I just returned home from a trip to California. Coming from a city famous for its 12 gates, surrounding wall, dividing fence, and partition at the Western Wall, I was inspired by the openness of California. Traveling back and forth over the majestic Golden Gate Bridge, I wished Israel had less gates and more bridges, preferably golden.
One of the narrowest passages in Israel is the entryway for rabbis to be employed by the state (a difficult concept for some of you). Every Israeli pays taxes to support neighborhood rabbis who provide religious services to their communities. We have hundreds of these rabbis throughout the country. Jerusalem alone has 33 neighborhood rabbis. All neighborhood rabbis in Israel are Orthodox and all of them are men.
As this clearly discriminates against communities who prefer to be represented by a rabbi who is more closely aligned with their religious views, IRAC has been asking the Ministry of Religious Affairs to appoint a liberal neighborhood rabbi in Jerusalem since 2007. When that proved ineffective, last month we petitioned the Supreme Court to require the Ministry to appoint a liberal rabbi in neighborhoods where there is a demand for these services from local residents.
One of the rabbis we would like to see appointed is Rabbi Levi Weiman-Kelman, who founded Congregation Kol HaNeshama in 1985. This congregation now has the largest synagogue of any denomination in Jerusalem's Baka neighborhood. Rabbi Weiman-Kelman teaches prayer and liturgy at Hebrew Union College and at the Schechter Rabbinic Seminary and has served as Chair of MaRaM (the Council of Progressive Rabbis) and of Rabbis for Human Rights. Ask anyone in Baka; the greengrocer, the baker, or the restaurant owner, about Rabbi Levi and they will sing his praises. Even the Orthodox rabbis in the neighborhood hold him in high esteem.
We would also like to see the appointment of Rabbi Ada Zavidov, who was the founding rabbi of the Tzur Hadassah Reform Congregation and the current rabbi of Congregation Har-el. Born in Israel, and a single mother, she is the first woman to serve as a rabbi of a congregation in Jerusalem. In addition, she teaches in the Israeli rabbinic program at the Jerusalem campus of Hebrew Union College.

If Rabbi Weiman-Kelman and Rabbi Zavidov succeed in receiving acknowledgement as neighborhood rabbis, we will have revolutionized religious services in Israel. It will enable secular Israelis to find a rabbi who provides services that speak to them and does so with the backing of the state. It will also revolutionize our own movement by ending the outrageous situation in which the Jewish state refuses to recognize rabbis from the largest stream of Judaism in the world.
The state of Israel needs a diversity of rabbis for the many types of Jews here. As it says in the Bible, “open to me the gates of righteousness; I will enter into them” (Psalms 118:19). Let the court open those gates of righteousness and state paid salaries will follow and after that the multitude of modern secular Israelis seeking a rabbi who speaks their values.
L’Shalom,
Anat Hoffman