FOR CONGREGATIONS
If you are a pro-Israel congregation seeking to hire a rabbi who mirrors your position, you may increasingly face challenges due to current trends.
Antizionist rabbinical candidates are well aware that Reconstructionist congregations overwhelmingly support Israel as a Jewish state. These candidates may take steps to conceal their true position in order to enhance their employability.* This may include scrubbing social media postings, using rehearsed evasion during interviews, and interposing faux ethical objections to your searching inquiry.
There are steps Reconstructionist congregations can take to find pro-Israel rabbinical candidates, other than seeking rabbis from other movements. These include:
Using Beit Kaplan as a resource. We do not recommend specific rabbis for specific congregations. This is your individual choice. However, only legitimately ordained clergy, committed to Reconstructionist principles of peoplehood and process, who are committed Zionists, are admitted to Beit Kaplan. If you send us your job listing, we will circulate it to our membership. We will also confirm whether any applicant is a Beit Kaplan member (as not all of our members are listed on our website). After that, the matter rests between you and the applicant.
Vetting all candidates carefully. It will up to you to determine whether the views about Israel of rabbis who are not Beit Kaplan members, reflect your own.
Do not be deterred from asking whether a candidate supports Israel as a Jewish state, and pursuing that line of inquiry in depth.
Carefully review a candidate’s social media posts. If posts are restricted by privacy settings, you may ask to look at those private posts. If a candidate exercises the right to refuse this request, you are free to draw your own conclusions from this refusal.
Ask for personal and professional references, and research whether those persons are Zionists. Candidates and their references are often like-minded.
Speak to the references about the candidate’s position on Israel. If the reference deems the question somehow “improper,” or responds “it’s not for me to say,” you may infer that a candid response would be unfavorable.
A more general right of a congregation
If your congregation feels that it is guided by Reconstructionist philosophy and practice to any degree, you have the right to call yourself a Reconstructionist congregation. You do not have to be affiliated with Reconstructing Judaism to be a Reconstructionist congregation. The word is not trademarked, and in any event, Reconstructing Judaism does not “trade” as Reconstructionist.
It's a small Reconstructionist rabbinical world
Beit Kaplan’s members are mostly RRC graduates. Chances are strong that at least one of us knows the rabbi you are interviewing. If we can assist you in any way, please let us know through this website’s Contact Page.
* There are multiple reports that antizionist students self-censor, and use pseudonyms when speaking to the media:
https://jewishcurrents.org/a-reconstructionist-reckoning
https://inthesetimes.com/article/anti-zionist-israel-gaza-jewish-institutions