Israel should take more responsibility for Diaspora

GEOFF SIFRIN

The time has passed when what Israel expected of Jews worldwide was only to make aliyah and to send money. The focus has turned. Israel should assume broader responsibility for Diaspora communities’ well-being, whether they plan to come to Israel or not.

“I believe that Israel must adopt a leadership role concerning the Diaspora to promote Jewish identity. Israel is no longer the needy one it once was and more should be done to deepen Israel Diaspora relationships, thereby furthering the unity of the Jewish people.

“This is contentious,” he says. “Traditional Zionism may say you are legitimising the Diaspora. My answer is that Jews are already living there and they don’t need us to legitimise them. There have been Diaspora Jewish communities for 2 000 years. While they are there it is our responsibility to serve them.”  

He does believe that ultimately the Jews’ place is Israel. “But ‘ultimate’ can take a long time to materialise. Love for Israel must happen in more sophisticated ways.”

The religious Zionist establishment in Israel focuses on the Land of Israel with values like establishing settlements, studying in yeshiva, developing Torah in the modern world, and so on.

“Going to serve a Diaspora community in Jewish education is not top among its priorities. Now, the Israeli government has committed up to 100 million shekels for the benefit of the Diaspora community. This is matching funding of one shekel for every two raised by Diaspora communities. 

“This initiative of changing attitude has been driven by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Economy Minister Naftali Bennett. 

Rabbi Perez matriculated at Yeshiva College in Johannesburg, then studied in Israel, receiving rabbinic ordination in 1998 and serving in the IDF as an army chaplain. After gaining a degree in education and Jewish philosophy at Hertzog Teachers’ Training College in Gush Etzion, he returned to South Africa in 1999 as Mizrachi rabbi, aiming to build commitment to Torah and Zionism among South African Jewry. He has been managing director of Yeshiva College schools, the largest Torah school in South Africa, for six and a half years. He is married and has four children.

His family origins are unusual for South African Jews. His mother derives from Litvak Jews, as do most South Africans; but his father is a Moroccan Jew who made aliyah in the 1950s, came to South Africa in 1967 with the merchant navy, then met the daughter of the founder of Jewish Guild Country Club in Johannesburg, Gail Gecelter, who he married.

The family were traditional, non-practising Orthodox Jews, like many in South Africa – “Friday night shul Jews”. He was sports-crazy and went reluctantly to Yeshiva College, where it wasn’t a focus then, but he continued high-level sport elsewhere with Wanderers Cricket and Balfour Park soccer. 

Over time he got into Yiddishkeit with the help of the “warm and open-minded” rabbis such as Rabbi Barry Marcus and Rabbi Avraham Tanzer, and his family became religious.

His was a typical white northern suburbs Jewish family during apartheid, he says, with domestic helpers. “There was always respect and sympathy. My parents voted PFP. As a Balfour Park soccer player in the mid-1980s, we played alongside black youngsters – not common at the time. When there were slurs against them, the Jewish kids would stand up for them. There was tremendous camaraderie.”

During the tumultuous years of the late 1980s, when violence and political unrest threatened to plunge the country into anarchy, he was in Israel, but returned in 1999 five years after the 1994 democratic elections.

“South Africans living in Israel said I was mad to go back,” he recalls. “Former South Africans feel they must justify their own decision to leave the country. Many struggle with how good it still is here; they have this dissonance: You wanted to leave because it’s not good, but it actually is still good for the Jewish community.

“In those first few years here, there was no Shabbat table where there wasn’t a discussion about whether we should leave South Africa. Today you don’t hear that negativity. So many young families are now settled.

“I recall as a nine-year-old boy going to visit Israel, and black British visitors asking where I was from. I just couldn’t say South Africa then. But today you are proud to be South African. Outside of Coke, Mandela is one of the most famous world names.”

Jews have largely withdrawn from politics in the emerging South Africa, feeling they are so few in numbers, they can hardly impact. But they have other ways – through business and civil society and the non-profit sector. Tikkun olam is what Jews are all about.”

Looking forward for South African Jewry he highlights the exorbitant private schooling costs countrywide as a big challenge. 

“I don’t know how average income parents manage to pay for their kids’ education but at the same time, having run a school, there are no simple and obvious solutions.”

Finding competent teachers will be a problem for the future. The old teacher training colleges have closed and education is not a favoured profession for whites and Jews. So too, for religious and Hebrew teachers, despite an increasingly religious South Arfrican community. Teachers might have to come from Israel.

What about leadership in South African Jewry? This is a conservative community, he says, and it should keep this ethos.

“But it must broaden the umbrella. As South Africa catches up with other democracies, South African society is becoming more open. During apartheid when the country was cushioned, one benefit for the Jewish community was that it remained insular. But that era is over. Now, youth are being exposed to more influences.”

One consequence is that traditional Friday night shul attendance is decreasing. Thirty years ago, even non-religious Jews went to shul regularly on Friday nights. Now shuls have to think creatively to keep people involved Jewishly.

 For example, when the Jewish religious band the Maccabeats were recently here, the shul was packed with young people of all ages whom our traditional chazzanim are unable to attract.

Given the need for Jewish kids to be part of South African society, is it good that 85 per cent attend Jewish schools? He feels it is essential to maintain the Jewish schools, part of “building our own brand”. But we must ensure we interact more with broad society, he stresses, for example by twinning Jewish schools with others, “in terms of real involvement, not just charity”.

Growing hostility towards Israel today is not just from non-Jews, but also from extreme left wing Diaspora Jews and BDS.

“It’s not just about Israeli politics or a particular Israeli government,” he says, “but about delegitimising Israel’s right to exist. To defend Israel is a major tenet of Jewish identity. Rabbi Kook says an extremist, like some of those who only see bad in Israel, is a person who takes one true value and makes it the only value to the exclusion of everything else.”

Jewish youth movements like Bnei Akiva, Habonim and Betar, have been central to bolstering support for Israel. But he believes that Habonim South Africa, once the most important engine for this, has been taking an unfortunate direction in recent years.

He says: “Some in Habonim adopt a basic anti-Israel stance, which is a great pity. Habonim must find again a broad liberal Zionism not built on delegitimising Israel’s right to exist.”

Fourteen years since returning to South Africa, he exudes optimism about the country. “People have written it off for 50 years. But it has not gone that way. I feel tremendous positivity. Our schools are fuller than ever, young couples are staying, things have settled in the Jewish community.

“It is a place of reconciliation and hope. I don’t feel I am leaving South Africa – I am going to Israel to play a broader role. I don’t identity with people who say: ’At least you’re leaving South Africa.’ I have so enjoyed being in South Africa and serving our community.”

Moving to broad philosophical issues, there are often calls from Jewish leaders for the community to be ”unified”. Given the diverse nature of Jews, is this actually possible or even desirable?

“Unity and diversity go to the heart of life in general,” he says. “Jews have often been called stiff-necked – Rabbi Kook says stiff-necked people can only see one way. Unity does not have to mean uniformity.

“On the other hand, diversity is important, but if you go only for diversity without something to unify, there’s no unity. Two key elements that can bring diverse people together today are Torah and Israel. For example, Yom Ha’atzmaut and Sinai Indaba are the two best-attended events on the local Jewish calendar, bringing many thousands of South African Jews together.”

One contentious topical issue growing around the world is homosexuality and same sex marriage, which is now legal in South Africa and elsewhere. Major Jewish institutions will battle to avoid addressing this. Is there a Jewish way to embrace it?

“It is impossible from a Torah point of view to sanction same sex marriage,” he says. “But how do you deal with the reality? I wouldn’t have a problem with a homosexual joining my shul, even though the Torah says homosexuality is wrong.

“The Torah forbids many other things – not keeping Shabbat, cheating in business (which the Torah calls an abomination) etc, yet we do not deny people membership in our shuls if they don’t observe these commandments..

“There is a difference between sanctioning something and dealing with people who are already in that situation. Receding from it doesn’t prevent it.

“South African Jewry has a conservative tradition. The challenge is how to ensure it does not stifle liberal thinking. The same applies in reverse for a liberal community – how not to stifle conservative thinking.”

He sees three main goals in his new position. “Firstly, working towards Israel taking responsibility for Diaspora Jewry. Secondly, promoting Torah values in a broad and deep sense, to strengthen Jewish identity. Thirdly, tackling questions of Jewish peoplehood and Jewish community as well as Israel advocacy: In Israel we have a great sense of peoplehood; in the Diaspora there is a great sense of community.

“The challenge of Diaspora is to strengthen the sense of Jewish peoplehood, and in Israel it is to strengthen the sense of community.”