News from the 2007 Biennial Convention

Sunday, December 2

Today Rabah

No matter what the style of davening at the convention, it has been done with great kavanah. We would like to thank the people who led the services and read Torah and haftarah, infusing them with their knowledge, enthusiasm, ruach, and love. Thank you to Jonathan Berkun, Bruce Creditor, Susie Drazen, Ray Goldstein, Richard Helfand, Jerry Jacobs, Roz Judd, Eytan Kenter, Bernard King-Smith, Gabe Kravitz, Frank Kreutzer, Lou Meltzer, Ron Minor, Marc Neiwirth, Dianne Newman, Leora Perkins, Danny Pressman, David Propis, David Rosen, Harvey Rosen, Robert Salamon, Marjorie Saulson, Charlie Savenour, David Schwartz, Saul Shapiro, Michael Singer, Naomi Yadin-Mednik.

Friday

On Friday, after shacharit and workshop session, we got together to think about this convention’s main focus, the state of Israel at 60.

Rabbi Yafet Alemu, the first Ethiopian-Israeli to be ordained a Conservative rabbi, told the harrowing, inspirational, extraordinary story of his escape from Ethiopia, his trek across Sudan, his arrival in Israel, and his determination to help Ethiopian Jews fit into Israeli society. “I am living the Torah, I am dreaming the Torah, I am thinking the Torah,” he told us. And he has a dream; he dreams that someday soon, with his help and with our help, his people can rise out of the poverty in which many of them find themselves mired in Israel and make themselves an integral part of their homeland, as he has done.

Ethiopian Israelis are suffering, Rabbi Alemu believes, because their family structure has broken down and left family members unable to help themselves or each other effectively. Working with our Israel Commission, he has set up the Family Education Initiative, a program that works with families to strengthen their bonds with each other as they integrate into Israel. He is asking our congregations to partner with him. For $1,000, a congregation can make a difference in the life of an Ethiopian-Israeli family. Please join him in this holy work.

Next, our own Rabbi James Lebeau, director of the Fuchsberg Jerusalem Center, talked about some of the wonderful programs the center offers to North American Jews; it is now also reaching out to Masorti Jews as we work to strengthen Conservative/Masorti Judaism in Israel and around the world. The Fuchsberg Center is North Americans’ home in Israel, a place for learning and for celebrating, and we urge all of you to pay it a visit when you next are in Israel.

Salai Meridor, Israel’s ambassador to the United States, came to talk to us, fresh from the talks in Annapolis. “When the ambassador comes to town, people expect to hear only about security, and I will talk to you about it, but you should know that Israel is not only about security,” he said. “We are privileged to be the third generation building the new Jewish nation, the third generation to deal with major challenges not only from the outside but also in how we shape ourselves from the inside.

“We need to ensure the strength of our society by making sure that we both maintain excellence and also not allow social gaps to grow, first because it’s not Jewish and second because a society that asks each of its boys and girls to go into the army, to give their time and possibly their lives, cannot allow such a gap. We must invest in the young generation – it’s the only asset we have. We haven’t found any oil yet, but what we do have is our young people.” The way to do that, he continued, is to assure Israel’s continued economic growth.

Israelis and North Americans must continue to work together to make sure our children grow up to be proud Jews, connected to their heritage and to the state of Israel.

He chose to come to our convention, Ambassador Meridor said, because Rabbi Epstein asked him to, and because the connection he feels to the Conservative movement is real. Ten years ago, he said, his youngest daughter told him that she wanted to have a real bat mitzvah, like her brothers had, not just a party, like her older sisters’ celebrations. At first he was taken aback, but “after a minute I thought ‘Wow! I should be proud!’” he said. He investigated his options, first finding “a special place where they have a minyan for the ladies.” “No!” said his daughter. Next, he thought of having a ceremony at home. “No!” said his daughter. “‘I want it in a synagogue.’ So we ended up proudly in a Conservative synagogue in Jerusalem. Not only did it allow my daughter to become bat mitzvah and read the Torah portion and the haftarah, but my mother, who was 75, had an aliyah to the Torah for the first time. So I personally thank you.”

Then Ambassador Meridor discussed Annapolis, prefacing it with a talk about the existential threat posed by Iran; it is the most serious threat Israel has faced at least since the Six-Day War and the world has faced since World War II. Not only do we have to worry about Iran developing nuclear weapons, but we also have to worry about freelance terrorists acquiring them. “We are on the verge of having those genies get out of the bottle,” he said. “If we allow it, we are leaving our children a world that is a different place. If we don’t act today, literally today, then their tomorrow will be not a day but a nightmare.”

Annapolis was a good step, Ambassador Meridor said; he knows that the Palestinian government is weak but it is free of terrorists. He was encouraged by the presence of the representatives of other Arab nations; they might not have shaken the Israelis’ hands but they did show up. He knows that the record of such talks is not promising but the hope that someday something will come out of them is a hope worth pursuing, and after all, “Peace is a deep Jewish value.”

Friday Night

Although we have been presented with a variety of options for almost each service during the convention, on Friday night we met in one room for one service; that night unity trumped diversity. In his d’var Torah, our executive vice president, Rabbi Jerome Epstein, presented us with a challenge. We constantly face the tension between concentrating our efforts on our core members or reaching out to the people on our fringes; it is now time, Rabbi Epstein said, for us to concentrate on our core. We teach our children well, we infuse them with Jewish values, we fire them up with music and love, we send them to Israel, and then when they come back we have nothing to give them. We must provide a Judaism that will nourish our best and our brightest. We must reach out actively, and it must be done not only with warmth but with intimacy. We must practice a retail Judaism; synagogue leaders should consider making home visits to congregants, showing that they care for others not only in the abstract aggregate but individually and for real.

After dinner a panel of four lifelong Conservative Jews – Eric Fingerhut, Marc Gary, and Shira Kaplan – talked about what the movement has given them and what it can give others. Each had a different story but the three shared a clear theme – connection to the movement comes not only through theology and ideology but through personal connections. Each of them is tied tightly to the movement because each is bound to it by friendship and love. Their lives are a testament to the truth of Rabbi Epstein’s d’var Torah, with its charge that each of us reach out to others, one person at a time, offering to share the Jewish life that we live. That’s the way each of us can change lives.

Saturday

Shabbat was a day of choice; it offered many of us less rest than usual – so much to do! So little time to nap! There were six services from which to choose; egalitarian or not, with musical instruments or not. One of the options for the Torah reading and Musaf service was Storahtelling, an innovative program that uses a millennium-old technique of interpretation to fuse the Torah’s timeless text with a translation that is both of the Torah’s time and ours.

Services were followed by workshops and talks, more services, havdallah, an evening in the souk, and a concert by Visions, three young women who grew up in the Conservative movement.

The silent auction at the end of the evening raised more than $3,400. The money will go for scholarships at Nativ and the Conservative Yeshiva at the Fuchsberg Jerusalem Center.