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Editorials
Reform Movement Must Act On Vigor To Change
T
he influx of baby boom-
ers migrating to suburban
America enabled the Reform
movement to grow easily in the 1960s
and 1970s. By the 1990s, however, the
movement, on the cusp of becoming
America's largest Jewish stream, was
forced to confront a host of heady chal-
lenges even as its membership grew.
Those challenges have turned
daunting. They include intermarriage;
inclusion; teen engagement; young
adult involvement; social justice
causes such as immigration reform,
gun violence and workers' rights; sus-
taining the Zionist passion inspired
by teen missions to Israel and Taglit-
Birthright Israel; a decentralized view
of religious life that has hurt syna-
gogue affiliation; and the growth in
secular Judaism as a religious identity.
Rabbi Rick Jacobs,
the visionary presi-
dent of the Union
for Reform Judaism,
the congregational
arm of the Reform
"'
movement, imagined
Ak the way forward in
Rabbi Jacobs
his Dec.12 keynote
address at the URJ
Biennial in San Diego.
"God didn't create synagogues or
rabbis or denominations or even Jewish
people," he said. "No, God created a
ii
-
wondrous universe, teeming with beau-
ty, complexity and possibility. Within
this incomplete world, God created
human beings to be partners in shap-
ing a world overflowing with wholeness,
compassion, joy and justice."
It's not that an institution of Jewish
life can't be sacred to the mission of the
Jewish people, Jacobs said. Rather, he
said, they shouldn't define who we are
or what the Reform movement stands
for — as important as synagogues,
Hebrew schools, early childhood cen-
ters and Jewish camps may be.
A Growing Trend
In exploring the phenomenon of the
"Nones" — Americans who live outside
the margins of religious identifica-
tion, much as the biblical Esau did
— Jacobs cited the latest Pew study
on American Jewry. It punctuated
a national trend showing at least a
third of all 20- and 30-somethings call
themselves "None" when it comes to
identifying with a religious subgroup.
Wisely, Jacobs said he doesn't
believe the "Nones" are hopelessly
lost. "The same research that docu-
ments the 'Nones'," he said insightful-
ly, "reveals that many of them believe
in God, have some spiritual practice
and attend worship services occasion-
ally, even as they are allergic to insti-
tutional religion. It is the institutions
as we know them that the 'Nones' find
distancing."
He acknowledged how young
"Nones" reject fundamentalist reli-
gious trends and how a progressive
religious track might be more inviting
— both extremely provocative asser-
tions when measured against Jewish
tradition. But these ideas illuminate
the pathway for a movement that has
thrived on balancing an embrace of
Torah with the push of modernity.
Reform leadership
understands that
constant reinvention
is required to excel
and that its work is
never finished.
Voice Worth Hearing
Boldly, Jacobs implored the URJ and
its supporters to cling to a core com-
mitment to "the age-old Jewish voice
that insists on justice, cries for the
poor, upholds human dignity, demands
hope in the face of despair and finds
human purpose even when all seems
lost" above "the old and tired institu-
tional patterns of Judaism."
He gets it that the next genera-
tion not only wants to know adults
tout this commitment, but also that
they understand it will best succeed
through bottom-up, not top-down, col-
lective action.
To that end, Jacobs outlined
a sweeping Campaign for Youth
Engagement, featuring fresh program-
ming initiatives and higher-caliber
training for youth professionals. The
impetus: the unnerving matter of 80
percent of all young Reform Jews
leaving organized Jewish life by the
end of high school.
Jacobs didn't waver in urging
Biennial goers to cease viewing
Orthodox Jewish practice, essential as
it is to our tradition, as their baseline.
"Our Judaism," he said, "is appeal-
ing to everyone, those from more
traditional backgrounds, no Jewish
backgrounds, Jews by religion, Jews
by culture and Jews by affinity. We
will amply nourish all who are hungry
for meaning."
URJ leadership understands that
constant reinvention is required to
excel and that its work is never fin-
ished. In that contest, it must repel
the looming and damaging effects of
apathy, complacency and pompous-
ness within.
❑
Matter Of How To Deal With Hamas Lingers
H
amas greeted news of Ariel
Sharon's Jan.11 death with,
what else, rocket fire at south-
ern Israel — the same kind of air attacks
the U.S.- and European Union-declared
terrorist organization has afflicted the
Jewish state with for years.
Notably, it was
Israel's unilateral
pullout from the Gaza
Strip, which Sharon
first envisioned while
prime minister in
2003, that ultimately
enabled Hamas, a
Ariel Sharon
Palestinian proxy for
Iran's ruling mullahs,
to rise to power in
that Palestinian tinderbox, situated on
the Mediterranean along the borders
of Egypt and Israel.
Instead of looking the other way
given Sharon's unwitting influence on
its ascension, Hamas chose to remem-
ber Israel's brilliant military strategist
and war hero by firing rockets that
30
January 23 • 2014
landed harmlessly in a field near the
family's Sycamore Ranch in the Negev
during the Jan.13 funeral there. In
retaliation, Israeli airstrikes targeted
two terror sites in Gaza, affirming
Israel's right to protect its citizens.
Concomitantly, Hamas indoctrinates
teens to hate Jews as well as terror-
ize and murder "Zionist infidels." Its
"Pioneers of Liberation" camp recent-
ly put 13,000 high school students
"in the footsteps of suicide martyrs."
Campers received weapons training,
marching exercises and "security"
classes to "identify" Israeli spies.
Training was in anticipation of Hamas'
next war with Israel.
Clearly, Hamas is a master propagan-
dist, tailoring textbooks, news media
and spiritual messages, for example,
with glorification of violent jihad
against Israel. Gaza's youngest genera-
tions are taught to embrace hatred and
terror — and imagine "suicide martyr-
dom" above civilized purpose.
"Instead of devoting time and
resources to developing their society,"
reports U.S. terrorism investigator
Steve Emerson, "Hamas is teaching
its youth to kill."
Overshadowed is that the actual
pullout from Gaza in August 2005
involved "not only withdrawing Israeli
military personnel and transferring
control over the international bor-
der with Egypt to the Palestinian
Authority, but also forcibly removing
8,000 law-abiding, patriotic Israelis
from their homes and farms, and the
bulldozing of their flourishing com-
munities," as Israeli political columnist
Caroline Glick put it in the Jerusalem
Post on Jan.14.
In 2006, Hamas overthrew the
Palestinian Authority, which also
governs the Palestinian areas of the
West Bank, for control of Gaza. Ever
since, Gaza City has exerted the
Hamas Charter, which calls for Israel's
destruction, to terrorize Israel. "By
2012," Glick reported, "the number
of Israelis living within rage of Gaza's
missiles topped 3.5 million" — more
than a third of the population.
Glick quoted Egyptian prosecutors
who say Hamas "played a key role in
elevating the Muslim Brotherhood to
power in Egypt and effectively remili-
tarizing the Sinai, thus undermining
the key component of Israel's peace
deal with Egypt." The Egyptian mili-
tary saved the peace treaty, at least
for now, by upending the Brotherhood.
The Gaza disengagement, which
occurred after Israel essentially neu-
tralized the second Palestinian inti-
fada by late 2004, clearly has endan-
gered the ancestral Jewish homeland,
not strengthened it.
Time has proven the action came in
a vacuum with little foresight and no
long-range strategy for resolving the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Any agreement with the Palestinian
Authority over borders and security
in the West Bank would still leave the
commanding question of how to deal
with Hamas unanswered.
❑