“A
lthough for millennia Judaism played a central role in forging and unifying our people today American and Israeli Jews… find themselves increasingly divided on religious matters.” The writer of those words clearly has some brushing up to do on Jewish history a three-thousand-year-old journey that has been marked by a long litany of conflicts and schisms revolving precisely around religious matters.
Yet the writer of the Tablet article in which those words appear is someone who ought to know history having made some himself — former refusenik and current chairman of the Jewish Agency Anatoly Sharansky. He’s writing to urge resuscitation of the compromise he crafted under which the heterodox movements would be given their own enlarged prayer space in the Robinson’s Arch archaeological park next to the Kosel with one entrance for both.
He observes that the “historic nature of the compromise reached and the destructive consequences of its looming failure” is based on the fact that it “granted legitimacy to liberal communities while acknowledging that Orthodoxy remainsIsrael’s de facto religious common denominator.” I don’t know that it achieves the latter but it undoubtedly accomplishes the former which is precisely why it’s unacceptable.
How many misleading statements can one pack into one paragraph? Let’s count. Sharansky writes (with my commentary following):
