A message from the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, May 20, 2024

May 20, 2024

Dear hevre—

We write at an incredibly painful time for the Jewish people, wherever we are located. The leadership of the Reconstructionist movement committed to navigating this moment with care and integrity.

Yesterday was the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College’s graduation ceremony. As Jewish tradition teaches, we tried to not let the pain of this time interfere with our joy as we welcomed 11 new rabbis. We also used that opportunity to speak frankly about our key commitments and the challenges at this moment. These include:

• Reconstructionism was founded on a commitment to diversity and this is reflected in incredible diversity of students at RRC.
• The stance of the Reconstructionist movement since the time of Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan to this day is that Israel has a right to exist and is a vital center for Jewish life and the Jewish people. We care deeply about the Jewish people across geography and we stand in solidarity with Israelis.
• We recognize that our shared values can lead us to very different conclusions about very important things.
• We affirm the longstanding Reconstructionist opposition to the Occupation and support for Palestinian self-determination.
• We believe that it is essential to the Jewish future that, instead of building political and ideological barriers around belonging, we strive to build covenantal community across our political and ideological differences and based on our shared Jewish values.
• We must train rabbis – leaders – who can lead across difference.
• As a result, we do not have any litmus test about particular stances around Israel.
• We do have a litmus test about the capacity to center relationships and to build covenantal community together across our differences. By covenantal community, we mean intentional and abiding and values-driven, communities that have the orientation and commitment to develop the skills to stay in deep relationship in hard conversations and in times of struggle.
• We do this in the service of training rabbis who can lead with love and compassion so that they will be able to have the greatest possible impact depending on the contexts and settings within which they find or locate themselves—wherever they are, whoever they serve.

Here is a link to Deborah’s full graduation remarks.

At RRC, our students hold a range of political opinions and approaches to Israel and Palestine, as does our wider community and the American Jewish community. We challenge all RRC students, regardless of their politics, to engage deeply with Israel as a necessary part of their rabbinic education, including a summer term studying in Israel in a program we have designed in partnership with Bina, a values-aligned Israeli organization. Here is a link to a letter from Deborah to the membership of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association in February 2024 outlining the centrality of Israel education at RRC in great detail. (Since it was intended for an internal audience, some references may not be fully clear to outside readers but the overall gist should be clear.) The RRC faculty’s work on our curriculum will be bolstered by a faculty study trip to Israel planned for July.

We believe that covenantal community is about refusing to draw red lines around a certain set of political beliefs or insist on ideological purity. It is about affirmatively opting into an intentional community built on deeply rooted Jewish values and a fundamental commitment to one another, respecting our many kinds of diversity and agreeing to stay in relationship across difference. It is about putting the concept of peoplehood at the center of community rather than trying to drive individuals out of it. It is about listening with open hearts and minds, including across generational differences, and affirming that a vibrant Jewish future depends on our ability to build bridges, not shut doors.

This commitment to relationship rather than political orthodoxy is not an easy approach, nor a perfect one. There are those who have determined that they cannot remain in a community with people with whom they disagree and have chosen to leave RRC. This was not the outcome we hoped for, and we sincerely hope that anyone who makes that choice will find community and fulfillment. However, the vast majority of RRC students across the political spectrum have chosen to commit to this hard work. Most see this struggle as a valuable part of their rabbinic training that will equip them to be better leaders and teachers in various settings and across generations.

As befitting a rabbinical seminary, the boundaries we are drawing at RRC are behavioral rather than political. How do we treat one another? How do we foster a sense of community? What do we do when we fail? In these polarized times, this has been very challenging; in the Jewish community and in the wider world since October 7, it has been exponentially more difficult. Deborah reflected on the challenge and the necessary ongoing commitment in an op-ed posted in the Times of Israel just before Passover.

We deeply believe that this approach is absolutely necessary. We work from the premise that a Reconstructionist approach is committed to continuity and community across generations and that every generation has the right and even the obligation to reconstruct Judaism. Reconstructionism is anti-fundamentalist. This requires us to not demand adherence to orthodoxies and to prioritize relationships. Division around Israel and Palestine is tearing the Jewish community apart, and this is only exacerbated by the approach favored by some in the Jewish institutional world of throwing out anyone who doesn’t conform to a single perspective. We will do our absolute best to refuse to allow this to happen in the Reconstructionist movement. We have seen how our approach has helped us remain in relationship and move through heartbreaking moment after heart-breaking moment as a values-driven community. Even those who may be looking to find evidence of our movement breaking apart are finding our values on full display.

At Reconstructing Judaism, of which RRC is a key part, we have been leaning in hard around covenantal community around Israel and Palestine. Along with the RRA, Reconstructing Judaism issued a statement on October 7 but we have intentionally refrained from further statements since then. Reconstructing Judaism is part of the Progressive Israel Network and has been participating in joint programming and occasional statements with them. Rabbi Maurice Harris, our Israel affairs specialist, has been tireless in his efforts, consulting with individual congregations, offering movement-wide webinars and teaching online courses. Ritualwell has posted dozens of resources since October 7 and after six months recently wound down weekly convenings providing online support around the war. Evolve has a dedicated section on the Israel-Hamas war aiming to model covenantal community in its nuanced presentation of multiple perspectives.

Camp Havaya offers an incredibly powerful path for bringing covenantal community to life with this guide for parents, Building Community: A Framework for Summer 2024. May we all be able to learn from our children.

We aim to lead with a balance of conviction and humility. We sometimes misstep and, when that happens, we strive to do teshuvah. We believe we have been and will continue to walk along the best possible path for the Reconstructionist movement at this challenging moment. We are profoundly grateful to everyone who is willing to keep walking with us, keep learning with us, keep growing.

With appreciation—

Seth Rosen
Chair, Board of Governors

Rabbi Deborah Waxman
President and CEO