USCJ Review - Spring 2007
The Fuchsberg Jerusalem Center - A Home For Conservative Jews in Israel
Buildings made of Jerusalem stone look old, even when they’re not.
When they’re made of Jerusalem stone and they’re in Jerusalem, they look almost as if they’re grown from the city’s hills; the city’s harsh light turns their uncompromising surfaces to gold. They look battered but serene.
The United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism’s Shirley and Jacob Fuchsberg Jerusalem Center certainly follows that pattern. The Center, the headquarters in Israel for North American Conservative Jews, is built around a core of older buildings, but most of it is new. When you look at it, though, you see a place that looks as if it had grown where it stood centuries ago, a place that looks as if it has been a bulwark for Conservative Judaism forever.
In truth, though, the Fuchsberg Center as it stands today is just a few years old, the physical manifestation of a two decade-old dream.
In 1972, David Zucker and Morris Speizman bought the first buildings on Agron Street, in the center of the city, that later became the Fuchsberg Center. They knew that the Conservative movement needed a home in Israel and they realized that the location couldn’t be more central or more appealing. The small complex, then logically enough called the Center for Conservative Judaism, included offices, classrooms, a youth hostel, and Congregation Moreshet Israel, one of Israel’s first Masorti synagogues. (Masorti is what the Conservative movement outside North America calls itself.) In 1986 the center expanded, adding a residence hall and more classrooms. It already had begun to establish a symbolic presence for itself.
In the late 1990s, Shirley Fuchsberg, in her own right and representing her late husband, Judge Jacob Fuchsberg, gave to the center so generously that the entire complex was named for them. Shirley Fuchsberg’s dream was to have a center for Conservative Jews in Israel, but her dream was fueled by outrage as well as by love. The love for was Israel and for the Conservative movement, and the outrage was sparked and stoked by Israeli Orthodoxy’s intolerance toward the non- Orthodox.
“My mother and my dad had always had a strong commitment to Conservative Judaism,” said Rosalind Fuchsberg Kaufman of Harrison, New York, one of Shirley and Jacob Fuchsberg’s four children. Her parents had been active in their Conservative synagogue in Brooklyn. When the family moved to Westchester County, her father was instrumental in founding the town’s Conservative synagogue, the Jewish Community Center of Harrison.
Among their commitments was a strong bond to Israel. In that, the Fuchsbergs were solid Conservative Jews. Zionism has always been a central tenet of North American Conservative Judaism; we have never shared Orthodoxy’s theological problems with it, or Reform’s sociological qualms. When most Orthodox Jews and the Reform movement later embraced Zionism, they were falling in line with us.
That’s why it was even more viscerally appalling for Shirley Fuchsberg to hear how Conservative Jews were treated in Israel. Her good friend Mimi Teplitz, whose husband, Rabbi Saul Teplitz, was then rabbi emeritus of Congregations Sons of Israel in Woodmere, New York, reported that when she tried to pray at the Western Wall in an egalitarian Conservative minyan, a group of right-wing Orthodox men, enraged by what they saw as heretical behavior, assaulted them physically. The haredim attacked from above, throwing objects that are reputed to have included bags of excrement.
“Mimi Teplitz was one of those people who were desecrated,” Ms. Kaufman said. “My mother was totally aghast. How could that happen in Israel? The Kotel,” the Western Wall, “is as important to us as Conservative Jews as it is to the Orthodox. Israel is just as important to us as to them. We feel just as strongly about Israel as they do. They just can’t coopt it.”
So, Ms. Kaufman continued, “When my mother was in Israel the next time, she said ‘I’d really like the Conservative movement to gain some visibility.’ She started saying that she’d like to do something that would enhance the position of Conservative Judaism in Israel.”
Mrs. Fuchsberg and Rabbi Jerome Epstein, the executive vice president of United Synagogue, talked about the center’s role in showcasing Conservative Judaism and providing a haven for Conservative Jews, and “that’s how the plan evolved,” her daughter said. They gave the lead gift for the campus, encouraging others to give as well. “My mother felt that’s how we can tell both other Jews and the world that we Conservative Jews are here to stay,” Ms. Kaufman said. “That was the passion behind it.”
“The campus was built to provide an embassy of sorts for Conservative North American Jews in Israel,” Rabbi Epstein said. “We wanted to provide a home that would translate the ideals and values of Israel for the Conservative Jew. There are many Orthodox outreach centers in Israel; any Orthodox Jew who goes there can feel comfortable. We felt there should be a way for Conservative Jews visiting Israel to find the kind of programs that would be right for them. Israel is not the private property of Orthodoxy. When Conservative Jews we train through USY and Solomon Schechter schools and Camp Ramah go to Israel, the only options they used to have were Orthodox. They’d either not go at all, or they’d come back Orthodox. We said we have the opportunity to provide a different approach – and the responsibility to do so – and so we did.”
The Fuchsberg Center now houses the Conservative Yeshiva, where North American students can study for periods as short as half a day or as long as a year. It does not grant degrees but offers Torah lishma – the chance to study for sheer joy, for the pure intellectual, spiritual, and emotional pleasure of it. Fuchsberg also provides a home base for Nativ, the program for new high-school graduates who spend the year between high school and college in Israel; for USY Pilgrimage trips; for Solomon Schechter day school trips to Israel, and for individual and group travelers. It offers classes, gemilut chesed or social action opportunities, and social and cultural programs. It is a place where North American Conservative Jews, Masorti Jews from around the world, and Israelis who either belong to Masorti congregations or are interested in learning more about our world can meet, talk, and become friends.
Visitors can arrange parties or celebrate lifecycle events at Fuchsberg; many choose to have their children become bar or bat mitzvah there. Recently, a family of 11 – parents, their two married children and their spouses, and their five children, took Fuchsberg up on its offer.
“It was unbelievable,” said Dorrie Greenberg of New York City. “We’re Conservative Jews, and we thought that we should be in a Conservative environment.”
Two of her granddaughters, Hillary Winnick and Lynn Greenberg, celebrated becoming bnot mitzvah by reading from the Torah and leading services on a Thursday morning at the Conservative Yeshiva; their grandmother read Torah too.
“Everybody has a bar or bat mitzvah at Masada,” Ms. Greenberg said. “This was different. Both girls said afterward that having a bat mitzvah at the Fuchsberg Center was very meaningful to them. It’s consistent with what we teach them.”
They also raved about Rabbi James Lebeau, the director of the Fuchsberg enter, who officiated “He was marvelous,” Ms. Greenberg said. “So warm! And he involved the whole family, even the youngest child.”
