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| Breaking Ranks, Fueling Feuds |
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| Written by Josh Nathan-Kazis | |||||
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Reform Movement Opposes Iraq War  This past November, a measure that questioned the Bush Administration’s handling of the war in Iraq came before the General Assembly of the Union for Reform Judaism (URJ). Of the 2,000 delegates sitting in the ironically named George Bush Ballroom that day, only one, a rabbi from Georgia, rose to speak in opposition. A press release issued by the URJ stated that the resolution was passed “almost unanimously.” Though easily passed on the historically liberal floor of the URJ General Assembly, the resolution sparked an uproarious debate within the larger Jewish community over the Iraq war, Jewish perceptions of that war, and the overall state of Jewish political opinion in America today. The Reform Movement Takes a Stand The URJ is a 1.5 million-member umbrella organization of North American Reform Jewish congregations. It has a long history of political action, and issued resolutions opposing the Vietnam War in 1965 and 1969 that are still cited as sources of pride by some members of the Reform movement. On November 18th, six Reform congregations and the Commission on Social Action of Reform Judaism submitted their resolution on the Iraq war to the General Assembly of the Union for Reform Judaism at the Union’s Biennial Convention in Houston. The resolution called on the Bush administration to present a strategy for the extrication of American troops from Iraq, and to set goals for troop withdrawal beginning after the December 15th elections. It also exhorted Congress to closely monitor the war’s cost, and condemned the torture of detainees. Like most resolutions that come before the General Assembly, the resolution on Iraq spent months passing through a series of task forces and committees and being mailed out to each Reform congregation before finally reaching the floor for a vote. With such an extensive vetting process in place, it is infrequent that resolutions that reach the General Assembly are not passed. “By the time we get to the biennial, we’re pretty sure we have a consensus,” says Rabbi Marla Feldman, the Director of the Commission on Social Action of Reform Judaism. Certain elements of the resolution caused particular conflict during the drafting and vetting process. “Some wanted to call for immediate withdrawal,” Feldman says. In the end, drafters decided against including such a clause. “We don’t have the information to say that this won’t hurt our military and political goals,” Feldman said. “We try to be respectful of the fact that there are differing views within our pews, nevertheless we know that our movement has always spoken out on issues of concern,” says Feldman. “We work hard to find the consensus position. I think this time we got it right, by virtue of the votes.” The resolution, Feldman says, “empowers people who share these views, because now they’re speaking with the strength of the Reform movement behind them. Now they can say, the Union has taken this position and we share it.” Going Public There is, of course, a flip side to the equation. By taking such a political position, the movement made itself a target of criticism from conservative organizations. On December 13th, the Republican Jewish Coalition launched a nationwide public relations campaign with a full-page advertisement in the New York Times picturing a smiling Iraqi woman holding up a finger stained with purple ink, indicating that she had voted. A headline read, “To the Union for Reform Judaism: Freedom is Worth Fighting For.” The cost of the campaign was in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, according to Matthew Brooks, the Executive Director of the RJC. “We felt that this was a profoundly important issue to counter what was being promoted by the Reform movement,” Brooks said. “What we took real issue with was the statements in the press release [by URJ President, Rabbi Eric Yoffie] which professed to speak for all American Jews. All American Jews are not opposed to the war.” The Republican Jewish Coalition bills itself as a “well-respected representative of the Jewish community to Republican elected officials and party leaders and is the pre-eminent Republican organization in the Jewish community.” Hardly a non-partisan voice, it is known for its close ties to the Republican Party. In the days after the publication of the advertisements, a hailstorm of articles was published criticizing the Iraq resolution. In a web-only article posted at MSNBC.com on December 16th, Marc Gellman, a Reform rabbi who co-hosts the cable television program The God Squad, compared the plight of the Kurds, the Shiites, and the Marsh Arabs to that of the European Jews during the Holocaust, and said that the resolution “was a mistake and embarrassment for my movement.” In an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, Lawrence Kaplan, the senior editor of the New Republic, criticized the Reform movement for, among other things, making political statements while claiming to be active defenders of the line between church and state. Mark Pelavin, associate director of the Religious Action Center, the URJ’s lobbying organization, says that he is pleased that the resolution has sparked such heated debate. “We do see one of our roles as being a voice and encouraging debate within our community, and the broader American community,” Pelavin says. Still, his organization has struck back hard at critics, claiming in a press release that the RJC’s advertisements were “misleading,” and writing off the RJC as “loyalists [who] will defend the policies espoused by their party’s leader.” Pelavin takes particular issue with the implication that the URJ was unfairly presenting itself as a mouthpiece for all American Jews. “We don’t pretend to speak on behalf of all Jews, or all Reform Jews, for that matter,” he said. He maintains, however, that the resolutions were the product of “a series of decision-making processes that are as democratic and broad-based as any in the Jewish community.” Both sides of the debate claim to speak for the majority of the American Jewish community. In a December 13th release, the Religious Action Center quotes two polls, one from September of 2004 and one from March of 2005, saying that over sixty percent of American Jews disapprove of the Administration’s handling of the war, and believe that the war has made us less secure. An op-ed published by the URJ on December 15th stated: “We are confident (and public opinion polls bolster that confidence) that a substantial majority not only of Reform Jews but of American Jewry in general, broadly support the spirit and quite likely the letter of our statement.” The Republican Jewish Committee has its own statistics. In a telephone conversation, Matthew Brooks was quick to quote statistics that he said indicated a rightward shift among American Jews. In 1992, Brooks said that the Republican candidate for president won 11 percent of the Jewish vote. This grew to 16 percent in 1996, then again to 19 percent in 2000, and finally reached 25 percent in 2004. “There’s no doubt that the Jewish community is growing more conservative,” Brooks said. This national hubbub has had ramifications on the local level, as well. Rabbi Rick Jacobs, who heads the Westchester Reform Temple in New York, says “There are some members of the congregation who are very, very upset” about the Iraq resolution. “I would guess that about a quarter of our temple members would describe themselves as Republicans, either moderate or otherwise,” Jacobs says. “Some of them feel disenfranchised by our movement.” “I think if it was taken as a plain majority vote, the majority [of my congregation] would support the resolution. But you would have a lot of thoughtful dissent. That’s not reflected in the publicity from the biennial,” Jacobs says. All Quiet on the College Front Lisa David, Acting Director of the KESHER College Department, the Reform Movement’s campus program, says that college student response to the resolutions has been low. “I don’t think that there’s been any response, or really any action taken,” David says. “This is absolutely an area that has the potential for our students to take action, but we just haven’t started that yet.” A search of KESHER’s website turns up no hits for the word ‘Iraq.’ David says that the dearth of student response to the Iraq resolution could be attributed to students not having heard about it. “This has caused me to think critically about how we disseminate information,” she says. “One of the greatest issues that we’ve faced, that we work on in this department, is figuring out how students can connect with the larger movement. They just don’t know what we’re doing.” Unlike a youth movement, KESHER has little organized student membership beyond its seven-member Leadership Council. Instead, KESHER works through groups such as Hillel to provide services for Reform students at college campuses. As such, initiatives begin on an organizational level, and must be geared to attract broad-based student involvement. “When we try and do social activism, from my standpoint, we try to stay away from the hot political issues,” says Mike Fuld, a member of the KESHER Leadership Council and a junior at NYU. “We as students try to focus on…tangible, hands-on issues.” Fuld, who is opposed to the resolution on Iraq, pointed to the genocide in Darfur and homelessness prevention as more typical—perhaps because they are less controversial— KESHER causes. Isaac Rothbart, a senior at NYU who also sits on the KESHER Leadership Council, attributes the lack of student response to the Iraq resolutions to a lack of Iraq activism in general. “When the first protests were happening, there were KESHER members, such as myself, who were involved,” he says. Now, Rothbart feels that Iraq activism is scarce on campus, while activism around issues such as Darfur has remained strong. He says that this is reflected in the focus of KESHER’s social action. Despite all of the criticism, many Reform Jews think it is important that the resolution was passed, and reject the notion that organizations such as the URJ shouldn’t have said anything. “I think that the idea of taking stands that are potentially divisive is the bread and butter of leadership,” says Rabbi Jacobs. “I’m proud that the Reform movement spoke out on the most important moral issue of our time.”
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