Many of us in the progressive halakhah camp make our denominational home in the Reform movement. So it’s appropriate at this season of Yom Ha’atzma’ut to consider the relationship of North American Reform Judaism toward the State of Israel. To be specific, we’re not talking about political issues, such as security policy, relations with the Palestinians and the Arab states and the like. Nor do we have in mind the always sensitive and often infuriating realm of religion-and-state policy, which includes the Israeli government’s response to the legitimate demands of its non-Orthodox citizens. Our inquiry here is more theological than political: how does the organized Reform movement understand the religious significance of the state of Israel? What, according to official Reform movement doctrine, is the significance of the establishment and the existence of the state as a matter of Jewish faith and belief?  We’re hardly the first ones to ask these questions, which are addressed in numerous sources.[1]

For purposes of this blog, though, there’s no better place to look than in Mishkan T’fila, the current official prayerbook published (2007) by the Central Conference of American Rabbis (CCAR).  That’s because, like the traditional Jewish prayerbook (siddur), Mishkan T’fila is very much a text of halakhah.[2] While it is not a comprehensive work of systematic theology, the prayerbook reveals better than any other source the collective vision of the Reform rabbinate as to how Reform communities ought to organize their worship and express verbally the community’s vision of God, Torah, and Jewish experience. So at the approach of Israel’s 69th anniversary we ask: what does the American Reform[3] prayerbook have to say about Israel in general and about Yom Ha’atzma`ut in particular? Continue reading The Reform Movement and Israel: The Evidence of the Prayerbook →