A Feeling of "Less Jewish"

This past weekend I spent Shabbat in Tel Aviv, and it wasn't your typical Tel Aviv weekend. It was cold and rainy, the beaches were empty, and asides for a few hours on Shabbat afternoon, most of the time was spent indoors, a very different Tel Aviv then normal.

However, one thing that I did was go to Synagogue on Shabbat morning. Myself and two friends went early on Saturday to a local Shul, and was there for the Torah Service, Musaf, and Kiddush. It was definitely very nice. I realized however that this was the first time in a while, about three months to be exact, that I even stepped into a Shul. The last time was September 17th, and this time was December 18th. It doesn't mean I haven't been doing "Jewish" things all this time. I've done Kabbalat Shabbat a few times with some friends in my Garin, did Havdallah twice, and say the Shabbat prayers with my host family on Friday night. All along I have also been learning Hebrew, speaking Hebrew, living in a Jewish state, and preparing to enlist into the worlds only Jewish army. All of which are still Jewish, right? However, this leads to a bigger idea of what Jewish life is here, and the division between a religious and a secular life.

Jewish life in Israel is not something I am used to, and something that I am honestly not the most comfortable with.

My prior Jewish life consisted of Synagogue on a Saturday morning, and then going to the mall or a sports game that afternoon; stumbling upon a restaurant in the middle of i-95, and ordering the eggs and pancakes, but not the bacon or ham; saying Shacharit (morning prayer) at my Jewish Day School every morning, but usually not saying Mincha or Maariv; sometimes doing Havdalah, and sometimes not; saying the Shabbat blessings on Friday night, and then watching TV after the meal. I think you get the point.

In New York I lived this in-between life where I loved Judaism and doing "religious" things, in whatever way that may mean, but I also didn't allow religion to take over everything I did, and my Judaism was practiced on a "what-came-to-me" basis. Whether I was in the mood to go to Synagogue or do something Jewish, or whether that's what my family was doing that day, would determine the Jewish things I did. A life of living Jewishly not based on what one needs to do, but rather what one wants to do.

Jewish life doesn't work like that in Israel, and it's a little bothersome mainly because I am not used to it, and I don't feel like I fully belong.

Let's start with the first decision I had to make when signing up for Garin Tzabar about a year ago. I had the choice to go into a regular Garin, or to choose the Religious Garin. You might be wondering, if you grew up going to Synogogue on Shabbat and saying the prayers on Friday night, then why didn't you sign up for the religious Garin? To me there's a very simple answer, it's because it was all or nothing. The religious Garin isn't a place where you can keep Shabbat or you can pray three times a day, but rather a place where you have to.

If I signed up for the religious Garin, I would have to pray three times a day, including waking up even earlier than the normal schedule to do Shacharit in the morning. I would have to keep Kosher in the common area to a degree that went beyond what I did growing up. My level of Kosher that I was used to would simply not be enough. Lastly, I would have to keep Shabbat, or at least in public areas, which is not something that I would have wanted to do. There is obviously nothing wrong with any of this, it's just not what I am used to at all, and not what I wanted to do.

So, I chose the regular Garin, and with that I can make my religious experience what I want to, and not what I was told I had to do. But what does that mean?

Since I am not in the religious Garin, that means that the kitchen isn't kosher, because why would it be, we do things using technology on Shabbat, there isn't a place to go to Shul on the Kibbutz, and most people on the Kibbutz do not really know how to live any sort of religious life, or the prayers at all. Basically, what you get for choosing to be in a regular Garin, and not the religious Garin, is basically the complete opposite experience. Granted, I was given a traditional host family, one of only a few on the Kibbutz, that doesn't do much, but they say the Shabbat blessings on Friday night, and that in itself has been nice. However, for the most part, being in a non-religious Garin has taken close to all parts of Judaism or religion out of this experience.

*Shabbat dinner with my host family and my real family two months ago

This idea, while only represented in this one small example, leads to a bigger concept in Israeli society. For the most part, you are either religious or secular, and there isn't much in between. There is the Ultra-Orthodox sector, but they live in their own world completely detached from reality and not taking any role in Israeli society, or a very minimum one at best. Then you have the rest of the religious population, called the Dati Leumi (national religious) community, and they can best be compared to the Modern Orthodox community in the United States. This is a community that follows Judaism to a tea, adheres to all Jewish Law, and lives a full religious life while still living in a modern world and contributing to society. In between them and the rest of the Jewish population in Israel, you have the secular community, who in many ways wants nothing to do with religion. This is a community, probably the largest in Israeli society, that does not eat kosher, nor do they try to, seldom goes to Synagogue, and often times are seen doing things so blatantly against Judaism, such as eating pork, just for the hell of it.

As far as Judaism goes in Israel, the situation is nothing less than messy. The Rabbinate is the the source of Jewish authority in Israel, and this means that with all matters of religion, they call the shots. To be religious therefore means to live Judaism based on the way the rabbinate sees Judaism. To have a Jewish wedding, or most other Jewish events, it has to be approved and accepted by the Rabbinate.

But how is this different than America? In the United States, there isn't one Jewish authority because Judaism doesn't live in the public sector. Rather, Judaism is privatized, and Jewish authority basically comes from whoever one decides to listen to. For example, I grew up in the Conservative Movement, and therefore my Jewish authority came from the top Rabbis and experts within the movement, or the Committee on Jewish Laws and Standards (you can ask my brother all about of this). The Conservative movement made rulings about Judaism, such as allowing female Rabbis and praying in egalitarian spaces, that the Rabbinate would never approve of. I therefore lived my Jewish life based on the authority of the Conservative Movement, and their more liberal and modern approach to Judaism, or more specifically based on what my local Rabbis taught me about Judaism.

This all essentially means that the Jewish life I lived, a life holding onto Jewish law and tradition while still adapting to modern times, is not a life or a significant community that exists in Israel. Since Jewish life is all or nothing, either following all of Jewish law or none of it, society, on the large scale, pushes you to one side or the other.

Everything that I said above, and all the differences between religious life in America vs Israel, was just a long and analyzed way to describe my current predicament here. I made the conscious choice to live in a secular community rather than a religious one. It was an all or nothing choice, and I felt as if a secular community would give me the opportunity to be "more religious" when I wanted to, rather than being forced to do it all the time.

However this decision comes with the reality that I have lived. Not having gone to Synagogue in three months, singing less Jewish songs, and learning a lot less about the weekly Torah portion or the bible as a whole, if I even have at all. I think it's pretty ironic that in many ways I am living less of a Jewish life while living in the Jewish state, compared to my life outside of the Jewish state. But then I think of the fact that I am living on Jewish land, speaking the Hebrew language, and preparing to enter a Jewish army. I'm just living a different Jewish life, certainly ironic in many ways, but I guess you can say at the end of the day that it's just different.