“The silence was not the whole story” by Rabbi Amitai Fraiman (’16)

by Rabbi Amitai Fraiman (’16) for eJewishPhilanthropy

In the Talmudic period, there was a group of rabbis known as the nehutei. They traveled between the great rabbinic centers of Babylonia and the Land of Israel, carrying teachings, arguments and legal traditions from one world to another. They were not merely messengers but interpreters between Jewish centers that shared a people and a tradition, even when they did not share the same language, assumptions or daily experience.

The Jewish people still need this role, and the Haggai Segal episode made that clear, though not for the reasons most commentators have named. Gidi Grinstein noticed something real when he observed the silence of American Jewish institutional leaders after Segal’s column (“American Jewish leaders, where were you?” April 30). But the silence was not the whole story, and the institutional response he called for would not have solved the deeper problem.

Segal’s piece was not a broadside that Israeli discourse launched into the open while American Jewish leaders looked away. It was a Hebrew-language argument, published in Makor Rishon, from inside a religious-Zionist conversation that most American Jewish institutional leaders simply do not read.

This is not for lack of investment in Israel. American Jewish institutional life channels enormous energy toward Israel through Federation missions, philanthropic partnerships, government relationships and organized travel. But that investment flows mostly through English-language channels and official Israeli interfaces. It does not usually flow through Hebrew-language media, internal religious-Zionist discourse or the ideological conversations happening inside Makor Rishon. American Jewish leaders know the Israel of Ben Gurion Airport arrivals and prime minister press conferences. They do not know the Israel of Segal’s column. The point is not that many were staying silent after seeing it, but that they likely never saw it at all.

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