Expanding the Conversation: Rakefet Ginsberg

By :  Expanding the Conversation Podcast | Expanding the Conversation Podcast | Israel

What does Jewish pluralism actually look like in Israel today?

In this episode of Expanding the Conversation, Rakefet Ginsberg, Executive Director of the Masorti Movement in Israel, reflects on how Israelis are redefining religious identity and reclaiming spiritual space—from the egalitarian Kotel to public Yom Kippur services in Tel Aviv. Drawing on her work at the grassroots level, she offers stories of coexistence, struggle, and hope, and makes a compelling case for expanding access to Judaism that is both meaningful and inclusive.

Bio of Rakefet Ginsberg

Discussion Questions

  1. Pluralism in Practice
    Rakefet Ginsberg described the egalitarian section of the Kotel as a space where diverse Jewish expressions coexist. What does this tell us about how pluralism functions outside of formal policy? What challenges and opportunities does this model present?
  2. Ownership of Judaism
    Ginsberg emphasizes the need for Israelis to “take ownership” of their Judaism. What might that look like in practice—for religious, secular, and traditional Jews?
  3. Building Trust Across Difference
    How can trust be built between communities with vastly different religious worldviews? What lessons can we take from Ginsberg’s conversation with Rabbi Eliezer Melamed?
  4. The Role of Institutions
    What role should state institutions like the Chief Rabbinate play in defining or regulating Jewish life in Israel?
  5. Sources of Hope
    In difficult times, Ginsberg points to community, song, prayer, and memory as sources of hope. What spiritual or communal practices sustain you in moments of challenge?

Show Notes

Video

Further Reading

Transcript

Ellie Gettinger

Welcome to Expanding the Conversation, a podcast series that brings the Jewish Theological Seminary to you. The series focuses on the messages that emerge from Israel at a crossroads navigating religion, democracy and justice. A Convening that took place at JTS in April 2025. I’m Ellie Gettinger, director of outreach for the Center for Lifelong Learning, and I will be curating the series, which will highlight key messages from the convening itself with insights from our panelists that were recorded separately.

In this episode, we hear from Rakefet Ginsburg, the executive director and CEO of the Masorti Conservative Movement in Israel, Rakefet spoke at a session entitled “Religious Pluralism in Israeli Society,” where she focused on the ways in which Israeli society is engaging in questions around pluralism.

Rakefet Ginsberg

Bechol dor v’dor hayah vadam lirot et haetzmo k’ilu yatzan Mimitzrayim, every generation a person needs to see himself like he’s the one who got out from Egypt.

And I thought Every generation we have to fight for our freedom in different ways, in different levels. This is our time. We’re doing that and we’re doing that in different ways. It’s pretty hard and sometimes make you feel like there is no point to find the government with it, to fight to the institutions, although we do that together as coalitions.

And I want to say and we probably going to refer to that, the fact that there are coalitions who can have Orthodox organizations, Reform, Conservative, even secular organizations that deal with Jewish pluralism in Israel today. And I think it means something about what we feel compared to what the government actually does or do not necessarily do. Since the Masorti movement is I want to say that as a grassroots organization that work on two levels. One, we work with communities around the country and we work for the Israeli society. We’re here here in Israel to work for and make Israel a better Jewish, pluralistic, democratic state, not just for Conservative Jews. For Israelis.

The Masorti movement, in my eyes as CEO, is a vehicle for that vehicle that help Conservative Jews but help Israelis all over the country. They don’t have to sign as a Conservative Jews. They just need to be Israelis who want to enjoy from their Jewish life, pluralistic Judaism, egalitarian Judaism in Israel, we’re the address for them. And we want to be an address for them. We knew and we know today more than ever, that we can change things on the ground.

I want to tell you one story about the Kotel. We have a small part at the Kotel that is an egalitarian, that is called ezrat Yisrael. I hope all of you visit there. If you haven’t yet, please make sure that in your next visit in Israel, you’re there. This place was built because of a lot of pressure. And the pressure came mainly because American Jewry thought we’re coming to Israel and we have no place the Kotel.

We can’t have an egalitarian prayer. It started, by the way, with Conservative rabbis that started this fight. It took years and years to achieve that. And it’s not what we dream of. We wanted to have a place that’s going to be big enough and going to be nice enough and going to be able to host everybody. But we got a place that is small and has a very horrible platform.

But there is a platform and the Masorti movement runs this place to give other religious services on the ground there. So it’s a beautiful archeological garden that the government gave and said, okay, we give you the platform, but that’s all from this point, you’re by yourself and we use this place for prayers and we use this place for services of bar and bat mitzvah.

And it started with a few families that came from North America and some families that came from South America. And every year and every month, we saw more and more people. And today I’m not talking about the wartime because this is a really different thing with all the flights. You all know that it’s much more complicated. But let’s say September 20, 2023, okay, just before the war, when we’re talking about an average busy Monday and I’m saying busy because we have 40, four zero services per day, per day.

There is no synagogue in the world that can hold 14 services per day, 40 services per day! Now, you would think, okay, they’re all North Americans. No, they’re North Americans and South Americans. And third, our Israelis, Israelis that maybe never heard the word pluralistic Judaism. Okay. But they practice by fact, pluralistic Judaism, because when they can choose, they realize there’s another opportunity.

There is an opportunity for me to have a service for my child, a bar mitzvah or a bat mitzvah for my children in an egalitarian way. And the beauty of this place is that we have six services at the same time. One table conservative family with a woman rabbi next to her reform bar mitzvah with a man rabbi next to them.

And while they’re an Orthodox family, that’s a bat mitzvah and they use the table as a separation. Then they stand from both sides of the table. And near them a secular family from Nahariya that have a service for their child. And another one that comes from Beersheva. And this is an educational moment that I can’t even describe.

When they realized that the service just next to them by the woman rabbi is actually pretty similar and it’s by the halakhah. And this girl that reads the bar mitzvah, she writes beautifully from the Torah. I don’t have to teach them what egalitarian Judaism is at that moment. They know what egalitarian Judaism is. I don’t have to talk about pluralism at that moment, since there are more and more organizations, more and more places.

We’re getting to more and more people and not just the Masorti movement. We do that, but other organizations do that as well. And bringing Judaism pluralistic Judaism, to people. So there’s a huge gap between what the government allowed us to do and the Chief Rabbinate that is so disconnected from everything that’s going on, on the ground must tell you, you just need to see the elections, how they run the elections for the Chief Rabbinate to understand that Israelis has nothing to do with it, how people really feel about their Judaism.

And I think this whole term of the last three years, two and a half years, showed us that more and more Israelis actually think we don’t need the ultra-Orthodox to hold Judaism for us. We want to take ownership of our own Judaism. It’s not going to be the same way, but it’s going to be ours. And I think for many, many years, Orthodox ultra-Orthodox were afraid from Judaism that’s going to be different from them in Israel. And by that they got a lot of power and it got a lot of budgets. And now it’s a system that holds itself. We can and we should keep fighting this system. We should fight this system as coalitions. But one of the most important thing is we need to decrease this fear that people will be less afraid from the different Judaism that they see near them.

We see Hilonim secular people in Israel, which is a tricky term, but let’s say Hilonim in the Israeli term because they’re afraid from those systems sometimes we talk about, you know, let’s have a service in the school or something like that for one of the holidays. And there are like really a real okay with a rabbi getting into our school.

It’s not going to make our children now super Orthodox, and they want to eat at my home tomorrow. We need to get their trust that we’re not changing them. We’re actually giving them the opportunity to take ownership of their Judaism. By that, it’s a process that this society is afraid from that side and this side, that afraid from this side.

And we happen to be many times in the middle that we’re thinking, okay, where do we belong? What do we do with that? But that’s exactly our role to make sure that we can decrease this fear. Ultra-Orthodox kids, mainly with their teachers, came on motzei Shabbat that was to Erev Tisha B’av to the egalitarian Kotel, took the whole place, put the message, sign the middle, and started to pray in a very loud way that the actually didn’t let us pray.

And we come every Shabbat, every evening of the Shabbat, have to pray at the egalitarian Kotel. And they actually took our took the only place that we can have. We could have an egalitarian prayer there. It was horrible because the words that were there is like, we’re fighting for religion, we’re fighting This is this is a religious war.

Now think about the Tisha B’av, Kotel. You’re standing there with the stones. You know, you see the destruction in front of your eyes and they’re talking about hatred, you know, among Jews. It was a horrible, horrible night. No prayer can be accepted if something like that happens. I mean, no God can hear a prayer that comes by interfering or arresting other Jews from praying.

And those videos were all over the media. Some rabbis started to write short notes. Maybe we had to rethink how we do that. We have to rethink if this is our way. And one rabbi wrote, I saw this video of this woman saying, no prayer is accepted like and I saw it again about and I thought, this is an opportunity.

And I called him. I won’t tell you the whole story. That can take us 3 hours. But it’s it’s it’s a very interesting way. How they accepted me eventually was Rabbi Eliezer Melamed that is very known among the Orthodox community. And I got to his house and I thought, it’s going to take us 20 minutes. I’m going to say thank you for saying what you said.

And he’s going to say, Yeah, okay. And that’s it. And I was there for three and a half hours and we were talking for three and a half hours. Now the talk was very open and very direct. I didn’t try to be anybody else than just myself and say, This is who I am, This is why I do that.

And he asked very directly, he said, Why do you go to the Kotel? And I said, Look, I have three boys. They were born in Israel and raised in Israel. I want them to feel that Israel is their home. They can live anywhere else in the world and they’ll be fine. But I want them to feel that Israel is their Jewish home no matter what.

And if you eliminate us from the Kotel, the most important thing and for me personally, my grandparents met at the Old City in Jerusalem. So for me it’s like this is really family home. If you take me for this place and say to my children, That’s not your place, you have no place here.

What actually you mean by that? What’s the next generation future going to be here? We’ve talked a lot about a lot of things. And I said I’m a pluralistic Jew. He immediately said, I’m not. I said, I think the truth is, among a lot of people, a lot of ways to practice Judaism. He said, no, I don’t think so. I think you’re wrong.

But I understand one thing you’re doing that because you really feel that this is an important thing for you and you’re doing that for the next generation and you’re doing that. And I get it that you want your children to feel at home. I want that for my children as well. This, after three and a half hours, was the only thing that we could agree about.

All the rest we thought, though, I thought about women’s leadership. You know, everything was different. This was the only thing that we said, I want my children to feel at home. You said, I want my children to feel at home. And this is my commitment that your children are going to feel at home and vice versa. That was a beginning.

At the end of these three and a half hours, I said, Can I? I came there without telling anyone. It’s a long story, but then said, Can I tell or write about this meeting? He said, Yes. It wasn’t an easy thing at the beginning. Like, Are you sure? Tell people that you met a friend here.

A month later, he wrote an article that says, Leave that part for Conservative and Reform Jews. Let them do that in their own way. We disagree with their way, but we’re respected and we understand that that’s their way to connect their Judaism. He was not sure when we’ve met. He was sure that I’m doing that just because I want to interrupt him, because I want to, you know, put my finger in his eye, like I’m doing that in purpose just to make him angry because I don’t want him to practice his Judaism in his own way.

And when I said, I don’t care about where you practice your Judaism, I care about how I can practice my Judaism. I care about the fact that I want my children to feel that they can practice their Judaism in their way. This is a moment of trust, and I’m talking about it because I think we’re so afraid. They’re afraid of us.

The fact that I’m not afraid from them doesn’t mean that they are not afraid of me. We need to build trust. We need to work on it. And we need to have more and more Israelis that can take ownership of their Judaism. And by that, we can show that we’re not trying to make this state a democratic with no Judaism.

Judaism is part of what this country must be about, a body without a soul. It must be there. But still, the fact that we’re there with pluralistic Judaism is not against them, is not, instead of its side by side with. And this is something for a lot of people hard to accept because you have to give up on power.

You have feminism worked for years to be accepted by men, and it takes time. It’s not an easy thing automatically to just let it happen, but it’s a process and the process needs to come from both sides. One of the things that we’re seeing that when we grow and we have more and more people that getting married outside of the Chief Rabbinate, the Chief Rabbinate become more strict.

But at the same time, we hear the terminology, we’re going to be more open. We in this, but eventually we make the revolution. Kids just don’t get married through the Chief Rabbinate. So the revolution is here. We should change the Chief Rabbinate’s, right. Married in in our I.D.. If I don’t get married through the Chief Rabbinate, we should change it.

But at the same time, we have more and more people that understand the Chief Rabbinate is not Judaism. The Chief Rabbinate is an institution, and we shouldn’t let this institution to defined our Judaism. And we have to take ownership of our Judaism. And Israel can and must be Jewish, pluralistic, democratic state, because our people are going to make it like this.

We’ve started to do a service of Yom Kippur. We’re doing a Neila, and now we’re doing not just Neila, but we’ve started with Neila in Habima Square. Habima Square is the biggest city square in Tel Aviv, I think the biggest in Israel. It’s a huge place. And we had a rabbi there with two people and we thought in several to one, we thought they probably going to be like ten people, maybe 15 will join, but at least we’re going to we’re going to have some kind of presence, especially because we’re talking about years that this whole debate of do we have a mehitza are in their public area.

We don’t have a mehitza outside. Let people see that there is an option without a mehitza to have a Jewish service outside there. Thousands of people were there, thousands of people. The funny thing is, I have tons of I never had so many videos from a career like I have from it. Think about it. People who took video on Yom Kippur at the city square for prayer.

But that’s exactly the people that come. Those are Israelis that if you ask them to join a synagogue, they’ll say, if you’re asking them who they are, what’s their identity? They’ll say, I’m Hiloni, okay, I’m secular. But that’s exactly the Israeli. I want to say a little bit political term because it’s easy for us to say if you don’t drive on Shabbat, you’re you’re a religious If you do drive on Shabbat, you’re secular.

But actually it’s much more wider and more complicated that as everything in life, it’s not black or white. And many, many Israelis do kiddush, Shabbat dinner, the bar mitzvah. Okay, They don’t consider themself as religious, but they still practice something in Judaism and want to connect. And by having this service at Habima Square, people that could just join and felt like it’s mine because it’s in my area, I can get there with my child to see and touch a tefilla and suddenly it’s ours.

And many people that I’ve never knew before, and some of them are celebrities, wrote they after, like this is a Judaism that I want. I don’t think they’re going to join the majority movement tomorrow, unfortunately. I wish they were. They need and want to connect, even though they consider themselves as Hiloni because knocking on a door synagogue is something else for them, having a religious and spiritual  life, it’s much more important for them.

And they want their children to understand, as I said before, why do they live in Israel eventually? It’s not an easy place to live, to choose to live in. And those who choose to live in Israel not do that just because it’s comfortable or they were born and just stayed. You need to have something in addition to that.

And something in addition is your roots. And if you don’t connect to your roots, then we may lose those roots. Israelis understand it even if they think this religious organization or this Orthodox institution is not for me. They need to find a way and our role is to offer those ways.

Ellie Gettinger

I wanted to dig in a bit more into the Neila service, particularly in thinking about the challenges and opportunities in marketing pluralistic Judaism. You gave a description of the Neilah service. What are other ways that that it’s like becomes a branding exercise to say that this is also Judaism and we are here as part of Judaism?

Rakefet Ginsberg

I want to start with saying that the whole split between Hiloni and the Dati in Israel, I think it’s a very political split. I know a sociological. A lot of people thought, you know, you’ll say hiloni, dati and masorti, which means you’re somewhere in between. But the way we the way we describe it is actually you drive on Shabbat, you don’t drive in Shabbat, you relate to Judaism. That’s the middle. The majority in every sociological research says that the majority in Israel are masorti. Maybe it’s not masorti like at Noar, almost all these like the majority movement, but actually they are masorti.

And when you think about the Masorti movement, you think, okay, what’s the difference? What do I actually look for when I see or talk about those differences? So many times the egalitarian issue is the difference, but I think the Israeli society 20 years ago, 40 years ago, is not the Israeli society that we see today. I grew up in an Israeli society that thought that a woman cannot be a pilot.

I grew up in an Israeli society that women could not be in a combat unit, and we broke this ceiling glass and we found that there are possibilities. And actually, why not? And when we have this opportunity to do that in a halakhically way more and more people say, especially more and more women say, why not if that’s an option?

And I don’t belong to start with to an Orthodox synagogue or an Orthodox community, then I can bring my values to my Judaism and I can combine and find a way that’s going to fit my ways. Now, a lot of Israelis think about synagogue as the Orthodox institution that they don’t want to belong to because that means that they’ll have to keep Shabbat in their way or they can do only one thing and not another, or maybe wear a dress or have a, you know, cover their head and then they get into a place that they don’t have to apologize for who they are.

They can come with their shorts and sneakers and they can be who they are. And they don’t have to pretend like there’s somebody else and connect their children. And I think more and more Israelis look for this kind of way. So being at a city square or a place that is open, have no walls, you don’t have to ask for permission.

You can just join or leave whenever you want. It’s a way that’s respectful for them, that respect the fact that they are not necessarily going to do everything or nothing. It’s their way to do whatever they choose and people need those opportunities. And we are here to offer those opportunities.

Ellie Gettinger

As she wrapped up her talk, Ricafort owned the current challenges and talked about the importance of hope in times in which there are so many issues affecting Israelis society.

Rakefet Ginsberg

Hope is a hard thing, really hard. And there are days that you wake up in the morning and what’s going to happen tomorrow. We need to make sure that we’re going to be okay. If we relate to our history, this is part of our resiliency. If we think about we were of a day, we were slaves in Egypt, but eventually we got out.

We’re the hostages square every day? And we were there for Purim every day at 5 p.m. service of circle of prayer and singing together and just hold the hope together. One, because we understand that we can do that by ourselves. Nobody can do that by himself. We need community. And being together is being a community. And second, because praying and singing together give us hope and singing is religious ritual as well.

Sing, Lu Yehi. It’s like let it be an American “Let it Be” for many people. That’s that’s a prayer. That’s a way to hold hope. We all need this spiritual thing. We were there on Purim, reading the Megillah together and knowing that eventually it ended with a happy end. That gives us hope. Our history gives us hope. We belong to a nation that survived, which means we have it in our genes, not just in biological genes.

We have it in our spiritual genes. We have it in our cultural genes. The ability to survive and get through this. It’s not easy, but it can happen and it will happen to us. Reminding that every day to people, to ourselves, that spiritual thing that we as a religious organization can bring to people and need to bring to people today, that’s our that’s part of our role in times of war.

We can fight, but it’s not less important than fighting because those hostages will be back, not just because of a deal. The fact that we will have a deal is because we hope and believe that they must and can come back home. If we want believe that it can happen. It will never happen. We need our politicians to do their their role, but we need to our role as well.

And the role is to hold this hope to make sure that everybody remember that we can. And it is possible to make this place a better place, that we can have better democracy, that we can live in peace one day. Peace is not black or white. It’s a process. Different levels of we can do that and we will do that.

That’s our role as religious organization

Ellie Gettinger

in closing our conversation, we talked about hope, but also the practical reality of funding. There’s so many hurdles and there’s so many challenges because of kind of entrenched power, money, all of those pieces. Where are you finding moments of hope in this in this process?

Rakefet Ginsberg

It’s hard to say. The more days that you think, my God, it’s getting worse than days that you feel there’s a hope in terms of funding, You can see that it’s getting better. But I think even the Israeli government today fund services outside in a city square in different places, some services that are more open and traditional, not necessarily not necessarily religious, the way with the Israeli government today understand that people will connect one way or another and there is a need to reconnect people in a way that’s going to be more set and going to give them the opportunities.

It’s not like a funding. It’s not when, especially when we look at the Chief Rabbinate or even at the Kotel, we don’t talk about the same the same amounts. I mean, the the gap is horrible.

Ellie Gettinger

I mean, it’s not even in the same ballpark.

Rakefet Ginsberg

You’re right. You can’t really compare like like, like group that plays in them in their backyard.

Like you’re going to give them something, but you won’t really give them the real money.

Ellie Gettinger

Maybe a flat ball.

Rakefet Ginsberg

Okay, I’m going with that. But it’s not. It’s definitely not what we want to see. It’s not an equal funding. We can’t even talk about it yet, but we’re talking about funding. It’s hard

Ellie Gettinger

And that’s new. Just being able to talk about it.

Rakefet Ginsberg

I’m not sure it’s totally new, but we’re saying that more and more out loud. It doesn’t mean that it’s going to happen tomorrow with this government. It’s not going to be easy. I’m not sure that any other government going to do the change dramatically. It’s a process, but it’s a process that we have to believe in. And eventually I don’t think there is an other option.

Eventually, we will live in a country that will be democratic, Jewish, pluralistic, and we must make it like this. And even though we are going to expect and we should expect some of disappointments along the way, it’s still something that we have to hope for and still something that we have to fight for. Good to have small winnings here or there, but eventually it’s going to happen.

A meshiah will come.

Ellie Gettinger

It was really great to hear from Rakefet Ginsburg today. She drew amazing mental pictures of what pluralism in Israel can look like. Just consider a busy day at the egalitarian section of the Kotel, which has hosted 40 different services in one day, or the thousands of Israelis gathering in a public square for Neila. I appreciated the opportunity to explore what pluralism could look like and does look like in Israel.

Thank you for listening. I hope you will expand this conversation, sharing your concerns and questions, and maybe this podcast with friends and family members. If you want to see complete footage of this session or of any of the sessions of the meeting, Israel at a Crossroads.

You can find a link on our website jtsa.edu/podcasts. Look for the “Expanding the Conversation” icon. Each episode includes discussion questions for individuals or groups to consider and links to our speakers, organizations and publications. If you would like to attend a Convening, you can find information about our upcoming programs at jtsa.edu/convenings

I’m Ellie Gettinger, director of Outreach for JTS. This podcast was produced by me with technical support from Chris Hickey, director of New Media. This is a production of the Jewish Theological Seminary. No part of this podcast may be reproduced or transmitted in any form without the written permission of the Jewish Theological Seminary. The views expressed here in may not be those of the Jewish Theological Seminary.

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