Zionism Isn’t Up for Debate – It’s the Job.
There is a quiet crisis unfolding in the American rabbinate, and it is one that too few institutional leaders are willing to name. Across movements, a growing number of rabbinical students are either indifferent to or actively hostile toward Zionism. For those of us in yeshivas and seminaries who maintain an unapologetic connection to Israel, the isolation can be disorienting.
I know this firsthand. Together with a group of like-minded rabbinical students, I have facilitated cross-denominational focus groups with peers who share a deep concern about the direction of their schools. What we have heard is consistent: students across movements report that antizionist sentiment is present and growing in their seminaries, and that institutional leadership is not confronting it. The students who love Israel often feel they must whisper that love rather than proclaim it. Support for and education about Israel exists for students in private whatsapp groups or in fellowships funded by external organizations.
The pattern is not anecdotal. Just this week, six undergraduate seniors and four rabbinical students at the Jewish Theological Seminary signed a letter opposing the invitation of Israeli President Isaac Herzog to speak at their commencement. Six students at a Conservative institution whose very mission is woven into the fabric of Jewish peoplehood and the Land of Israel. Rabbi Menachem Creditor, a JTS graduate and prominent voice in the American rabbinate, responded with a piece that named the stakes clearly: “Antizionism is not normal. Nor should we normalize it…Zionism is not political preference,” Creditor wrote. “It is the modern expression of ancient covenant.” It is the insistence that Jewish life, Jewish memory, and Jewish destiny require a home in the world. “To strip Judaism of that commitment is not to refine it. It is to hollow it out.” When our own institutions struggle to say that directly, those of us who share this clarity must find community where it can be said without hesitation.
It was with this urgency that I traveled to Washington, D.C. at the end of April for the Zionist Rabbinic Coalition’s Fifth Annual National Conference.
The ZRC, founded and chaired by Rabbi Stuart Weinblatt, is the only independent, nonpartisan network of Zionist rabbis in North America, now representing a network of over 2,000 members from every denomination. Its mission is to foster love and dedication to Zionism and Israel among American Jews, and to provide rabbis with the tools, resources, and collegial support to strengthen the bond between the Diaspora and the Jewish state. As the ZRC’s guiding principles state: “At a time when there is concern over the widening gap between the Jews of Israel and North America, we are committed to working to close that gap before it becomes greater and irreparable.”
For rabbinical students like me, this conference was not a luxury, but rather a necessity. The speakers who addressed us offered the intellectual framework and moral clarity that our generation of rabbis will need to lead with clarity of purpose and conviction of message.
The conference opened a question that wove through every session: How do you fight for truth in an environment that rewards distortion? Shabbos Kestenbaum, who gained national prominence through his legal challenge to antisemitism at Harvard, answered that question with a principle that should be engraved on the walls of every seminary in America: “The only way you combat bad ideas is with better ideas. You don’t combat bad ideas with censorship.” That insight reframes the entire challenge facing Zionist rabbinical students. The answer to antizionism in our institutions is not to retreat or stay quiet. It is to be more articulate, more informed, and more courageous in our Zionism than our opponents are in their rejection of it.
But better ideas require better information, and Jonathan Schanzer, Executive Director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, provided exactly that. His data-driven analysis of the geopolitical landscape facing Israel modeled the kind of informed advocacy that rabbis desperately need to bring back to their communities. In a moment when public discourse about Israel is dominated by slogans and social media, Schanzer demonstrated that the facts themselves are among Israel’s strongest allies, if we bother to learn them and teach them.
The question of facts and distortion took on a different weight when Retired Colonel Richard Kemp, former commander of British forces in Afghanistan, took the stage. Colonel Kemp addressed head-on one of the most persistent charges leveled against Israel: the claim that the IDF uses disproportionate force and kills too many civilians in Gaza. He countered with a fact that should reshape the entire conversation. The combatant-to-civilian casualty ratio in Gaza has been approximately 1:1, a figure unmatched by any other military in the history of modern warfare. That single data point demolishes the narrative of indiscriminate killing, and yet it is almost never cited by Israel’s critics in the press or on campus.
And then there was a voice that most American Jews rarely hear: Dalia Ziada, an Egyptian political activist, author, and human rights advocate who publicly supported Israel’s right to exist while living in Egypt, and the cost of that courage was exile. She had to leave her country at risk of losing her life. Her testimony was a sobering reminder that for many people in the Middle East, supporting Israel is an act of physical bravery. When rabbinical students in comfortable American seminaries treat Zionism as something that could be discarded, they might consider the people in the region who risk everything to affirm what we take for granted.
The conference also brought us to the U.S. State Department, where we heard from Ambassador Rabbi Yehuda Kaploun, the Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism. Confirmed by the Senate in December 2025, Rabbi Kaploun serves as the primary advisor to the U.S. government on global antisemitism. Hearing from him while inside the State Department underscored both the seriousness with which the current administration is treating the fight against antisemitism and the level of access the ZRC has built as an advocacy organization. For rabbinical students accustomed to feeling like a minority within our own institutions, sitting in that room was a powerful reminder that our convictions are shared at the highest levels of government.
The final speaker at the conference was Israel’s ambassador to the United States, Yechiel Leiter, who used the moment to reinforce the coalition’s broader mission of educating clergy and community leaders on current issues facing Israel. He shared that this meeting was “the highlight of [his] week, to see multidenominational Jewish leaders come together in the name of Zionism.”
The thread that connected every speaker and every sidebar conversation was the conviction that the bond between the Jewish people and the State of Israel is not negotiable, and the rabbis who will lead the next generation of American Jews must be willing to say so clearly. The ZRC approaches this commitment with intellectual honesty, affirming “unconditional love, yet not uncritical support.” It is a model that embraces diversity of thought while holding firm on the non-negotiable bond between the Jewish people and our homeland.
The ZRC represents something essential. It is proof that the mainstream of the American rabbinate has not abandoned Israel, even if the loudest voices sometimes suggest otherwise.
I encourage every rabbi and rabbinical student to learn more about the Zionist Rabbinic Coalition at zionistrabbis.org. Consider joining the movement. And join me at next year’s conference in Washington, where we can connect, learn together, and grow our voices as Zionist rabbis.
The future of the American rabbinate, and its relationship with Israel, is not yet written. But it will be shaped by those who show up. I intend to be one of them.
