Last Sunday, the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College (RRC) held its graduation ceremony, celebrating its newest rabbis. This year’s commencement marks 25 years since I graduated from RRC and became a rabbi myself.
At many rabbinical seminaries, the 25-year milestone is traditionally marked by honorary degrees recognizing a quarter century in the rabbinate. As that milestone approached, I found myself reflecting on how profoundly my relationship with Reconstructionism has changed over the years — particularly around questions of Jewish peoplehood, Zionism, and the place of Israel within contemporary Jewish life. Long before any formal conversations about anniversary recognition might have occurred, I communicated to the college that I would not be interested in participating.
That realization carried a deep sense of loss for me.
Reconstructionism helped shape me. Rooted in Mordecai Kaplan’s vision of Judaism as an evolving religious civilization, it offered me a framework for embracing Jewish tradition while believing Judaism could continue to grow, adapt, and speak meaningfully to modern life. Many of my teachers and mentors at the college influenced the rabbi I have become, even if some of the divisions and disagreements that have emerged over time now feel painful.
While I had already grown increasingly distant from parts of the Reconstructionist world, in recent years — and especially since October 7 — many others began grappling more openly with questions surrounding Jewish peoplehood, Zionism, and Israel. Those conversations ultimately helped give rise to Beit Kaplan, an initiative I helped found alongside other rabbis and leaders deeply connected to Reconstructionist ideals and troubled by the movement’s growing distance from forms of Jewish belonging and attachment to Israel that remain central to many Jews.
In that context, the college’s decision to honor Professor Hasia Diner at this year’s graduation did not feel incidental. Public reporting has made clear that Professor Diner has renounced Zionism and embraced positions that place her outside the broad historical consensus that views Jewish national self-determination as central to modern Jewish life. For many of us, the decision to honor someone identified with those views at this particular historical moment crystallized just how deep the divide within parts of the Reconstructionist world has become.
Honorary degrees are never merely acknowledgments of scholarship. They are moral and communal statements about the values institutions choose to elevate publicly. (Beit Kaplan’s full statement regarding Professor Diner’s degree: https://www.beitkaplan.org/statements)
Perhaps that is why the story of Mount Sinai feels so alive to me this Shavuot.
Shavuot marks the revelation of Torah at Sinai, and Jewish tradition teaches that all of us, somehow, stood there together.
In Judaism, Sinai is the symbolic moment of covenant — the place where a diverse and often fractious people became bound to one another through Torah and shared responsibility.
We often speak of Sinai as if it were a fixed moment in the distant past. But in truth, every generation returns to Sinai differently. Revelation unfolds through history, argument, heartbreak, renewal, and reinterpretation. Every generation encounters Torah through the realities of its own time and struggles.
The question is not whether Judaism changes. Of course it does.
The deeper question is:
What remains sacred enough to hold us together as we change?
For Mordecai Kaplan, Jewish peoplehood was never incidental to Judaism. It was foundational. Kaplan envisioned Judaism as an evolving religious civilization grounded in the life of the Jewish people, and he understood the rebuilding of Jewish civilization in both the Diaspora and the Land of Israel as intertwined projects of Jewish continuity and collective flourishing.
I continue to believe that.
Reasonable Jews can and do disagree passionately about Israeli policy and other important issues around Jewish life. I have no fear of respectful disagreement. Judaism has always contained argument.
What troubles me most is the growing tendency within some Jewish spaces to frame Zionism itself as incompatible with ethics, pluralism, or progressive values. I believe that framing accelerates a dangerous estrangement between the Reconstructionist movement and the broader Jewish community.
I also continue to believe that one can wrestle honestly with Israel, grieve deeply for both Israelis and Palestinians, advocate passionately for peace and justice, and still affirm the legitimacy and necessity of a Jewish homeland.
That is not a betrayal of the Reconstructionism that helped form me.
It is an attempt to remain faithful to the covenantal vision of Jewish peoplehood at Reconstructionism’s very core.
This Shavuot, I find myself thinking less about certainty and more about covenant.
About how Jewish movements evolve — and sometimes fracture.
About how history, heartbreak, and ideology can reshape communities we once believed would always feel like home.
We cannot return to Sinai unchanged.
As we return, many of us do so more deeply committed to Jewish peoplehood, Zionism, and covenant, even as institutions and movements that once nurtured those commitments grow increasingly distant from them.
But Sinai does not belong to any one movement.
And neither does the Jewish future.
Perhaps the challenge of Jewish life has never been standing in perfect agreement at Sinai.
Perhaps it is finding the courage to keep returning — and realizing that even after fracture and disappointment, there are still others gathered at the mountain who remain committed to the enduring bond between Israel and the Jewish people, and with whom new Jewish pathways can still be forged.
As I mark 25 years in the rabbinate this Shavuot, I find myself filled not only with reflection, but also with gratitude — for teachers who shaped me, for Torah that continues to challenge me, for the ongoing work of Jewish learning and building still ahead, and for the fellow travelers beside whom that work continues. The journey back to Sinai is never finished.
Shabbat Shalom and Chag Sameach