Rabbi Uri Regev was awarded the Doctor of Divinity, honoris causa, at HUC-JIR/Jerusalem Ordination and Academic Convocation on November 28, 2011 /  21 Cheshvan 5772.

Rabbi Regev presented the Ordination and Academic Convocation address:

Israel is at a crossroads.  It is our hope that Israel after the tent protests, which swept the country’s squares and streets this past summer, will not be identical to the Israel that preceded it.  Hundreds of thousands attended the protests and its events.  While this protest praised itself for its repeated slogan “The People want civil justice”, truth be told, it mostly evolved around a new economic order that would benefit the middle class, rather than a holistic, comprehensive demand for social justice.  Topics such as Israel’s minorities or the growing religious extremism were ignored as priorities.  Segregation of women in the public domain and their growing marginalization in the army are just the last manifestations of this growing religious extremism, which brought the former head of the Mossad to public decry these days that it poses a greater threat to Israel that Iran’s Ahmadinejad.

The public faces great challenges: peace and security, education, urban development and environmental conservation, the renewal of the Zionist vision, religion and state, minorities, refugees and foreign workers and many others.  We assemble here at this festive event, Israelis, Diaspora leaders and members of the Board of Governors of Hebrew Union College – Jewish Institute of Religion, all partners in the desire to advance the State of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state.  In this regard we are no different from millions in Israel and the Diaspora who confront with these questions.  We need to ask what is our uniqueness, what added value do we bring to this conversation?

The voice of religion is clearly heard in three main arenas, explicitly or implicitly, usually for worse rather than for better: equality of women, treatment toward the Arab minority and in freedom of religion and conscience.  It is particularly in these areas that the voice of Reform Judaism and its partners, from Orthodoxy to Humanist Judaism, is of greatest importance.  In the area of equality of women, the work of the Reform movement both in Israel and abroad and of the Hebrew Union College are paving the way in forging new models of participation and equality for women in religious life.  One should particularly celebrate the fact that in recent years, voices have arisen in the Orthodox community who seek to “sanctify the new” and advance the role of women in religious life.  Their pioneering work deserves every accolade, especially given the challenges and obstacles placed in the path of these groups in attaining this goal. 

Nevertheless, we cannot lose sight of developing phenomena in Israel in recent years and the mounting religious extremism under the protective cover of terms such as “tzniut (modesty)” and “mehadrin (highest/strictest standards)” resulting with meteoric growth of gender segregated bus lines in public transportation, growing separation of the sexes in formal and informal education, in public spheres from medical services to supermarkets and now, a growing threat to the role of women in the IDF.  This last threat recently brought 19 retired generals to protest the slippery slope which we have already begun descending.  The outlook on the ground is bleak, and with all the achievements of the past, the struggle is still yet to come.  This clearly does not only impact domestic life in Israel itself, but has far-reaching ramifications in terms of the Diaspora’s younger generation to identify with, be inspired by and attracted to Israel.

The role religion has played in Israel’s implementation of its core values is a sad state of affairs.  We should have been guided by the principle “the stranger that resides amongst you shall be like your own citizens…you shall love the stranger as yourself”.  Time limitations prevent me from adequately addressing the ignoring of this principle.  I will instead dedicate my time to the third arena to which I’ve committed most of my professional and public life: advancing the vision of an Israel in which freedom of religion and conscience are not merely an abstract promise etched on our Declaration of Independence, but a full fledge reality. 

Already in my law school days, some 40 years ago, I dedicated most of my attention to questions of conversion and marriage in Israel.  The legal analysis I conducted at the time became the foundation for legal petitions which emerged as landmarks in the struggle over the “Who is a Jew” debates, which I led together with my associates at the Israel Religious Action Center.  Already then, I sought to add Jewish philosophy and Talmud to legal studies, feeling that Jewish textual study, where existential struggle has become a matter of course, is an authentic expression of the progressive Judaism and the law in Israel.

However, we should not be under illusion.  The gap between reality and the vision is painful, and at times grows even wider.  The Religious Freedom International Comparative Table, which was recently published by the Israel Democracy Institute gave Israel a grade of “0”, placing it in the lowest category among Saudi Arabia, Syria and China.  It is a current reminder of this gap, a reality in which hundreds of thousands of Israeli citizens cannot legally marry at all, in which thousands of public bus rides are taking place every day where women are required to sit in the back, where Israel’s security and economy are being threatened by the phenomenon of yeshiva students who are publicly funded and whose numbers ballooned from 400 army exemptions given in 1948 to some 60,000 yeshiva students who dodge the draft today under the pretext of “the Torah is my vocation”.  They constitute approximately 15% of the current class size and if no change occurs, this percentage will grow to 25% in just a few years.  Every year, 100,000 yeshiva students receive stipends from the public and refuse to enter into the workforce and provide for their families’ livelihood, a phenomenon that has no precedent in the history of the Jewish People nor parallels where Jewish communities reside.

In Israel, Reform and Conservative converts to Judaism not welcomed into the Jewish fold and are treated as second class Jews and citizens.  Religious extremism has gotten to the point where even Rabbi Ovadia Yosef (spiritual leaders of Shas), has been titled “Reform” in Mea Shearim graffiti and Rabbi Drukman, who headed the conversion authority on behalf of the government received the dubious title of “Rasha” (Evil) in a ruling of the High Rabbinic Court of Appeals and had his conversions nullified after the validity of the conversions of IDF soldiers came into question.  In Israel, political parties refuse to stand at the forefront of the necessary battle for change; they have a political fixation that prefers selling out citizens’ rights and dignity for meager retuns, buying off the ultra-Orthodox votes instead of establishing a civil coalition, essential for the invigoration of Zionism and democracy.

The majority of these dilemmas have not been part of the agenda at the General Assembly of the Jewish Federations of North America that convened in December.  The Jewish leadership there for the most part still refuses to open its eyes and understand the existential threat we face which goes far beyond the “Who is a Jew”  battle which pops up every ten years or so.

Nevertheless, one should still maintain a level of careful optimism and know that change can be brought about, that the reality can be turned around.  Hiddush - Freedom of Religion in Israel, the NGO that I currently head, engages in an in-depth periodical polling of public opinion in Israel.  Our studies consistently indicate an overwhelming majority of 80%+ who want to see freedom of religion and equality become a reality in Israel.  A similar percentage expresses dissatisfaction with government handling of religion and state.  A consistent majority that wants pluralism, freedom of choice in marriage, equal sharing of civic burden, enforcement of core curriculum, equal recognition of conversions of all streams of Judaism and more.

Israel is at a crossroads.  It faces an existential battle that was foreseen by Theodore Hertzel and Haim Weitzman before it even came into being.  They foresaw that we would be forced to engage in a culture war to defend freedom of religion and the well being of the State if we wish to survive. This struggle must be guided by the dual-faceted strategy described in the bible as “turn away from evil and do good.”  We must increase the light of Judaism, and at the same time, fight against the threatening darkness in every possible forum whether public, legal, or media.  This is a struggle in which Israel and the Diaspora ought to cooperate.  The College has great importance in this arena, in internalizing the critical need for this existential struggle and translating it into the way rabbis, educators, cantors and communal service professionals are being trained in Israel and the US.  

The leadership of Diaspora Jewry, especially North America, with the exception of the “Who is a Jew” debate, has unfortunately never set their participation in the battle over the image of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state as a central goal for itself.  Neither have the non-Orthodox movements themselves put this struggle at the forefront.  The question of “Who is a Jew” ought not be the main and singular struggle they are involved in.  American Jewry must take a stand on other cardinal questions that impact directly on its relationship with Israel, on the ability of the younger generation in the Diaspora to identify with Israel and seek inspiration from it to strengthen their own Jewish identity.  Israel is undergoing a dangerous process of religious radicalization; the new demands and stringencies are so far fetched that at times, we feel like we are living in a horror movie.  He who does not join this necessary struggle will not be able to brush off responsibility.

And so it is on the Israeli side.  This debate cannot be solely focused on redistribution of resources and the mounting prices of consumer goods.  Social justice is not merely a shopping list of economic demands announced by the leaders of the tent protests.  The leaders of the protest movement must understand that which the Trajtenberg Committee understood so well; there will be no social justice without confronting the challenges posed by the ultra-Orthodox community.  Ultra-Orthodox leadership has not made secret its attempts to thwart the Committee’s recommendations and prevent the adoption of any recommendations that limit the privileges of the ultra-Orthodox sector.  The tent leadership must abandon the mindset that avoids confrontation and join the demand for equal sharing of civil burderns, the army and national service, the workforce and the enforcement of core curriculum.  Without these recommendations, not only will there not be social justice, but the burden on the middle class will grow to the point of collapse.  In the same vein, how can one discuss social justice when hundreds of thousands of citizens are denied the ability to realize the basic human right of legally founding a family?

We must return to the core values that we have promised ourselves and the world at the outset of the State of Israel, which holds the key to the future of Israel and its ability to thrive, which contain the uniqueness of our movement and this institution: a state “founded on the principles of liberty, justice and peace according to the visions of the prophets of Israel” and which will “uphold full social and political equality to all its citizens, regardless of religion, race or gender and will ensure freedom of religion and conscience!"