By Aaron Berner
She started with a simple story; one that we all could relate to, even if some of the details were a bit different than we were used to. Tamar was a young child, no more than 7 years old, and was enjoying one of the most special family celebrations in Jewish practice, the Passover Seder. As little Tamar sat waiting for the meal, listening to her grandfather tell the long-winded version of story of the Jews’ Exodus from Egypt, however, something didn’t seem right. Even as a small child, Tamar noticed something strange about the fact that all the men in the family sat comfortably at the table enjoying her grandfather’s retelling of this crucial story in the Jewish collective memory, while all of the female members of the family hurriedly prepared the Seder feast in the kitchen. There was a disconnect in young Tamar’s mind: the story of the Exodus from Egypt is one of the strongest stories of Jewish survival, faith and redemption, and it concerns all Jews, for it is as if all of us were there when God took us out of Egypt. But the women in Tamar’s family, she could see, were being deprived of the retelling of this story.
So, rather than sit quietly and let this continue, young Tamar did something that would encapsulate her unique power, vision and ability to make change: Tamar stood up at the table in the middle of the story, looked her grandfather in the eye, and told him that the women in the family should hear the story as well. After the initial shock of this confrontation wore off, Tamar’s grandfather, to everyone’s surprise, apologized and agreed. The women would come sit and listen to the story like the men, and the family would all make the final preparations for the meal together, after everyone heard the Passover story.
With this first step, Tamar Elad Applebaum, the founder of Tzion, a uniquely-inclusive egalitarian prayer community in Jerusalem, began her personal journey to righting some of the wrongs she saw in a religious community she was always completely devoted to. Tamar’s story is a story of change through devotion. Or maybe it was change because of devotion.
As part of the Nachshon Project, we have had the privilege of seeing some incredibly inspiring Jewish role models. Leaving Tamar’s beautiful home in Jerusalem that afternoon, however, many of agreed that Tamar was certainly the most inspiring speaker we had spoken to thus far.
The experience began upon walking in to Tamar’s home; we could tell something was different about her. We were let in by Tamar’s husband, holding one of their young children. The house was spectacularly decorated with beautiful Jewish symbols adorning the walls. A home visit was different for us, and we piled into the living room, sitting casually on the family’s couches and rugs. We were told that Tamar was a very busy person, and that a home visit was easiest for here so she could continue doing her work the rest of the day instead of wasting time on transportation.
When she came into the room, we could tell at once why her time is so valuable. A small, slightly built woman smiled radiantly at us and immediately put us at ease. Tamar asked us to introduce ourselves and listened intently before discussing her upbringing in an Orthodox Moroccan Jewish family and the implications this had for her childhood. She was always interested in learning, in discovering more about her heritage, and in challenging herself with new material and experiences.
Tamar’s story was an incredible story of a woman with a vision and a tremendous strength of character to stop at nothing to see her vision become a reality. We could tell that the same 7 year old Tamar who stood up to her grandfather at the Seder in the name of equality and love had the exact same fire burning inside her speaking to us in her living room.
As a young adult, Tamar was exposed for the first time to non-religious Jews in Israel, and then later to non-Orthodox streams of Judaism in America. This discovery led Tamar to a major decision in her life: She decided to commit herself to bridging the gap between the world of Judaism, filled with the beauty of learning, of Torah, Talmud and Mishnah and the value of Jewish thought with the secular world of Israel. Both “bookshelves” as Tamar described them, were filled with their own incredible intrinsic value but also plagued by their own shortcomings.
Tamar’s end goal was to create a religious community, with freedom of choice and personal and communal responsibility like she had found in the States, and bring this back to Israel, a land Tamar saw as religious but lacking in the values of inclusion, community and collective responsibility.
As future Jewish leaders ourselves, our minds were filled with questions about how to much such a vision a reality. The story was so relatable. Growing up in a Jewish community that you love and are devoted but also see many flaws in: How does one go about making changes to it while preserving what makes it so special?
Tamar challenged every one of us to use our vision; a model, a direction, a picture of a better future; to put our trust in human beings, to work together to open doors and give people a choice. Tamar’s unique vision was in a sense empowering herself by empowering and trusting others.
Tamar told us that the key to everything is sincerity: as long as you are sincere, people will respond.
“So many things seem to put barriers between us; all we have to do is live together.”
Tamar’s community, Tzion, lives by this vision. It is a community that gathers weekly to pray, with women, children, Jews, non-Jews, immigrants, Arabs, and anyone else treated with the same respect and value.
Tamar put it on us to mend the world to be one.
“The world is made up of people just like you and me. Get to know them and trust them. You have the next 30 years of your lives to reshape the world. You should get to know the fabric that you’re going to use.”
