Safety fears must not ‘overwhelm’ our holidays

When he faced Mayor Zohran Mamdani at a closed-door meeting with other Jewish New York spiritual leaders in early August, Rick Jacobs told the mayor plainly that his inflammatory rhetoric on Israel was “making Jews less safe.”

But heading into the High Holidays, Jacobs, president of the Union for Reform Judaism, told JNS that he wants safety and security to be the last things about which Jews think when they walk into their synagogue.

“We have holy things to do,” he said. “We have a community that is also about celebration, joy, pride in being Jewish.”

He said that anti-Israel views among Reform Jews, reportedly among younger Reform rabbis in particular, are not as concerning going into the High Holidays and looking ahead as media reports have suggested.

He called those reports “inaccurate.”

Since becoming URJ president in 2012, Jacobs has led the movement through challenging periods including what he called the “toxic polarization” among Americans, “imperiled” democracy — which he said “is the thing that has kept Jews safe — and efforts to make it “more difficult for people to vote.”

Rising Jew-hatred is now “a dominant reality.” His meeting with Mamdani was one example of how he believes that Jewish leaders should respond.

“We meet with the people who are in leadership, whatever we think of them,” Jacobs said. “To not meet means that our voices will not be heard, our concerns will not be in any way noticed.”

The discussion included “rabbinic colleagues from across the spectrum,” including Orthodox, Reform, Conservative and Reconstructionist movements, who were united in the view that the mayor’s rhetoric about Israel had been “unhelpful and hurtful” and had “created more danger for the Jewish community,” he said.

“What was amazing about our meeting was we weren’t divided as a rabbinate,” Jacobs said. “We were a minyan of rabbis, but we were not divided on these questions.”

That willingness to work across ideological and denominational lines characterizes much of the rabbi’s approach to the role.

He works very closely with Orthodox and Conservative leaders, and with the Orthodox Union, Jewish Federations of North America, American Jewish Committee, Anti-Defamation League and the Jewish Agency for Israel, he said.

“More often than not, we work very, very well together, even in our differences,” he said. “We understand that there’s something profound we need to do together.”

Jacobs said that he “fell in love” with Israel while attending Reform summer camps and studying in Israel as a college student and “thought seriously about aliyah, and I would have loved to have done that, but I felt called also to lead here in North America.”

While in Israel, Jacobs studied with Rabbi David Hartman, the Orthodox founder of the Shalom Hartman Institute and a disciple of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik. He also spent several years volunteering on an Orthodox kibbutz.

He said concerns that Reform youth today were moving away from supporting Israel were overblown.

“Anytime they see someone who’s an anti-Zionist, they say, ‘Oh, they’re Reform’,” Jacobs said. “There are some anti-Zionists within the Reform movement. There are some within the Conservative movement and yes, even some within the Orthodox.”

“The largest swath of our movement is connected to Israel,” and is supportive of Israel as a “democratic, Jewish, pluralistic state,” he said. “So let’s be clear about that.”

As for those who are not, “rather than scold them, I like to actually talk with them,” he said. “I like to listen. I think our job is also to be supportive of their own quest for understanding.”

During the High Holidays, Jacobs is focused on reaching Jews who may feel uncertain about where they belong.

“How do we find ways to bring people into the synagogue, into Jewish community, who have yet to find their Jewish home?” he said. “So many have maybe made their decision to live outside of the organized Jewish world. What are the doorways that we can open?”

He said that he had “many congregants” who were in and near the World Trade Center that day in 2001 and that he later buried victims of the attacks.

“The 25th anniversary is obligatory for us,” he said. “It’s Yom Hazikaron, the ‘day of remembering.’ How do we not remember those people? … To think that that does not have a place in our spiritual observance — I have trouble even imagining that.”

Despite the dangers Jews face at home and abroad, Jacobs rejects the idea that American Jewish life is nearing its end or that fear should guide the Jewish community throughout the holidays.

Quoting the Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai, Jacobs said that the Jewish people is negu’ei tikvah — “infected with hope.” —JNS