The Significance of Israel for American Reform Jews
Rabbi Evan Moffic
Chicago Sinai Congregation
July 21, 2006

The events in Israel have been on our minds for the last several weeks. It's something that I've discussed with our members and with friends and family alike. Yet, on Wednesday I read an article that was both intriguing and troubling. The author, Steve Windmuller, is a professor at my alma mater Hebrew Union College. He argues that over the last twenty years, the level of interest in and commitment to the state of Israel has diminished amongst American Jews.

He points to several causes. First, the disastrous war in Lebanon in 1982 demythologized the notion of Israel has a moral exemplar that could do no wrong. The first intifadah during the late 1980s furthered this process of demythologization. Whatever their accuracy, the pictures of big Israeli tanks and gun-toting soldiers and young Palestinian rock throwers made the Palestinians seem like David and Israel like Goliath. Because of this, Israel lost some of the glow of its early years. Second, a new generation of American Jews lacks the sense of urgency and crisis that led to Israel's formation and growth after the Second World War. After the Holocaust, a Jewish state seemed like a moral imperative. American Jews today, however, largely grew up with the presence of a strong Jewish state, and may even take it for granted. Third, American Jewry has truly come into its own. We are a strong Jewish community, with thousands of synagogues, community centers, Jewish studies programs, rabbinical schools and so on. Israel does not serve, as one critic put it, as life support for the Diaspora. This leads to a final cause for the growing divide between Israel and American Jewry. It is a continuing feeling among many Israelis that one can only live an authentic Jewish life in Israel.

Just a few months ago, the celebrated Israeli author A.B. Yehoshua was invited to speak at the national meeting of the American Jewish Committee. The AJC was celebrating its 100th anniversary. Now you may recall that the AJC was founded by non-Zionist German Jews. Amongst its early leaders were the rabbis and presidents of Temple Emanu-El in New York. They opposed the establishment of a Jewish national homeland, though they did support Jews who fled to Palestine to avoid persecution in Eastern Europe. This view of Zionism as a philanthropic, rather than a political pursuit persisted within the AJC until at least the 1950s. Now, of course, the AJC is strongly committed to the Jewish state, but as its name suggests, it affirms the significance of American Jewry. At their 100th annual meeting, Yehoshua spoke before the entire plenum as part of a panel on strengthening Jewish identity. In his talk he declared that Jewish life in America is meaningless. He called the 100-year record of the AJC "a great failure" and said that as an Israeli, he had no interest in discussions of Jewish identity. "It's your problem, not mine," he said. Just a few weeks after this incident, the president of Israel further alienated American Jews, Reform Jews in particular, when he refused to address the president of the Union for Reform Judaism, Rabbi Eric Yoffie, as a rabbi.

So now let us return to the article I mentioned at the outset. Let's listen to its opening sentence: "Israel's military operations in Lebanon may represent a greater test of American Jewry's resolve and engagement with the Jewish state than of Israel's military capacity." What is it that is being tested? Professor Windmuller calls it resolve, but I think that it is the feeling of American Jews toward Israel. What should be our relationship to the Jewish state? As Jewish Americans, and in our case, as Reform Jews, what role does Israel play in our lives? How and why is Israel important to us?

Here's my answer: First, if we care about the Jewish faith about the ethical message and profound sense of human dignity that lies at the heart of Judaism then we must care about the Jewish people. Judaism is not only a religion, a people, a culture or a philosophy. It is all of these things and more. Each depends on the other. The preservation of our faith requires the survival of our people. The survival of our people depends on a secure and strong Israel. In its early years, Reform Judaism emphasized faith at the expense of peoplehood. Allow me to illustrate this through a line in the prayer book. When the Torah is taken out of the ark, the following prayer is said: Beit Yaakov, lechu v'nalcha b'or Adonai. "Oh House of Jacob, come let us walk by the light of our God." Now if you look at the first edition of the Union Prayer Book, you find something slightly different. It says only lechu v'nalchah b'or Adonai. The first phrase, Beit Yaakov, O House of Jacob, is missing. The early Reformers felt that Beit Yaakov emphasized Judaism as a nationality. Beit Yaakov, you see, refers to the Jewish people, so they eliminated the reference. The opposite approach was taken by an early Zionist group which called itself BILU. This is an acronym for Beit Yaakov lechu v'nelchah. BILU was comprised of Jewish nationalists who were also secularists. They kept Beit Yaakov, Oh House of Jacob, but eliminated b'or Adonai, by the light of our God.

The Reforms took out Beit Yaakov. The Zionists took out b'or Adonai. Perhaps each was a bit too extreme; the secular Zionists minimized our faith, while the early Reformers marginalized our historic sense of peoplehood.

One of the first to recognize and address this weakness of Reform was Sinai's founding rabbi, Bernhard Felsenthal. A classical Reformer, he realized that the maintenance of our Jewish faith is strengthened by the maintenance of a Jewish culture and a Jewish state. Felsenthal was, as my teacher Michael Meyer told our congregation when he spoke here last month, the first Reform Zionist. He realized that Jewish nationalism is not an oxymoron. Religion and peoplehood are not mutually exclusive. In fact, they are intertwined. American Jews who care about Judaism need Israel and Israelis who care about Judaism need America. As Rabbi Ronald Sobel puts it, "If the principal mission our people is to be a moral conscience to humanity, then that mission can best be fulfilled to the extent that there is a safe, secure and viable State of Israel surrounded by Jewish communities the world over, equally safe, secure and viable."

Israel is also important to us because it is built on the foundation of democracy and peace. From its inception, Israel has been, as its Declaration of Independence states, "a country based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel; it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex; it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture." Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, who was both America's leading political progressive and Zionist in the early 19th century, made the case for a Jewish state in just these terms. As he proclaimed, "The highest Jewish ideals are essentially American. It is Democracy that Zionism represents. It is Social Justice which Zionism represents, and every bit of that is the American ideal of the twentieth century." In other words, Israel stands for values we hold dear as Americans and as Jews. We may disagree with and criticize some of the decisions or policies of its government. Like America, it is a place of frequent political division. But it is still the only place in the Middle East whose citizens, include Arabs, vote in national elections. It is also a pursuer of peace. In 1978, in 1993, and even under Prime Minister Sharon, its leaders have shown a willingness to make sacrifices for the possibility of peace.

Finally, Israel represents a hope and a trust in our Jewish mission to be a light unto the world. In the 20th century, the bloodiest century in human history, its founding made light out of darkness. We can see this by comparing years 1945 and 1948. 1945 was the end of the Second World War and the Holocaust. It was in that year that we realized that six million Jews, a third of our world population, had been murdered. It gave new urgency to the quest to create a Jewish state. That goal was realized in 1948, when the British withdrew from Palestine and Israel declared its sovereignty. When seen in this light, 1948 marked a partial Tikkun, repair, for the destruction of the Holocaust. When seen in this light, Israel, as Reform thinker Eugene Borowitz has written, offers not only Jews, but all people, a personal experience of God's saving power. "The state of Israel appeared," he writes, "as a model of moral politics; it was an instinctive life-affirming answer to Hitler's nihilism." Even President Harry Truman understood this significance of Israel when he said in a speech in 1944 that "Today, not tomorrow, we must do all that is humanly possible to provide a haven for all those who can be grasped from the hands of Nazis."

It may seem strange for a rabbi of a congregation committed to the philosophy of Classical Reform Judaism to place such great emphasis on the importance of the Jewish state. As I noted earlier, the early American Reformers generally opposed the Zionist movement. But like Rabbi Felsenthal, I think we are part of a historic people as well as a living faith, and the success of each depends on the vitality of the other. We need Israel, as Israel needs us. At its best, Israel exemplifies our finest values as Jews and gives the world light and hope.

These are difficult days for Israel, and for all people who hope and pray for peace in Middle East. Let us not think that we American Jews have no role to play there. Let us not think that what happens is Israel is not truly our concern. Rather, let us give of ourselves our hearts, our energy, our resources to support Israel, visit there, and do all we can to help make it an or l'olam, a light unto the world. Let us remember that we are one people who can give each another support and courage. Let all of us proclaim, with enthusiasm and with resolve, the entire prayer: Beit Yaakov, lechu v'nelchah b'or Adonai, oh house of Jacob, come let us walk by the light of our God.