A friend of mine previously from the US Midwest moved to Israel a year and a half ago with her family. She is one of those really nice, always smiling, always positive types that you expect to come from the heartland of the USA. Basically, she's their poster child. And that's why her observations (made originally to her husband and later to me) about our neighbourhood and our synagogue are all the funnier.
About six months into their move to Ra'anana she said to her husband: "Isn't it nice to come to a place where there are no shul (Yiddish for synagogue) politics?" As an aside, let me add that her husband, a native New Yorker, had a less delusional perspective.
I can never hear that story or tell that story enough times. It cracks me up as much now as it did when I first heard it. And after last week, it cracks me up even more.
I promised my AdHoc Overseerers Committee that I would not discuss the issue that brought our synagogue to its philosophical crossroads last week, but suffice it to say that the members of our community spent the last month in the midst of a discussion about how we view ourselves within the framework of Modern Orthodox Judaism. Left, Right, Center, Indifferent, Left with Right Leanings, Right with Left Leanings ..... you get the idea.
In the days leading up to the great vote, emotions were running so high in some quarters that there were many synagogue members who really thought that this issue would irrevocably destroy our community.
Then came Saturday night and the moment of reckoning. After weeks of over-thought angst the members of the synagogue voted last Saturday night and the matter was put to bed. But more important, the synagogue did not implode as a result of the final vote. Admittedly, there were winners and there were losers (and I suspect there were many people who were just glad the whole matter was behind them).
Which brings me to last night and the engagement party of one of our friends' daughter. (Try to follow along with my convoluted thinking here.)
The party was packed with people from our synagogue (and many other people as well). It no longer mattered what side people voted for the other night.
The question any naive outsider could reasonably ask was: "How could you go from the brink of destruction to non-partisan party mode in 48 hours?" And that, my friends, is an interesting question.
When people move to Israel from North America they leave behind a lot -- family, friends, emotional comfort, to name a few. In my mind, they gain a lot more than they lose, but that does not minimize the fact that they have paid a big price to recreate their lives.
And the people who play the biggest role in their new lives (at least in my neighbourhood) are the other members of the shul. People who may have nothing else in common but this one gigantic life experience. They may not share the same political views (trust me, they don't) and they obviously don't share the same views on the observance of Judaism, but at the end of the day, they are the people who will do your carpool if your car breaks down 10 minutes before pick-up. They will feed your children when you are home in bed with the flu. They will drive you to the airport when your parent dies in North America -- and they will be waiting there to bring you home when you return from the shiva.
The grandfather of the groom-to-be spoke last night at the engagement party. He was a very polished, knowledgeable speaker who recounted how, 70 years ago, he managed to survive a pogrom in Romania that left many in his shtetl dead. He also talked about surviving the Shoah (Holocaust). And now, he said, here he was, in Ra'anana, celebrating his grandson's engagement on behalf of all those who never knew there could even be a Jewish state where Jews could live any type of Jewish life they wanted, freely.
And when all is said and done, that is really the ONLY point that matters.
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