Buenos Aires bomb changed me
Iat the World Union for Progressive Judaism’s Connections event, I will be installed as the new president of the body that was founded in the UK almost 100 years ago and now represents 1.2 million Reform and Liberal Jews in more than 50 countries around the world.
My installation, in itself, shows the way our Judaism has changed and the challenges and opportunities we face as we slowly emerge out of this pandemic and period of global crisis.
Every president before me — from Lily Montagu to Rabbi Hugo Gryn to, most recently, Ambassador Rabbi David Saperstein — has come from the Jewish centres of Israel, America or Europe.
I come from the bottom of the world, literally. From Buenos Aires, Argentina. A place that has rarely been on the Jewish radar.
My grandparents fled there from Poland. They were the lucky ones; they were able to board one of the ships to escape the Nazis. The rest of our family were not so lucky and were victims of the Holocaust.
Argentina welcomed my grandparents and offered them freedom and hope. Their journey left me with a commitment to social justice, Jewish community and, most importantly, the belief that we must translate our shared human values into concrete actions to make the world better and to fix it.
At first I studied science, becoming a pharmacist. Then I had a calling that I must use my background to serve other people — becoming a youth leader, a social leader and then finally going to Israel to study for the rabbinate, receiving my ordination at Hebrew Union College in Jerusalem in 1993.
Progressive rabbis are commonplace for you in the UK, but when I returned to Argentina, I became the one and only Reform rabbi in the country.
The year I started, 1994, was also the year of the terrorist attack on the AMIA
Jewish community building, the deadliest antisemitic attack since the Holocaust, where 85 people were murdered and hundreds more injured.
This event changed my life.
I spent 10 days identifying members of my community who had been killed in the attack, so that their families could bury them.
Tragically, I then also saw how nothing was being done to catch those who had planned and committed this atrocity.
I had previously wanted to be a rabbi inside a community. But this led me outside, to lead demonstrations and to pursue justice. I had moved from the synagogue to the streets.
Next it took me into politics, being elected and then becoming the first ever rabbi to serve in the Argentinian government, as Minister for the Environment and Sustainable Development from 2015 to 2019.
Everyone asked: “Why is a rabbi taking on this position?” To them it didn’t make any sense. And then I explained that climate change is the symptom that shows how ill our earth is, so for me this was the most rabbinic job I would ever have. Tackling climate change and what we are doing to our planet will always be at the centre of my Judaism.
Now, as president of the World Union, I will lead an organisation facing its own set of critical challenges.
The Covid-19 crisis has changed the paradigm. We now need to restart and rebuild our Progressive Judaism in this post-pandemic world.
Working with our synagogues and movements around the globe — including Reform Judaism and Liberal Judaism in Britain — we must use Connections to tackle some very timely and tough questions.
How can we build on the innovations we have seen over the last year? How do we continue to blend religion with modernity? How do we use spirituality to fuel our social activism? How do we show all the things that Progressive Jews stand for, and not just what we stand against?
Most importantly, how do we change the status quo of religion and allow it to adapt and flourish as our times, lifestyles and demands change?
I take much inspiration from Jorge Mario Bergoglio, who you will know better as Pope Francis. He is my friend, my teacher, my mentor, my rabbi.
We met amid the socio-economic crisis of 2001 in Argentina. At the time he was Archbishop of Buenos Aires and would go out telling people how we needed to be proactive; he would say that we needed to be part of the solution, not part of the problem. You can’t stay only in your own temple.
This showed me how you can be both a spiritual religious leader and involved in fixing the world. It showed me that when you see a crisis, when you see corruption, when you see the dignity of humans being denigrated, you cannot stay in the synagogue or the church praying for God to come and fix it for you.
It is our work — and our responsibility — to go out and make that difference. That is what the Prophets of Israel taught us to do and I believe that, today, Progressive Judaism is the vision of those Prophets.
As we come out of the Covid crisis, who knows what type of world we will face? No one can predict, but we can learn from our Jewish memory. We are a resilient people. We have learned from every challenge in our history.
For me, the future that is coming is a good one. If you ask me what the new reality will be, then I don’t know. But if you ask me can we as a Jewish people succeed, then my answer is yes, we will thrive as this is part of our identity and our commitment. We do not give up and we do not lose our hope.
And as Progressive Jews, we have a window of opportunity with the change that is coming.
Religion is an institution unlike any other. You can use it for good or you can use it for bad. But, like any institution, religion has one underlying problem — it is not built to serve the people. It is built to maintain the status quo.
In a global world, where national borders are more fluid than ever before, the Jewish world is crying out for evolution.
Connection is our opportunity, as the extended Progressive worldwide family, to advance that message by putting on a wide-ranging, inclusive and joyful event — celebrating the multiple ways of living our Jewish cultural and spiritual lives, rooted in traditional values but in alignment with the modern world.
This is why I am so proud to be a Progressive Jew, because I respect religion but I also know that we need to constantly change and evolve.
We must not close our mind and just always do things the same way, because that’s what our parents and our ancestors did.
Of course, we need to honour the past. But now is the time for us to build our future.
To find out more about the World Union for Progressive Judaism and the Connections 2021 event (which runs from 20-22 May) please visit www.wupj.org