These are not necessarily easy times in Israel, but they are still fascinating times. Today, we meet Avi Dabush, a long time social activist in Israel, head of Rabbis for Human Rights, and a recent graduate of a unique rabbinical school program at the Hartman Institute, which trains as rabbis people from across the religious spectrum.
Before we get to Avi, whose interview we’re making available in full to all our readers and listeners, a glimpse into the sorts of issues that are roiling Israeli society, far from the placid tapestry of the rabbinic program Avi Dabush just completed.
A week ago, for example, the following two ads both appeared, within a few pages of each other, in the Makor Rishon newspaper.
The following ad, with the “map” of Israel (note that there’s no green line) says, in the large blue letters
ANNEXATION NOW!
It’s an ad for people to look into a number of residential building projects that Harei Zahav (Golden Hills) is constructing … and one can see by the map where the construction is happening. Nothing secret or hidden here. More people than one might think are in favor of “calling a spade a spade” and annexing what they call Judea and Samaria and the international press calls the West Bank.
By the way, buying a home in these areas requires more than forking over the money. One also has to be accepted (religious, political criteria among the important ones) to buy there.
But in the very same newspaper, just a couple of pages earlier, a different issue has other people exercised:
THE IDF: THERE HAS BEEN A 25% DECLINE IN RESERVISTS’ REPORTING.
In the part of the ad in black:
The white letters on the black background: Reservists to the Minister of Defense Israel Katz:
The red letters on the black background: If you annul the 7,000 draft notices [sent to the Haredim], it will be a betrayal of us.”
The first red rectangle: We’re totally spent. We haven’t seen our homes in more than 200 days.
The second red rectangle: Our lives have been put on hold, no family, no income, no studies, everything has stopped.
And finally, the black letters on the white background at the very bottom: Now you have to decide. Are you with the draft avoiders or with the warriors?
The “annexationists” are obviously towards the right end of the spectrum. The reservist issue is a broad based issue, speaking for many except for the Haredim.
And now, a program that brings together people from across the spectrum, Orthodox through largely secular, who studied together to become rabbis.
Avi Dabush was born and raised in Ashkelon to a religious-right-wing-Mizrahi family.
He was educated in state-religious schools and at the "Or Etzion" yeshiva, headed by Rabbi Chaim Druckman. He was a counselor in the (religious) in Bnei Akiva youth movement.
He served in the Armored Corps and established and managed a school for girls and boys with autism immediately after his military service.
He completed degrees with highest honors in Behavioral Sciences and Organizational Sociology.
For over 20 years, Avi has been leading and managing organizations and initiatives in civil society. He is one of the founders of the Negev Council, the Movement for the Future of the Western Negev, and the Periphery Movement. He ran for the leadership of the Meretz Party in 2018.
For the past five years, he has been serving as the CEO of Rabbis for Human Rights. He published the book "The Periphery Rebellion" and co-authored the book "I Am Nowhere Else". He was recently certified as an Israeli rabbi at the Hartman Institute and the Midrasha at Oranim.
He was evacuated from Kibbutz Nirim with his family after the October 7th attack. He is married to Anat and is raising their four children with her.
Today we hear from Avi about the rabbinic program he recently completed and about his vision for Israel.
The link at the top of this posting will take you to the full recording of our conversation; below you will find a transcript for those who prefer to read, which we’re making available today to all our readers and listeners.
I have the pleasure of speaking with someone today named Avi Dabush, who I wanted to meet and talk about because of a program that he is now completing called the Harabbanut HaIsraelit, which is the Israeli rabbinate, which we're going to hear more about, but an entirely alternative way of ordaining rabbis in Israel. There's all the Orthodox establishment. There's a conservative establishment at Neve Shechter, there's HUC for the Reform Movement. RRC has a small program here in Jerusalem for the Reconstructionist Movement.
But there are also other programs that are not nearly as well known outside of Israel that are doing really interesting things. And when I heard from a colleague of Avi's who's also finishing the program, someone who's been interviewed on our podcast before, Abi Dauber Sterne, that they were wrapping up, I said to her, okay, who's a fascinating person who's in the group who I can talk to? And she gave me a bunch of names. But she said, if you can get Avi, that would be amazing. So, we got Avi.
So Avi, thank you for being with us. Before we get to the Harabbanut HaIsraelit, the Israeli rabbinate, you've had a very complicated year in a personal way. And so, let's just start with your history a little bit. Where you grew up, how you grew up, how you were educated, what part of Israeli society you come from, what part of Israeli society, both geographically and ideologically you're part of now. We'll hear a little bit about what's happened in this last year, and then we'll talk about the Israeli rabbinate.
Wonderful. So, thank you for the invitation. Again, my name is Avi Dabush. I was born and grew up in Ashkelon, around the eight or nine kilometers from Gaza. I was born in 1976. It was a time that for us, you know, Gaza was our big city in a lot of ways. Ashkelon was much smaller. The borders were open. Of course, we didn’t see the power relations and the occupation and so on. And we thought, it's very good for the Palestinian. It's very good for us. We went to the market and the beach and so on. In Gaza. My father He had been in the army for many years, and he was most of his years in Gaza. So, we went to visit him and again to the market and other places.
But I have memories from childhood. After that, when I was in the Yeshiva, I was in Gush Katif and other places, but then it was in the market of Gaza and in the heart of Gaza…
So, you said you grew up in the yeshiva and you went to Gush Katif, which was the Israeli settlement block in Gaza. So I assume it means you grew up in the religious community?
Yeah, definitely. My family is Mizrahi, from Libya and Syria. My father actually was the third in the family and he was born here in Jerusalem. And after a year or two, they moved to ma’abara [immigrant and refugee absorption camp] in Ashkelon. And my mother, she was born in shuchunat Hatikva in South Tel Aviv. And her family came from Damascus, from Syria in the '40s, actually, them, and in the '51, the family from Libya.
So, Mizrahi-oriented, Orthodox, religious family, and, of course, very peripheral in terms of geography and in terms of socioeconomic status. I was part of the Bnei Akiva Schools and the Bnei Akiva Movement and so on. In the youth movement, I was in the yeshiva of Rabbi Haim Drukman. He was my first rabbi.
So, for people that don't know, Rabbi Haim Drukman is one of the giants of Israeli orthodox... I mean, a giant. It's just hard to exaggerate. He's passed away now, but it's hard to exaggerate how both influential, respected, and powerful he was. He had all of those things, and he had a couple of things that were controversial towards the end of his life, especially. He didn't shy away from controversy, but also an extraordinary... I never met him, but people who knew him say he was a larger-than-life figure.
Yeah. Actually, his life is really interesting because in a way, he symbolizes, and Professor Avi Sagi is talking about it, the movement of the religious Zionism and so on, from being a youth movement inside of the Labor movement, the big Labor movement, towards Gush Emunim and other places. And now we can see that in a very leading role. Of course, for me, it's not a thing that I sympathize today, this politics. And I found myself not once and not twice in demonstrations against him and his politics. But I must say that he was fascinating and very a giant, as you said, educator. And also in charge, he got the Israel Prize for the conversion. He was in charge in Israel about that. And he was in a fight with the ultra-Orthodox parts.
So, that was the place that I grew up in. Around 17, in 1993, I had a gap year before my army service because I skipped a year in my elementary school, and I came to Jerusalem. It was the Oslo Accord or first Oslo Agreement days. And of course, I joined the movement against that and the demonstrations and so on. And that, in the way, and it's a whole deep story, started a shift, a political shift for me. I found myself, of course, it's a process in many years and so on in the left-wing politics in so many ways.
Okay. So, you grew up in the Orthodox community in protesting against the Oslo Accords. At that point, it was a one-to-one correspondence. I mean, if you were Orthodox, it was almost certain that you were opposed to the Oslo Accords.
It's still like that.
Mostly, mostly. But maybe a little bit less than one to one, maybe 0.8 to one or something like that. But yes, okay. Then you have this gradual shift, theologically, religiously, politically…
Again, it connected really deeply in the days that I was in Gaza. Today, I can say that because I ask my friends, okay, the Oslo Agreement is bad. I understand that. Still, I can be very... I can criticize the Oslo Agreement. But what's the alternative? There are Palestinian people. They want their freedom. And of course, the common answer was Golda Meir's answer that there isn't such a thing as Palestinian people. But I saw them. I saw them as a kid, so I couldn't accept that.
Okay. So, you have a long process. And for all of us, whatever political, religious shifts we make, they're gradual. Usually, they're gradual. And tell us a little bit about your professional life after the army. You did the army, I assume, after the mechina. And then what came?
Then, actually, I started for several years working in education projects, and I led the establishment of a school for autistic children. And I was actually a principal at the age of 23. It was really interesting and bizarre for three years.
Before you had a university degree?
Yeah. It's another different story. But it was families that went actually to the US to learn how to deal with their autistic children. And then they hired me or first I volunteered with them and their children. And then we said, we want another school because the children got older. And then we established that school. And after three years, it was enough for me.
And I got back to the main mainstream road of people in Israel, went to college, to first degree in Ben Gurion University in the Negev in Be'er Sheva. But my first two years were in Achva College. So, it's near Kiryat Malachi. Then I was living in Kibbutz Revadim, Kibbutz Hashomer Hatzair. And then it was the first time in 2002 that I started to really get involved in civil society. It was in the environmental movement, actually, at an organization called Green Course of Students for the Environment. And I led a very big project or campaign against a coal power station, third coal power station in Ashkelon. And that brought me to another place to understand more and more about the peripheries of Israel.
I stood with my friends in Ashkelon in 2003 and asked people to join our campaign. And then they told me, are you an Ashkenazi that you are involved in the environmental stuff? Or what if this coal power station will bring us jobs, we are in favor of that. If not, it doesn't matter. Or we want to change, but how can we change it? It's in Jerusalem. What connection do we have with Jerusalem, of the Knesset and the government?
So that was the first time that Mahatma Gandhi used to say that the happiest person is the one that never left his village. And you need to leave your village and your bubble and your community in order to understand something. So, then it was like I was amazed. And then I started to understand power relations. Then I started to understand the peripheries. Then I started to understand a lot about the place that I grew up in. When I came to the army or the yeshiva or so on, people said, “ah, Ashkelon, it's crime, it's poor people”, and so on. And then I understood fully what's the meaning of that, of being weak politically, of being weak in terms of that you don't feel that you are in charge of your destiny, of your future, and present, and so on. So, I was amazed on that.
And then it started a whole new chapter of civil society. I used to work for many years in Shatil. It's the branch of NIF, the New Israel Fund, and they use so many organizations and activists all over Israel. Also, very involved in the protests of 2011. And that led me at the end, when I went with my family to the Gaza envelope, to Kibbutz Bror Hayil, in 2009, that led me to establish a movement in Protective Edge. Actually, 10 years from now, exactly 10 years from now. And then I attempted to go into politics, to real politics, party politics. And in 2015, I was in Meretz. I was in the eighth place in the list of Meretz.
A minute after Bougie Herzog, Issac Herzog, now the President, lost to Netanyahu, now still the Prime Minister, there was a very harsh discourse in the left that said, those peripheries, they voted to someone that does harm them, and so on. I can't say the not nice version of that. And then I started a very big, like going everywhere in the periphery in Israel. And at the end, after many months of visiting Yeruham, and Tiberius, and Kiryat Shmona, and Rahat, and other places, we established the peripheries movement. And that was because we started to understand fully, and I can't say that now I understand fully, but I'm trying, and I wrote about it also, in a book. I published a book, the power relations between the center in terms of economy in geographical terms, and the peripheries in Israel. And that's, in a lot of ways, the burning fire in myself, the burning fire in terms of my public life. And that brought us, in a way, to October 7th.
Okay. So, in October, you're living where?
In Kibbutz Nirim.
Which you moved there because your wife is from there, right?
Yeah. So, I was a few years in Kibbutz Bror Hayil, and then a few years in Sderot. Again, if you know, Sderot is a very right-wing place. And I'm always saying, and I really feel that, that it's great for me. It's very good to live in a place that people doesn't agree with everything you believe in. And all my family, most of my family is right wing, so I really feel at home. And Kibbutz Nirim is less than 2 kilometers from Khan Younis. It's a hashomer hatzair kibbutz. It has a very interesting history that really connected to Zionism in the Negev, one of the 11 points in 1946…
Just to make everybody understand, there's 11 points. There were 11 places in Israel which were created overnight. The same exact night, Ben Gurion said, we’re going to create these 11 outposts. He was trying to make sure that the borders extended further south. They ended up extending all the way to Eilat, but nobody knew for sure what we're going to be. So, these were the hard core Zionists who went out in the middle of nowhere…
It was an amazing project.
In what year was it?
‘46. In the first day of the war, the Independence War in May 15th, when the armies of the neighboring countries invaded Israel, Nirim was attacked by Egypt, by Egyptian soldiers, a whole day with thousands of Egyptian soldiers and tanks and airplanes and so on, with 39 people in Nirim that defended the place, and they couldn't conquer it. So, at the end of the day, Haim Bar-Lev, he used to be an officer in the Negev, he wrote that this is the day that we won the war. Of course, it took many months after. But if they couldn't conquer Nirim with this power gaps, we will win the war. So, they are really, in a lot of way, proud of this history. Actually, in October 6th, we had our anniversary of the kibbutz, celebrating this history, this ancient history, 77 years before of the establishment of Nirim.
So, most of the people of Nirim was there in Nirim. And my children worked there. We had some market or something like that, and a lot of visitors and so on. And then, of course, in the morning of October 7th, we just got into all different story and reality.
What happened to the people of Kibbutz Nirim in terms of casualties and killed, kidnapped?
So, it's a long story, and we had kind of miracles. I must say, tragically, only five people got murdered and only five people were kidnapped. And three soldiers also got murdered in the kibbutz. They are part of the miracle. By the way, the high officer of all the area got inside the kibbutz after 15 minutes. We were the first one in the area that were invaded. He thought he didn't know what is happening, the whole picture. He thought it's only in Nirim. And it started the day that we had in the eight hours that the army in the capital A didn't came, and soldiers here and there came into the fields or a helicopter and so on. And it helped us to have only, and again, it's tragically, in the last day of a Protective Edge in 2014, two members of the kibbutz got killed, and it was devastating for the kibbutz. And here, it's all proportion. We are seeing our neighboring kibbutz Nir Oz, and it's more than 100 people that got kidnapped or killed.
Nir Oz is how far from Nirim?
Five hundred meters.
Five hundred meters. Made all the difference in the world. And since then, the kibbutz has been evacuated. Obviously, the whole otef was evacuated. And your family has been living in Beer Sheva?
Yeah. At Sunday afternoon, after more than 30 hours in the shelters, we got evacuated to Eilat, of course, under fire and with the army and so on. We were in Eilat for four months.
So, you were attacked by the Houthis also at that point, right?
Yeah. But it was a piece of cake.
Well, relative to Gaza, for sure.
So, after four months…
My only point is that even being in Eilat doesn't keep you out of the war.
Yeah.
You can be in Eilat. You can be on the northern border…
Yeah. I must say we are all in the same kind of, I don't know how to call it, in the same story. In the same boat, yeah. And in a way, it's funny because I mentioned Shahar Bar-On. And he used to say that you were there on October seventh. I wasn't there. And I told him I wasn't there. I was in a very small peak of my specific experience in the shelter with the kids and eight hours without the army, then 30 hours and then go to Eilat. But there are so many stories. And another stories inside of Nirim, we have such a different stories. And of course, Nirim and Nir Oz, as we mentioned. And Nirm and the Nova, and Netiv HaAsara. We still don't really understand the full scale of this day. And in a lot of ways, we are still in that day. We said in the Talmud. It's a day that it's not a day, not a night. And we just last week, we buried two of our hostages, Nadav Popplewell and Yagev Buchshtav. So, it's still bleeding, this very deep wound.
Yeah. I mean, it's horrifying. And it's just Israel today. You can't really have any conversation that doesn't start like this. I mean, if you get together to talk about the Israeli rabbinate, you can't have a person sitting across the table from you who lives in Nirim who went through, you went through and said, yeah, but we're not going to talk about that. I mean, you can. It's just the elephant in the room. And I appreciate you're sharing it with us. And the plan is to go back to Nirim for most of you, right? And what's the timetable? Is there a timetable?
So now we are one of 10 settlements that still can't go because the war is too close. Now we are talking about March ‘25, but we don't really know. Only in the last days, we started, or we finished ruin all the houses that burned.
Taking it down, like destroying whatever was left with it.
Yeah, in order to build it again. So, it will take many months.
And most people from Nirim are in Beer Sheva?
Yeah, 80 % of the community.
And close to each other. Beer Sheva is not a small town anymore. Are they pretty close to each other?
Yeah, most of us in the same neighborhood, in a new neighborhood. But yeah. Actually, I must say that if you know the communities, a lot of communities are shredded and torn to many small pieces. And I must say, proudly, because my wife is the head of the community of the kibbutz. Actually, the leadership is a very female leadership that they did great job. And in November, we started to have this plan in order to move because we understood that being in a community, in an hotel, it doesn't work. And we choose where to go, and we choose how it will be, and so on, and we choose good.
That's great. Okay, now let's talk about other things that are good beyond that. So, you grew up in the Rabbi Drukman’s Yeshiva, I mean, among other places, which means you have a pretty robust and deep Jewish education. You can open up a Talmud and start to learn. And you have a very robust Orthodox education and just very impressive. People who learn that way really know what they're talking about. And now you find yourself, in the last few years, in a program that's created by the Hartman Institute, if I understand correctly.
Shalom Hartman Institute and also the midrashah in Oranim.
The idrashah in Oranim. It's a joint venture. Doing this program called the Israeli rabbinate. So, tell us about this program. Why does the program exist? There's an Orthodox establishment, there's a Conservative, there's Reform, there's Reconstructionists. Who needs another thing? Who comes to it? I mean, people like you obviously have a tremendously deep Jewish background. I'm assuming not everybody does. So, there must be a wide array of people. And you must be studying some Talmud with people from this is their first Talmud experience. What's that like? If you've spent years in Yeshiva, what's that like? So, who's coming to it? What are you learning? And what brought all these people together? What's the impact that this group wants to have on Israeli society?
So that's a lot of questions. I will just start saying that you mentioning that there is a big gap between talking about October seventh and talking about the Rabbanut HaIsraelit. And I must say, for me, it's the same root in terms of we are in a very deep crisis of the Israeli society. And I'm always saying to my friends, it didn't start on October 7. Even it didn't start on January 4th with Yariv Levin in 2023, starting this reform. And maybe we can talk about, I don't know, '95, the assassination of Rabin, or even ’67. I don't know exactly. And even go back to Masechet Gittin [tractate Gittin] and what happened in the second Churban HaBait [destruction of the Temple] and so on.
But I must say that I understand the crisis or any deep crisis as an identity crisis. And in a way, what we are trying to do in this project, Israeli Rabbinate, is to answer, in our humble way, it's not the answer and the only answer and so on. But exactly what you said, there are a lot of streams in Judaism, thank G-d. It's very good. It's nice. But this project try to go beyond that and start a movement of rabbis that they are leaders of the communities or even the society, the Israeli society at large, and not being so touched to their affiliation or their stream in Judaism or their establishment. I really have very good relationships with my Reform rabbi friends and Conservative and Orthodox and so on. And then now there are secular rabbis also, we talked about it. But we try, as you said, to make a group. We are the fourth cohort.
And how many people in a cohort?
In that cohort, we were 22, from completely secular people to very Orthodox people, including people that also go to the Rabbanut HaRashit [The Chief Rabbinate]. And all the things that you can find in the middle. And the idea was, and for me, this is the vision of Rabbi Tamar Elad Appelbaum.
Who's been on the podcast for people who want to go search for her.
Yeah. So, this is her vision of bringing the rabbis again as leaders inside the society. It's not that we just happen to get involved in small halachic thing or question, which is sometimes it's very important. But again, it's not about the whole sphere of the Israeli society or just learning text or studying text. But we have to deal with the big questions. And now it's the era that we have to deal with that.
Name a few big questions.
Wow.
Just give people an idea.
The question, maybe the biggest question is, how can we live together? We, the Israelis, and maybe bigger we is the people in the Middle East and the people from the river to the sea, as we say today. When I was a kid, there was a very famous novel or a book in our religious Zionism sphere called the HaIm Yesh Sikui L’ahava? “Is There A Chance to Love? It was the first New Age Orthodox book. And I always have this question in myself. Maybe there are people that are saying, no, the answer is no. We can't really do it. We did it for several years because we were survivors of the Holocaust and so on and wars and so on. But there isn't enough glue in this country between the ultra-Orthodox and the secular and the religious and the right and the left and so on. And I can't accept that.
What does that mean when they say that there's not enough glue? It’s going to fall apart?
Yeah.
The country is going to fall apart?
Yeah, definitely. There is a thesis of Rino Zror, for example, a movie [director] that said, after 60, 70 years in the First Temple and the Second Temple, we fall apart. We can't do more after 70 years. And there is something into that. After 50, 60, 70 years, like a grown-up man, we have to face a very deep questions. And now we happen to have this luck to live in this very frightened and very interesting and very, I don't know, era. And we are the one that have to give the answers. There isn't any other where Ben-Gurion is talking about it, that one day he looked right and left and didn't see anyone. So, we said, this is me. This is about me. So, we need to be like Ben Gurion, like many leaders…
In a place where there's no people, be a person.
Yeah. And it's not a person. It's a community. It's a group. It's not about one leader, as we tend to think. Who's the leader? Who can be after Netanyahu? Something like that. No, we are talking about leaders. And this is very big, of course. And again, I must say, we have to do it in a humble way, but also in a way that really try to live this very big challenge and to answer these very big questions.
How long is the program? How many days a week? All that stuff. Just the technicalities.
It's three years, two days a week. Two full days a week. Most of them are in Hartman, the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem. Some of them are in the Midarsha, in Oranim. It's in Kiryat Tivon in the north. And I must say that comparing to, I don't know, ultra-Orthodox yeshivot and so on, it's not a lot. But for us, in our very busy schedule, and the people that are going there are, again, they are leaders. I myself, am the CEO of an organization, of Rabbis for Human Rights, and so on. So, it's really hard to find two full days, three years, and so on.
But again, for me, the only reason is that there was this Beit Midrash and this wonderful rabbi, Tamar, and of course, there are a lot of wonderful rabbis there, and also philosophers and others in Shalom Hartman Institute that really wants to deal with the deep questions and have this... For me, it's a political project of bringing the rabbis to a leadership, wider leadership, and to have a group, a varied group, again, of secular and Orthodox, religious and non-religious and so on, the dealing Judaism as one.
In a way, for me, it's funny because in a lot of ways, I'm not live in Orthodox Judaism for many years. But only in this beit midrash, I understood fully the connection between the classical Judaism, again, the Talmud, the halacha, Rambam, and so on, and what we have in Zionism, and all the literature in Hebrew that came out of nowhere in the 19th century and so on. So, there is a deep connection in trying to hold that and also that, trying to hold and Brenner and others, and also the Rambam, and the Soloveitchik, and others.
Is it courses? Like in a liberal rabbinical school, you take history courses, you take Bible courses, you take Talmud courses, you take literature courses, or is it more like a beit midrash, like in an Orthodox, where there's not actually courses. It's more you're just learning whatever you're learning, mostly Talmud and halacha in those worlds? How is it set up? Is it a course with teachers? What's the curriculum look like on a a day-to-day basis, what are you guys studying?
It's more courses, but I must say it's gam ve gam [both]. It's courses, but also a beit midrash, like a classic one. I started to be as a free student in HUC. I started four or five years ago because our office was near HEC, and so I went once a week.
You were also admitted to Schechter at one point, right?
Yeah.
All right. So, you started in a Reform one. You were also admitted Conservative one, and now you're doing the Israeli one. So, you're a man of many rabbinical schools.
Yeah. And again, my rabbi is a Tamar, so I went along with her beit midrash. So, in a way, it's really unique. It's not like HUC, that it's more like a university, that you can choose courses and be with one student in one class and with another in another. Here, we went along all these three years, this cohort, this group. So, a lot of time, or most of the... I don't know if most, but a lot of time we work together, of course, in the first year, but also after. And then we had courses, like you said, in the Talmud. We could choose, either we are learning Talmud or something else. And in the Talmud, there were, especially in the first year, the people that didn't have any experience with Talmud and others that had more experience and got, I don't know if deeper understanding. Yeah, but in a way, more experience. More advanced, of course. But I must say that Shalom Hartman Institute is a very varied place in the way that the offers of the people from Avi Sagi, and Ariel Picard, and Micah Goodman, and many others. So, we had a very huge Jewish candy store for us. And of course, we can do it for many years. Most of us, maybe all of us, felt after three years that we want more. We want to apply to the next cohort. So again, you need to learn of course more, but…
You're in the fourth cohort, right?
Yeah.
Okay. So, you have people of all different walks of life. I guess they're also a pretty wide age range, right? From the youngest to the oldest, what would you say the range is in your cohort, let's say?
From 30 to 50.
Okay. So not on their 20s, not on their 60s. And so, they're starting for three years together. So, you have Orthodox people studying with secular people, and you have Reform people studying with Conservative people. We have men and women, and I'm assuming gay and straight. I have no idea, but I'm guessing…
And more liberal and less liberal and even conservative.
So politically all over the map also. And so, the goal is they should come out Jewishly very literate, and Israeli-ly, I use that for there's Jewishly and Israeli-ly literate, so they should know something about Israeli culture, Israeli history, Israeli literature, Israeli, you mentioned Bialik and Brenner and lots of others, I'm sure.
And what's the hope of both the participants and the founders? So, let's just say, make the math easy. There's 20 people in a cohort, probably a little bit more, but let's just make it easy math. So now there's 80 people, and after the fifth cohort or the sixth, it'll be 100, 120 people. What's the hope 10 years from now, 15 years from now, somebody like Rabbi Tamar Elad Applebaum, who I also think is an extraordinary human being, these people who founded it, and they go to bed at night and they put their heads on their pillows for the 30 seconds that they're awake before they fall asleep exhausted, what's their hope that the 120 of you, what's the hope, the impact you're going to have on Israel?
It's a very good question. I guess in a way, I can say it's still in process or in a debate. I can say that I want those people to be with their hands and feet and so on inside the public sphere of Israel in a lot of ways. I really think that this should be, and that's the idea, of course, Donniel Hartman and maybe others in the institute of a liberal stream. And again, we have days that, in a way, you must choose. Of course, you can choose unity, and you can choose to talk to everyone and so on. But there is a difficult question that you must choose. So, I guess for me, and maybe in that I'm assuming, I'm talking more about Rabbis for Human Rights, or not only about Israeli Rabbinate, that we must have an alternative to a very loud voice of rabbis, a very loud voice of Judaism, that now, unfortunately for me, sometimes support Jewish supremacy, violence, and even inner violence. I'm not talking only, of course, violence against the Arabs, the Palestinians, and so on.
So, my dream is that we will have this voice, this Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai voice, that is talking in a very, for me, from my perspective, in a very responsible way, in a way that sees the values. Now we have a war on our values, not only on our bodies or our communities and so on. So, for me, this is the dream. I guess for Tamar and others, maybe it's not this radical or this evident dream, but the dream is to have people, as I mentioned, rabbis as leaders, rabbis as people that are part of the Israeli discourse in a very influential way.
And the people in the program who are Orthodox, who are going to study Orthodox, I assume, they're certainly not going to talk about non-Orthodox Jews the way that the Orthodox rabbinate and that here talks about non-Orthodox Jews because they know them, they respect them, they've studied with them. So, it's really about creating, even among those who may not be personally liberal, a much more open, tolerant, embracing Judaism, I would imagine.
Yeah, definitely. Of course, as you mentioned, also in LGBTQI questions and with women and so on. So, the most Orthodox in the class are still studying with women and see them as equal and so on. So, this is, of course, part of the revolution. I want more, but this is me.
Well, it's a revolution. I mean, you used the word. Maybe you throw it out, but it really is a revolution in terms of rabbinic education in Israel. Because it doesn't matter whether it's Orthodox or Reform. If it's Orthodox, it's all Orthodox. If it's Reform, it's all Reform. And this is purposely not that. This is purposely about saying that it's Israeli Rabbinate. And Israel is all of us put together. It's a new leadership, a new model of learning. And as you said, tailored to people who are already very deep into their lives and who can't take three or four years off just full-time to go to rabbinical school because that's just not where they are anymore. It's very exciting. It's very interesting. I know that your cohort is having a graduation ceremony in a few weeks. So first of all, Mazal Tov on that. That's very exciting. We'll have 22 more rabbis in Israel, but of a very different sort of rabbi, which is really very exciting…
So, I just want to end by asking you, we did this circuitous… We started out with your youth in the orthodox world. We started out, and then we went on to your gradual ideological, political, and religious evolution. You ended up in Sderot and you were in the otef. You were in the otef, in the Gaza envelope on the seventh. You've been in Eilat and then in Beer Sheva since then. So, you've been through the ringer. You work for Rabbis for Human Rights, which is very involved in a very specific angle of work with Israelis and Palestinians. Some people agree with it, some people don't. That's what makes the world go round. How optimistic are you? We talked about 70 years, 73 years before the first Commonwealth, after King Solomon split and then ultimately died. 74 years, the second time around, more or less, depending on how you count. And now we're in the year 76. And 75 and 76 were not good. 75 was judicial reform. It was a disaster. 76 was the war. It's a disaster. And this woman that you were talking about before, you could say, here we go again. We last for 70 something years, and then it dies.
I'm just talking about Avi now. Not Avi, the rabbi, not Avi, the head of the Rabbis for Human Right, not Avi, who was in Nirim. How optimistic are you that this is going to be a place where your children and grandchildren are going to choose to live?
Wow. You know from October seventh, I'm finishing my Facebook post with the two words. “Ani ma'amin”. I believe. And a lot of people also from the US and other places…
“Ani ma'amin” means I have faith.
Yeah. And this is what we used to sing at the end of Shacharit in the yeshiva and so on. “Ani ma'amin beviat hamashiach”. That the Messiah will come. And a lot of people told me that this is something that really inspired them. And I'm telling myself that I'm losing hope and faith and this belief three times a day. But four times a day, even more, I got encouraged from the things that I saw around, I see around. And I'm really optimistic in the way that I know that we will find a way to live together. I'm talking about Israel inside, and I'm talking about Jews and Arabs, Palestinians, and Zionists, because there isn't any good other option. The only question is how many people will die, how much time it will take. And this is what I'm saying that the leader's role is to have the best way and the fastest way to do that in the deepest way, of course, to bring all the people to understand that and to find a way.
Of course, it will be very hard. It's not that I am thinking, and we have to fight for our security, definitely, it's not that I'm saying that we have to give up or something like that. So, in that terms, I'm really optimistic. And also, we talked about the people that you are bringing here. You are bringing a lot of people that they are doing great things in Israeli society, and wonderful thing that most of the Israelis doesn't even know or take into account. So, I believe it will shine on, and it will influence the leadership. And I hope that we will be there to do so, to be part of this leadership, to push those people, to have more responsibility and more power in order to do good. So in that way, I'm really optimistic.
Well, we can all use a dose of optimism. So, it's really a “zhut”. I mean, it's really a privilege to sit with somebody who's been in the trenches of all different sorts, who's still so optimistic, and who still believes in this so much, ani ma’amin, as you said. And for the sake of all of us, I hope that your dream comes true, because if your dream comes true, we're all going to be in a much better place. Thank you not only for the conversation but thank you for what you've done with your life. I wish you many, many more years of success and productivity, and for all of us, a year of peace coming up.
Thank you, Daniel.
Music credits: Medieval poem by Rabbi Shlomo Ibn Gvirol. Melody and performance by Shaked Jehuda and Eyal Gesundheit. Production by Eyal Gesundheit. To view a video of their performance, see this YouTube:
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