Six months into my mid-career rabbinic ordination program at The Shalom Hartman Institute, I received a phone call from my very secular Israeli cousin sharing some sad news. “Niv” (all names are changed to protect privacy) let me know that my sharp-witted, stylish, impossibly daring aunt Dina had passed away. Would I perform the funeral? He asked. It would be in the secular section of a private Ramat Hasharon cemetery, beyond the jurisdiction of the state rabbinate. Though I am an academic based outside of Boston, I was in Jerusalem for the first of three ordination program summer intensives. I called a rabbi friend, crammed in as much knowledge as I could, put on the only button-down shirt I had with me – white, unfortunately – and took the early train the next morning.  

My cousins are the kind of Israelis American Jews like me hold in awe. My newly-widowed uncle, Yishai, is a successful businessman who greatly distinguished himself in the military in the ‘60s and ‘70s. His quiet authority left room for Dina’s outsized personality; she was so bold and charming she once walked into a random party at a posh hotel and walked out arm-in-arm with Queen Noor. 

Their sons Niv and Eyal are gigantic, tattooed surfers and skydivers who vacation in the Maldives and the Philippines and have thriving careers in tech. I would be showing up for the funeral in my kippah, perhaps under cover of performing the service, but in fact as my new self, having started wearing it on October 8th, and having become more observant since. I was not sure what they would think. 

Niv picked me up from the train station. I met with him, Eyal, their wives, Ofra and Tali, my bereaved uncle Yishai, and a close family friend. We looked through family photographs, shared memories and tears. Dina had a complicated relationship with Judaism; the family did not want a religious ceremony. Fine, I said. In that moment, I was willing to help design whatever would be meaningful for them. She had studied English literature at Hebrew University and had worked as a teacher. Was there a poem she particularly liked? Not really, they said. We cycled through many unsatisfactory options. Finally, I proposed a classic funeral text from Kohelet, “To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under Heaven.” Oh yes, that’s a good one, they said. It’s Jewish? Yes, I pointed out. “Very good!” 

Step by step, we designed the service. Yes, they did want to say Kaddish. Psalm 23, the one with “though I walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death…?” Very good, let’s do that too. I didn’t mention it, but by the time we were done, they had designed a traditional Jewish funeral. It was a bit uncanny. It made me think of a line we had studied from Deuteronomy: “For this mitzvah… is not hidden from you, nor is it far away… rather, the matter is very near to you, in your mouth and in your heart to do it.”

We waited until 6 PM to start. Still, the summer heat was unbearable, like sitting inside a Ziploc in a steam room. I guided us through the service, worried about missteps in this, my first “lifecycle event” as an American rabbi-in-training. Niv and Eyal eulogized their mother beautifully, as did Yishai’s brother. Then we walked together for a few minutes to the secular section, out past the edge of the official cemetery. The secular burial ground had apricot-colored soil, in deliberate contrast to the dark brown soil of the official religious cemetery, so that even in death, the divide between secular and religious should be clear. I wasn’t sure if the religious or the secular wanted the ground itself to mark a boundary between them. Maybe both. 

Immediately after the service, in classic Israeli style, I received candid performance evaluations. Fortunately, they were positive. Unfortunately, the bar is low. Secular Israelis have not always had wonderful experiences with their state-issued clergy. Of course, you only hear the worst stories. Still, I was ahead of the game by not delaying the funeral to smoke a cigarette or watch the second half of a soccer match. Despite these experiences, I felt a yearning for Judaism in that secular crowd. One family member I met for the first time was delighted to learn of my mid-career rabbinic journey. A little flexibility from a religious representative, a little agency for the bereaved was all it took. It was a startlingly small ask.  

Niv’s eulogy included a memorable story about Dina, one that spoke to who she was, and to the ongoing secular-religious divide in Israel. Once, their family was hiking at Mount Meron, close to where Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai is buried, when they came across a young Haredi woman praying and weeping. The family kept walking, but characteristically, Dina approached the ultra-Orthodox woman to ask what was wrong. She replied that she was having fertility problems. Dina took out a pen and wrote down the name of a leading fertility specialist whom she knew personally. Contact him, use my name, he will see you right away, Dina said. But I want to tell you something else, she continued. You do not have to cry and pray for help in this country. We have world-class doctors. Go to them if you have a problem.

“Thank you,” the young woman replied, accepting the phone number. “But don’t you see? You are what I prayed for!” 

Today, secular and religious world views do not sit easily alongside one another. Nowhere is this more true than in Israel. The schism is not hard to spot. Sending your sons and daughters off to battle while the visible and growing Haredi community avoids national service is infuriating. Studying all day on the dime of those who protect you is an added insult, including to nationalist religious Jews who do serve. (Yes, there are many non-Haredi Orthodox who serve, but in my view, Haredi non-service disproportionately affects how secular Jews view the religious). And the broader political conflicts do tend to break down along secular-religious lines writ large, including the fight over the role of the courts and the future direction of Israeli democracy, which is not just a secular-Haredi issue, but a secular-religious one. Too often, for secular Israelis, religion and religiousness demand accommodations but offer none in return.

Something close to the mirror image of this problem exists for Jews outside Israel. Most diaspora Jews support Israel’s existence. It’s unfair and inaccurate to say that the religious support Israel, the secular do not. And our measures of religiosity and Jewish commitment are often crude and denomination-based. Still, according to Pew Research, over 80% of Orthodox Jews feel “somewhat or very attached to Israel,” compared to just 40% of unaffiliated Jews. 

And while it is true that the small number of Orthodox anti-Zionists receive considerable press attention, beneath the headlines, it is usually the most disaffiliated Jews who are outright indifferent to Israel’s fate, or worse, who promote deadly libels. The same religious Jews viewed skeptically by secular Israelis at home are often their strongest allies abroad. And for religious Jews the world over, secular indifference to Judaism feels like a scandal, a failure of intergenerational responsibility, crudeness in the face of the sublime. I don’t underestimate how much force is required to maintain a sense of oneness across these divides.

Beloved Dina died after the fight over judicial reform, after October 7th, before the 12-day war, before yet another Iran war. Still, when we interred her, it became clear that the divide between the orange and brown soil was only on the surface. Underneath, it was the same. Is this also true for the religious divisions that feel so urgent and intense? In the recent wars, Dina’s grandchildren ran three or four times a night to bomb shelters, as did their religious cousins and countrymen. Global Jewish communities, religious and secular, once again feel the shadow of violence darkening the door. The unity of our fates is not just an aspiration. It is a fact. Like it or not, the force required to maintain that oneness is already here. Will we use it properly?

A time to be born, and a time to die. Dina has now been gone long enough for that Haredi woman to have had a child or two. I like to imagine that she did. Maybe because she went to Dina’s doctor. Maybe because Hashem answered her prayers It need not be one or the other. We can make room for both. This Israel Independence Day, as the world darkens around us, we have no other choice.

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)