A prominent right-wing lawmaker in Israel, Galit Distel-Atbaryan, mocked Reform Judaism at a committee discussion she headed on Monday and, after ordering the removal of a rabbi from that denomination due to his protests, added that “the Jews would like to continue” the debate.
Distel-Atbaryan, an outspoken member of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party, made the remarks to Gilad Kariv, a Reform rabbi and former CEO of the Israel Movement for Reform and Progressive Judaism, who is a Knesset lawmaker for the left-wing Democrats Party, at the Knesset Subcommittee of Jewish Philosophy.
Critics said Distel-Atbaryan’s comments added unnecessary strain to the already tenuous relationship that many Reform Jews in the United States have with Israel.
The exchange happened during a discussion on tensions surrounding the practice of putting on tefillin on school grounds in Israel, where some principals forbade this activity, allegedly without legal justification.
Upon hearing that the Israeli Education Ministry intends to send out a letter regulating the issue, Kariv requested that the letter state that not only male but also female students may or may not put on tefillin at school, stating this was permissible also according to halachah, Jewish law.
Under the Orthodox interpretation of halachah, only men put on tefillin. Unlike Orthodox Judaism, Reform Judaism advocates total egalitarianism between the sexes.
“One of my two daughters regularly puts on tefillin, so I’m sure the letter will say that every male and every female student—as is permissible in halachah—would be able to [put on tefillin], and at least in one school a tefillin stand for girls would be erected,” Kariv said.
Distel-Atbaryan admonished him, saying: “I’m tired of these provocations.” Kariv said Distel-Atbaryan knew “nothing about halacha” and disputed her characterization of his remarks as a provocation, to which she replied: “It’s not a provocation at all, and if you celebrate your dog’s bar mitzvah, I’ll come and celebrate.”
This was a reference to a fringe custom, mostly among American Jews, known as “bark mitzvah,” a playful celebration of a pet’s 13th birthday. The United Torah Judaism Party, a Haredi political movement, in 2021 launched a campaign centered on the bark mitzvah phenomenon to oppose the Israeli Supreme Court’s ruling that Reform conversions to Judaism were valid for the purposes of Israel’s Law of Return.
To the phenomenon’s critics, it encapsulates the alleged excesses of Reform Judaism and a sacrilegious watering down and even subversion of Jewish traditions. To many advocates of Reform Judaism, the focus on the bark mitzvah phenomenon is a change-resistant Orthodoxy’s attempt to weaponize a marginal eccentricity to discredit a major Jewish worldview.
Distel-Atbaryan and Kariv began talking over each other. He accused her of “having no class, no knowledge,” whereas she said he was “out to shock us with how special he is, like a three-year-old.” As the shouting match continued, Distel-Atbaryan issued three calls to order against Kariv, and on the third ordered him to leave the room. “The enlightened Reform [person] will leave the room, the Jews would like to continue the discussion,” she said.
Rakefet Ginsberg, CEO of the Masorti (Conservative) Movement, called Distel-Atbaryan’s remarks “pathetic and insulting,” adding: “Any attempt to humiliate the liberal currents in Judaism is to spit in the face of millions of Jews around the world who manage to combine the Jewish world and modernity as a way of life.”