What Happens When Modern Orthodoxy Moves to Israel?

Geoffrey Stern [00:01:11]:
Welcome to Madlik. My name is Geoffrey Stern, and at Madlik, we light a spark or shed some light on a Jewish text or tradition. Along with Rabbi Adam Mintz, we host Madlik Disruptive Torah on your favorite podcast platform. And now on YouTube and Substack, we also publish a source sheet on Sefaria, and a link is included in the show Notes. This week, we read Parashat Vayishlach, and we’re joined by Professor Adam Ferziger. Professor Ferziger argues that Anglo Modern Orthodoxy hasn’t just immigrated to Israel. It has reshaped Israeli Judaism from within. So we’ll ask, how is Modern Orthodoxy influencing Israeli religious life, from education and community to feminism and LGBTQ inclusion? And if the next generation of Israeli leaders is likely to affect a population that is increasingly traditional, shouldn’t we all be paying attention? Adam Ferziger holds the Samson Raphael Hirsch Chair in the Israel and Golda Koschitzky Department of Jewish History and Contemporary Jewry at Bar Ilan University. Welcome, Rabbi Adam and Professor Adam. I’m surrounded by Adams today.

Adam Ferziger [00:02:22]:
Thank you very much. Great to be here.

Geoffrey Stern [00:02:25]:
It really is exciting to have you. And I must say that the first time I invited you was for Parashat Lech Le’Cha, where we did something on Aliyah. We did it with your cohort at Bar Ilan. Noah Efron. And he actually said, what did American Jewry bring to Israel? He said, environmentalism, and not-for-profits. But you are focused on the religious sphere, and I would love. Adam. Professor Adam, I’ll call you, if you could tell us maybe your personal story, how you arrived to Israel, and maybe the changes that you saw that maybe triggered the writing of this book.

Adam Ferziger [00:03:05]:
Okay, thank you. So my wife, Dr. Naomi Ferziger and I, she wasn’t a doctor yet there either. We arrived in Israel in 1987. We had actually both spent time on gap year programs. I’d been spent two years in a Yeshiva in BMT in Yeshiva Hartzion here, and then went back to college in America. And we were studying, we were living in Jerusalem. And then after two years we moved to Kfar Saba, which is a very Israeli town in the center of the country, adjacent to Ranana. Many people from the United States know Ranana better and.

Adam Ferziger [00:03:41]:
We spent 33 years there. We brought up our children there. I was a communal rabbi for a good number of years. And even after I stopped being a rabbi in a more official capacity, I continued to be involved in Jewish life and religious life there, primarily offering services to non-observant Jews in that area. And in the meantime I developed an academic career and did my PhD. I had the privilege to write my MA with a very well known Jewish historian by the name of Jacob Katz from the Hebrew University through YU, but Katz was my advisor and then I worked with Professor Gershon Bacon at Bar Ilan and I was privileged to eventually become part of the tenured faculty and become a professor. So that’s my very quick professional trajectory. And in terms of what I’m looking at here, it’s a big change when I came to Israel. I’ll give an example from politics, even though my book is really not focused on politics. In 1988 there was an election and there was a party called Meimad, which was supposed to be a moderate, traditionalist, religious oriented party that was running as.

Adam Ferziger [00:05:04]:
An alternative to the more right wing.

Adam Ferziger [00:05:07]:
More settler-oriented, more focused on stringency in their interpretation of Jewish law. Religious Zionist party that had been dominant for many years and had increasingly taken on these positions. And I spoke to lots of people and it seemed clear that Meimad was.

Adam Ferziger [00:05:28]:
going to get like 5, 7, 10 seats and it got none, zero.

Adam Ferziger [00:05:35]:
And I realized after thinking about it.

Adam Ferziger [00:05:37]:
That it wasn’t that everyone was voting.

Adam Ferziger [00:05:40]:
Meimad, but I knew everyone who voted.

Adam Ferziger [00:05:43]:
Meimad because it was such a small little cadre of Anglo immigrants.

Adam Ferziger [00:05:51]:
And for many years I could give many anecdotal examples.

Adam Ferziger [00:05:56]:
The sense was that the Modern Orthodoxy.

Adam Ferziger [00:05:59]:
Or types of perspectives that I’d grown up with in the United States and internalized from different places were really on the periphery, even deviant in a certain way.

Adam Ferziger [00:06:10]:
And we can get into that.

Adam Ferziger [00:06:11]:
And that changed in the 2000s, and.

Adam Ferziger [00:06:14]:
That’S really the starting point.

Adam Ferziger [00:06:16]:
For my book, why did that change? How did that change?

Adam Ferziger [00:06:21]:
And we can talk more about that. So that’s the starting point. Yeah.

Geoffrey Stern [00:06:25]:
So you saw that little bubble of.

Geoffrey Stern [00:06:31]:
Modern Orthodoxy, what you in the book call moderate Orthodoxy, grow from a bubble to something that you argue in your book. And I think for someone like me that reads the paper all the time about those settlers and those hilltop youths and those nationalist Zionists with the focus on nationalism and all that, very encouraging in terms of how deep it is. But I don’t think it’s a story that we all know. I think if you were to ask most Americans what forms of Judaism have the potential and are slowly having impact or failing to make impact, they would talk about Conservative/Masoreti Judaism, they would talk about Reform/Progressive Judaism, maybe even Havurah Judaism. But what your book kind of really highlighted for me, that I hadn’t really realized that for whatever reasons, most of those foreign imports remain foreign imports. And you have a wonderful chapter on comparing Reform and conservative to McDonald’s and Starbucks. But the focus of your book is the radical difference between Modern Orthodoxy as practice in the US and what it encounters encountered, and then what it is slowly gaining traction in Israel. Why don’t you, for our readers, for those of us who are not that I would say, knowledgeable in the nuances of these differences, why don’t you paint a picture? Of haredim we all know they pretty distinctive with their long coats and payes, but why don’t you draw a map a little bit within the Kipa Seruga, the knitted (Kippa) Yarmulke.

Geoffrey Stern [00:08:18]:
community and what it is you’re focused on in particular?

Adam Mintz [00:08:22]:
And just what can you say? One thing to add, Adam, and that is why don’t you give us a little background about modern Orthodoxy in America so that people could understand that distinction?

Geoffrey Stern [00:08:32]:
Okay.

Adam Mintz [00:08:33]:
It’s great.

Adam Ferziger [00:08:33]:
Yeah. Sometimes when I get interviewed, they want really short, quick answers. And I’m really happy that you guys are digging in deep. It’s a lot more as a professor, sort of my comfort zone. But you could stop me at any.

Adam Ferziger [00:08:44]:
Point if you feel like I’m, you know, I tell my students the same thing. So that’s, that’s the best way to, to move forward.

Adam Ferziger [00:08:50]:
But I’ll just say, Geoffrey, I did write a book about haredim in America, and actually it has a little bit of a different twist there.

Adam Ferziger [00:08:58]:
It’s called Beyond Sectarianism and won a.

Adam Ferziger [00:09:00]:
National Jewish Book Award. So there’s also work to talk about there.

Adam Ferziger [00:09:04]:
Maybe another time.

Adam Ferziger [00:09:05]:
But just to give a backdrop So I always start with a point, and.

Adam Ferziger [00:09:09]:
I’m starting actually with Adam’s question, because it’s the backdrop is that when Jews.

Adam Ferziger [00:09:14]:
Became integrated more into society, the question was those people who everyone had a.

Adam Ferziger [00:09:19]:
Choice, what do you do? Some people made the choice of becoming acculturated, some people made the choice of becoming, developing new versions.

Adam Ferziger [00:09:28]:
Reform, Conservative, Reconstructionists, all sorts of approaches to how to integrate the new world.

Adam Ferziger [00:09:34]:
In which Jews were becoming or being.

Adam Ferziger [00:09:38]:
welcomed to some degree with their religious values and identity.

Adam Ferziger [00:09:43]:
Zionism is one response to that as well.

Adam Ferziger [00:09:46]:
But there was a group which I.

Adam Ferziger [00:09:48]:
also believe, following my teacher Jacob Katz, I had a choice.

Adam Ferziger [00:09:52]:
And they became known as the Orthodox. The people who continued to see the Jewish law as the basis for their religious values and behaviors, but did not. But okay, that’s the point of departure for the Orthodox. And then the Orthodox split. Those people who you call haredim, who sort of tried to insulate themselves because they saw modernity principally as a threat, as a danger, and only engaged to the degree they needed to financially, politically.

Adam Ferziger [00:10:23]:
or from a survivalist perspectives.

Adam Ferziger [00:10:25]:
And those starting with a bunch of.

Adam Ferziger [00:10:28]:
People, certainly Samson Raphael Hirsch, the rabbi, Frankfurt am Main, was a critical person.

Adam Ferziger [00:10:32]:
In this process who actually said that modernity offers opportunities and actually Judaism can flourish in ways it never could when it was more ghettoized or limited, etc.

Adam Ferziger [00:10:43]:
because of the lack of emancipation, etc..

Adam Ferziger [00:10:46]:
So the modern Orthodoxy that developed in America, which had institutions that grew in.

Adam Ferziger [00:10:53]:
The early 20th century, like yeshiva University, like the Hebrew Day School movement, like the more modern Orthodox types of congregations affiliated.

Adam Ferziger [00:11:01]:
With OU, Young Israel, to a certain.

Adam Ferziger [00:11:03]:
Degree, the Orthodox Union, the Rabbinical Council.

Adam Ferziger [00:11:07]:
Of America, were different shades of that idea that we need to live and we can actually, if we do this right, Judaism can flourish. Many of them were also very pro Zionist. Over time they had a titular figure in Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik, who became the leading rabbinical figure in Yeshua University himself.

Adam Ferziger [00:11:27]:
With a PhD from German University.

Adam Ferziger [00:11:30]:
And.

Adam Ferziger [00:11:32]:
This is the world in which I grew up in.

Adam Ferziger [00:11:35]:
I grew up in a place called Riverdale, New York. I went to a synagogue where the rabbi in the 60s and early 70s was Rabbi Dr. Yitz Greenberg, and went to a school called Ramaz, founded by the Lookstein family.

Adam Ferziger [00:11:49]:
And that world was a world in which we weren’t taught about conflict. We talked about balancing or about navigating and about enjoying and drawing from the benefits of literature, of intellectual pursuits, of academia, of science, etc as part of our broader sort of synthetic Jewish identity. Now I want to be very clear, religious Zionism is a derivative of that as well.

Adam Ferziger [00:12:21]:
Absolutely.

Adam Ferziger [00:12:22]:
The idea of Torah+ the idea of not just Torah is certainly implicit in the idea that Zionism can be integrated with religious commitment.

Adam Ferziger [00:12:34]:
Zionism was founded by people who are.

Adam Ferziger [00:12:36]:
Not oriented towards religion. Its main thinkers in the early period were people who saw Zionism as an alternative to religion. So there’s a synthetic foundation for religious Zionism in Israel, certainly. However, initially there were quite a few people who had some overlays, people related to the religious kibbutz movement, some people who started Bar Ilan University and other areas who actually had a lot more similarities to Modern Orthodox.

Adam Ferziger [00:13:06]:
Actually, over time, particularly after the Six Day

Adam Ferziger [00:13:09]:
War, the strand of religious Zionism that became much more dominant, and it was clearly dominant when I arrived in Israel was that which was affiliated with the Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook camp, known as the Merkaz HaRav group, who were certainly very positive about the State of Israel and about a certain degree of social integration with secular Jews. However, they were much more redemption oriented. They saw the State of Israel as a fulfillment of a messianic dream or as a stage in that messianic process. They saw the Six Day War as a triumph in that magical process, so to speak. And together with that, over time they began to also adopt more stringent approaches to Jewish law and personal practice. And so much so that some people refer to aspects of that camp today as Hardal. Now, Hardal in Hebrew means mustard, but.

Adam Ferziger [00:14:19]:
In the colloquial language, Hardal means.

Adam Ferziger [00:14:24]:
National Haredi. So they’re Zionist, but in terms of their personal practice, they’re more like Haredim, not into movies and books, not into academics very much, except for practical things. Much more oriented towards the secular is what goes to serving in the army, to the function of the state and everything else when it comes to culture and values, stems primarily or from one’s more narrowly religious world. And as I said, when I arrived in Israel, that was on the rise. And the people who were considered the spokespeople, the.

Adam Ferziger [00:15:09]:
representatives in that, in the Parliament, the Israeli Parliament, the people who were the inspirational figures primarily were those related to that camp. And I studied in institutions where I was exposed to those people. And they were wonderful people. And they are wonderful people. And I don’t write for the pejorative, but as a historian, I experienced and then asked the question of something changed. Something changed. I’ll just give you one little anecdote that seems very kind of minor, but it was cute. I remember when my daughter, who’s now 25, was in the Bnai Akiva youth movement, which is the main religious Zionist youth movement. And they had a camp. And it’s funny, actually, coming from America. In America, you go to camp for seven weeks or four weeks. In Israel, you go to camp for a week. That’s the longest amount of time. And they still have visiting day, which took us about four kids to realize. And so by my daughters, I had four boys and two girls. By my daughters, I said, come on, you gotta come. You gotta bring us food, whatever. So we show up in this camp, and by that point, the Hardal approach is clear. So much so that the girls, no matter what they did at home, they could only come to camp wearing skirts.

Adam Ferziger [00:16:23]:
They had to wear skirts the whole time.

Adam Ferziger [00:16:25]:
It was a thing. You had to wear a skirt. So I’m sitting on some mound with my daughter and my wife, and we’re eating some sushi, actually, and I see these girls walking by in jeans, and I say to my daughter, hey, that’s interesting. My wife would say, Adam, you’re not doing research right now. You’re visiting your daughter. But what can I do? I asked her a question, and she said, oh, they’re from the religious kibbutz movement. They have a grandfather clause because in the 1950s, they wore pants that they’re allowed to. But they’re, like, peripheral.

Adam Ferziger [00:17:00]:
They’re not part of the mainstream.

Adam Ferziger [00:17:04]:
And I can keep going. Of course, the focus of my book is on the change, on the fact that today the religious Zionist community is much more diverse. And there are. I want to be clear, the Merkaz HaRav is still the majority. I don’t want to make it sound like there’s been a reversal, but there has been a diversification. The world of religious Zionism is broader, is more assorted, has many more voices, and those voices are legitimate voices that come across in the press, come across in synagogue life, come across in public life, and more and more, these are people who are academically trained rabbis, who are academically trained women who are very, very strong in their religious backgrounds and parochial backgrounds, together with new perspectives, who have authority, who have impact, people who are involved in more critical study, people.

Adam Ferziger [00:18:08]:
Who are very appreciative of the broader Israeli culture that’s developed in many areas that go beyond religion. And these are people who are central voices with institutions that attract thousands of.

Adam Ferziger [00:18:24]:
students year in, year out.

Adam Ferziger [00:18:26]:
And we still haven’t come to the punchline of courses. What happened and how did this develop? Which is my big question. I’m happy to answer it. Do you want to interject in between, or should I just answer the question right away?

Geoffrey Stern [00:18:41]:
What I’d like to interject is, for the most part, I think, really your story is the story of students meaning to say that we have Rav Kook and we have Rav Saloveitchik. Growing up, I was taught that Rav Kook, he was the one who saw a car driving by on Shabbat, and he would say, mazel tov. They must be be going to deliver another Jewish baby into the State of Israel. He was the one who said that our chayalim soldiers and Halutzim, pioneers who don’t keep a single commandment, are the holiest nefashot, the holiest souls. But in a sense, what he was doing was not so much embracing the secular world as he was patronizing it to be very straightforward. They were Klei kodesh. They were holy tools. And I think the way that in (slang) English, we use the word “tools” fits the job. The State of Israel became for then a tool to achieve the messianic and the spiritual goals. And I have to say, if I was stuck in a room and I had to read the writings of Rav Soloveitchik or Rav Kook, I would definitely pick Rav Kook. He’s lyrical, he’s poetic, he’s idealistic. But then there is Rav Soloveitchik. And when he talked about embracing secularism, he meant getting a degree which he had and which he flouted. And his students are really. That you trace in this book, showcase the power of embracing, whether it’s the state, whether it’s science, whether it’s medicine, whether it’s diplomacy, academia, knowledge, and working with that Torah Im Derech. And I think that is the power of this book. And I think for me, as someone who feels maybe that religious Zionism has been a little hijacked and the press focuses on those who are followers of Rav Kook. What your book does is it really highlights this growing, you know, we talk about segments, and you said, rightly, don’t misunderstand me, this is not the largest segment, but I think in terms of growth, it’s one that you have identified and that we should all be focusing on. So now go ahead and tell us why.

Adam Ferziger [00:21:02]:
First of all, Geoffrey, I’m so glad that you said students, because in the end of the day, I am a.

Adam Ferziger [00:21:09]:
Big believer in education. And maybe because I’m a believer in.

Adam Ferziger [00:21:12]:
Education, it made me gravitate towards noticing.

Adam Ferziger [00:21:17]:
Some things that maybe other people hadn’t.

Adam Ferziger [00:21:19]:
Noticed, and I’m very proud of that because I think that is a big.

Adam Ferziger [00:21:23]:
Part of the story.

Adam Ferziger [00:21:25]:
Just to echo what you said and Rav Kook, there’s a great book that Marc Shapiro just put out in English.

Adam Ferziger [00:21:32]:
About Rav Kook that’s worth reading, that that offers a very interesting reading of him.

Adam Ferziger [00:21:37]:
But Rav Kook’s son, Tzvi Yehuda, who was the central figure in post 67.

Adam Ferziger [00:21:45]:
Religious Zionism, took a lot of what.

Adam Ferziger [00:21:48]:
Rav Kook had said that you described and maybe made it a little bit.

Adam Ferziger [00:21:52]:
More parochial in certain ways and a little bit more redemptive in ways that his students ran with it in one way.

Adam Ferziger [00:21:59]:
But I will say that there’s a famous quote that really echoes what you were saying before that’s written. Amos Oz was the late great Israeli.

Adam Ferziger [00:22:08]:
Author in his book Po V’Sham b’Eretz Yisrael, in his.

Adam Ferziger [00:22:11]:
Book where he describes walking around Israel in 1982 and all these different places that he visited. So he has one point where he talks about Rav Kook and he talks about how Rav Kook adopted the framing of what’s called Tinok shenishba (a child who was kidnbapped), that secular Jews should be embraced because even though they do lots of sins, they really are just ignorant. They don’t know what they’re doing, and therefore they’re really good people in their souls. They’re Pintala Yids, and we should give them sort of.

Adam Ferziger [00:22:42]:
Let them get a

Adam Ferziger [00:22:44]:
pass because they’re a Tinok Shenishba, they’re an infant taken captive, which is a Talmudic and Maimonidian formulation.

Adam Ferziger [00:22:53]:
So Amos Oz responds. He says, call me a Rasha, call me a wicked person, call me apikores, call me a heretic, but just don’t.

Adam Ferziger [00:23:06]:
Patronize me and call me a baby.

Adam Ferziger [00:23:08]:
I know exactly what I’m saying, and you may not like it, and I’m willing to debate you, but respect me.

Adam Ferziger [00:23:15]:
For the decisions I made.

Adam Ferziger [00:23:17]:
And interestingly, one of those agents of change that I highlight, the one I call the game changer, Rabbi Dr. Aaron Lichtenstein, in a book that came out in 2016, quotes Amos Oz and he says how much he; Lichtenstein, does not identify with the Tinok Shenishba approach and really understands very well that criticism that Oz had. And he seeks to find an alternative means of communication and of connection to Jews with whom he disagrees. And he says, I’m happy to respectfully disagree with people and then move from there. I don’t have to turn them into.

Adam Ferziger [00:24:01]:
People who I can just sort of dismiss their opinions.

Adam Ferziger [00:24:05]:
Now, what I saw in the book.

Adam Ferziger [00:24:09]:
Or in my research, and that’s where it came, is that.

Adam Ferziger [00:24:15]:
There’s this gap.

Adam Ferziger [00:24:18]:
I identified a group of eight personalities, seven of them direct students of Soloveitchik, but all of them people who were sort of inspired by the integrationist synthetic Torah Umada; Torah and science approach, who made aliyah, who immigrated to Israel between 1965 and 1982.

Adam Ferziger [00:24:43]:
Lichtenstein, who I mentioned already, Rabbi Aaron Lichtenstein, the son in law of Soloveitchik.

Adam Ferziger [00:24:49]:
And Rabbi Dr. Nahum Ravinovich and Dr. Chaim Bravinder, and Rabbi Dr. Daniel Trapper and Rabanit Hana Henkin and Rabanit Malka Bina, and Rabbi Dr. David Hartman and Rabbi Dr. (Steven) Shlomo Riskin. All people who had begun their careers in North America, in the modern Orthodox world came to Israel. And what was common to all them is besides their backgrounds, in variety of ways they all led institutions for higher learning, higher Torah learning in Israel for men or women, in which Israelis over time began to study. Now, here’s the thing. When they started these institutions, they were really Martians, they were really outsiders. And they were looked at that way by the Merkaz HaRav world, by the mainstream religious Zionist, certainly the Haredim as well. But somehow, slowly but surely, their Israeli students studied with them, heard their approach, their ideas, internalized them. And here’s the key. But they didn’t copy them. And that’s why I call it ISMO Israeli Moderate Orthodoxy and not Israeli Modern Orthodoxy. Because it’s not the same, it’s Israelified, it’s recalibrated. Any good teacher knows that there’s good students take what they learn and then they process it. Any good student does that, that internalization, then processing. But historically, this is what accounts for the delay they arrived, those eight that I mentioned, those pioneers, by 1982, 83. But it took another 15, 20 years until the recalibrated ideas started to really impact Israeli society.

Adam Mintz [00:26:49]:
Why?

Adam Ferziger [00:26:50]:
Because in the meantime, their students themselves became leaders of institutions. Their students themselves became public figures, their students themselves became spokespeople, and they established.

Adam Ferziger [00:27:05]:
Constituencies throughout Israel. And therefore the process has two pieces. The early agents are those American modern Orthodox figures who came here, very, very profound individuals. But the second agents are their Israeli students who do the key process. And that’s exactly, Geoffrey, where pointing to students is so important, because it’s the students and the way they take it.

Adam Ferziger [00:27:33]:
And made it Israeli, made it local, didn’t just make it an imported product. And that was actually the place where I applied the McDonald’s/Starbucks analogy, using some transnational theory, which is really not looking at religion at all, but how do globalized products succeed? And following the work of someone named Mel Van Elten, I understood that the products which tried to be duplicated, like Starbucks in all sorts of countries, didn’t necessarily succeed in places where they had a different coffee taste, but the ones in which they sent people out to check the market and to learn what were the tastes, what were the flavors that they would like, what were the pita.

Adam Ferziger [00:28:23]:
In the Big Mac that had to be part of it, and the hummus and the tahina and integrated the local with the imported and created something sui generous, something new. Those were the products that succeeded in the new place. And that analogy helped me to think about why these, this Israeli moderate orthodoxy, at least in part to account for.

Adam Ferziger [00:28:48]:
Its success in the 21st century.

Adam Mintz [00:28:50]:
Now, I have a question, Adam, obviously this is all amazingly fascinating. I’m interested. You talk about the globe, you wrote about the global product. What about the immigrant experience? Meaning that is that true about all immigrant groups, that they only make an impact in their new place after a generation, you say after 15 years. Is that always true? Or because Jews and the Torah world focus on education, it was more true in the experience of the students. Rabbi Soloveitchik.

Adam Ferziger [00:29:26]:
So, you know, it’s a great question. I wish that I had an absolute answer. I think it depends. I think that there are profound people who arrive. I mean, Rabbi Soloveitchik was an immigrant himself.

Adam Ferziger [00:29:38]:
And after he had done his PhD and after. But he was young and he was.

Adam Ferziger [00:29:42]:
He was him a long time.

Adam Mintz [00:29:44]:
We don’t know anybody, right? We grew up together. We don’t know anybody from the 40s.

Adam Ferziger [00:29:49]:
I mean, look at my friend Seth.

Adam Ferziger [00:29:51]:
Farber’s book about Soloveitchik in Boston.

Adam Ferziger [00:29:53]:
It was complicated and people forget about those things when people reach these heights. And Lichtenstein today is considered, you.

Adam Ferziger [00:30:00]:
know, a very important figure in Israeli.

Adam Ferziger [00:30:02]:
Religious history and, and cultural history. But it was only when he was.

Adam Ferziger [00:30:08]:
Soon before his death, actually, I think it was in 2013, not 2016, when.

Adam Ferziger [00:30:12]:
A book was written in Hebrew by an Israeli author, Rabbi Chaim Sabbato, who’s a very well known author who interviewed Lichtenstein and put Lichtenstein’s ideas into Hebrew and in a language that spoke to Israeli readers, that people other than his direct students and their student students really became exposed. So I would say, Adam, and he.

Adam Mintz [00:30:35]:
Won the Israel Prize, which also made him the Israeli.

Adam Ferziger [00:30:39]:
And you know, and things happen. But I think that immigrants play really interesting roles. I was introduced to a wonderful book.

Adam Ferziger [00:30:48]:
About an Italian immigrant Catholic priest in Philadelphia. I forget the name of the book right now.

Adam Ferziger [00:30:55]:
Who serviced an immigrant Italian Catholic community.

Adam Ferziger [00:30:59]:
In Philadelphia for, like, 50 years.

Adam Ferziger [00:31:02]:
And after he passed away, the congregation found his diaries that were up in the attic of the church, and they gave permission to a professor from Temple.

Adam Ferziger [00:31:13]:
University to review them.

Adam Ferziger [00:31:14]:
He wrote this wonderful book, and he argued the following, which is interesting when.

Adam Ferziger [00:31:19]:
It comes to the subject of immigrant leaders.

Adam Ferziger [00:31:21]:
He said, the assumption is that you.

Adam Ferziger [00:31:24]:
Have an immigrant priest and immigrant rabbi.

Adam Ferziger [00:31:27]:
An immigrant imam, that they are sort of like the hedge against integration, against acculturation. They’re the ones who are always representing the old place. They’re the ones who are always trying to prevent people from becoming acculturated or assimilated with their local place. But it turns out that that’s not necessarily the case. That actually what they are are bridge builders. They are. Are.

Adam Ferziger [00:31:53]:
Cultural agents for facilitating a more stable integration into the new place. It’s very hard to integrate.

Adam Ferziger [00:32:01]:
I’m an immigrant. It’s not easy. Your language.

Adam Ferziger [00:32:07]:
Your accent, your proclivities, the kind of food you like, there are all sorts of things. Even if you find employment and even if you have economic stability and. And having a priest or a rabbi or someone who gives you stability and gives you a sense of continuity and a sense of connection to your roots and not a complete detachment is critical for facilitating that type of integration. So that really opened my eyes. And it’s not just valuable in terms of American society. I think it’s very valuable for some of the figures and how they have functioned in Israel in terms of.

Adam Ferziger [00:32:47]:
The adjustment to society.

Adam Ferziger [00:32:50]:
But what I think is fascinating is how the Israelis then ran with it and often radicalized. And when it comes to feminism, when it comes to attitudes towards academic issues, when it comes to society, culture, all sorts of things, a lot of the students were more radical than the Americans were, but they built upon it. And even among the eight of them, there’s a lot of differences between David Hartman and Aharon Lichtenstein, even though they.

Adam Ferziger [00:33:18]:
Were chavrutoed, even though they were study.

Adam Ferziger [00:33:20]:
Partners in YU when they were younger, et cetera, et cetera. But the milieu that was created is.

Adam Ferziger [00:33:27]:
Something that spectrum that applies to all them.

Geoffrey Stern [00:33:31]:
Thank you. So I want to close. It would be very easy to say, based on this discussion, that Agents of Change, American Jews and the Transformation of Israeli Judaism would be a book that would be of interest only or primarily to people that are interested in Israeli Judaism who are interested in the minutia that we’ve discussed today of Rav Kook and Rav Soloveitchik. But I will argue, as anyone who knows driving a car in Israel today, turning the channels, wanting to hear a song by Arik Einstein, the old songs of the Labour Party will find that, that the population in Israel, and this I believe, correct me if I’m wrong, has even been increased by the war that we’ve gone through in the last two years, is a population that is much more traditional. The songs are much more traditional. Many of them are actually using prayers and piyyutim and poetry that is deep in our religious tradition. And my sense is, and I’d love to know in al regel echad (on one foot), Professor Adam, what you think. But my guess is that if we had to predict where the next leadership, where the next generation of leadership will come from, it is highly likely that he will be wearing a kippa seruga or she will be having a hair scarf on her hair. And therefore it becomes rather important for all of Israel and I would argue for all of world Jewry to watch this nascent movement of moderate Orthodox Jews who are either going to lose out to those who have different interpretations of Judaism or are going to win and introduce a moderate Orthodoxy that will affect every Jew in the state. And I would therefore argue that your book should be of interest to anyone who’s interested in the arc of where Israel is going, whether it’s politics, diplomacy, foreign policy.

Geoffrey Stern [00:35:33]:
The different tribes and the relationship between them. What thinks you?

Adam Ferziger [00:35:38]:
So first of all, I endorse completely what you just said, and I do think that the book is not, not targeted just to specialists and people who.

Adam Ferziger [00:35:48]:
Are interested in the trajectory of orthodoxy. And the last chapter, really, there’s a chapter on Reform Judaism in Israel, but the last chapter, there’s a lot about the role of women. But the last chapter really speaks about two things that.

Adam Ferziger [00:36:04]:
Are very pertinent to your point. One is that actually, I think if I am a historian, but let’s say if we want to predict, I would say that the next leader of Israel might have a kippah shkufa. What’s a kippah shkufa? It’s an invisible kippah. And that’s a term that is often used by young people who come from observant families and grew up wearing a kippah. And they decided even if I do keep Shabbat, I don’t necessarily want to wear a kippah, not because I’m less observant, but because I don’t want to be divisive socially, not because they’re embarrassed, not because anyone’s going to be negative towards them. But I want to feel my camaraderie in that way.

Adam Ferziger [00:36:53]:
Yes. Serving in the army together with people of all types and putting their lives.

Adam Ferziger [00:37:00]:
On the line definitely only strengthen that sense of wanting to emphasize the camaraderie. Having said that, the second point that comes across very clearly in that chapter is a term that I didn’t make up that appears in a book by Shmuel Rosner & Camil Fuchs. But I really liked it. The term is Israeli Judaism, one word, #yahadutyisraelit.

Adam Ferziger [00:37:25]:
And Israeli Judaism is sui generis.

Adam Ferziger [00:37:29]:
It’s new.

Adam Ferziger [00:37:30]:
It’s something that’s a product of 75, 76, of sovereignty. It’s a product of struggling with a tradition that emerged for over 2000 years as a minority in dominant Christian or Muslim environments that now has to reinvent itself in an environment of majority, with all the challenges, moral policy, religious, social involved. But there’s a new product here which is emerging. And these are people that American Jews of all stripes can be in conversation with, can talk to, not always agree. And there’s certainly levels of politics and other areas where this group has different.

Adam Ferziger [00:38:20]:
Maybe priorities or orientations I’m not trying.

Adam Ferziger [00:38:22]:
To whitewash, but they’re people who share a lot. And so much has been written lately about a people divided and about how the gulf, the gap between American Jewry, diaspora Jewry, or world Jewry, and Israeli Jewry is sort of becoming insurmountable. And there are levels at which that exists, but there are also levels that, as you said, Geoffrey, and as Adam, you drew attention to that are not given sufficient currency and attention. And actually, I think that those are areas that maybe reading my book will.

Adam Ferziger [00:39:05]:
Help people to think about them more clearly and maybe something positive will come out of that. I would certainly be very, very happy if that were the case.

Geoffrey Stern [00:39:15]:
Amazing. Well, thank you for joining us and we look forward to continuing the conversation. And to our listeners, the book is worth reading. It really is an eye opener. So thank you, Adam. Thank you, Adam. We’ll see you all next week. Shabbat Shalom.

Adam Mintz [00:39:33]:
Shabbat Shalom.

Adam Ferziger [00:39:34]:
Shabbat Shalom. Lehitraot, Toda Raba.