San Diego (special) -- How did the situation of Jew fighting Jew over issues of Jewish identity come to be such a problem in Israel? You might want to blame Napoleon Bonaparte. Or another likely culprit is the Israeli news media.

Such were the not entirely tongue-in-cheek conclusions offered respectively by a Reform rabbi now teaching at Hebrew Union College in Los Angeles, and an Orthodox political scientist who is a professor at Bar Ilan University in Israel. 

Rabbi Reuven Firestone and Prof. Sam Lehman-Wilzig were the speakers on Sunday, Feb. 15, at the annual Galinson-Glickman Symposium sponsored by the Lipinsky Institute for Judaic Studies. 

Joseph Glickman, father-in-law of Murray Galinson, was in the front row at Temple Emanu-El to represent the donor families, but other members were at funeral services held simultaneously at Greenwood Memorial Park for the Lipinsky Institute's co-founder, Dorris Lipinsky, who died the day before. Firestone said that prior to the time of Napoleon the divisions that rent the Jewish world today were all but unknown.. "The two major components of Jewish identity--peoplehood and religion--were not separated," said the rabbi who also is an historian. While ritual practices varied from area to area, these were "cultural dialects just like linguistic dialects," Firestone said. "In addition to regional differences,

PROF. SAM LEHMAN-WILZIG

some individuals were more pious in their observance, scrupulously observing the commandments while others were more lax in their Jewish practice...

"If Chaim Yankel doesn't keep the Sabbath as strictly as Menachem Mendel, that may cause some eyebrows to be raised, or some grumbling, or complaining in the community, but that is life," Firestone said. "It would be extremely rare for them to be branded as heretics, or pushed aside outside the pale of Judaism." 

After the French Revolution, Napoleon extended the concept of "liberte, fraternite and egalite " to all peoples living in France, including the majority Catholics, and the minority Protestants (Huguenots) and Jews, Firestone lectured.

In 1806, Napoleon convened a meeting of Jewish rabbis and notables (some called it a new Sanhedrin) and asked them a variety of questions intended to establish whether Jews could be "modern" and be treated by the French state as no different than any other French citizen except in their religion.

"The notables and the rabbis hemmed and hawed, and the answer they gave was 'yes, but,'" Firestone said. "The 'but' meant that the traditional model of Jewish identity, known through the centuries, had to be stretched a bit to fit the Western European mold. Jewishness began to be defined increasingly in Christian terms now, as a 'religion.' The 'peoplehood' --the national identity aspect of Jewish identity--was played down." Once Jews were emancipated there was "a powerful move toward full Jewish integration into French culture." One aspect of this assimilationist impulse was the development of Reform Judaism, "making Judaism compatible with the times," he said. This found expression in making services more like Christian services, and making synagogues more architecturally awe-inspiring like churches.

RABBI REUVEN FIRESIDE

Why did Reform Jews jettison the notion of Jewish peoplehood? "Because as a religious belief system one could assimilate culturally and still remain Jewish. Because one's Jewish identity as a religion would not call into question one's national identity, which was French, or English, or German, or Dutch," Firestone said.

Not all Jews liked the idea, Firestone said. "Some were alarmed at these developments and considered them as the death knell for the Jewish people," he said. "In reaction, as reformers began to broaden the acceptable boundaries for the Jewish faith, these Jews went into a defensive formation by narrowing the boundaries of acceptable Jewish behavior. The result in all of its various permutations is the variety of Orthodox Judaisms that we know today."

In Eastern Europe, nationalism expressed itself in a different manner than in Western Europe. Various national groups like the Lithuanians, Hungarians, Poles and Ukrainians sought to break away from such empires as the Russian, Austro-Hungarian and the Turkish. These national movements did not include Jews, precisely because they were not Ukrainians or Poles, but were a separate people.

In response, Jews developed the idea of Zionism -- emphasizing the national aspect of their identity, Firestone said. The secular Zionists jettisoned their religious identity, while focusing on their national identity.  Like the Reform Movement, the Zionist Movement provoked a response from the Orthodox -- anti-Zionism. The Orthodox were offended by the secular Zionists' disregard of Torah law. Further, they felt that by attempting to establish a Jewish state in Palestine, they were attempting "to force the hand of God." In their view, Firestone said, "this would

LIPINSKY WINDOWS--These stained glass windows  were purchased for Temple Emanu-El by Dorris  Lipinsky.  Ironically, Dorris was buried on Sunday, Feb.  15, the sane day that light shone through these eindows on a symposium sponsored by the Lipinsky Institute for Judiac Studies which she and Bernard also helped found.

inevitably lead to disaster for the Jewish people just as all previous messianic movements from the time of Bar Kochba onward had led to disaster for the Jewish people."

"Only one small but significant group of Orthodox supported the Zionist movement and this was the Mizrachi," Firestone said. While they agreed that there should be a homeland for the Jews--in order to help those Jews in physical peril--they disagreed with the cultural Zionists on almost every other question concerning what the new state would look like.

Given such history, Firestone said, it is not surprising that there should be some friction in the State of Israel today.

Lehman-Wilzig lectured next, picking up the narrative almost seamlessly -the two speakers more united as fellow academics than divided by their adherence to different Jewish movements.

The professor suggested that the perception that his fellow Orthodox are winning the kulturkampf (cultural war) against the secular forces in Israel may be more a function of media reporting than reality.

He said the Israeli media pays a lot of attention to people who become ba'al tshuvah , reporting the movement of people from non-religious life styles to religious ones as an alarming development. However, he said, when religious people decide to become secular, this is hardly remarked upon at all, as if it is a normal development, to be expected.

Lehman-Wilzig compared the situation in Israel to a double game of Pac Man, a reference to an early video game in which a figure on a screen chomps everything in its path. On the one hand, Haredim (ultra Orthodox) are trying to eat the Israeli body politic, "by passing legislation, getting subsidies from the government," he said, " but what is really happening is that the Israeli technical society is eating up the Haredim. They are getting swallowed up by the larger, stronger, western secular ethos of Israeli society."

The professor recalled that in the 1920s, when Eliezer Ben Yehuda was proposing that Hebrew become the language of the Jewish people in Palestine, he was strongly criticized by the ultra-Orthodox for using the "holy language" for secular purposes. Children who used Hebrew in their games risked being stoned by the Haredim. Today even the haredim use Hebrew in every day discourse, he said.

Further, said Lehman-Wilzig, "they have joined the Zionist government, even sit as ministers....Haredim appear on television (even though they are not supposed to have them)....Haredim women are bread winners and work outside in the big bad secular world where they are encountering western ideas of equality."

Additionally, he said, " a couple of weeks ago, several leaders of the Shas party were talking openly about possibly setting-up ultra-Orthodox Army units-- have them serve in the Army in their own units, the greatest and central symbol of the Israeli state."

Viewed against this backdrop, he said, the attempt to push through a conversion law in the Knesset can be seen as just one battle in a war that the ultra-Orthodox are losing, Lehman-Wilzig said.

A trend in Israeli society has been two forms of "ghettoization," Lehman Wilzig said. 

The first is "functional ghettoization." While Israeli law authorizes only the Orthodox rabbinate to conduct marriages and other life cycle ceremonies, secular Jews routinely circumvent the law by using alternative institutions. Some even arrange to be "married by fax" by officials in Paraguay. 

The second form of ghettoization, he said, is geographical separation. Ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods, secular neighborhoods, and Orthodox Zionist neighborhoods are becoming an increasing fact of Israeli life. Recently in Pardes Hanna, where secular Israelis established a neighborhood, fist fights and rock throwing occurred after Ultra Orthodox tried to set up a school in a "caravan" (home/trailers) nearby.

The rock throwing was by the secular citizens "shoving against the push," by the Haredim, Lehman-Wilzig said.

During question and answers, the professor said one force which eventually may be able to bridge the gap between the Orthodox and the secular is the Conservative (Masorti) movement.

"The Conservative movement in 20-30 years will have tens of thousands of members," he said. "I think you will find that many secular Jews, who also are seeking some kind of Jewish content in their lives--who are seeking some kind of ethos--are going to seek the Conservative movement as a home place."

He said Israelis will be attracted to the Conservative movement rather than the Reform because Conservative considers itself bound by Jewish law, even though it interprets it more liberally than the Orthodox.

Many secular Israelis take the attitude, "I don't pray in a synagogue but if I did I would pray in an Orthodox synagogue," Lehman-Wilzig said. "In the future they will say 'if I did pray, I would pray at a Conservative synagogue' and in fact probably will go and pray at the Conservative synagogue."