In my last few days in Israel, I interviewed four more important people in Israeli Jewish renewal (intentional small "r"; again, I'm avoiding movement language): Rabbi Ruth Gan Kagan, Itamar Lapid, Esteban Gottfried, and Rabbi Ela Merom. There were many other people whom I would also have liked to have interviewed this summer, but as readers of the blog know, I took classes for six weeks at the Conservative Yeshiva in Jerusalem, and I couldn't do both the classroom study and the independent study at the same time (except for reading articles at night on the subject).
(I wrote the following paragraph before I left Israel)
I leave in the middle of the night after Shabbat is over to return home - the Nesher sherut (pronounced shay-root - meaning taxi) is scheduled to pick me up at 2:45 am - so there is no point in going to sleep. This means that Shabbat will fold into the next day, and a very long one that will be. I'll go from Jerusalem to Ben Gurion Airport, near Tel Aviv, and fly from there to Vienna for an hour layover, then on to Dulles, where my friend Farlee [and, it turned out, her husband Glenn and son Uri, as well!] will be picking me up to return me to Silver Spring. Then I think I'll sleep a little before driving the next day to Rehoboth Beach to spend the rest of the week with Phyllis, Joel, and Ilan (sadly, Rachel can't be with us as well). At the beach, I don't expect to get much sun time in, considering the amount of work left on writing High Holiday sermons and services, practicing the cantillation and Torah readings for the High Holidays, planning weddings (two in September, helping with one in December), catching a two-day training session for my Transformative Text fellows project by Skype, and no doubt some things that I have momentarily forgotten! [Such as finishing up an incomplete in Hebrew!]
I'll discuss the remaining interviews in future posts. For now, here is the first.
Rabbi Ruth Gan Kagan
My first interview to be explored was with Rabbi Ruth Gan Kagan, whom I mentioned in my last post on my davenning experiences this summer in Israel. She was ordained nine years ago by Reb Zalman-Shachter-Shalomi through the Aleph Renewal Program. She was one of his closest students, having gone to Colorado for two years to study with him personally, cowrote a book with him in Hebrew in 2006 (published by Yediot, an important Israeli publishing house - she does not think that it needs to, or perhaps even should, be translated - to capture the thought of Reb Zalman in Hebrew is the key, she says), and now she teaches through the program as well.
Ruth grew up Orthodox and was active in B'nei Akiva. She always remembered being in interfaith relations from the age of nine onward. She became active in egalitarian prayer as a young woman and when she married, the family shifted into egalitarianism but remained traditional - her husband Michael now calls himself "a non-Orthodox Jew."
Ruth's modern-Orthodox parents are accepting of her becoming a rabbi. Ruth even related a story of her father reassuring the father of another female rabbinical student that a daughter becoming a rabbi is "not so bad." But her parents don't attend her service because of the musical instruments and mixed seating.
We met by a fish pond stocked with large goldfish in the shade of the garden of her comfortable home in Jerusalem. (This accounts for the loud background sound of moving water in my voice recording of the conversation!) The idyllic setting matched the often ethereal content of her answers. This was more a conversation, really, than a fact-seeking interview. (I marvel some times at how my journalistic background might have provided me with some skills and tools to do interviews but did little to enlighten me as to the range of beyond-journalism topics that I would encounter.) Ruth says that she has often been interviewed by rabbis and rabbinical students, and she has mentored many as well.
In my last post, I discussed the prayer experience at Nava Tehila (which means "beautiful praise") but did not tell you much about its rabbi. Ruth Gan Kagan began kehillat (congregation) Nava Tehila, which now meets once a month for kabbalat Shabbat (welcoming the Sabbath on Friday evening) services in the lower level of kehillat Kol Haneshama (again see my previous post to read about that synagogue). Nava Tehilla began as a group that met in her home once a month for three years, "as a lab," she says. "I still think it is a lab, but like one of those hothouses for high tech startup companies, you begin with all kinds of experiments, and then you land on one. We have been developing it since."
Then, as interest grew, and she began to collect musicians around her (the Nava Tehila Ensemble), and as the group expanded in numbers, services moved to the rented space in Kol Haneshama. Hundreds of people regularly attend the monthly kabbalat Shabbat service, word of which is mostly spread by word of mouth. That number often is boosted in the summer months by groups of students and others visiting from all over the world - some non-Jews also attend (I saw a monk praying there when I last attended). The two main prayer leaders, who both sing/pray beautifully and accompany themselves seamlessly with guitar, are supported by a non-static group of other musicians (the Levites, Ruth calls them, unashamedly referring to the musicians in the Temples of old), who play instruments and some of whom sing as well. Some compose the music that is used in the service. (Nava Tehila sells CDs of their music through their website.) They all meet before the service, not only for rehearsal but for spiritual work as well. "It is very intentional work," Ruth says, "The people who come and play with us play and pray; they just do so using their voices and instruments. They don't perform." They are Ruth's students, but she also thinks of them as "talmidim chaverim" (students-companions), because "I learn as much from them as they learn from me." They came to her to be trained, and they have become like "spiritual warriors," with their "weapons" being their instruments. The military analogy is not inappropriate - in both realms (after all, G-d is referred to as the Lord of Hosts (armies)), there is a knowledge of when one is serving and when one is not. Service does not happen when the set plan for some reason does not work, and there is no openness to alternative action. However, when there is openness to being accepting of what happens, to be "in surrender, that is the gateway to true spiritual practice."
In the service, which is musically beautiful, prayerful, and meditative, Ruth, in a flowing white dress is an embodiment of the Sabbath queen, moving gracefully about the inner space of the room, not simply sitting or standing in one place, while directing the congregation in a musical and contemplative journey through the weeks' themes and focuses, often bringing in passages or teachings from parshat hashavuah (the weekly Torah reading). She welcomes newcomers and old friends, celebrates the congregations simchot (happy events), facilitates meditation, and is a warm and wise presence.
Early in our conversation, Ruth mentioned Yair Sheleg's book From Ancient Hebrew to New Jew: the Renaissance in Israeli Culture. Sheleg is a journalist, writing for Ha'aretz, one of Israel's leading newspapers, and is part of the Israel Democracy Institute. His book discusses two major trends in this renaissance: that of batei midrash (literally, study houses) and prayer groups. The former provides intellectual content, and thereby attracts an elite, while the latter is for spiritual, emotional growth and attracts the masses. Ruth, however, does not agree with his dichotomy; for instance, she sees Ruth Calderon, who heads Almah in Tel Aviv (see one of my previous posts), as a very spiritual person. It is perhaps not accurate to see too much differentiation between the types of activities - many people draw great spiritual energy and emotional content from study of the classical Jewish texts. (I saw some of that energy in the end-of-the-year student presentations that I witnessed at Almah early in the summer - see my Tel Aviv Tell-all post).
Ruth is wary of the term "movement" to describe the varied activities that constitute the Israeli Jewish renaissance. "You call it a zerem (flowing water) and it stops flowing." Firstly, she says that she doesn't want to be part of a bigger movement; when asked what kind of a rabbi she is, she responds "a Jewish rabbi." Not aligning herself with Masorti or Reform seems natural - she doesn't see Orthodoxy as a movement, either. However, Nava Tehila is part of a network, Reshet Kehilot, of alternative prayer groups and communities, which is acceptable in that it has a structure but a flat one and no real head. (My next post will describe my interview with Itamar Lapid, who is very involved with the network and with the Shimshit community.) Ruth prefers to think of Nava Tehila not as part of a movement but as one of the emergent Israeli Judaism's communities. It should only be thought of as part of a movement, she says, if it "moves within people."
Rabbi Ruth Gan Kagan is certainly one of the best conduits for making Judaism move within people, and if Israeli Jewish renewal will continue to be enriched by leaders such as she, it will surely expand and become a real force in more and more individual Israelis' lives.
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