We Zionist Reconstructionist Jews have lost our guiding light

Reconstructionist Judaism has been in the news for all the wrong reasons. Most recently, Jewish Currents published an article describing the student body at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College as predominantly anti-Zionist. It is now seen as the rabbinical school most friendly to anti-Zionist students. So much so, that the atmosphere has become downright toxic to Zionist students, many of whom have left the institution – as whistle-blowing students Talia Werber and Steven Goldstein forcefully presented in a Forward article last year. As the institution becomes more anti-Zionist, it caters increasingly to the extremists in its student body, modifying curricula to placate them and allowing them to forego the required summer in Israel. And yet the President of Reconstructing Judaism, Rabbi Deborah Waxman, continues to assert strongly that the rabbinical school and the movement are progressive Zionist institutions. Why the deep contradiction?

Within American Judaism, the Reconstructionist movement has proudly been at the forefront of progressive causes, welcoming Jews of color, the LGBTQ+ community, and patrilineal and intermarried Jews – historically sidelined communities. Reconstructionist Judaism and its institutions have created a culture of radical inclusivity and it advocates for inclusive ‘big tent’ Judaism. This has led to a culture of ‘no litmus tests’ – ideological or otherwise – for RRC’s applicants. Today, liberal rabbinical schools compete for a dwindling number of applicants. Consequently, RRC has become a haven for radical leftist rabbinical students, since other institutions were not as welcoming or would not accept them, and now they are the majority of the student body. Ironically, the very spirit of inclusivity has led to a different type of intolerance: intolerance for liberal Zionism. Most of the vocally Zionist students have left.

It’s a mistake to see progressive Zionism as ‘just another value’ of Reconstructionist Judaism.  Zionism is integral to the shared values of Reconstructionists: a core tenet of Jewish peoplehood. Israel’s Jews are half of world Jewry; no notion of Jewish peoplehood exists without them.

As a new majority, the anti- and non-Zionists at RRC have asserted themselves strongly and vociferously. Students, graduates, and even instructors of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College have been very vocal in their accusations of so-called genocide in Gaza, and promoted a view of Israel as a European colonialist state, within and outside of the school. RRC students’ proclamations that Israel is a genocidal nation have appeared repeatedly in the national press. Anti-Zionist protest culture has led to 83% of Jewish college students in the United States witnessing or experiencing antisemitism. On college campuses across America and the world, they have been assaulted, denied entry to class, chased, taunted, or blamed for Israeli actions, with these antisemitic incidents accepted as collateral damage in the effort to end Jewish sovereignty in Israel. 

This culture pervades RRC. While RRC leadership continues to affirm an official commitment to Zionism for the sake of donors and members of Reconstructionist congregations, these types of actions by RRC students have also impacted Zionist individuals at the school, who have been called oppressors and racists.

A very vocal minority

After October 7th, the contradiction of a student body so fundamentally at odds with the values of Reconstructionist Judaism became increasingly untenable. To take the ‘big tent’ metaphor: you can’t claim the mantle of big tent Judaism when most of your student body wants to dismantle half the tent. The RRC is supposed to be graduating the next generation of Reconstructionist leaders, but these leaders disagree with the great majority of both North American Jews and Reconstructionist Jews, namely, with those they wish to lead.

Indeed, several articles have been written about the employment challenges of anti-Zionist students and graduates, given that most synagogues and other Jewish institutions are not interested in hiring anti-Zionists as rabbis or teachers. Yet these students demand the right to be hired and complain about the unfairness of having to face the consequences of their anti-Zionism. It has even been said that RRC advisors may have suggested that students not proactively disclose, or even actively hide, their anti-Zionist attitudes and actions, to gain employment.

The spotlight on these anti-Zionist students hides the fact that they make up just a small fraction of the Reconstructionist community. Most American Jews, including most Reconstructionists, identify as Zionists, supporting the existence of Israel as the Jewish homeland. This support persists even when they are deeply dissatisfied with the current government or grieve the loss of civilian life in Gaza. In fact, only 26 synagogues conform to the anti-Zionist Jewish Voice for Peace standards regarding Israel, and most of those are smaller institutions. This is a tiny sliver of the Jewish community. Regrettably, 60% of the rabbinic board of A Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), the biggest anti-Zionist Jewish organization, are Reconstructionist rabbis.

Unfortunately, because of the attention given to this very vocal minority, we, the majority of Reconstructionist Jews, are often painted with the same anti-Zionist brush, and find ourselves working to explain how we are not them, and that Reconstructionism was born from the genius of Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan, himself a liberal Zionist who lived in Israel for several years after he retired from JTS.

This is very destructive.

The rupture at RRC has reverberated across the movement. As RRC produces more and more anti-Zionist rabbis, the Zionists have not been silent. Beit Kaplan, a new forum of Zionist Reconstructionist rabbis who reassert the centrality of Jewish peoplehood, has formed, and it is growing; at present, 75 rabbis have joined, nearly all of them RRC graduates. We rabbis of Beit Kaplan have watched, sad and horrified, as the zeitgeist of our beloved college has succumbed to the new anti-Zionist majority. Many of us have appealed for years to the leaders of RRC to realign themselves as lovers of Zion, to no avail. It is a tragedy to us that they have decided to continue this journey. Given the current trajectory of the College, it is hard for us to imagine that it has a future.

We have created Beit Kaplan to salvage our reputation as Zionists, recover and promote the wisdom of Reconstructionism, and be a source of healing and inspiration for those who have been harmed. I hope that these ruptures and contradictions within Reconstructionist Judaism heal, but I no longer see the College as a beacon guiding the movement.