(Reviewer: Gwynne Schrire, Vol. 72, No. 2, Rosh Hashanah 2017)
In this autobiography, Dr Debbie Weissman describes the events in her life that turned her from a child born to secular Zionist parents living in America during World War II into the Shomer Shabbat woman living in Israel. It is a compelling and beautifully written memoir by a modest, unassuming woman whose life was far from unassuming. How many people could say that on the same day, they visited Arafat’s grave (which was empt y) and made gefilte fish? And if there were such people, she probably knew them. And if she did not record her memories, they would be lost. Hence her book, Memoirs of a Hopeful Pessimist: A Life of Activism Through Dialogue.
Weissman writes simply and honestly, and her integrity and concern for human rights for all people shines through. She describes herself as a modern person living in a post-modern world, which, she says, is hard. She gives as an example an inter-religious study trip she attended in Bosnia over Tisha B’Av. A mosque allowed her to use an anteroom to chant the Book of Lamentation – alone and a little lonely. She completed the reading shortly before the muezzin began his call for the evening prayers. The only other Jewish delegate, an otherwise observant Jew, took the other participants to a restaurant for a meal. The book is full of such reminiscences.
Weissman describes growing up in a Jewish home in mainstream Christian America. Both her parents were social workers and as a child she accompanied her mother on feminist marches. Because her father worked for the Jewish community, they were frequently transferred to different Jewish community centres. Debbie joined Young Judea, becoming national president and, aged 17, was a youth delegate to the World Zionist Congress. During her studies, she spent a year in Israel, which was a culture shock. On her first Shabbat there, a policeman knocked on their door. In America the students called them pigs or fuzz. Why was he bothering them? Had there been a complaint about the noise? Was he looking for drugs? No. Knowing they were newly arrived students, he had come to wish them Shabbat Shalom.
On Weissman’s return to college in America, where she obtained an M.A. in sociology on the history of the Bais Yaakov movement in Poland between 1918 and 1939, she became observant and also campaigned for the release of Soviet Jewry, going into Russia to smuggle Jewish ritual objects in and names of refuseniks out. When she made aliyah in 1972, her activist parents organised a support group for parents of children who had gone on aliyah. This grew into PNAI, Parents of North American Israelis, with dozens of chapters and thousands of members.
In Israel, she obtained a Ph.D. in Jewish Education from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, on the social history of Jewish women’s education. She started training high school teachers, becoming known for her courses on Judaism, Jewish sources, festivals and feminism, Biblical interpretation and issues in the Palestinian-Israeli relationship, including teaching courses to the IDF and Jewish Agency emissaries going abroad.
In 1978 she was invited to South Africa to run seminars for Jewish youth. She accepted with hesitation, determined that she would not use a segregated toilet – only to discover that there were no others. She got into trouble twice, both involving Israeli dancing, which she loved. The first time was north of Johannesburg when she took the hand of a black onlooker to bring her into the dancing circle, and was told afterwards by the youth leader not to do it again as it was a criminal offence. The second time was at a campsite at Muizenberg where a passing rabbi noticed that the dance involved teenage boys taking the hands of teenage girls dancing next to them. She was told that in future she could only teach the girls. She writes, ”Thus I got into trouble in South Africa twice for mixed dancing – once by race, the second time for gender. If I lived in South Africa I would have continued doing this – and probably other, even more significant ‘offences’ – but then I would not be around to bear the consequences. I realized that at the end of the month I would be returning to Israel so it wasn’t really fair for me to jeopardize the locals”.
When she was asked to teach Christians about Judaism, she took it on reluctantly only to find that she loved doing so as she found that most people were eager to learn and that their questions were always stimulating. She began hosting students for Shabbat and chagim and discovered that doing so enhanced her own spirituality. She was then invited to teach on the faculties of numerous Christian educational centres in and around Jerusalem. Her reputation spread and soon she was receiving invitations to speak on interreligious friendship and dialogue at major interfaith gatherings around the world. The book is enriched with stories about these experiences.
Weissman returned to a different South Africa in 2011 and 2016, the most recent time as the first Jewish woman President of the International Council of Christians and Jews, the recipient of its Sternberg Interfaith Gold Medallion and an active leader in the Interreligious Coordinating Council in Israel. She was the guest lecturer for the annual Jacob Gitlin Memorial Lecture at Cape Town’s Jacob Gitlin Library.
From her years in interfaith work, Weissman concludes that the achievement of such dialogues cannot be taken for granted because of a backlash in some places, with trends in all the religions toward a more fundamentalist approach, wanting to return to an imagined idealized past. There has been a resurgence of antisemitism, of bigotry, xenophobia and hate crimes. South Africa is not alone in this. On the positive side she observes that the churches are no longer part of the problem but part of the solution and are our allies in fighting antisemitism.
Weissman’s call for equal respect to be paid to other faiths has also extended to her call for equal respect to be paid to worshippers of both genders. She writes that “Feminism is the radical idea that women are human beings, and religious feminism is the even more radical idea that rabbis are human beings … Rav Lichtenstein, son in law of Rav Yosef Soloveitchik, said it is high time to stop questioning the sincerity of women who want to take on more active roles within Judaism. After all we don’t question the motives of men who are seeking honours in the synagogue”. She helped to establish and was a founder member of a modern Orthodox synagogue in Jerusalem, Kehillat Yedidya, a halachically-based community that is equally concerned about traditional Jewish values, social justice and democracy in Israeli society. Kehillat Yedidya supports tolerance for “the other” and has become well-known, both for its friendly relationships with other streams of Judaism, and for its hospitality in hosting multi-faith groups from around the world.
As an aside Kehillat Yedidya, with Weissman’s active support, agreed to host the Israeli grand-daughter of this reviewer for her batmitzvah when she wanted the opportunity to lein from the Torah just like a barmitzvah boy. A mechitzah separated the men and Weissman led the service with an appropriate shiur, followed by a small brochah for the family.
Looking back at her decision to go to Israel, Weissman writes that she made aliyah to a largely secular, left-leaning country where the kibbutz movement was disproportionately influential, but now lived in a right wing, religious and traditional society where there were almost no traces left of socialism and, where, like in South Africa and Europe, racism was on the rise. However although over the years she had experienced alienation from some aspects of her Israeli identity, especially over the occupied territories, she has never wavered from her primal Jewish identity.
Why the title of her book? She explains that her teacher, philosopher Prof Mike Rosenak, Mandel Professor of Jewish Education at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, used to say that Jews were pessimists in the short run and optimists in the long.
“Perhaps that’s what I am. What has made me feel pessimistic recently is the realisation that I probably won’t live long enough to see peace in the region. In some ways it is better now. We have much more religious pluralism, feminist values that are anchored in progressive legislation, something that has been called a Jewish cultural renaissance and more room for all kinds of people who previously were confined to the periphery”.
“One of our problems is that both Israelis and the Palestinians see themselves as the victims of the conflict. They seem to be competitors in what I call a Suffering Sweepstake. One of the problems with victimhood is that it prevents the victim from assuming responsibility for his or her actions, including the victimisation of others. In the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, I believe that both sides are victims and both sides are victimizers”.
For readers who enjoy insights like these and episodes like some of those quoted, Memoirs of a Hopeful Pessimist is for you. It is a book for everyone who is a hopeful pessimist, who believes, like Dr Weissman, that the pursuit of peace is a religious imperative.
Memoirs of a Hopeful Pessimist: A Life of Activism Through Dialogue by Debbie Weissman, Ktav Publishing, Urim Publications, Jerusalem, New York,, 2017, 199 pp with 4 appendices
Gwynne Schrire,a veteran contributor to Jewish Affairs and long-serving member of its editorial board, is Deputy Director of the Cape Council, SA Jewish Board of Deputies. She has written, co-written and edited numerous books on local Jewish and Cape Town history.
