Tag: Liberal Zionism

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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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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.

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Books Israel

Fragile Identities in Dialogue: What is Zionism today?

I grew up in an age when the State of Israel was touted as the panacea for the lost American Jew. We celebrated Yom haAtzmaut as fervently as we celebrated Purim. The most exciting skits put on by our day camp counselors all ended up with the characters realizing they could just go to Israel. It was messaged, both subtly and not-so-subtly, that the greatest move we could make as a Jew was Aliyah. The State of Israel was a modern miracle. I do not remember the word Zionism crossing anyone’s lips, but I was certainly raised a Zionist.

When I ventured to Israel for the first time as a senior in highschool, I came back fully bought into the triumphalist Zionist narrative of the State of Israel as the culmination of all Jewish history; the reclamation of Jewish strength; the realization of Jewish sovereignty, and, soon, in vague whispers, the messiah. Then I went to college in Gambier, OH, and I found that there was another side to the story – a reality of oppression inflicted by the State of Israel upon the Palestinians that wasn’t justifiable.

In search of answers, I returned to Israel for my junior year abroad in 2004-2005, and now off the rails of the high school Israel-as-Disneyland experience, I was free to see a much broader spectrum of Israeli life. Busses exploded blocks from my dorm in Beer Sheva; religious extremists refused to leave their settlements in Gaza, threatening to tear apart the country; Bedouin were rounded up and forcibly settled in the Negev against their will, often in abject poverty. I returned from that experience confused and concerned. Why had I been taught this State was the answer to all my questions about Judaism? What even is Zionism, and do I want anything to do with it?

Dr. Joshua Holo, the dean of HUC-JIR in Los Angeles, writes in the upcoming release from CCAR Press, The Fragile Dialogue: New Voices of Liberal Zionism, that Zionism “seeks to guarantee Israel’s existence and its Jewish and democratic character…(and) merely reflects the fact that Jews and Judaism are tightly bound up with the Land of Israel.”

Regardless of the inner conflict, the crack at the foundation of my relationship to Israel, I still feel bound up with the Land of Israel. After writing a graduate thesis on the development of secular Israeli identity, and spending my first year of rabbinical school in Jerusalem, I am no longer surprised by the disappointments the government of Israel consistently bring me. It no longer hurts when my very Jewish identity is denied authenticity by that same government. My anger no longer burns so strongly at the continued and worsening oppression of the Palestinian people at the hands of the Israeli government. It has all become old hat, and as predictable as the rest of the Jewish calendar.

Coming from the perspective of a Jewish educator, in her chapter from The Fragile Dialogue titled, “Educating for Ambiguity,” Rabbi Dr. Lisa Grant, writes, “Just as all would agree that God, Torah, and shabbat are integral to Jewish experience but that different Jews have different beliefs and practices, the same can be said about Israel. There is no one right way to engage with Israel, but engaging is an essential aspect of Jewish experience.”

Words are slippery creatures. Jewish tradition has spilled much ink arguing over the definition of one word or another. Once a word referring specifically to the lofty dream of a new nation State for the Jews, upon the accomplishment of this goal it has now spun into a multitude of different amalgamations: Religious Zionism, Revisionist Zionism, Classical Zionism, Anti-Zionism – and, as these writers discuss, Liberal Zionism.

I’m not sure if I’m a Liberal Zionist, but I am sure that no matter what I do, the State of Israel is as basic to my daily thoughts as Torah and the Jewish calendar. Although I no longer see the State of Israel as a miracle (just as I no longer think that Moses literally parted the Red Sea), I can not cut the ties that bind me to her. So I must join the conversation, and welcome all the voices, from Religious Zionists to Anti-Zionists, but also be willing to stand and put my own relationship with Israel into words.

During Purim we celebrate the story of the victory of the Jews of Persia over their oppressors, and also look critically, even ashamedly, at the end of the book of Esther in which these same Jews massacre 75,000 of their enemies. If we can manage this confusing and confounding tradition each year, we can celebrate the accomplishments within the contemporary State of Israel, as well as protest the moral failings we see in its government.

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Andy Kahn is entering his fifth year as a rabbinic student at HUC-JIR. He has served as the CCAR Rabbinic Intern and is currently the Rabbinic Intern at East End Temple in New York City. 

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Books Israel

Swiftly Flow the Days

Stanley Davids
Rabbi Stanley Davids, celebrates 50 years in the Rabbinate.

In anticipation of the release of CCAR Press’s newest book, The Fragile Dialogue: New Voices of Liberal Zionism, we’ve invited several of the book’s contributors to share how the book came together. The book is officially available for pre-order now from CCAR Press. 

When I sat with David Ben Gurion in his Tel Aviv apartment in 1973, there was no doubt in “The Old Man’s” mind as to what Zionism was: To come to the Land.  To build and to be rebuilt.  To create a new Jew and a new Judaism in the Old/New Land.  He was bemused by the fact that there was push back from some quarters in the Diaspora.  All those ‘Zionists’ had come out to cheer BG in London.  But then he boarded his plane to return to Eretz Yisrael, and they returned to the London suburbs.  So what’s a Zionist?

And then there was the struggle with Jacob Blaustein of the American Jewish Committee.  All Israel’s founder had said was that Jews were obligated to settle in Israel. Blaustein strongly protested against this obvious denigration of the Diaspora, so the Blaustein-Ben Gurion Agreement was signed in 1951.  Blaustein would support the Zionist enterprise from afar and BG would not (often) criticize that distancing.  So what’s a Zionist?

In 1967, it seems that everyone was now a Zionist.  Following the victories of the Six-Day War, Jewish volunteers flooded Israel.  Youth programs expanded dramatically.  Israeli flags flourished on synagogue pulpits across the world.  Heschel wrote: Israel, An Echo of Eternity.  Soviet Jewry began to flex its muscles.  American Jewry was marked by parades, marches and other public events in which our Zionist identities were celebrated with pride.

But with the passing years there were increasing doubts and uncertainties and disappointments.  The world was moving away from the fervent nationalisms that described the mid-20th century.  Israel became controversial.  Some deemed its policy of Occupation to be colonialist or worse.  Ethnicity and peoplehood eroded as the individual was increasingly celebrated.  More wars.  Intifadas.  Ethiopian Jews confronted discrimination, as had the Mizrachim before them.  As do Israeli Arabs.  Reform Judaism was far too often treated as an unwelcome, alien presence.  Huge gaps opened up between the very rich and the very poor.  Was the bloom off the rose?

The nations of the world increasingly felt free from their burden of responsibility for having incited anti-Semitism over the centuries.  But now anti-Semitism was being cloaked in anti-Zionism.  And long suppressed arguments burst forth from within world Jewry.  Too easily accommodating to new norms for discussion, shouting replaced words; ad hominem insults replaced reasoned disagreement; rage replaced discomfort.  We refused to hear anything with which we disagreed.  By the second decade of the 21st century, Jews began boycotting Jews over arguments regarding who and what is a ‘good’ Zionist?  And whose views were the most likely to guarantee Israel’s security?  Battered increasingly from without, we turned on each other.

The Fragile Dialogue: New Voices of Liberal Zionism has the self-assumed role of trying to demonstrate that we Jews must and can learn how to speak with one another about core, existential issues.  This book is intended to be a model for Jewish disagreement about the meaning, purposes and goals of Zionism.  No more demonization.  No more exclusion or banning.  Neither Rabbi Englander nor I have any intention of attempting to define right answers, but only to demonstrate that strongly held positions from within the liberal Jewish community both need to be heard and must be heard.

Does anything go?  Frankly, No.  Our scholars and teachers had to meet one standard: they are firmly committed to the right of Israel to exist as a Jewish and Democratic State.

Some of our authors favor the possibility of a One State Solution.  Some favor Two States.  Some favor a nuanced imposition of BDS.  Some see Israel as a Divine gift.  Some reject any claim that Israel is “The beginning of our Redemption.”  Some want us to teach Zionism with an embrace of ambiguity; some see the survival of North American Jewry as dependent upon the survival of Israel as a Jewish and Democratic State.  They all have a place in this book; and they all have a place in our synagogues, campuses, and Jewish organizations.  Open wide the umbrella!

Enough banning of Zionist voices with which we are uncomfortable!  Hear each other.  See each other.  Greet each other with respect.  Make space so that our children can find their own, unique liberal Zionist voices – without fear of being ostracized.

In recent days, complaints against the Netanyahu Government over the Kotel and over Conversion have made this book even more important.  The language of liberal, religious Zionism can give us the power to state our demands while not encouraging even more distancing or, worse, indifference.

The liberal Zionist dialogue is fragile, but we must preserve it.  Larry and I have worked with that imperative firmly in mind.

Read as if our future depends upon it.  Because it does.

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Rabbi Stanley M. Davids serves as rabbi emeritus of Temple Emanu-El in Atlanta, GA. He is also a Co-Editor of CCAR Press’s newest book, The Fragile Dialogue: New Voices of Liberal Zionism, now officially available for pre-order from CCAR Press. 

Categories
Books Israel

It’s Lonely in the Middle

In anticipation of the release of CCAR Press’s newest book, The Fragile Dialogue: New Voices of Liberal Zionism, we’ve invited several of the book’s contributors to share how the book came together. The book is officially available for pre-order now from CCAR Press. 

Randy Newman, tongue planted firmly in cheek, wrote a song with the title “It’s Lonely at the Top.”  When it comes to political ideology – and in particular, to Zionism – it’s more like “It’s lonely in the middle.”  That covers a wide range somewhere between Haredi fanatics who want to expel every non-Jew from Greater Israel to those whom I call “template leftists” who see Israel only through the lens of colonialism.  Where do we find the ground to engage in reasonable dialogue, even with those whose perspectives differ from our own, without any side claiming a monopoly on truth?  Where do we find a safe ground for this dialogue to take place?

These questions prompted the vision for the forthcoming book, The Fragile Dialogue: New Voices of Liberal Zionism.  In the autumn of 2011, I had guest-edited an issue of the CCAR Journal which contained a symposium on Progressive Religious Zionism.  A few years later, Rabbi Stanley Davids (who had contributed a seminal article to that symposium) took the initiative to suggest that we expand that dialogue between the covers of a book.  Our objective was to garner a wide spectrum of perspectives, ages, and topics.  Now that we have seen the finished product, both of us are very pleased with the result – and we hope that you will be too.

Among other things, I’m happy that every article in the book presents something new and fresh.  I learned something significant from each and every author.  Rather than point to specific articles, I’d like to share some of the insights that I gained from the collection as a whole:

  • I was reminded that, even though the Jewish population of Eretz Yisrael has been scant at times, we as a people have never relinquished our hope for a return.  This constitutes the historical core of our Progressive Religious Zionism.
  • I learned that there is a widening gap between Israeli Jews and Diaspora Jews with regard to our expressions of Zionism.  We don’t always understand each other.
  • I also read first-hand accounts of the distancing from Israel that is taking place, especially in the United States.  This appears to be due to different factors: discomfort or disagreement with Israeli government policies, fear of being singled out on campus as an Israel supporter, or simple lack of interest.
  • I became convinced that any solution to the above phenomenon will depend on intensive, creative and nuanced educational initiatives.
  • It was also interesting to discover that liberal Zionism is expressed differently in different countries of the Diaspora.  In our book, we gain an insight from the United Kingdom; I hope the exchange between Rabbis Baginsky and Gold will open the door for other nationalities to join the conversation and to learn from each other.
  • I was saddened to read that, for some liberal Zionists, Israel must take second place to their home country in addressing issues of civil society.  I would have hoped that the values of Reform/Progressive Judaism would be applicable – and necessary – for both nations.

These are my impressions after reading the essays in solitude on my computer screen.  But my main hope for our Fragile Dialogue is that it will encourage readers to meet together and to initiate their own dialogues to discuss its contents and to seek meaningful responses.  The book has been deliberately crafted so that a wide range of responses are presented and respectful disagreement is encouraged; and even beyond these, the door remains wide open for further thoughts and plans of action to emerge.  I welcome you to pick up what I truly believe is a great read!

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Rabbi Lawrence A. Englander serves as Rabbi Emeritus of Solel Congregation of Mississauga, Ontario and Adjunct Rabbi at Temple Sinai in Toronto.  He also serves as Chair of ARZENU, the international Reform Zionist organization, until August of 2017.  The Fragile Dialogue: New Voices of Liberal Zionism is now available for pre-order from CCAR Press.