When a self-described Zionist organization stops acting like one

T’ruah calls itself a Zionist organization. Yet its recent actions, increasingly legitimizing individuals, organizations and ideas that reject Zionism and deny the legitimacy of Israel’s continued existence as a Jewish state suggest otherwise.

As leading rabbis of the Zionist Rabbinic Coalition, an independent network of more than 2,000 North American rabbis spanning all denominational movements, we are deeply concerned about this contradiction. T’ruah says that it is “committed to the State of Israel’s (Medinat Yisrael’s) future as a Jewish and democratic state side by side with Palestine.” We welcome that declaration. But an organization is ultimately defined by its choices and actions, not its mission statement.

Sponsored Large Custom Desk Mat: An Affordable Canvas for Your Desktop AliExpress See the review →

The decisions T’ruah has made in recent months are concerning, and they are not isolated lapses in judgment. They reflect a broader pattern that is becoming impossible to reconcile with the group’s stated identity.

As rabbis, we recognize that political disagreement within the Jewish community is both legitimate and necessary. Indeed, criticizing an Israeli government, opposing particular policies and advocating for Palestinian rights do not make a person or organization anti-Zionist. However, a rabbinic organization that claims a place within the Zionist community has a responsibility to distinguish such criticism from efforts to discredit Jewish national self-determination itself.

In recent months, T’ruah and its leadership have repeatedly elevated anti-Zionist figures and rhetoric.

T’ruah CEO Rabbi Jill Jacobs supported the effort to prevent Israeli President Isaac Herzog from addressing the Jewish Theological Seminary’s commencement in May, calling him “not an appropriate speaker” for the institution which ordains conservative rabbis. Her position treated the presence of Israel’s president, who plays a largely ceremonial and non-political role in the government, at a flagship American Jewish seminary as beyond acceptable communal bounds.

And yet, T’ruah gave New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, the country’s most prominent elected opponent of Israel’s existence as a Jewish state, a featured speaking role at its annual gala in June and publicized his participation without acknowledging his longstanding hostility toward the Jewish state, including calling for Israel’s prime minister to be arrested for war crimes.

As Rabbis David-Seth Kirshner, Erez Sherman and Neil Zuckerman observed: “There is something profoundly revealing about a moral framework that seeks to deny a platform to the president of the Jewish state while enthusiastically offering one to a politician openly hostile to its existence.”

At the same gala, T’ruah presented its Raphael Lemkin Human Rights Award to Gili Getz, who has publicly accused Israel of genocide and apartheid. Giving an award named for the jurist who coined the term “genocide” to someone who directs that accusation against the Jewish state represents a particularly disturbing degradation of moral and historical standards.

T’ruah also recently hired a national rabbinic organizer who describes herself as committed to doikayt, a favored term of Jewish anti-Zionists, and who, as recently as this past June, was the face of a Jewish Voice for Peace social-media campaign.

T’ruah’s tendency to showcase anti-Zionist voices did not begin this year. While Israel’s war against Hamas was still underway, it hired a rabbinical student organizer who had previously described her own position on Israel unequivocally: “Integral to my Jewishness is the activism I do with Jewish Voice for Peace, and my stance as anti-Zionist.”

She helped organize a “stop the genocide” rally less than two weeks after the Hamas-led terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

T’ruah also operates a joint project with Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, an organization that says it works most closely on “Israel-Palestine” with JVP and IfNotNow, describes itself as “proudly anti-nationalist” and grounds its work “as an alternative to Zionism.” This ongoing institutional partnership provides further reason to question how T’ruah defines its own Zionist commitments.

Taken together, these decisions reveal a consistent pattern. T’ruah opposes platforms for representatives of the Jewish state while providing such platforms, honors, employment and partnerships to people and organizations that oppose Zionism itself.

Engagement is not the same as endorsement. Jewish organizations should speak with political leaders and activists with whom they disagree. But prominently featuring someone on an organization’s most celebratory stage, honoring that person, hiring activists to shape the next generation of rabbis or maintaining formal partnerships confers legitimacy. When those choices recur, a platform is no longer neutral. It becomes an expression of that organization’s values.

This is not a demand for ideological conformity. Zionism encompasses profound disagreement over governments, borders, war, occupation, religion and Palestinian rights. The question is whether Jewish national self-determination and Israel’s continued existence as a Jewish state remain core values T’ruah is prepared to defend.

We call on the organization and its leaders to answer that question plainly and to bring its actions into line with its professed commitments: reaffirm unequivocally the Jewish people’s right to national self-determination; stop elevating activists and political leaders who seek to eliminate Israel as a Jewish state; and restore a meaningful distinction between criticism of Israel and repudiation of Zionism.

Human-rights advocacy and Zionism are not opposing commitments. A Zionist rabbinic organization should be capable of defending both. Increasingly, the actions of T’ruah actions suggest that it is unwilling to do so.

And so we ask, T’ruah: Are you still a Zionist organization?

Get the latest updates in our WhatsApp group.