‘I’ll represent world Jewry’
First Reform rabbi to become MK says he will hold egalitarian prayer services at Knesset when possible
Labor Party MK-elect Rabbi Gilad Kariv said his election to the Knesset is a strong message that non-Orthodox Judaism is becoming part of the Israeli mainstream and also a message to Diaspora Jews that “Netanyahu does not equal Israel, or the successors of Kahana.”
Kariv has served as the director of the Reform Movement in Israel for many years, and in a historic first for Israel will be the first Reform rabbi to serve in the Knesset.
Speaking to The Jerusalem Post on Thursday, Kariv said the top priority of the Labor Party was to remove Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from power, and expressed hope that this would be possible with either the cooperation of the rightwing Yamina and New Hope parties or the Arab parties.
Asked about the significance of a Reform rabbi serving in the Knesset, Kariv pointed to the ferocious response and caustic comments made by the farright and ultra-Orthodox parties regarding progressive Jews in the wake of the recent High Court decision on non-Orthodox conversions.
“What we saw after the court ruling on conversion, the incitement and manipulative political use of the ruling by the ultra-Orthodox parties, you understand the significance of having a non-Orthodox rabbi in Knesset,” said Kariv.
The rabbi said that “the incitement and manipulative political use of the conversion ruling by the ultra-Orthodox parties” and the presence of “Kahana’s successors, and ultra-nationalist and chauvinist forces of the Religious Zionist Party” made representation of a progressive rabbi even more important.
Beyond the declarative statement of his election, Kariv said that the very presence of a Reform rabbi in the Knesset and the ability of the non-Orthodox movements to “present the ideology of liberal Judaism and present our perspective on current affairs” was “a clear sign
that non-Orthodox Judaism is becoming part of the Israeli mainstream.”
Kariv said that his election was also a positive sign for world Jewry that could be a starting point for improving relations between the Jewish state and the Diaspora, which he said have been badly strained in recent years under the Netanyahu government.
He had received hundreds if not thousands of messages from Jews and Jewish organizations around the world, he said, including AIPAC, J Street, Hadassah and WIZO branches, Jewish federations in North America, and beyond.
“It’s not about me, it’s that they feel after several years of destruction – and the souring of relations between Israel and Diaspora Jews – that this is a positive sign that there is a large public in Israel which does share with them the idea of religious pluralism and
Haknesset,’” ‘Beit fights on the battlefield.”