Build it and they will come
Bliss Notes
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30 January 2012 |
Dear friends of IRAC, There is a lovely plot of land in Herzliya, a city north of Tel Aviv, which has been sitting empty for almost ten years. Why has this plot gone undeveloped for so long in such a rich and populated town? It’s not due to pollution or lack of funding. This is the plot of land that belongs to the Torat Hayim Conservative congregation. Torat Hayim was founded in 1978 and has a membership of over 150 people. For the past five years they have been meeting in the dining room of an old age home. Every Shabbat they have to take out the dining room tables out and move in an ark. The congregation is ready for a building to call their own. In Israel, government funding for Orthodox synagogues works like gravity, the natural order of things is that the money just falls from the sky. For liberal congregations the laws of gravity work the other way, unless IRAC gets involved to create some balance. Usually when a liberal congregation requests a building the municipality refuses to allocate the land. But this wasn't the case in Herzliya. Yael German, the mayor of Herzliya, is one of two female mayors (out of 145) in Israel. She is also the exception when it comes to supporting religious pluralism. The municipality approved the allocation of the land without too much trouble. The challenge came from the neighbors, who created a series of legal obstacles that held up the allocation process for years. First, they complained that there would not be enough parking spaces. Then they argued that the congregation is so small that it doesn't deserve the allocation of the land. They claimed that the synagogue would become an eyesore as the congregation would not be able to raise enough funds to finish the building. Last year, they filed an appeal to the Supreme Court asking it to revoke the allocation of the land. In November 2011 the appeal was rejected by the Supreme Court and the last obstacle was removed for the congregation to lay the foundations for their own synagogue building. This is another important ruling that will help Conservative and Reform congregations throughout the country. We stood by kehilat Torah Hayim for the past four years in court. We will now be standing beside them at the ground breaking ceremony in March. In celebrating this particular ground breaking we will get to feel a pioneering spirit. Breaking ground for a living Torah (Torat Hayim) with tikva, hope in our hearts that when we build it they will come. L’Shalom, Anat Hoffman
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Israeli women’s rights moving to front of bus 
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