When a Rabbi Can’t Go Home

By Rabbi Claire Magidovitch Green

What does it feel like to get an invitation from the seminary where I was ordained as a rabbi and am so ashamed of the institution that I cannot open it?

It’s bad enough that I can’t acknowledge my school when people compliment me on my rabbinic skills. When they ask if I went to HUC-JIR (the Reform movement seminary where my father and brother were ordained) or JTS (since I worked for so many Greater Philadelphia Conservative congregations), I can see their shock and embarrassment for me when I mutter, “Recon.”

I get lots of puzzled responses, too: “But you’re such a strong Zionist. You’re clearly proud to have descended from a founding family of Tel Aviv. You are a staunch though not uncritical advocate for the state of Israel. You’re a student in Gratz College’s new graduate-level antisemitism studies program.

“And isn’t it true that you lost four members of your own family on Oct. 7, at Kibbutz Be’eri, including your 12-year-old twin cousins?

“You understand that Jewish spiritual leaders need to be loving advocates at all times for our Jewish people, our Jewish homeland and our Jewish struggle with our texts and traditions to create a joyful, meaningful Judaism for us and future generations.
“What on earth were you doing at Recon?”

I remember when I would be asked to explain Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan’s vision for a thriving American Jewish community, one with rabbis and educators able to reinterpret Judaism and make Jewish identity meaningful under modern circumstances. One that I, as a Reconstructionist rabbi, could identify with and help to build with enthusiasm and pride.

But there is no longer an alignment between that noble vision and the Reconstructionist organization. There is no longer an independent congregational organization since it was folded into the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College 20 years ago, giving the college a lot of power at the expense of the voice of the Reconstructionist laity.

And, sadly, the RRC has mismanaged that power. The college administration and student body has steered away from its commitment to identify with and protect the Jewish community, the Jewish homeland and Jewish values in a way that makes Jewish identity meaningful and joyous. The Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association, the organization of rabbis affiliated with Reconstructionist Judaism, also has been too weak to rein in the drift of the RRC toward extremism.

Last year, the president of the RRC asked the synagogue that was hosting its graduation ceremonies to remove the flags of the United States and the state of Israel from its bima.

Despite the host rabbi’s emphatic “no,” the RRC president had artificial palm trees lugged in and placed around the flags to hide them. This is a new low in the RRC’s decades-long project to distance itself from Israel and the Jewish people, ordaining numerous proudly unapologetic anti-Zionists while Zionist students are harassed and driven underground or out the door.

This year, there is no Jewish congregation in Greater Philadelphia willing to host the ordination of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College.

Abington Friends School was the site of this year’s RRC graduation. This is the school that Jewish parents had to sue because AFS failed to protect their disabled child from antisemitic abuse. This is the private school whose parent organization has been vocal and active for years in its enmity toward the state of Israel. The Friends have a right to such opinions, but it is vile for a Jewish organization, especially a rabbinical seminary, to tacitly endorse such hostile views toward Israel.

Seeing the RRA and RRC succumb is gut-wrenching. Our history is replete with examples of Jews who sold out their community for acceptance. We’ll survive, but we mourn the loss of those who no longer want to study, teach Judaism and celebrate Jewish communal life.

Many graduates of the RRC and members of the RRA have established a new organization, Beit Kaplan: The Rabbinic Partnership for Jewish Peoplehood, where the inspired voice of Reconstructionism can be taught and celebrated. Because, unlike the current RRC, we share Ahavat Yisrael — love for the diverse, creative Jewish people and for our ancestral homeland — and the centrality of Jewish peoplehood.

Beit Kaplan has reached out to the RRC and RRA and encouraged them to reunite with the Jews of America and return to the Reconstructionism of Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan. Sadly, the RRC and RRA are unwilling to turn aside in their rush toward the margins of the Jewish American consensus and into the arms of those who seek the destruction of the state of Israel and death of Jewish civilization.

For those rabbis who studied at RRC and do not support the RRA’s anti-Zionist shenanigans, Beit Kaplan is where you can find an authentic and joyous voice advocating for Israel, fellow Reconstructionist rabbis who are celebrating Jewish continuity, rabbis who love studying Jewish texts rather than manipulating them to rubber-stamp trendy anti-Zionist slurs. I encourage the laity to bring their curiosity so that we in Beit Kaplan can finally answer that question for each of you: “Rabbi, what is it about Reconstructionism that you admire so much?”

Rabbi Claire Magidovitch Green, who was ordained in 1988 from RRC, is a specialist in translating the Jewish way of making meaning to those who feel that our culture is static and irrelevant.