It’s Time To Stop Lecturing And Start Listening To Young Jews
New York pride parade, 2017 Image by Keshet: LGBTQ inclusion in the Jewish Community via Flickr
Rick Jacobs December 18, 2019
When I travel, I hear many people my age ask, “Why don’t our young people join synagogues? Or give to their federations? Why don’t they stand up for Israel? Why don’t they go to Hillel?”
In short, they’re asking, why can’t they be more like us?
Indeed, the war between the boomers and the millennials has become popular fodder. But, I don’t see it as a war at all.
The job of the next generation is not to be just like us. And we in Jewish leadership would be wise to stop struggling to only fit them into old constructs within our Jewish community; rather, we must equally embrace their desire to be active and seek to encourage and empower them as leaders in shaping a Judaism that is relevant to them.
The young people in our communities are the most diverse, inclusive, connected, and educated generation ever. The polls tell us that a commitment to social justice is a particularly significant part of their Jewish expression.
And they proudly and confidently carry their commitments to justice as a reflection of their Judaism wherever they go — including Israel. In fact, Israel is where the generational divide splits most painfully.
The Reform movement, like many entities in American Jewish life, provides immersive experiences for our young people in Israel precisely so they can shape their own deep engagement with the people, the land, the dream of Israel. But they do not want to be told that there is only one way to love Israel.
They’re exasperated at being disparaged for their Jewish commitment to stand up for the rights and dignity of Palestinians, for their commitment to an Israel strongly democratic and Jewish, embracing equality for all; an Israel that rejects attacks by the Haredim on the civil rights and civic roles of women, LGBTQ and labor immigrants and refugees; an Israel committed to closing the gap between the rich and the poor and between the powerful and the weak.
And they need to see an Israel that reciprocates back. Religious pluralism is critical and urgent for North American Jewry of all ages to feel connected to Israel and its future.
They see all this advocacy as an essential, holistic expression of their Israel engagement, an additional sacred commitment, one that is absolutely vital to Israel’s morality as well as its security.
Let’s face it: These young people I describe, who are of student age, play a pivotal role in pro-Israel advocacy, which will only be effective on college campuses if the many Jews who are critical of Israel’s government policies are included. The failure to embrace this diversity as a strength is one of the great failures of some Israeli leaders and of too many segments of the American Jewish community.
To take a crucial example in the fight against BDS, which seeks to delegitimize Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state, the most effective pro-Israel voices, the ones with the most credibility with the widest number of students and faculty on campus, are often our progressive students.
No, these young adults don’t want to walk away. They want to wrestle with the dream, and make the reality something that resembles the Israel we preach and teach about to them.
But, even progressive Jewish students are having a hard time on campus, their home base. We need to assist them — not lecture to them — in debating and taking action, especially on American university campuses, the bastions of freedom and intellectual thought.
This is urgent as on too many campuses Jewish students face harassment, alienation and often overt anti-Semitism, sometimes simply for being Jewish; more frequently simply for being ohavei Yisrael, lovers of Israel.
This debate has risen from the campuses to the highest office in our nation. We welcome efforts that seek to protect our students from anti-Semitism on campus. The executive order signed by the president last week addresses important aspects of this crisis. And while there are different opinions about why President Trump issued the EO, there should be agreement that anti-Semitism on the left or the right is repugnant and that free speech in our own community as well as on campuses and in our civic spaces must be protected.
But make no mistake: to truly keep American Jewry, including our students, safe, elected officials must not use Jews as political fodder. The use of anti-Semitic tropes, including that of dual loyalty, endangers us all. It must end.
And when our college students return home to their congregations, they also need to feel safe from the plague of white nationalism that is intent on murdering our people in prayer. Our elected officials must never give sanction to such elements in our nation.
Let’s trust our next generation to see and experience for themselves and to make up their own minds.
Jewish teens and young adults are not just tomorrow’s leaders. In so many ways, they are already leading us. If only we would listen to them.
Rabbi Rick Jacobs is the President of the Union for Reform Judaism. This op-ed is adapted from the shabbat morning sermon he delivered at the URJ Biennial on December 14, 2019.
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