Reform Rabbinate Favors Religious Jewish Nationalism in Israel

Declaring that the Reform rabbinate today holds “a strong conviction in favor of Jewish nationalism in Israel, plus an equally strong conviction in favor of a religious definition of Jewry in the Western world,” Rabbi Solomon B. Freehof, of Pittsburgh, said here there is no real conflict today between so-called classical Reform and classical Herzlian Zionism.

The former president of both the Central Conference of American Rabbis and the World Union for Progressive Judaism, one of the foremost spokesmen for Reform Judaism made this point in delivering the annual Abba Hillel Silver Memorial Lecture at the Herzl Institute in New York. Both he and Dr. David Seligson, rabbi of Central Synagogue, New York, who presided, paid tribute to Dr. Silver, as did Dr. Emanuel Neumann, chairman of the Theodor Herzl Foundation, who also spoke.

Reviewing the history of the more than fifty year conflict of ideologies between the religious oriented Reform rabbinate and the “secular nationalism” of the Zionist Movement which gradually diminished in the years just prior to the establishment of Israel, Dr.Freehof paid tribute to the “natural healing power” of Judaism and Jewry.