TIMES OF ISRAEL
To survive, American Judaism must abandon ideological inbreeding
by David Kinnear
September 20, 2017

…It is well known that the American synagogue is generally plagued by declining enrollment and diminished interest among congregants. Is preaching leftist politics from the pulpit a long-term accretive strategy? Reform Judaism is currently positioned to be indistinguishable from the Progressive wing of the Democratic Party, and it has nothing more to gain from overtly aligning itself with it. Actively alienating Conservatives is not a viable growth strategy when your market share of politically Liberal Jews is at saturation levels and Judaism is in relative decline. It was once possible to find Reform rabbis and lay leaders active in both the Republican and Democratic parties, and the movement’s policy opinions were more or less non-partisan. This is no longer the case. READ MORE