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For the Love of Israel, We Need to Say: The Reform Movement Is Zionist

(Times of Israel) Ammiel Hirsch - On Nov. 2, the New York Times Magazine published an article that focused on rabbinical and cantorial students enrolled in non-Orthodox American seminaries who harshly criticized Israeli policies and actions during the May hostilities between Israel and Hamas. Since the issue is no longer one of internal debate but a matter of public record, we have a responsibility, even an obligation, to respond. For the record, the Reform movement is a Zionist movement. Every single branch of our movement - the synagogue arm (Union for Reform Judaism), the rabbinic union (Central Conference of American Rabbis), and our seminary, the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion (HUC-JIR) - are Zionist and committed ideologically and theologically to Israel. We are committed to the centrality of the Jewish people and the Jewish state. We have said so repeatedly. We are commanded to love fellow Jews - and to support them, especially in times of war, hardship and struggle. Jewish leaders have an obligation to speak about Jewish peoplehood and our struggle to survive. Jews want to live. Why is it so hard to speak about the war crimes inflicted on our people, and the blood-curdling threats to commit another genocide? How is it possible for future Jewish leaders to write an open letter to the public in the middle of a war, missiles raining down on our people, without ever mentioning Hamas, the instigator of the war? The strategy of Israel's opponents is to delegitimize Israel's response to defend its people - to deprive Israel of the right to self-defense. Some, wittingly or not, provide cover to forces that seek not coexistence with Israel, but Israel's destruction. The issue is not criticism of Israel. The issue is that the Reform movement does not speak enough about our people's enemies or their threats against us - enemies who seek to destroy us, three generations after the Holocaust. That is the root cause of the unresolved conflict: The inability or unwillingness of Israel's enemies to accept a Jewish state within any borders. It is preposterous to imply that Israel fought Hamas because Israelis are white and Gazans are people of color, and Hamas is simply a civil rights organization. First, most Israeli Jews are not of European descent. And second, can anyone seriously argue that Hamas launched 4,000 missiles, every one of which was a war crime, because indigenous people of color rebelled against white colonial Jews? The writer, senior rabbi of Stephen Wise Free Synagogue in Manhattan, is former executive director of the Association of Reform Zionists of America-World Union for Progressive Judaism.
2021-12-06 00:00:00
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