When Rabbis Forget the Jewish People
There are moments in Jewish life that look small from a distance but reveal something enormous up close. The controversy at the Jewish Theological Seminary over Israeli President Isaac Herzog’s honorary doctorate is one of them. Some rabbinical students and graduates objected, using the language of genocide and moral disqualification. Chancellor Shuly Rubin Schwartz defended the invitation, noting Herzog represents the State of Israel and the Jewish people. That should have been obvious. Apparently, it is not.
For Cincinnati Jews, this should hit close to home. Cincinnati is one of the birthplaces of organized American Judaism. The American Israelite was founded in 1854 by Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise. Hebrew Union College was founded in Cincinnati in 1875 as the first permanent Jewish institution of higher learning in America. And now, after 150 years, HUC’s Cincinnati campus has ordained its final class of rabbis. The city that helped create American Reform rabbinical education is watching that pipeline close.
That makes this more than a New York seminary controversy. HUC and JTS are not the same institution, but both belong to the non-Orthodox architecture that shaped Jewish life. If that architecture produces rabbis fluent in social justice language but embarrassed by Jewish national life, Cincinnati has a stake in the outcome. This city helped prove that Jews could become fully American without disappearing. Can its institutions now prove that Jews can remain fully American without becoming ashamed of Israel?
This is not an argument that every rabbi must support every Israeli policy. Jews argue. Jews criticize. Jews challenge kings, prophets, rabbis, and God Himself. But there is a difference between criticizing Israel and treating Jewish sovereignty as a moral contaminant, between demanding better from Israel and teaching future rabbis that Jewish national life must be protested, shamed, and spiritually quarantined.
Anti-Zionism inside rabbinical education produces a broken Jewish identity. A rabbi trained to see Jewish nationalism as morally suspect will not produce confident Jewish children. A rabbi who speaks about Israel only through shame will not produce young Jews responsible for survival. A rabbi who cannot distinguish between Jewish sovereignty and genocide is being educated out of Jewish peoplehood.
The old Reform movement feared dual loyalty and tried to prove Judaism was a religion, not a nationality. That fear was understandable. But history did not stop in Cincinnati. The Holocaust proved what happens when Jews depend on the mercy of others. Israel’s rebirth proved what happens when Jews reclaim national responsibility.
Zionism is not a foreign political ideology pasted onto Judaism. It is the return of Jewish national life. To reject that outright is not to reject one Israeli government or one war. It is to reject the idea that the Jewish people have the same right to national life that every other people takes for granted.
Since October 7, that rejection has become obscene. Jews have watched antisemitism surge in schools, streets, campuses, and politics. Hamas’s massacre was denied, minimized, justified, or explained away by people claiming justice. What does it mean when future rabbis look at Israel’s president and see not the symbol of a wounded people, but a figure too impure for a Jewish seminary stage? It means something has gone terribly wrong.
The prophets did not rebuke Israel because they were embarrassed by Israel. They rebuked Israel because Israel was their people. Their criticism came from covenant, not exile. Their anger came from love, not abandonment. That is the difference between Jewish moral courage and Jewish self-erasure.
Local Jewish leadership cannot treat this as someone else’s seminary drama in New York. Cincinnati’s rabbis, educators, donors, boards, schools, camps, and institutions have to ask: what kind of Jewish future are they building here? Are they preparing young Jews in Cincinnati to inherit a people, or merely to manage the slow decline of a religious lifestyle brand?
Communities are shaped by the rabbis they hire, educators they platform, seminaries they trust, curricula they fund, and assumptions they refuse to challenge. If local institutions draw spiritual authority from leaders embarrassed by Jewish national life, they cannot act surprised when the next generation feels no obligation to defend it. Jewish continuity collapses through soft apologies, evasions, and leaders who confuse comfort with courage.
Cincinnati Jews should care because this city did not merely participate in American Judaism. It helped build it. As one historic rabbinical chapter closes in Cincinnati, the question is whether Jewish institutions can preserve a people.
A Judaism that cannot defend Jewish national life will not save the Jewish soul. It will preside over its disappearance politely, eloquently, and with excellent committee minutes. And if Cincinnati’s Jewish leaders are willing to bless that decline, fund it, hire it, and call it moral courage, then they should at least have the honesty to stop calling it continuity.
Editor’s Note: The opinions expressed herein are those of the author and do not represent the editorial position of The American Israelite.
