In 1985 I was living in Jerusalem, in my first year of Rabbinic school at the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion. Once a week, we would welcome visitors to speak to us on a variety of issues. One day, our speaker was Rabbi Mickey Boyden, a Reform rabbi who had come to Israel that very day from England with his family, making “Aliyah”-emigrating to Israel.
I remember his talk vividly. Rabbi Boyden was young, with a young family, and I noticed that he was sweating profusely in the summer heat. When asked how he felt moving to Israel, he blurted out, “Frankly, I’m both excited and terrified”.
I later learned that a few years later, his oldest son Yonatan was killed in combat in Lebanon.
Rabbi Boyden founded a Reform congregation in the city of Ra’anana, and then founded a synagogue in Hod HaSharon called Kehillat Yonatan, named after his late son. Rabbi Boyden is fairly well known in Israel, as are many bereaved parents who have lost a child in defense of the Jewish state.
On Tuesday night of this past week, on Yom HaZikaron (memorial day) worshippers gathered in the Reform synagogue of Ra’anana founded and served for so many years by Rabbi Boyden. It is customary for Israel’s memorial day to be a very solemn and difficult day. This week, however, hundreds of ultra Orthodox Jewish thugs, followers of the right wing extremist government member Itamar Ben Gvir descended on the synagogue, screaming curses and smashing windows and attacking worshippers. The police did little to stop the carnage. People were injured, cars and property damaged. This vile act, a true desecration of the memory of the fallen, falls squarely in the lap of Netanyahu and his thuggish cabinet ministers. I pray for my beloved Israel and hope for a better future.
Rabbi Doug Sagal aka “The Boxing Rabbi”-