{"id":15441,"date":"2015-10-30T00:16:12","date_gmt":"2015-10-30T07:16:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/?p=15441"},"modified":"2015-10-28T15:14:28","modified_gmt":"2015-10-28T22:14:28","slug":"winning-equal-rights","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/2015\/10\/30\/winning-equal-rights\/","title":{"rendered":"Winning equal rights"},"content":{"rendered":"

Anat Hoffman, right, and another member of Women of the Wall, standing at the entrance to the Kotel in January 2013, as Charedi men look away. (photo by Michal Patelle (Women of the Wall) via Wikimedia Commons<\/a>)<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

For more than 30 years, Anat Hoffman has been fighting for individuals\u2019 rights. Notably, her work with Women of the Wall, which won legal recognition in 2013 for women\u2019s right to pray at the Kotel wearing prayer shawls and using a Torah. And her more than 10 years with the Israel Religious Action Centre, which has achieved government funding for non-Orthodox rabbis, earned multiple Supreme Court decisions recognizing Reform and Conservative conversions, and won a 2011 Supreme Court ruling making gender segregation on public buses illegal.<\/p>\n

The self-described troublemaker will be in Vancouver Nov. 15-18, speaking to several community groups<\/a>, as well as addressing the Jewish community as a whole on Nov. 16, 7:30 p.m., at Temple Sholom. Her topic \u2013 From the Back of the Bus to the Top of the Agenda.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m talking about the achievements of a family of organizations \u2013 Women of the Wall, the Religious Action Centre, the Jerusalem Open House, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, all sorts, we\u2019re a cluster of organizations for social change, and I am such an admirer of my colleagues,\u201d said Hoffman. \u201cAnd we\u2019re all looking at the same issues: how the monolithic interpretation of Judaism in the Jewish state is limiting and stunting our ability to enjoy Judaism and celebrate it.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn this respect, more than any other, including security, economics \u2026 we must dialogue with the Diaspora Jews. You have a stake in it, and you have an opinion. Israel is way too important to be left to the Israelis.\u201d<\/p>\n

She doesn\u2019t want Diaspora Jews to be silent, she said, because there are things that Israelis can learn from them. \u201cI\u2019m tired of Israeli arrogance, and the feeling that we know everything,\u201d she said. \u201cIf we know everything, how come we are in the situation we are in today on our 67th anniversary? That\u2019s number one: I am humbled by reality and I think we could use all the help we could get.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe second thing is, I think it\u2019s a joint project. I think it\u2019s the most important project of the Jewish people\u2026. The state of Israel, the fact that we have a sovereign Jewish state, is so exciting and so wonderful, and I think we\u2019re involved in the most important dialogue in our lives \u2013 you and I. What are the values of the Jewish state? What are Jewish values anyway? Are they the values of the Book of Joshua \u2013 smite them, kill them, annihilate them? Or the values of Isaiah? Who do we listen to, and who do we act like? I\u2019m an Isaiah person, he\u2019s my steering committee. I read him for inspiration and I think if he were alive in Israel today, he\u2019d be under administrative detention \u2013 the man had no mouth control.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo, I am driven to speak to Diaspora Jews, involve them in this dialogue and tell them to stop being quiet. If you are quiet, don\u2019t be surprised if Jerusalem turns into Tehran, don\u2019t be surprised if you wake up one day and you\u2019re ashamed to even be called Jewish because of what the Jewish state is doing. You have to make your statement known today \u2013 and, it turns out, the Israeli government is very sensitive to what Canadian Jews think\u2026. You\u2019re not using your fantastic nuisance value. You have so much of it and you don\u2019t use it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Acknowledging that Canadians are \u201cextremely harmony-seeking and somewhat conservative,\u201d Hoffman said people should speak up \u201cin whatever style fits you. If Israel arrests women wearing a tallis, praying out loud and trying to have a bat mitzvah at the holiest site of the Jewish people, if this is not something right, then you should mention it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The morning of her phone interview with the Jewish Independent<\/em>, Hoffman had attended a b\u2019not mitzvah at the Kotel, one girl had come from Brazil, the other from the United States. \u201cI had to stand in front of them and explain that we don\u2019t have a Torah scroll this morning because the rabbi [Shmuel Rabinowitz] refused to give me one for these two girls \u2013 he has 100 Torah scrolls for public use. I found a way to smuggle in a Torah, but I didn\u2019t use it today. Why? Because I didn\u2019t want to make the Jerusalem police look like horses\u2019 asses today because they have other things on their plate,\u201d she said, referring to the current spate of terror attacks.<\/p>\n

Because of the security situation, Hoffman had written Rabinowitz to ask him to make an exception that one day, and to allow the women to use one of the Kotel\u2019s Torahs, \u201cso that we do not burden the police with our problem,\u201d she said. \u201cI didn\u2019t even get an answer.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"photo<\/a>
Anat Hoffman (photo from Anat Hoffman)<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Despite \u201c30 years of troublemaking,\u201d Hoffman said she has never felt unsafe or isolated. \u201cNot only am I not persona non grata, I was elected and reelected to the city council of Jerusalem endless times. I have 24,000 voters in this right-wing, ultra-Orthodox city. I\u2019ve never felt threatened. My phone number is published in the phone book\u2026. Israel is a democracy and as someone with a dissenting voice \u2013 I always was a member of the opposition \u2013 I think I was rewarded for this.\u201d<\/p>\n

On the issue of gender segregation in public spaces, Hoffman said victory could be declared. \u201cWe certainly don\u2019t see new segregations going on, and the new ones are punished by the government now.\u201d<\/p>\n

Of the challenges that remain, she said, \u201cFreedom of religion and pluralism, recognition of the Reform and Conservative movements, recognition of women in religion, the issue of the Wall \u2013 on these issues of pluralism, the religious establishment is very, very strong in resisting any change because any change would mean the breaking of their empire.\u201d<\/p>\n

Also on the morning of her interview with the Independent<\/em>, former chief rabbi of Israel Yona Metzger was indicted for allegedly accepting some $2 million in bribes. \u201cThey have a corrupt system and they\u2019re fighting to keep it because they are very spoiled and used to it, and there\u2019s a lot of resistance to change in that power structure. That structure is the next frontier.\u201d<\/p>\n

Calling the Women of the Wall, \u201cthe Little Engine that Could,\u201d Hoffman said, \u201cWe\u2019re pushing for equality and, in the end, we will win. Am I going to see the end of this struggle? I\u2019m not sure, it\u2019s taking too long. But is it going to be won? There is no doubt in my mind that it will be won.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hoffman said she is pushing for a model she learned about in a Limmud South Africa conference a number of years ago. The presenter \u2013 Simonne Horwitz \u2013 shared stories about the small Jewish community of Saskatoon. In the winter, people help each other get to synagogue, she said, \u201cand they don\u2019t care if you\u2019re Orthodox, Reform or Conservative. And the congregation, the building of the synagogue, it\u2019s Orthodox if a majority of Orthodox show and it\u2019s Reform if the most Reform show, and the one structure can become whatever it is that the people want it to be at that moment.\u201d<\/p>\n

Horwitz told the small community\u2019s stories \u201cwith so much humor, so much joy,\u201d said Hoffman. \u201cI come from the largest Jewish community in the world, and I have a lot to learn from Saskatchewan, Canada.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hoffman said about Israel, \u201cI want us to recognize all streams. I want our structures of religion to be able to be as pluralistic as possible. I want freedom in the market called religious services, and may the best rabbi win.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hoffman encouraged everyone to come hear her speak. \u201cI would like to make sure that people who are not liberal, feminist, peacenik, that they know that they are very, very welcome to come dialogue with me. I\u2019m very interested in speaking to more than the choir. I love to dialogue with people who are willing to look at their opinions and check them out with this<\/em> Israeli. There are Israelis of many kinds. Israelis like me don\u2019t come to your area very often, and I would very much like to dialogue with people who disagree with me, in a civilized manner. Even if you leave me with your same opinions, at least you\u2019ve aired them out a little bit\u2026. It\u2019s a Jewish thing to do. We\u2019re asked to leave our comfort zone a few times a year: when we leave home to build a sukkah, when we throw every piece of bread from our house\u2026. So, I invite very much those people who are not in my natural habitat to come and talk to me.\u201d<\/p>\n

She also stressed that it is not regular Israelis who object to the changes she and her colleagues and supporters are demanding, but rather \u201cthe establishment that has so much to lose. And it\u2019s all the folly of Israel. By giving one stream the political power, huge political budgets and the ability to monopolize all religious services in Israel, we\u2019ve corrupted something so important for Judaism \u2013 the free spirit of criticism, the art of argument. All this is gone now because there\u2019s only one way. Since when do the Jews have a chief rabbi? We never had a pope, never. We\u2019ve always argued. We argued with Moses, Moses argued with God, the prophets argued with the kings, the kings wanted to resign, God resigns, Moses throws his hands up! We\u2019ve always argued. The Talmud is one long argument. We come from a fantastic core of arguments. It all ended with the state of Israel, the argument ended, there is an establishment, the Orthodox establishment, and it\u2019s so bad for orthodoxy, bad for Israel and bad for Judaism.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Anat Hoffman, right, and another member of Women of the Wall, standing at the entrance to the Kotel in January 2013, as Charedi men look away. (photo by Michal Patelle (Women of the Wall) via Wikimedia Commons) For more than 30 years, Anat Hoffman has been fighting for individuals\u2019 rights. Notably, her work with Women […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":15442,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4329],"tags":[4739,4740,4330,4742,4741,4738],"class_list":["post-15441","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-israel","tag-anat-hoffman","tag-gender-segregation","tag-israel","tag-israel-religious-action-centre","tag-religious-equality","tag-women-of-the-wall"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15441","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15441"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15441\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15442"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15441"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15441"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15441"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}