Jewish Pluralism at the Mainstream
November, 2016
It was on November, as my year came to a close, after a year long of navigating through Jewish communities across the world, that I decided to visit the museum of Jewish peoplehood in Tel Aviv, “Beit Ha-Tfutsot”. I had an urge to see how Israelis perceive what I just had a glimpse to get to know - our beautiful global Jewish world, and that we so rarely are being exposed to in Israel. I really expected nothing much. Since the museum was founded in 1978, I excepted it to have some archaically way of presenting things.
You can’t imagine my excitement when I was wandering around the exhibit of the synagogue halls, and came across a big screen showing different Kabbalat Shabbat services across the globe. And what was I so excited about? The video didn’t show orthodox men pray in a synagogue. It showed men and women celebrate shabbat in “Burning man” in Nevada, they showed different congregations celebrate Shabbat in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, New York, California and Amsterdam. And those celebrations were so full of spirit and joy and looked so uplifting. You may think to yourself now that, well, yes, people celebrate Shabbat everywhere. But it’s something much more than that. In Israel we’re so often taught to believe that there is only one way one can be Jewish. And Secular people so often feel threatened by anything related to Judaism. This exhibit is so Avantgarde in Israel in our present day, and seeing these exhibit made me feel such a comfort that a change is happening. Getting to know different Jewish communities, mainly in Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union in the past year, made me believe that it is so important to allow people to learn that you can be Jewish in many different ways. To show that Judaism is pluralistic and diverse. It almost made me forget that we need the same reminder here in Israel.
There was also a section in the exhibit where you can listen to Piyyutim (liturgical songs), performed by renowned artists, like Barbara Streisand, Lenoard Cohen, Berry Sakharof, Ehud Banai and more. I’m writing this post actually only in January, a week after Meir Banai passed away. Meir Banai’s songs are the most Jewish songs, and at the same time, the most Israeli ones. Meir Banai made these songs part of our life, of people who do not regularly attend synagogue. His song “lecha Eli”, written by Abraham ibn Ezra, is a song known by every Israeli.
The older part of the museum is also worth seeing. Especially the part presenting the course of Jewish culture, under the title of “One Culture Many Facets: The Growth of Pluralism in Modern Jewish Life”, presenting important figures in our new Hebrew culture, like Bialik and Brenner, and their most important creations. The birth of the new Hebrew culture and critical thinking about the foundations of Jewish rabbinic culture are actually not taught in our schools’ curriculum. There are only a few teachers who are familiar with the Enlightenment movement and know how to teach its works. These should be the founding texts of the national education system, and serve as the basis of our Secular identity.
Touring this exhibition, I realised that it’s not for no reason that the museum changed it’s name - from being “the Diaspora museum” to “the Jewish Peoplehood museum”. Such a meaningful change in terminology that I hope will percolate deeper in our society. In the globalized 21st century, the division between Diaspora and Israeli Jews is non-relevant. We shouldn’t emphasise the lines that separate us across lands, we should emphasise what unites us. And now, thankfully, what was once a museum meant to explore the non-Israeli Jews of the Diaspora is now a place to celebrate Jews from all across the globe.
“The centrality of the synagogue lessened with modernity and secularism. More Jews became estranged from the synagogue which was no longer automatically the hub of communal life. Jewish communities established new gathering places.”
