Jewish Women in Reform Settings in Israel: Past, Present, and Personal Dr. Einat Libel-Hass The Reform Movement in Israel was established in the mid-1960s and has promoted gender equality in their congregations. In this paper, I will focus on active women in the Reform Movement and present their stories. Over the years, the composition of the Reform Movement changed considerably. Initially, they were founded by English-speaking families; however, in time, Israeli-born families and individuals began to take part and even take up rabbinical positions. My paper is based on ethnographic fieldwork I conducted in Beit Daniel, the well-known Reform congregation in Tel Aviv. It was established in 1991 by immigrants from English- and Germanspeaking countries as the Reform Movement’s hub in the Tel Aviv area. From the beginning, it functioned as both a synagogue and community center, offering cultural and educational activities alongside religious services. I was especially interested in the role played by women. I discovered that active female members were affiliated with different generations: the founding generation, fifty-to-seventy-year-olds, and forty-something-year-olds. I, therefore, analyzed their stories DR. EINAT LIBEL-HASS is currently a post-doctoral fellow at the Sociology and Anthropology department at Bar Ilan University, Israel. Dr. Libel-Hass is an anthropologist of religion and a historian. Her PhD dissertation topic is The Development of Liberal (Reform and Conservative) Judaism in Tel Aviv: Organizational Patterns and Identities. Her PhD dissertation won the Churgin Award for Outstanding Doctoral Thesis granted by Bar Ilan University. Her academic interests include cultural dynamics between Israel and the United States, urban anthropology, liberal Judaism, and congregational studies. Dr. Libel-Hass has presented her work at prestigious academic conferences worldwide and won the American Jewish Archives’ 2017–2020 Fellowship to advance her research on the roots of the Israeli Reform Movement. From CCAR Journal - Summer 2023: Israel at Seventy-Five. Copyright © 2023 by the Central Conference of American Rabbis. All rights reserved. Not to be distributed, sold or copied without permission. Copy for Einat Libel-Hass. Summer 2023 13 DR. EINAT LIBEL-HASS to uncover the developments in women’s status in the congregation, which may reflect those in liberal Israeli communities in general. In addition to the active members, this congregation attracts women from the larger secular public due to the religious services it offers, such as bar and bat mitzvah celebrations or conversion services. Throughout my paper, I will incorporate quotes from both women groups. Stories play a key role in the individual’s and congregation’s lives. For example, the religious biographies of female congregants reveal the personal element that gives communities their texture. The Beit Daniel Founding Women The older women founders grew up in religious or ultra-Orthodox families. They joined a Reform congregation for some connection to Jewish tradition without being strictly observant and wanted to belong to a Jewish community that shared their cultural background. Some joined the congregation to provide their children with Jewish education, emphasizing the importance of men and women sitting together, allowing parents to sit with their children. Most founders also noted their interest in helping the needy as a motive for joining Beit Daniel. As a representative of the women founders, I will introduce you to Bruria Barish, the congregation president. Bruria Barish—President, Beit Daniel Bruria Barish was born in Romania in 1931 and grew up in a Chasidic family. She was already living in Israel in its early days, and her studies, as well as the frequent crises of war, gradually led her to stop being observant and adopt more liberal views. She was a nurse and met her husband, Benjamin (Benny) Barish z”l, an attorney, in the United States. They returned to Israel in 1963 and joined the Reform Movement to provide their son with contemporary Jewish education, attending Friday night services as a family since he was two. Another reason for joining the congregation was Bruria’s search for tradition. She wanted to belong to a nonOrthodox Jewish congregation. She said, “I realized I was missing the framework, the sense of belonging to a community.” She now views Beit Daniel as an extended family: “Aside from my own loving family, I see the congregation as a family. When I was sick and From CCAR Journal - Summer 2023: Israel at Seventy-Five. Copyright © 2023 by the Central Conference of American Rabbis. All rights reserved. Not to be distributed, sold or copied without permission. Copy for Einat Libel-Hass. 14 CCAR Journal: The Reform Jewish Quarterly JEWISH WOMEN IN REFORM SETTINGS IN ISRAEL grieving, I was happy to discover that the congregation I belong to is concerned about me and loves me.” Another reason for Bruria’s ongoing activity at Beit Daniel is her desire to help others: “The interest I found in people and social work led me to be active in the Reform congregation.” Her activeness in the congregation met all her needs: “As my life coil wound on . . . it introduced me to the possibility of going back to tradition while also satisfying my passion for working with people, so I became an active member of the Reform Movement . . . in Tel Aviv.” Involvement in the Congregation As her son grew up, her involvement in the congregation increased. While being the president of Beit Daniel between 1986 and 1991, she was also the volunteering head of the Reform Movement in Israel. She became well-known for her public promotion of the Reform Movement through her insistence to be a full-fledged member of the Tel Aviv Religious Council (in Israel, a religious council is a state authority predominantly comprised of religious and ultra-Orthodox men). In many Jewish communities, women volunteer in charity work and prepare food for congregants. Bruria and other founding women of Beit Daniel had a similar concept of female religiosity. For them, Jewish religion and ethics are expressed in interacting with and helping others. Their opinion also aligns with Reform Judaism’s commitment to pursuing tikkun olam. However, the founding women of Beit Daniel broadened the traditional concept of helping others by heading mixed-gender committees within the congregation. Bruria is exceptional since she played key volunteering roles in the Reform Movement. Key Active Female Members Aged Fifty to Seventy Years Old Most active female members in this age group are middle class with academic degrees. They immigrated to Israel from various countries and are at different stages of their family life cycle; hence, they have myriad reasons for joining the community. Joining the Congregation Because of Their Family Yehudit Konforty was born in Israel in 1948. She was a history teacher and joined the Beit Daniel congregation with her husband, From CCAR Journal - Summer 2023: Israel at Seventy-Five. Copyright © 2023 by the Central Conference of American Rabbis. All rights reserved. Not to be distributed, sold or copied without permission. Copy for Einat Libel-Hass. Summer 2023 15 DR. EINAT LIBEL-HASS a lawyer. She represents the relatively few Israeli-born women who have joined the community because their children had turned bar or bat Mitzvah: “We came in preparation for our son’s bar mitzvah eighteen years ago. My nephew had attended a bar mitzvah celebration at Beit Daniel and said the entire family was sitting together. I thought we should check it out, and we’ve been here ever since.” Yehudit was drawn by the family sitting arrangement, symbolically tying family values to religious ones. She understood the message conveyed by the Reform Movement: “A family that prays together stays together”—a view widely held by religious congregations in the United States.1 Yehudit and her family found that joining Beit Daniel strengthened their ties. Yehudit said: “Every Friday, we have a family dinner; it is our tradition. Going to synagogue on Friday was like adding another layer to our family setting.” Yehudit is also a prime example of an active woman who volunteered in the congregation in roles befitting their skills. Upon her retirement, she founded a social framework for the local elderly population, where she gave lectures on history and Judaism. The commitment to social justice—tikkun olam—is at the heart of Reform Judaism. The active women at Beit Daniel, much like American Jews affiliated with Reform Judaism in the United States, view their engagement in social justice and charity as their way of expressing their Jewishness nowadays.2 The active women in Beit Daniel established their social status through volunteer work, forging strong ties with other members, and naming it as a reason for remaining part of the congregation. Active Women in Their Forties These women came to Beit Daniel through a framework for young adults and students designed to overcome young Israelis’ disinclination to become involved in a Reform congregation. They forged close ties with other members and remained in the community even after they married and became mothers. These social bonds helped get the women involved in prayers and social justice, including protests on behalf of the Reform Movement on issues relating to the state and religion. They joined the congregation in their twenties and thirties. They speak of Judaism that suits the needs of a middle-class secular From CCAR Journal - Summer 2023: Israel at Seventy-Five. Copyright © 2023 by the Central Conference of American Rabbis. All rights reserved. Not to be distributed, sold or copied without permission. Copy for Einat Libel-Hass. 16 CCAR Journal: The Reform Jewish Quarterly JEWISH WOMEN IN REFORM SETTINGS IN ISRAEL woman in the twenty-first century and liken Reform Judaism to the internet: “We surf wherever we want,” meaning that there is no need to commit to a single congregation that expresses one form of Judaism. Instead, these women had tried several social and spiritual-religious options before selecting Reform Judaism and Beit Daniel: “Judaism that suits the needs of women who do not seek commitment. ” Individuals are now committed to many communities. Educated women whose lives are mobile place greater emphasis on autonomy. The active women in Beit Daniel, who joined it at the time through the Young Forum, emphasized that although their involvement in Beit Daniel was partial, it was meaningful to them. These women are flexible, constantly reshaping their commitment to the congregation and their identity. They view Judaism as a constant flowing river, choosing one Jewish direction and then changing its course later in life. The Secular-Reform Identity of Active Women in Their Forties Some women defined themselves as secular-Reform or secular women who are active in a Reform congregation and sometimes pray. Omrit, forty-five, divorced with one son, financial officer involved in Beit Daniel, said of her Jewish identity: “I am secular; there is no religious aspect to my daily life . . . I view Judaism as a culture and have a positive affiliation with tradition, holidays, customs, and rituals.” Omrit’s random attendance of services made her friends wonder, and she explained: “People don’t understand why a secular person attends synagogue. I don’t go to pray to communicate with God. I enjoy . . . the experience . . . It lifts my spirits to sing certain songs to a certain tune.” She chose the term “Reform” as an external label that makes her identity easier for those around her to comprehend. However, her perception of her Jewish identity is far more complex. Omrit and women like her combine secularity and Reform Judaism to explain to themselves and others how a secular woman can be active and pray from time to time in a Reform synagogue. In the absence of suitable terms to describe their complex Jewish identity, women like Omrit use available terminology. By doing so, they create hyphenated identities, adding the phrase “Reform” to From CCAR Journal - Summer 2023: Israel at Seventy-Five. Copyright © 2023 by the Central Conference of American Rabbis. All rights reserved. Not to be distributed, sold or copied without permission. Copy for Einat Libel-Hass. Summer 2023 17 DR. EINAT LIBEL-HASS another common term in the discourse on Israeli Jewish identities, thereby challenging it. Commitment to Social Justice as a Reason for Joining the Young Forum and as Means of Enhancing Secular Jews’ Identification with the Reform Movement Omrit and other active women in their forties believe in philanthropy and social justice. Identifying with this value allowed them to identify themselves as Reform instead of just secular. Beit Daniel provides opportunities to engage in social justice projects. The congregation is therefore perceived by Omrit and other young active women as a way of expressing their values, such as tolerance and equality, whether between genders or humans in general. They had not been exposed to religious education frameworks before, and their involvement in the Young Forum was their first taste of a religious community. When they joined Beit Daniel, they wanted mainly to belong to a social community that would meet several of their needs in a one-stop shop—be they societal, religious, or identity-related. I will next share some quotes from women who consumed the religious services offered by Beit Daniel. Secular Mothers of Bar and Bat Mitzvah Children from the Greater Tel Aviv Area These women attend Beit Daniel for family reasons that are partly combined with gender motivation. Most women interviewed noted their support of gender equality during services, connecting it to their desire to sit with their families and turn the bar mitzvah ceremony into a family celebration. Naomi said: “At the ceremony in the Reform synagogue, I was impressed by the fact that everyone sat together; mothers could sit by their sons instead of hiding upstairs and moving curtains. I have a son, and I want to celebrate with him. It’s nice to do it together; it’s fun.” Revital provided the following practical explanation for her choice to celebrate her daughter’s bat mitzvah at Beit Daniel: “When you want a girl to read the Torah, you need to find a Reform synagogue.” She added, “Something new is being introduced into tradition and religion, the Reforms.” It was clear that if she were to mark her daughter’s bat mitzvah in a religious ritual, the only place open to her was a Reform synagogue. From CCAR Journal - Summer 2023: Israel at Seventy-Five. Copyright © 2023 by the Central Conference of American Rabbis. All rights reserved. Not to be distributed, sold or copied without permission. Copy for Einat Libel-Hass. 18 CCAR Journal: The Reform Jewish Quarterly JEWISH WOMEN IN REFORM SETTINGS IN ISRAEL Parents who celebrate their child’s bar or bat mitzvah at Beit Daniel participate in a preparation course. Only a small percentage of Israeli mothers had celebrated their bat mitzvah in any religious context. The importance of this preparation course was attributed by some of the women I interviewed to the t’fillin donning ceremony held during it. Dafna said: “It felt good to don t’fillin for the first time in my life. I was excited to be in a religious framework that noticed me for the first time, unlike other frameworks that ignored me just because I am a woman. It is a tremendous contribution to the Jewish identity of girls.” Her quote implies that mothers and daughters found it meaningful and exciting to take an active part in a ritual that, to this day, is commonly considered in Israel a male practice. This ritual connected them to their liberal Jewish identity in an unmediated way. Moreover, the fact that a woman rabbi had instructed the participants how to don the t’fillin rendered her a role model for the b’not mitzvah and their mothers. I will next refer to the woman rabbi at Beit Daniel. In Israel, half of the students and ordained rabbis at HUC-JIR are women. Rabbi Galia Sadan as a Religious Spiritual and Congregation Leader at Beit Daniel Rabbi Galia Sadan has been an associate rabbi at Beit Daniel for the past twenty years, ever since her ordination at HUC-JIR/Jerusalem. She also runs the bar/bat mitzvah program and the conversion school. Alongside Senior Rabbi Meir Azari, to the three-hundred-member families of Beit Daniel, she is their congregation’s rabbi. She also officiates Reform wedding ceremonies and is chief justice at the Israeli Reform Movement’s beit din (conversion court). Sadan was born in 1967 and has a son. Her parents came to Israel from Argentina and raised her in a kibbutz, which she left at age seventeen. During a year of studies and volunteer work, she was introduced to Reform Judaism through seminars on Judaism and Zionism. Gender Sadan’s feminist views shaped her ties with the Reform Movement. She said: “I would never have started my adventure with the Reform Movement had it not been a gender-equal movement. The From CCAR Journal - Summer 2023: Israel at Seventy-Five. Copyright © 2023 by the Central Conference of American Rabbis. All rights reserved. Not to be distributed, sold or copied without permission. Copy for Einat Libel-Hass. Summer 2023 19 DR. EINAT LIBEL-HASS fact that men and women were completely equal was my ticket in. I could never have connected to a religious world without gender equality.” Sadan is in charge of bar and bat mitzvah ceremonies at Beit Daniel. During our interview, she voiced some concerns about families of bar and bat mitzvah children’s acceptance of her, saying, “To the larger Israeli public, [the rabbi’s] gender is still an issue in many cases, especially when celebrating a bar mitzvah.” In this context, Sadan said that parents from traditional backgrounds hold common views, accepting gender segregation in the religious sphere. To them, it is extraordinary, even inconceivable, that a woman rabbi would be teaching the bar and bat mitzvah preparation course or officiating the ceremony. Yet she also talked about Rabbi Azari’s habit of saying, “the more they see women rabbis, the more they’ll want them. It’s a personal matter. Once they know you and are happy with how you officiate the ceremony, they’ll ask for you. They would not care about what Grandpa has to say.” And indeed, there have been cases where the families initially requested a male rabbi but agreed to have Rabbi Sadan officiate over their son’s bar mitzvah after getting to know her. Sadan believes that women rabbis do not only have the power to change the minds of the individuals they meet but potentially to make a genuine difference in society at large. Conclusion I discussed and compared active members in Beit Daniel versus women who only occasionally consume the religious services offered by a Reform congregation. The founding and older active female members of the Reform congregation of Beit Daniel used a single term—Reform—to describe their Jewish identity. In contrast, the forty-something-year-olds use more terms, combining them in various complex ways to define their Jewish identity. This difference indicates that these younger women did not wholly embrace the Jewish identity definition their congregation proposed. The reason may be generational differences in the level of freedom individuals have when forming their own Jewish identity. For example, past generations in the congregation adhered to a single identity for many years, whereas the younger women view identity-forming as an ongoing process. From CCAR Journal - Summer 2023: Israel at Seventy-Five. Copyright © 2023 by the Central Conference of American Rabbis. All rights reserved. Not to be distributed, sold or copied without permission. Copy for Einat Libel-Hass. 20 CCAR Journal: The Reform Jewish Quarterly JEWISH WOMEN IN REFORM SETTINGS IN ISRAEL Reform identities are broad; thus, Israeli liberal congregations contain different identities and appeal to women of various generations. Reform congregations such as Beit Daniel offer multiple opportunities for women to volunteer, each according to her skills. My conversations with active women members in the congregation reveal that they connect to Reform Judaism through actions. They are drawn to Beit Daniel as a place combining a commitment to social justice with philanthropy. It is a vital part of their Jewish identity. They understand that their guiding values of human equality, including gender equality and tolerance for a wide range of opinions, align with the main value of Reform Judaism—tikkun olam. From this realization stems their support for Reform Judaism. Unlike the female members of the congregation, the women who only mark special occasions at Beit Daniel are religious service consumers. They came to Beit Daniel because it offered ceremonies aligned with their secular lifestyle. Their experiences from life-cycle celebrations strengthened their positive view of Reform Judaism but have not changed their Jewish identity. After they finish consuming the specific religious service that brought them to the congregation, they terminate their contact with Beit Daniel because the spiritual and identity-related needs of most secular Jews in Israel are met simply by living in the Jewish-Israeli sphere. Recommended Reading Ammerman, N. T. Congregation and Community. New Brunswick and London: Rutgers University Press, 1987, 364. Ben Lulu, E. “Reform Israeli Female Rabbis Perform Community Leadership.” Journal of Religion & Society 19 (2017): 1–22. Edgell-Becker, P. Congregations in Conflict: Cultural Models of Local Religious Life. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999, 13. Goodman, Y., and Y. Yona. “Introduction: Religiosity and Secularity— Other Perspectives.” In Maelstrom of Identities: A Critical Look at Religion and Secularity in Israel, edited by Y. Yona and Y. Goodman, 9. Tel Aviv and Jerusalem: Hakibbutz Hameuchad and Van Leer Institute, 2004. Libel-Hass, E. The Development of Liberal (Reform/Mitkademet and Conservative/Masorti) Judaism in Tel-Aviv: Organizational Patterns and Identities in the Congregations Beit Daniel and Tiferet Shalom (1991– 2015), doctoral thesis. Ramat Gan, Bar Ilan University, 2015 [In Hebrew]. From CCAR Journal - Summer 2023: Israel at Seventy-Five. Copyright © 2023 by the Central Conference of American Rabbis. All rights reserved. Not to be distributed, sold or copied without permission. Copy for Einat Libel-Hass. Summer 2023 21 DR. EINAT LIBEL-HASS Libel-Hass, E. “A Portrait of a Tel-Aviv Reform Congregation: From Kedem Congregation up to Beit Daniel.” In “Your Name Is Worthy to Be Praised”: Rabbi Moshe Zemer, Studies and Chapters of Life, edited by D. Barak Gorodetsky. Hevel Modi’in Industrial Park: Kinneret, Zmora, Dvir, 2022, 82–100 [in Hebrew]. Libel-Hass, E., “Female Visibility in the Public Space of an Israeli ‘Masorti’/Conservative Congregation.” In Role of a Woman in Jewish World, edited by D. A. Maryasis and L. R. Khlebnikova, 206–21. Moscow: Institute of Oriental Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences, 2020. Libel-Hass, E., and A. S. Ferziger. “A Synagogue Center Grows in Tel Aviv: On Glocalization, Consumerism and Religion: Modern Judaism 42, no. 3 (2022): 273–304. https://doi.org/10.1093/mj/ kjac009. Sered, S. “Ritual, Morality, and Gender: The Religious Lives of Oriental Jewish Women in Jerusalem.” In Women in Israel, edited by Y. Azmon and D. N. Izraeli, 225–28. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2009. Wuthnow, R. “The Cultural Turn: Stories, Logic, and the Quest for Identity in American Religion.” In Contemporary American Religion: An Ethnographic Reader, edited by P. Edgell-Becker, 245–65. Walnut Creek, CA: Alta Mira Press, 1997. Notes 1. J. D. Sarna, “The Debate over Mixed Sitting in the American Synagogue,” in The American Synagogue, ed. J. Wertheimer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 366. 2. S. M. Cohen and A. M. Eisen, The Jew Within: Self, Family, and Community in America (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2000), 129–30. From CCAR Journal - Summer 2023: Israel at Seventy-Five. Copyright © 2023 by the Central Conference of American Rabbis. All rights reserved. Not to be distributed, sold or copied without permission. Copy for Einat Libel-Hass. 22 CCAR Journal: The Reform Jewish Quarterly