Job one for a rabbi, or any religious leader, is to provide moral leadership, especially as our increasingly secular society slips further into moral relativism.
The Union for Reform Judaism has nominated a man as its next leader, Rabbi Richard Jacobs (see April 2011 Chronicle), who not only has trouble telling the good guys from the bad guys when it comes to Israel; his moral reasoning is incoherent on this subject.
In a speech given on May 2, Jacobs, attempting to position himself as a supporter of Israel, asserted that, “Following Operation Cast Lead, it is critically important for these remarkable young [IDF] soldiers to know that we in America are with them.”
This is the same man who is a long time board member of an organization (New Israel Fund) that fed a blood libel about these same soldiers to the Goldstone Commission and who is in a leadership position of another agency (J Street) that helped promote the now-discredited Goldstone Report to Congress and the United Nations.
To appoint as leader of URJ a man incapable of understanding the clear moral incompatibility of these two positions would render Judaism meaningless.
I trust that Jacobs is a nice man, but the leader of the largest movement in Judaism has to set an example of clear moral leadership, and he is clearly not up to this task.
I urge my fellow Reform Jews to join those of us who are appalled by this choice and contact URJ chair Peter Weidhorn at Chairman@urj.org and ask that the board reject the nomination of Jacobs at its June 10 meeting.
Fox Point
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