Introduction

The Assembly for Open Judaism affirms the dignity, safety, peoplehood, and self-determination of the Jewish people. We affirm the right of Jews everywhere to live free from antisemitism, oppression, hatred, violence, exile, and forced assimilation. We affirm the deep ancestral, historical, spiritual, and cultural relationship between the Jewish people and the Land of Israel. We also affirm the right of Jews to gather, to return, to build community, and to participate in collective Jewish life in our ancestral homeland.

At the same time, the Assembly recognizes that the modern State of Israel is not identical with Judaism itself. The government of Israel does not speak for all Jews. The religious authorities of Israel do not define Judaism for all Jews. The Chief Rabbinate and other state-recognized Orthodox structures represent only one part of the Jewish world, and their authority, however powerful within Israeli civic life, does not extend over the whole Jewish people.

For this reason, the Assembly’s position must be stated with care. We support Jewish self-determination. We support the right of Jews to live safely in the Land of Israel. We support the right of Israel to exist as a homeland and refuge for the Jewish people. But this support must never be confused with unconditional support for every action of the Israeli government, every policy of the Israeli state, every military decision, every religious ruling, or every gatekeeping structure that claims the power to decide who is and is not a Jew.

Our commitment is first to the Jewish people as one extended family, one dispersed tribe, one covenantal civilization spread across the face of the earth. Politics must never be allowed to destroy that deeper bond.

Defining Zionism Carefully

Zionism, in its most basic and careful sense, is the movement for the self-determination of the Jewish people in their ancestral homeland, the Land of Israel. That definition matters. Zionism is not, by itself, a claim that every action of the modern Israeli government is righteous. It is not a claim that every Jew must agree with every Israeli policy. It is not a claim that the State of Israel is above criticism. It is not a claim that Jewish life outside Israel is incomplete, invalid, or inferior. It is not a claim that Palestinians, Arabs, Muslims, Christians, Druze, or any other people are without dignity, rights, history, or legitimate human concern.

At its core, Zionism is a response to the long history of Jewish exile, persecution, displacement, and vulnerability. It is the conviction that Jews, like other peoples, have the right to exist as a people, to preserve their culture, to return to their ancestral land, and to participate in collective national life.

But Zionism has never been only one thing. There have been political Zionists, religious Zionists, cultural Zionists, labor Zionists, revisionist Zionists, liberal Zionists, non-Zionists, anti-Zionist Jews, and Jews whose connection to Israel is spiritual, familial, cultural, or historical rather than ideological. The Assembly therefore rejects simplistic definitions. To be a Zionist does not necessarily mean one supports the Israeli government in all things. To criticize Israel does not necessarily mean one rejects Jewish self-determination. To oppose certain forms of Zionist politics does not automatically mean one hates Jews. And to support the existence of Israel does not mean one is indifferent to the suffering of others.

The Assembly’s position begins with this distinction: Jewish self-determination is a legitimate and necessary concern, but no modern political movement, state, party, or government is beyond moral judgment.

Biblical Israel, Messianic Israel, and the Modern State

The Assembly also distinguishes between the Israel of the Bible, the Israel of Jewish hope and prayer, and the modern State of Israel.

The Israel of the Bible is the people Israel: the children of Israel, the tribes, the covenantal people, the community bound to Torah, memory, land, exile, return, repentance, and divine calling. Biblical Israel is not merely a political entity. It is a people, a sacred story, a covenantal inheritance, and a moral responsibility.

The messianic Israel of Jewish longing is likewise not reducible to a modern nation-state. In Jewish tradition, the hope for return, restoration, peace, justice, and divine nearness is much larger than any present political arrangement. The prophetic vision of Israel is not merely that Jews possess land or political power, but that justice flows, that the stranger is not oppressed, that widows and orphans are protected, that Torah is honored, that peace is pursued, and that the nations see righteousness rather than domination.

The modern State of Israel is a real nation-state. It has borders, parties, courts, armies, taxes, elections, bureaucracies, religious institutions, competing ideologies, and political failures. It is a homeland to millions of Jews. It is also a state like other states: capable of courage and error, refuge and exclusion, moral responsibility and moral failure.

For this reason, some Jewish organizations and Jewish individuals do not support Israel politically, or do not identify as Zionist, or sharply oppose particular Israeli policies. Some do so from secular ethical commitments. Some do so from religious convictions. Some do so because they distinguish between the sacred Israel of Jewish tradition and the modern political state. Others support Israel’s existence but criticize its government, its treatment of non-Orthodox Jews, its treatment of Palestinians, its religious establishment, or its political direction.

The Assembly recognizes that these disagreements exist within the Jewish people. We do not require uniformity of political opinion as a condition of Jewish belonging.

The Government of Israel Does Not Represent All Jews

The government of Israel represents the citizens of the State of Israel through its own political system. It does not represent all Jews worldwide.

Diaspora Jews are not subjects of the Israeli government. Jews in America, Europe, Africa, Asia, Latin America, Australia, and elsewhere are not politically represented by the Knesset. Israeli elections do not determine the religious, ethical, or communal conscience of world Jewry. No prime minister, cabinet, coalition, or party has the authority to speak for every Jew.

This distinction is morally necessary. When people blame all Jews for the actions of the Israeli government, they engage in collective guilt. That is antisemitic. When people demand that every Jew publicly answer for Israel before being allowed to participate in civic life, they impose a political test on Jewish existence. That is antisemitic. When people treat synagogues, Jewish schools, Jewish community centers, Jewish cemeteries, Jewish students, or Jewish families as representatives of the Israeli state, they endanger Jews and collapse the distinction between a people and a government.

The Assembly rejects that collapse completely.

At the same time, the Assembly also rejects the idea that love for the Jewish people requires silence about the Israeli government. Governments may be criticized. Policies may be opposed. Leaders may be held accountable. Military actions, civil policies, settlement policies, religious policies, and immigration policies may all be debated. Such criticism must be judged by its content, not by whether it makes political partisans uncomfortable.

Criticism of Israel is not automatically antisemitism. But criticism becomes antisemitic when it denies Jews the same rights granted to other peoples, erases Jewish history, calls for harm against Jews, uses classic antisemitic tropes, holds all Jews collectively responsible, or treats Jewish self-determination as uniquely illegitimate.

Israeli Religious Authorities Do Not Define Judaism for All Jews

The Assembly is especially concerned with the religious gatekeeping exercised by Israeli religious authorities, particularly the Chief Rabbinate and related Orthodox structures.

The Chief Rabbinate plays a powerful role within Israeli religious life, especially in areas such as marriage, divorce, conversion, burial, kashrut, and personal status. But civil recognition, rabbinic recognition, and Jewish identity are not the same thing.

The Assembly rejects the idea that one Orthodox-controlled religious establishment in the modern State of Israel has the moral or spiritual right to decide who counts as a Jew for the entire Jewish people. We especially oppose policies and attitudes that delegitimize non-Orthodox Jews, Jews by Reform conversion, Conservative conversion, Reconstructionist conversion, Humanistic Jewish adoption, Open Jewish adoption, independent beit din conversion, Karaite practice, secular Jewish identity, patrilineal Jewish identity, or other sincere pathways into Jewish peoplehood.

This gatekeeping is harmful. It wounds converts. It humiliates families. It divides the Jewish people. It treats diaspora communities as religiously inferior. It tells Jews who have lived Jewish lives, raised Jewish children, joined Jewish communities, studied Torah, suffered antisemitism, and bound their destiny to the Jewish people that they are somehow not Jewish enough.

The Assembly rejects that.

Judaism is larger than the Chief Rabbinate. Judaism is larger than Israeli Orthodoxy. Judaism is larger than any one halakhic system, denomination, institution, or state bureaucracy. We are a dispersed people, a tribe spread across the whole earth. For one small portion of the Jewish world to claim final authority over Jewish identity in our shared ancestral homeland is not only unjust; it is contrary to the living reality of Jewish history.

The Right of Return and the Right to Belong

The Assembly supports the right of Jews to return to the ancestral homeland of the Jewish people. We affirm the importance of Israel as a refuge, especially in light of Jewish history. After centuries of exile, expulsions, pogroms, discrimination, genocide, and statelessness, the Jewish people have a legitimate need for a place where Jewish life can be protected, cultivated, and sustained.

But the right of return must be grounded in the broad reality of Jewish peoplehood, not in narrow religious exclusion.

A Jew should not be treated as a stranger in the Jewish homeland because an Israeli religious office dislikes the rabbi who oversaw their conversion. A Jewish family should not be divided because one branch is Orthodox and another is Reform. A convert should not be embraced in one Jewish community and rejected as counterfeit in another. A diaspora Jew should not be welcomed for demographic purposes but rejected for marriage, burial, or religious status.

The Assembly supports a broad, inclusive understanding of Jewish belonging. We affirm those born Jewish, those adopted into the Jewish people, those who convert, those who return after generations of disconnection, those who are secular, those who are religious, those who are doubtful, those who are spiritual, those who are observant, those who are non-observant, and those whose Jewish lives do not fit neatly into denominational categories.

The Jewish homeland must be a homeland for the Jewish people, not merely for Jews approved by one religious bureaucracy.

Support Does Not Mean Silence

The Assembly supports the right of Israel to exist as a Jewish homeland and supports the right of Jews to self-determination. But this does not require support for every Israeli government, every Israeli law, every Israeli military action, every coalition, every party, every settlement policy, every religious ruling, or every statement made by Israeli leaders.

Love is not silence. Loyalty is not obedience. Family does not require agreement on every political matter.

Indeed, Jewish tradition itself is built on argument for the sake of heaven. Our people have always wrestled with power, justice, law, mercy, exile, return, land, covenant, and responsibility. To criticize Israel from within Jewish concern is not betrayal. It may be an expression of Jewish conscience.

The Assembly therefore makes room for Jews who support Israel strongly, Jews who support Israel with deep criticism, Jews who are non-Zionist, Jews who are anti-Zionist for religious or ethical reasons, and Jews who are still struggling to name their position. We ask only that such disagreements remain rooted in love for the Jewish people, opposition to antisemitism, and respect for human dignity.

Family Before Politics

The Assembly’s purpose is not to enforce one political ideology. Our purpose is to recognize, support, gather, teach, and strengthen Jews.

Those Jews who do not support Israel, or who oppose aspects of what happens in and around Israel, must have a voice equal to those who do support Israel. Jews who are deeply Zionist must not be treated as morally suspect for loving Israel. Jews who are critical of Israel must not be treated as traitors for raising ethical concerns. Jews who are afraid for Israel’s survival must be heard. Jews who are heartbroken over Palestinian suffering must be heard. Jews who distrust Israeli religious authorities must be heard. Jews who find spiritual meaning in the Land of Israel must be heard.

We are one people. We are one extended family. We are one tribe.

That unity does not erase disagreement. It gives us a sacred reason to remain at the table when disagreement becomes painful.

The Assembly therefore holds the following position:

We affirm the right of the Jewish people to safety, dignity, self-determination, and return.

We affirm the right of Israel to exist as a homeland and refuge for the Jewish people.

We affirm that the Land of Israel holds deep ancestral, historical, spiritual, and cultural meaning for Jews everywhere.

We deny that the modern State of Israel is identical with biblical Israel, messianic Israel, Judaism, or the Jewish people as a whole.

We deny that the Israeli government speaks for all Jews.

We deny that the Chief Rabbinate or any Orthodox-controlled religious structure has the right to define Jewish identity for the whole Jewish people.

We oppose antisemitism in all forms, including the collective blaming of Jews for Israeli government actions.

We oppose religious gatekeeping that excludes non-Orthodox Jews, converts, diaspora Jews, secular Jews, or Jews whose identities are not recognized by Israeli Orthodox authorities.

We support open conversation among Jews of differing political convictions.

We place Jewish peoplehood above partisan loyalty.

We choose family before politics.

Conclusion

The Assembly’s stance on Zionism and Israel is therefore one of careful affirmation and moral independence. We affirm Jewish self-determination without surrendering Jewish conscience. We affirm the Jewish connection to the Land of Israel without confusing the land, the people, the state, the government, and the religious establishment as though they were all the same thing. We affirm Israel’s importance without making an idol of the Israeli state. We affirm Jewish unity without demanding political uniformity.

The Jewish people have survived because we have carried one another through exile, argument, persecution, renewal, grief, and hope. We have disagreed fiercely and remained one people. We have lived in many lands and still remembered one another. We have prayed toward Zion, argued about Zion, returned to Zion, criticized Zion, loved Zion, and wrestled with what Zion means.

The Assembly stands within that wrestling.

We stand for the safety and dignity of Jews everywhere. We stand for the right of Jews to return to our ancestral homeland. We stand for the right of Jewish communities across the world to define and live Judaism with integrity. We stand against antisemitism, coercion, exclusion, and religious gatekeeping. We stand for a Judaism wide enough to hold our arguments without breaking our people.

Above all, we stand with the Jewish people.

Humanism is often misunderstood as something that must stand outside religion, against religion, or in deliberate rejection of God. In many modern conversations, to call oneself a humanist is often assumed to mean that one is secular, non-theistic, rationalist, or opposed to religious belief. For some people, that is exactly what humanism means, and there is nothing dishonest about that. Secular humanism has given many people a meaningful ethical framework rooted in reason, compassion, human dignity, and responsibility without reliance on supernatural belief.

But humanism does not have to be limited to secularism. There can also be religious humanism, spiritual humanism, cultural humanism, and Jewish humanism. A humanistic approach does not necessarily require disbelief in God. At its heart, humanism is a commitment to the dignity, agency, responsibility, creativity, and moral worth of human beings. It asks us to take human life seriously. It calls us to build a more compassionate, ethical, and just world. It reminds us that our choices matter, that our communities matter, and that the flourishing of human beings is not a secondary concern.

For Judaism, this conversation is especially important. Judaism has never been only a system of private belief. It is not merely a creed, a theology, or a set of abstract doctrines. Judaism is the living civilization of the Jewish people. It is Torah, memory, language, ritual, ethics, history, peoplehood, culture, family, law, interpretation, argument, mourning, celebration, survival, and hope. Jews have always wrestled with belief and doubt, tradition and change, obligation and freedom, the sacred and the practical. Some Jews believe in God with deep conviction. Some do not believe in God at all. Some are uncertain. Some use religious language symbolically, poetically, culturally, or spiritually. Some pray traditionally. Some meditate in silence. Some find their deepest Jewish connection in Shabbat candles, Torah study, ethical action, Hebrew song, family memory, or the struggle for justice.

A Jewish humanism worthy of the name must be large enough to hold this diversity. It must be able to say that a Jew who believes in God and a Jew who does not believe in God may both live meaningful, serious, ethical, and committed Jewish lives. It must refuse the false choice between humanity and God, between reason and ritual, between secular honesty and sacred meaning. This is very much in harmony with the foundational vision of the Assembly for Open Judaism, which describes itself as “humanistic, spiritually open, and theologically non-coercive,” and which affirms that Jewish belonging cannot be reduced to theology alone.

Jewish humanism begins with the dignity of the human person. Some Jews ground that dignity in the belief that every human being is created in the image of God. Others ground it in conscience, reason, shared vulnerability, moral responsibility, or human solidarity. The language may differ, but the ethical demand remains. Human beings must not be degraded, exploited, humiliated, or treated as disposable. A Jewish community must be judged not only by its prayers, symbols, or institutions, but by the way it treats people: the poor, the stranger, the convert, the doubter, the child, the elder, the grieving, the outsider, and the one who does not easily fit.

This means that a person can be both theistic and humanist. Belief in God does not have to diminish human responsibility. In a Jewish context, it should deepen it. If one believes that human beings bear divine worth, then human dignity becomes sacred. If one believes that Torah calls Israel to justice, then ethical life becomes a central expression of faith. If one believes that God desires righteousness, compassion, and repair, then human action becomes not a replacement for faith but one of faith’s most important fruits. Prayer cannot become an excuse for passivity. Ritual cannot become a substitute for compassion. Belief cannot become a weapon used to exclude, shame, or control.

At the same time, a person can be non-theistic and fully Jewish. A Jew who does not believe in God may still love Torah, honor Jewish memory, observe Shabbat, celebrate the festivals, study Hebrew, participate in Jewish community, raise Jewish children, mourn with Jewish ritual, and work for justice out of deeply Jewish commitments. Such a person may understand blessings as poetry, prayer as reflection, mitzvot as inherited practices of ethical and communal meaning, and Torah as the central literary and moral inheritance of the Jewish people. None of this is shallow. None of this is fake. It is a serious way of living Jewishly with intellectual honesty and communal responsibility.

This is why Jewish humanism does not need to be anti-religious. It can be God-optional without being God-denying. It can make room for the believer, the atheist, the agnostic, the skeptic, the mystic, the traditionalist, the cultural Jew, the spiritual seeker, and the symbolic interpreter. What matters is not forced agreement about God, but shared commitment to Jewish peoplehood, ethical responsibility, learning, ritual meaning, freedom of conscience, and human dignity.

This also allows us to speak of humanism without secularism. Secular humanism is one valid expression of humanism, but it is not the only one. Humanism can also live inside religious language, spiritual practice, sacred memory, and communal ritual. A Jew may believe in God and still affirm that human beings must take responsibility for the world. A Jew may not believe in God and still experience awe, reverence, gratitude, grief, wonder, and sacred connection. Spirituality does not always mean supernatural belief. Sometimes spirituality is the deep human experience of standing before life with humility, before death with tenderness, before beauty with gratitude, and before history with responsibility.

Jewish spiritual humanism recognizes that people need more than ideas. We need rituals that carry us through life. We need candles to mark sacred time. We need songs that connect us to ancestors. We need stories that teach us who we are. We need mourning practices that hold us when words fail. We need festivals that bind families and communities together. We need ethical obligations that call us beyond selfishness. We need belonging.

In this sense, Jewish humanism is not a lesser Judaism. It is not Judaism emptied of seriousness. It is not merely ethnic nostalgia or vague spirituality. Properly understood, it is a demanding path. It asks us to live with integrity. It asks us to honor tradition without freezing it. It asks us to adapt inherited forms without treating them carelessly. It asks us to welcome difference without abandoning standards. It asks us to build communities where freedom of conscience and communal responsibility are held together.

A Jewish humanist perspective also challenges coercion. If belief is forced, it becomes dishonest. If prayer is required but not believed, it can become theater. If conversion or Jewish adoption requires theological claims a person cannot sincerely make, then the process risks rewarding performance over truth. A serious Jewish community should not ask people to lie in order to belong. It should teach, form, challenge, and invite, but it should not coerce the inner life of conscience.

This does not mean theology is unimportant. Jewish theology, philosophy, mysticism, liturgy, and God-language are part of the Jewish inheritance. They deserve study and respect. The names of God, the poetry of the siddur, the cries of the prophets, the arguments of the sages, the longing of the mystics, and the ethical fire of Torah all remain available to us. But they are not weapons. They are not tests of worth. They are inheritances to be engaged honestly.

A Jewish humanism of this kind can therefore become a meeting place. It can welcome the religious Jew who believes deeply but rejects dogmatism. It can welcome the secular Jew who does not believe but still seeks meaningful ritual and community. It can welcome the agnostic Jew who is unsure but wants to live Jewishly. It can welcome the spiritual Jew who finds God-language meaningful but not literal. It can welcome the traditional Jew who loves inherited forms but wants space for conscience. It can welcome the seeker who wishes to join the Jewish people without being forced into artificial certainty.

Such a Judaism does not ask everyone to answer the question of God in the same way. Instead, it asks: How shall we live? How shall we honor our people? How shall we carry memory forward? How shall we treat one another? How shall we mark time, teach our children, welcome the stranger, bury our dead, celebrate joy, pursue justice, and build communities worthy of human dignity?

This is the heart of Jewish humanism as a perspective: the belief that Jewish life flourishes when human dignity, moral responsibility, freedom of conscience, ritual meaning, and peoplehood stand at the center. Some will see God at that center. Some will see humanity. Some will see the Jewish people. Some will see mystery. Some will refuse to name it at all. Yet all may still gather around the work of Jewish life.

Jewish humanism is therefore not a rejection of Judaism. It is one way of returning to Judaism’s deepest human concerns. It reminds us that Torah is not only studied but lived. Ritual is not only performed but embodied. Community is not only organized but cared for. Belonging is not only inherited but chosen and renewed. Ethics are not only discussed but practiced.

In the end, Jewish humanism offers a path beyond the forced choice between belief and disbelief. It says that the believer may believe with humility, the nonbeliever may live with integrity, the doubter may question honestly, and the seeker may continue seeking. It says that Jewish life is large enough for all who bind themselves sincerely to Jewish memory, Jewish responsibility, Jewish community, and the flourishing of human life.

It is humanistic without being anti-spiritual. It is spiritually open without being dogmatic. It is Jewish without making theology the price of admission. It is serious without being coercive. It is compassionate without being careless. It is rooted in the conviction that human dignity is sacred, Jewish belonging is profound, and the future of Jewish life depends not on uniformity of belief, but on integrity, learning, conscience, ritual, and shared responsibility.