{"id":2071,"date":"2011-02-10T13:20:13","date_gmt":"2011-02-10T11:20:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/?p=2071"},"modified":"2011-02-09T15:22:35","modified_gmt":"2011-02-09T13:22:35","slug":"secular-rabbis-to-the-rescue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/2011\/02\/secular-rabbis-to-the-rescue\/","title":{"rendered":"Secular Rabbis to the Rescue?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\t\"\"<\/a>\n\t

Rabbi Sivan Maas<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

The Jerusalem Post reported this weekend about a rabbinic ordination ceremony of a very different kind. I was there at the event too, which took place in December. What made it all so unique was that the new rabbis were all entirely secular. And they don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t believe in God, at least not in the traditional sense of a personal deity that intervenes in one\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s daily activities.<\/p>\n

Secular rabbis? Isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t that an oxymoron? No, says Tmura<\/a>, the Israeli arm of the International Institute for Secular Humanistic Judaism<\/a>, the rabbinic and leadership school of a small Jewish movement of about 30,000 members worldwide that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s mostly flown under the radar.<\/p>\n

Tmura\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s 12 freshly minted rabbis have set for themselves a formidable task: to bring Jewish content and ritual based on (but not obligated by) tradition to the 67% of Israelis<\/a> who define themselves as either secular or \u00e2\u20ac\u0153not very religious.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

Formidable because non mainstream Jewish denominations haven\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t exactly been welcomed with outstretched arms in Israel, where Conservative, Reform, Reconstructionist, and even Jewish Renewal congregations are vastly outnumbered by their Orthodox brethren, and where the average secular Israeli holds by the old saw that the shul<\/em> he or she doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t go to has to be frum<\/em> by the standards of the increasingly strict Orthodox Rabbinate.<\/p>\n

To wit: in an interview<\/a> on Israel Channel 10\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Miktzoanim (\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Professionals\u00e2\u20ac\u009d) morning program, host Shira Flicks launched immediately into a friendly (but certainly serious) banter on what to call Tmura dean Rabbi Sivan Maas \u00e2\u20ac\u201c Rabah<\/em>, or maybe Rabanit<\/em> (both feminine versions of the Hebrew \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Rav\u00e2\u20ac\u009d). Maas playfully responded to the latter, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153That would be my husband.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

Imagine, then, Flicks\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 response to the concept of a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153secular rabbi,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d who believes in \u00e2\u20ac\u0153God as a literary character.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

Tmura is trying hard to play catch up. The organization has graduated some 23 rabbis in the last three years and has a sister organization called Tkasim<\/a> (\u00e2\u20ac\u0153ceremonies\u00e2\u20ac\u009d) that helps non-religious Israelis created humanistic life cycle events – weddings, funerals and bar and bat mitzvah\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s \u00e2\u20ac\u201c along with Shabbat and holiday celebrations.<\/p>\n

In conjunction with its ordination ceremony in December, Tmura sponsored a full day conference featuring biblical-themed lectures on topics such as \u00e2\u20ac\u0153human rights issues during the biblical era,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u0153the bible as inspiration for contemporary art,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and \u00e2\u20ac\u0153comparing lifecycle events, ceremonies and celebrations during biblical times with contemporary Judaism.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

The organization is also trying to arrange a monthly humanistic Kabbalat Shabbat service at the Bible Lands Museum in Jerusalem. Such gatherings already exist on a number of secular kibbutzim where Tmura-trained rabbis live, Rabbi Maas told me.<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153The kibbutzim are going through a fascinating process of \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcre-comunitizing\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 themselves in the post-privatization stage, realizing they want a community but they also need capable professional leaders to do the job,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Maas said.<\/p>\n

The time for Tmura may be ripe. With recent polls showing that a majority of Jewish Israelis favor the recognition of non-Orthodox conversions, and with the creation of some 30 new mixed secular-religious congregations in the last few years, Tmura\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s alternative agenda could gain traction,<\/p>\n

It may not be the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153revolution\u00e2\u20ac\u009d that many of the organization\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s new secular rabbis called for at the ordination, but it certainly won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t be for lack of trying.<\/p>\n

This article on Tmura appeared yesterday on Israelity<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Jerusalem Post reported this weekend about a rabbinic ordination ceremony of a very different kind. I was there at the event too, which took place in December. What made it all so unique was that the new rabbis were all entirely secular. And they don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t believe in God, at least not in the traditional […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[29,53],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2071"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2071"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2071\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2077,"href":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2071\/revisions\/2077"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2071"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2071"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2071"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}