On the Freedoms and Limits of the Pro-Israel Dialogue

In retrospect, in deciding to share my thoughts on the freedoms and limitations of the Pro-Israel dialogue, I probably should not have chosen to speak after Adon Olam and before Kiddush. Indeed, if one of the lessons learned from all this is that timing “matters,” then how much more so when your remarks are the only thing standing between a three-hour service and lunch?

It occurs to me that in this room right now there may be both those who are anxiously anticipating my comments and those who have no idea what is going on. So let me manage expectations by stating that which you may take as good news, bad news or a combination of both. My remarks this morning will not be as expansive as you may have expected. There are times in this world when less is more, and this is one of them. From the moment I decided that I would speak today, there have been days that I wanted to give an impassioned critique of Peter Beinart’s views in anticipation of his upcoming visit; and there have been other days that I believed that what I really should do was give a full-throated defense of his position. But then something really interesting happened; the more I wrote and rewrote this speech in my head, the less and less ground it covered. Because I realized that my responsibility as the rabbi of this congregation is not give a book review, not to defend or critique an invited speaker, an activity that I have not done with anyone else. Rather I decided that I want to use this time to explain how we got here, what we stand for as a congregation, and how this moment, in all its complexity, is actually an incredible opportunity for growth and communal self definition. Because at its core, I do not think that this conversation is about the strengths or weaknesses of Beinart’s book. I believe there are greater principles at stake, principles that we need to articulate and affirm as a congregation, principles that both now and in the years to come are worthy of our most vigorous defense.

Let’s start, as the song goes, at the very beginning, or at least the beginning of when I arrived here at Park Avenue Synagogue. I made a commitment that this congregation would stand at the center of the most pressing conversations on the Jewish docket. Whether it is the state of congregational music, the condition of supplementary Jewish education, the future of Conservative Judaism or the nature of the Diaspora-Israel relationship, Park Avenue Synagogue would be the place where these conversations happen. The speakers we bring in, the programs and schools under our watch, the lay and professional leadership together would understand their mission to be the relentless effort to identify and address the major challenges facing the Jewish world. Within our walls we would generate the transformational thinking that would contribute towards the revitalization of this community and serve as a model for the rest of the Jewish world. It is big, it is bold, audacious and ambitious and I am happy to say – now heading into my fifth year – we are well on our way.

This year, through the generosity of a congregational family that is as anonymous as it is generous, we began an annual lecture series, whose stated mission is to bring top scholars and notable intellectuals to speak to a topic that we believe to be a priority issue facing the Jewish future. We are in the midst of determining the theme of next year’s series, and if you want input, then I invite you to get involved in the synagogue. I can clearly recall two happenings that directly impacted the choice of topic for this year. First, a re-emergence in Israel of the “who is a Jew?” question in Israeli life – a question that should be of profound concern for the members of this congregation. And second, the piece Peter Beinart published in the New York Review of Books in 2010 on a perceived generational distancing of American Jewry from Israel, an article in which he asserted that for a certain segment of American Jewry, rather than being a source of solidarity, Israel had become a point of alienation. Whatever you or I may have thought of his thesis, the brouhaha surrounding the piece signaled the rawness of the nerve that it touched. These events, along with my ongoing commitment that our community stand at the forefront of Israel education and engagement both now and in the generations to come, led to the theme for this year’s series: “Israel in the American Jewish Imagination.” The flyers were on your seats on Rosh Hashanah. The pamphlet blurb asks the question plainly: “Can North American Jewry be political and philanthropic stakeholders in Israel’s well being and simultaneously voice criticism of the country it defends so vigorously? How shall non-Orthodox Diaspora Jewry hold close a Jewish state that does not embrace or even recognize the Jewishness of its most ardent supporters?” The goal of the series was to create a year-long forum, as stated, “to invite representatives from across the political spectrum to share recommendations on how to move forward, with an eye towards helping our community express its own voice in this critical conversation.”

To review the year thus far: We have had Leon Wieseltier, Steven Cohen, Daniel Gordis, Dan Senor, and Natan Sharansky and on May 8, we will have Donniel Hartman. While not formally part of the series, much of our synagogue programming has also been directed to this theme. Ambassador Ido Aharoni addressed us on Rosh Hashanah; Alan Dershowitz spoke to us in the fall; we hosted an event where Bret Stephens spoke; and we reached out to everyone from Prime Minister Netanyahu to President Shimon Peres, to the former head of the opposition Tzipi Livni, to Ambassador Ron Prosor of the UN and beyond. We have a congregational trip to Israel planned for the weekend of Memorial Day and Shavuot, a Bnei Mitzvah family trip in December, and a young family trip already filling up for June 2013. There is much more that I could list, but the point is that we are doing exactly what we set out to do: to raise the level of conversation, to encounter voices that do not merely parrot the beliefs we would hold anyway; in other words, to think critically about critical issues, thereby fulfilling not only our mandate to be at the center of conversations facing the Jewish world, but also to serve as a model of creative and inclusive thinking for the Jewish future. When it comes to engaging in the relationship between Diaspora Jewry and Israel, you can be proud of your shul, a shul which, by the way – through the generous donations of people in this room – is also funding a Birthright trip, so that every single young person who grew up in this community and others will have the opportunity to make a first – and please God, not final – trip to Israel.

And, yes, it did occur to us to invite Peter Beinart, the individual whose 2010 article was part of the impetus for our lecture series. The invitation was issued, the date was set – all confirmed last summer. And lest there be any intrigue, barring any changes in his personal schedule, he will be speaking here on April 27 following our musical Kabbalat Shabbat services. The RSVP information for the dinner is on the website.

In the meantime, Peter Beinart wrote an article in the New York Times and subsequently released his book, The Crisis of Zionism. Since then, many people have reached out to me by phone, email and in person asking how it is we can host him. By hosting him, are we not somehow giving tacit support for his position, a position that some – but not all – find problematic and objectionable.

It is a fair question, and it is a question to ask not only of Beinart but of all speakers at PAS, a question to which I feel compelled to respond.

There is a short answer and a longer answer. The short answer is no. In inviting a speaker here, neither I personally, nor we institutionally are signaling agreement with that person’s positions. I have certainly disagreed with many of the comments made by speakers this year, both their published writing and what they have said on their visits. I can readily recall multiple occasions sitting in dialogue with different guests, responding to their remarks with respectful critique and on at least a few occasions, exasperation. To book someone as a speaker does not mean that we endorse a position. To be sure, there are occasions when speakers absolutely do reflect the mission of the synagogue. A good example is next Shabbat when Chancellor Arnold Eisen of JTS will address the community. Chancellor Eisen, unlike other speakers, is allowed to do something nobody else does – to speak to a captive audience on a Friday night or Shabbat morning. An invitation to Chancellor Eisen reflects my personal belief and our institutional policy that our commitments to JTS are part and parcel of what this community stands for. I don’t want to say never, but I try my darnedest not to have opinions that do not reflect the institutional mission of the synagogue voiced during a prayer service. Whether it is Beinart, Wieseltier, Gordis or anyone else, it strikes me as both ungracious and unfair to impose such an encounter on an unsuspecting congregant who has come to shul for spiritual uplift.

Another, but not insignificant point. You may also have noticed that with all of the Israel education and engagement, I have left out one dimension – advocacy. Our guests, though I have heard them speak elsewhere on behalf of AIPAC, J Street or other organizations, are not invited here to forward the mission of another agency. To say it another way, you may have noticed that we have not had an Israel advocacy event in the building during my tenure. To be sure, this is a very prickly issue for me. Why? Because as I have said over and over (and all my sermons are on our website), education, engagement, and Israel travel are not enough. To live as a Jew in this time and not understand Israel advocacy as a constituent element of your Jewish identity, is to miss out on the fullness of what it means to be a contemporary Jew. Since long before I arrived here, I have been making my personal and philanthropic commitments to Israel advocacy. I am proud of my decisions. They reflect my political sensibilities, and I call on each of you to do the same. But that is where the statement ends. As the rabbi of a 1500-family congregation, I am the rabbi, as it were, of both the red states and the blue states. There is a trust that comes with being the rabbi of this congregation, a promise that our mailing list does not become fodder for other organizations, no matter how noble their intentions may be. Again, I don’t want to say never, because if I have learned anything, I have learned that I am learning all the time, but the present policy that the advocacy choices individuals in this congregation make remain the choices of those individuals is a policy that reflects my views and those of the leadership of the congregation. It is a policy that is here to stay for the foreseeable future.

And so, with all of the qualifications out of the way, we can go to the heart of the matter – the long answer to the question: Who is and who isn’t allowed to speak at our shul? Our synagogue is not a college campus; this is not a First Amendment issue. We are allowed to make choices as to who is allowed to speak and who isn’t.

When it comes to Israel, the range of conversation can be defined as those who advocate for a secure, Jewish and democratic state. Secure – because for me, the safety and well being of Jews is non-negotiable. Jewish – because while there are those who would trade Israel’s Jewish character for another value, I will not. Our prayers for Israel exist on the backs of thousands of years of Jewish longing and the Jewishness of the state is non-negotiable. Democratic – there are those who would create a state that does not acknowledge the rights of all its citizens and those people are not invited to speak in our synagogue. And finally, a state: there are those both at the extreme end of the Jewish world, and of course, in the non-Jewish world who do not recognize the right of the Jewish state to exist; they have no place in our communal conversation. That is it. Those are the boundaries: a secure, Jewish, democratic state. You may agree, you may disagree; you may believe these boundaries to be overly constrictive or excessively loose, but that is as close as I can get to defining the limits and freedoms of our Israel dialogue. It is the Zionist dream as articulated by Theodore Herzl. It is just as compelling and urgent and defensible today as it was when he first articulated it.

I have read Peter Beinart’s book from cover to cover. I have many opinions about it, but I believe that it exists well within these boundaries that I have laid out. Some of the comments that I have received have suggested that Beinart is anti-Zionist, a self-hating Jew, somehow an enemy of the Jewish state and the Jewish people. I don’t know Peter Beinart; to the best of my knowledge we have never met. But I can tell you that from what I have read, he is totally invested in working towards the creation of a secure, Jewish, democratic state. You may believe that he is wrong and misguided, or that his recommendations come at too great a cost for Israel. I invite you to engage with him respectfully when he comes here. But the words “anti-Jewish” and “anti-Zionist” are words that strike me as totally inapplicable. To bandy them about is to diminish the integrity of the dialogue we are committed to creating.

We are living through a very delicate moment for Israel. Israel is facing existential threats from Iran, from her neighbors all around and in the court of world opinion. Israel does not lack for external threats and each one of us has an obligation to stand vigilant on Israel’s behalf. But there is another danger, a danger that we face from within, right here in America, in New York and in our own community. Somehow we have found ourselves unable to countenance an opinion that is not our own, and when we do, rather than engaging it, confronting it and even arguing with it, we simply label it as beyond the bounds of acceptable discourse. From the political left to the right, there are Jews calling other Jews treif. In just a few weeks, the Jewish community of New York will be marching down Fifth Avenue in support of Israel. Sunday June 3 to be exact, and I expect all of you come out that day in force. I am deeply concerned by those who have called on the organizers of the Celebrate Israel parade to bar progressive pro-Israel organizations from participating. As if the Jewish community needs more tsuris, somehow it is now in vogue for Jews to declare those with whom we disagree as untouchable. We are perilously close to the closing of the Jewish mind, losing our ability to sit down with anyone who holds opinions different from our own. We listen only to those whom we want, our information bubbles filter the rest out and we grow narrower day by day.

It is for this reason that it is so very important that our community continues to model the example that we have set. The late, great Rabbi Arthur Hertzberg explained that “One cannot affirm one’s own certainties without understanding the counter certainties of others.” When we invite a speaker to Park Avenue Synagogue – and more importantly, when you choose to listen to that speaker – it does not signal weakness, it signals strength. It tells the world that the opinions you hold, whatever your politics may be, are held with confidence because you have encountered and withstood the counterclaims of the other. We can learn much from the great rabbinic debates of Hillel and Shammai. Hillel, tradition explains, won the debates not merely due to his intellectual prowess. Hillel won because in stating his opinion he always began by first stating the opinion of Shammai, his loyal opposition. Moreover, the tradition teaches that the houses of Hillel and Shammai, though differing on basic interpretations of Jewish law, still married their children one to the other, studied each other’s opinions and acknowledged each other as members of the House of Israel. To be a flagship community means that we have both the responsibility and opportunity to model behavior worthy of being followed by others. I believe that this moment, here and now, is such an opportunity to demonstrate that we are a community capable of engaging with the full range of the pro-Israel discussion. Whether you decide to come or not, what happens between now and Peter Beinart’s visit on April 27, what happens on the evening itself and more importantly what happens in the years that follow, will not speak just to this or that position, but will speak to our community’s ability to live up to the highest ideals of our tradition.

As I wrote in anticipation of today, if there is a take-home message from this holiday of Passover just hours away from concluding, it is the inclusive nature of the Jewish conversation. The Jewish family is made up of different voices, from the wise, to the wicked, to the simple, to the one who does not know how to ask. More important than the labels is the realization that each one of them, year in and year out, returns to sit at the table. So too our congregational table. As the saying goes: “Wherever we stand, we stand with Israel.” From the left to the right, we are working together to find a path forward, all of us unflinching in our commitment to a secure, Jewish, democratic state.