The letter sent a few months ago to the mayor of Munich had a distinctly Israeli flavor. In Germany, unlike the United States but like Israel, basic religious needs are paid for by the state, generally through the municipalities.
Heads of the Munich Jewish community, whose institutions have long been controlled by Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox groups, had a simple request for the mayor: they asked him to stop supporting the Reform community and to give them all the money earmarked for Jewish religious services. Their reasoning was simple, too: they told the mayor that rites and rituals were being performed in the Reform temples that had no connection to Judaism. The mayor acceded to their request.
The issue of Munich's Reform community was one of the topics on Rabbi Uri Regev's agenda when he began his new position as executive director of the World Union for Progressive Judaism (WUPJ), the international umbrella organization of all Reform communities. Regev, who in the last decade was considered the leader of Israel's Reform Jews, is used to such confrontations. In recent years he has devoted much of his efforts to them.
"These aren't only Israeli problems," Regev said this week. "There is a behavior pattern that is common to Orthodox communities everywhere in the world. In places where the Orthodox are in the minority, such as in the United States, they champion freedom of religion, oppose state interference in religious issues and seek to cooperate with Reform Jews. In places where the Orthodox control the local Jewish establishment, such as Munich, or places where they are powerful politically, as in Israel, they turn their backs on these principles and see nothing wrong in receiving government assistance for their battle against us.
"This is happening not only in Munich," Regev continued. "In Kiev, for example, they asked the authorities not to give the Reform community a building intended for a synagogue."
Regev, whose struggles against Haredi budget allocations have made him a favorite punching bag of Israel's ultra-Orthodox press, can now expand his efforts into the international arena. He sounds ready for battle, but also like a person who understands the difference between the situation in Israel and in other Jewish communities. If the Munich story had taken place in Israel, Regev would almost certainly have submitted a High Court petition against the mayor. "I still need to study the material," he said when asked whether he intended to pursue legal action in Germany.
Regev's appointment as head of the WUPJ is a milestone in the organization's history: Regev is the first Israeli selected to lead an organization that has up until now been associated almost exclusively with North American Jewry. All Regev's predecessors in the post were American or Canadian rabbis. The appointment of an Israeli rabbi symbolizes the development of three different processes taking place within the Reform movement in recent years.
The first process is taking place within Israel. The movement's activity in Israel, which became particularly intensive during the 1980s, turned it from a marginal religious movement consisting almost entirely of former Americans or Germans, into an influential body.
"I remember the Kedem synagogue in northern Tel Aviv during the `60s and `70s," Regev recalled, "and I look at Beit Daniel [the movement's large center in Tel Aviv] today. Not only the name has changed, everything has changed. The sanctuary is filled, people stand in the aisles."
The movement's expansion included a new crop of rabbis and leaders, nearly all of them Israelis in their 30s and 40s. Regev, 50, is distinctly their representative.
The second process is taking place in the United States, and it is connected to the dramatic change in the Reform movement's attitude toward the State of Israel. American Reform Jews, who in the 1950s and `60s avoided all association with Israel and Zionism, changed their spots. Not only did they formally join the Zionist movement, but also formulated a new worldview, in Regev's words, "recognizing Israel's centrality to Jewish unity in the world and expressing willingness to accept Israel as a force of leadership."
These ideological changes heightened the influence of Israel's Reform Jews within the movement's international institutions. The first sign of this was a few years ago, when Rabbi Asher Hirsch, for 25 years the executive director of WUPJ, decided to move his offices from New York to Jerusalem. Regev's appointment was the natural next step.
The third process is taking place in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. Since the end of communism there, Reform communities have been expanding in some of these states (including Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Estonia, Hungary and Georgia). The international leadership's desire to divert some of the movement's resources into developing these communities also affected the choice of executive director.
"My appointment," Regev said, "is also an expression of the complex international reality in which the movement operates today. Most of the weight is still in North America, but it is developing in the other continents as well. Not only in Eastern Europe, also in Australia and Latin America. The assumption was that an Israeli head would balance the movement's needs throughout the world."
Movement and lobby
Regev was born in Tel Aviv in 1951 to a secular family. As a child he had no interest in religion. His first contact with the Reform movement was in 1967, when he and another 12th-grader at Tichon Hadash were chosen to join a student delegation to Jewish communities in the United States.
The visits to Reform synagogues in America, Regev relates, "exposed me to a reality I hadn't known existed. I realized that tradition and modern life were not polar opposites and could be combined." After returning to Israel, he began going to Kedem and joined the small Reform youth movement.
Regev studied law within the framework of his military service and went on to practice law. In the late 1970s, however, Regev began studying at the Reform movement's rabbinical school, Hebrew Union College - Jewish Institute of Religion. After he was ordained, he became a full-time activist in the movement.
For the past 14 years, Regev has been executive director of the Israel Religious Action Center, the political arm of the Reform movement in Israel, through which the movement has petitioned the High Court on a wide range of issues. Regev, a charismatic figure who speaks eloquently and often sharply and has an impressive work output, made the center the most active institution within the movement. In doing so, he changed the face of the Reform movement. Unlike the Conservative movement, which focuses on creating congregations and synagogues and expanding its spiritual and educational activities, the Reform movement under Regev's guiding hand has concerned itself mainly with public, political activity. The result: the Reform movement's public and political influence has grown, and the number of people attending Conservative services regularly has increased.
Regev rejects this description. "Public activity is one of the four pillars on which the movement stands," he says. The other three are the congregations, the rabbinical and cantorial training programs and the educational system, which consists mainly of kindergartens. I agree with the argument that the Reform movement cannot exist without the congregations, kindergartens and synagogues. However, Reform Judaism that only has congregations, kindergartens and synagogues would be derelict in its responsibility to take part in shaping Israel's future. You can sit in temple and give a sermon, but the people who are already in the synagogue are the last ones who need those sermons. The real challenge is in finding a way to reach the wider public."
The right to marry
On this front, even Regev's critics admit, the Religious Action Center (RAC) has had several successes, the main one being to turn the movement into a factor that both the religious and political establishment cannot ignore.
The conversion issue is the most significant example of this. The long legal battle for the recognition of Reform conversion and the political struggle against the Conversion Law led the state to recognize Reform and Conservative conversions performed abroad. It led to the appointment of the Ne'eman Commission, which recommended the creation of a common conversion institute for all three streams of Judaism - a recommendation that was accepted by the Chief Rabbinate.
RAC also managed to stop certain inappropriate or discriminatory allocations intended for ultra-Orthodox targets. Some of these achievements were reached through the High Court, but not all of the High Court petitions dealt with genuinely important issues. At least one concerned a rather trivial matter: Attorney Regev once petitioned the High Court to prevent Shas spiritual leader Rabbi Ovadia Yosef from using the title "Rishon Letzion," on the grounds that it was reserved for the incumbent Sephardic chief rabbi of Israel only.
A few Reform movement members have reservations about Regev's indefatigable litigious efforts to put Reform and Conservative representatives on the municipal religious councils. They contend that these councils are marginal bodies not worth wasting significant resources on.
"The religious councils issue does look marginal, but it's an example of an important struggle on behalf of the rule of law in Israel," Regev replies.
He intends to take the struggle over freedom of religion and conscience to the international stage. He says that by taking away the right to marry and raise a family from hundreds of thousands of Israeli citizens, Israeli law has created an intolerable situation. Regev plans to enlist the movement worldwide in a battle to change the situation.
"The ability of the Israeli establishment to perpetuate this situation is based on hiding the truth from Diaspora Jewry," Regev said. "An unholy alliance has been struck between a majority in Israel's political establishment and a majority in the Diaspora Jewish establishment, whose aim is to prevent any discussion of these questions. I intend to break that alliance."
Regev seeks to explain "the absurdity of their behavior" to the major Jewish international organizations. The same organizations that in the past fought against the Soviet Union to allow Jewish immigration to Israel, Regev said, ignore the fact that Israel is preventing immigrants from Russia from marrying and raising families.