Re-CHARGING Reform Judaism

“I fear that we are losing the soul of the Reform movement,” said Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch at the opening of Re-CHARGING Reform Judaism, a two-day conference gathering more than 300 Reform clergy, educators and lay leaders at Stephen Wise Free Synagogue. Hirsch spoke about the three ideological pillars on which the movement's future rests: commitment to Zionism, balancing universal and particular values, and elevating ritual and religious practice. “Sooner or later we will have to attend to the growing fissures in the movement,” he said. “Otherwise, the rifts that emerged between the anti-peoplehood, anti-Zionist Reform Jews of the first half of the 20th century, and the Zionists who were committed to Jewish particularism, will reopen with devastating consequences for 21st-century Reform synagogues.”