by Rabbi Alan Silverstein, PhD | President of Mercaz Olami (Representing the global Masorti/Conservative movement)
Expressions of Zionism have continued to proliferate throughout the Conservative movement in recent decades. In my synagogue — where I served as senior rabbi from 1979 to 2021, the Israeli flag stood on the bimah side-by-side with the American flag. The Prayer for the State of Israel was recited along with the prayer for the United States. Prayers on behalf of the Israel Defense Forces and its members who were missing in action or prisoners of war were uttered along with similar prayers for members of the American armed forces.
Over the last few decades, the numbers of olim grew, notably among Rabbinical Assembly members and their adult offspring, as well as alumni of the Ramah camps and Nativ (the Conservative movement’s student gap year program in Israel). Statements affirming the importance of Israel have been issued by all primary leaders of Conservative Judaism. The following are prominent examples.
Jewish Theological Seminary chancellor Gerson Cohen’s successor in 1986 was Dr. Ismar Schorsch, who published “The Sacred Cluster: The Core Values of Conservative Judaism.” His analysis commenced with Zionism:
The Land of Israel — “The centrality of modern Israel heads our list of core values. For Conservative Jews, as for their ancestors, Israel is not only the birthplace of the Jewish people, but also its final destiny. Sacred texts, historical experience, and liturgical memory have conspired to make it for them, in the words of Ezekiel, “the most desirable of all lands.” Its welfare is never out of mind. Conservative Jews are the backbone of Federation leadership in North America and the major source of its annual campaign. They visit Israel, send their children over a summer or for a year, and support financially every one of its worthy institutions. Israel’s accomplishments on the battlefield and in the laboratory, in literature and politics, fill them with pride. Their life is a dialectic between homeland and exile.”
The Hebrew language — Chancellor Schorsch also emphasized the critical role played by Hebrew “as the irreplaceable language of Jewish expression…. Its existence is coterminous with that of the Jewish people, and the many layers of the language mirror the cultures in which Jews perpetuated Judaism…. It is part of the fabric and texture of Judaism. [Hebrew] words vibrate with religious meaning, moral values, and literary associations…. To know Judaism only in translation is, to quote Bialik, akin to kissing the bride through the veil…. In a Jewish world of sundry and proliferating divisions, Hebrew must emerge as the common and unifying language of the Jewish people.”
Jewish peoplehood — The chancellor expounded upon the necessity of Jewish peoplehood. “Devotion to the ideal of klal Yisrael, the unfractured totality of Jewish existence and the ultimate significance of every single Jew. In the consciousness of Conservative Jews, there yet resonates the affirmation of haverim kol Yisrael [all Israel is still joined in fellowship] — despite all the dispersion…that history has visited upon us, Jews remain united in a tenacious pilgrimage of universal import. [This] brings Conservative Jews to support every worthy cause in Jewish life. Often communal needs will prompt them to compromise the needs of the [Conservative] movement.”
Rabbi Schorsch’s successor as JTS chancellor was Dr. Arnold Eisen. Eisen’s blog post titled “The Religious Significance of Israel: A Personal Love Story and Accounting” offered additional perspectives.
Israel as defender of Jews in peril — While in Israel during the perilous period of the 1973 Yom Kippur War, Eisen recollected, he felt that “only the army stood between me and people who wanted me elsewhere or dead…. Jews have the right, indeed the obligation, to defend the State against forces that do not want it there, do not want Jews there …”
Embodiment of Jewish values in practice — Dr. Eisen emphasizes that only Israel offers the hope of embodying Jewish values being lived. “I hold to what I call a ‘Sefer Devarim Zionism,’ animated with a vision that the Torah wants to be lived not only in private spaces of home, school, and synagogue…but in public. I want an environmental policy shaped by Torah, an educational policy, a health care policy, a foreign policy, a policy on how one treats minorities and refugees, [along with] my conviction that democracy is a Jewish value, because it is instrumental to safeguarding the dignity of human beings who like us are created in God’s image.”
The president of the Schechter Institute, Rabbi David Golinkin, emphasized the uniqueness of Israel as a factor that drew him to become an oleh.
Venue for the study of Torah in its fullness — As a scholar of Jewish sacred texts, Dr. Golinkin noted — in his essay, “Why I Made Aliyah” — that “Limud Torah, the study of the Torah, comes to life in Israel. [For example], when I visit Jericho, I take out my trusty pocket Tanach and read the story of its capture by Joshua 3,200 years ago …”
Best setting for experiencing our prayers/liturgy — Golinkin takes note of the manner in which our tefillot come alive in Eretz Yisrael. “When I lived in the Diaspora, many of our prayers and prophecies seemed unreal and remote. When I live in the reborn State of Israel, they are real and miraculous…. For 1,900 years, Jews have recited this prayer for Kibbutz Galuyot, the ingathering of the exiles, as a hope and as a dream. If you live in Israel today, you realize that it is no longer just a dream — it is a dream come true. When I did my basic training in the IDF, many years ago, the 66 soldiers in my unit had made aliyah from 23 different countries …”
Bradley Shavit Artson, dean of the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies in Los Angeles and of the Zacharias Frankel College in Germany, wrote to his students:
Ahavat Yisrael — As rabbis, we must exhibit “A love and solidarity with our fellow Jews in Israel, with the right of the Jewish people to self-determination in our own homeland, to the very real sacrifices this experiment in Jewish national self-expression has imposed from its inception…, love for the Jewish people, of which we are a part and which we aspire to lead. If a rabbi does not root their leadership in love and unity, they lose the ability to critique constructively, to encourage doing better, to inspire.”
Pursuit of peace despite everything — Rabbi Artson praises “brave Palestinians and Israelis who have been risking the work, year after year, of peaceful advocacy for coexistence, mutual democracy, respect, and nonviolence. These brave people hold the possibility of a two-state solution in which both peoples live in peace, justice, and safety…. Centering their pioneering work and their commitment to mutual listening, mutual support, would have been fitting for people preparing for a life of rabbinic service…. I insist on owning the possibility — the necessity — of an authentically liberal Zionism, one that sees a democratic Israel side by side with a free Palestinian people, each committed to peaceful coexistence. There is no other way.”
Founding dean of the Schechter Institute for Jewish Studies in Jerusalem, Rabbi Lee Levine, articulated Israel’s importance:
The Centrality of Eretz Yisrael — Rabbi Levine said that “one should not elevate fortuitous circumstances to the level of ideological necessity or desirability. In terms of Judaism and Jewish history, Los Angeles is not the promised land, Philadelphia, Chicago, or Miami cannot substitute for Zion, nor can New York ever replace Jerusalem as the center of Jewish interest and yearning. To argue otherwise is to deny a major component of our religious and national heritage. For our literature, holidays, mitzvot, history, holy sites, and future dreams are inextricably intertwined with Eretz Yisrael.”
Conservative/Masorti Judaism’s first official representative to the World Zionist Organization, Rabbi Joseph Wernik, articulated the case for aliyah, particularly among young adults.
“Rather than hearing how much Israel ‘needs him,’ a Jewish young person must come to the deep-seated realization of how much he needs Israel. After all, he is a Jew living in a non-Jewish society with a non-Jewish culture. He knows in his soul that there is no life more congenial to the Jewish psyche than in Eretz Yisrael. This ‘positive Zionism’ must be inculcated into the individual from early childhood into adolescence and beyond.”
Emet V’Emunah
In the late 1980s, the Emet V’Emunah commission issued a “statement of principles” of the Conservative movement. It included:
The Miracle of the State of Israel — “We rejoice in the existence of the State of Israel in the Land of Israel with its capital of Jerusalem. We view this phenomenon … to be a miracle, reflecting Divine Providence in human affairs. We glory in that miracle; we celebrate the rebirth of Zion.”
Israel must be an exemplary state to all its citizens — “We do not view Israel as just another state or political entity; rather, we envision it as an exemplar of religious and moral principles of civil, political, and religious rights for all citizens regardless of race, religion, ethnic origin, or gender. We believe that the litmus test of the character of the democratic Jewish state is its treatment of and attitude toward its religious and ethnic minorities…. Jews should be particularly sensitive to the well-being of all the various ethnic and religious groups living in the State of Israel.”
Israel must provide religious pluralism for all Jewish streams — “The essence of democracy is two-fold: it expresses the will of the majority and scrupulously protects the rights of minorities. Therefore, the laws passed by the State of Israel…should not be used to support the religious view or establishment to the exclusion of others. The State of Israel, founded by the entire Jewish people, must in its actions and laws provide for the pluralism of Jewish life. The State should permit all rabbis, regardless of affiliation, to perform religious functions, including officiating at marriages, divorces, and conversions [and] provide civil options for marriage and divorce for those who so prefer …”
In sum, from the era prior to Solomon Schechter until the 21st century, Conservative/Masorti Judaism has been a Zionist movement and has played an important role in the history of Zionism and the rebirth and shaping of the State of Israel.