by Avraham Burg
When Judah Leib Gordon, one of the poets of the Enlightenment, wrote, “Be a man in the streets and a Jew at home,” he coined the motto of the Enlightenment movement, which sought to bridge the Jewish and modern worlds. Dad was such a bridge, until the whole structure collapsed on him. A rabbi with a doctorate, a German-speaking immigrant and an Eastern European Jew, educated and traditional, both in high German and juicy Yiddish. For “Father Burg, Part One,” one of the early years in which there was a clear separation between the holy and the profane, the movement of the kippah on and off his head was the sign of this precise internal and external division. Whatever was Jewish wore a covering, and whatever was general, civil, and belonging to humanity at large was bareheaded. This division between the man and the Jew was actually lost by Dad when he became “Father Burg, Part Two” and adopted the habit of wearing a kippah all the time. No wonder it happened to him after the Six-Day War. He was, after all, an official and practical part of the border nullifiers, and through that actually erased his own borders. I hope that by the time these lines are published I will have succeeded in becoming a divided man like his early version. Wearing a kippah as a Jew, and bareheaded in all other dimensions of my life.
It’s not easy for me—it’s like an amputation, or disconnecting a tube that has become part of me like a vein. And still, I want to go back to my father’s first division. To the days when he was still an Israeli-German. To the worldview according to which everything Jewish is done with a kippah, and everything general is done without a kippah, and the separation between religion and the rest of life is clear and natural. Like in Zurich, like in Dresden. As it was when there was still hope here, so that there will be new hope.
THE FIRST THING I DID WHEN I LEFT THE SAN FRANCISCO airport in the early 1980s was to take off my kippah and all other identifying paraphernalia. At the time, those were the security guidelines for Israelis traveling abroad. It was my first visit to the United States. I had been invited by the New Israel Fund, which was very, very new. It was run by Jonathan Jacoby, my guide to American Jewish life, who became one of my dearest, cherished friends. Johnny is one of the most accomplished strategists I have had the privilege of meeting. Virtually with his bare hands he established one of the most important organizations of politically progressive American Jewry, and he is the most sensitive and committed friend I have. I traveled with Johnny to his home. On the way, we stopped for a cup of coffee and a bite to eat. I took out my wallet and counted the cash I had. “Avrum, here it’s all backwards,” he told me, “Here you can walk around with any kippah you like, anywhere, anytime. No one will bother you. But don’t take your money out of your wallet in public—you could get mugged.”
The next day I was mugged.
The comfortable, familiar order of things was breached, and the foundations of new worlds were laid down inside me, worlds in which I will continue to move until my last day. Johnny took me to meet the man who would become one of my closest friends, a soul mate in word and deed. Brian Lurie was then the charismatic executive director of the San Francisco area Jewish Community Federation. I knew nothing, absolutely nothing, about American Jewry, its leaders, institutions, and organizations. “They’re plastic Jews,” someone back home had told me before I left. Until then, I had met very few American Jews; most were friends of my parents. Immigrants or refugees like them, Jews of the synagogue, Psalms, pastrami, lox and bagels, accented English and lively Yiddish. At the time, I had yet to meet a religious Jew who was not Orthodox. Reform and Conservative Jews were demons that one must be very wary of. That is why we would pass by the Reform synagogue on the way to elementary school with real physical fear. In the hierarchy of our lives they belonged somewhere in the infernal depths with Christian missionaries and the rest of our enemies who in every generation try to wipe us out.
We went into Brian’s office, and everyone introduced themselves. “I’m a Reform rabbi by training,” he began. I was so scared, really. If the chair and floor had answered my prayers I would have been swallowed up and disappeared at that very moment. Reform Jew. Gevald.
“What do you do here, in the community?” I wondered aloud with any remaining politeness I could muster. I was not familiar yet with the first principle of politics: don’t ask a question unless you already know the answer.
“Lots of things,” he answered. “But today is especially important for me. After my meeting with you I’m going to a meeting in which we will decide to increase by thirty percent our contributions to hospitals that treat AIDS patients.”
“What is AIDS?” I asked. It was 1983. And while the earth had failed to swallow me up half an hour earlier, his eyes bore through me on the spot. Brian has those kind of eyes.
“It’s acquired immune deficiency syndrome,” he patiently explained. And I understood even less.
“But what is it?” I probed politely.
“It’s a homosexual disease.” That was the belief at the time, and that is how that terrible illness was branded.
“But there are no Jewish homosexuals, so why is the Jewish community contributing to it?” I heard my mother speak from my mouth.
And thus began a journey of faith, friendship, and partnership, which has included unique experiences, good deeds, and especially a common study of human and Jewish fate, a journey that has been going on now for more than thirty years. I learned from him about the United States and its spiritual movements, about American Jews and the trends among them. About philanthropy and fundraising. We don’t always agree, but I have always loved him unconditionally, and I learn something new with our every encounter.
In 2008, I officiated at my daughter’s wedding in our house, in an entirely Jewish and completely egalitarian wedding. Later, Brian married her in San Francisco in a civil marriage, so we were partners in the same chuppah—not only in the limited sense of the family celebration, but in the wider sense of the struggle for a humane Judaism, different than the one represented here in Israel by the repellent rabbinic establishments.
DAYS AND YEARS HAVE PASSED SINCE THEN, AND MY LIFE no longer revolves solely around what happens to me. Change is also reflected in the content of our children’s conversations, including during the familial Shabbat meals that we so cherish. When they were little, we talked around the table about teachers and studies, games and hobbies. As army service approached, militarism asserted itself on their side, and on our side, there was sad concern for them. When they were released from the army the conversation shifted from service to studies, work, and their future. Then the room was filled with the happiest of subjects—their weddings, the new families they were going to have. Now there are lots of grandchildren, and the commotion starts anew. Not all our children are married, and for some the conversation is very practical while for others it remains theoretical. In these worlds of theory, we always tried to delicately sketch the outlines of the future bride or groom. To assure them that we genuinely believe the broad human message, according to which there is really only one test at home for any who come in—that they be good people. What do I care whether someone is Jewish if he is fundamentally bad or evil, racist or violent? And what will stop me from loving my new daughter-in-law or son-in-law if my children love them and they will bear my grandchildren?
In 2013, I was in a public debate in Netanya. The audience was very right wing, and the conversation was heated. The arguments continued long after the lights were turned off and the hall was closed. It was nearly midnight when I finally got to the parking lot, eager to get as far away from there as fast as possible.
In the darkened lot only my car remained; everyone had already gone home. Next to the car was a group of young people wearing the kippahs of the Chabad movement and wearing T-shirts of the extreme rightist Kahane Chai movement. Bad news. For a minute, I was afraid. My mailbox is full of threatening letters from their ilk, and it’s clear to me that one day this violence will catch up with me. Was this the moment?
“Burg,” one of them began,
“he wants to ask you a question.” He directed me to the one who looked like the biggest thug in the group. They all chuckled in expectation of the intellectual knockout punch that would soon be thrown at me, the hated leftist.
“Tell me, with all these views of yours, would you be ready for your daughter to marry an Arab?” I sounded my internal all clear and relaxed my tensed muscles; this wouldn’t come to blows. Not tonight. I explained to them that in my view there was no difference between my sons and daughters. That it wasn’t me who approves my children’s marriage partners. That they had been educated to be independent, ethical people who make the decision about their lives themselves. “And most importantly, if my daughter will come home and tell me, ‘Dad, I have two marriage proposals, which do you recommend? One man is a Jewish Kahanist, racist, studies with Arab-hating rabbis, a violent activist who participated in two lynchings of Arabs’—someone like you for example,” I said, pointing at the questioner. None of them responded to my provocation, so I continued. “‘And the second is an Arab doctor, active in human rights groups, a volunteer in the community clinic in the mixed city in which he lives, he has Jewish and Arab patients and he’s a veteran peace activist,’ whom do you think I would recommend to her?”
“He definitely answered you,” said the one who started the conversation, and they quietly moved away. But the incident was not over. Out of the darkness came two young girls, bearing their identities on their skin, Ethiopians. They said that they were at the debate and wanted to ask me a question.
“Of course,” I replied.
“Would you also not care if your son married an Ethiopian?” Unlike the baiting question of the group of youths, this was a painful question, full of tears.
“Yes, my dear girl, I don’t care who they marry. Tall or short, black or white, I don’t care what his or her faith is. I will have only one test for whomever they bring home. That they be good people.”
“Non-Jews as well?”
“Of course! If they are good, what do I care what their faith is? And if they are bad, what good does it do me that they are Jewish?”
“And a homosexual?”
“Yes, even a homosexual or a lesbian. There is only one test for partnership and humanity.”
One of them began to cry, and the second told me, “We’ve been in Israel for years. We’ve studied in religious institutions, and we always knew there was something else, but we didn’t know how to say it. This evening you said it for us. Thank you so much. Drive carefully.”
I’VE REACHED A POINT IN LIFE IN WHICH MY FAMILY IS the center from which other circles emanate. Imposed closed tribal and national frameworks repel me. I need human space without barriers. I want to define my own borders and connections. I don’t feel genuine automatic membership in collectives only because of our common ethnic, genetic, or religious origin. I have too many relatives who are real moral enemies, and there are distant relatives I don’t even know who are potentially very close to me. At the same time, pure, egoistic individualism repels me no less, and does not satisfy me at all. The family is therefore the framework in which I feel most comfortable. Mostly it is filled with solidarity and brotherhood, but sometimes it generates quarrels and resentment. Despite everything, it is a microcosm of humanity in a size that I can grasp. Not billions or millions of partners with whom I have no real connection, and not myself alone.
From my extended family, I look at the world and try to understand the contexts of my relatives’ lives and our future. Our family is old-fashioned in every respect. Most of the marriages are stable, the relationships are healthy, tensions are contained and not externalized, and all generations speak with one another. From my old-fashioned family I watch and even stare inappropriately at the new families. What happens to them interests me a great deal. Through the old families, I better understand the past and the old world, and through the new families I try to understand the renewed humanity and the future waiting for us all.
When I was a child, all children had a father and mother. The Sephardic children usually also had a grandfather and grandmother from both sides, and we, the Ashkenazic children, had almost none. The children of today are exposed to far greater complications. Many have more than two pairs of grandparents. Sometimes more than one mother or father, or less. Same-sex or single-parent families, divorced or separated parents, and so on. Biological children and test-tube children in the same class. I don’t know what it does to the souls of these small children, but it certainly demands the ability to absorb far more complexity than we encountered at their age. The new structures of parenting, the complicated and separated families, the erased borders between generations of parents and children—all these raise the question anew for me, where is human society heading? I once knew the answer—what was, what will be, because the basic social core, the family, had remained as it was. Now I no longer know. I can’t guess what future society will look like, because I don’t entirely understand the modern family. I accept it as it is, and I am hopelessly curious about the new intimacy, which I am sometimes witness to, but don’t understand—yet. How can someone from my background understand someone such as L., one of my new friends in the wide world?
L. is a friend I love very much. He is a Lutheran theologian who is gay, and who was born in Germany and lives in Holland in a happy family with his two male lovers. A standard family of three men. And they are not alone. A. is a single-parent mother who received a sperm donation from her former partner whom she divorced through the rabbinate according to religious law. K. and Y. are two test-tube babies whose marriage I officiated. And their family happiness is even richer and more complex.
In order to better understand the new realities, I’ve been watching established rabbinic Jewish weddings, and I don’t like what I see. The bride and groom stand under the chuppah, like scarecrows in their own play. The rabbi mumbles some incomprehensible words that to many sound like a faint echo of ancient voodoo rituals. And the audience waits impatiently for the end of the forced ceremony in order to sit comfortably at a table, eat a good meal, chat with friends, and dance before the dawn of a new day of work.
Whoever takes a deeper look understands that this is a meeting of two terrible wrongs: the distorted perception of women by the rabbinic establishment and the coercive involvement by the authorities. The first in that marriage is an ancient ritual that is basically the husband’s acquisition of sexual ownership of the woman from her father. Yes, it must be acknowledged that the roots of the ancient original Jewish wedding are planted, among other places, in the flowerbed of trafficking in women. The man purchases the woman with a ring that is “worth a penny” and becomes her “husband,” that is, her owner. And she, on the “happiest day of her life,” effectively becomes his property. And the second—as if the first were not enough—in that the Israeli wedding has three people under the chuppah: the bride, the groom, and the State of Israel. The state, the regulator, intrudes into the sexual relations and partnership of the two lovers and imposes on them very specific religious content, though that really should not be its role.
For many years, I wanted to offer couples a different kind of wedding. One that is entirely derived from tradition, but turns the damaged into the meaningful and the discriminatory into a declaration of love and a completely equal, committing partnership. In the wedding, humanity, and family that I believe in and am committed to, there is no trafficking of people. The weddings have to reflect and echo the values and commitments of the couple getting married. But so long as my children were not married, I couldn’t come out with my plan. I knew what people would say: “Ah, you married your children by the book, and you’re offering us a second-rate wedding.” That is not my intention.
An egalitarian and respectful wedding, committed to human and universal values, is the deepest and most comprehensive expression I can give to up-to-date Jewish culture, combining what is good in tradition with what is wonderful in renewal. In every wedding I now conduct, all that is i
nappropriate is erased or changed: there is no ownership, no monetary marriage contract between the woman and her partner, there is no fictitious sadness over ruined Jerusalem, because the city spreads from Jericho to Netanya. All these ancient symbols are endowed by the bride and groom with new and egalitarian meanings, so this ceremony has real, actual significance.
With this commitment, we conducted the weddings of our children as ceremonies of union in which the man and woman are completely equal to one another. We stayed true as much as possible to the ancient texts and traditions of the wedding celebration, and in places where the meanings of the tradition could not be papered over, we exchanged his ownership of her to a partnership between them.
The weddings of our older children (in 2008 and 2009), which I was privileged to conduct with them and for them, exposed me to many other couples getting married. First, to the circle of our children’s friends, and in recent years, to couples getting married from wider circles, much further away. I have several preconditions for every one of the couples that I marry. The first and main one is equality between bride and groom. As the weddings increased and I listened to the many messages that emerged, I became more aware that I was effectively involved in a battle that had been nearly decided. The recognition that every woman is equal before God has already penetrated so deep that it can’t be rolled back. Along with my belief in equality for women, I also realized that if I am indeed committed to the principle of equality between all people, then every person has the right to have a family, to be happy, to raise children, and to pass on his or her legacy and beliefs through them. So why not have an LGBT wedding? That’s what I explicitly tell my children: personal preferences are not important, what is important is a positive personality, no?
It didn’t happen immediately. On the contrary. One day in the early nineties, when I was serving as chairman of the parliamentary education committee, a group of political activists came to see me. As soon as the routine opening remarks were made, I was sorry that I had agreed to meet them. “We are LGBT community activists, and we want…” I devoted the rest of the meeting to evasions, excuses, and obfuscation. “That’s the last thing I need,” I rationalized to myself. I was closer then to my mother, who didn’t believe there was such a thing as a Jewish homosexual, than to Brian, who mobilized his community in San Francisco to help AIDS victims. At the end of the session with the activists, they asked if they could have their picture taken with me and issue a press release about the meeting. “It wouldn’t be good for you…” I convinced them.
