On My Mind

Making Sense of Antisemitism

Mar 21, 2019

It’s hard to read the news these days without encountering evidence of a significant rise in antisemitism. What’s going on? We need to step back from the near-daily barrage of incidents and insults, I believe, and think seriously about the renewed and age-old practice of singling out Jews for attack.

After Pittsburgh

Oct 31, 2018

At a time when increasingly loud and aggressive forces are working to sow hatred among us and plant discord, it is more important than ever that we stand with one another and give each other strength—and give our institutions strength—to do the work that needs doing.

Yom Kippur 2018: It’s on Us

Sep 20, 2018

A few weeks ago, I was leafing through the Mahzor Lev Shalem in preparation for the High Holidays, and for some reason my eye wandered to the English translation of the Aleinu prayer. Aleinu is one of the most familiar prayers in Jewish liturgy. It concludes practically every service. I pretty much know it by heart, so I had never bothered to look at the English. You too, if you are a regular shul-goer, have said Aleinu hundreds or even thousands of times, and you probably have not thought very much about the complexities of its message.

This New Year, Let’s Move Beyond “Us vs. Them”

Aug 30, 2018

My wife and I had the privilege of traveling this summer through Scotland and Italy, where we found ourselves face to face with issues of identity and allegiance that have been very much in the news in America lately, and that merit reflection as we approach the High Holidays.

Camp Ramah Up Close and Personal

Aug 30, 2018

I never went to overnight camp as a kid, for reasons that, looking back, I find mysterious. I remember my parents wanting to send me to Ramah Poconos, the natural destination for a Conservative Jew in Philadelphia, and me refusing, summer after summer. I also remember that once I had begun attending the Hebrew High School program at Gratz College, and had joined USY, my circle of friends included a lot of people who had been to Ramah and loved it—at which point I berated my parents for not forcing me to go even if I hadn’t wanted to. Thankfully, I get to visit several Ramah camps every summer as chancellor of JTS and see, close up, the 2018 version of what I missed back in the sixties. Better late than never.

Understanding American Jews

Jun 18, 2018

We knew long before Pew’s “Portrait of Jewish Americans” that a lot needed to change if our tradition and our people are to survive and thrive in conditions that are changing so rapidly and so dramatically that it is hard for any parent, leader, or institution to keep up. After the study, the extent of the communal transformation that is needed, and much of its direction and detail, have come more clearly into view.

The Religious Significance of Israel: A Personal Love Story and Accounting

Apr 25, 2018

Speech to the 2018 Rabbinical Assembly Convention

The minute I realized that I’d be giving this talk three days after Yom Ha’atzma’ut, and three days before flying to Israel for a day-long yom iyyun sponsored jointly by JTS and the Schechter Institute, I knew that my subject this afternoon would be Israel and our relationship to Israel.

Israel: Up Close and Far Away

Feb 15, 2018

The story on the morning news show as I drove to Ben Gurion Airport last week had made headlines throughout my 12-day visit to Israel: the imminent deportation of some 30,000 migrants from Eritrea and Sudan. To the Netanyahu government, they are “infiltrators” who entered the country illegally or have long overstayed the temporary welcome once afforded them. To a growing chorus from Israel and abroad who are opposed to their expulsion, many of the immigrants are “refugees” entitled to asylum. To me, the distinctive terms of the Israeli debate over immigrants furnished another example of longstanding differences between what Jewish identity and Judaism mean in the sovereign Jewish State of Israel and the very different meanings attached to Jewishness and Judaism in the North American Jewish community.

Bridging the Growing Gap between Israeli and North American Jews

Feb 15, 2018

Adapted from the text prepared for delivery at a consultation on this subject sponsored by Shaharit, an Israeli think tank, at Beit Avichai in Jerusalem on January 25, 2018

Let me say at the outset that I will address you today not only as a scholar of modern Judaism whose research has long focused on Jewish thought in North America and Israel, and as the chancellor of JTS, a major institution of Jewish learning and the center of Conservative Judaism for over a century. I will also speak personally, one Jew to others, one member of what President Rivlin has recently called the “fifth tribe” of Israel to members of the other four. I will speak out of personal experiences and longings far more than books or surveys—an approach that I trust will lead to the sort of frank and fruitful conversation that must take place more regularly between our two Jewries, and within them both, if we are to draw closer together and bridge the divides that seem to grow deeper with each passing year.

Partition in the Land of Israel, Then and Now

Nov 29, 2017

Today marks 70 years since the momentous vote by the General Assembly of the United Nations to create two states in Palestine, one Jewish and one Arab. Jews in Palestine and around the world danced in the streets upon hearing of the UN’s decision. Arabs in Palestine rioted, killing seven Jews on the first day of violence. David Ben Gurion, who had reluctantly supported the partition agreement as the best the Jewish people could hope for at that juncture, warned his aides that blood would soon flow. He was right, of course, and the conflict with Palestinians and some of Israel’s Arab neighbors has not ceased from that day to this. Even Ben Gurion could not have foreseen that 70 years after the vote, issues of partition and division would remain at the top of the agenda for Jews in the Land of Israel, in two related but very different forms.

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