Galilee Diary: Values collide
January 19, 2010 
4 Comments
by Marc Rosenstein
(Originally published in Ten Minutes of Torah and Galilee Diary)
We hold that the State of Israel was not permitted, by law, to allocate State land to the Jewish Agency for the purpose of establishing the communal settlement of Katzir on the basis of discrimination between Jews and non-Jews.
-Israel Supreme Court decision, March 8, 2000
The issue of “admissions committees” in rural communities, which has been simmering for over a decade, came to a boil in recent months and has now sort of boiled over. For decades, kibbutzim and most other gated rural communities had rather draconian admissions procedures. For example, when we came to Shorashim in 1990 there was a preliminary interview, psychological testing, a weekend visit, a weeklong trial residency, a vote for acceptance to a year of probationary membership, and, at the end of the year, a final vote for membership. It was taken for granted that small communities had the right to choose their members, to perpetuate their values. We got in; some other families didn’t. While troubled on one level by this exclusivity, on another level Tami and I believed in it, as it seemed obvious that without it, our little Camelot would be overrun by city-dwellers looking for suburban life, with no interest in preserving and supporting Shorashim’s liberal Jewish life style. Of course, we tended to think keeping out those who might undermine the comfortable homogeneity that had so attracted us to the community meant selecting for people like us in our Jewish and liberal values. The flip side of that selection, which we didn’t really think about, was that non-Jews would certainly not fit the criteria. And since around here, non-Jews are mostly Arabs, we were essentially adopting a policy that was ethnically/religiously exclusive, something that we had railed against whenever we encountered it in the United States, growing up in the 50s and 60s.
This complacent compartmentalization was shaken by the Katzir case ten years ago, when an Arab family sought to build in a Jewish community, was rejected, and turned to the supreme court. This resulted in a decision that communities that were not defined by a specifically religious ideology could not be selective in admitting members. This left an opening for religious communities to preserve their lifestyle by selecting new members who hewed to their particular standard of religious observance. Later, similar test cases were brought by Jewish families excluded for personal, individual reasons, and their right to live where they wanted was likewise upheld by the court.
Over the past two years this ongoing controversy has landed in our backyard, as an Arab family applied to build in a community a few miles from here; their case is currently before the supreme court, and it seems pretty likely that the Katzir precedent will hold in their case. Most of the 30 Jewish communities in our county define themselves as “secular.” Some have synagogues that are active; many don’t have synagogues, or only use them for bar/bat mitzvahs or the high holidays. Most have a communal cultural life that doesn’t have much to do with Jewish observances. Suddenly there has been a flurry of legal activity as these communities rush to amend their bylaws to include some kind of Jewish-Zionist definition which would require new members to agree to a statement of commitment that an Arab couldn’t sign. And concern that these provisions might also ultimately fail in court has given rise to the effort to pass a law in the Knesset that would authorize local communities to be selective in their admissions, and to impose a non-religious but ideological test. This proposal seems likely to pass, despite vigorous efforts by civil rights organizations to stop it. The early 20th century Zionist writer Yosef Haim Brenner said that Jews’ bragging of their morality is like a eunuch bragging that he is not an adulterer. It seems to be much easier to be a strong supporter of minority rights when you are a member of a minority…
Secular? Secular? So what is secular?
This is similar to exclusion of blacks (and other minority groups) from neighborhoods in the US forty years ago. When a black couple (both successful professionals) began the process in 1967 of buying a house next to our home in a NY suburb, some neighbors organized a coordinated boycott, with much anger and rumors. We welcomed the couple; however, they did not buy, as they were only testing the attitudes of the neighborhood (a common practice in those days).
Times have changed! We now live in suburban Houston with neighbors who are of all religions, nationalities and colors. Our home is also in the largest eruf in Houston with three Orthodox synagogues within 1/2 mile. (Our Reform congregation is 2 miles away!) Perhaps Israelis will open their minds and hearts as Americans have begun to do over the past several decades.
The laws of the United States specifically make discrimination by religion, race, and national origin, illegal. By law, there can be no State sanctioned preference of religion or race. That is why the face of America is always in a state of change, evolving with the ever shifting demographics.
Israel was created specifically as a Jewish State. Regardless of race and national origins, the founding fathers of Israel intended for the State of Israel to be Jewish, then, now, and forever. It would seem the means of preserving this identity of Israel as the Jewish homeland does not always sit well with those who hold dear to the belief that discrimination, based on religion, is morally wrong.
If we stop discriminating against non-Jews in Israel, then the face of Israel, like America, will also evolve, except to that of either a Christian or Muslim Arab. The rate of this evolution will depend on immigration numbers and birth rates.
Is it morally wrong for a nation to preserve its constitutionally mandated religious identity, if the sole purpose to the existence of this nation is to provide a sanctuary and homeland to the people of that religion?
If it is agreed that it is morally acceptable to preserve the religious identity of a nation, then are the moral questions only those concerning the means of such preservation?
If it is acceptable, and even constitutional, for a nation to discriminate in order to maintain its religious identity, then it would seem to be acceptable also for the smaller communities that comprise it.
I do not think that the Jewish State identity requires discrimination against those who are not Jewish. It may define national symbols and provide privileges like the law of return, but it should not define all other individual rights and obligations. Neither should “Jewishness” be defined by the degree of religious observance. I understand the tension that exists between the concept of a Jewish State and civil rights, but a will to negotiate those tensions can find ways to allow for both to co-exist. Even in the United States, individual rights are in tension with civic and constitutional requirements.