Report of the Israel Task Force - March 2003
Session III
In the third and final session, Task Force members addressed a series of questions designed to surface recommendations for each of the key themes listed above.Specifically, in terms of increasing leadership and tolerance for diversity, Task Force members discussed:
- Should BJ seek to promote a consensus vision of Israel, or is our role to serve as a catalyst for fostering individual perspectives and diversity of thought?
- How do we embark on a process that will enable us to listen to and learn from each other as a community as we grapple with our fears and our hopes for Israel?
- How do we support the rabbis in their quest to speak openly and passionately about Israel from the bima?
- How can we maximize our Limud program and educational curriculum for children and families to build broad-based knowledge of Israel's history/Zionism/current issues?
- How can our educational efforts foster the kind of debate that breeds individual values and a deepening personal commitment to Israel?
In exploring crisis response and other types of projects, they considered:
- How do we develop an integrated strategy for our Israel-related activities in order to promote unity and broad community enthusiasm for them?
- Given both our thoughts about BJ's role and our finite resources as a synagogue, what are the one or two most critical and appropriate projects for the BJ community to embrace in support of Israel?
Recommendations
The rich conversation stimulated by the Session III questions described above resulted in numerous recommendations for the rabbis and the BJ community to consider. Task Force members felt that...To increase leadership and tolerance for diversity we should:
- Support and encourage the rabbis to make their perspectives about Israel explicit. Their views on Israel teach us and challenge us to engage with Israel, and to develop our own views of Israel.
- Provide opportunities for more and deeper discussion of complex ideas, including more opportunities for communication among members, and between members and rabbis.
- Develop, as individuals, more "personal ideology" in our views about Israel.
- Find ways to embrace diversity as a Jewish value and help the congregation feel comfortable with having a serious discourse with disputation.
- Build an understanding of the centrality of the Israel experience and the historical path to Zionism; it's also important to push members to reunite with the original vision of Israel and with how that vision is part of our destiny.
- Engage people on both ideological and practical levels. Working together on issues that have nothing to do with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict could give us common ground to pave the way for dealing subsequently with more difficult political realities.
- Have announcements from the bima and in our publications that focus on a dynamic view of Israeli life.
- Place programmatic emphasis on support for young people in Israel by their American/BJ counterparts.
- Increase travel to Israel with members of the community.
- Consider using the Heschel School's video conferencing capability to create personal connections with Israel.
- Encourage members – through a major infusion of education ‹ to develop their own views (or "ideologies") about what Israel could and should be. Educational efforts should lend historical perspective about democracy, human rights, the peace process, and Palestinian viewpoints, among others.
- Show documentaries on a regular basis and have authors do book-readings on Israel.
- Provide education/courses/ beit midrash for BJ, including having speakers come in, courses taught, and a curriculum developed through our communal beit midrash that would focus on text and Israel.
- Enhance education through biography or story telling, thereby making the connection more personal.
In exploring crisis response and other types of projects we should:
- Create a Board Steering Committee for Israel similar to those established for Social Action/ Social Justice, Education, Beyond BJ, and other areas. Board members should be directly responsible for determining how to continue to integrate Israel more fully into our community offerings. The Israel Steering Committee should include representatives of the BJ Israel Committee and the BJ Israel Action Committee.
- Identify additional communal projects that could have an Israel focus from the "community conversation" process that is part of the upcoming BJ Social Action/ Social Justice faith-based organizing initiative.
- Institute projects that promote working together across our community and that build on the positive aspects of initiatives currently happening in Israel (for instance, one Task Force member suggested sports).
Areas of Inquiry for Community Consideration
Taken as a whole, the recommendations that emerged from the Israel Task Force's deliberations reflect Task Force members' consensus about BJ's need for:- Increased leadership, particularly from the rabbis, to guide our Israel-focused discussion and initiatives;
- Greater tolerance for diversity of opinion to enable constructive dialogue across the community;
- More personal engagement of members with Israel;
- Enhanced learning opportunities so that members of the community are well informed and better able to converse from an educated point of view; and
- A Board-level focus on Israel through the creation of an Israel Steering Committee to determine, guide, and support BJ's Israel activities.
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