Penitence Season Allows Me To Call Out Fellow Jews For Insufficient Progressiveness

by Rabbi Jill Jacobs, Truah – the Rabbinic Call for Human Rights

New York, September 23 – The period from Rosh Hashanah to Yom Kippur has always loomed large in my calendar, given its centrality in Jewish synagogue life and my role as a rabbi. In my capacity as a fighter for human rights and progressive values, however, it takes on even more importance, in that it invites identifying and publicizing the myriad ways in which established Jewish institutions and communities have failed to uphold the universal truths that we liberal Jews take as axiomatic. I live for that.

Nothing compares to the smug self-satisfaction that results from calling mainstream Jewish groups out for the sins of prioritizing Jewish continuity, survival, flourishing, and security over other values such as enforcing preferred pronouns for transgender Americans, or such as maintaining the soft bigotry of low expectations vis-à-vis People of Color, Muslims, immigrants, non-cisgender people, and other marginalized groups. I relish the underscored legitimacy and urgency of that scolding this time of year, when Jews are expected to conduct an annual reckoning of behavior and character. Put simply, it makes me feel so good to know we, I, am a better person than all those backward-looking moral troglodytes, and, perhaps just as important, that the public sees I am a better person than those moral troglodytes. Fundraising poses a much bigger challenge otherwise.

The traditional sources technically call on Jews to conduct an introspective audit, not to shame others in the public square, but we all know the traditional sources have a, shall we say, pre-modern view of things we now know to be more important than anything they prioritized. Not a single such source, for example, touts the benefits of allying with those who condone genocidal antisemitism! Can you imagine? Moreover, as a rabbi, in which capacity I can invoke the gravitas of ancient sources I cherry-pick, it falls to me to keep my community honest, meaning it is my obligation to engage in such scolding.

Scolding always proves more effective when subtle, which is why my organization often couches its criticism in more understated terms than some of our political and ideological allies, such as If Not Now and J Street. But the message remains the same: the religion of Tikkun Olam, as understood to mean twenty-first-century American progressive values, supersedes anything to which the “traditional” organizations or movements might adhere. And you wouldn’t want to be branded a heretic, would you?

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