A symposium on the cultural future of Jerusalem will take place in the nation’s capital on Saturday night. The conference will be attended by Rabbi Aryeh Stern, the national religious Zionist candidate for the position of Jerusalem’s chief rabbi, Rabbi Pupik Arnon, representing the hareidi religious sector. and Jerusalem City Council member Pepe Alalo from the Meretz faction.
In an interview with Israel National News, Rabbi Stern, who heads the Halacha Brura Institute and is a frontrunner for the position of chief rabbi of Jerusalem, remarked that the Chanukah festival, which commemorates the war between the Maccabees and the Greek Hellenists, is a very relevant time for an important discussion on the character of Jerusalem.
“Chanukah was a battle between the culture of Torah and the culture of Greece," he said. "When the Hellenists entered the Holy of Holies in our Temple and sought to defile it, it was really the core of the greater struggle between them and the Maccabees. The question today is how we should relate to the modern global culture and if we should view this culture as a modern version of Hellenism.”
Rabbi Stern further explained that the positive aspects of cultural developments in the larger world should be embraced so long as they do not conflict with the culture of Israel’s Torah. Referring to two sons of the Biblical Noah, he commented, “There is a beautiful idea that Yaphet will dwell in the tents of Shem. If an aspect of the global culture is clean and pure and compatible with the beauty of our Torah, it can be incorporated into our civilization. We can appreciate Gentile contributions in art, science, literature and music. Matters of science are developing all the time, and it is an essential part of the global culture. We can incorporate some of these things – that which is kosher and modest – if we understand the correct proportions.”
Rabbi Stern expressed awareness that understanding the proportions is challenging for many people, but he argued that unlike times when the Jewish nation was in exile and could afford to sit secluded in Torah study, Israel is now challenged by the realities of managing the institutions of a state. The rabbi emphasized, however, that the Torah must continue to play a central role in the life of the Jewish nation and remain the primary source of Israel’s culture.