Category: Rabbinic Reflections

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Rabbinic Reflections

Rabbi Fred Guttman on the Blessing of an Influential and Inspirational Rabbi

Recently, we have begun an effort to really downsize our “stuff.” In this context, I was going through a file that belonged to my mother, of blessed memory. Looking in the file, I found my tenth grade confirmation speech from 1968. Reading it, I was struck by just how much I owed “My Rabbi.”

Let me explain.

I really cannot say that I liked going to religious school all that much. As a matter of fact, I frequently got in trouble!

There was one thing that I really did enjoy and that was singing in the junior choir.

By the time I was in the eighth grade, I was already playing piano in a garage band. I wasn’t great, but I was good enough.

One day, the director of our junior choir was late arriving. So, I told people to take out a sheet that had on it the words of “Adon Olam.”  I then told them that they should sing with me. I started to play the “House of Rising Sun” by the Animals. Before long, I had the entire choir gloriously singing “Adon Olam” to the melody of “House of the Rising Sun.”

After a while, the choir director came in and was very much distressed. He asked me whether or not I knew what this song was really about.

I answered that I did not but that I liked the music. He then said “You need to go talk to the rabbi.”

I walked into “My Rabbi”’s office and told him what had occurred. He smiled, and we sat down at the table. He pulled out a Jewish text; I do not remember what it was. We studied for a little bit, and then I was sent back.

Before I left, he told me that he thought what I did was rather creative and said, “You just might grow up to be a Jewish educator.” Frankly, at that time, this was the farthest thing from my mind.

Two years later during the confirmation class, I came to “My Rabbi” and told him I had a very interesting idea for confirmation. The idea was that during the ceremony, the class would all sing “Turn, Turn, Turn” by the Byrds. I do not think that I knew at that time that the song was actually written by Pete Seeger.

His reaction really surprised me. He told me that he thought it was a great idea. I volunteered to accompany the class on piano. Then, however, he told me that the lyrics were not written by Pete Seeger, but traditionally were written thousands of years ago by King Solomon. The lyrics were to be found in a biblical book called Ecclesiastes.

“My Rabbi” then said to me that he liked my idea so much that every confirmation speech would take one line from the passage and discuss it. My line was “A time to plant.” I had no memory of this until I found my confirmation speech in my mother’s papers.

I went to college at Vanderbilt because I wanted to continue to play in the garage band. While there, I started taking courses in the religion department and the divinity school.

In my sophomore year, I came to “My Rabbi” with the idea that I would like to go on the year-abroad program at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. However, I told him that my father had recently closed his business and that without a significant scholarship, I could not afford to go.

He told me not to worry and harnessed the resources of others in the community, including the local Jewish Federation. As a result, I was able to go to Hebrew University for my junior year.

That year turned out to be one of the best years of my life. I fell in love with a beautiful girl who today is a beautiful woman. I have been with her now for fifty-two years. We have three children and five grandchildren.

How different my life could have been had I not gone that year or had I not been able to afford to go that year. All of this happened thanks to “My Rabbi.”

When I returned, I told “My Rabbi” that but I was thinking about applying to HUC-JIR. He told me at the time that it was interesting because there was an official from HUC who was going to be visiting Nashville and that I should meet him. I was more than open to this.

I sat down for an hour with this official who was also a rabbi. We had what I thought was a nice conversation. I found out later that he told “My Rabbi” that he did not think that I would be suitable for the rabbinate.

Nevertheless, “My Rabbi” encouraged me to apply, which I did, and in 1979, I was ordained in the New York school. Five days later, my wife and I moved to Israel, and we stayed there for eleven years. While in Israel, I had the privilege of working for Rabbis Hank Skirball, David Forman, and Morrie Kippur. These men, like “My Rabbi,” had a profound influence upon my life.

I have now been retired for three-and-a-half years. I have had an amazing career. I have been involved in a lot of pro-Israel work and in various social justice activities.

By the way, I think it was the example of “My Rabbi” that encouraged me to become active in the North Carolina social justice movement known as “Moral Monday.” Other issues that I dealt with in North Carolina involved voting rights and LGBTQ issues. I really do feel that it was “My Rabbi” who served an example for these activities.

I think that we all should be as blessed as I was to have had such an influential rabbi in our lives.

Many years later, I showed my mother a rubbing of a tombstone from the 1880s from the Warsaw Jewish cemetery. The stone depicted broken Shabbat candles. My mom told me that that would be what she wanted on her tombstone.

“My Rabbi” died in 2014. His widow was friendly with my mom. My mom suggested that there be a carving like the ones from Warsaw on his tombstone and she asked me what it should be. I answered that it should be “books” because he was such a learned man.

Mom died in 2020 just before the epidemic.

If one goes to the Temple cemetery in Nashville, one will find two tombstones with designs on them, designs that go back to the 1880s in the Warsaw Jewish cemetery. The two tombstones are my mom’s and “My Rabbi’s.”

So, who is this person? Who was “My Rabbi”?

His name was Rabbi Randall Falk. I owe so much to him!

I share this story partially in tribute to Randy Falk, but more than that, I share it as an example of the enormous role that we rabbis have to play in educating young people and encouraging them to consider the rabbinate.

While I was not the first student of Randy Falk’s to become a rabbi, I was the first person to be ordained from Temple Ohabai Shalom in Nashville, Tennessee.

I do not know if I have been successful in being a rabbinic role model for younger people. I do know that I tried my best, and hope that along the way, I have influenced my students to become good Jews and purveyors of the Jewish tradition.

Thanks to “My Rabbi,” Rabbi Randall Falk.

Y’hi Zichro Baruch!

Rabbi Fred Guttman served Temple Emanuel of Greensboro, North Carolina for 26 years. He is now the Rabbi Emeritus of the congregation.

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Rabbinic Innovation Rabbinic Reflections

Rabbi Abram Goodstein’s Rabbinic Innovation: Time Traveling Through Torah

The Central Conference of American Rabbis, Reform Judaism’s rabbinic professional leadership organization, is home to more than 2,000 Reform rabbis across North America and beyond. And while Reform rabbis wear many hats, often at the same time—Torah scholar, officiant, pastoral counselor, chaplain, educator, organizational leader, activist—they also serve in a wider range of settings, changing the shape of the sacred work of the rabbinate with innovative new visions for Jewish communal life.

We’re proud to share the stories of CCAR members who are taking our ancient Jewish traditions and imaginatively and courageously building new programs, practices, collaborations, communities, and transformational approaches to Reform Judaism. We’re also sharing how, even in dark times, so many CCAR members find joy as rabbis, and we share their hopes for the future of the Reform rabbinate and Reform Judaism.

Rabbi Abram Goodstein serves Congregation Beth Sholom in Anchorage, Alaska, the congregation and town where he was raised. Congregation Beth Sholom is the largest Jewish organization in the State of Alaska, and Rabbi Goodstein takes an innovative, interactive approach to teaching kids Torah while grounding his congregation in tikkun olam and g’milut chasadim.

How do you describe your approach to the rabbinate?
I see myself as a community builder. I believe it’s my role to create an engaging and safe place for Jews to worship, learn, and have meaningful communal experiences. I also believe it’s a Jewish community’s responsibility to practice tikkun olam and give back to their greater community. Just as a Jewish professional serves their community, so does the Jewish community serve their neighbors.

What is your rabbinic motto or words that guide your rabbinate?
Judaism is a responsibility as much as it is a religion.

How have you been innovative in your rabbinic career?
One of my favorite innovations is a program called Shabbat Time Machine. Since my congregation has, for decades, held our religious school on Sundays, our whole school, including parents, starts in our sanctuary and we go back in time by one day (with lots of sound effects) to celebrate a Shabbat morning service. We go through the Shabbat liturgy with different classes leading different sections culminating with the youth group running a full Torah service. I always offer a story that is acted out by kids and teachers. Throughout the service, I offer different opportunities for the kids to engage in the prayers. After the Aleinu, we go back to Sunday; Shabbat Time Machine is over and the children go to their individual classes.

Rabbi Goodstein with his family at Camp Kalsman in Washington State.

How has your rabbinate evolved throughout your career?
I started out believing I would spend most of my time being a rabbi in a small congregation, working for a community small enough to only need a single rabbi, and just enjoying a rich Jewish communal experience. However, out of necessity, I have become more involved in social justice causes in my local community. I have come to believe that since we are am s’gulah, God’s treasured people, it is our responsibility to practice tikkun olam. I am inspired by Moses’s famous statement, “Justice, justice you shall pursue,” and have taken this statement to heart as my career has evolved. I’ve become deeply involved in many local, city, and state social justice campaigns including LGBTQ+ rights, child welfare, homelessness, and preventing antisemitism.

What do people find unique, unusual, or surprising about your rabbinate?
I wear a lot of flannel! Alaska is a famously casual place, and I absolutely embrace it.

People are also often surprised to discover that I was born with a lifelong speech impediment. While they don’t necessarily hear it, it’s not because it’s gone, but the enormous amount of work I put into navigating it. I’ve worked with a number of bet mitzvah students who also have impediments and I show them that impediments do not have to impede your speaking as long as you have something important to say.

What brings you joy in your rabbinate?
Some of the greatest joy I have experienced is helping people feel their emotions. Whether it’s officiating a wedding, cheering on a bet mitzvah kid or adult, or crying with a community member who lost a loved one, a communal Jewish life is beautiful, and I believe our tradition offers so many ways to experience our feelings. I derive great joy from showing people how our tradition celebrates our successes and mourns our losses.

What makes you feel the most hopeful about the future of the rabbinate?
We recently had two Friday night regulars who met at our temple start a relationship. I tell you, the inner yenta in me is positively beaming. Anyways, I get excited when I watch community members become inspired by our tradition, whether it’s to perform acts of tikkun olam (my personal favorite) or making life choices based on the values taught by our tradition. I love it when a community member enriches their lives through Torah, avodah, and g’milut chasadim.

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Rabbinic Reflections

Rabbi Joe Klein: 50 Years of Preaching and Teaching

My long tenure in the small community of Terre Haute, Indiana taught me the singular importance and religious value of interfaith dialogue and friendship. We challenged each other to affirm the meaning and value of being a “believing” Jew and Christian, striving to read Hebrew Scriptures and New Testament with a single voice.

They helped me to understand and appreciate the New Testament, building upon the excellent foundation of New Testament classes at HUC-JIR. My teaching “A Rabbi Reads the Gospels and Paul” in adult Jewish and Christian communities has been a hallmark of my career.

I’ve always wanted to, and have been able to, reach beyond the sanctuary and classrooms of the synagogue. I’ve been fortunate to have found Christian colleagues who were comfortable with my preaching and teaching to their folks, and university department chairs who thought my reading of Hebrew Scripture and explication of the Jewish heritage were worthy of new courses added to the curriculum. And in “retirement,” I found an additional home in a small Christian university where I teach courses on Genesis, Exodus, K’tuvim, and even Introduction to Judaism, in addition to courses at a large state university.

My years of teaching Genesis at the university and to adult members of the Jewish community led me to publish last summer Reading Genesis Again for the First Time—A Radical Commentary. I think of it as written in the spirit of Rashi and ibn Ezra, closely examining the p’shat of the Genesis text, free from the traditional bias of what Genesis is “supposed to say.” (Reading Genesis is available through Amazon Publishing.)

In the congregation, I have always tried to teach “differently,” so I regularly included a semester study of the New Testament Gospels in the confirmation program, and used magic to express the meaning and message of monthly Shabbat and festival services.

Looking back, I realize that while I certainly learned so very much at HUC-JIR, the real gift from the school was teaching me the best way to be a teacher. I learned from my professors (well, most of them) how to prepare and present, the value of handouts and testing, to teach with challenging questions, and to reward thoughtful responses. More than my undergraduate university experience, my five years at HUC-JIR taught me how to be a good student and then to be a worthwhile teacher.

Rabbi Joe Klein is celebrating 50 years as a Reform rabbi. We look forward to celebrating him and all of the CCAR’s 50-year rabbis when we come together at CCAR Convention 2025.

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Rabbinic Innovation Rabbinic Reflections

Expanding Religious Diversity at Sea: Rabbi Emily Rosenzweig, Lieutenant Commander, US Navy, Serves All Who Serve

The Central Conference of American Rabbis, Reform Judaism’s rabbinic professional leadership organization, is home to more than 2,000 Reform rabbis across North America and beyond. And while Reform rabbis wear many hats, often at the same time—Torah scholar, officiant, pastoral counselor, chaplain, educator, organizational leader, activist—they also work across diverse settings, rapidly changing the shape of the sacred work of the rabbinate with innovative new visions for Jewish communal life.

Here, we share stories of CCAR members who are taking our ancient Jewish traditions and imaginatively and courageously building new programs, practices, collaborations, communities, and transformational approaches to Reform Judaism.

Rabbi Emily Rosenzweig is a Reform rabbi and CCAR member, ordained by HUC-JIR in 2006. After serving Temple Israel in Columbus, Ohio, she began her career in the United States Navy in 2012. She completed Officer Development School and continued at the Naval Chaplaincy School and Center in Fort Jackson, South Carolina.

Today, she is a Lieutenant Commander in the US Navy, currently assigned as an Exchange Chaplain with the British Royal Navy. She is the first non-Christian chaplain to serve full-time in the Royal Navy and is tasked with helping expand religious diversity within the Royal Navy. She spends times on military bases and at sea, serving Jewish Navy personnel and members of other faiths.

Here, Rabbi Rosenzweig discusses her innovative approach to her role as military chaplain.

How do you describe your rabbinate?
While I am employed by the US Navy, I’m currently assigned as the Exchange Chaplain with the British Royal Navy in Portsmouth, England. I often describe my work as being an ambassador: part representative, part translator, part cultural anthropologist, part teacher. When I began my career as a congregational rabbi I was an ambassador for Judaism, for Reform Judaism and its institutions, for our congregation, for the senior rabbi—all depending on my audience. Now, in various circumstances, I represent either the Royal Navy, the US Navy, the military and everyone who has ever served, Americans, America, Jewish people worldwide, Reform/Progressive Judaism, Judaism, or some combination thereof.

 One of the best parts of being on exchange with the British Royal Navy is that I’m able to represent the US Navy at events here in the UK (where there is mostly a US Air Force presence). This past Memorial Day, I offered the invocation and benediction at the Cambridge American Cemetery, a 30-acre site that serves as the burial ground for more than 3800 service members killed during World War II. Among those laid to rest there are four of the crew members of my grandfather’s B-17 bomber who died in a plane crash that my grandfather survived. 

All answers given here are my own and do not necessarily reflect any of the above listed institutions/organizations/ ways of peace.

What guides your rabbinate?
Words that guide me: compassion, humility, connection, humor. The closest I have to a rabbinic motto is the US Navy Chaplain Corps motto: “Called to serve.” I knew I wanted to be a rabbi when I was fifteen. I couldn’t explain my certainty then, and I’m not sure I’ve identified good reasons for it since, but I know it’s what I’m meant to do with my time on earth.

How have you innovated within your rabbinic career?
Much of my current assignment requires innovation, as I am the first non-Christian chaplain to serve full-time in the Royal Navy. For the annual gathering of Royal Navy chaplains, I worked with an Anglican colleague to transform the communal prayer service from the standard Anglican evening worship to one with equal contributions from Jewish and Christian liturgical traditions. While at sea with one of the Royal Navy’s aircraft carriers, I reimagined how a chaplain might lead a gathering during the ship’s “church” time block that could include people of other faith practices and humanist or non-religious members of the crew alongside the regular attendees.

What do people find surprising about your rabbinate?
There are Jews in the (American) military?! The flip side of that question is that people are surprised that I work with all the members of my unit, regardless of faith background.

What is the most rewarding aspect of your rabbinate?
The institution I work for doesn’t rely on me for its continued existence, so I’m able to focus on people—listening, advising, celebrating, teaching, coaching, or otherwise, depending on the day. And there’s good health insurance too.

What excites you about the future of the rabbinate?
Among military leaders, there’s a growing recognition of the importance of spiritual fitness in the resilience and overall readiness of our people. I’m excited to be on the front lines of how chaplains of all faiths can address and engage the universal human spirit in all of our service members and their families; not just to survive a deployment, but to thrive throughout their lives.

Rabbi Rosenzweig has been awarded the Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medal, the National Defense Service Medal, the Global War on Terrorism Service Medal, and the Navy Recruit Training Service Medal.

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Rabbinic Innovation Rabbinic Reflections

Rabbi Evon Yakar’s Innovative, Outdoor Approach to His Rabbinate: Exploring the Nexus Between Recreation and Jewish Life

The Central Conference of American Rabbis, Reform Judaism’s rabbinic professional leadership organization, is home to more than 2,000 Reform rabbis across North America and beyond. And while Reform rabbis wear many hats, often at the same time—Torah scholar, officiant, pastoral counselor, chaplain, educator, organizational leader, activist—they also serve in a wider range of settings, changing the shape of the sacred work of the rabbinate with innovative new visions for Jewish communal life.

We’re proud to share the stories of CCAR members who are taking our ancient Jewish traditions and imaginatively and courageously building new programs, practices, collaborations, communities, and transformational approaches to Reform Judaism. We’re also sharing how, even in dark times, so many CCAR members find joy as rabbis, and we share their hopes for the future of the Reform rabbinate and Reform Judaism.

Rabbi Evon Yakar is a co-founder of the Tahoe Jewish Community, a partnership of Temple Bat Yam in South Lake Tahoe, California and North Tahoe Hebrew Congregation in Tahoe Vista, California, a Jewish community that serves the Northern Sierra Nevada. He shares his innovative, creative approaches to enriching and enhancing Jewish life in the Sierra Nevada region to celebrate “Mountain Judaism,” which often includes taking the story of Esther to the ski slopes or reading Torah from the mountaintops.

What is your unique approach to the rabbinate?

My approach to the rabbinate is to connect Jews and Jewishly-adjacent humans to Jewish life and community. I value the relationships that stitch communities together. As a founder of Tahoe Jewish Community, my rabbinate is often expressed through celebrating the magnificence of Lake Tahoe and the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Our focus is on “recreation as re-creation,” which means we often find ourselves engaging as a community in outdoor recreation—reading a book on the beach, hiking trails with a Torah on our backs and on our lips, or skiing down the slopes as a way of marking Jewish time. It is my firm belief that our Jewish tradition has the potential to enhance our quality of life when we engage with its values, texts, and rituals. So, while my approach to my rabbinate seeks innovative and creative endeavors, it is firmly grounded in our rich past and story. 

 

What is your rabbinic motto or words that guide your rabbinate?

I’m guided by “recreation as re-creation,” celebrating our gem of creation, and co-creation as our path towards a vibrant covenantal community. I also hold tight to Dr. Rob Weinberg’s teaching from the early 2000s that Chadesh Yameinu K’kedem (Lamentations 5:21) is best understood and lived as “Renew our days as we always have.” In other words, we are the authors of the continuing Jewish story.

How have you been innovative in your rabbinate career?

I’m always striving to identify opportunities to be innovative. In Tahoe, I continue to engage in ways to articulate and live what we lovingly call “Mountain Judaism.” This is an expression of living Jewishly in rural mountain communities while linking ourselves firmly to the Jewish story.

Currently, we are in the first few months of founding the Tahoe Jewish Community: Center for Jewish Life in the Northern Sierra Nevada. This is a partnership of Temple Bat Yam in South Lake Tahoe, California and North Tahoe Hebrew Congregation in Tahoe Vista, California. We’re a Jewish community serving the Northern Sierra Nevada. We’re a membership organization which counts its members as synagogues and Jewish organizations. Our founding members, the two Tahoe synagogues of TBY and NTHC work in collaboration, good-faith partnership, and co-creation to share resources, develop best practices for synagogue leadership, and become a resource to future members and similarly situated Jewish community organizations.

Rabbi Alan Rabishaw has been an amazing mentor to me, beginning even before the days we shared the pulpit at Temple Chai in Phoenix. There, we reimagined ways to engage our middle school students and families through a program that connected their post-bet mitzvah years to mature adults in the community to center their Judaism.

I continue to work with Adventure Rabbi: Synagogue without Walls in Boulder, Colorado. With Adventure Rabbi, I developed Adventure Rabbi Kids, an alternative to the mainstream synagogue religious school program. In this program, we innovated around the activities, the content, and the community connections with Jewish youth and families. We developed curricula and lessons around the clear theology Adventure Rabbi holds (see Rabbi Jamie Korngold’s The God Upgrade), tapped into our shared commitment to recreation and being active in the mountains, and understood ways to bind ourselves to the Jewish story.

How has your rabbinate evolved throughout your career?

Wow! My student rabbinate began with a vision of leading wilderness trips for Jewish young adults. Through my HUC-JIR years, I rekindled a love and appreciation for the pulpit and synagogue setting. My first community as an ordained Reform rabbi gave me the chance to experience and work within the mainstream synagogue setting—at Temple Chai in Phoenix—where I was encouraged to be creative and innovative in the youth, young adult and worship spaces. Beginning entrepreneurial work with Adventure Rabbi, while at Temple Chai and continuing into my tenure in Tahoe, opened my eyes, heart, and soul up to the endless possibilities to live the nexus between recreation and Jewish life. 

Now, serving two very small congregations with lots of visitors (as we are tourist destinations), I have evolved in my rabbinate to treasure the opportunity and responsibility to imagine new structures and engagement styles for Jewish community. Becoming a Jewish organizational founder has helped me evolve to gather skills and expertise in collaboration, in treasuring relationships and connections, and build covenantal community through the co-creation model of partnership among and with my community.

What do people find unique, unusual, or surprising about your rabbinate?

People are often surprised to meet the rabbi on the ski lift, on the mountain bike trail, or playing back-up guitar of Hineh Mah Tov for the kindergartner performing at her secular school’s talent show. I’m told that Jews and non-Jews alike are surprised and pleased to spend time with me both at synagogue moments and recreating in the same ways they do personally. I also hear that our embrace of all those willing and wanting to support Jewish community is unequivocal.

What is the most rewarding aspect of your rabbinate?

The trust I feel from my leadership teams, congregations, and communities is the most rewarding aspect of my rabbinate. While creativity and innovation often stresses that trust, so far, we have always been able to lean on that trust and manage the stress points. It is beyond rewarding to have this mutual respect and trust.

What brings you joy in your rabbinate?

My joy is also found skiing powder with more than fifteen young people under the age of sixteen during our Purim in the Powder, gathering for our Sukkot Brisket and Brews Festival, which brings wider the community together in a Jewish context, and having an amazing team of leaders, including my “co,” Rabbi Lauren Ben Shoshan. Another source of joy in my rabbinate is that I have designed my life in ways that my own children treasure their Jewish experience and are able to see the joy on my face and in my heart with the “work” I get to do.

What makes you feel hopeful about the future of the rabbinate?

I am excited to see proofs of concept bear fruit. Our collaboration between our local congregations, now becoming the TJC, continues to inspire folks, visitors and residents alike. I am excited and hopeful that we are developing a unique expression of a thriving Jewish community, Mountain Judaism, which speaks to our heads and our heart. It is truly powerful to continually learn how Judaism is experienced and lived among our congregational members, community, and visitors.

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Israel Rabbinic Reflections

Rosh Chodesh Kislev: Moving Americans Beyond Their Own Narrative on Race as They Seek to Understand Israel

The Reform Israel Rabbinic Cabinet has created a monthly forum where rabbis share their thoughts on teaching and preaching about Israel in the month ahead. For Rosh Chodesh Kislev, Rabbi Yael Dadoun shares her wisdom on moving Americans beyond their own narrative on race as they deepen their understanding of Israel’s and the Jewish people’s beautiful diversity.

I once tried to explain to a colleague that Jews come from diverse backgrounds and that we have the wonderful responsibility to honor those differences by celebrating distinctive rituals and experiences in Judaism. With a flick of the wrist she responded, “Yeah, but we all eat lox and bagels!”

Having grown up in a Moroccan-Tunisian-Israeli household in Connecticut, I only first heard about lox in my sophomore year of high school—and to be honest, lox is still not my preferred bagel topping. For those of you wondering, I’m also not going to spread hummus on my bagel either, but that’s not the point. 

What I wished my colleague would have said was, “Tell me more about your rituals! What do you eat on special occasions?”  

In the last few years, I’ve observed that some Americans assume all Jewish people have an Ashkenazi background. There’s a similar assumption made about Israeli society—that Israelis are all “white” and of European descent. This is one of the reasons Israelis are often called colonizers, implying that Israelis come from foreign backgrounds and are not indigenous to the Holy Land. Thus, when we try to understand what is happening in Israel, we make incorrect parallels between American and Israeli society, superimposing American challenges with race and oppression upon Israel. 

Author and journalist Matti Friedman points to a recurring narrative he sees in the United States. He argues that many Americans are using their image of home to construct their image of Israel. He brings to our attention that some conflate the conflict between Jews and Muslims in the Middle East with American struggles of racism. They peer out into the world making claims about others but are actually looking at a mirror in which they mistakenly see their own unique struggles as the reason for conflicts across the globe—conflicts with their own unique set of circumstances as the root cause. Ultimately, America’s history of slavery, racism, and the struggle of Black communities in America have nothing to do with the history of the Jewish minority in Europe and the Islamic world who fled centuries of death and religious persecution by returning to their historic homeland in Israel. Israelis are diverse, and very real and challenging divisions and separations exist within the society, though for very different historical reasons than American segregation.

In 2019, The New York Times published an op-ed by the respected scholar Michelle Alexander, the author of an important book on incarceration. She described Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians as “one of the great moral challenges of our time,” claiming that Israeli society is guilty of “practices reminiscent of apartheid in South Africa and Jim Crow segregation in the United States.” For Alexander and other American writers, Jews living in the distant Middle East have wrongfully become an embodiment of American racial oppression. Rather than taking time to learn about the complex history of the region, the remarkably diverse background of Jewish Israelis who are over 50 percent Mizrachi and Sephardic (i.e., non-European), and the wide-ranging political beliefs of Israeli society, they seem to fall back on age-old tropes in which Jews are blamed for whatever problems may exist in a given society.  

As American Reform rabbis, we have the incredibly joyful opportunity to showcase how truly diverse Jewish people are, both in our ethnic backgrounds and religious rituals. This perspective can help to counter a simplistic and flawed narrative that paints Jews in the US and Israel as a homogenous group and can elevate the many different voices of our people. Such an approach would go a long way in enriching our American Jewish tradition while more accurately describing Israel’s fervent diversity and culture.

The Reform Israel Rabbinic Cabinet asks that if you choose to respond to this author, you do so only with kavod harav—respect for the rabbi sharing their wisdom, experience, time, and talent.  

Rabbi Yael Dadoun is a rabbi at Temple Mishkan Or in Beachwood, Ohio.

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Israel Rabbinic Reflections

Rosh Chodesh Cheshvan: A Fork in the Road for the Next Generation’s Engagement with Israel

The Reform Israel Rabbinic Cabinet has created a monthly forum where rabbis share their thoughts on teaching and preaching about Israel in the month ahead. For Rosh Chodesh Cheshvan, Rabbi Allie Fischman shares her perspective on teaching and learning about Israel at Reform Jewish summer camps.

We are sitting at a fork in the road in terms of Israel engagement with the next generation of URJ leaders. Overall, we had a fantastic summer at URJ Camp Newman, where I serve as director. We also received multiple emails from Newman alum who are calling upon us to shift our Israel education to “share a more true and wider narrative about the land of Israel, the people of Israel, and the evolution of the current State of Israel.”

Since 2016, we have been working with The iCenter in Chicago to find a model that feels like the holy grail of Israel education in a camp setting (spoiler alert: no one has discovered it yet). How do we teach a “balanced” narrative, as some folks ask for, when we only have two to three hours during a two-week camp session to focus on Israel? How do we teach campers and staff to understand the nuances that young adults can handle? How do we convey the importance of the teachings of the movie Inside Out: that we can hold multiple truths and narratives at once, and feel compassion and love for multiple groups of people at once?  

This summer, we saw a handful of our fifteen- to seventeen-year-old campers and eighteen- to twenty-four-year-old staff members unwilling to embrace the concept of holding multiple truths about Israel. Rather than criticizing the Israeli government’s choices in the war, but still loving the Jewish homeland, they instead choose to forge a Reform Jewish life that simply does not include Israel as a main component. They feel comfortable singing Israeli or Hebrew songs but not ever stepping foot on the land. My heart hurt to speak with these campers and staff members. Israel remains such an important component of my Judaism, and these young future leaders of the Reform Movement want to create Reform Jewish life without Israel. Though this was a small percentage of 175 staff members, their stance reveals a shift from alumni before them. 

We need to come together as a Movement to consider the path ahead for Israel education. Congregations, youth groups, URJ camps, Reform Jewish parents—we could all be stronger together by creating a more unified plan of Israel education across all Reform Jewish platforms. No single religious school, no single camp, no single Reform Jewish parent or mentor should bear the entire weight of teaching our children about Israel and its complexities. I imagine a future where we work together across different areas of engagement to ensure that we teach our young leaders that understanding, holding, and embracing multiple truths and narratives displays strength, humility, empathy, and compassion.  

Though we encountered difficult conversations around Israel from some of these young folks this summer, our URJ camps also provided a vital haven for campers, staff, and faculty across the country. We provided another safe space to come together and be joyfully Jewish. We did everything we could to hold with care and love the hearts and souls of our visiting Israeli staff members and campers. Ultimately, I wonder how and if we can come together as the teachers of our future generations to find ways to teach about the nuances and complexities of Israel, while also passing on the importance of embracing and holding multiple truths. 

The Reform Israel Rabbinic Cabinet asks that if you choose to respond to this author, you do so only with kavod harav—respect for the rabbi sharing their wisdom, experience, time, and talent.  

Rabbi Allie Fischman has served as URJ Camp Newman Associate Camp Director from 2014 to 2018 and as Camp Director since 2018. 

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Inclusion Rabbinic Reflections

Evolving My Position on Jewish Interfaith Marriage

I remember it like it was yesterday. The year was 1987. The place was a classroom at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in New York City, and we were having a critical discussion about the question of intermarriage, whether we would officiate and why. My position was adamant. I would only officiate at unions between two Jews. 

I felt that my role as m’sader kiddushin was to create Jewish families. And for the first eight years of my rabbinate, that was my steadfast policy. 

Then, in 1995, a dear friend shared his recent adoption of a new policy regarding intermarriage. If the non-Jewish partner was not actively practicing the religion of their birth, if the couple agreed to spend a year studying Judaism, and they agreed to have Judaism be the only religion in their home, and to rear Jewish children, he would marry them. 

By that time, I had noticed intermarried families in my congregation who were creating amazingly wonderful Jewish homes and whose kids were solid and secure in their Jewish identity and, more often than not, were among the most active teens in my religious school and youth group. 

It was a seminal moment for me. I was all in. My temple leadership, which had only hired me one year earlier, was concerned about my “flip flop,” but I assured them this represented a seachange for me in how I viewed the path to achieving the very same mission I had signed onto years earlier, namely creating Jewish families. The evidence was demonstrating that there was more than one way to achieve that. 

For the next twenty-seven years, I officiated at weddings between two Jews or one Jew and one non-practicing non-Jew who studied and promised to make a Jewish home. As the years went by, I watched with great satisfaction as these families grew and enriched Jewish life for themselves and for our community. Often, the non-Jewish partner became active in temple leadership, and in more than a few cases, eventually formally chose Judaism for themselves. Their kids were incredibly Jewish models for their younger peers, and I no longer heard self-disparaging comments about feeling like “a half-Jew.” 

Then the sea changed again. 

In 2022, a temple kid reached out to me to say she was engaged to be married and wanted her old childhood rabbi to officiate. The kicker? Her fiancé was Hindu and loved being so. 

By the policy I’d held for so many years, I should have said no. In fact, I did say no. But something about this didn’t sit well with me. It had little to do with the couple itself, except that I liked them and probably wanted to make sure this was really what I wanted to tell them, and that the family they would be creating would not fit the model to which I had long ago subscribed. They would have two religions at home and their children would be reared in both. Everything I had learned about such marriages waved the red flag. 

Except for one major, and as it turned out, decisive difference: the world of 2022 had changed greatly from that of 1995. 

Nowadays, there are so many pronounced, ugly divisions across our country, with so much anger and outright hatred flooding our daily lives. Politics have become personal vendettas, and the internet has offered anyone and everyone a nearly uncensored, unhampered platform to amplify and disperse every distorted, uncaring, and even unhinged remark that people “care” to put out there. 

As I thought about the mess we’re all living through, with so much discord pushing people further and further apart, I couldn’t have been more surprised to find myself thinking, “How can I tell this couple, who only want to love each other and share their love with others, that I won’t marry them?” In a world that knows far more callousness and hostility than I can remember, I reached back out to them and said, “Yes, I’ll marry you.” 

And just recently, that’s what I did, with immense gratitude to them for reminding me of the preciousness and virtue of love, that it outshines whatever else we may think is important in our lives. 

Will this couple make a Jewish home? Will they raise Jewish children? Will they secure the future of Jewish life? 

I don’t know. Maybe not. 

But they’ll make a loving home, one in which their children benefit from watching two adults who care about the spiritual paths they’ve chosen for themselves. And while yes, they’ll be raised in two religions, and they’ll have to sort out which religion to choose for themselves, or they’ll create some amalgamation of the two, or they’ll choose no religion at all, I believe with all my heart that something beautiful is going to happen inside that home that is profoundly needed in a world gone crazy. Where it’s become commonplace to see national leaders rip one another apart for the basest of reasons, this home will serve as an incubator for the values of two religions that teach us what is perhaps life’s most important instruction: Be good to one another. 

How can that be a bad thing? 

As I recently observed Elul, which propels us toward the High Holy Days, I found myself thinking about the symbols and rituals of my own religion and the symbols and rituals of other religions. When they do their jobs, their purpose is to prepare us, like Elul, for our upcoming lives. 

These symbols all speak to Judaism’s big plans for them, its grand hopes for their happiness, and its loving reminder of the role they have yet to play in bettering the world around them. Just as Hinduism’s symbols do. And Islam’s symbols. And Christianity’s too. 

And while they may look very different from one religion to the next, their underlying messages are remarkably similar. For this wedding couple, their chuppah symbolizes the protection from life’s storms that they will give to one another. Their kiddush cup symbolizes the bounty of sweetness that they will share with each other. Their rings symbolize the unending promise that they will care for one another. And the glass that they broke symbolizes their leaving behind what has been, and their forging together a new future. 

I love Judaism. And I want it to continue to exist. The world needs it to continue to exist. But in this time of schism and toxic dissent, I love love even more so. And while I will always celebrate when two Jews marry, I won’t ever again stand in the way of two human beings promising to love and care for each other forever. In fact, I will respond to their request for officiation with a wholehearted and grateful, “Yes!” 

Billy Dreskin is Rabbi Emeritus of Woodlands Community Temple in White Plains, New York. These days, he spends most of his time making music, which you can check out at jonahmac.org/billys-music. 

Categories
Israel Rabbinic Reflections

‘The Wheat Is Growing Again’: Rabbi Tamir Nir on Communal Spiritual Regrowth After October 7

Rabbi Tamir Nir is an Israeli Reform rabbi and the founder of the Israeli Reform congregation Achva Ba’Kerem in Jerusalem. Here, he shares his hope for regrowth and renewal even in tragic, trying times, and he shares how his Reform congregation, which includes a community garden, has provided a spiritual refuge during the war.

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“It’s not the same old house now; it’s not the same old valley
You’re gone and never can return again.
The path, the boulevard, a skyward eagle tarries…
And yet the wheat still grows again.”

Dorit Tzameret wrote this song after the 1973 Yom Kippur War. In it, she wonders how wheat can grow again after everything has gone and is simultaneously amazed and excited by nature’s regenerative capacity.

This is how I have found encouragement, hope, and motivation since the beginning of the war and even today.

These days, the squill is the only plant that grows and blooms in Israel after a long and dry summer. It emerges from the dry and barren land without leaves or branches, an upright, white, proud inflorescence like the phoenix. It renews itself, like the new year, which comes out of the void, and the moon, which is covered and then shows the ability of renewal.

I founded the Achva Beit HaKerem—a Reform congregation in the Keram community in Jerusalem—in 2007 because I understood the acute need to build communities for secular Israeli urban society. The necessity of fostering identity and belonging and creating frameworks for support and mutual responsibility to build personal and community resilience. We need to achieve political power to make a difference in the neighborhood, the city, and even the country.

The reality in Israel proves that the traditional synagogue is not suitable for most of the Israeli society: Secular Israelis want to contribute and immerse themselves in acts, in tikkun olam.

We built a community garden with the understanding that this is the place where the community can grow. The garden is where trees and vegetables grow, and people create a community. It is a gathering space open to all, without fences or definitions—a synagogue without walls. Since it is an open public space, the garden invites residents from all sectors and genders so everyone can feel welcome and significant.

Our garden calls for an endless and continuing encounter with the cycle of nature. Working in the garden requires faith, even in the simple act of sowing: “Those who sow with tears will reap with Joy” (Psalms 126:1). We need faith that the seed will sprout, grow, and bear fruit. This action encourages faith and hope and a call for action that leads to social action. This act proves our ability to repair and create with nature, with the help of rain and the sun, in partnership with God.

I want to share two new projects that have grown in our community this past summer.

  1. During the war, we started holding carpentry workshops in the garden, focused on repairing old and broken furniture and recycling wood. Here, too, we witness our ability to mend what is broken, despite the brokenness. Many of the participants in the workshops today are reservists who left Gaza, as well as their spouses.
  2. “Beer Garden” has become a regular weekly event lately, attracting hundreds of people. We learned that sitting with neighbors over a glass of beer opens hearts and creates closeness, as well as new interactions between people. Sometimes, it even leads to new initiatives and projects.

“How awesome is this place! This is none other than the abode of God, and that is the gateway to heaven.” Genesis 28:17

The services held in the garden on Shabbat and holidays call us to pause, rest, admire our joint effort, and enjoy “the fruit of our labor.” We connect to each other and God. This profound experience of joining together offers spiritual renewal and strength, which is needed in these difficult days.

In prayer for good days, peace, growth, and peace.

Rabbi Tamir Nir is an ordained Reform rabbi who serves as the congregational rabbi for Congregation Achva Ba’Kerem, which he founded in 2007. Rabbi Nir teaches Jewish and Islamic thought in a high school for religious and secular Israelis. He recently served as Deputy Mayor of Jerusalem, where he bridged differences between the many diverse communities that make up the city, as the head of the BINA Secular Yeshiva, and as chair of the Heschel Center for Sustainability. He has an MA in Jewish Education and a BA in Architecture and Urban Planning. 

Categories
Israel Rabbinic Reflections

Rosh Chodesh Elul: Two Reform Rabbinic Perspectives on Teaching About Israel and Finding Ourselves in the Wilderness

The Reform Israel Rabbinic Cabinet has created a monthly forum where two rabbis will share with Reform rabbis their thoughts on teaching and preaching about Israel in the month ahead. For Rosh Chodesh Elul, Rabbi Melissa Simon has shared her thoughts, and Rabbi Dan Moskovitz has shared a Davar Acheir, a second perspective. 

Writing About Israel in Advance, by Rabbi Melissa Simon 

When I was asked to write this piece, my first question was “How late can I submit it?” This was not just because I have a tendency to procrastinate, but rather because every passing hour seems to see shifts and changes in the reality on the ground in the Middle East. So how can someone write about Israel in advance?  Writing about Israel in advance requires flexibility, an awareness of the possibility of a last-minute edit or rewrite, and creativity. It means identifying goals or themes and then ideating around them. Sometimes these initiatives can lead to meaningful adaptations and ideas.  

Over the first seven months of 2024, I organized and led three trips of Hillel campus staff from the United States, Canada, and Poland to Israel to better understand the post-October 7 reality. We painstakingly crafted a journal full of poetry, songs, prayers, and art. But then we faced a challenge: we desperately wanted to believe that our hostages wouldn’t still be held captive by the time the trip took place, yet it was a possibility (and sadly a reality throughout each trip). What did we do? We found an image that resembled a torn piece of tape, like the one Rachel Goldberg—the mother of hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin—has been wearing attached to her clothing, what she calls “an emblem of pain,” marking the days of captivity of her beloved son, who was tragically murdered by Hamas. In solidarity, many of us around the world have been wearing the torn tape with the unbelievably increasing total number of days. We printed the blank tape image at the top of each day’s journal page and invited the participants to fill out the number of days each morning. It became a painful yet powerful ritual each day, as we marked the difficult passage of time. It centered the people of Israel and their reality at the forefront of our minds and hearts. 

The take-away I have from this experience is that however difficult it is, we must talk about Israel, we must write about Israel, we must engage in the work of Israel education—even when it is hard, even if our old systems and plans have failed us, even if we fear we will make a mistake. 

We need to center Israeli voices in our work, and we need to travel to Israel to experience the changed realities. We need to read books and articles, listen to podcasts, and watch TV and movies in order to add to our knowledge. We need to be creative with how we engage with Israel, and we need to be expansive in how we understand the people, land, and State of Israel. 

The greatest danger is the silence. The fear of getting it wrong causes some people to freeze and to fail to act. Our Jewish communities need prophetic and strong voices. They need sermons that make sense of what is hard to understand. They need classes that explain history and how present realities have come to be.   

Yes, sometimes you might need to edit that sermon right before services because something has shifted in world events. Yes, sometimes you might need to throw out the lesson plan to hold space to deal with a challenging reality. Yes, sometimes we can confess that we too are confused or scared or challenged. 

But even when it is hard—perhaps precisely because it is hard—we need to write, speak, and teach about Israel today and every day. 

Davar Acheir / Another Perspective: Always in the Wilderness, by Rabbi Dan Moskovitz 

Thank you, Rabbi Simon, for your thought-provoking and honest reflections on the challenges of writing about Israel amidst the daily uncertainty and dynamism of a post-October 7 world.

I too have been putting off my High Holy Day sermon topic selection let alone outlining and drafting, which by Elul is usually at least in my head if not on paper. Shabbat sermons and divrei Torah have been similarly “eleventh hour” as events impact perspective on a daily basis.  

And yet some things about Israel and the experience of Jews in the diaspora never change, even as they appear new to us as twenty-first-century Jews. For over seventy-five years, the miraculous existence of the State of Israel, to say nothing of Jews in the West in general; the nature, character, and acceptance among the community of nations of both the Jewish State and the Jewish People has been fragile and under attack from enemies “foreign and domestic.” The fantasy we tell ourselves is that the forces unleashed on October 7 are new and different, rather than revealing something that has been there all along, and that our people have faced for millennia.  

Franklin Foer’s piece in the Atlantic, “The Golden Age of American Jews Is Ending,” makes the point that what we are experiencing now is not the exception but rather normative of attitudes toward Jews and becoming normative toward Israel. I draw some degree of strength from that sad reality. We have been here before and are still here.  

I think of the tens of thousands of sermons and articles written by our rabbinic predecessors in their own precarious times; the strength (koach) and wisdom they gave their communities in dire moments such as these that guided our people through the wilderness. Maybe that is the burden and the blessing of being a Jew or a Jewish State—we are always in the wilderness striving toward a promised land, a promised time, but we never quite get there. In the striving, in the wilderness journey, our true character is formed and the dangers to our survival are revealed so we can confront them.  

The Reform Israel Rabbinic Cabinet asks that if you choose to respond to these authors, you do so only with kavod harav—respect for the rabbi sharing their wisdom, experience, time, and talent. 

Rabbi Melissa B. Simon is the director of Israel education for Hillel International and lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Rabbi Dan Moskovitz is the senior rabbi of Temple Sholom in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.