Every community has boundaries — why can’t we – Latest News
A bomb simply detonated in American Jewish life.
America’s largest Reconstructionist synagogue formally cut ties this month with its national denominational physique, citing its seminary’s persistent minting of anti-Israel rabbis.
The beautiful public rebuke over anti-Zionism by Kehillat Israel — a California congregation in mainstream Judaism’s most left-wing department — is a watershed.
The grownups have proven up. Maybe it’ll help us repair the youngsters.
Kehillat Israel’s Rabbi Amy Bernstein instructed The Post her Pacific Palisades congregation, with 930 households, was fed up with Reconstructionist rabbis fomenting intolerance in opposition to the very people they’re meant to nurture.
“What they want is to use their title ‘rabbi’ to help Jews and non-Jews hate the idea of a Jewish democratic state. I don’t understand how you can do that and call yourself a leader of the Jewish people,” she stated.
Kehillat Israel, a California congregation in mainstream Judaism’s most left-wing department, issued a beautiful rebuke over anti-Zionism. Google maps
The break got here after years of reflection, Bernstein stated. “It broke my heart to say the movement has changed to the point that it’s not in line with our Reconstructionist values and tenets.”
Mainstream American Jewry has long watched — typically in dumbstruck silence — as progressive rabbis signed obscene petitions that make Jews much less protected, helmed anti-Israel teams like Jewish Voice for Peace and took to the streets to demand “Palestine” be “free” of Jews.
The bloodbath of Israelis on Oct. 7, 2023, taught them nothing.
And whereas overtly anti-Zionist synagogues are few, many rabbis within the Reform and even Conservative actions say their “big tent” requires embracing everybody — together with those that advocate in opposition to Israel as a Jewish state.
Jewish Voice for Peace closed Grand Central with a protest. AFP by way of Getty Images
It’s a head spinner, all proper.
Israel is talked about some 2,500 instances within the Hebrew Bible. It’s home to more than 7 million Jews, the bulk of Jews worldwide.
Every day brings information of more incidents of Jew-hatred.
Meanwhile, rogue rabbis are lending a false patina of rabbinic authority to anti-Israel rhetoric — and complicated gullible youth.
Reconstructionism, based within the Twenties by Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan, emphasised Jewish peoplehood, tradition and evolving custom.
The motion itself was by no means anti-Zionist. But with rabbinical seminaries competing for college students, the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College exterior Philadelphia has thrown open its doorways to candidates making no secret of their disdain for Israel.
Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan based Reconstructionism within the Twenties. opensiddur.org
Reconstructing Judaism, which oversees the faculty and about 100 member synagogues, didn’t reply to requests for remark.
Kehillat Israel’s break means it’ll no longer ship 1% of its annual funds to the umbrella group.
Only about 3% of affiliated US Jews determine as Reconstructionist, but some say that as Reconstructionist goes, so too goes the most important denomination, Reform Judaism, with roughly 2 million members.
“I’m really proud of Kehillat Israel,” Diana Fersko, senior rabbi at Manhattan’s Village Temple and writer of “We Need to Talk About Antisemitism,” instructed The Post. “I’m hopeful it will inspire others.”
Fersko hopes Kehillat Israel “will inspire others.”
In the Reform world, charismatic rabbi and podcaster Ammiel Hirsch of Manhattan’s Stephen Wise Free Synagogue leads the charge to get the Union for Reform Judaism to attract the road on anti-Zionism. Reform seminaries additionally ordain anti-Zionist rabbis.
But don’t count on change from the highest in that department, both.
Andrew Rehfeld, president of the Hebrew Union College, made that clear final yr at Hirsch’s annual convention, Re-CHARGING Reform Judaism.
“If we meet what we think is extremism with extremism of our own we will not only leave them to the radicals, we will betray our sacred values of liberalism,” Rehfeld instructed a packed, silent room. He would possibly as effectively have been holding forth in some pretentious poli-sci grad-school seminar.
Every community has boundaries. Why the hell don’t we?
Bernstein stated the break got here after years of reflection. RabbiAmyBernstein/Facebook
I’ve heard even worse at my own synagogue, Judea Reform in Durham, NC. At final yr’s annual assembly, congregants have been to vote on hiring a second rabbi, Hannah Bender. I had a query first.
“Does the rabbi identify as a Zionist?” I requested into the microphone.
The viewers erupted. Synagogue executives whispered furiously.
Senior Rabbi Matthew Soffer rushed to a mic.
There will probably be no “assigning litmus tests,” Soffer chided, “as we balance being proud — but not supremacist — about our Judaism.”
So now Zionists are supremacists — perhaps just like the Ku Klux Klan?
In reality, Bender had signed a petition disgustingly accusing Israel of “apartheid.” But my query was by no means put to her.
Bender was confirmed:106 to 1. I used to be the only “No.” Yet I’m not alone.
Legions of us are fed up with anti-Zionism — and its toleration — in our supposed final protected space.
It’s time to behave. Kehillat Israel has proven us how.
Kathryn Wolf was director of community engagement at Tablet and a employees reporter on the Miami Herald.
