{"id":32329,"date":"2019-04-12T03:50:01","date_gmt":"2019-04-12T10:50:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/?p=32329"},"modified":"2019-04-10T16:04:57","modified_gmt":"2019-04-10T23:04:57","slug":"educating-rabbinical-students","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/2019\/04\/12\/educating-rabbinical-students\/","title":{"rendered":"Educating rabbinical students"},"content":{"rendered":"

T\u2019ruah students help plant trees in the Hebron Hills. (photo from T\u2019ruah)<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

U.S.-based T\u2019ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights works in Jewish social justice circles in Israel and North America.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe work with human rights of both Israelis and Palestinians…. We\u2019ve also worked on introducing rabbis and rabbinical students, and also congregations, to what\u2019s happening in West Bank and more,\u201d executive director Rabbi Jill Jacobs told the Independent<\/em>.<\/p>\n

T\u2019ruah, which supports a two-state solution, offers the Year-in-Israel program for rabbinical students.<\/p>\n

\u201cStudents study in Jerusalem at various institutions,\u201d said Jacobs, \u201cbut they don\u2019t necessarily get to see human rights issues up close. We take them once a month to see a human rights issue on the ground, either in the West Bank with Palestinians, in Bedouin Israeli communities in the Negev, asylum seekers, etc.\u201d<\/p>\n

At these sessions, students meet with Israeli human rights and other leaders on the ground. The program is held during students\u2019 free time, separate from their regular studies.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe goal of the program is to help them develop a rabbinic moral voice,\u201d said Jacobs. \u201cAs rabbis, they\u2019re going to be called on to speak about Israel. The question is, how do they talk about Israel as a rabbi? Rabbis talk out of their values, and also are generally dealing with politically diverse communities\u2026. So, the question is, how can a rabbi speak in a way that will push people to listen to perspectives they might not otherwise listen to, [based on] Jewish texts and Jewish values?\u201d<\/p>\n

Jacobs recognizes that the information they provide is not comprehensive. Their focus is to give students the opportunity to interact with human beings \u2013 to meet Palestinians, Bedouins and others and learn from them what their life experience is like.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s also crucial to us that they are meeting with Israeli human rights leaders,\u201d said Jacobs. \u201cVery often, there\u2019s a dichotomy that suggests that being pro-Israel means supporting the right-wing government of [Binyamin] Netanyahu and that being pro-Palestinian means being against Israel. We\u2019re pro-human rights and we want them to meet Israelis working every single day to push for human rights in their own country because they love their country. We want them to see that there are actually people who are changing the situation.<\/p>\n

\"photo<\/a>
T\u2019ruah students planting trees. (photo from T\u2019ruah)<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cWe hear a lot from the students that our program gives them hope. Sometimes, they are so hopeless about what is happening in Israel and then they meet people, both Jewish and Palestinian communities, who are trying to change their situation.\u201d<\/p>\n

One T\u2019ruah graduate is Rabbi Philip Gibbs, spiritual leader of Congregation Har El in West Vancouver.<\/p>\n

\u201cDuring my year in Israel, during my second year of rabbinical school, I had the opportunity to then be a fellow with T\u2019ruah for their rabbinical student program,\u201d Gibbs told the Independent<\/em>. \u201cI really appreciated the opportunity, both because, at least the year I was doing it, there was clearly a huge focus on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But, also because the way, in terms of educating about social justice issues in Israel, they were able to show some of the other issues happening \u2013 whether it was meeting with Bedouins, talking to some asylum seekers from Africa … really seeing what their home-grown needs are and seeing how it developed into a strong sense of the how they were fighting for many of those needs through the legal systems in Israel.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gibbs met with Palestinians who had been displaced from the Jerusalem area after the 1967 war. \u201cWe had the chance to hear their narrative,\u201d he said, \u201chighlighting how their status as refugees during that conflict had really come into question because of both the policies of Jordan, as they were occupying the area, as well as some of the motivations of different settler organizations in their attempt to create a much stronger Jewish presence behind the Green Line… I felt like that was more educating us in understanding the way that the nature of a lot of these neighbourhoods had been going back and forth.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor the Israeli settlers, they felt they were reclaiming a neighbourhood that was Jewish. For the Palestinians that had been living there, their legal status was caught up in layers of legal confusion of having that area under control of many different authorities over the past 150 years.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gibbs has not yet had an opportunity to bring this part of his rabbinical education to his congregation directly, but it has definitely played a role in how he shares his perspective regarding, for example, the upcoming Israeli election.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m making sure there\u2019s a deeper sense of having the recognition that a lot of these questions that are coming up, some of these issues are on the minds of most Israelis \u2026 but that, no matter what, a lot of the work that human rights organizations are doing, a lot of that is going through the overt legal system of Israeli government.\u201d<\/p>\n

Regarding the many Israelis he has met who work for human rights organizations, Gibbs said he appreciated the way their main motivation was a deep sense of trying to make their country the best it can be, noting that every government needs to be transparent in their treatment of their citizens, allowing for a certain amount of criticism.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s something coming from a place of love and it\u2019s the most ideal way to get things done in a constructive way,\u201d said Gibbs. \u201cPeople can debate about how much people living outside of Israel are supposed to be making any sort of direct intervention, which happens on both sides of the political spectrum, but, I think, there\u2019s absolutely nothing that we should hide in terms of understanding the full array of political work happening in Israel.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rebeca Kuropatwa<\/strong> is a Winnipeg freelance writer.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

T\u2019ruah students help plant trees in the Hebron Hills. (photo from T\u2019ruah) U.S.-based T\u2019ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights works in Jewish social justice circles in Israel and North America. \u201cWe work with human rights of both Israelis and Palestinians…. We\u2019ve also worked on introducing rabbis and rabbinical students, and also congregations, to what\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":32330,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[1200,2880,4330,218,7345,8890,5994,1959],"class_list":["post-32329","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world","tag-diaspora","tag-har-el","tag-israel","tag-judaism","tag-philip-gibbs","tag-rabbis","tag-truah","tag-tikkun-olam"],"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\/32329","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=32329"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32329\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32330"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32329"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32329"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32329"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}