Rabbi's Update 6/5/26

Dear Friends:

For the past several weeks there has been significant controversy over whether the seminaries of both Conservative and Reform Judaism should insist that their students be Zionists. Should JTS and HUC admit students who are non- or anti-Zionist? If already studying at one of the seminaries, should they be expelled? Denied ordination? Prevented from marching at graduation and receiving their degrees?

At JTS the controversy was sparked when six graduating undergraduate students out of a class of 50 wrote to JTS Chancellor Shuly Rubin Schwartz protesting the choice of Israel’s President Isaac Herzog as graduation speaker and recipient of an honorary doctorate. (The letter was subsequently joined by four current JTS rabbinical students but none of this year’s ordination class.) Chancellor Schwartz met with the students who signed the letter but did not accede to their request to disinvite President Herzog -- who eventually addressed the graduation over video link because events in Israel prevented him from leaving the country.

In the Reform movement, Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch of Stephen Wise Free Synagogue in New York gave the keynote address at the “Re-charging Reform” conference sponsored by his synagogue calling on HUC to deny admission and ordination to non-Zionist students. He called upon that conference -- which has no official status within the Reform movement or vis-a-vis HUC -- to pass a resolution urging HUC to “cultivate and expect a deep, informed and lived 

engagement with, and commitment to, Jewish peoplehood, Zionism and the State of Israel 

among all those pursuing ordination and professional leadership within the Reform movement.”

And be it further resolved that “we expect that all candidates for HUC-JIR’s educational 

programs — rabbinical, cantorial, educational and nonprofit management — will be committed 

to a Zionism that echoes the commitments of Reform Zionism.”

Rabbi Hirsch is certainly correct that rabbis and cantors within a particular movement should believe in and practice the ideology of that movement. When I reached the conclusion that I did not accept the ideology of Reform Judaism and could not function as a Reform rabbi because of my commitment to traditional standards defining Jewish identity and Jewish marriage, I left the Reform movement’s Central Conference of American Rabbis and applied to and was accepted to the Conservative movement’s Rabbinical Assembly.

To be sure, I consider myself to be a Zionist. I spent four years in Israel, two of them on a border kibbutz where I carried a weapon in defense of the State of Israel. I have served twice as a delegate to the American Zionist Movement convention and once (many years ago) as a delegate to a worldwide conference of young Zionist leaders held in Jerusalem. And I have been an unsuccessful candidate several times for election as a delegate to the World Zionist Congress. I’m deeply engaged with Israeli culture and as I write this I am listening to Reshet Gimmel, ביתה של המוזיקה הישראלית, “the home of Israeli music” which on Fridays plays Israeli popular music from the 1970s and 1980s.

The problem that I have with these current controversies is that I have not seen anyone define the Zionism they would like to see expected and enforced or the anti-Zionism which would lead to expulsion or denial of ordination. I think that the students who protested the honorary degree for President Herzog were wrong and I am glad that the Seminary rejected their protest. But at the same time, I think that to deny them their degrees or prevent them from marching at graduation would have been deeply wrong and possibly illegal since JTS’ undergraduate program is a joint venture with Columbia University where students received bachelors degrees from both schools.

In his address Rabbi Hirsch -- who made aliyah with his family as a teenager and served as a tank commander in the IDF -- writes that “it is not enough to say to each other, “we are a Zionist seminary, but liberal education requires us to accept bi-nationnalism as a legitimate expression of Zionist thought.” Even the bi-nationalists would be offended by our including them on the spectrum of Zionism.”

I find this particularly interesting if not problematic because I wrote my rabbinical school thesis on the North American branch of the Zionist youth movement “HaShomer HaTzair.” HaShomer HaTzair favored the establishment of a bi-national state -- as did Reform rabbi Judah Magnes who was the first Chancellor of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Henrietta Szold, the founder of Hadassah and the first woman to study at JTS. (Solomon Schechter admitted her to rabbinical school classes on condition that she would not seek ordination.) 

Rabbi Hirsch would consider the founder of Hadassah and the first president of the Hebrew University, as well as the founders of 14 kibbutzim including Ein Hashofet (the first “American kibbutz”), and most of the crew of the Haganah ship Exodus not to be Zionists. But ironically, HaShomer HaTzair during the time I wrote about would not have considered Rabbi Hirsch to be a Zionist, since he had made aliyah and voluntarily chose to leave Israel and return to the United States. HaShomer HaTzair defined a Zionist as someone who lived in Israel and if you grew up in the movement but did not make aliyah, you were expelled from the movement.

I agree with Rabbi Hirsch that every movement has the right to define the boundaries of acceptable belief for its clergy and other religious functionaries. But if we are to start enforcing certain orthodoxies and policing the beliefs of our clergy and seminary students, we need to do a much better job of defining our expectations.

If you or someone you know is in need because of having been laid off, or has  lost benefits of some type and needs immediate help, please let me know. I can access limited funds through the Jewish Federation almost immediately. For longer-term help, the Hebrew Free Loan Society will loan up to $18,000 interest-free and the Jewish Federation has set up a hotline to  access assistance at 703-JCARING.

As a reminder, I am having drop-in hours on Thursday afternoons from 2 to 4 at the shul. For my drop-in hours, you do not need to make an appointment -- that would negate the whole point of drop-in hours -- but I’d urge you to check and make sure I am there regardless as sometimes there are unavoidable pastoral or other emergencies which might take me away from the building. 

As always, if I can do anything for you or you need to talk, please contact me at rabbi@kehilatshalom.org rather than through the synagogue office. I am happy to meet you at the synagogue by appointment; if you want to speak with me it’s best to make an appointment rather than assuming I will be there when you stop by. 

Additionally, if you know of a Kehilat Shalom congregant or another member of our Jewish community who could use a phone call, please let me know.

L’shalom,

Rabbi Charles L. Arian