Rabbi Chaya Rowen Baker

On the morning of rosh hodesh Nissan I joined neshot ha-Kotel at the Western Wall. Someone photographed me there, praying. Catching sight of her in the corner of my eye threw me back fifteen years to another photo of me taken without my knowledge, and subsequently put up in the Masorti synagogue in Kiryat Yovel. In that picture, I was standing alone, close by the Western Wall, dressed in army uniform and seemed to be praying intently. Today I stood at the far end of the women’s section, as far as possible from the wall itself, wrapped in prayer “uniform” – a tallit and colored kipah (I was afraid to lay tefillin there). I was surrounded by many women who, like me, were being castigated and insulted, and I wondered how it happened that I had moved from prayer so fervent and close to those ancient ashlars that it penetrated the photographers lens, to prayer so very different in the back of the plaza by the Western Wall.

I felt as if every sentence in the prayers had been written about this occasion: women seeking to take an active part in the heritage of their forebears; facing insults and threats to do so, in the best of Jewish tradition: “Our Father, … have mercy upon us and give us the wisdom to understand, obey, learn and teach, observe and maintain all the teachings of Your Torah lovingly…”; “Enlighten us through your Torah and cause us to adhere to Your commandments, …that we never be ashamed”; “It shall be for you as a fringe, so that seeing it you remember all the Lord’s commandments and obey them…”; “The Lord is my strength and might”; “The Lord is on my side, I have no fear; what can man do to me?”

Notwithstanding the great meaning I found in my prayers that morning, the innocence of fifteen years ago was sorely lacking. I pondered the loss, the disappearance of the sense of completeness and perfection that lay at the foundation of that innocence. I wondered how that romantic experience measures up with the present world, peppered with doubt, questioning, and criticism. Would I like to return to the former state? Do I long for those days of naiveté, the time when I could stand by the Western Wall and close my eyes to the difficult issues this place brings forth?

Prayer which is entirely positive ecstasy instills confidence. It affords the opportunity to create a perfect world to which we can flee, an ambience non-existent in any other plane. This ability is important and satisfies a spiritual need; but the experience of prayer, indeed religious experience as a whole, must be more than this. Humans are thinking beings, and thinking carries with it the faculties of criticism, skepticism and creativity; all this is a gift from G-d, perhaps the greatest gift with which we have been endowed. When we criticize and wonder, we realize this G-d-given trait, and this in itself can be a spiritually elevating religious experience.

We are on the eve of celebrating our feast of freedom, but freedom has a price; freedom of thought, as well. We cannot exercise this freedom and remain in a comfortable state of innocence. Perhaps we can escape there from time to time, artificially, but life after eating from the Tree of Knowledge can never be as it was before. This is the story of human existence, the essence of the story of Adam and Eve, the inescapable expression of our humanity, of being in the image of G-d. Therefore, I would not give up freedom of thought, the right to search and the joy of discovery that it brings. There I find consolation in my lonely spot, at the rear of the plaza, in a powerful but emotionally complex experience of prayer.

Our obsession with numbers is well-put in a song by HaDag-Nahash. Captivated by the charm of numerical popularity, in the Conservative Movement we lament not sweeping the masses in Israel along with us, and we forget that at almost every stage in history the Jewish people has been a minority, and this status has not adversely affected our faith in the correctness of our way. One could generalize and say that where the masses flow critical faculty decreases. Rabbi Donniel Hartman commented recently about the decline in independent thinking among the Orthodox community, as expressed by the depth of crisis in the wake of the accusations made against Rabbi Mordechai Elon. In his opinion, the warped view of the rabbi as the source of the answer to all and the dispeller of doubt makes possible the mass following of rabbis and is responsible for the depth of the sense of tragedy among Rabbi Elon’s disciples.

Springtime beckons to us to witness the reawakening and renewal of nature. Looking out from my study I see fresh leaves budding on the loquat tree, tender green and full of life. Where the tree was pruned, new branches sprout in greater number than before. It seems that when we cut ourselves back, when we take risks and lay open to fresh air and new influences the layer beneath our cover of innocence, then we too stimulate fresh growth and discover the rewarding experience of freedom.

From the back of the plaza one gets to see a greater part of the Western Wall, and further beyond as well.

Best wishes for a happy and kosher celebration of our freedom!

March, 2010,
(trans. Rachel Rowen)

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Rabbi Chaya Rowen Baker was born to an Orthodox father and a Reform mother. She grew up within the Masorti Movement in Israel, in the Hod Hasharon TALI school and in NOAM. After her army service she held several educational positions in the Movement and was head of MAROM, the Masorti student and young-adult organization. She holds a BA from the Hebrew University in Jewish History and Archaeology and is currently a graduate student in the university's Jewish History Department. Rabbi Chaya has an MA in Jewish studies from the Schechter Institute and rabbinic ordination from the Schechter Rabbinical Seminary.

During her studies Rabbi Chaya interned at Congregation Magen Avraham in Omer and participated in "B'ruach", pastoral training at the oncology ward of Sha'are-Tzedek Medical Center. In her final year of rabbinical school she was the 2007 Tanenbaum Fellow of Congregation Beth-Tzedec in Toronto, the largest synagogue in North America, and she is currently a Fellow of RIKMA, training for congregational leaders. Rabbi Chaya lives in Jerusalem with her husband Etai, and their two daughters Adaya and Keshet.

A Message From the Rabbi

Since when does 2008 minus 1967 equal 40?

On my daily commute from Talpiot to French Hill, I have the dubious pleasure of seeing several of the numerous billboards proudly announcing 60 years of the State of Israel and 40 of the unification of Jerusalem.

Jerusalem has been united for 41 years, not 40! One could argue that for three brief weeks in May, Israel was 60 years old and the united city of Jerusalem 40, yet these billboards still hang proudly in our city, and parades and events are still being held in celebration of this wonderful confluence of dates. This theme is included in many educational programs, government functions and publications; the height of absurdity was the slogan used for the celebrations held on the 41st Jerusalem Day, "marking the end of the 40th year of the unification of Jerusalem." Clearly, the 41st Jerusalem Day marked the end of the 41st year, not the 40th, which ended over a year ago.

Why am I so disturbed by this? Surely we have much greater problems. But it seems to me that behind this small, ostensibly insignificant detail, is a highly problematic way of thinking which, in nay opinion, underlies many of fee ills of our society in general and religious notions in particular. Here facts and reality are ignored, and a superficial idealization presented in their stead. How nice it would be if indeed it were true! Celebration of these two events could be inflated, and attention deflected from our burning issues: an embarrassing crisis in conversion, captive soldiers whom we have abandoned, corrupt elected leaders. The wonderful combination of 60+40=100 could prove to all the cynics that we have been blessed by Providence that saw fit to arrange history so that we could celebrate all these wonderful events together, in a manner attesting to our great success.

The only difficulty is that history would have it otherwise. Does that mean that our successes are less significant? Less worthy of celebrating? Not at alL But herein lies the danger of this propagandistic way of thinking. It suggests that what is important is not what truly happened, but what we would have liked to have happened. Therefore it legitimizes taking anything out of its context, as long as the end is justified. That is what happened when the Hatam Sofer quoted the Mishnah, Oria 3:9, in his famous declaration that anything new is forbidden by the Torah. In the context of his fight against Reform Jewry in the late 1st-early 19th centuries, the Hatam Sofer quoted the Mishnah figuratively in an attempt to convince his audience that the Torah forbids any innovation in Halakhah. He managed to de-legitimize Halakhic innovation in the eyes of millions, convincing them that there was actually such a prohibition in the Torah, while in reality the passage cited does not refer to new rulings, but to the new crop of grain, which is forbidden to be eaten before the omer has been brought to the Temple!

Removing things from their context indicates the propagandist's wish to present issues as solved rather than dealing with them. It robs all of us of the ability to respond to reality and fix what needs to be fixed. Moreover, it ultimately poses a danger to its own cause, for often such an argument has no foundation other than this dubious evidence. If the Hatam Sofer had to base his position on a quote taken out of context, perhaps one should conclude that there is no real substantiation for his position. Similarly, and dangerously, the issue of the 40th and 60th years may indicate that the originators of this propaganda fail to see our real achievements as worthy of celebration and feel the need to fabricate fictional ones. Perhaps worse than that, children in the school system today will remember that the 60th and 40th were celebrated together and we will have taught a whole generation that we really have no interest in facts but only in their tendentious interpretations.

Paying attention to the seemingly marginal, small facts is not a trifling matter, rather an essential issue in an enlightened society. Propaganda and manipulation function on the assumption that the masses will not pay attention to details but will be swept along by the enthusiasm and enchantment of the new, more beautiful, aggrandizing reality presented by the propaganda. Therefore, we must not be captivated by these things. We must not believe that everything new is forbidden by the Torah, or that Jerusalem has been unified for 40 years. Let us celebrate reality as it is, looking it straight in the eye, and if what we discover needs to be worked on and improved, let us do that rather than live in a false Utopia.

Chaya