Category: Rabbinic Reflections

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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. 

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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. 

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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. 

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Israel Rabbinic Reflections

Rosh Chodesh Av: Two Reform Rabbinic Perspectives on Embracing Conversations about Israel

The Reform Israel Rabbinic Cabinet has created a monthly forum featuring the thoughts of two Reform rabbis on Israel. This content provides Reform rabbis with material for teaching and preaching about Israel in the month ahead. For Rosh Chodesh Av, Rabbi Jeremy Barras has been invited to share his perspective, and Rabbi Keren Gorban shares a Davar Acheir, a second perspective.

The Many Faces of Zionism, by Rabbi Jeremy Barras

A few days after this year’s CCAR Convention in Philadelphia, I wrote a note to my colleagues urging us to respect each other’s views on Israel. For many years, as someone who stands to the right of many in the Conference on such issues, I have been frustrated by what I perceived as a lack of support for Israel amongst our colleagues. In the past I would spend parts of the workday debating with one colleague or another. Over time, I realized these exchanges were not productive. On the contrary, they often unnecessarily caused hurt feelings.

For the past few years, and especially since October 7, I have softened my approach even further. It became perfectly clear to me after October 7 that we each care deeply about what happens in Israel, and we each share equally in the pain and suffering that October 7 and its aftermath have caused. I will admit that I felt a tinge of resentment when the war began, and many of us called on the Biden Administration to support Israel in her time of need. For the past twenty years, some of us—including myself—have been criticized for being so active in AIPAC. Now that we have seen such incredible support from our government for Israel, I resented that some of us have been working tirelessly on Capitol Hill to build these relationships that have produced such incredible results, all the while taking criticism for being “too right wing.”

That is how I felt in the days immediately following October 7. I no longer feel that way. As the war drags on, I feel that each one of us brings an important approach to support for Israel. What is important is that we each feel like we are fulfilling our responsibility to support Israel in the way we best see fit.

Recently, I finished reading Yehudah Mirsky’s excellent biography of Rav Kook. I have always been drawn to Rav Kook and his willingness to open the bounds of traditional Judaism to the innovations of modern Zionism. Mirsky beautifully describes Rav Kook’s ability to see the holiness in the commitment of secular Zionists. While the ultra-Charedi world dismissed the secular Zionists as antithetical to Judaism, Rav Kook recognized that through Zionist activity a Jew could be brought into the realm of spirituality.

From my perspective, October 7 intensified Jewish identity for Jews around the world. Overnight, we found ourselves frightened for our futures. But that fear caused us to look deeply at why we care so much. And when the encampments were disassembled and the protesters finally gave way, we could not help asking ourselves a couple of questions: What is it about being Jewish that is so important to us? Why do the lies and vitriol of our enemies hurt us so profoundly? And in these moments, when we ask these questions, we may each draw different conclusions. This is no different than the early Zionists. There were so many different schools of thought on how the goals of Zionism should be achieved. But ultimately, it was clear that all of them were necessary to build the State of Israel. Likewise, today, just as Ben Gurion argued with Begin, and A.D. Gordon debated with Rav Kook, our differences should not stifle our contributions, they should complement them. No matter what our views are, we will do better to begin with the baseline that we each love the State of Israel, and our differences no matter how profound, are imbued with the holiness of the Zionist spirit. 

Davar Acheir, Another Perspective, by Rabbi Keren Gorban

We have entered the season when we remember, mourn, and seek comfort after the destructions of Jerusalem. The second of those destructions, our tradition teaches, resulted from שנאת חינם, sinat chinam, the free-flowing hatred and intolerance of others and their ideas, positions, and priorities. As Rabbi Barras rightly notes, the strength of our community depends on us valuing pluralism and learning from diverse perspectives.

I think it’s critical for us to recognize that our community also benefits from including the perspectives of those who identify as anti-Zionist and non-Zionist. When I meet with someone who tells me that they don’t believe in God, I invite more conversation: “Tell me about the God you don’t believe in.” Invariably, I don’t believe in that God either, but they and I can only discover our shared values and beliefs when we approach each other with respect and curiosity. From their opposition, I strengthen my own connection to God and learn more about how to teach theological complexity. They deepen their understanding of what people might mean when they refer to God, even if they ultimately decide that a relationship with God isn’t meaningful.

Likewise, we, as rabbis and as a movement, need to invite anti-Zionists and non-Zionists into conversation about the Zionism they oppose. These are not debates with the goal of proving one side right and the other wrong. These have to be open, curious, respectful opportunities to learn more about our hopes, visions, frustrations, etc., for and with the State of Israel. We will not always agree—in fact, we may often disagree—but let it be the result of deep understanding and love for each other rather than שנאת חינם, sinat chinam.

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 Jeremy Barras is Senior Rabbi at Temple Beth Am in Pinecrest, Florida. He also serves on the CCAR board of trustees. Rabbi Keren Gorban serves Temple Beth El in Tacoma, Washington.

Categories
Rabbinic Careers Rabbinic Reflections

Rabbinical ‘Re-tire-ment’: A Perspective for Retirees and Successors 

Rabbi Fred Guttman (left) with his successor, Rabbi Andy Koren, at a civil rights rally in Raleigh, North Carolina.

Summer is often when many congregational rabbis begin new jobs, while others choose this time to retire. Here, Rabbi Fred Guttman shares insight into how retired rabbis can stay connected to rabbinic successors while enjoying retirement.

I was ordained in 1979 and retired three years ago at the age of sixty-nine.  

I believe that in retirement, I have learned some very practical lessons that might apply to others. Here are nine reflections on retirement and succession: 

  1. Retirement is not the end of life. It is literally a time when you “put new tires on the car” (re-tire-ment!) and go someplace, whether literally or figuratively. 

  2. In retirement, realize you have a finite amount of time before you or your partner/spouse gets sick. Therefore, every day is precious! Carpe diem! 

  3. Find something or some things to do in retirement. Embrace them with the same gusto, strength, and dedication you had when working. In my case, I have led two trips of public-school Holocaust teachers to Poland, taught a college course, and became a member of the North Carolina Democratic Party State Executive Committee. 

  4. Travel. Travel frequently. And extend your stay if you can afford it. My wife and I have been spending lots of time in Atlanta and Israel, where we have kids and grandkids. 

  5. Speaking of grandchildren, if you are blessed to have them, cherish them! Hug and kiss them and enjoy every moment that you have with them! 

  6. Try to cultivate a good relationship with your successors. Do not get in their way.  Give them the benefit of the doubt. They will do things differently. Realize that some of those things might actually be better!  

    Try as hard as you can to cultivate this friendship. In my case, this was easy because my successor and I worked together for eighteen years, and outside of my family, I still consider him to be my best friend! 

  7. To clergy successors: If the emeritus(a) clergy is still in town, ask him/her to do something occasionally. It doesn’t have to be much. It could be an adult study class or an occasional sermon. Invite them to give a tribute or eulogy along with yours at the funerals of our friends. These things make us feel useful and build on our friendship with you! Remember that the previous clergy still might have connections in the community and that they might have been and still could be an important part of the community. 

  8. “Respite for Ravs”: I believe that the last few years have been the most difficult years in the rabbinate that I have ever seen. From Covid, to sociological changes in the American Jewish community, to October 7, rabbis serving congregations have had to face incredible challenges. Many of our younger colleagues are really stressed out. Therefore, I propose that as retirees, we offer a program called “Respite for Ravs.” The program would suggest that a serving rabbi literally take the Shabbat/ weekend off and the retiree would cover in the congregation for no charge or honorarium. For rabbis in remote areas, the congregation would be expected to cover travel expenses. Doing this could give our stressed out colleagues a much-needed short break. Retired rabbis can also apply to join the Reform Movement’s Small Congregations Clergy Collaborative or apply to become an interim rabbi.

  9. World Zionist Organization (WZO) Election: In the last elections, our slate garnered 31,000 votes. While this may sound like an impressive number, in actuality, it is quite low. We can do better! I suggested to Rabbi Josh Weinberg, the Vice President of the URJ for Israel, that we find fifteen to twenty retirees who could become regional captains for a “get-out-the-vote” (GOTV) campaign. Colleagues would be in touch with serving rabbis, offering encouragement, advice, and materials with the goal being to at least double our votes in the upcoming election. If interested, please contact Josh or me.  

    It is now time for the younger generation of clergy, politicians, and others to take over. Our generation did as well as we could. 

I really love the Jewish concept called the “chain of tradition,” which as you know is based upon a tradition from the first Mishnah in Pirkei Avot:  Moses received the Torah from Sinai and gave it over to Joshua. Joshua gave it over to the Elders, the Elders to the Prophets, and the Prophets gave it over to the People of the Great Assembly.  

Every generation receives tradition and wisdom from the past, but eventually a new link in the chain needs to be created and a new generation needs to take over.   

The “chain of tradition” will always need to add a new link. As retirees, we should welcome it and help in any way possible to make the new link as strong as possible!   

Rabbi Fred Guttman in June 2024, teaching 36 public school teachers from North Carolina at the site of the Ghetto Wall in Krakow Poland. 

Fred Guttman (HUC-JIR NY ‘79) served as Senior Rabbi of Temple Emanuel of Greensboro, North Carolina from 1995 to 2021.

Categories
Rabbinic Reflections

Rabbi James Mirel: 50 Years of Joys and Sorrow Serving the Jewish Community

On July 28, 2006, a deranged antisemitic man with a gun entered the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle and murdered my congregant and dear friend Pamela Waechter. She was one of a handful of American Jews who have been murdered for being Jewish.  

The Islamic terrorist was found to be sane by the jury and sentenced to life in prison. Pam‘s life was over in a bloody barrage of gunfire. 
 
At her funeral, our temple was filled with fellow Jews and many government officials and others, well over a thousand people who were still in shock. That was most traumatic and yet most important day in my life as a rabbi, when it fell to my shoulders to bring comfort to her family and to the community. Pam’s memory will stay with me forever. She truly died al kiddush HaShem—for the sanctification of the God and the Jewish people.  
 
When she converted many years prior, I am sure her rabbi reminded her that historically being a Jew can be a source of personal danger and persecution (as is required in the Talmud), but no one could have imagined that it could lead to her being gunned down in cold blood just for being a Jew or working in a Jewish setting. 
 
Fifty years of thousands of funerals, weddings, bet mitzvah, and other life cycle events. All meaningful at that moment, most of them forgotten in the details. 
 
But every once in a while, having served in the same community all fifty years—and I pray more to come—someone will see me on the street and say something like, “Rabbi, you really made a big difference in my life.” 
 
These are the moments in which I know I made the right decision fifty-five years ago when I entered HUC-JIR in Los Angeles with a college degree in philosophy and a hundred dollars in my checking account. What a journey. I have been blessed in so many ways.  

Baruch HaShem.

This year at the CCAR Convention 2024 in Philadelphia, we celebrated all of the CCAR rabbis celebrating 50 years in the rabbinate. We are honored to include Rabbi James Mirel in this year’s 50-year rabbis and ordination class of 1974.

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Israel Rabbinic Reflections

Rabbi Oded Mazor: Israel, on The Day After (היום שאחרי)

Rabbi Oded Mazor is a Reform rabbi living in Jerusalem, where he leads Kehilat Kol Haneshama. During CCAR’s annual rabbinic Convention—held this March 2024 in Philadelphia—he was asked to address an audience of his rabbinic peers and reflect upon life in Israel during the war, specifically the day after the war ends. Below are his powerful reflections.

We were asked to talk about “the day after.”  

In the last few days, two quotes from the תפילה (t’filah, prayer) passed before my eyes, bringing two different feelings that many of us feel these days, about the present and about the future.  

On Shabbat, the words that struck me the most were not easy ones. Do you remember the words ואל תטשנו יי אלוהינו לנצח (Al titshenu Adonai Eloheinu l’netzach)?i How should we translate these words? What does the word לנצח (la’netzach, forever) refer to in this phrase? Does it mean, “God, don’t ever forsake us?” Or does it mean, “God, don’t forsake us forever?” It’s not the same thing.  

I’m going to refer to a few people in my congregation, Kol HaNeshama in Jerusalem.

The first, her name is Esther. She is eighty-seven years old. She teaches a Torah class every other week, for twelve years now. She’s incredible! And she comes to me every other week with a suggestion for an alternative Haftarah for the next Shabbat, a different reading that we can have from the נביאים (n’vi’im, Prophets) or from the כתובים (k’tuvim, Writings), to understand the Torah portion in a different way, two weeks from now!

Two years or so ago, when we were in the middle of Covid, and I met with her and spoke with her—and, thanks to her, we still have a morning meditation twice a week on Zoom, because even now that we’re allowed to be in the synagogue, the pace that we set during Covid, to meeting on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 9:30 in the morning for meditation, we’re still doing it, with more than a minyan on most days. I remember sitting with Esther in her room, and the way she looked at reality and היום אחרי (ha-yom acharei, the day after), she said, “I know the cure is going to be found. We’re going to get over Covid. I’m just not sure I’m going to be here.” ואל תטשנו יי אלוהינו לנצח (V’al titshenu Adonai Eloheinu l’netzach). This feeling of my personal נצח (netzach), my personal “ever,” I feel that I’m already forsaken. Maybe this is going to be the reality. That’s what Esther was feeling during Covid. I think she feels like that again right now, these days.

But when we were saying the Hallel here in Philadelphia, the verse לא אמות כי אחיה (Lo amut ki echyeh, “I shall not die but live”) came to me from the Hallel, as an answer to my feeling of ואל תטשנו יי אלוהינו לנצח (V’al titshenu Adonai Eloheinu l’netzach), insisting on this לא אמות כי אחיה (Lo amut ki echyeh), ואספר מעשי יה (V’asaper ma’aseh Yah), “I will not die but live, and I will tell the deeds of God” (Psalms 118:17). Now obviously, we all know we’re not going to live forever; but as a mental source of strength to ourselves, we may affirm: לא אמות כי אחיה (Lo amut ki echyeh, “I will not die but live”). 

Thinking about the day after, I’m also thinking about the manager of our congregation, Anna. Her cousin is Karina Arayev. She’s one of the women soldiers kidnapped from the Nachal Oz base on October 7. For many, many, many awful weeks, Anna’s uncle and aunt (Karina’s parents), and the whole family—which is a rather small family of Ukrainian Jews—didn’t know anything about Karina and her situation. Three weeks ago, Hamas released a short film with three women talking. One of them was Karina. That’s the first time that they received any message, if we can call it that.

When Anna is thinking about היום אחרי (hayom acharei, the day after), there is no יום אחרי (yom acharei, day after) without Karina coming home. Karina’s parents, Anna’s aunt and uncle, told her that very explicitly: If she doesn’t come home, there is no day after. We try as a community to be there with Anna and her family the whole time through. When we say “the whole time through,” it means that, weeks ago, too many weeks ago, when the first groups of hostages were released, every time a group of hostages came back home and Karina was not amongst them, we were rejoicing with the families who received their loved ones back home; but we were in pain with Anna’s family, with Karina’s family, and the families of all the hostages who are still waiting and have no idea—and had no idea, until the first group of people came off the Hamas vehicle, and still have no idea. 

Nati is not a member of our congregation. She is definitely a very close friend of our congregation. She’s not a member of our congregation because she lives on Kibbutz Or Haner, a few kilometers from Gaza. The next kibbutz up the road, further from Gaza, was not evacuated. The next kibbutz to the west was the kibbutz that stopped the terrorists from infiltrating Or Haner, Kibbutz Erez. Nati and others from Kibbutz Or Haner were moved to Tiberias on October 8. They were there for a month, and then they were offered to move from Tiberias to Jerusalem, to the Orient Hotel. Have you ever been to the Orient Hotel? That place was, for three months, a refugee camp for the people from Or Haner. Nati is the chair of K’hilat Sha’ar HaNegev, led by our dearest colleague, Rabbi Yael Vurgan. When they were moved from Tiberias to Jerusalem, Yael made the connection between Nati and me, and we met in the lobby of the Orient Hotel, which didn’t look anything like what you remember from the Orient Hotel’s lobby. The walls were the same, but nothing else. And I sat there with Nati and her husband, Damian. From that meeting on, every Kabbalat Shabbat and every Shabbat morning, Nati and their younger son, Noam, were with us at Kol HaNeshama. Noam would come and stand next to me and with the other children from Kol HaNeshama for opening and closing the Ark. And his job came to be holding my סידור (siddur, prayer book) when I put the Torah Scroll inside the ארון (aron, Ark), and then I would give him a hug when we sang דרכיה דרכי נועם (d’racheiha darchei no’am, its ways are ways of pleasantness).

A month ago, they returned to their home in Or Haner. What does היום אחרי (hayom acharei, the day after) mean, when you return to your kibbutz, just a few kilometers from Gaza, and the kids go to school, and some of their friends are not there anymore and will never be? And some of their friends will be there, but still are someplace else around Israel and not yet allowed to come back. What it meant for Nati: Returning home is to go pick the lemons from the lemon tree in their yard. היום אחרי (hayom acharei, the day after) will be to know that this lemon tree will give lemons again next year as well. 

And if we’re talking about picking lemons, Debbie is a member of our congregation. Debbie retired from being a lawyer at משרד הרווחה (Misrad HaR’vachah, the Ministry of Welfare) just a few months ago, in August. She didn’t know what she was going to do in her retirement. What she has been doing for the past five months—on top of worrying about her three children, all three of whom were recruited to the army—she has been organizing our volunteering in agriculture, twice a week, every week, for the past four months. Ten to twenty people on each group from Kol HaNeshama, from the area, and people from abroad who hear about it and ask, “Can we join?” One of them is a very dear friend of mine, Rabbi Aaron Goldstein from London. When he told me that he was coming to visit a month and a half after October 7, he asked, “Can I do anything with you?” I said, “OK. Let’s join the agricultural volunteering,” and we planted broccoli. The name Aaron gave it is “brocco-therapy.” It was walking in the field and planting broccoli, one after the other, one after the other. “The day after” will be when Aaron comes again with his congregation and shows them, “You see, this field? Now we’re going to plant another line of broccoli together.” 

My deepest sense of היום שאחרי (hayom sh’acharei, the day after)—and I hope this time I won’t dissolve into too many tears—every day is when I drive my children to school, to the יד ביד (Yad b’Yad, Hand in Hand), bilingual school in Jerusalem, that has been functioning incredibly in these months. Since it’s a rather new building, they have enough shelters in the building, so they were able to return to a regular schedule in the school as soon as anyone was allowed, because they have enough shelters. Many other schools had to require the children to come in shifts—a day yes, a day no; in the morning or in the afternoon—because they only had so much room in the shelters. But the Yad b’Yad school in Jerusalem, of all places, has enough room in the shelters to have everybody coming on the same day from the first day that was allowed in Jerusalem. And every day when I get the privilege that my schedule allows me to drop them off and pick them up at school, and see their teachers and see their friends—Jews and Arabs, Palestinians who live in West Jerusalem, Palestinians who live in East Jerusalem, Palestinians from across the checkpoint to Bethlehem, from Beit Sahour and Beit Jala.  

Some of their teachers were not allowed to come to school in the first few weeks, because they’re on the other side of the checkpoint. Some of their teachers couldn’t come to school because they have little children who had nowhere to go, and the other parent was in מילואים (miluim, reserve duty). And these teachers have to come to school and teach in the same class. And I was told an incredible story by one of my kids’ teachers. In another class, the Jewish teacher was teaching, and the Muslim teacher was there with her. One of the grown children of the Jewish teacher walked in the room in uniform, having come back home from the army. He asked his mother to go out with him for a coffee. His mother told him, “I can’t go. I’m teaching now.” And the Palestinian teacher said, “Of course you should go with him! He’s your son! He came home!” She understood that as a mother, even though that son came into the class in uniform, and I can only imagine what that meant for the Palestinian teacher. That mother had to go with the son who came from the battlefield. What they didn’t know was that the reason he came to get her to go out for coffee was that, at the coffee shop, the other son who came home from מילואים (miluim, reserve duty) was waiting.  

My children came with us to many of the הפגנות (hafganot, demonstrations) in Jerusalem in the past few months. The two younger ones said that they’re not willing to come any more after, at one of these demonstrations, they saw how I was screaming,  לא תהיה לבן-גביר מיליציה (l’Ben-Gvir lo tihyeh militziah, “No private militia for Ben-Gvir!”). There was a proposition that there would be some kind of force that would be under Ben-Gvir’s direct supervision. I think that got them really scared, not so much Ben-Gvir’s militia, but seeing me screaming that way. They prefer being with their Arab Palestinian homeroom teacher, their Jewish homeroom teacher, and their friends, whom they might get along with or not get along with. It’s OK. They’re children in school; that’s what happens. It’s not heaven in that school. It’s the normal life that we want to see.  

It’s the day after that we pray for.  

Will Esther live to see it? Will Karina come back to see it? Will Nati really be able to feel it also in Or Haner, seven kilometers from Gaza? Will Debbie’s three children, coming back from the army, be willing to take part in it, after what they have experienced?  

But my children are going to school. And on מוצאי שושן פורים (motz’ei Shushan Purim, the night that Shushan Purim ends), in Jerusalem, in the courtyard of Kol HaNeshama, we’re going to have an Iftar meal for the families of our daughter’s class. 

That’s the day after that I’m waiting for.  

Watch Rabbi Oded Mazor’s address here.