Issue #5

The Philadelphia Jewish Voice November 2005

Reform Jews Begin Moving Towards Opposing War

Many Jews opposed to the Iraq invasion have been surprised to find that there has been no official stand taken by any of Judaism’s major movements. The following excerpt from the Shalom Center’s website provides an update on the beginnings of a unified voice in the Reform movement against the war.

The last Shalom Report reported that a congregation in New Jersey – M'kor Shalom – had decided to [make a motion] at the Reform biennial convention in mid-November to get the Union for Reform Judaism (URJ) to speak out against the war. We invited other congregations to write us to connect. A dozen did. We have now put M'kor Shalom in touch with them.

Meanwhile, they were told by the Reform movement's Commission on Social Action that all this activity had stirred the CSA to start preparing a resolution as well.

Of course there is a lot yet to do. Though the "whereases" of the M'kor Shalom proposal are strong, the directive part is very gentle – leaving all key decisions to the URJ steering committee.

So a strong show of antiwar commitment at the biennial in Houston will matter a lot.

Kol hakavod to M'kor Shalom and the others. We at The Shalom Center are glad to have dropped the crystal of commitment into what was and is obviously a super-saturated solution, ready to transform the Reform stance.

Now it is up to all reform congregations and members to keep up the momentum going toward a strong end-the-war stance.

See September 2005 Networking Central for more information on the Shalom Center.