“Why We (American Jews) Should Care About Them (Jews Outside the U.S.)”

Posted/updated: November 07, 2007

This is the story of one congregation and how it found inner meaning and purpose by looking outside itself. It is also a Jewish tale of guilt, but one with a happy ending.

It begins with an admission. I am a rabbi with a history of visiting, being involved with and supporting the State of Israel. Thus I knew about the World Union for Progressive Judaism, but only as a philosophical construct. Frankly I didn’t know what it was or what it did.

I knew that the World Union had something to do with the struggle of Reform Judaism for recognition and equal treatment in Israel but — admission number two — it was difficult for me to distinguish them from the alphabet soup of other Jewish groups including, but not limited to ARZA, IRAC and the IMPJ.

I began to pay more attention when Rabbi Uri Regev became president of the World Union in 2002. His passionate support of the disenfranchised in Israel, brilliant arguments before the Israeli Supreme Court and impeccable loyalty as a friend mandated that I support him in every possible way by taking “his” (not “my”) organization seriously. I decided that I needed to raise the level of my own, and my congregation’s, awareness of our, responsibility to world Jewry.

My campaign was launched with my Rosh HaShanah sermon in 2004. I began by telling the story of my grandparents who left Ivinetz (a shtetl outside Minsk) before the First World War. I had assumed that any Jews who remained behind in Eastern Europe would have been vanquished by the Holocaust and the Communist regime so I was stunned to discover that a small but continuing Jewish population had survived the pogroms and the Nazis and Stalin and had miraculously returned to communal life in the region of Minsk. And not only in Minsk, but in St. Petersburg, Prague, Budapest, Berlin, Warsaw, Kiev and Vienna as well. These renascent Jewish communities yearn — with vigor and purpose, with resilience and longing — to reclaim Jewish life in its fullness.

I proceeded to recount the history of Jews in Argentina, the former Soviet Union (FSU) and Israel, and then offered my congregation this challenge and invitation:

Let us give testimony to our forebears’ actions and courage by nourishing the rekindling of Jewish life in places from which so many of them came. We will bring Reform Judaism to the Former Soviet Union.

And we will respond to our brothers and sisters struck by poverty in Argentina, for quite frankly, but for a fortuitous decision of our grandparents to come here, we could be those people.

And we vow again to nourish the movement of our colleagues in Israel who themselves yearn to live as Jews as we live as Jews, and who cannot do it alone.

I, personally, have committed myself to that task and I invite you to join me.

Thus was launched our amazing congregational voyage — literally and figuratively — into the universe of the World Union and the incredible communities that are part of the movement of Progressive Judaism throughout the world. Groups from my congregation traveled to Argentina, Israel, the FSU, Cuba and most recently to Germany bringing resources and energy those communities and receiving so much from them in return.

On the congregational trip to Minsk in the fall of 2005, I hoped to uncover my past and the world of my grandparents, as well as to encounter the World Union-affiliated community there. We met Rabbi Grisha Abramovich, the remarkable and only rabbi serving the Progressive Jews of Belarus. He alone serves 16 separate communities and travels extensively among them, teaching students, organizing social and liturgical services, and training the next generation of lay leaders. One of these congregations is for the deaf, who gifted us with a painting they created in appreciation of our visit.

Our congregation developed a vital ongoing relationship with Rabbi Abramovich and his community as a result of our warm welcome in Belarus. Following our visit, eight young leaders from Belarus came for a week to New York City to learn about our synagogue and Reform Jewish life here. These amazing young people stayed in our homes, led our services and transformed our Yom HaShoah commemoration, conducted in cooperation with a neighboring Lutheran church, by telling their family stories and naming the members of their families who died in the Shoah.

Members of our congregation then decided to fund a World Union summer camp in Belarus as one measure of our support of the youth and future of the Belarus Progressive community. We sent two of our full-time religious school teachers to spend a week working at their winter camp program.

Our congregational leaders were so impacted by these interactions and relationships that they decided to contribute a percentage of all funds we raise each year to the World Union for its ongoing operations around the globe in support of the renewal of Jewish life.

Our understanding of the World Union has enhanced our synagogue’s life and deeply touched the souls of every one of us who has become involved. While I originally went to Minsk to uncover my past, I was amazed to discover my future. Perhaps you can too.