Lynn Magid Lazar

On a Friday evening in January, my husband, daughter Jessica, son-in-law, and I attended Kabbalat Shabbat services at Congregation Ruaj Ami in Santiago, Chile. It was a delightful and wonderful experience!!!

This week, in Israel, women were praying and those women were arrested. This is a tragedy that must not happen again! Anat Hoffman, executive director of the Israel Religious Action Center and chairwoman of Women of the Wall, was arrested for praying at the Western Wall. Anat was part of a prayer service for Rosh Chodesh Chesvan that included Women of the Wall members and Hadassah convention delegates, who had convened in Jerusalem to mark the 100^th birthday of the founding of Hadassah. This arrest is an outrage and an atrocity!

During our visit, a new study was released in Israel by the Guttman Center, which showed that there are more Israelis who identify as Reform or Conservative Jews than those who identify as ultra-Orthodox. This is interesting and important news! It shows that our Movement is growing and that Israelis are learning ways to develop their Jewish identities that are non-Orthodox. How and why this is happening is complicated and multi-faceted, but there is definitely one program that is making a huge impact.  That is the Israeli Rabbinic training program at HUC-JIR in Jerusalem. These men and women are serving our communities and helping to expand the influence of Reform Judaism all across Israel. Marla, Resa, and I had the opportunity and privilege to meet the current students, treat them to lunch, and engage in dialogue about WRJ in general and WRJ-Israel, specifically. What a delightful time we shared with this incredibly talented and passionate group of people who are dedicated to Reform Judaism in Israel. Although WRJ has been offering financial support to the Israeli Rabbinic Program for many years, it is only in the past two years that we have begun to deepen our personal relationship with the men and women in the program. We have learned that many of these students must work part-time and study part-time. Some are second career individuals who have found a ‘home’ in Reform Judaism, and some have come to HUC as a result of growing up in the Reform Movement in Israel.

Hello from much-loved Jerusalem - although today we experienced a side of Israel that is a bit harder to love. Let me start by mentioning something about which everyone complains and over which no one has control. Namely, the weather! Israel has been experiencing an abnormally cold and rainy winter, and the arrival of WRJ’s president and executive director has not changed that! Today was exceptionally windy, wet, and chilly. In some ways, appropriate to our experience of participating in a Freedom Ride on public bus #56. As you are probably aware, IRAC (Israel Religious Action Center) recently succeeded in the Israel Supreme Court to prohibit gender segregation on any public bus. Men and women may sit anywhere on any public bus! Of course, enforcing that law is a problematic issue. Furthermore, enabling people to internalize the concept of mixed seating on buses is also a long-term proposition. Therefore, hundreds of volunteers spend time riding buses to encourage and ensure that women may sit anywhere on a bus.