Introductory Note: I delivered this sermon on Kol Nidre at Temple Israel of Hollywood where I served as Senior Rabbi from 1988 to 2019. The YouTube above is available to watch or the written text below.

Shanah tovah.

It’s so good to look out from this bimah once again and see so many friendly faces. I’ve missed you.

I thank our Board of Trustees and my clergy colleagues for extending to me the invitation to speak with you on this holiest of nights. I’m honored to have this privilege. The adage that you can’t go home again doesn’t apply to me here. Temple Israel was and remains a home away from home for my family and me. Our sons were educated here, and now our two grandchildren are enrolled in our schools. L’dor va-dor.

Since I became Rabbi Emeritus six-plus years ago so much has happened in each of our lives and our families, in the life of this community, in our country, Israel and the Middle East, and around the world.

And here we are, together again at this annual reunion, as we begin Yom Kippur and Temple Israel’s 100^th anniversary year.

Tonight commences our day of fasting, reflection, self-criticism, and renewal, and is an opportunity to count our blessings too, to cherish each other, to remember those who have passed on who have been dear to us, and those who built this community and left it to us as part of their legacy.

Particularly in these soul-crushing and heart-breaking times in which we’re trying to make moral sense in this new era that began on October 7^th two years ago, it’s important to remind ourselves who we are and who we’ve been as Jews over our long history.

Judaism includes many things, a moral and legal tradition founded upon the principle of tikun olam (repairing the world), a religion and faith, a culture, history, languages, a Homeland, literature, art and music.

Though twice we were forcibly exiled from the Land of Israel, we’ve kept the Holy City of Jerusalem in our hearts. In exile we’ve suffered persecutions, but we survived as Jews despite all those who sought to destroy us.

Our liturgies, philosophies, theologies, and ideologies evolved as we’ve lived and adapted in lands throughout the world.

We are therefore not a religious and faith community alone. We’re a people and civilization distinguished by our moral values, ideas, and sense of community, lived experience and history no less significant than the Greek, Roman, Ottoman, and British empires, though we’ve never occupied as much territory as any of them.

I was asked to speak tonight about Israel, the war, Zionism, and our relationship as American Jews to the Jewish State, and I confess that after accepting the invitation, I asked myself how I ought to speak about this most horrific inflection moment in modern Jewish history and in the history of Israel.

To start, the 20-point peace plan unveiled on Monday at the White House, has many good things in it, including an end to the war, the immediate return of the hostages, a plan for the day after in Gaza, the surrender of Hamas, a surge of humanitarian aid, no forced displacement of Palestinians from Gaza, an eventual Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, a recognition of the Palestinian aspiration of self-determination and a “credible pathway” toward statehood, and the support of the Arab world, not a small thing at all.  

The proposal needs Hamas to support it and we’ll know soon enough if it does. Word is that it intends to reject it, but even if Hamas accepts the plan, it’s likely that Prime Minister Netanyahu and Hamas’ leadership will, for their own domestic political reasons, drag their feet and put obstacles in the way, or even derail the initiative altogether.

A significant weakness of the plan is that no Palestinians were involved in developing the agreement and there was no mention of the future of the West Bank. For true peace and a two-state solution ever to emerge, Israelis and the Palestinians must work face-to-face, from the ground up, not top down with one of the parties excluded, as Trump’s plan does.

After the press conference, PM Netanyahu, speaking in Hebrew, rejected Palestinian statehood as he has done throughout his political career.

I fear, therefore, that the status quo before Monday’s announcement hasn’t really changed, though I would love to be wrong.

My initial intent in speaking with you tonight was not to talk policy; rather, to reflect about who we are as Jews, and what impact the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023 and these two years of war have had on our identity as liberal American Jews, our Jewish values, and our relationship with the people and State of Israel. 

Since October 7^th, like so many of you, I have continually felt despondent, outraged, grief-stricken, vengeful, and deeply worried about the families of those murdered on that day, the well-being of our hostages and young soldiers and their families, and about the thousands of innocent Gazans who have lost their loved ones, homes, and communities.

I’ve been a Zionist since my earliest years. My family was among the earliest pioneers to Palestine starting in 1880, and I have many dear Israeli friends. I’ve studied, taught and written about Zionism, the State of Israel, and Jewish history, about Jewish texts, literature and values. But, nothing has pierced my heart and soul like what we have experienced during these past two years. Consequently, no sermon I have ever given has been more difficult and painful for me to write than this one.

The founding of the State of Israel only three years after the greatest tragedy ever to befall our people, transformed who we were to become as Jews in this era. The new state returned us to our ancient Homeland and to history. Israel gave us confidence and agency. It restored our pride as a people. It offered us protection from antisemitic hate and violence. And it became a laboratory in which our people’s ethical tradition could be tested in the context of our attaining power and sovereignty for the first time in two thousand years.

But, what happened on October 7^th represented the greatest existential threat in most of our lifetimes to everything we have been as a people in the modern era.

Israeli commanders feared in the initial days after the attack not only that Hamas would continue its savage rampage going north killing Jews with the ultimate goal of destroying the Jewish state, but that Israel’s enemies on all sides would join the war in a coordinated attack. Such a combined assault would have overwhelmed Israel’s defensive capacity.

Even before that awful day, Zionism and the State of Israel had come to be regarded by many in the United States and around the world cynically, with derision and in the most pejorative terms. That downward trend intensified and metastasized almost immediately as Israel began fighting back. Those hostile to Israel have for years sought to re-frame Israel’s narrative as discriminatory, racist, colonialist, and as a cancerous foreign element in the heart of the Islamic Middle East that had no legitimate right to exist.

An increasing number of progressive left-wing Americans, people many of us thought were our friends and social justice allies, agreed openly with the harshest Israel critics, justifying morally what Hamas did and some even celebrating Hamas by calling its brutal and savage terrorists, inexplicably, “freedom fighters.”

Every people has the right of self-definition, and we liberal American Jews and Zionists who support and love the State of Israel have that right as well. Especially now after two years of war, a dramatic rise in antisemitism around the world, and Israel being labeled a pariah nation, we Jews cannot allow Israel haters, antisemites and right-wing extremist Jews to define us or to determine the inner life of the Jewish people. We need to be able to restate our liberal Jewish narrative and lead with it whenever we discuss with those who know much or little about the history of the Jewish people, Judaism, Zionism, and the State of Israel. 

I want to express to you tonight as clearly as I can, from the deepest place in my being, in an effort to reclaim our narrative, why I remain a liberal American Jew, a liberal Zionist and a supporter of the people and State of Israel despite my very strong protest against the policies of the most extremist, anti-democratic, right-wing, messianic, and myopic ruling coalition government in the history of the Jewish state.

As a liberal American Jew, I believe in the right of the Jewish people to a state of our own in our historic Homeland and in the right of Israel militarily to defend itself whenever it’s attacked by terrorists and hostile states set on its destruction.

As a liberal American Jew, I affirm that the universal humanitarian values advocated by the ancient prophets of Israel, developed by rabbinic tradition over the past two millennia, and included in Israel’s Declaration of Independence, including equality, justice, compassion, empathy, human rights, and peace – all foundational virtues in Judaism – must be the core values guiding all of the Israeli government’s policies and reforms, its military and civil society.

As an American Jew, I acknowledge that I am not an Israeli citizen. I do not pay Israeli taxes nor do I send my children and grandchildren to the Israeli military. Nor do many of us American Jews know people who were murdered on October 7, though two of the young people killed at the Supernova music festival, Norelle and Roya Manzuri (aleihen b’shalom), grew up here in our own Briskin Elementary School.

Few American Jews have family members who were taken as hostages, and few among us have been subjected to missile attacks forcing us to run quickly with our children and babies in our arms into shelters with only seconds to spare before the explosions and the walls of our home shake.

Only Israeli citizens have the right to take the hard decisions that impact their lives and well-being. However, as an American Jew who loves Israel and who cares deeply about Israel’s citizens and future, I insist that I do have the right to share my ideas and criticism of Israeli government policies and trends that I believe are harmful to Israel as a Jewish and democratic state, that threaten our security and well-being as Diaspora Jews, and are contrary to our liberal Jewish and democratic values.

I had little doubt that Israel had to respond militarily in order dramatically to reduce Hamas as a military threat to enable Israelis safely to return to their homes in southern Israel, just as Israel had to defang Hezbollah in Lebanon to allow Israelis to return safely to their homes in the north.

However, I’ve been haunted ever since I read words written soon after the war began by a dear Israeli friend, Nadav Tamir, who wrote:

“After October 7^th, I understood the anger and desire for revenge, but I feared Hamas would win the battle for our souls if they succeeded in making us as murderous and vengeful as they are…” (1)

I knew Hamas couldn’t win this war on the battlefield. Thankfully, Israel is too strong and strategic a military power, but like my friend, I worried too that Hamas would succeed in corrupting the heart and soul of the Jewish people.

This war began as a just war of self-defense against a cruel and vicious enemy that committed massive war crimes against our people. Israel’s initial war goals were to bring the hostages home and to degrade Hamas’ ability ever to attack Israel again as it did on that day.

Like many Israelis and American Jews, I too have felt the need for revenge, but I’ve asked myself at what cost to my heart and soul and to the soul of the Jewish people should I or any of us continue to harbor such self-destructive emotions? And at what moral cost to our people have these two years of violence and killing had upon Israelis and the Jewish people around the world?

Earlier this year, 600 retired Israeli security military and intelligence officials wrote to President Trump to urge him to apply pressure on Israel to end the war because they believed that Hamas was no longer a military or strategic threat to Israel and that there was nothing more to be gained in continuing the battle, that the war was harming Israel’s international legitimacy, causing immense suffering for Gazan civilians, and that the war was no longer a “just war.”

But, despite their advice and expertise, the fighting has gone on and on. Though Trump has now tried to end this war, over the past two years, Israeli bombers, missiles and tanks have utterly destroyed Gaza, house after house, apartment building after apartment building. Water, electricity and sewage infrastructure no longer exist. It’s estimated that 90 percent of all homes, 436,000 residences, are either destroyed or damaged beyond repair with tens of thousands of innocent Palestinian civilians dead – men, women, children, babies, the elderly, entire families wiped from the face of the earth. They and so many of our own Israeli soldiers and hostages that have been killed could have been saved had the war ended long ago. 

If all of this isn’t awful enough, from March to May of this year, the Israeli government withheld all humanitarian aid from Gaza allegedly to force Hamas to release the hostages and to surrender. But that tactic backfired. We’ve seen the images of starving children. Even if Hamas doctored some of the photographs for its corrupt propaganda purposes, is there really any doubt that thousands of children were starving because Israel used humanitarian aid as a weapon of war? This tactic was not only immoral and un-Jewish, but according to international law, a war crime.

After heavy criticism from the United States, Israel opened the gates and aid began flowing again on hundreds of trucks daily into Gaza, but far more is needed to address the horrific long-term effects of famine.

It is American policy that Israel and all recipients of United States’ weapons must adhere by law to standards concerning humanitarian aid and the use of force. As painful as it is for me to say this because I have always supported American military aid to Israel throughout my life, I support those 27 Democratic Party Senators who in July voted to block the sale of U.S.-made heavy bombs, guidance kits for bombs, and assault rifles to stem Israel’s use of these offensive weapons to harm civilians, block humanitarian aid, and contribute to mass starvation in Gaza. Though the bill didn’t pass in the Senate, the intent of those Senators was to put maximum pressure on President Trump, Prime Minister Netanyahu and his extremist government to end this war.

Those 27 Senators are friends of Israel. In their vote to withhold offensive weapons they carefully distinguished between those weapons and the defensive weapon systems of Iron Dome, Arrow, and David’s Sling that save Israeli lives. These Senators should not be accused of being anti-Israel as some in the American Jewish community have done. They are not that. They instead should be praised for acting on behalf of the best interests of Israel and the Palestinian civilians of Gaza and for applying necessary pressure on the Israeli government to do what is just and compassionate.

Many of us are aware also of the organized right-wing extremist settler violence and murder of Palestinian civilians in the West Bank, the demolition and burning of their homes, orchards and fields with impunity and often with the participation of uniformed Israeli soldiers. The intent of these violent settlers, with the backing of this extremist Israeli government, is to drive Palestinians out of the West Bank altogether, from their homes and villages in which they have lived for generations, to make way for more Jewish settlements and the eventual annexation of the West Bank into a Greater Israel, also contrary to international law.

Several weeks ago, I was stunned when Prime Minister Netanyahu arrogantly boasted that Israel will become “Super Sparta” – a reference to the ancient hyper-militaristic, self-reliant society that was isolated from the rest of the world. The “Super Sparta” vision prizes armed-force prowess above all else and is not a vision for Israel’s future that most of us would recognize or of what early Zionists hoped for Israel to become as a nation amongst nations. It’s a road-map to deepen Israel’s pariah status around the world and to accelerate Israel’s moral and political decline.

It ought to be clear by now that given the massive destruction and killing that continues day after day that Israel has crossed red lines and committed war crimes. War crimes are committed in every war, and in this war, it’s likely that rogue commanders and rogue soldiers have shot civilians without provocation, and missiles and bombs have destroyed buildings inhabited by Hamas commanders without nearly enough concern for the number of civilians who would certainly be killed. Those commanders and soldiers should be held accountable when the war is over.

We Jews know better. Our own people have been the victims of war crimes throughout our history. Judaism gave the world a system of justice and a moral tradition of compassion based upon the principle that every human being is created b’tzelem Elohim, in the divine image, and therefore is of infinite value and worth.

Israeli soldiers have long been trained in what’s called Tohar HaNeshek, purity of arms, meaning that every means and every effort must be taken at all times by every commander and soldier to preserve innocent human life. (2)

To their great moral credit, hundreds of Israeli reserve soldiers are now refusing to report for military duty because they know that Israel is now fighting a cruel and unjust war. The vast majority of Israelis too, according to polls, are demanding that the war, killing and suffering end, and the remaining hostages be returned home.

This war has shaken Israelis and world Jewry to our core. The wounds of each of our peoples, of Israel and Palestine, are going to be difficult to heal or overcome for generations.

In the United States and around the world, we Jews are dealing also with a rise of antisemitism – much of it exacerbated by this war – that most Jews alive today have never seen, experienced or imagined before.  

The Palestinian-Israeli struggle is amongst the oldest unresolved conflicts in the world. The Israeli historian and writer Fania Oz-Salzberger put it exactly right when she wrote a month ago:

“Here’s a truth to reckon with: neither Israelis nor Palestinians are going to disappear any time soon. No one can destroy their respective claims to a sovereign state in their ancestral homeland, which happens to be the same land. Barring a cataclysmic event, there will be no river-to-sea Palestine and no Greater Israel. This is a conflict that can only be solved by territorial and political compromise.” (3)

There are serious ideas, in addition to what we heard on Monday, that have been developed over the last number of years between Palestinians and Israelis working together, from the bottom-up, who recognize and accept each other’s legitimate national aspirations, needs and rights. Despite whatever despondency I have felt, there are two related ideas that I actually find hopeful and visionary.

One is called “Eretz L’kulam – A Land for All: Two States, One Homeland”, a political vision developed by Israeli Jews and Israeli Palestinian Arab citizens. The proponents of the idea envision two democratic and sovereign states alongside each other – Israel and Palestine – linked together in a confederation much the way the European Union functions. (4)

The second idea is a “23-State Solution” that includes all the western Arab states and Israel in coalition with each other, complete recognition of Israel for the first time in Israel’s history by most of the Arab and Muslim world, and the creation of a demilitarized Palestinian state, perhaps as part of the confederal model. (5)

This isn’t the time or place to discuss the details of these ideas, but it’s important to know that there are creative and pragmatic ideas that can offer hope and a way forward. After the holidays, this sermon will be posted on our synagogue’s website and on my personal blog (6), and I will include links to both of these proposals that spell out the details, if you are interested.

All ideas about how to resolve this conflict are, of course, not risk-free, but the status quo is unsustainable. Violent rejectionist Jewish Israelis and violent rejectionist Palestinian Arabs will have to be controlled harshly by each state’s respective police forces in any future negotiated agreement.

To be Jewish, especially in these times, means, in part, to lift ourselves up out of the morass of confusion and despair, to reclaim our virtue as critical and creative thinkers who raise moral questions and seek practical solutions, and who can argue with one another without withdrawing from the fight or being intimidated by Israeli zealots or their supporters in the United States who slander us as self-hating Jews, antisemites, Kapos, and traitors because we dare to be critical of Israeli policies and actions as a matter of conscience and moral outrage about this war that long ago should have ended.

We Jews have always viewed our purpose through an aspirational lens. We have striven as a people to be better than we are, that we do not ever settle for the status quo, and that we stay committed to correct moral wrongs and move forward as best we can.

 Some of our own young liberal and progressive American Jews, however, are decoupling the State of Israel from their Jewish identity, and others are closing the door behind them and disavowing being Jewish altogether. Many are walking away from the American Jewish community because they believe that we rabbis and teachers, Jewish leaders of synagogues, national Jewish organizations and Jewish summer camps, who taught them Judaism’s moral principles emphasizing compassion and empathy, justice, human rights, and peace are, in their minds, hypocrites because we have not been nearly critical enough, or critical at all, of Israel’s bad behavior in this never-ending war.

I want to speak now to you, our young generation of Jews.

I understand how many of you feel and why you feel as you do. But, I believe that this is not the time to turn your backs on our people, on Judaism, on liberal Zionism, or on the State of Israel.

Our Jewish moral and ethical principles transcend any specific point in time or series of events. Judaism is not what we see in war or as a consequence of our having to cope with antisemitism, though both can teach us much about ourselves as Jews.

Judaism is what we rabbis, teachers, synagogues and Jewish summer camps tried to impart to you, our young people, about the vitality in living an enriched Jewish life, about the multitude of ways to be spiritual beings within Jewish community, about the wisdom our sages, mystics, and great thinkers have left for us, about ways to live the rhythms of our holidays and life cycles, and about the meaning of the establishment of the State of Israel as the greatest single accomplishment of the Jewish people in two thousand years.

Though you may wish to turn away, I hope you will decide to stay engaged in whatever way is meaningful to you because we need you, your way of thinking, and your critical moral voice.

Another thing about us Jews – our struggles are nothing new. We are, after all, Yisrael – a people who wrestles with God and with the moral challenges and complexities we face every day as individuals and as a people.

We Jews have always recognized the wide chasm between what is and what ought to be. The best of us, however, have not sat on the side-lines nor given up without entering the fight on behalf of our people and for human rights, justice and peace for all peoples and nations, including the Palestinians.

We live in a violent and corrupt world. It’s understandable that so many of us want to turn away from the news out of the Middle East and throw up our hands and shout “enough already!”

But, once we do that and we’ve had a chance to breathe and restore our moral and emotional equilibrium, it’s better for us to draw close to one another again and reaffirm our Jewish identity, our age-old principles and values, and our faith that eventually there will be a better day for Israelis and the Palestinians.

I keep reminding myself that history swings like a pendulum, from the death of the spirit to renewed life, from division to unity, from war to peace, from despair to hope, and that we Jews have lived this swinging back and forth over and over again throughout our history.

I remind myself that every human-made problem has a human solution if we apply critical and creative thinking, our understanding of the needs and truths of the “other,” and the will to compromise in order to solve the seemingly unsolvable.

As a Jewish community, each of us has the right to think what we want and to feel what we feel – as I have shared with you my thoughts and feelings here tonight – and the Jewish community ought to be a safe space for everyone to find their place and their voice, to argue with one another passionately but respectfully, to disagree without becoming disagreeable, and where even our harshly contrasting ideas and perspectives, our many different life experiences, and our generational distinctions can live alongside each other with humility as we engage in discussion, argument, criticism, and self-criticism.

Our people’s safety valve is that we talk and discuss and argue, and hopefully that we also listen to each other, especially to those with whom we disagree the most.

Our challenge as American Jews in these days is to find ways to come together and to affirm our foundational Jewish values as we struggle to cope in these painful and disturbing times and not to become numb to the barrage of terrible events that are all around us.

And it’s our challenge as well to look to the future with fortitude and hope. Our history of survival as a people teaches us to do so.

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks wrote:

“To be a Jew is to be an agent of hope in a world serially threatened by despair …No Jew knowing Jewish history can be an optimist, but no Jew worthy of the name abandons hope.” (7)

This new era in Jewish history begins with a darkly written chapter, but this is not the last chapter. It’s upon us, all of us, to write what comes next.

I wish us all the strength, perseverance, thoughtfulness, and moral courage necessary in this New Year.

I often sign-off my emails to my Israeli friends saying:

“Stay safe and sane. With love – John.”

And I say to you too, my beloved congregation:

Stay safe, sane and strong. And most importantly, hold those whom you cherish very close. We need each other.

With love – John.

G’mar chatimah tovah.

Notes:

1. Nadav Tamir, “Never Again”, The Times of Israel, August 22, 2025.
2. Tohar HaNeshek – Purity of Arms – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purity_of_arms.
3. Fania Oz-Salzberger, “The Battle for the Soul of Israel”, The Financial Times, August 29, 2025.
4. “Eretz l’kulam – A Land for All: Two States, One Homeland” – see https://www.alandforall.org/english-vision/?d=ltr
5. The 23-State Solution to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict – see https://jstreet.org/the-23-state-solution/
6. My personal blog – see https://rabbijohnrosove.blog/
7. Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, Lessons in Leadership – A Weekly Reading of the Jewish Bible, (New Milford, Connecticut: Maggid Books, 2015), p. 202.

This is my third consecutive post in a series of three concerning the meaning and importance of liberal Zionism and the State of Israel.

In this torturous, confusing and challenging era for Jews since October 7, 2023, I believe it’s worthwhile to read or re-read books that can help focus our moral, Jewish and liberal Zionist compasses. To that end, I recommend 4 volumes:

Gil Troy, The Zionist Ideas – Visions for the Jewish Homeland – Then, Now, Tomorrow with a Foreword by Natan Sharansky (New York: JPS Press, 2018)

“The Zionist Ideas is a must-read, a comprehensive Zionist Bible for the twenty-first century. The outstanding scholar and community leader Gil Troy presents an impressive range of thinkers, from yesterday to today, from left to right, illuminated by his extraordinary commentary, all of which affirm the enduring moral character of the Zionist idea: that Zionism, beyond safeguarding the Jewish state, is anchored in a humanistic ideology of universal resonance.” –Irwin Cotler, former minister of justice and attorney general of Canada and human rights activist.

Yossi Klein Halevi, Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor – with an Extensive Epilogue of Palestinian Responses (New York: Harper Perennial, 2018)

“The most insightful description of this deep-rooted conflict–from the Israeli perspective–which I have ever read . . . A master linguist, Yossi Klein Halevi has voiced the hopes and feats of many Israelis, as well as many Zionists in the diaspora.” –London Jewish Chronicle.

Ari Shavit, My Promised Land – The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel(New York: Spiegel & Grau, 2013)

“With the heart of a storyteller and the mind of a historian, Ari Shavit has written a powerful and compelling book about the making of modern Israel. No country is more emotionally connected to the United States, and no country’s fate matters more to many Americans. And yet until Shavit’s My Promised Land, it has been growing more difficult to sense the character of Israel through all the caricatures. This book is vital reading for Americans who care about the future, not only of the United States but of the world.” –Jon Meacham, American presidential historian and author of Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power.

Rabbi John L. Rosove, Why Israel and its Future Matters – Letters of a Liberal Rabbi to the Next Generation (New Jersey: Ben Yehuda Press, 2019; reissued after October 7, 2023)

“Rabbi Rosove shares 11 compelling letters directed at his two sons, but this fascinating work is in fact aimed at an entire generation of perplexed young Jews. He delineates the just case for Israel with precision and delicacy, sans fluff or pandering. This is a book which strives to combat Israel haters and bashers and gives real tools and answers to those liberal Jews who feel somewhat frustrated and confused about Israel. A must-read!” – Isaac Herzog, President of the State of Israel.

All 4 books are available from their publishers or on Amazon.com.

Despite the rightward turn of the Israeli government, we continue to believe in the Zionist enterprise and the viability of the State of Israel, write four leaders of progressive Zionism.

AUGUST 3, 2016 

[Introductory notes: Simultaneously with my posting of my blog on August 6, 2025 – “What does it Mean to be a Liberal American Zionist?” – the British-born former Director of Policy Analysis at AIPAC, Michael Lewis, posted the following article on LinkedIn that was originally published by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA) 9 years ago, almost to the day, that I co-wrote along with my colleagues (see names below). I thank Michael for posting this. I had forgotten about it. Little has changed, however, in my thinking about what it means to be a liberal Zionist except today, because so many “progressive” Jews no longer identify as Zionists, I prefer to be called a “liberal” Zionist. One more thing. Though the vast majority of Israelis today believe, after October 7, that a two-state solution is unlikely ever to happen, there is still no alternative if Israel is to remain both Jewish and democratic. When I think of the current relationships between the United States and Germany and Japan, no one would have thought such alliances would have been possible in 1945. Perhaps, once this horrendous war ends, there might be a new light showing the way along with the will amongst our two peoples to chart a course that will enable Israel and the Palestinian people to live next to each other in security and peace.]

NEW YORK (JTA) — As progressive American Zionists, we take seriously the critique of Israel and Zionism by professors Hasia Diner and Marjorie N. Feld, contained in their Aug. 1 Haaretz article, “We’re American Jewish Historians. This is why we’ve left Zionism behind.”

However, unlike them, we affirm progressive Zionist values. And those values mandate activism in order to ensure that Israel is both a democracy and the national home of the Jewish people.

The difference between us and professors Diner and Feld is that we continue to believe in the Zionist enterprise and the viability of the State of Israel, despite troubling trends: the rightward turn of the Israeli government; the corrupting influence of the nearly 50-year Israeli occupation of the Palestinian people in the West Bank; the growing messianic nationalism of the settler movement; the ultra-Orthodox influence on the Israeli government and its control over Jewish religious life; the second-class status of Palestinian Israeli citizens. We have a duty as Diaspora Zionists to critique Israeli policies whenever we believe that the State of Israel violates Jewish and democratic values as articulated in Israel’s Declaration of Independence.

For us, Jewish “nationalism” cannot be the sole objective of Zionism. Rather, Zionism and the Jewish nation is a means towards the perfection of the Jewish people and the world (tikkun olam).

Since its establishment, Israel has meant many things to many people: a haven from persecution, a catalyst for Jewish renewal and a place where the rhythms of civic life are Jewish rhythms. We regard the State of Israel as the Jewish people’s laboratory of Jewish ethical living, one that has seen unparalleled achievements and successes, as well as considerable deficiencies and failures. We regard the founding of the state as a consummate historic opportunity, to test the efficacy of Jewish ethical values, institutions and the diversity of Jewish peoplehood all while holding onto political power as a sovereign state.

Sadly, the professors base their argument on the highly reductionist notion of Judaism as simply a religion, and they even seem to breathe life into the 40-year-old defamatory attempt to label Zionism as racism. They suggest that it was Israeli homogenization that led to the demise of Jewish communities around the world, as if the great holy communities of Warsaw, Vilna and Krakow would somehow be intact today if it weren’t for…Zionism.

They also deeply oversimplify the reality here in the U.S., with its religiously neutral environment. America, and American Jews, have championed the “Goldene Medinah” — the Golden Land — as the great melting pot and exalted land of assimilation and acculturation. But today, Jews throughout the U.S. struggle with the challenge of balancing the benefits of American religious freedom while responding to communal trends in which Jews struggle to find connections, meaning and relevance in being Jewish.

As Zionists, Israel is the center of global Jewish life, and, it is important to recognize, it has managed to create a vibrant and creative Jewish society with a rich and incredibly ethnically diverse Judaism. Yet, Diaspora Jewry is a partner in assuring Israel’s viability as a democracy and a Jewish state, and its security as a sovereign nation. Our role in the Diaspora is different than that of Israeli citizens, but it is no less important. Indeed, our two centers need each other’s wisdom and support.

Professors Diner and Feld seem to have been defeated by their mythic understanding of Zionism and Israel. Though there is merit to their legitimate concerns about the “other” and what Jewish nationalism must do to include non-Jews as equal citizens in the state, it is unfortunate that they are turning away from Zionism altogether. Their relationship with Israel seems to be conditional. We would like to suggest an unconditional relationship to Israel. That means, like family, when we see troubling trends and abhorrent behavior, rather than disavow the entire enterprise, we prefer to roll up our sleeves and get more involved.

They are right that the Palestinians are entitled to empathy, justice and redress. Israel cannot continue to occupy another people and remain true to its democratic and Jewish values. The only way to preserve Israel as a Jewish state and a democracy is for Israel and the Palestinians to enter into negotiations leading to two states for two peoples.

Similarly, Israeli Jews and Diaspora Zionists must actively engage non-Jewish Israelis to address the real tensions within Israel’s identity as a Jewish and democratic state. Making Israel both more democratic and more Jewish is a serious challenge, but it is the essential struggle of Zionism. And as we reject Professors Diner and Feld when they give up on Israel as a Jewish state, we oppose Israelis and other Jews who take actions that threaten Israel’s essential nature as a democracy.

Ultimately, our vision of progressive Zionism — which is embodied in the Israeli Declaration of Independence and the Zionist movement’s Jerusalem Program — is one grounded in hope and action. And we will continue to strive to fulfill this vision to ensure a just, secure and peaceful future for all Israelis, and an Israel that can be a dynamic inspiration to Jews around the world.

(Rabbi Josh Weinberg and Rabbi John Rosove are the President and Chair of ARZA, the Association of Reform Zionists of America. Gideon Aronoff and Ken Bob are the CEO and National President of Ameinu.)

Original JTA article link – https://www.jta.org/2016/08/03/ideas/why-progressive-jews-mustnt-give-up-on-zionism

Even before Hamas’ attack against Israel on October 7, 2023, the definition and meaning of “Zionism” had increasingly come to be understood in far-left-progressive circles in the United States and around the world in strongly cynical and pejorative terms. Zionism became even more so understood negatively once Israel began its morally just counterattack against Hamas beginning on October 8th and later against Hezbollah, the Houthis and Iran. Those who were in league with the world-wide anti-Israel movement before October 7 and who had sought for years to re-frame the Zionist narrative as discriminatory, racist, colonialist, and a product of European imperialism discovered that they were gaining increasing support among many politically progressive left-wing Americans who claimed the humanitarian mantle against what they believed was Israel’s military over-reaction to what Hamas did to Israelis on that bloodiest day in the history of the State of Israel.  

Every people has the right of self-definition, and we Zionists – and especially we liberal American Zionists – have that right as well.

I believe that this is the time for us to take back our liberal American Zionist narrative and lead with it whenever we discuss with those who know much or little about the history of the Zionist movement and the State of Israel. That is what I want to do in this blog post, to express why I am a proud liberal American Zionist despite my deep protest against the policies of this most extremist Israeli right-wing messianic government in the history of Israel.

I am a proud liberal American Zionist and as such I believe in the right of the Jewish people to a state of our own in our historic Homeland and in the right of the Jewish State militarily to defend itself when attacked by terrorists and hostile states.

As a liberal American Zionist I affirm that the universal humanitarian values advocated by the ancient prophets of Israel, developed by rabbinic tradition over the past two millennia, and included in Israel’s Declaration of Independence, namely that justice, equality, human rights, compassion, and peace must be core values guiding every Israeli government’s policies, its military and civil society.

As a liberal American Zionist I am proud of what the Zionist movement and the people and State of Israel have accomplished in virtually every arena of human endeavor including immigration and the absorption of refugees, agriculture, education, the sciences, medicine, bio-technology, cyber, culture, the arts, diplomacy, human rights, civil society, and self-defense.

As a liberal American Zionist I understand that the intent of Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and Iran is to destroy the State of Israel and murder as many Jews as possible in their messianic zeal to establish an extremist caliphate over all of historic Palestine “from the river to the sea.” As one example of this murderous intent, Hamas’ leadership said early on in the war that 100,000 Palestinian martyrs were not too many to fulfill its extremist mission to murder Jews and destroy the Jewish state.

As a liberal American Zionist I am proud and grateful that the United States historically has been Israel’s most important and generous ally and that Israel’s security needs have enjoyed bi-partisan American political support.

As a student of Israeli and Middle East history, I know that Israel has tried many times to resolve diplomatically the Israeli-Arab and the Israeli-Palestinian conflicts resulting in two-states for two-peoples as a matter of justice for the Palestinians and enlightened self-interest for Israel, but that extremist and uncompromising Palestinian leadership has walked away every time.

As a liberal American Zionist I acknowledge that I am not an Israeli citizen, that I do not pay Israeli taxes nor do I send my children and grandchildren to the Israeli military to fight in Israel’s wars. Only Israeli citizens have the right to take the decisions that directly impact their lives and well-being. However, as an American Jew and liberal Zionist who loves Israel I believe that I have the right to share my ideas and criticism of Israeli government policies that I believe are harmful not only to Israel’s own best interests as a Jewish and democratic state but to my security and well-being as a Diaspora Jew and my liberal Jewish and democratic values.

As a liberal American Zionist, for months I have felt the anguish, grief and rage of what Hamas did on October 7^th. I continue to worry daily about the survival of the remaining hostages and the well-being of their families and the families of the Israeli soldiers killed and injured in this war. I have worried as well since this war began about the suffering of the two million Palestinian civilians in Gaza.

As a liberal American Zionist I believe that Israel, in fighting this just war has not always fought the war justly. It ought to be clear that Israel has crossed many red-lines despite all the challenges and difficulties in fighting a war against a non-state actor that deliberately hides behind and uses its own people as human shields. Israel’s massive killing of tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians and its use of humanitarian aid as a weapon of war are immoral and un-Jewish.

It is American policy that Israel and all recipients of U.S. weapons must adhere by law to standards concerning humanitarian aid and the use of force. As painful as it is for me to say this because I have always supported American military aid to Israel throughout my life, I support those 27 Democratic Party Senators who voted recently to halt the sale of offensive weapons to Israel as a way to put pressure on PM Netanyahu and his extremist government to end this war now, to stop the suffering, the starvation, the killing of civilians, and the deaths of Israeli soldiers and hostages.

These 27 Senators are friends of Israel, every one of them. They have always supported Israel’s true security needs. In their vote to withhold offensive weapons now after all these months of war they carefully distinguished between those weapons and the defensive weapon systems of Iron Dome, Arrow, and David’s Sling, which save Israeli lives. These Senators should not be criticized for their vote or accused of being anti-Israel. They are not that. They instead should be praised for acting on behalf of the best interests of Israel and the Palestinians and for applying necessary pressure on this extremist Israeli government to do what is just and compassionate – to end this war now, to bring home the hostages immediately, to pour massive humanitarian aid into Gaza, and to stop the killing and injury of Israeli soldiers and Palestinian civilians.

The vast majority of Israelis themselves and the vast majority of the American Jewish community agree that the war must end now, the hostages returned home, and humanitarian aid be provided in quantities that can stop the hunger and starvation.

I say all of these things as a committed liberal American Zionist and as a lover of the people and State of Israel.

At a time when democracy in Israel is being challenged by the most extreme right-wing messianic and autocratic-ruling-coalition-government in the history of the state, we American Reform Jews who care about Israel have an opportunity to make our voices heard in protest. Voting in the World Zionist Congress (WZC) election is our opportunity to take a stand for democracy and pluralism in Israel.

I have written twice on this blog already about the singular importance of this election. I am doing so again because our voting for the Reform Slate is one way for Diaspora Jewry to participate in the future of democracy in Israel. Contrast our intent to that of our ultra-Orthodox opponents who have pledged to get 100,000 votes in order to defund Israeli Reform Judaism and turn back the clock on Israeli democracy, pluralism and peace. 

Israel’s leaders are watching closely to see who is going to emerge as the predominant voice of American Jewry – and it must be us!

If we Reform American Jews vote in large numbers in this election, we can directly impact the amount of resources and funding for our Israeli Reform synagogues, rabbis, values, and advocacy work on behalf of democracy and human rights in Israel and Diaspora communities. The Israeli Reform Movement does not receive the kind of funding that the Orthodox and Ultra-Orthodox movements receive from the government, and so our standing in the World Zionist Congress can make a very significant impact on the financial health of the Israeli Reform Movement.

I am running for a seat in the WZC, and I ask for your vote – BUT, your vote isn’t only for me. It’s for our values to help ensure religious pluralism, women’s rights, LGBTQ+ inclusion, and a pathway to peace that includes the return of all hostages.

To be eligible to vote in 39th World Zionist Congress you must:

• Be Jewish (and not subscribe to another religion)
• Be 18 years or older by June 30, 2025
• Be a U.S. citizen or a legal permanent resident in the U.S.
• Maintain your primary residence in the U.S.
• Accept the Jerusalem Program (the Zionist movement platform)
• Have not voted in the November 2022 Knesset election (and will not vote in any future Knesset election which may be held prior July 28, 2025)

To register to vote, pay the $5 administrative fee, go to https://www.vote4reform.org/

I am running to be a delegate representing the United States Reform Jewish Movement in the World Zionist Congress, and I ask for your vote .

The following explains why it is important that every American Jew over the age of 18 votes for the Reform Movement Slate in this election.

When I served as the National Chair of the Association of Reform Zionists of America (ARZA) representing 1.5 million United States Reform Jews, I had the honor of having a seat in the World Zionist Organization, the Jewish Agency for Israel, and the Jewish National Fund, and that experience persuaded me how important it is that we in the American Reform Movement do very well in this election, which means that as many Reform Jews vote as possible.

The following should answer questions you might have about the election. If you have questions after reading this blog, please ask and I’ll respond.

What is the World Zionist Congress (WZC)?

The World Zionist Congress is a central nongovernmental institution in Israel. Often called “The Parliament of the Jewish People.” From the era of Theodor Herzl, the father of the Zionist movement, the WZC was the pre-statehood governing body representing the entirety of the Jewish world. The WZC convenes every five years to bring together representatives from Jewish communities around the world to decide key issues affecting the Jewish people in Israel and globally. The Congress elects the leadership that sets policies and influences the allocation of significant funding of about $1 billion annually. It plays a crucial role in supporting activities worldwide that promote Jewish identity and combat antisemitism.

What does the Reform Jewish Movement have to do with the WZC?

While the Reform Jewish Movement is the largest Jewish denomination in North America, we are a minority in Israel of just 8% – partly due to the lack of Israeli government funding in comparison to Orthodox communities in the Jewish state. Your vote will help to bring funds that are crucial to survive, thrive, and further our core values of democracy, freedom, pluralism, and security, and champion a different vision of what it means to be Jewish in the Jewish State. The Israeli Reform Movement includes more than 50 congregations, more than 140 Israeli trained Reform Rabbis (women and men), an active youth movement, pre-military educational programs, two kibbutzim, a renowned high school in Haifa, and many nursery schools and elementary schools all of which promote liberal Judaismand represents our liberal Jewish values as a counter-balance to the illiberal values that Israel’s right-wing promotes.

Where does the money come from? Where does it go?

The World Zionist Organization receives its funding from various Zionist institutions, donations, and partnerships. A major financial pillar, the Jewish National Fund (KKL-JNF) generates revenue from leasing and developments in Israel. Additional funds come from the Jewish Agency for Israel, donations, membership dues, and indirect state funding from Israel.

THE IMPORTANCE OF YOUR VOTING

Why is voting important? What’s really at stake?

Our representation in the WZC helps protect fundamental rights for all Israelis and Reform Jewish communities. It also prevents extremist factions from implementing policies that oppose our core shared values of democracy, freedom, pluralism, and security. The ultra-Orthodox and ultra-Nationalist movements are using the levers provided through these institutions – and power gained in the World Zionist Congress elections – to advance their extremist agenda, including: rejecting our conversions and questioning the authenticity of our children’s Jewish identity, stripping Israeli Reform clergy and communities of their rights and funding, advancing anti-democratic policies, and rolling back gains for LGBTQ+ rights.

What has been the impact of the Reform Movement at the WZC in the past? 

Our work has proven crucial for Israel’s secure, democratic and inclusive nature and for marginalized individuals within Israeli society.

● We ensured that over $4,000,000 a year ($20 million over 5 years) of financial support goes to the Reform movement in Israel thereby allowing it to significantly expand its reach to Israelis who seek a liberal Jewish community for themselves and their families.

● Our leaders have stood up for a secure Israel, directly preventing settlement building and advancing policies that align with our liberal Jewish values.

● We have passed key resolutions for equality, transparency, and pluralism.

● We helped guarantee LGBTQ+ rights for same-sex partners of fallen soldiers

● We battle for gender equity in Israel

The work of the WZC:

● Supports Reform rabbis and congregations;

● Offers humanitarian aid, inclusive housing for people with disabilities, and programs that empower women;

● Provides counseling and other services for over 20,000 Reform Jews in Israel each year;

● Fights discrimination among marginalized groups of Israeli society through the Israel Religious Action Center (IRAC), representing up to 500 people a year in court.

THE VOTING PROCESS

When does the vote start?

Voting runs from March 10 – May 4, 2025!

Who is eligible to Vote?

In order to vote, one must be:

● 18 or over.

● Self-identified as Jewish

● Live in the United States

● Pay $5 administrative fee

How can I vote?

You can vote online or by mail starting March 10 – May 4 at ZIONISTELECTION.COM. Note that voting requires a $5 administrative fee to help fund the cost of the election. Payments can be made by credit card, e-check, PayPal, Venmo, Apple Pay, and Google Pay. The payment serves to prevent fraud by making sure that individuals are voting and are only doing so once.

Why Vote Reform and not for one of the other pro-democracy slates?

● The Vote Reform Slate (the THIRD SLATE ON THE BALLOT) has successfully and consistently represented Reform values in the WZC for decades. Because we represent the largest pro-democracy mandate from the United States, we are uniquely situated within the infrastructure of Israel’s National Institutions (The WZO, The Jewish Agency for Israel, and the Jewish National Fund) to stand up against far-right settler, messianic and anti-democratic extremism. Our work as a movement has proven crucial in defending a secure and democratic Israel:

● We ensured that over $4,000,000 a year ($20 million over 5 years) of financial support goes to the Reform movement in Israel, allowing it to significantly expand its reach.

● Our leaders have stood up for a secure Israel, directly preventing settlement building and advancing policies that align with our values.

● We have passed key resolutions for equality, transparency, and pluralism.

● We helped guarantee LGBTQ+ rights for same-sex partners of fallen soldiers.

● We fight discrimination among marginalized groups of Israeli society through the Israel Religious Action Center, representing up to 500 people a year in court.

ONCE AGAIN – I ASK FOR YOUR VOTE. PLEASE REGISTER NOW OR ON MARCH 10, PAY THE NOMINAL ADMINISTRATIVE FEE OF $5 PER PERSON, AND HELP SECURE THE WELL-BEING OF LIBERAL REFORM JUDAISM IN ISRAEL AND AROUND THE WORLD.

Introductory Notes: I was invited on Sunday, February 23^rd by the Washington Hebrew Congregation in our nation’s capital and co-sponsored by the National Jewish Book Council to deliver the Amram Lecture in its 70^th anniversary year to discuss the identity of liberal American Jews, as well as my most recently published book From the West to the East – A Memoir of a Liberal American Rabbi – https://westofwestcenter.com/product/from-the-west-to-the-east/ and at Amazon. This was the first time I had returned to WHC since I served there as Associate Rabbi from 1986-1988. It was a kind of home-coming and its Senior Rabbi Susan Shankman presided with her customary grace and intelligence. This talk and the Q and A session following was recorded and will be available in the coming days. I will post the link when it is available.

This is what I said:

So much has happened in the Jewish world, 38 years since I began my service with you. I want to speak with you this morning about the historic challenges facing Israel and the American Jewish community today, especially since October 7^th, and share some of the broad themes and inflection-point stories in my life and rabbinate that I write about in my Memoir that I believe have universal take-aways for us all.           

Today is the 506^th day since October 7^th. The trauma of that day remains palpable in both Israel and for so many of us as well. The murder by Hamas of the Bibas family of two small children and their mother has renewed the trauma and rage felt by Jews around the world. Israeli society, despite the release of some hostages, is still frozen by the horrors of that day, arguably the deadliest and most traumatic day for Jews since the Holocaust. Border communities bear the scars of destruction and displacement. The trauma of war affects virtually every Israeli in how they relate to their families and with friends, with fellow Jews around the world, with the Palestinians and their Arab neighbors.

As much as we Jews are thrilled that some of the hostages are home, we worry about the well-being of the remaining hostages and we fear that this deal will fall apart any day. Despite the joy of seeing the freed hostages reunited with their families, there’s something morally repulsive and offensive in the fact that these innocent Jews and others who were stolen from their bedrooms and from fields filled with music on that day were exchanged for those very Hamas terrorists who committed atrocities against our people or who support the murderous Hamas intentions.

To see the starving and tortured faces of the three hostages released a few weeks ago recalled the old black and white photographs taken when the camps were liberated which is why President Trump’s ‘solution’ for Gaza was acceptable to Israel’s far right wing. His plan mainstreams for the first time in Israel’s history the idea of “transfer,” a euphemism for ethnic cleansing, without any concern for the rights of the Palestinians living there, most of whom are not terrorists, nor were members of Hamas, and are suffering. His plan threatens the Israeli-Egyptian and Israeli-Jordanian peace agreements, the future of the Abraham Accords, the lives of the remaining hostages, and feeds the most extremist, messianic, and illiberal trends in Israeli society.

Just as Israelis find themselves at a significant crossroad in their history, so too do we American Jews find ourselves at a significant cross-road. For the first time in American Jewish history since the founding of the State of Israel, many liberal American Jews who love the Jewish state have been deeply disturbed not only by what happened on October 7^th but also by Israel’s overwhelming and massive military response against Hamas that killed and injured so many thousands of Palestinian civilians and essentially destroyed Gaza. I was one of them, however, in fairness to Israel it’s important for us here to understand that this war, the longest in Israel’s history by far, was a response to what the Israeli government and army most feared would happen immediately after October 7^th.

Israel’s leaders believed then that they were fighting for the existence of the Jewish state itself. They knew that Hamas intended to expand its attack, that there were realistic threats also by Hezbollah and Iran to join the war, and that a sympathetic uprising could ignite in the West Bank forcing Israel to fight simultaneously on three fronts. It was unclear then whether Israel could meet those threats. Hamas was organized and executing a plan that it had developed over many years. The IDF was disorganized. The Israeli army command believed that it had to distribute immediately its authority to a far lower level of officers than it had ever done before. That decision reduced the IDF’s customary safeguards to protect as much as feasibly possible Palestinian civilians who were used by Hamas as human shields, a massive war crime on top of what Hamas did in Southern Israel, massacring 1200 Israelis, raping and taking as hostage 250 more.

The army command believed that Israel had to fight with overwhelming fire power to disrupt Hamas’s chain of command and reach its leaders hiding everywhere under homes, apartment buildings, schools, community centers, hospitals, and mosques. If Israel didn’t succeed in disrupting Hamas immediately and demonstrating to Hezbollah and Iran how capable the IDF still was, Israel’s military and government leadership feared that tens of thousands of Israelis would be killed.

Both Israelis and American Jews are only now beginning to ask about the horrible impact this war has had on both Israelis and Palestinian civilians and what long-term psychological damage has been done on both peoples. We’re trying here in Diaspora communities as well to figure out where exactly we stand as American Jews and how much we want to say and reveal publicly about our fears and moral concerns in the war and the illiberal trends that are taking over Israel.

Taking a 10,000 foot view, the significance of this period in Jewish history is unparalleled in the modern era except for the three years from 1945 to 1948 when the Jewish people went from our lowest nadir after the Shoah to the establishment of Israel. That wide swing of the pendulum is testimony to the Jewish people’s durability and ability to survive, adapt and thrive after catastrophic events. Perhaps, the tragedy of October 7^th and Israel’s turnaround military successes will have a strong deterrent impact on the perceptions of Israel by its enemies.

Despite Israel’s military successes, only a completed cease-fire and hostage deal will bring October 7^th to an end and enable Israelis to begin a process of healing. But, any peace deal must include also a pathway to a demilitarized Palestinian state of some kind in Gaza and the West Bank in the context of a larger Middle East peace agreement that includes Israel and Saudi Arabia and all its moderate Arab neighbors.

That larger deal won’t be easy to attain because right-wing Israeli political parties and the extremist settler movement want to keep the war going as long as possible to enable Israel to annex Gaza and the West Bank into Israel. Should those extremist and messianic forces have their way, more terrorism and more war with the Palestinians and Islamic extremists will be inevitable and Israel’s international standing will remain diminished for decades to come.

Thankfully, polling of Israelis today suggests that the grip of the extremist right wing on the Israeli government is weakening. Sixty to seventy percent of all Israelis say they want all three stages of the agreement with Hamas to go forward with the return of the hostages and a permanent end to the war.

Even if and when that were to happen, there are immense residual problems facing Israel that have to be confronted and resolved including the massive humanitarian crisis in Gaza, the lack of an Israeli consensus about the role of the Palestinian Authority in the future governance of Gaza and the West Bank, Israel’s severely damaged international standing, what we in the American Jewish community think and feel about Israel and Zionism, and the dramatic rise here in antisemitism.

Among the greatest and immediate internal challenges facing Israel is that it has yet to set up a State Commission of Inquiry into what happened leading up to October 7^th and Israel’s conduct in the war. Israel needs a power-house authority to undertake this inquiry to restore the people’s confidence that every lesson has been learned, that leadership failings are exposed, conclusions are drawn, and whether military excesses and war crimes were in fact committed.

In considering Israel’s culpability, however, we Jews who love Israel have to be able to distinguish between two kinds of criticism leveled against Israel’s conduct of the war.

There’s criticism from Israel’s friends that the IDF went too far, bombed Gaza too heavily using thousands of those huge 2000-pound dumb-bombs that destroyed entire apartment buildings and neighborhoods to get at Hamas command sites deep underground thus causing far too much damage to life and property, and that Israeli commanders and soldiers in the heat of battle crossed red lines against international moral standards of war. Israelis need to address this legitimate criticism from Israel’s friends and not characterize it as either anti-Israel or antisemitic.

The second kind of criticism is very different and comes from those who believe that the Jewish State has no moral legitimacy, is a colonial and foreign entity in the Middle East, has no right to exist and therefore no right to defend itself. That criticism clearly is based upon antisemitism.

Despite the loss of hundreds of young Israeli soldiers, the suffering of the hostages and their families, and the massive carnage in Gaza and the loss of life and property in the Strip, there have been a few positive things that have come from this war for Israel. Immediately after October 7^th, Israel’s civil society came together from across all political and religious lines to support one another following a year of intensive demonstrations and hatred that brought hundreds of thousands of Israelis into the streets and tore apart the fabric of Israeli society as a consequence of the government’s proposed Judicial Reform efforts, or over-haul, or Judicial coup de etat – however one characterizes it. And hundreds of moving Hebrew songs have been written focusing on war and peace, hopelessness and hope.

In Diaspora communities $1.4 billion was raised for Israel representing the single largest set of contributions on behalf of Israel in our history, and 300,000 Jews and friends of Israel came together here in Washington in solidarity with Israel, the largest Jewish demonstration since the 1987 Soviet Jewry rally on the Mall.

All of that is a source of inspiration and pride. However, the rise of antisemitism here and around the world has been dramatic. Between March and May of 2024, Jewish students on 147 campuses in North America were under attack. The ADL counted 10,000 incidents against Jews representing an increase of 200 percent over the year before. In a new survey released three weeks ago by the ADL and Hillel International, 83 percent of all North American Jewish students have experienced or witnessed antisemitism firsthand since October 7, 2023.

An American Jewish Committee study reported that over 50 percent of us won’t show in public spaces anything that identifies us as Jews including wearing kippot, the Magen David, dog tags with the names of Israeli hostages, and yellow hostage ribbons.

At the same time, many American Jews have experienced a passionate reconnection to Zionism, Israel and their Jewish identity. However, 42 percent of young Jews under 35 have had difficulty finding common ground with the Jewish State. Some, though a minority, now say they’re anti-Zionists.

Antisemitism comes from both the far right politically and the far left. The far right doesn’t consider American Jews to be part of white America and that we’re foreign interlopers here with far too much power and influence in government, politics, the media, banking, business, and entertainment – classic antisemitic canards. The far left considers us to be part of white America and in league with right-wing colonialists around the world that oppress peoples of color most especially in America and Israel.

It’s unclear what impact October 7^th and the war will ultimately have on each of us and on the character of our traditional Jewish institutions, most especially our synagogues, religious schools and day schools. In the early weeks and months of the war, many Jews sought out the organized Jewish community for themselves and their children. Many non-Jews were choosing to convert to Judaism in numbers greater than we’ve experienced in a generation. More American Jews began reading books, attending classes and on-line seminars that helped them better understand Zionism, Israel, and Middle East politics and history.  

In the Reform Movement, many of my rabbinic colleagues, however, have confessed either that they don’t know enough or don’t understand well enough what’s really happening in Israel to be able to publicly speak and teach with confidence about it. Many who do love and understand Israel have feared for their positions if they spoke critically about Israel’s conduct in the war. They’ve worried that conservative wealthy and influential congregants will take exception to what they say and advocate for their dismissal. Too many synagogues have become unsafe places where rabbis and congregants are unable to discuss and debate openly the wide range of opposing views that exist in our community concerning Israel, Zionism, antisemitism, the war, the Israeli government, illiberal trends in Israeli and American societies, and the Israeli-Palestinian and Israeli-Arab conflicts.

We don’t know how our American and Israeli Jewish identities will evolve over time, but my sense is that we Jews are in a deeply troubling but also transformative era. Whereas in years past, Israelis were happy simply to take Diaspora Jewish dollars and seek American Jewish political support for Israel’s security needs, in a recent Israeli poll, 80 percent of Israeli Jews now feel strongly that the Israel-Diaspora relationship is important personally to them.

I characterize myself as a liberal American Reform Zionist and a lover of Israel and the Jewish people. But, even as I identify so closely with Israelis – many of whom are among my dearest friends – I’ve been confused why so many Israelis haven’t empathized nearly enough with the suffering of the Palestinians in Gaza.

Rabbi Donniel Hartman and Yossi Klein HaLevi of the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem raised this issue last month in their weekly podcast For Heaven’s Sake. They noted that amongst the many challenges Israeli Jews have faced is that in the midst of the war they felt no significant moral angst about the suffering of Gazans because they themselves felt victimized first by Hamas’ attack on October 7^th and then by the world’s remarkably quick turn-about against Israel once the IDF began fighting only days later.

Donniel and Yossi explained that victims generally respond to their enemies with fear, anxiety, rage, hostility, and a desire for revenge, and from that embattled position they morally justify themselves in whatever they do. I confess that in the initial months of the war, I felt the same way. These terrible effects of feeling victimized explain not only why Israeli society and the Israeli media did not focus on the destruction of Gaza and the huge loss of life there during the war, but why Palestinian society too has historically tolerated and embraced terrorism as a legitimate tool and moral response against Israel and the Jewish people. As victims, Palestinians living under Israel’s harsh occupation in the West Bank and formerly in Gaza until Israel unilaterally withdrew 20 years ago believe they’re justified in committing even the most vicious crimes without moral consequence.

At the beginning of the war, a colleague and friend called me distraught because his college-age daughter had joined the Jewish Voice for Peace, an anti-Israel, anti-Zionist and anti-nationalist Jewish organization. She claimed to want no part of Israel in her life and even expressed the view to her father, a rabbi and Reform Zionist, that Israel should never have been created. My colleague, as you might imagine, was deeply upset and didn’t know what to say to her. He asked me what I thought. A number of my congregants called me as well (though I’m retired they called me anyway) with the same question about their college age and twenty-something kids.

You might remember a letter signed by hundreds of young Reform Jews, children of rabbis and alumni of our American Reform Jewish summer camps that was published in the Jewish press that accused us older Reform Jewish leadership with hypocrisy – that we taught them liberal universal Jewish values but now support an illiberal and immoral Jewish state.

That letter provoked op-eds, sermons and conversations throughout our movement about how we Jewish leaders have failed to educate our people and especially our young Jews about Israel and Zionism.

To my colleague and congregants, I said the following:

“First – these are your kids. Your relationship with them is what’s most important now. Don’t say or do anything that will alienate them from you. Love them a lot which means listening to them without your having to instruct or correct them. Recognize that we’re all struggling in this new era of American Jewish history. Take a 10,000 foot perspective and remember that they’re at the beginning of their adult journeys as Jews and Americans and that they’ll likely evolve and change their thinking over time just as we’ve done over the course of our lives. You’ve instilled in them the Jewish values that are important to you. This isn’t the end of their engagement with Jewish life or in their relationship with Israel. Keep the door open to continuing a conversation with them. They already know, most likely, how you feel and what you believe about Israel. You don’t have to persuade them now about anything. Just listen and tell them that you respect them and love them. If they’re open to reading about why Israel matters to the American Jewish community and what liberal Reform Zionism has to offer them and Israel as a direct response to the illiberal trends in Israeli society, there are books that deal directly with these challenges.”

The greater question confronting us here now is what do we do to better educate ourselves and our young people about Israel and Zionism? That’s the $64 million question.

The best thing we can do is to go there individually or in congregational groups and meet Israelis face to face from the right, left and center, with Palestinian-Israeli citizens and Palestinians living under occupation in the West Bank, with Israeli and Palestinian journalists, with members of Knesset, and with our Reform movement rabbis and leadership, and especially with the leadership of the Israel Religious Action Center whose liberal values we share and who are working every day to counter the extremist actions of the government and on behalf of pluralism, equality and democracy in Israeli society.

Taking a longer view, there are a number of questions we need to be asking ourselves, debating, and striving to find consensus. Those questions include:

• How we regard the impact of October 7^th and the war on our Jewish lives and institutions?
• How we memorialize what occurred on October 7^th without identifying as victims?
• What it means to belong to the Jewish people and to have a Jewish state?
• How we look at the world today beyond our Jewish agenda and act on behalf of other minorities and groups who may feel towards us Jews as colonialists and interlopers?
• How we regard ourselves as a distinct “other” in our Diaspora communities?
• How we frame how others ought to be regarding us as American Jews who love Israel?
• How we rebuild trust in our Jewish institutions and even in many of our clergy and teachers who some young people regard with a measure of suspicion and distrust because we haven’t been honest enough or knowledgeable enough about Israel, Jewish peoplehood, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict when they grew up?
• And finally, how we understand anti-Zionism, anti-Israel sentiment, and antisemitism today, and what we do about it?

From the 1990s, the organized American Jewish community worked to reestablish inter-group relationships with the African-American, Latino, Asian, Christian, and Muslim communities in America. We worked on writing textbooks and developing curricula together, and we attempted to influence how other groups understood Israel and the American Jewish experience. Today, many of those efforts have been vacated. The American Jewish community is consequently in a shifting place, and though October 7^th and the war contributed mightily to that shift, the events of the past 16 months were not the starting points of that shift.

There’s still, of course, so much that’s positive for us to celebrate about the American Jewish experience and opportunities to address the challenges I’ve mentioned. Our financial resources are great. We have many talented rabbinic, cantorial, academic, educational, professional, lay and political leaders helping us forge a new path forward.

Our message as American liberal non-Orthodox Zionists and as lovers of the people and State of Israel has to be clear and unrelenting – DON’T GIVE UP ON ISRAEL. We have a moral Jewish duty to fight for Israel despite her imperfections just as we fight for America despite its imperfections. My friend and colleague Rabbi Josh Weinberg, the Vice President for Israel and Reform Zionism at the Union for Reform Judaism, put it well with these words: “We have a duty to fight for Israel’s right to be the only Jewish state in the world and for Jews to be a free people thriving in our historic Homeland without always having to live by the sword. We liberal American Zionists also have a moral duty to fight for Israel to live up to the values articulated in Israel’s Declaration of Independence. We have the duty also to fight against those who constantly defame and delegitimize Israel, who unfairly criticize her and judge her by unreasonable double standards.”

As Reform Jews, we have the duty to join with our growing Israeli Reform movement in its fight for religious pluralism, democracy, equality, the return of all the hostages, and to pursue a pathway to peace with the Palestinians, the Arab and moderate Muslim world.

One of the most important ways for us American Reform Jews to do all of this is to vote in next month’s World Zionist Congress elections for the Reform ARZA slate. Rabbi Shankman is prospective delegate, as am I, and I hope you will vote in large numbers so that we will do very well in this election. Our liberal Jewish values are at stake in the National Institutions, the World Zionist Organization, the Jewish Agency for Israel, and the Jewish National Fund. The World Zionist Organization dispenses annually $1 billion dollars and since our Israeli Reform institutions are discriminated against by the government of Israel, having a large representation in the World Zionist Organization will enable more dollars to flow to our Reform movement programs in Israel that educate and advocate for liberal Jewish and democratic values.

Though I’ve articulated some of what I said this morning in my Memoir, I want to say a few more words about it. I chose as the title “From the West to the East – A Memoir of a Liberal American Rabbi” based on a medieval poem by the 11^th century rabbi, poet and philosopher, Yehuda Halevi, who lived most of his life in Muslim Spain and eventually made his way to the Land of Israel. He said famously: “Libi b’mizrach v’ani b’kitzei ma’arav – My heart is in the East and I’m at the edge of the West” thereby expressing the age-old longing of the Jewish people for Zion, a longing I’ve felt since I was a little boy as parts of both sides of my family made Aliyah – my mother’s side in 1878 and my father’s side in the mid-1930s.

My Memoir is organized around many events in my life including the intense blow-back I received to sermons I delivered and actions I took in San Francisco, here in D.C., and in Hollywood.

I write about many causes I took up in my life-long social justice activism and in my role as a past national chairman of the Association of Reform Zionists of America (ARZA), and as a national co-chair of the rabbinic and cantorial cabinet at J Street.

I have a number of important mentors about whom I’ve written who have come from the Israeli political right, the American political left, the moderate-liberal center in both the American Jewish and Israeli Jewish communities. Each of their voices has guided me, and their voices inside my mind and heart often have been at odds with one another, pushing me one way and then another, always sowing doubt, but helping me to clarify my liberal American Jewish and Zionist moral values.

I write in my Memoir, for example, about a dramatic story at Congregation Sherith Israel in San Francisco in 1980 as a young 30-year old rabbi after I delivered a Rosh Hashanah sermon to a packed sanctuary stopping just short of calling for a Palestinian state alongside a secure Israel. A brawl almost broke out after the service when an Israeli leader of Tel Aviv’s right-wing Likud Party barged into a group of the synagogue’s leaders and took great exception to what I said.

I describe another dramatic story here in Washington, D.C. in 1987 after I delivered another High Holiday sermon and moral appeal for us to become a sanctuary synagogue on behalf of the 100,000-plus El Salvadoran refugees living in the nation’s capital, many of whom were being hunted by Salvadoran death squads, and how I was taken to task in the weeks following Rosh Hashanah by a group of Jewish advisors to then Vice President George H. W. Bush. However, I was supported by the former American Ambassador to El Salvador Robert White who told me to resist the pressure to recant what I said in that sermon that he told me was 100 percent accurate.

I told the story in 2012 about my then 32-year policy of not officiating at inter-faith weddings and then changing that policy and announcing it on Rosh Hashanah morning resulting in a surprising standing ovation, and how my decision became for me an inflection point in my life and rabbinate and an inflection point for my congregation with congregants crying in the halls and parking lot for weeks afterwards. As only one example, a good friend, an African American actor married to a Jewish woman, came to me immediately after the service before I even left the bimah and said: “John, I’ve always felt welcome here, but now I consider Temple Israel of Hollywood my home.”

I wrote in some detail as well about contemporary antisemitism, anti-Zionism, and anti-Israel sentiment and what it means to raise proudly identifying young Jews today to assure the future of liberal American Jewry and our positive relationship to the people and State of Israel.

I wrote about my cancer diagnosis 15 years ago, the overwhelming loving response of my congregation to me, my coping with what I believed initially was a death sentence thanks to the brutal way my first physician informed me of my condition, and of the pain I suffered during my recovery from surgery, radiation treatment, and a staph infection, and how the experience changed me and made me far more empathic than I had ever been before to those confronting life-threatening illness and chronic pain.

I share how we liberal Jews might refocus our faith away from the traditional God-King and narrow idea about God that comes to us from tradition – especially the God Who doles out rewards and punishments – a classic image in the Hebrew Bible and rabbinic tradition, but instead embrace a mystic model that asks not “Do I believe in God” but rather “How might I best experience myself as a spiritual being?” based on my life-long study of Jewish mysticism and the thought and writings of such luminaries as Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel.

And I wrote about the difference between optimism and hope, that hope is an attitude of the heart and a mindset that helps people endure even the most negative and destructive challenges without denying that reality around us, and what transpired at my family Seder a dozen years ago in which my millennial sons challenged me given their pessimistic and, at times, cynical understanding of contemporary American, Israeli and world events.

I wrote this Memoir first and foremost for them, my children and grandchildren, that they might know more about who their father and grandfather was in this fractious and troubled era of Jewish, Israeli and human history; but I believe that what I’ve written is relevant for the large non-orthodox American Jewish community and many outside our Jewish tent.

My father died when I was 9 years-old, and other than a group of letters he wrote to his cousins in Philadelphia during his period of service as a Navy physician during WWII in Hawaii and on the Midway Atoll, I have nothing from his hand communicating to me who he was, what he most valued and believed as an American Jew living in the first half of the 20^th century, or any details about his parents and grandparents and their immigration to America in the closing years of the 19^th century. Not having his reflections and beliefs have been for me a large missing piece in the greater puzzle of my family’s life, and I didn’t want my grandchildren and their children to have no record of what I’ve experienced, cared about, valued and learned that might be of use and importance to them.

When I served my congregation in Hollywood, I met with every family a year before each bar and bat mitzvah celebration, and I urged the pre-b’nai mitzvah young people to research with their oldest living relatives their life stories. I gave them a list of 40 questions to ask those family elders. Doing so became for the young people and their parents an enriched experience that offered them greater appreciation for the life-experiences of the oldest surviving members in their families and a larger context for their lives. If you’ve not done so yourself in writing, audial or video, I urge you to consider it. To have such a record will preserve your memories and lives for the generations to come.

I’d be happy to share with you that list of 40 questions if you email me. Simply respond to this blog with your email address and I’ll send you a copy.

Finally, I hope you will acquire a copy of my Memoir for yourselves, your adult children, grandchildren and friends, whether they be Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindi, or without a faith tradition who are open to expanding how they think about their lives in this era and what possibilities this period in our history holds for each of us and the Jewish people.