By David J. Butler

The public dispute between Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch and Hebrew Union College President Andrew Rehfeld has been described as a debate about Zionism. It is actually a debate about the relationship between a religious movement’s beliefs and the leaders it ordains.

The controversy began when Hirsch criticized HUC for admitting and ordaining students who identify as anti-Zionist. Rehfeld responded that a liberal Jewish seminary must remain open to competing ideas and that students should be free to reach conclusions different from those preferred by the institution.

Rehfeld’s “response” makes sense, but it is wholly unresponsive to Hirsh’s criticism. Hirsch did not question whether students should be free to challenge Zionism. He questioned whether a movement that formally defines Israel and Zionism as central to Jewish life should ordain clergy who reject those commitments.

That question begs another: What is a Reform rabbi?

A rabbi is not merely someone who has completed a course of study. Ordination is not an academic credential. It is an act of institutional approval and sanction through which a religious movement entrusts its future to a new generation of teachers, interpreters and leaders.

Every religious tradition, however liberal, possesses defining commitments. Otherwise, it ceases to be a tradition and becomes merely a collection of individual opinions. Reform Judaism is no exception. Indeed, the current controversy is especially striking because the Reform movement spent more than a century wrestling with the very issue now before HUC.

Classical Reform Judaism was not Zionist. The Pittsburgh Platform of 1885 rejected Jewish nationalism and reflected the confidence of an era that believed emancipation and integration had solved the Jewish problem. Judaism was understood principally as a religion. America, not Zion, was viewed as the homeland of American Jews.

The 20th century forced a profound reconsideration. The Holocaust, the persistence of antisemitism and the creation of the State of Israel transformed the Reform movement’s understanding of Jewish peoplehood and Jewish continuity. Over decades of debate and reflection, Reform Judaism concluded that Jewish identity could not be reduced to private belief or ethical universalism alone. Jews were also a people bound by history, memory and
collective destiny.

The significance of Reform Zionism lies not merely in the conclusion but in the process that produced it. The movement rejected Zionism, reconsidered Zionism and ultimately embraced Zionism. The resulting commitment was not inherited. It was earned. That evolution culminated in the Reform movement’s 1999 Statement of Principles, which affirmed both “the centrality of Israel in Jewish life” and a commitment to Medinat Yisrael, the State of Israel.

Those statements are not political slogans. They are declarations of identity. They represent the movement’s considered judgment about Jewish peoplehood, Jewish continuity and the role of Israel in modern Jewish life.

The question is what practical significance those commitments carry. A seminary committed to liberal education should encourage inquiry. It should expose future rabbis to competing ideas, including criticisms of Israel and Zionism. But a seminary does more than educate. It ordains. At some point, it must decide whether rejection of one of the movement’s own foundational commitments has any bearing on who is qualified to represent that movement.

That is the question Hirsch is asking. Rehfeld doesn’t even pretend to answer it. Instead, he returns to the virtues of openness, exploration and intellectual freedom. Those values are indispensable. Yet they do not resolve the question at the heart of the controversy.

The issue is not whether anti-Zionist ideas may be discussed. The issue is whether anti-Zionism is compatible with serving as an ordained representative of a movement that formally embraces Zionism.

The controversy is often mistakenly framed as a struggle between openness and orthodoxy. It is neither. Reform Judaism has never required uniformity of political opinion, nor should it. Reform Jews disagree passionately about Israeli governments, settlements, borders, peace negotiations and military policy.

The question here is more fundamental: Can a rabbi reject the legitimacy of Jewish self-determination while claiming to represent a movement that identifies Jewish self-determination as central to contemporary Jewish life? And the deeper challenge for Rehfeld is explaining why Zionism appears to occupy a category all its own.

Reform Judaism has defined commitments, among them Jewish peoplehood, equality, pluralism and Zionism. Reasonable people may disagree about their relative importance. What is harder to understand is why Zionism alone increasingly appears to be treated as optional for leadership.

If a movement’s stated commitments have no bearing on who may represent it, what purpose do those commitments serve? That is not fundamentally a question about Israel. It is a question about continuity.

Hirsch is not asking Reform Judaism to become Zionist. He is asking whether the movement still expects its rabbis to affirm the principles it has chosen to call its own.
Sooner or later, the Reform movement will have to answer that question. Its answer will reveal far more than the movement’s position on Israel. It will reveal what it believes a Reform rabbi is supposed to be.

David J. Butler is an attorney. He is president of Dvash Consulting, LLC and a member of the ownership group of Mid-Atlantic Media, which owns and publishes Washington Jewish Week.