October 12, 2022 

Recent years have seen an increase in reports of Jewish college students facing antisemitic comments, vandalism, and efforts at exclusion from university-recognized social or academic groups. 2022 has been marred by such controversies at schools like the University of Vermont and UC Berkeley School of Law. This is unacceptable anywhere, but especially in institutions of higher learning, which must be committed to a safe and open community for all students, even while protecting the right to free speech.

Let us say explicitly to our students—to all Jewish students: we are with you as you joyously live your Jewish identity, which includes expressing your connection to Israel. You have the right to live and learn on campus proudly and to participate fully in campus life and activities without harassment.

What often determines the success of such harassment and antisemitic acts is the level of response from university presidents, deans, professors, and other professionals on campus. We want to express our appreciation for campus professionals who are pushing back against those trying to advance antisemitic views. When such incidents occur, the campus atmosphere could cause some Jewish students to feel vulnerable and marginalized, but when campus professionals speak vigorously and forcefully against antisemitism, Jewish students feel supported in their ability to participate fully and safely in campus life. Often such harassment is dressed up as “only” anti-Israel criticism. Free speech on campus includes the right to be critical, even sharply critical of Israel’s policies. But when those policies of Israel’s government being criticized are blamed on Jews , when such efforts deny the right of the Jewish people to have a Jewish, democratic state in their historic homeland (the essence of Zionism), or when students are barred from any campus activity based on their identity as Jews or Zionists, that crosses the line into antisemitism and must be treated and responded to as such.

In this context, we want to acknowledge and commend the constructive leadership modeled by UC Berkeley School of Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky and by Berkeley professors such as Ethan B. Katz, Associate Professor of History, who have spoken and acted with conviction against efforts to ostracize students and others who are proud Zionists. When such leadership is lacking and outside help is necessary, such as has been the situation at the University of Vermont (UVM), we deeply appreciate the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights’ work to address campus antisemitism including, in UVM’s case, launching a full investigation as to whether the school has violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act. We hope the university will act effectively on the investigation’s findings.

Within our Reform Movement, we are committed to better preparing our students to know what their rights are on the college campus, and how to respond effectively to antisemitic speech and actions should they arise. At the URJ, we will be deepening both our college programming and our pre-college programming (including NFTY, the RAC’s L’Taken seminars, and the new Israel Teen Fellowship program). The URJ is already in conversation with Hillel International and the Anti-Defamation League about ways to strengthen our longtime partnerships to be more effective in supporting our college students. The CCAR offers resources, including those related to our commitment to Zionism and our fight against antisemitism. The CCAR, ACC and ARJE urge Jewish students in need of support at any campus to contact and partner with their local Jewish professionals as well as their home congregational rabbis, cantors or educators, who remain committed to the Jewish lives and well-being of their students, even while far away. These students are not just our future leaders, but our present. We need their passion, vision, and love of Israel and of Jewish life to ensure our community is ever more vibrant today, this new year, and for generations to come.

Union for Reform Judaism
Jennifer Brodkey Kaufman (she/her), Chair
Rabbi Rick Jacobs (he/him), President

Central Conference of American Rabbis
Rabbi Lewis Kamrass (he/him), President
Rabbi Hara E. Person (she/her), Chief Executive

American Conference of Cantors
Cantor Seth Warner (he/him), President
Rachel Roth (she/her), Chief Operating Officer

Association for Reform Jewish Educators
Marisa Kaiser, RJE (she/her), President
Rabbi Stacy Rigler, RJE (she/her), Executive Director

August 3, 2022

The Central Conference of American Rabbis celebrates the defeat Tuesday of a proposed constitutional amendment in Kansas which would have declared that the state’s constitution does not include a right to abortion. The CCAR congratulates and commends its members in Kansas and the communities they serve, who were at the forefront of Kansans for Constitutional Freedom, the organized opposition to the anti-choice amendment. This result reinforces the separation of church and state—a prized ideal of our unique American democracy—and the First Amendment’s guarantee of the right to free exercise of religion for Jews and others whose religious traditions permit abortion.

The Kansas election results send a clear message: Americans support access to safe, legal healthcare, including abortion care. In states where ballot initiatives can be put forward by voters, safe and legal abortion care may be restored in some states where it has been outlawed in the wake of the Supreme Court’s deplorable decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.

The Kansas vote—combined with a commendable 2019 decision by the Kansas Supreme Court holding that the state constitution’s Bill of Rights protects the right to abortion—assures that millions of Kansans will continue to have access to safe and legal abortion. Tuesday’s result also assures that Kansas facilities will continue to be the closest place where millions of citizens in Arkansas, Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma, and Texas can obtain a safe and legal abortion. Long and arduous journeys are still required from many locales: Houston, for example—our nation’s fourth largest city—is over six hundred miles from Wichita, Kansas, the closest place where a Houstonian may secure a safe and legal abortion.

Nobody should have to travel outside their own community—and certainly not across state lines—to secure reproductive healthcare, including a safe and legal abortion. Reform rabbis are grateful, though, for President Biden’s Wednesday executive order, which eases the way for pregnant people to cross state lines for abortion care and grants access to Medicaid waivers for states where abortion is legal to help them care for pregnant people from out of state seeking abortions.

The CCAR looks forward to victories in other states following Kansas’s lead to protect access to safe and legal abortion.

Rabbi Lewis Kamrass, President
Rabbi Hara E. Person, Chief Executive
Central Conference of American Rabbis

July 13, 2022 

The Reform Jewish Movement strongly condemns Presbyterian Church (USA)’s declaration falsely charging that Israel is an apartheid state, with the passage of Amendment INT-02 at its recent General Assembly. The Reform Movement is equally appalled that the Church entertained a recommendation to remove the term “antisemitism” from its official lexicon, preferring the term “anti-Jewish,” as it is universally accepted that “antisemitism” refers specifically to the hatred of the Jewish people. This is not the first time that an egregious statement on Israel has been made by PCUSA leadership, and we can clearly see that this is part of a pattern. Earlier this year in his reflection for Martin Luther King, Jr. weekend, the Church’s highest official, Stated Clerk Rev. Dr. J. Herbert Nelson II, described Israel’s treatment of Palestinians as, “21st-century slavery.”

The Reform Movement condemns these libelous mischaracterizations of the Jewish State, which carry with them a significant risk of increased antisemitism in the United States and worldwide.

The accusation of ‘apartheid’ is flawed, as the distinguishing factor determining the legal system in the West Bank is based on nationality and citizenship, not racial hierarchy, skin color, religious, or ethnic measures. Positioning the conflict in racial terms is simply wrong and is unhelpful in bringing this conflict to resolution. PCUSA and other international organizations continuously fail to recognize the context of Israel/Palestine, as they do not address Israel’s security concerns or the call by many of Israel’s neighbors – including the Palestinians – to bring an end to the Jewish State.

While the North American Reform Movement has a long-standing policy of opposition to Israeli settlements, we deeply regret that the PCUSA has taken an entirely unhelpful, even counterproductive, approach toward achieving a two-state solution. We acknowledge that the occupation regularly causes hardship to Palestinians, and to that end, we have repeatedly called for negotiations to establish two states for two peoples.

Reform Jews across North America enjoy warm relationships with local Presbyterian clergy and laity, many of whom have chosen to disassociate themselves from the national body. We will continue to nurture those relationships, engaging our friends and partners honestly and candidly to share our hurt, anger, and disappointment. Reform rabbis, cantors, and lay leaders will work with our Presbyterian partners to build a greater understanding of the Jewish people’s commitment to Israel, as well as a more accurate and nuanced understanding of its ongoing conflicts, its vulnerability to antisemitism, and our shared concern for the welfare of the Palestinian people. We call on PCUSA to retract their resolution.

Central Conference of American Rabbis
Rabbi Lewis Kamrass (he/him), President
Rabbi Hara E. Person (she/her), Chief Executive

American Conference of Cantors
Cantor Seth Warner (he/him), President
Rachel Roth (she/her), Chief Operating Officer

Union for Reform Judaism
Jennifer Brodkey Kaufman (she/her), Chair
Rabbi Rick Jacobs (he/him), President

July 4, 2022

We mourn the six lives taken today in Highland Park, IL and pray for all those injured, beloved members of our Reform Jewish community among them. On this day celebrating American independence, it is clear that Americans’ ability to live independent of the fear of gun violence is ever more elusive. With each massacre, the freedom to gather, pray, shop, learn, and simply be, free from fear of gun violence, is taken away.

As we await news that the perpetrator of today’s violence has been apprehended, we also know that there will be a next time. The recently passed federal legislation was an important step forward, but far from sufficient to address the scope of gun violence happening in every state in the nation. This country remains tragically in the grip of those unwilling to act to curb gun violence. Mass shootings, as well as daily loss of life from firearms, plague us. But let us be clear: The proliferation of guns is a policy choice that state and national policy makers can stop. It is on each of us to demand they do so.

May the memories of those lost today be a blessing and may their loved ones find comfort and peace.

Central Conference of American Rabbis
Rabbi Lewis Kamrass, President
Rabbi Hara E. Person, Chief Executive

Union for Reform Judaism
Jennifer Brodkey Kaufman, Chair
Rabbi Rick Jacobs, President

Commission on Social Action and Religious Action Center
Susan Friedberg Kalson, Chair
Rabbi Jonah Dov Pesner, Director

American Conference of Cantors
Cantor Seth Warner, President
Rachel Roth, Chief Operating Officer

July 1, 2022

The Central Conference of American Rabbis bemoans Thursday’s Supreme Court decision in West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency, which severely limits the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to regulate carbon emissions that have led to the disastrous climate crisis facing our planet.

In our Resolution on the Climate Crisis, issued in May of this year, we noted that U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres described the report of “[t]he Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Crisis, a U.N. body comprised of international climate scientists” as “‘an atlas of human suffering and a damning indictment of failed climate leadership.’…[T]he report … emphasized that unless greenhouse gas emissions are quickly reduced, the world’s collective ability to overcome the crisis will soon be overwhelmed.”[i] Since President Biden has taken office and reentered the 2015 Paris Agreement, the U.S. has been obligated to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions, and the Environmental Protection Agency has robustly pursued this aim, a power delegated to it by Congress. Today’s Supreme Court ruling imperils that important work, irresponsibly arguing that Congress would need to predict all the strategies required to achieve a goal it authorizes an Executive Branch agency to pursue.

Midrash teaches “God’s prescient warning to the first human beings: ‘Look at how beautiful and excellent My works are! Take care not to spoil or destroy My world, for if you do, there will be no one to repair it after you.’”[ii] At a time when Congress is so divided, and the prospect for renewed climate legislation is dim, Thursday’s ruling offers the U.S. government few tools to confront the climate crisis that threatens God’s creation.

Even so, Reform rabbis refuse to abandon hope. The CCAR urges Congress to provide the specific authorization that the Supreme Court now requires in order for the Environmental Protection Agency to achieve its mandate to reduce carbon emissions and bequeath a habitable world to future generations.

Rabbi Lewis Kamrass, President
Rabbi Hara E. Person, Chief Executive
Central Conference of American Rabbis

[i] Central Conference of American Rabbis Resolution on the Climate Crisis, May 20, 2022, Central Conference of American Rabbis Resolution on the Climate Crisis – Central Conference of American Rabbis (ccarnet.org).

[ii] Kohlet Rabbah 7:13, cited in CCAR Resolution on the Climate Crisis.

June 29, 2022

The Central Conference of American Rabbis is deeply concerned by this week’s Supreme Court ruling in Kennedy v. Bremerton School District. The Court ruled in favor of public high school football coach, Joseph Kennedy, who engaged in public prayer while on duty and “invited” students to join him.

Reform rabbis are long on record in support of the free exercise of religion, a First Amendment right which has enabled Judaism and a host of religions to thrive on American soil. At the same time, we have consistently opposed the establishment of religion by the state, equally guaranteed by the First Amendment.

Members of the CCAR have often counseled young people in the communities we serve who have been “invited” to participate in Christian prayer at public schools, often in connection with athletics. For decades, young people in our communities have told us that “invitations” like Coach Kennedy’s are coercive, and that when they decline to participate, student athletes face consequences—from their coaches, from their peers, or both. Those consequences have ranged from reduction in playing time, to social isolation, to anger, and even to violence. CCAR rabbis have frequently and successfully intervened with public school officials to end these coercive practices, which were prohibited until this week’s ruling. Whenever a state employee leads a public prayer, inviting students to participate, they are establishing a state religion, contrary to our Constitution’s First Amendment.

Public schools should be free of an established state religion. With the recent Supreme Court decision, representatives of minority religions, including CCAR rabbis, have lost a tool that our Constitution had provided to keep our students safe in public schools. Reform rabbis will not rest in our advocacy for our young people and will continue to support them when they bravely stand up to religious coercion in their public schools.

Rabbi Lewis Kamrass, President
Rabbi Hara E. Person, Chief Executive
Central Conference of American Rabbis

June 24, 2022

The Central Conference of American Rabbis condemns, in the strongest terms, the Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization and deplores the reversal of the precedent set a half-century ago in Roe v. Wade. Roe guaranteed a right to reproductive health care, enabling tens of millions of pregnant people to terminate pregnancies that threatened their wellbeing. Now we face a terrifying future: hundreds of millions of Americans, in about half of the fifty states, will lack access to safe and legal abortion care.

The CCAR proudly participated in an amicus curiae brief submitted to the Supreme Court in support of Jackson Women’s Health Organization and of reproductive freedom.

Abortion access is part of comprehensive healthcare. Overturning Roe v. Wade will not stop abortions. What it will do is increase the occurrence of illegal, dangerous abortions, thereby causing unnecessary death and suffering. We know that low-income women and all gender non-conforming individuals who can become pregnant will suffer the greatest burden of state abortion bans triggered by a reversal of Roe v. Wade. This ruling will harm not only countless individuals, but also their families and communities.

This decision violates the First Amendment’s guarantee of the right to free exercise of religion for Jews and others whose religious traditions, like ours, permit abortion. Moreover, this ruling is a violation of the principle of the separation of church and state, a cherished ideal of our unique American democracy.

The CCAR, its members, and communities will not rest in our ongoing struggle for reproductive liberty, working with all our Reform Movement partner organizations, as well as the National Council of Jewish Women, Jews of other movements, women’s and LGBTQ advocacy groups, interfaith partners, and all Americans who join this work for individual bodily autonomy and privacy.

In the strongest terms, CCAR rabbis call on Congress to enact federal legislation guaranteeing a right to safe and legal abortion for all within our nation’s borders. Reform rabbis will continue to oppose state laws that restrict abortion rights. The CCAR will support its members who are in need of abortion care, wherever they live, just as Reform rabbis will be present for members of the communities they serve and for all Americans in need of abortion care—again, wherever they live. The CCAR supports our rabbis who will now choose to participate in civil disobedience if necessary to save the lives of and ensure access to healthcare for pregnant people.

At this terrifying moment in American history for all people who can become pregnant and for all who love them, Reform rabbis stand ready to comfort the afflicted and to act on behalf of all who need any kind of reproductive health care, including abortion care.

Rabbi Lewis Kamrass, President
Rabbi Hara E. Person, Chief Executive
Central Conference of American Rabbis

 June 23, 2022

The Central Conference of American Rabbis deplores Thursday’s Supreme Court ruling striking down reasonable gun violence legislation, specifically a New York State law that established appropriately strict limits on carrying firearms outside the home.

The CCAR has long supported legislation to prevent gun violence, which has only become more critically needed in recent years as gun deaths have dramatically increased. The latest data available from the Pew Research Center indicates that “More Americans died of gun-related injuries in 2020 than in any other year on record…That included a record number of gun murders, as well as a near-record number of gun suicides.” The study also found that gun violence deaths were lower in states with more restrictive legislation such as the law now invalidated by the Supreme Court.[i]

Even as we abhor this Supreme Court ruling, Reform rabbis celebrate compromise gun violence prevention legislation put forward by a bipartisan coalition in the United States Senate. That bill would slow gun purchases by purchasers under age twenty-one, providing the time needed for more extensive background checks than those currently required. It would also offer financial incentives for states to implement red-flag laws, which enable law enforcement, with due process, to remove guns at least temporarily from people deemed dangerous. Importantly, it would close the so-called “boyfriend loophole,” at long last including dating partners in an existing federal law that prohibits domestic abusers from purchasing firearms.

Reform rabbis advocate for much tighter gun restrictions than those proposed in the Senate, but we are grateful for the progress that has been made, and we urge all members of Congress to support this lifesaving legislation.

The CCAR, its members, and the communities we serve will remain staunch advocates for gun violence prevention legislation. We will continue to be present to comfort victims’ families, and we will pray for the healing of all who are injured, both in mass shootings and in the gun violence that plagues our nation every day. Reform rabbis will not rest until our entire society joins us in refusing to stand idly by while our neighbors bleed (paraphrasing Leviticus 19:16).

Rabbi Lewis Kamrass, President
Rabbi Hara Person, Chief Executive
Central Conference of American Rabbis

[i] John Gramlich, “What the data says about gun deaths in the U.S.” (Pew Research Center, February 3, 2022).

May 24, 2022

With hundreds of millions of Americans, the Central Conference of American Rabbis is horrified by the mass murder at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. With at least 18 students, a teacher, and the assailant dead, this killing is the deadliest in an elementary school since the Sandy Hook massacre a decade ago.

Before and since Sandy Hook, Reform rabbis, communities we serve, and our partner organizations in and beyond the Reform Movement have been among the millions of Americans repeatedly calling for gun violence prevention legislation. [i] Facing a gun industry which has purchased untold power in Washington and having experienced too many decades of advocating in vain, we could be forgiven were we to despair. We might even ask whether mass murders such as this have become so routine that they do not merit our focused attention. We vow never to become desensitized to murdered children and grieving parents.

Prayer alone is inadequate as a response to such horrors as this. We will not be silenced, but will once again raise our voices for gun violence prevention legislation. We will never stand idly by while our neighbors bleed (Leviticus 19:16). And we will also pray. For the lives lost. For the futures never to be realized. For grieving families and their communities. For healing of those wounded. For leaders to have the courage to place safety and lives over partisan politics. For the healing of our bleeding nation.

Rabbi Lewis Kamrass, President

Rabbi Hara E. Person, Chief Executive

Central Conference of American Rabbis

[1] CCAR Resolution on Gun Violence, August 2015

CCAR Resolution on Gun Violence

May 17, 2022

The Central Conference of American Rabbis mourns the tragic loss of life in yet another hate-motivated mass murder—this time, targeting Black Americans in Buffalo, New York. The murder of ten individuals, with others wounded, again highlights the deadly consequences of combining the proliferation of assault weapons in America with the normalization of the “great replacement” conspiracy.

The CCAR demands forceful enforcement of existing gun laws, even as we call for the enactment of new and sorely needed gun control legislation.

Having often raised the collective rabbinic voice against hate speech, the CCAR applauds President Biden, Vice President Harris, and members of Congress of both parties who have clearly condemned white nationalism and its deadly “great replacement” conspiracy. We deplore political leaders who have profited from hate and yet remain silent, even in the wake of the Buffalo massacre. This conspiracy theory is both racist and antisemitic, positing that alleged Jewish power brokers seek to replace a white Christian power structure with one dominated by people of color.

Both Jewish history and Judaism’s sacred texts have taught us that malicious speech can kill. Talmud (Arachin 15b) cautions that wicked speech can kill the one who utters it, those who hear it, and the target of the slander. In Buffalo yesterday, those words proved tragically true of those who purvey the “great replacement” conspiracy.

Reform rabbis extend condolences to the families of those who were murdered in Buffalo, and we pray for the healing of the wounded. We pray for healing, too, for the community of Buffalo, New York, home to CCAR members and the communities they serve. We pray for the day “when all may sit under their vine and fig tree, with none to make them afraid” (Micah 4:4).

Rabbi Lewis Kamrass
President 

Rabbi Hara E. Person
Chief Executive
Central Conference of American Rabbis