Rabbi Rick Jacobs Urges Benjamin Netanyahu To Protect Pluralism
The leader of the Reform Jewish movement urged Benjamin Netanyahu to preserve pluralism in a message congratulating the Israeli prime minister on forming a new government.
“We hope that as this new government moves forward, it will take into consideration the values of inclusion and pluralism for all of Israel’s citizens – values that are at the core not only of our movement, but of Israel’s founding declaration,” Rabbi Rick Jacobs, the president of the Union for Reform Judaism said in a statement Thursday, a day after Netanyahu announced his government.
“Both a Jewish and a democratic state are at the heart of Israel’s mission, and we urge the prime minister to insist on the balancing of both as he moves forward,” Jacobs said.
Netanyahu’s narrow coalition sees a return to influential government posts Haredi, or fervently Orthodox, Jews who have rejected a number of reforms aimed at accommodating other streams of Judaism.
Additionally, the junior partner in the coalition, the Jewish Home Party, champions limits on non-governmental groups that it says harm Israel and favors policies that it claims would enhance Israel’s character as a Jewish state. Critics of those policies say they would come at a price of rights of expression for minorities.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
