JTA has published yet another list of eminent Reform personalities who support the selection of Rabbi Richard Jacobs as President of the Union for Reform Judaism (URJ).
Like all the other responses to the objection raised by some Reform Jews that an activist member of J Street and the New Israel Fund (NIF) is not an appropriate choice to lead the largest Jewish denomination in America, it offers no arguments, just character witness:
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Rabbi Jacobs has made the welfare, security and democratic character of Israel a prime focus of his rabbinate. He is an ohev Yisrael, a lover of Israel, of the first order.
What we need today are Jewish leaders in Israel and North America who will not hesitate to struggle with the difficult questions of peacemaking and human rights while being firmly committed to the security of Israel. Rick Jacobs is such a leader. Rabbi Jacobs speaks his mind independently and with unswerving integrity.
In other words, “He’s cool. Trust us.” It isn’t enough.
It does not respond to the point of our criticism, which was that one cannot be a member of J Street’s Rabbinic Cabinet and a board member of the NIF and still be a Zionist in any meaningful sense.
There have always been Jewish anti-Zionists, those who oppose a sovereign state for the Jewish people for various reasons. Some think that only God can create such a state; others, that it will cause conflict or increase antisemitism in the Diaspora, etc. Even the Reform movement was quite anti-Zionist in the beginning, and only slowly moved toward Zionism over the years.
But there is a new twist to the anti-Zionism of J Street and the NIF: they act against the Jewish state while insisting that they are acting out of love for it. They attack and weaken the state while claiming that they are only trying to make it better, more democratic, more peaceful, more tolerant. They are remarkably arrogant, because they believe that they know better than the great majority of Israeli Jews who more or less approve of the policies of their elected government (and who are directly, physically, impacted by them).
In addition, they damage the image of Israel in the US — which is absolutely critical to Israel’s survival — by arguing that Israel is becoming undemocratic, theocratic and intolerant, and imply that it is not worthy of support by enlightened liberals.
The supporters of Rabbi Jacobs suggest that they are only trying to change the location of the center, to move it leftward to meet what they perceive as the new consensus among young Jews. As Rabbis Ellenson, Kelman and Marmur wrote in response to the original criticism:
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A significant number of North American Jews of a liberal disposition under the age of 40 are less and less likely to make Israel a central part of their lives. Yet, a small and highly influential committed core is swimming against the tide, and developing meaningful models for engagement for this cohort with Israel at this dramatic and uncertain time is a necessity for all of us who love and support the Jewish State. In Rabbi Jacobs’ example of encounter with Israel, in his willingness to confront complexity and face up to unpalatable realities, in his infectious enthusiasm and immense charm, he is a model for such younger Jews. To vilify him is to alienate them still further.
J Street and the NIF do not represent a new, slightly more ‘liberal’ approach to Zionism. J Street espouses and the NIF funds anti-Zionist causes. In the case of J Street, there’s good reason to believe that it’s fundamentally fraudulent, financially supported by people and institutions that are aligned with Israel’s enemies.
The URJ’s move is a major realignment, not a minor ideological shift. We probably owe it to the way anti-Zionism has become fashionable in US colleges and universities, part of the conventional wisdom for progressives.
But fashionable or not, we don’t have to accept it. There are a great many Reform Jews — we think they are a majority — that believe that the Jewish people has a right to self-determination in its own land and that without a state the Jewish people will return to the unstable existence as luftmenschen that characterized Jewish life for centuries.
Such Zionists understand that it is antithetical to their beliefs to apply the same double standards, to join in the delegitimizing and even demonizing tactics that are employed by Israel’s — and Jewry’s — most vicious enemies.
I am not exaggerating when I say that the most dangerous foe that Israel faces in this dangerous time consists of Jews — Jews who are obsessively self-critical, delusively optimistic about the intentions of their enemies, and convinced that the only moral path is that of appeasement. Nothing validates the anti-Israel forces more than to be able to point to a Jew that agrees with them. Imagine if that Jew happens to be the President of the URJ!
Am I being fair to Rabbi Jacobs? Perhaps not — but as long as he continues to support and take an active role in J Street and the NIF, which do their best to promote the principles of Jewish anti-Zionism, then one can only assume that they are his principles too.
I know that the URJ leadership feels that the movement is facing many serious problems, and they wish this one would go away (one rabbi wrote that the issue was ‘irrelevant’). But I hope they realize that we are not going away. There will be more advertisements and we will continue talking about this issue.
And I hope that they understand that it is not we who are the divisive force. They are the ones that decided to take a sharp left turn away from Israel and onto J Street.
Nathan, the Progressive Reform movement leaders by choosing Rabbi Richard Jacobs to lead them, signals that the Reform movement is distancing itself even further from Conservative and Orthodox Jewry and Jews who might fairly be described as being to the right of left wing, which includes liberal, centrist, conservative and right wing Jews.
Can you explain your comment “we need uniters not dividers” in the context of how that can be accomplished, given that the Reform movement, the largest congregation in the States, by moving even further left than they were before, is casting itself in the role of a disuniting force?
In fact, Foreign Minister was a bouncer. He still is. His role now is to kick terrorist trash & kapos out of Israel. Kapos includes leftist-liberal terrorists’ boot-lickers.
The reform movement hijacked by the left!
It should be center period.
And far from being simplistic and mindless, most would agree that my comments are exceedingly brilliant.
WE? Speak for yourself. I would suspect that most Israpundit readers agree with me.
Israel is already plenty democratic, peaceful and tolerant to its own detriment. It’s enemies are not the least bit democratic, peaceful or tolerant.
Too bad. I really don’t care that these leftist youth are alienated. We should never alter our vision of Judaism and Zionism to suit them. It is they who need to change if they want to be considered Zionists.
Last year,The Central Conference of American Rabbis decried the proposed loyalty oath as contrary to Israel’s democratic character
Little do they know about Talmud. Tractate Sanhedrin 26a tells the story of the Assyrians coming to besiege Jerusalem. Shevna, a high-placed official, assembled a party in favor of surrender. King Hezekiah opposed the surrender, but his party was smaller. The prophet Isaiah commented, “Do not speak of the group that these people speak of, as a group.” Even though they are a majority, we do not follow them because they are wicked, and when there is a consensus among the wicked against the Torah, we do not follow them.
So much about democracy and Jewish values in normative Judaism.
Time to declare the reform movement an enemy of Israel the Jews and Judaism. We should make a law forbidding any official contact by either elected or appointed Israeli officials with any representative of J-Street. Any American Jew or gentile shown to support J-Street in word or deed should be barred from Israel and added to a list of enemies by a select oversight panel selected for that purpose. Any American or Israeli unhappy with such a circumstance can go and drink the water in Gaza.
I’ve seen Christian Messianics who are more Jewish than most reform ex-Jews and most are certainly more knowledgeable re: anything to do with Judaism and Israel. Maybe we can’t excommunicate them but we certainly should marginalize them and give them NO SAY in our affairs. If it costs us money then so be it.
All Jews may be created equal, but they do not end up equal:
1. Liberals believe that all people are the same, that they are interchangeable, and that there is no such thing as intelligence.
2. Real Jews have never believed this.
3. Some Jews are better than other Jews.
4. If HaShem truly created the universe, gave the Torah to the People of Israel on Mount Sinai, and promised them the Land of Israel as an eternal inheritance, then you can draw certain conclusions:
5. Religious Zionists are the truest and best Jews.
6. Religious Jews who are not zionist, and secular Jews who are firm zionists, have some good points and some bad points.
7. The Israeli left, and Reform Jews in America, have ceased to be Jews in any meaningful sense, and are Jews in name only. They have set themselves on a path to assimilation, and, in the words of the Torah, have “cut off their souls from the Jewish People”.
8. There is only one valid path for Jews, now that HaShem has begun the end of our exile: Fully reclaim the Land of Israel for the Jewish People, establish a truly Jewish government guided by the Torah, and rebuild the House of HaShem of the Temple Mount.
I am disappointed (but not really surprised) that so few Jews are willing to state these obvious truths out loud and in public. You simply cannot be truly and fully Jewish if you do not subscribe to these principles.
Lets not forget Rabbi Jacob’s being a member of the Rabbinic Advisory Committee for Soros funded Jewish Funds for Justice (JFSJ): See: http://www.just-tzedakah.org/shopexd.asp?id=59
You will no doubt recall the JFSJ gained national attention when the JFSJ led Open Letter signed by 400 Rabbis accusing Glenn Beck and Fox News of being anti-Israel, anti-Holocaust and implicitly, if not explicitly anti-semitic, was published in the WSJ.
The indisputable fact is that Beck has done far more to publically speak out against anti-semitism and in defence of Israel and reach a vastly greater audience with his pro-Jewish/Israel mssages than probably most, if not all of these 400 Rabbis.
JFSJ and their 400 lackey Rabbis were not about to let this fact get in the way of their hatred that moved them to attack Beck and Fox in respect of something Beck said re: JFSJ’s benefactor Soros that did not sit well with them. Even if Beck’s words were inappropriate, they did not justify the accusatory conclusions in that letter. What was however, revealed was the hatred JFSJ and the 400 Rabbis have for Beck and Fox.
As I noted in my Open Reply to JFSJ’s and the 400 Rabbi’s WSJ Open Letter damning Beck and Fox and calling for Beck’s head on a platter, for Rabbis to spread such hate filled vitriolic accusations with a view to harming the reputation and economic well being of Beck, is hardly acting in Rabbinic tradition. It is however, typical of left wing political advocacy.
With those things in mind, Rabbi Jacobs’s affiliations and views should rightly be scrutinized, vetted and judged. It appears they have. The Reform movement leaders have judged that Rabbi Jacobs represents the very best of what the Reform movement is offering the Jewish community by their views, advocacy and activist agendas.
Similarly Reform Movement detractors have concluded that Rabbi Richard Jacobs represents the very worst to the Jewish community.
The divisions within the Jewish community have been measurably deepened by the Reform movement having chosen Rabbi Jacobs to lead them forward.
Those divisions already fractious and breeding weakness on a number of levels within the Jewish community at large, have just gotten much worse.
Both sides of that division need to take a long hard look at this huge and deep gulf between them, at themselves for having made it so and put the interests of the Jewish community and Israel ahead of their own jealously guarded views, if both sides can work towards lessening these self defeating divisions within our community.