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New Reform head walking
pro-Israel tightrope.

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Rabbi Richard Jacobs with Israeli soldiers at his Westchester Reform Temple
last year

Stewart Ain
New York Jewish Week

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38

April 14 • 2011

abbi Richard Jacobs, poised
to become the next leader
of the Reform movement,
recalled last week taking part in
an anti-government protest in
Jerusalem last July sponsored by the
Sheikh Jarrah Solidarity movement.
"I take issue with residents of east
Jerusalem [being] taken out of their
homes to make room for Jewish set-
tlers," he explained, hastening to add
that he disagrees with 99 percent of
what the movement, which has been
described by the Jewish Agency for
Israel as anti-Zionist, stands for.
But Jacobs said he joined promi-
nent Israelis who also agreed with
him on this issue, like novelist David
Grossman and educator Moshe
Halbertal, a colleague of Jacobs at
the Shalom Hartman Institute in
Jerusalem, where the senior rabbi of
the Westchester Reform Temple is a
senior fellow.
And Jacobs noted that the night
before the protest, he had participat-
ed in a rally in Jerusalem on behalf
of Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier
kidnapped and held by Palestinian
terrorists.
"That didn't mean that I support-
ed the agenda of many who attend-
ed," like a man standing near him

whose T-shirt called for rebuilding
the Third Temple.
In a sit-down interview and sub-
sequent phone conversation last
week, the rabbi aired his views on
Israel for the first time in a detailed
way, seeking nuance where others,
particularly critics on the political
right, look for hard-line definitions.
Jacobs acknowledged that in his
new position as president of the
Union for Reform Judaism, set to
begin in 2012, he may well have to
consider participation in protests
and rallies "differently, reflecting the
different views within our move-
ment."
Weighing his symbolic role as the
leader of America's largest denomi-
nation at a time of deep polariza-
tion in the Jewish community over
Israel, Jacobs is trying to advocate
a middle-road approach framed
by commitment to strengthening
Israel rather than abiding by strict
parameters. But he admits it's not a
simple matter and that his personal
views must be balanced with deci-
sions formed by the various arms of
Reform Jewry as part of "a thought-
ful, deliberative process."
Jacobs favors a "big tent" approach
in assessing groups and individuals
in terms of support for Israel and
notes that "the tent needs to have
boundaries, but we have made them
so narrow that the slightest wind
blows it over."

Settler Foe on page 40