There’s a couple of interesting stories from the United States about the current state of the main US non-Orthodox Jewish movements, Reform and Conservative and how they and the communities that they serve have been impacted by both the trauma of 7/10 and how recent events have exposed extreme politicisation of the non-Orthodox Rabbinate. Some may think that this is a bit of a niche subject for this blog but the stories of religious leaders choosing politics over religion, abandoning core precepts and the naive practise of becoming allies to those who will eventually hate you could probably apply to some Christian denominations as well.
The first of these stories is from Jonathan Tobin and was published in the Jewish News Service and concerns those secular and non-Orthodox Jews who have abandoned the idea of Israel. The article talks of those in academia who have ignored or downplayed the Biblical links to the Holy Land, even though the Tanakh aka the Old Testament and Jewish prayer and practise show that there has always been a desire to reclaim the Jews’ homeland from its various occupiers. Mr Tobin states how the US Reform movement practised a form of extreme assimilationism, with the USA taking the place of Zion in the minds of Jews. These what Mr Tobin calls ‘disaporist’ Jewish movements push the idea that it is better for Jews to be powerless than have Jews taking responsibility to govern themselves. This is a monstrously bad argument. Nothing good can really come out of powerlessness.
Mr Tobin said on the subject of the diasporist thinkers:
They are appalled by the reality of Jews living fully Jewish lives, whether religious or secular, Ashkenazi or Mizrachi, right-wing or left-wing in a Jewish state where its citizens speak Hebrew and live by the Jewish calendar in their people’s ancient homeland. To them, Jewish powerlessness—the root cause of millennia of persecution and martyrdom that culminated in the Holocaust—is a good thing since it relieves Jews of the responsibility to govern or protect themselves. In this way, they can bask in the faux righteousness of victimhood, absolved of any guilt that comes from the difficult and complicated task of survival in a hostile world.
This is deeply wrong on several levels.
Those who claim that support for Jewish life and sovereignty in the land of Israel is marginal to Judaism—and those who do make that argument are usually antisemitic non-Jews—are betraying their abysmal ignorance. Israel is integral to Jewish observance, prayer and its most profound beliefs, as well as to the history of the Jews. For two millennia, Jews prayed every day for their lost homeland, for the rains to come in season there, and for the complete rebuilding of Jewish life and worship there. Nor was there ever any time in history since the Roman expulsion when Jews were completely absent from it despite the hardships, humiliations and persecutions exacted by various foreign conquerors, of whom the Arabs were only relative latecomers.
There has been similar hostility to Zionism among British Progressive Jews in the early part of the 20th century with religious movements, such as the one that became modern Liberal Judaism, having within it lay people, lay leaders and clerics who were critical of Zionism. However these particular anti-Zionists were primarily concerned with protecting British non-Orthodox Jews from accusations from Jew haters of having dual loyalty. The reality is that it is quite possible to be a loyal British subject and being the best that Jews can be for Britain, including serving in Britain’s armed forces, whilst also supporting the idea of rebuilding the Jewish homeland. This attitude from some of Britain’s non-Orthodox Jews of playing down Zionism ended up being to a large degree dropped following the revelations about the Shoah and urgent need for the re-establishment of the State of Israel. Anti-Zionism ended up being seen as a dead end path and as Mr Tobin said: ”Since the Holocaust and the birth of Israel, anti-Zionism can no longer be considered as having even a shred of intellectual integrity.” I believe that Mr Tobin is correct here. All the horrors that have been dumped on the Jewish people since the forced exile by the Romans of Jews from Israel for millennia have occurred because the world’s Jews have been, up until very recently, powerless. Jews have been powerless in the face of tyrants, Kings and the mob because the ancient lands of the Jews were not in Jewish hands but were in the hands of everyone, from the Romans via the Crusaders to the Arabs and finally the British Empire. With no homeland to go to when things got tough, Jews became eternal victims to be killed or expelled with impunity by everyone from King Edward I to Adolf Hitler. No, whatever the Left say, powerlessness and victimhood are not good things.
On the subject of the Left Mr Tobin points out that the whole idea of powerlessness and victimhood being good things in themselves is not an idea that comes from within Judaism but comes from the Left.
Mr Tobin said:
The best way to understand today’s Diasporists is to put them in the context of contemporary leftism, not Jewish history or faith.
If a certain small percentage of people who have some Jewish ties are openly anti-Zionist, it generally has little to do with seeking a non-nationalist vision of Israel or even the ultra-Orthodox belief that a Jewish state must await the coming of the Messiah—a point of view espoused by a minority of even those Chassidim who do not think of themselves as Zionist but still accept the reality of modern-day Israel.
Rather, it is a function of their acceptance of the toxic beliefs of the intersectional left, whose origins are related to the rise of critical race theory and the woke catechism of diversity, equity and inclusion. They accept the false idea that the world is divided between two immutable groups locked in perpetual racial conflict—oppressive possessors of white privilege and victimized people of color. In this formulation, Jews are wrongly labeled as “white” colonialists while Palestinian Arabs are their racial victims.
I agree with Mr Tobin here. The sort of anti-Zionism that we see today is not coming from or has any roots in the idea of protecting Jews from false accusations of dual loyalty, as was the case with early British non-Orthodox Judaism or the minority Jewish religious view that Israel can only be recreated by the Moshiach/Messiah but comes from the most poisonous parts of the political Left. The dualist view of the Left that the world is made up of victims and oppressors is the key issue here. This viewpoint divides people into artificial categories of oppressor and victim with no room for nuance or subtlety with some groups being deemed, even without evidence, as wholly good whilst others are wholly bad. It’s the old fashioned class hatred of the Communists but given a racial and religious twist and is something that I believe should be rejected by anyone
capable of independent thought.
The second article that I wish to highlight and comment on is primarily concerned with American Reform and Conservative Judaism and the cleaving by the leadership of these communal groups to Leftist politics that can do nothing but destroy. The article is by Karol Markowicz and was published in the Real Clear Politics magazine and tells of the horrible experience that American secular and non-Orthodox Jews, whose communal organisations have embraced Leftism with a passion, have gone through since 7/10 and how Leftism has hollowed out Reform and Conservative Judaism in the United States.
Ms Markowicz paints a picture of American non-Orthodox Jewry in steep decline with the Rabbinate of these communal groups doing their utmost to hammer the square peg of Leftism into the round hole marked Torah and traditional Jewish belief and practise.
Ms Markowicz’s piece was sparked by a discussion on a Facebook group of parents opposed to the growth of campus anti-semitism in the United States. She said that initially the group was straight up campaigning against the Jew hatred on American college campuses but how it eventually became riddled by division over the issue of ‘Diversity, Equity and Inclusion’ (DEI) with some contributors stating that efforts needed to be made to include Jews under the DEI umbrella whilst others taking the view that it was DEI itself that was the problem.
Ms Markowicz said:
On Facebook, a group called Mothers Against College Antisemitism (M.A.C.A.) was founded and grew quickly to over 50,000 members. They shared information, emailed, called, and signed petitions. They stood united against the oldest hatred rearing its head again.
But just as fast, fissures formed. The cudgel of DEI – that is, “diversity, equity, and inclusion” policies that had been used against Jewish students – was the subject of feverish debate. Sure, the policies were bad for Jews, but weren’t we all good liberals after all? Shouldn’t that take precedence here? People earnestly wondered whether other minority groups would be mad at them if they fought to end DEI instead of simply fighting to get Jews included in the special identity groups recognized by the absurd system.
Ms Markowicz added:
What became clear within that Facebook group and in so many other quarters since Oct. 7 is that much of secular Judaism, in both the Reform and Conservative branches, had become overtly political and not really religiously based at all. For many Jews, their religious identity had become so intertwined with leftist politics that they couldn’t force a separation even when they themselves were being targeted with their own bad ideas.
They pledged allyship to other groups in their tent, not to Judaism or Israel. This was evident in 2019 when daily attacks began on Orthodox Jews in Brooklyn. Activist synagogues in places like Park Slope, which would have been at the forefront of marches had any other group come under attack, spent years staying silent about it. The attackers, often caught on video, were frequently other minorities, not MAGA hat-wearing white people as they would have hoped, so it was awkward to raise a fuss. Progressive politics was the code they followed, and Judaism was an identity umbrella like all the others in their movement. “As a Jew…” they would begin their lectures. As a Jew, they were rarely interested in Judaism.
At a time when American progressive Jews should have been concerned with the attacks on the Jewish community, they were instead worried about what the Marxists of Black Lives Matter or other identity politics groups would think of them. There seems to have been little consideration by some US progressive Jews that DEI was a problem for Jews because it wasn’t just and fair. It treated people differently depending on a person’s skin colour or communal background. I’m opposed to DEI because in my view it goes against the Biblical commandments to have honest and non-corrupt judges and DEI is a metaphorical thumb on the scales of justice. If you are treating people differently and especially advantageously because of their race or religion or place of origin then that is not true justice. It might be politics but it is not equal justice for all.
American liberal Jews have been utterly shafted by those who they thought were allies and who would be on their side should the shit hit the fan. Well on 7/10 in Israel the shit really did hit the fan with the monstrous attack by Hamas that left approximately 1500 people dead. What American liberal Jews discovered is that those whom these liberal Jews had aligned themselves with and who they had helped politically, rapidly turned against them. The secular leftists, the BLM types, the ‘Palestinian’ movement in the States and those in the various other liberal left causes that Reform and Conservative Jewish groups had supported and lobbied for, ended up openly celebrating the death of Jews in Israel and then turned their malodorous attention to American Jews.
It’s clear to see from my position across the Great Pond here in the UK that US Reform and Conservative Jewish organisations are devastatingly and excessively tribally politicised. The primary interests of those in charge of these organisations is not the faith of Judaism but left wing politics. Because so much attention has been focused by these Jewish communal organisations on left wing politics, they have not been attentive enough to things like Jewish history, Jewish religious thought and practise or even building a functioning community.
The fact that these US Jewish communal organisations are now just socialists with a tallis has really really hurt Reform and Conservative Jewish movements in the USA. Many people want to go to synagogue to praise the Eternal One, not to hear a communist ranting on about climate change, BLM or how bad Israel is. American Jews, it seems, are voting with their feet. People don’t want the iffy left wing politics of Reform and Conservative Jewish movements and at the same time as traditional Jewish groups like Chabad, which are less wedded to party politics, have garnered a massive increase in adherents, Reform and Conservative Jewish groups are in a marked decline.
Ms Markowicz continued:
In the last decade, the Conservative Jewish tradition has neared collapse, with Reform Judaism on a similar downward trajectory. According to a Pew poll from last year, some 33% of American Jews identify as Reform, the highest number of any Jewish denomination. As there are about 7.5 million Jews in America, the Reform movement should be rock steady. But a “Re-CHARGING Reform Judaism” conference held in June in New York noted, “there are only 550,000 synagogue-affiliated Reform Jews in the United States.” It’s likely many secular Jews who say they are Reform just mean they’re unaffiliated or specifically not Orthodox.
The Times of Israel reported in 2022 that “In the past 20 years, more than one-third of Conservative synagogues and one out of five Reform synagogues closed.” The Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, the country’s oldest Reform seminary, is ending its rabbinic degree program due to a decline in enrolment.
Many reasons are offered to explain this phenomenon. Often overlooked is how blatantly political these entities had become. It’s not a coincidence that Chabad, which has become the largest Jewish educational, religious, and social service organization and eschews politics, has grown by nearly 200% in the last two decades. The temple should not be a political organization, but too often, the rabbis move it in that direction anyway.
I must admit that it was truly shocking to see the decline in Reform and Conservative Judaism and how many Jews say they are Reform in order to differentiate themselves from Orthodoxy but don’t attend Reform synagogues. Reform can’t get people to attend and those who feel they have a vocation for the Rabbinate don’t enrol at Hebrew Union College. I truly believe that a left-captured Rabbinate is a big part of the problem for Reform and other non-Orthodox Jewish movements in the USA. A person might go to a Reform shul in order to pray but gets assaulted with un-Jewish left wingery by the Rabbi anyway. That sort of thing would certainly put me off attending that particular synagogue.
In Britain things are not so bad in non-Orthodoxy. Yes of course there are the Rabbonim who are so left wing that they might at any moment start selling copies of Socialist Worker from the Bimah, but I find that these are in the minority. In Britain for every single loony tunes socialist ‘Jewish’ group such as Na’amod or the ‘Kaddish for Hamas’ clowns, there are hundreds or possibly thousands who stand against such meshuganim (crazy people). I could walk into many Reform or Liberal shuls in the UK and find many individuals who are sensible Zionists and who know and respect the intimate connection between Judaism and the land of Israel. Sadly it seems that this might not be the case if I did this in the United States.
As I said at the beginning of this piece, the capture of Reform and Conservative Judaism may seem to many readers to be a bit of a niche issue and not relevant to them. I can understand that view but it’s one I disagree with. I disagree with it because leftist entryism and leftist capture is something that can afflict any organisation, whether religious or secular. In Britain we’ve seen the National Health Service (NHS) become infested with advocates for diversity schemes that are often, if you look at them dispassionately, racist in nature and the very opposite of the sort of equality that people like Martin Luther King Jr once campaigned for. The NHS has also become home to science free dogma such as that of gender ideology, which does not cure the distress felt by people with gender identity issues but often just makes this distress worse. The Established Church in England, the Church of England, under the influence of liberal/left thinking, now spends more time worrying about slavery, transgenderism, LGB rights, secular socialism and making nice with groups that would quite happily wipe Anglicans out, than it does on ministering to the spiritual and practical needs of the people of England. Also long established and once respected entities such as the National Trust, the BBC and the arts and museums sector now push left wing political talking points rather than doing what they are supposed to do, which is explaining the world, helping those who create artistic works, documenting the past and protecting British culture.
What has happened to Reform and Conservative Judaism in the United States is a terrible religious and communal tragedy, but it is one that is not confined to the American Jewish world. The destruction that we see the political Left has brought to these religious organisations has also been brought to many other organisations that once we could rely on to be reasonably honest and unbiased. Those of us who are opposed to the excesses of the Left need to step up and try to reclaim the organisations that have been ruined or start new ones to take their place, lest all our societal entities end up as moribund and rejected by the populace as Reform and Conservative Judaism are in the United States.
