational tribalism.

Until now, virtually all forms of religious Judaism in Israel have been Diaspora imports. Sephardi Orthodoxy has its roots in the Middle East and North Africa. Ashkenazi Orthodoxy hails from eastern Europe. The way in which its ardent adherents (haredim) live and dress reflects a very different era and a very different climate: they may live in Israel but they aren’t of Israel. Many don’t even recognize the legitimacy of the Jewish state. 

What’s normally described as modern Orthodoxy could have become more authentically Israeli had it not been mired in political ideology that disguises power as piety and patriotism. Even the Chief Rabbinate owes more to the British mandatory regime that created it and the expedient agreements with successive Israeli governments that have indulged it, than to authentic Judaism. 

Reform and Conservative Judaism are largely American and European. A Reform congregation to which I belong conducts all its services in Hebrew, but the moment the prayers are over, only English is heard. 

Though some Reform rabbis imaginatively seek to make common cause with Israeli secular culture, most of those to whom they reach out find liberal Judaism no less alien than its orthodox counterparts. 

One of the study sessions I attended on Shavuot looked at rabbinic sources, in an effort to shed light on the tensions between the reality of Israel today and the aspirations of Jewish tradition through the ages.

Despite the lecturer’s valiant efforts to point to today’s need for solidarity and compromise, the cited texts came into being in societies where Jews had no power. It’s different in the sovereign State of Israel. Here, the challenge is to find formulas that affirm Jewish teachings, yet face the realities of military prowess and political clout. For that, more than solidarity and compromise are needed. 

What we’ve had so far is mainly tribalism. Even the religious movements are organized along tribal lines: Sephardim, Ashkenazim, new immigrants, Europeans, Americans, middle class liberals, working class conservatives and many more.  

Rachel Azariah spoke about it. She’s a new star in the Israeli political firmament: a young mother of four, a former deputy mayor of Jerusalem and now a member of Knesset. Though she was stronger on analysis than solutions, the fact that, together with many others, she’s in search of answers reflects the growing determination in many quarters to formulate an Israeli Judaism that neither negates its sources nor denies its history, but seeks to go beyond present divisions.

Azariah reminded us that throughout Israel’s relatively brief history, its citizens had to work against seemingly overwhelming odds. Yet they succeeded beyond expectations: immigrants have been absorbed, the borders have been made secure, a political culture has been established and a sound economy has become a reality. The next challenge may be to shape an indigenous form of Israeli Judaism.

As the continuation of the midrash cited above has it: by occupying themselves with Torah, Jews will find their way back to God. The fervour on Shavuot night bodes well for the future.