Have Progressive Rabbis reached the end of the road on Israel?
JVL Introduction
Robert A.H. Cohen writes thoughtfully and movingly about his disappointment with Reform Judaism in whose warm embrace he grew up. He finds their rabbis – and Liberal Judaism’s rabbis as well – “consistently disappointing” on the subject of Israel.
Here he looks at their past contributions and their recent– more critical – letter to the Israeli embassy last month, in the face of the annexation proposals.
He urges them to go further and outlines a new progressive Jewish agenda, one in which the Palestinian experience would be essential to our understanding of Zionis
This article was originally published by Writing From the Edge on Sun 26 Jul 2020. Read the original here.
“History will judge us” – Have Progressive Rabbis reached the end of the road on Israel?
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As a Jew and Labour member, I feel totally unwelcome in my Liberal shul community since those on our board have decided to invite well known anti Palestinian racists into our Shabbat sightline. I feel I cannot daven in such a community that embraces bigots and their calamities. I feel lost and homeless.
Another great article by Robert. A.H.Cohen. Annexation is the latest stage of a process of settler colonialism. To understand this we really need to go back to 1948. What has happened to Palestinians to facilitate the flawed Zionist project can’t be denied for ever. This airbrushing of history corrupts the Jewish diaspora. It also corrupts the wider UK community. It was a UK government that sat back and allowed this to happen. We need to hear the experience of the Palestinians who ended up as refugees in neighbouring States. We need to hear the truth about living under occupation in Gaza as well as the West Bank. The ongoing process of attacks on Palestinian identity in East Jerusalem must not be ignored. The more people here from the victims of this settler colonialism,the harder it becomes for the Zionist lobby to brand us all as anti-semites.