Reactions to Wednesday’s decisive vote of the Council of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations to reject the candidacy of confrontational J Street to join the body varied from predictable to petulant, after the president of the synagogue branch of the Reform movement, himself a strong supporter of J Street, declared his outrage that the Conference had sided against his wishes.
Ignoring the Conference’s breadth of membership—whose members range from Peace Now to ZOA, including 4 groups representing the Reform movement alone—and the preponderance of left-leaning, apolitical and centrist organizations that sided overwhelmingly against adding the controversial lobbying organization to its ranks, the Union of Reform Judaism (URJ) accused the Conference of lacking diversity, oddly suggested that the umbrella organization “no longer serves its vital purpose of providing a collective voice for the entire American Jewish pro-Israel community,” finally concluding that “Reform movement leaders will… decide what our next steps will be… We may choose to simply leave the Conference of Presidents.”
But while the URJ represents the Reform movement’s congregations, the movement’s rabbinical leadership is charting a different path that embraces Jewish communal unity and recognizes the diversity of Reform Jewry. Rabbi Richard A. Block, president of the Central Conference of American Rabbis (CCAR) is calling upon the movement’s spiritual leaders to use their pulpits for expressing support for Israel rather than voicing criticism. Like the URJ, the CCAR supported adding J Street to the Conference following a vote among its own board, though it made clear it a statement to its members that the decision was not an embrace of the controversial J Street lobby or its consistently critical positions. It is not clear if the URJ held a similarly consultative internal process to arrive at its position in support of J Street. Block is past president of the World Union of Progressive Judaism, the international umbrella group of the Reform movement, and his son is the CEO of the Washington D.C.-based pro-Israel group The Israel Project.
As Rabbi Block writes in the May 2014 issue of The Tower Magazine,
Where Israel is concerned, rabbis have a primary duty: to nurture ahavat Yisrael—love for, identification with, and attachment, loyalty and commitment to the Jewish state, its imperfections notwithstanding. The highest and best use of our pulpits and voices is not to focus on Israel’s flaws, but on its virtues, to rebut distortions, oversimplifications, and falsehoods, to provide context and perspective, to inoculate those who will study on campuses rife with anti-Israel hostility and to support them once they get there. It is to acquaint people with Israel the vibrant democracy, that guarantees freedom of speech, press, religion and assembly, where relentless self-scrutiny is the national pastime, and women, Arabs, religious minorities and gay and lesbian persons enjoy rights, protections, and opportunities unknown elsewhere in the region… the Israel that is infinitely more than the sum of its conflicts.
In a remarkably candid piece, Block strikes a markedly different tone than those demanding the inclusion of J Street, which has consistently opposed sanctions on Iran, opposed Israel’s right to self-defense, urged the White House not to veto anti-Israel resolutions at the United Nations, works with anti-Zionist organizations that lead the BDS movement, and engages in relentless criticism of the Jewish State. Block goes out of his way to express his opposition to Jewish organizations on both the Left as well as the Right that undermine support for the Jewish state:
Although I am a lifelong Democrat and a political liberal in both American and Israeli terms, I cannot, in good conscience, identify with organizations on the left, even those defining themselves as pro-Israel, that welcome and provide a forum to supporters of BDS, engage in public criticism of Israel heedless of how that criticism is exploited by her adversaries, prescribe policies its government should follow, and urge the U.S. to pressure Israel to adopt them. I am utterly repelled by organizations on the right that profess to support Israel but oppose compromises that its government is prepared to make for peace and agitate against such measures.
Though Block doesn’t name names, it seems clear who he’s talking about.
[Photo: Union of Reform Judaism / YouTube]