Posted on May 15, 2026 by Rabbi Noah Diamondstein
Dear friends,
Tonight, as we begin again the fourth book of the Torah, Bamidbar (Numbers), we also are celebrating our Israel Shabbat. We’ll have a special dinner beforehand, and a service full of Israeli melodies and messages about our relationship with the world’s only Jewish State.
Our Israel Shabbat will focus on our relationship with Israel as American Reform Jews, and while that relationship is generally one of love and support, like our own American patriotism it is not without complexity. Loving Israel (loving anyone or anything) does not equate to blind support for all its actions and blanket discrediting of all criticisms. Rather, it necessitates responsibility, accountability, and critique just as much as it does support, care, and compassion.
This Israel Shabbat falls in the shadow of a damning column published by the New York Times’ Nicholas Kristof which detailed horrific allegations of sexual abuse committed against Palestinians by the Israeli military and within Israel’s prison system. The column was so shocking that it has elicited a defamation lawsuit by PM Netanyahu and Israel against the NYT. Protestors have gathered to condemn the article as yet another blood libel against the Jewish State, while anti-Zionists around the globe have decided to treat all the allegations within the article as undeniable and condemned Israel (yet again) to the trash heap of history over them.
As a lover of Israel and believer in the promise of its founding document, Israel’s Declaration of Independence, I refuse to go to either of these extremes. I hold two truths simultaneously, as Rabbi Josh Weinberg wrote in his powerful column this week:
The juxtaposition of these conversations reveals a deeply broken public discourse. Jews are being asked, once again, to hold unbearable truths while much of the world chooses selective moral outrage against Israel…That moral hypocrisy is real. That moral asymmetry is real. And Jews are not wrong to feel gaslit by it.
But the obvious moral inconsistency in the world towards Israel does not absolve us of our own Jewish moral responsibility.
There is another truth that liberal Zionists ignore at our peril: there is a documented pattern of abuses against Palestinians — some isolated, others systemic — that have too often been minimized, excused, normalized, and defended by sectors of Israeli society, by State institutions, and by many Diaspora Jewish defenders of Israel. We have to discern that not every accusation is true. Not every claim is beyond dispute. But neither can every awful and morally repugnant revelation simply be dismissed as antisemitic propaganda or treated as an unfortunate exception detached from larger realities of occupation, war, rage/revenge, trauma, and dehumanization.
Tonight, as we welcome Shabbat and focus on what is worth celebrating about Israel and our relationship with Israel, we will not close our eyes. We will not be blind to the reality that Israel is an imperfect State with much to answer for. We will instead recommit ourselves to our covenant. We will affirm that as Jews we must both hold Israel to account with more moral clarity and consistency than anyone else in the world, and work harder than anyone else to shape Israel into the Israel of our dreams. Reform Judaism will play a major role in fulfilling that vision, and I am excited to talk about that on our bimah tonight.
In hope,
Rabbi Noah Diamondstein