I have recently returned from a week-long visit to South Africa where I participated in the Sinai Indaba II conference sponsored by the office of the Chief Rabbi of South Africa, Rabbi Warren Goldstein. The conference brought noted scholars and personalities from the Orthodox Jewish world – albeit of differing outlooks and backgrounds – to conduct classes and lectures on Shabat, Sunday and Monday. I participated in the Johannesburg and Capetown venues.

 

The conference was a great and uplifting experience for me. The crowds in attendance were extremely large – over 3200 people in Johannesburg and over 1100 people in Capetown. Approximately eight percent of all of South African Jewry attended the conference. And all types and nuances of Jewry were present.

 

Every type of kipah was present - and there were also very many who wore no kipah at all. The gamut of subjects covered a multitude of issues that face our Jewish world, ranging from personal relationships, to Israel/Iran, worldwide anti – Semitism, and the educational challenges confronting Torah education in our time.

 

The tone of the conference was serious and the audiences were most attentive and thoughtful. Yet, there was an undertow of joy and optimism present, a feeling that the Jewish people, its faith, and its homeland state, will not only survive but will continue to prosper. At the conclusion of each of the day’s sessions there was a short musical concert presented by a talented Israeli musician, Yonatan Razel, which gave expression to this feeling of joy and of belonging to the ancient eternal people of Israel.

 

It was truly a most memorable experience, this Sinai Indaba II, (For the uninitiated, “indaba” is a native African word for a gathering, meeting or conference. One always learns something new reading this column!)

 

To me however, I felt a tinge of bittersweet contemplation as I left the conference and South Africa and flew back (on Turkish Airlines nonetheless!) to Israel. I thought to myself that such a conference, with its wide array of talented presenters, all Orthodox observant Jews but all very different people – rabbis, roshei yeshiva, movie scriptwriters, clinical psychologists, kiruv professionals, university professors, women educators and role models (the woman who is the widow and mother of those murdered by a Moslem terrorist in Toulouse was one of the presenters – and the only dry eye in the house was hers), etc. – could not have taken place in Israel or in most of the Jewish communities of the Diaspora.

 

There was recently an enormous event that took place in a baseball stadium in the New York area that attracted over forty thousand Jews to discuss the moral problems that free and open access to the internet poses to Jewish society. The main buzz afterwards concerned who did not attend the event - who boycotted it and who was not invited to attend, who spoke at the event and who did not and what language the event was conducted in.

 

There will be a larger event commemorating the completion of the Daf Hayomi cycle of Talmud study at the beginning of August in the largest football stadium in the New York area, where 90,000 people are expected to attend. There will be few if any bareheaded Jews there. American Jewry generally, and American Orthodoxy particularly is too polarized to conduct a Sinai Indaba program successfully. And Israeli society and Orthodoxy is even more polarized and exclusive. Sad, but unfortunately true.  

 

Yet we should not despair. If we cannot conduct a Sinai Indaba conference for thousands I believe that we can do so for hundreds and that will also prove to be a step in the right direction for Jewish society. And I think that we should try to do it outside of the official kiruv organizations’ umbrella. Of course it will be difficult to find speakers for such an event for the zealots amongst us stop at nothing to terrorize those who do not subscribe to their ideas and world viewpoint.

 

Yet by staying under the radar a great deal can be accomplished. We all speak of unity but we always insist that it be on our personal and particular terms. This Indaba showed me that it need not be that way. There is an instinctive unity that exists within the Jewish people but it must be encouraged and nurtured.

 

It is fruitless to continue to fight the battles of the nineteenth century all over again; in the main, history has already decided most of those issues. Sinai Indaba II was the way to a brighter future for all Jews and for a Torah society for Jews the world over.  

 

Shabat shalom.

 

Berel Wein