RJ Blog

By Rabbi Stacey Blank In the midst of the modern State of Israel’s “High Holidays” – last week being Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day) and this Wednesday being Yom HaZikaron (Memorial Day) which leads right into Yom HaAtzmaut (Independence Day), I am considering what it means to be a Zionist or a lover of Israel, what it means to be a citizen of the State of Israel, and what it means to live outside of Israel and feel a connection with this entity. I have been thinking about it in the context of my parents’ (who live in the US) [...]

The following column is part of a series. For more, go to Liberal Zionists Speak Out. I am a Zionist. Zionism is the belief that the establishment of a Jewish and democratic state in the Land of Israel is essential for the creative survival of the Jewish people. Being a Zionist does not require that I live in the Jewish state, but it does require serious and thoughtful advocacy for the proposition noted above. My definition is carefully phrased and is rooted in the values and ideals of historical Zionism. Zionism calls for a state that is democratic, and that [...]

Haggai. I danced at his wedding in the fall of 1971. He was a proud member of the IDF Tank Corps. The wedding was at Kibbutz Na’an not far from Rehovot. My first Israeli wedding. We laughed and danced. He embraced me into the “kibbutz family” into which my sister would marry in February. On the first day of the 1973 Yom Kippur War, Haggai was killed on the Golan. He is buried not far from where he fell. Haggai was born on the 29th of November 1973, an auspicious day in our Zionist/Israeli history. He was the first child on Kibbutz [...]

by Rabbi David M. Weis As Israel celebrates the 64th anniversary of its Declaration of Independence, I am celebrating my 57th birthday. I share that information, because my age tells a great deal about how Israel fits into my life and worldview. I was raised in the early years of the State of Israel. I was reared with a strong connection to the justice of the Jewish cause and the promise of Zionism’s mission to create a Jewish democratic state in Israel.

With Yom Ha Atzmaut (Israeli Independence Day) on April 26th, and the first Reform Israel Shabbat immediately following, we know that Israel is on a lot of people’s minds right now. The easiest, most basic way for a Reform Jew to support Israel and its democratic, inclusive nature is to join ARZA! By belonging to ARZA with your $36 yearly dues, you help grow the Reform Zionist movement in the United States and the Reform Movement in Israel.  Our members and their dues, collectively, make ARZA the single largest funder of the Reform Movement in Israel and its Israel Religious [...]

It’s time to fight for the Zionist dream.  And it’s time to give some thought to what that dream is—and what it’s not. During the recent hostilities in southern Israel, the image that caught my attention was the picture of terrified Israeli schoolgirls cowering behind the school bus that they had just evacuated and looking to the sky for missiles launched from Gaza.  That image has remained with me.  I know that the Iron Dome defense system performed admirably and that the military operations of the Israel Defense forces were deemed successful.   I know that plans are underway to expand [...]

By Rabbi Levi Weiman-Kelman Before we are overwhelmed by Passover preparations, I wanted to share a description of a unique Purim celebration here in Jerusalem. We have been struggling with increasing attempts of the Ultra-Orthodox to ban women from the public sphere (ha-adarat nashim in Hebrew).  Women members of Kol HaNeshama helped organize a women’s megillah reading in Zion square. The reading was held a day before the traditional reading of the megillah (in Jerusalem we read it a day after the rest of the Jewish world on Shushan Purim). About a hundred people attended (men were invited to come [...]

When the founders of modern Zionism hoped that having a country of their own would make Jews like all other nations, they didn’t think that the Jews would adopt any of the despicable traits of the anti-Semites among whom they lived in dispersion. The aim of Zionism was not only to liberate the Jews from their perilous existence as pariahs but also to enable them to live by the highest ideals of their tradition. Yet more than six decades after the establishment of the State of Israel that has indeed afforded Jews who settled here freedom from persecution  – and [...]

by Rabbi Eric Yoffie(originally posted in The Jerusalem Post) When it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, we generally divide Jews into hawks and doves or right-wingers and left-wingers. But a more accurate division might be “security Jews” vs. “democracy Jews.” “Security Jews” are those whose greatest concern is Israel’s vulnerability to military attack. They emphasize Israel’s fragility as a small state in a bad neighborhood. They call for defensible borders, and for strategic depth that did not exist prior to 1967. They talk of a military presence along the Jordan River that will enable Israel to repel a possible invasion from current or future [...]

by Rabbi Daniel AllenExecutive Director, ARZAAlso posted in Ten Minutes of Torah Shavuot is traditionally observed through study. Tikkun Leil Shavuot, now with many variations, is a time of learning text throughout the night in order to more fully engage with Jewish law and tradition. Shavuot is linked with Pesach as the next logical step on the path from liberation to sovereignty. That natural link is law, a way to govern our Jewish society. Shavuot brings the message that society must have rules by which it is governed and that liberation to be effective cannot be anarchy or dictatorship. So [...]