The Reform Movement’s Statement on Israel’s 70th Anniversary

April 18, 2018 – The statement below is issued by the organizations of the Reform Jewish Movement, the largest movement in Jewish life:

“We join with our Israeli brothers and sisters, the worldwide family of the Jewish people, and friends of Israel everywhere, to mark with joy the 70th anniversary of the establishment of the State of Israel.  

We take this moment to renew and reaffirm our Movement-wide commitment to ahavat Yisrael (love for the land and people of Israel), through our words, by personally studying and traveling in Israel, and by providing financial and political support to the State of Israel and our partners there. We work every day to defend Israel when she comes under attack, and we play a key role in advancing the crucial relationships between Israel and the countries in which we serve.  

We know this to be true: The State of Israel represents the greatest achievement of modern Jewish history, reuniting millions with the land that gave birth to the faith and people of Israel. Following nearly 1900 years of exile – centuries of persecution and expulsion, that culminated in eras of both catastrophe and creative growth and innovation – the Jewish people are again sovereign on Jewish soil.  

As the Declaration of Independence states, the establishment of the State of Israel “is the natural right of the Jewish people to be masters of their own fate, like all other nations, in their own sovereign State.” The Zionist dream has been fulfilled with the ingathering of Jews who sought refuge and fulfillment in a land holy to our people, and is continually renewed by ongoing technological, medical, and economic miracles. We are continually inspired by Israeli creativity and contributions to Jewish life and culture. We will not yield in our pledge to strengthen our ties to the Jewish state and to be strengthened by her.  

Across her first seven decades, Israel frequently has been forced to defend herself against stronger and more numerous enemies that have sought her destruction. Israel has sacrificed for peace while maintaining the only democracy in the Middle East. At this critical milestone in Israel and Jewish history, we recommit to working for a secure and just Israel that exists side-by-side with a future state of Palestine. Additionally, we must work for the future, securing an Israel that fulfills the aspiration of its Declaration of Independence as Israel’s founders imagined when they wrote that the Jewish State will “uphold the full social and political equality of all its citizens without distinction of race, creed, or sex.” As tireless advocates for religious pluralism, we recognize that religious equality has been far too elusive for Israel’s growing Reform and Conservative Jewish movements and we remain committed to an Israeli society that recognizes the rights of all Jewish movements – and all Jews. 

In the presence of both triumph and challenge, hope remains our compass. Today, we join with Jews throughout the world, celebrating joyously this milestone anniversary of Israel’s independence. We pray for the fulfillment of Israel’s promise as a thriving democracy, an exemplar of security and peace, a beacon of light and hope for all the world. “

American Conference of Cantors
Association of Reform Jewish Educators
Association of Reform Zionists of America
ARZA Canada
ARZENU – International Reform Zionist Movement
Central Conference of American Rabbis
Men of Reform Judaism
National Association for Temple Administration
NFTY – The Reform Jewish Youth Movement
Program and Engagement Professionals of Reform Judaism
Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism
Union for Reform Judaism
Women of Reform Judaism
World Union for Progressive Judaism

 

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“The Lonely Man of Faith” – New York Magazine

This is an important article not only because it profiles Rabbi Rick Jacobs, the President of the American Reform movement so well, but it articulates the progressive liberal Zionism that is the hallmark of Reform Judaism. The American Reform movement represents about 1.5 million American Jews.

This is an important read, and I hope you will take the time to read it.

The Lonely Man of Faith, New York Magazine

Abraham Riesman profiles Rabbi Rick Jacobs, president of the Union for Reform Judaism.

 

Three poems for Seder Musings

“Not with a strong hand / And not with an outstretched arm / And not with great awe / And not with signs / And not with wonders / Rather hesitantly, with small steps, terrified by darkness / Softly / Dedicated / Purposefully / with accuracy / And love / Carrying little signs like the wrinkles of passing time, / The transition of seasons, my changing body, the pearls of my longings. Getting out of Egypt (Exodus)

—- by Hagit Ackerman

 

Reflections on Seder night, Mah nishtanah, we asked, / “How is this night different from all other nights”  / ”How changed?” Most of us are grown up now and have stopped asking, but some / go on asking all their lives, the way one asks / How are you, or what time is it, and keep on walking / without waiting for an answer. Mah nishtanah kol Layla, “How changed is every night,” / Like an alarm clock whose ticking is soothing and soporific. / Mah nishtanah, ha-kol yishtaneh, “What has changed, all shall be changed.” Change is God. / Reflections on Seder night. Of four children does the Torah speak: one wise, one wicked, one simple and one who knows / not how to ask. But nothing is said there / about a good one, or a loving one. / And that’s a question that has no answer, / and if there were an answer I wouldn’t want to know. / I who have passed through all the phases of the children / in their changing constellations, I’ve lived my life, the moon shed its light / on me for no reason, the sun went on its way, the Passovers / passed without an answer. Mah nishtanah. “What has changed?” Change is God, Death is his prophet.

—- by Yehuda Amichai (Translation: Channah Bloch and Chana Kornfeld)

 

Look around me now / I can see my life before me / Running rings around the way / It used to be

I am older now / I have more than what I wanted / But I wish that I had started Long before I did

And there’s so much time to make up / Everywhere you turn / Time we have wasted on the way

So much water moving / Underneath the bridge / Let the water come and carry us away

Oh when you were young / did you question all the answers / did you envy all the dancers / Who had all the nerve

Look round you now / You must go for what you wanted / Look at all my friends who did / And got what they deserved

And there’s so much love to make up / Everywhere you turn / Love we have wasted on the way

So much water moving / Underneath the bridge / Let the water come and carry us away

—-Graham Nash

Believing in Miracles

When I think about God splitting of the sea I’m reminded of the story of Joey who when asked by his father what he learned in Sunday school explained that Israeli engineers laid pontoons across the sea so that the Israelis could cross over safely, attack the Egyptian army and win the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Then Joey told his father that the same Israelis snuck back and laid charges under the bridges so that as the Egyptians crossed the bridges, they exploded and the Egyptians drowned.

Joey’s father said: “You didn’t learn that in Sunday school?”

Joey confessed: “No Dad, but you wouldn’t believe me if I told you what my teacher really told us.”

To children and adults alike, the parting of the Sea of Reeds in the Exodus story is incredulous. What to make of it as it defies reason? Wouldn’t a more relevant liberation story be Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, Kings “I Have a Dream” speech, Natan Sharansky’s address to the sentencing Soviet court, or Israel’s Declaration of Independence?

The Kotzker Rebbe said: “Whoever believes in miracles is a fool; and whoever does not believe in miracles is an atheist.” Is there no middle ground?

How ought we to read the Exodus text?

Here’s another way.

Nachshon ben Aminadav, a little known figure in the Exodus story, took matters into his own hands and as the Egyptians advanced and Moses prayed Nachshon jumped into the waters and started swimming. The Midrash says that Moses’ faith and Nachshon’s activism persuaded God to split the sea.

I’m reminded of the story of the man caught in a flood. While standing on his roof he prayed that God would save him. In the next hour 3 helicopters and 3 boats arrived but he refused them all claiming that he’d rather wait for God to save him. When the flood waters engulfed him he complained bitterly to the Almighty: “I’ve been a good man my whole life, but when I prayed to You to save me, you ignored my plea!”

“Nebesh!” God screamed, “I sent you 3 helicopters and 3 boats. Next time, help yourself?”

So – what’s a miracle? Philosophers answer the question in the negative; what isn’t a miracle? Judaism teaches that a miracle isn’t the radical transformation of the natural world. Divine wisdom and goodness lie not in rupturing God’s reign of universal law, but in the reliability of the steady order of the world.

Rabbi Harold Schulweis put it this way: “Faith isn’t dependent on miracles….miracles depend on faith. And faith, far from blind, sees life’s deeper truths.”

However defined, no miracle without faith is possible. Rabbi Abraham Heschel noted that a miracle has less to do with great historical peak events as it does in our consciousness of what lies before us at all times: “To pray is to take notice of the wonder, to regain a sense of the mystery that animates all beings, the Divine margin in all attainments.”

Rabbi Akiba was challenged by the pagan Tineus Rufus: “Whose deeds are greater, those of God or humankind?”

Akiba replied: “Greater are human deeds.”

The pagan asked how he could make such a claim.

Akiba brought sheaves of wheat and loaves of cakes and asked, “Which are superior?” The great sage answered his own question: the loaves of cakes excel because they required a human being to take the wheat and make something life-sustaining.

The lesson of the Sea of Reeds isn’t in the splitting of the Sea. It’s in our conscientious capacity to take action and transform the world.

As we prepare Pesach this week, our nation’s teens marching for reasonable gun control this past week is a great example of how we humans can transform ourselves and our world.

THAT is a miracle.

Chag Pesach Sameach!

 

 

Pesach is coming – It’s time to ask the big questions!

To be curious is the first quality of the wise. Wise people know that they do not know and they learn something from everyone they meet (Avot 5:1).

The Passover Seder will soon be upon us, and there is much about the Seder itself that is a mystery. Nothing is as it seems. Everything stands for something else. Deeper truths are there for the seeker. Everything in the Seder suggests questions.

I have compiled a list of questions that might be sent in advance to your Seder participants or asked around the table during the Seder itself. These aren’t exhaustive. Add your own questions.

As no marathon runner would show up at the starting line without preparation and training, neither should we show up at our Seder tables without thinking seriously in advance about the themes and truths of this season. Now is the time to begin the questioning and probing.

Afikoman – When we break the Matzah

Questions: What part of us is broken? What work do we need to do to effect tikun hanefesh – i.e. restoration of ourselves? What t’shuvah – i.e. return, realignment of our lives, re-establishment of important relationships – do we need to perform to bring about wholeness? What’s broken in the world – i.e. what remains unfair, unjust, unresolved, in need of our loving care and attention – and what am I/are we going to do about it?

Mah Nishtanah – How is this night different from all other nights?

Questions: How am I different this year from previous years? What has changed in my life this year, for better and/or for worse? What ‘silver lining’ can I find in my disappointments, frustrations, loss, illness, pain, and suffering? What conditions in our communities, nation and world have worsened since last we sat down for the Pesach meal?

Ha-Chacham – The Wise Child

Questions: Who inspired you this past year to learn? Who has been your greatest teacher and why? What are the lessons you have learned from others that have touched you most in the year gone by?

Ha-Rasha – The Evil Child

Questions: Since Judaism teaches that the first step leading to evil is taken when we separate ourselves from the Jewish community and refuse to participate in acts that help to restore justice in the world, have we individually stepped away from activism? Have we become overcome by cynicism and despair? Do we believe that people and society succumb inevitably to the worst qualities in the human condition, or do we retain hope that there can be a more just and compassionate world? Are we optimistic or pessimistic? Do we believe that people and society can change for the better? Are we doing something to further good works, or have we turned away into ourselves alone and given up?

Cheirut – Thoughts about Freedom

Questions: If fear is an impediment to freedom, what frightens me? What frightens the people I love? What frightens the Jewish people? Are our fears justified, or are they remnants of experiences in our individual and/or people’s past? Do they still apply? Are we tied to the horrors of our individual and communal traumas, or have we broken free from them? What are legitimate fears and how must we confront them?

Tzafun – The Hidden Matzah

Questions: What have we kept hidden in our lives from others? Are our deepest secrets left well-enough alone, or should we share them with the people closest to us? To what degree are we willing to be vulnerable? Have we discovered the hidden presence of God? Have we allowed ourselves to be surprised and open to wonder and awe? If so, how has such recognition changed us?

Sh’fach et chamat’cha – Pour out your Wrath

Questions: Is there a place for hatred, anger and resentment in our Seder this year? How have these negative emotions affected our relationships with each other, the Jewish community, the Jewish people, the Palestinians, the State of Israel, with any “other”? Have we become our own worst enemy because we harbor hatred, anger and resentment? Do the Seder themes and symbolism address our deeply seated anger, hatred and resentment?

Ba-shanah Ha-ba-ah Bi-y’ru-shalayim – Next Year in Jerusalem

Questions: What are your hopes and dreams for yourself, our community, country, the Jewish people, the State of Israel, and the world? What are you prepared to do in the next year to make real your hopes and dreams?

Campaign for Religious Equality in Israel

“We are doing great things at Kehilat Mevaseret Zion with families, adults, social justice work, and building community, but we receive no funding from the Israeli government, as opposed to orthodox synagogues one of which is just down the street from us and is fully funded because it is orthodox.” So said Rabbi Alona Nir Keren of Kehilat Mevaseret Tzion, a Reform synagogue community in the Judean Hills just down the road from Jerusalem.

Rabbi Nir Keren joined with four other Israeli Reform Rabbis on a stage on Monday night at the 129^th annual meeting of the Central Conference of American Rabbis in Long Beach, CA. She was part of a panel discussing the vitality and challenges of the Israeli Reform movement.

She was joined by Rabbi Chen Or Tsfoni of Kehilat Raanana, Rabbi Yoki Amir, Professor of Jewish History and Philosophy at the Hebrew Union College in Jerusalem, Rabbi Nava Hefetz, the Director of Education for Rabbis for Human Rights-Israel, and Rabbi Gilad Kariv, the CEO and President of the Israel Movement for Progressive and Reform Judaism.

Rabbi Kariv spoke about the growing influence of Israel’s Reform movement in Israel as a whole. He noted that 800,000 Israelis have attended in recent years weddings, b’nai mitzvah celebrations, britot milah, baby namings, and funerals conducted by our 100 Israeli Reform Rabbis. Israelis are not only taking notice of the Israeli Reform movement, they are joining Reform synagogues. Taken together (according to a recent poll), the Reform and Conservative movements attract 11% of the Israeli population, equal to the 11% of the Israeli population that are ultra-Orthodox Haredim.

Rabbi David Stern, President of the CCAR, questioned these rabbis on a wide range of issues including human rights, religious pluralism in the state, the impact of Reform Judaism on Israeli culture, the spiritual and educational needs of Israelis young and old, liberal religious practice in Israel, and the reasons so many secular Israelis are attracted to the Reform movement.

Rabbi Hefetz told of her work in human rights with the Eritrean and Sudanese asylum seekers. Rabbi Or Tsafoni, the daughter of Iraqi immigrants, shared her experience growing up in Israel as a child of immigrants from a Muslim country. Rabbi Kariv reviewed the wide range of issues that the Reform movement’s Israel Religious Action Center is actively confronting on a daily basis in the Knesset and in courts of law.

The evening was sponsored by the Association of Reform Zionists of America (ARZA), and as the Chair of the national Board, I had an opportunity to thank our Israeli colleagues for the important work they are doing and to present the “Campaign for Religious Equality” that ARZA and the Union for Reform Judaism began several months ago at the URJ Biennial Convention in Boston attended by 5000 delegates from Reform synagogues around the world.

We are asking every Reform synagogue in North America (now numbering more than 900 communities) to contribute $3600 each as we prepare to celebrate Israel’s 70^th anniversary in May. The money we raise will go directly to our Israeli Reform movement to support our Israeli synagogue communities (which receive no financial support from the Israeli government), our legal and lobbying efforts on behalf of religious pluralism, democracy, women’s rights, human rights, against racism and bigotry, and to conduct a massive public relations campaign to promote Reform Judaism in Israel with the intent to draw more Israelis to liberal progressive Judaism.

For North American congregations that would like to contribute $3600, please see ARZA’s website – www.arza.org .

Why Judaism Matters – A review in the Jewish Press of Northern California

This appeared this week – fyi

https://www.jweekly.com/2018/02/15/liberal-rabbi-tells-jewish-millennials-judaism-matter/

There’s No Such Thing As ‘Half-Jewish.’ Just ‘Jewish.’ – The Forward by Alyssa Pinsker

This article published by the Forward breaks my heart. Why should Alyssa have to suffer the indignities of being excluded from Jewish life when she herself has a Jewish parent and identifies as a Jew?

 

The story of the Reform movement’s acceptance of patrilineal descent as a determiner of Jewish status that accompanies a public commitment to living a Jewish life is already 35 years old. We Reform Rabbis at our 1983 CCAR Conference in Los Angeles voted in a large majority to accept as Jewish any individual born of a Jewish parent (father or mother) as long as he/she identified with the experience of the Jewish people and led a Jewish life.

 

This wise and far-reaching decision has impacted a generation of children of families in which the Jewish parent is the father. The Forward article explains quickly the historical reasons for matrilineal descent as recorded in the Mishna, namely that a Jew is born of a Jewish mother and it is irrelevant what the religious identity is of the father. This is not a biblical law. Rather, it is rabbinic passed during Roman times when intermarriage or rape cause a pregnancy. Out of concern for the dignity of both the mother and the child in those years, the rabbis determined that the Jewish status of the child was according to the Jewish status of the mother. In the Hebrew Bible, the priesthood follows the father’s line and not the mother’s. So much the more so should Jewish status follow the line of either parent as long as the child is raised as a Jew and identifies publicly as a Jew.

 

The Patrilineal Descent resolution passed by the CCAR is operative for Jews living only in the United States. Those living in Israel, Canada, and elsewhere have not yet arrived at this logical and compassionate evolution of the tradition – I’m still waiting. In the meantime, they would need to go through a conversion to be fully accepted in those other countries as Jewish.

 

Though Alyssa decided that at some point she is going to convert for the sake of her future children not having to suffer the indignities that she has suffered, my heart breaks for her and anyone in her situation.

 

They should all know that the American Reform movement accepts them as Jewish right now, fully and completely. They are not “half-Jewish.” They are simply “Jewish.”

 

See – https://forward.com/life/faith/393654/theres-no-such-thing-as-half-jewish-its-simply-jewish/?utm_content=daily_Newsletter_MainList_Title_Position-1&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Daily%20-%20M-Th%202018-02-08&utm_term=The%20Forward%20Today%20Monday-Friday

Flags on the Bimah – Do they belong?

I was sitting in front of the ark this past Shabbat and ruminating during a few moments of quiet prayer about the two flags that have framed my synagogue’s ark for as long as I can remember – the American flag on one side and the Israeli flag on the other. I love them both, but I asked myself, ‘Do they belong here in our Sanctuary, in our house of prayer?’ After all, they are national symbols and not religious ones.

I took a look at what has been written in Reform Responsa literature over the past 50 years since the question first was asked of the Central Conference of American Rabbis Responsa Committee about the appropriateness of placing flags in the sanctuary of our synagogues.

Essentially, the following is what I gleaned from a number of Responsa (links below):

“Though the flags are not religious symbols, they are symbols of our spiritual and emotional attachment to our country and to the State of Israel.”

“As citizens of the United States, the American flag represents some of our most sacred American ideals, our acceptance of the responsibilities and privileges of citizenship, and our devotion to the prophetic ideals of social justice and freedom.”

“The State of Israel is the political embodiment of the age-old Jewish dream of national redemption, a dream that Jews have expressed in our prayers for two millennia, and the Israeli flag represents the prayers of the Jewish people for a return to the land of Israel and the re-establishment there of our Jewish national life.”

So, yes! They do belong, in my opinion, and as a consequence of my ruminations last week, I feel that these flags in fact add something to the iconography of symbols that characterize our holy spaces.

Sources – Central Conference of American Rabbis Responsa

Hatikvah and The Star-Spangled Banner – https://web.archive.org/web/20170824182820/http://ccarnet.org/responsa/rr21-no-5758-10/

Israeli flag on a synagogue pulpit – https://web.archive.org/web/20170824183123/http://ccarnet.org/responsa/arr-66-68/

National flags at religious services LXIV(1954) 79-80 – https://web.archive.org/web/20170824183218/http://ccarnet.org/responsa/arr-64-66/

Flags on the bimah – https://web.archive.org/web/20170824182928/http://ccarnet.org/responsa/tfn-no-5753-8-29-32/

 

 

 

 

Poll: Deep Divide Among Americans Over Israel – AP

Josef Federman reports, “The bitter divisions in the United States are being felt across the world in the Middle East, where Israel is emerging as an increasingly partisan issue in the Trump era. A new opinion poll released Tuesday showed U.S. Republicans to be far more supportive of Israel than their Democratic counterparts. It also found Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a close ally of President Donald Trump, to be a divisive figure. The findings by the Pew Research Center could be a cause for concern for Israel, which has traditionally relied on broad bipartisan support in America.”

This divide has occurred over the last decade when the Republican party decided to make Israel a partisan issue. In discussions I had with then Congressman Henry Waxman while he was still in office, he told me that had tried, without success, to persuade the Republican leadership of the House of Representatives to not use Israel for partisan purposes.

The difficulty was compounded when Prime Minister Netanyahu violated protocol and accepted an invitation to address Congress on the Nuclear Agreement without the courtesy of informing the President of the United States. President Trump has deepened the rift with his friendship with the extreme right wing of the Republican party and the evangelical movement in America.

This is a dangerous trend. Israel has always been supported by both Democrats and Republicans and it should continue to be so supported. This does not mean, however, that we need to agree on policy – only that we agree not to diminish the pro-Israel bona fides of the other party with which we may or may not agree.

See https://apnews.com/86f32e653fca4c0a8f2778fcefca3f28