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lthough for millennia Judaism played a central role in forging and unifying our people today American and Israeli Jews… find themselves increasingly divided on religious matters.” The writer of those words clearly has some brushing up to do on Jewish history a three-thousand-year-old journey that has been marked by a long litany of conflicts and schisms revolving precisely around religious matters.

Yet the writer of the Tablet article in which those words appear is someone who ought to know history having made some himself — former refusenik and current chairman of the Jewish Agency Anatoly Sharansky. He’s writing to urge resuscitation of the compromise he crafted under which the heterodox movements would be given their own enlarged prayer space in the Robinson’s Arch archaeological park next to the Kosel with one entrance for both.

He observes that the “historic nature of the compromise reached and the destructive consequences of its looming failure” is based on the fact that it “granted legitimacy to liberal communities while acknowledging that Orthodoxy remainsIsrael’s de facto religious common denominator.” I don’t know that it achieves the latter but it undoubtedly accomplishes the former which is precisely why it’s unacceptable.

How many misleading statements can one pack into one paragraph? Let’s count. Sharansky writes (with my commentary following):

On one side the representatives of the Israeli religious and political establishments recognized that Reform and Conservative Jewry are not fringe sects... but important venues for large numbers of Jews who reject the strictures of Orthodoxy yet want to remain part of the Jewish people.

Non-Orthodox Jews are inherently part of the Jewish people and don’t need the heterodox movements to enable them to be so. To believe otherwise is to embrace the calumny peddled by those movements that the Orthodox write other Jews out of our nation.

While many Israelis simply identify Judaism with Orthodoxy to Americans the different denominations are almost like different religions…

Now there’s a statement that approaches truthfulness although removing the words “almost like” would have made it entirely accurate. Now if only the heterodox movements would acknowledge this truth too and apply for state recognition and funding as an independent religion with historical roots in Judaism not unlike the Samaritans over at Har Gerizim.

As a result to expect Reform and Conservative Jews to adopt Orthodox customs whenever they are inIsraelis unrealistic and unfair — as unrealistic and unfair as it is to expect Orthodox rabbis to recognize Reform and Conservative practices.

How many Torah or rabbinic prohibitions does a visiting American Jewish tourist violate by praying in a gender-segregated section or not raising her voice in song? The falsification of Torah inherent in recognizing heterodox practices by contrast is one that some Torah authorities rule must be avoided even on pain of death. Some equivalence.

If we want these sizable groups of co-religionists to feel drawn to the Jewish state and experience it as their home we must understand and accept the importance of liberal strands of Judaism in their lives.

It’s really hard to dialogue with people who are either willfully ignorant or in deep denial of American Jewish demographics. My advice to Mr. Sharansky: Begin by studying the 2013 Pew report on American Jewry in depth. Then take a tour of Jewish America. Show up in temple on the one weekend of the year people are there for a relative’s bat mitzvah and speak with them.

You’ll learn that the failure of non-Orthodox Jews to feel drawn toIsraelas their home has nothing to do with pluralism or the Kosel or anything else on their denomination’s political agenda. Only one third of Reform-affiliated Jews have been toIsraeleven once with a full quarter of them saying they have no interest in ever going. The rest give a variety of reasons for not having even visited and feeling disenfranchised by the Orthodox at the Kosel or elsewhere isn’t one of them. It has everything to do sadly with the degree of to use Sharansky’s own words the “importance of liberal strands of Judaism in their lives ” which is almost nil.

For their part the non-Orthodox parties to the agreement recognized that Orthodoxy’s preeminence inIsrael… stems from the historic need for a unifying religious force in the Jewish state.

I beg to differ. They view Orthodoxy’s preeminence as an unconscionable disaster the prevailing of dark medieval forces abetted by a backward Sephardic population and far-right-wing politicians.

This Kosel compromise enables them to gain a toehold of legitimacy on the way to a complete overthrow of Orthodox preeminence. Sharansky spells it out if one knows how to read his words: “The parties’ commitment to a shared future withIsraelas our common home could have inspired future cooperation on a host of other issues as well.”

Anatoly Sharansky will be stepping down as chairman of the Jewish Agency executive in June 2017. And it’s only natural for him to want a legacy a tenure-ending achievement to which he can point with pride. His deep personal investment in an issue he worked on intensely for three and a half years is obvious writing that the “demise of the Kotel compromise would be devastating… never before have we seen so much energy and goodwill invested in a negotiating process…”

But is this what he endured an eight-year Soviet prison sentence for? To be able to come to artzeinu hakedoshah to open a section of the Kosel to same-gender coupling ceremonies?

Natan Sharansky heroically withstood what must have been the unimaginable physical and psychological pressure of the menacing Russian bear. Facing now what might be the even greater financial and political pressure being brought to bear by the vaunted “leaders of Diaspora Jewry” a dose of that old-time heroic resistance would come in handy right now.