Finding BINA, Finding Hope

Israel can drive you nuts, like a sibling or lover who knows just how to push your buttons. That’s what Israel does to me, pushing my buttons and making me crazy, challenging without quite threatening the deep love that I have felt, that I always feel.  Israel is where I lived for many years as a young man. At home in Seattle, I follow events in the Middle East closely, in part because I teach about them in my professional role -- I teach Social Studies at an independent college prep school -- but more so because of their impact on the my friends and family in Israel.  And now I’m back.  As part my yearlong sabbatical from teaching, I’m in Israel for six months.  My wife and I are living near Machane Yehuda in Jerusalem, visiting friends and relatives, taking great walks, hiking up wadis, eating well… not a bad life, really.  Israel is part of me, and it makes me scream.  Why the frustration?  And how does this relate to BINA?

As I said, Israel knows how to push my buttons.  One of my high-sensitivity buttons is wired to the power exercised by the Orthodox and Ultra-Orthodox in the lives of all Israelis, including the secular majority.  It’s as if the Orthodox “own” Judaism around here.  Who shall marry, and who shall divorce? Who is a Jew, and who is not?  Who shall be buried, and where?  The Orthodox establishment makes the calls.  This makes me crazy, but it doesn’t make me passive.  When envisioning this sabbatical period in Israel, one of my goals was to bring my energies to an organization that works to change this status quo and its implications for Israeli society and for Judaism.  I didn’t know it at the time, but I wanted to join BINA.  BINA wants Judaism to belong to all Jews, including Jews like me.  The rest is commentary!

I’m a member of a Conservative shul in my (Northwest) corner of America.  My kids went to day school.  They have decent Hebrew and strong synagogue skills, and they even worked at Jewish summer camps and as bar/bat mitzvah tutors during their high school and college years.  My wife is a well-respected Jewish educator in Seattle.  We’re well connected to the Jewish world back home, and yet here, in Israel, it is as if we don’t exist “Jewishly”.  We could find a synagogue community for ourselves in Jerusalem, either Conservative/Masorati or Reform/Progressive.  But that isn’t the issue.  The real issue is the ownership of our history and culture, traditions and texts.  Broadening the scope of such ownership here in Israel is at the heart of BINA’s efforts, reclaiming Judaism for the rest of us.  BINA is helping strengthen the Jewish part of the Jewish state.

When Israelis come to Seattle and find our open, welcoming little shul and our day school, with its high-level, egalitarianeducation grounded in Jewish values, they can hardly believe it.  They’re at a loss to make sense of this hospitable, accessible Judaism.  It’s so distant from what’s familiar, from home.  BINA offers similar Jewish experiences for Israelis right here.  BINA provides opportunities for Israelis to reclaim and repossess their divine inheritance — their Judaism. 

As a new friend of BINA, it has been my pleasure and honor to meet with BINA’s leaders and to contribute articles to BINA’s Hanukkah 5772/2011 Newsletter.  It has been a joy to find BINA as inviting and open “in person” as its online materials indicate.  I am confident that my connection with BINA will continue long after my sabbatical ends.  My involvement with BINA is starting to change how my Israeli buttons are wired, by helping me to keep my calm in this crazy place that I love.  BINA is giving me hope for the future.  Thank you, BINA!

David Bennett, December 2011, Jerusalem/Seattle