A Reformed Character
By Yair Sheleg
Fri., Nov. 12, 2004

After Aharon Fox cut himself off from his ultra-Orthodox background, he served 10 years in the IDF and was a social worker on a kibbutz. Now he seems to have found his true calling - this week he was ordained as a Reform rabbi.

We are looking at one of the most exciting and important days in the life of Aharon (Ahrele) Fox of Kibbutz Na'an: Today is the day he will be officially ordained as a Reform rabbi at the annual ordination ceremony of the Reform Movement. Although he was very anxious for them to be there, his parents, David and Bracha Fox, will not attend the ceremony. His father, David, is an Orthodox rabbi with a deep attachment to ultra-Orthodoxy. He has taught all his life in national religious schools. He was a teacher at the Netiv Meir yeshiva high school for many years, and has served for the past few years as the rabbi of Kolel Meretz in Mevasseret Zion, which trains young religious Zionists to be rabbis and educators in development towns. At heart, however, he is ultra-Orthodox. He prays at the Kol Torah yeshiva in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Beit Vegan, and he sent his children to ultra-Orthodox schools.

But it did him no good. Four of his seven children regard themselves as secular today. Another son, Shlomo, is a Conservative rabbi and the director of the rabbinical ordination program of the Conservative Movement in Israel. Aharon, as we have said, has gone into the Reform rabbinate, and only the youngest daughter, Chani, has remained Orthodox. Even she goes to a religious Zionist school - not an ultra-Orthodox one.

Aharon Fox, 41, sent his parents an invitation to the ceremony but received no response, negative or positive. They refused to be interviewed for this article. His mother, Bracha, had only this to say: "We love Aharon very much, but we are not prepared to be interviewed on this subject." This tension between love for one's children and disappointment in the path they have chosen has been typical of their relationship all along, says Fox. "We've never broken off our ties with one another. My parents didn't `sit shiva' [seven-day mourning period after death] for any of us, and on the outside, at least, my father is not shocked or devastated. He's not in mourning."

Their home, at any rate, was not rigidly ultra-Orthodox or conformist. It was a home where opinions were expressed. "Some time around mid-week, we were informed that we would be discussing a concept like `truth' at the Friday night table, and we all had to prepare." Fox even detects signs of ambivalent pride in his siblings' ability to make independent choices. "People told my father his education failed, but he says the gist of his guidance is there."

Strange bird

The move between different worlds is also something they could have learned from their father - a man who grew up in a religious Zionist home in Chicago and was active in the Bnei Akiva youth movement, but studied for the rabbinate at an ultra-Orthodox yeshiva. Moving to Israel at the age of 23, he became more religious over time. He let his beard grow, and at one stage, began to pray at the Kol Torah yeshiva, but he continued to teach at religious Zionist institutions.

"I remember that one of the things we were always curious about as children was how he would vote in the elections," says Fox. "Five years ago, our relationship reached the point where we could barely talk, we argued so much. So I suggested we write to each other. In one of the letters, I asked him: Why did you hide your true self? He said he took jobs at religious Zionist institutions because he thought that he could be more influential there."

At the age of 14, Fox was sent to a "yeshiva ketana" where the ultra-Orthodox send their teenage sons before they graduate to full-fledged yeshivas. There was no high school curriculum. There, too, he was a strange bird. "Everyone was dressed in black, but my parents bought me brown shoes and red pants. The whole gang would come to my house to watch soccer games because we were the only ones with a television." Being different is what got him expelled. "The mashgiah [the rabbi in charge of school discipline] tripped and fell just as he was walking past me. They said I tripped him, and kicked me out. It wasn't true, but it was only natural for them to accuse me."

He ended up transferring to four different yeshivas in the span of six years. But the real turning point in his life was the Lebanon War. "Two of my brother's friends had left the Haredi world and joined the army. My brother-in-law fought in the war and was lightly wounded. I came home, talked to them and realized I couldn't stay in the yeshiva. I volunteered for the paratroopers, thinking I would show them all that I could go to the army and stay religious. But inside, I already knew I didn't care that much about being religious or not."

It happened in less than a year. "At first I would come home for the weekend and meet the guys from the yeshiva. But by the second time around, I realized we had nothing left to talk about. I had nothing to do at home, so when this guy from my unit, from Kibbutz Yiftach, invited me over, I went. The less observant I became, the harder it was to go home. I couldn't get up and leave in the middle of Shabbat. So I went to live with my older brother in Givat Shmuel."

Fox served in the paratroopers for six years, climbing the ranks from private to company commander. When his officer, Benny Ganz (today head of Northern Command) was promoted to commander of the Shaldag commando unit, he asked Fox to be his operations officer. He served in that capacity for four years, retiring from the army in 1993 as a lieutenant colonel, two years after his marriage to Hadas, a girl from Kibbutz Na'an. "On the kibbutz, I took a job as a counselor for bar mitzvah-age boys. They were really happy to have a dos [perjorative word for a religious person] who knew what a siddur [prayer book] was and could get the kids ready."

That wasn't the only area of life in which he discovered there was no escaping his upbringing. "I wanted to go to university, and I found myself doing a B.A. in history of the Jewish people and Jewish studies. My brother Shlomo said to me: `Now you'll learn what you were running away from.' And it really did put my head in order. At the yeshiva, you don't learn about these things in an organized, chronological manner."

Fox completed his undergraduate studies, went on to do an M.A., and was recently awarded a grant to pursue a doctorate in Jewish education. The subject of his dissertation: how to put God on the agenda of Israeli public schools. "I see myself as a person of faith," he says, "not in the God that I believed in at the yeshiva, but in the concept of God - a God that exists inside of us. But non-religious young people only know about the Orthodox God, because Bible classes in the public schools don't talk about God. They only talk about the people in the Bible."

Studies first

Actually, Fox himself began to study for the rabbinate before he went back to believing in God. His studies brought him back. "I went into the rabbinate because I was interested in Jewish leadership - not out of any religious belief or desire to re-embrace the concepts I cut myself off from for 17 years. In the course of my studies, it hit me. I realized I had to decide whether I was secular or reform. I felt that I was starting to behave differently. Last Yom Kippur, I spent the whole day in the synagogue. My wife said, `Aha, you're a dos again.' I realize I have a responsibility to the family, and I want to be with them, but I have a feeling that as the kids grow up, I won't feel so bad about disappearing for longer stretches of time to pray."

After a few years as a social coordinator, he went to study Talmud at the regional kibbutz school. Even after his ordination, he does not want to be a pulpit rabbi but an educator. "I really want to devote myself to learning, but I don't want to give up my work with young people. We're doing some wonderful things in the high school, like spiritual treks in the desert or the Galilee with Mickey Yosefi, a Bratslav hasid. Secular parents on the kibbutz don't object because they know I'm the organizer, and I look and live like they do. So they're not worried that their children are going to turn religious."

At the same time, some kibbutz members think Fox is too liberal in his religious approach. "On Yom Kippur, I prayed at the Orthodox minyan on the kibbutz, and I suggested that we include poems of Yehuda Amichai and Leah Goldberg in the service to attract a larger crowd. So one of them says to me: What do you mean Leah Goldberg? We came here to pray!'"

And how do the parents react to this changeover from secular to reform rabbi? "Around here, they don't think of me as a dos. My mother says she's still waiting for me to get back on the right track. When I started studying for the rabbinate, it took me a few months to tell them. My father is dismissive of the program, but I think he's very happy I've gone back to this kind of study. Altogether, they've loosened up. There were times when I stayed away from home for two years. Until one day my siblings told me: You can come home now. Mom and Dad have changed. Every time there was a family wedding, there would be a big fuss. Until the last minute, no one knew if they would come. I got married at the kibbutz, at a non-kosher restaurant. We ordered kosher food only for my parents and some religious cousins. In the end, my father showed up for the ceremony, but as soon as it was over, he went to the library to study. On the other hand, he has come to family bat mitzvah parties."

When all is said and done, Fox is thankful today for the education he received. "Sometimes we have discussions about where it would have been more fun to be born - Beit Vegan or a non-religious kibbutz. There were times when I said the place where I grew up has only been a source of pain. Today I feel that it gave me something very profound - not knowledge, but a kind of serious-mindedness, a sense that everything we do needs to be thought out carefully.

"My upbringing has also made me see the importance of using time properly and not wasting it. Till today, I have feelings of guilt when I sit around and watch too much television. I think that because of my education, I feel stronger today. I would like my children to get to know the world I grew up in. My daughter, who is 10, says that when she gets older she'll go live with Grandma and Granddad in Jerusalem for a year to learn about their way of life. If you ask me, a year is a bit much, but for a shorter period I think it's definitely worthwhile."

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