Allies in Love of Judaism

Their names, no doubt, will someday be somewhere in the same chapter in the history books about late 20th century American Jewry. And yet Rabbi Harold Schulweis and Rabbi Avi Weiss had never met.That potential historical fluke was averted last week when the two giants of Jewish activism took the bimah at B’nai David-Judea to look into the Jewish future, as they both have in decades past, to decipher how to strengthen and expand the Jewish community.

The audience basked in the mutual admiration and warmth that flowed between the two. In fact, love – specifically ahavat Yisrael, love of the nation of Israel – was what the two most wanted to talk about.Weiss, rabbi of the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale, was in town as a scholar-in-residence at B’nai David-Judea, a modern Orthodox congregation on Pico Boulevard. He is perhaps best known as the indefatigable personality who chained himself to the gates of Auschwitz to protest a convent; held a sign above David Duke’s head calling him a Nazi; faced off with Louis Farrakhan; followed Kurt Waldheim around the world; and forced the Jewish community out of its indifference to the plight of convicted spy Jonathan Pollard.

It was love for his people that drove him to that activism, Weiss said, and it is that same love that has helped him realize it is time to turn instead to strengthening the spirit and love within the Jewish community.

We must answer the spiritual yearning that is out there, he said, and show those who are searching that Judaism is meaningful and ethical, beautiful and fulfilling.Just as in a family, he said, the Jewish people should be driven by a connection so emotional, so deep, that we are able to maintain our loyalty to each other though we act and believe differently, though we disagree.

That theme was all that was on the mind of Schulweis, who deplored the sad state of Jewish broiges – Yiddish for being so angry at each other that you’re not on speaking terms. “When you are guilty of schismatic thinking, you end up speaking only to yourself, and that is a sign of insanity,” said Schulweis, senior rabbi of Valley Beth Shalom in Encino. “We are flirting with insanity.”

Schulweis, known as the father of the chavurah movement, a leader of interfaith dialogue, and one of the most brilliant minds of this generation, minced no words in laying much of the blame on the shoulders of the many Orthodox rabbis who disparage their liberal colleagues and set up situations that are untenable to Conservative, Reconstructionist and Reform Jews.

He praised the more proactive and inclusive approaches taken by Weiss and Rabbi Yosef Kanefsky, who served as assistant to Weiss before coming to B’nai David-Judea four years ago. Schulweis offered his moral – and substantial – support to Weiss in his new yeshiva, which is committed to training leaders for an “open Orthodoxy.”

But just as Schulweis was unapologetic in his harsh assessment of close-minded Orthodox leaders, Weiss stood firm in his defense of those areas in which compromise is not possible, where unity and pluralism cannot mean affording equal legitimacy to nonhalachic positions.

That the two men staked out and stood fast on principle was no surprise. That they hugged and praised each other was also no surprise. These are, after all, the ingredients that have gone into making Schulweis and Weiss two of this generation’s greatest leaders: A clear sense of purpose and principle, a determination to see those principles through to the end, and most of all, an underlying and overarching foundation of ahavatYisrael, love of the Jewish People.