Tag: pluralism

As we prepare for our family’s upcoming seder, I am thinking about not only the relatives and friends who will grace our table, but also those four allegorical children who are perennial guests: the chacham (wise) one, the rasha (wicked) one, the tam (simple) one, and the one who does know how to ask. It’s the rasha who I am most intrigued by this year. But I’d recast the moniker “wicked” child as the “skeptic” or “critic” or even “rebel.” As part of the Passover seder, we are instructed to entertain the questions of a child who doesn’t feel they are part of what’s taking place, and who may even choose to stand apart from it. “What does this service mean to you?” the critical child asks, and we answer the best we can. This always seemed like a sour note in the Passover program, but lately I’ve come to see the beauty in the exchange. How striking that one of our most sacred traditions insists we acknowledge skepticism.

Making Space for the Question

What if our role when it comes to the so-called rasha isn’t to scold them but to acknowledge and honor their questions? What if we came to see our cherished rituals—and indeed our people—as incomplete without those who criticize and doubt? We are not whole without those who push boundaries and challenge our assumptions and ingrained ways. How remarkable that our tradition does not cast aside this child, but rather provides them an invitation to our table year after year … and how remarkable that this child accepts the invitation and joins.

Federation’s flagship Jewish Community Leaders Program (JCLP) includes a visit to a megachurch in Maryland to learn about how they build communities of belonging. Our group was inspired to learn they didn’t define themselves by rigid red lines, while still holding a clear sense of their core values. Instead, they defined themselves by an ongoing relationship with a spiritual center. They considered anyone oriented toward a common set of principles as relevant and part of their flock. It’s got me wondering: in this post-October 7 landscape, how do we help shape our future by evolving our community’s relationship with boundaries? These are not easy questions, particularly in a moment when the need for clarity and certainty feels so real.

At Federation, we will continue engaging this question and find new ways to create space for the challenging voice, the uncomfortable question, the perspective that stretches our assumptions. After all, many of the shifts that now feel foundational—expanded roles for women, inclusion of LGBTQ Jews, the recognition of multiracial Jewish identity—were once at the edges of communal acceptance. They moved inward because passionate people pushed to widen the frame.

Our Community Leadership Council (CLC) has been using this year to listen to the broad voices of our community—nearly 200 people from 26 diverse groups—including those engaged in our traditional institutions, as well as people who have not affiliated, who have felt marginalized, or who have created their own communities to meet their unique needs. It’s critical to gather insights from all to help understand and shape our community priorities.

At the Same Table

In describing the four children at the seder, Rabbi Jonathan Sacks noted, “there is a message of hope in this family portrait. Though they disagree, they sit around the same table, telling the same story. Though they differ, they stay together. They are part of a single family… The Jewish people is an extended family. We argue, we differ, there are times when we are deeply divided. Yet we are part of the same story. We share the same memories. At difficult times we can count on one another. We feel one another’s pain. Out of this multiplicity of voices comes something none of us could achieve alone.”

Bringing the entirety of our community together across differences is a bold move. It’s clear that has been our work all along. The goal has never been to embrace uniform views. On the contrary, the thing we’re meant to embrace is each other, in all our messy, diverse, and divine glory.

With wishes for a happy and meaningful Passover,

Elisa

Credit: Chicago Haggadah, 1879, a historic American Jewish Passover Haggadah published in Chicago. It is a notable example of early American Jewish print culture, reflecting the growing Jewish community in Chicago in the post-Civil War era. Who do you see as the rasha?

I’ve been thinking about Federation’s role in Jewish life. To be fair, I’m pretty much always thinking about this. But I’m looking at the swirl of everything going on in our world, and wondering what is it that we owe our community in this moment?

As the sociologist Robert Bellah might put it (a reference I’m borrowing from a recent meeting of our Governing Board), some communities find strength in internal alignment while others rely on a series of interconnected bridges to stay strong and cohesive. Our community is likely best defined as a combination of the two. We hold a common commitment to a strong and vibrant Jewish community while operating across a breadth of differences. We must therefore continue building durable throughways to ensure we stay connected to Jewish life and each other.

This, of course, includes our work to engage our community with Israel. Core to our strategy is the goal to engage the full range of our community with the full range of Israeli society according to our community members’ own interests. This year, we’ll be continuing to work with Jewish organizations across our community to build out opportunities for more people to learn about and connect with Israel.

Additionally, as I wrote this week in partnership with scholar Ted Sasson, The Jewish Federation of Greater Washington is a Zionist organization. And as such, we have a responsibility to live up to our definition of the term and show people that Zionism is “broad enough to accommodate a community of Jews who hold (or grapple with) attitudes about Israel that span the range from the right to the left.”

After all, the latest JFNA study found that a majority of American Jews are struggling with specific Israeli government policies, even as they continue to believe in a Jewish, democratic homeland and Israel’s right to exist. If we care about a vibrant Jewish community, we cannot ignore this. We owe it to those deeply troubled by Israel’s actions to continue engaging them and creating the conditions for open dialogue and authentic connections with Israel and Israelis.

On a local note, our latest pulse survey found that political and social disagreements are the number one driver of disengagement with Jewish life and community. After issues of safety and antisemitism, Jews in the DC area rank political polarization as one of the most critical issues facing Jewish Greater Washington. More and more, I see a core part of Federation’s role as not only mitigating this crisis but turning our unique communal makeup into a source of strength.

Disagreement need not mean distance. Uncertainty need not mean isolation. What’s going on in the world, and certainly in Israel, is complicated and, for many, deeply personal. What matters is not that we arrive at the same conclusions but that we feel comfortable and, better yet, moved to meet each other on those bridges and find a way forward together.

Surveys released last week by the Jewish Federations of North America and Combined Jewish Philanthropies of Greater Boston are among the first to report Jewish views about Israel since early in the Gaza war. They are also among the first in a very long time that ask Jewish respondents whether they identify as Zionists, and what they mean by the term. The findings have important implications for how Jewish communal institutions relate to Israel and the rapidly expanding spectrum of opinion inside the American Jewish community.

Photo Credit: Alex Wong/Getty Images

Across our community, leaders are navigating real tensions: belonging and boundaries, safety and responsibility, clarity and pluralism. These aren’t abstract debates. They shape what Jewish life feels like in our synagogues, agencies, schools, and communal spaces every single day.

How leaders hold that complexity determines whether our community feels safe or splintered, principled or reactive, connected or alone.

That’s why The Jewish Federation of Greater Washington continues to partner with the Shalom Hartman Institute as part of a sustained investment in Jewish leadership. Together, we equip leaders across our region with the shared language and frameworks needed to navigate complex communal challenges. Earlier this month, that partnership convened senior and emerging leaders for a candid conversation about what this moment requires of a vibrant Jewish community.

More than 60 leaders participated across the full spectrum of Jewish Greater Washington: congregational rabbis, synagogue presidents, agency executives, foundation trustees, long-time board members, and rising lay leaders. They represented institutions across denominations, missions, and generations—many of whom do not typically sit at the same tables.

Bringing this breadth of leadership into one room reflects Federation’s unique role and its investment in the relationships and common language leaders need to respond to difference with intention instead of reaction.

Shared Language in a Strained Moment

Our community includes many organizations, identities, ideologies, and expressions of Jewish belonging. Honoring that breadth and creating space where it can exist in conversation rather than collision is central to our mission as a community builder.

The goal was not uniformity, but shared understanding.

To anchor the conversation, we drew on the “Our Fragile Tents” framework developed and presented by Yehuda Kurtzer, President of the Shalom Hartman Institute. The framework offered language to help leaders name the fractures, fears, and ideological divides shaping Jewish life today, allowing the conversation to go deeper, faster.

Leaders began at tables, speaking openly about the tensions inside their own institutions. Several distinctions proved especially clarifying: the difference between communities of kinship and communities of consent; the ways participation, interest, and national identity shape expectations; and the recognition that not every community can or should operate by the same norms.

Leaders spoke candidly about what they are holding:

“Understanding the boundaries necessary in my community that may not be necessary in the larger Jewish community was eye-opening.”

“The varying definitions of community and the norms that guide them will directly shape how I lead.”

As leaders explored one another’s reflections, it became clear that no single institution is holding this moment alone.

No one left with every tension resolved. Agreement was never the objective. The goal was building the relationships and shared understanding that allow our community to move through strain without fracturing.

Strengthening the Ecosystem

The conversation underscored how much this moment requires coordination and clarity across our community. No single synagogue, agency, or leadership body can bring this breadth of voices together across ideologies and generations.

By convening leaders in serious dialogue, Federation strengthens the relationships that help our community stay steady under pressure. Without shared language and cross-institutional relationships, leaders are left to navigate strain in isolation. Bringing institutions together ensures those tensions are held collectively rather than alone.

When leaders share common language and trust one another, institutions are better positioned to respond with clarity rather than escalation, with steadiness rather than isolation. The experience of Jewish life across our region—how safe it feels, how welcoming it feels, how principled it feels—is shaped by those choices.

A vibrant Jewish community depends on leaders who can hold complexity with clarity, speak honestly across difference, and remain committed to the whole, especially when it’s hard.

Strengthening that leadership capacity is central to Federation’s mission and essential to the long-term resilience of Jewish life in Greater Washington.

This convening was one step. Federation is now reviewing and synthesizing the reflections shared that evening to guide our next steps, so leaders across our community are better equipped for what this moment demands.

About the Partnership

For eight years, Federation’s partnership with the Shalom Hartman Institute has been rooted in a shared commitment to strengthening Jewish leadership and deepening relationships across our diverse community. Together, we have built a space for learning, reflection, and growth—a place where leaders wrestle with big questions, develop the clarity and courage needed to navigate complex times, and explore how to hold our community’s multitude of perspectives when the stakes feel high while communicating across differences in service of a stronger, more connected Greater Washington Jewish community.

Federation’s leadership programs help emerging and seasoned leaders alike grow their skills, deepen Jewish learning, and lead with purpose.

This past week I had the privilege of joining an informal group of Jewish foundation and Federation leaders to discuss issues facing Jewish life. This year especially, I appreciated the intentional time, set aside from my usual schedule, to dive into some deep discussions. The seventy-degree weather didn’t hurt either.

The tenor of our time together included a clear focus on the future. Everyone agreed that fighting antisemitism remains an urgent and essential priority for which we need to have a more integrated and effective strategy. At the same time, people were most eager to talk about the things we could build together. How to strengthen Jewish engagement, communal trust, bridges to other communities, our vision for a vibrant, pluralistic Jewish future, and so on.

Coursing through the week was the idea that now is a time to go all in. We are living in a moment that calls on us to grapple with the most critical issues facing the Jewish community. This is not a time for avoidance or incrementalism. We should not—and must not—shy away from what needs to be done.

And we can do it! Because the other consistent takeaway was that we collectively have the capacity to meet this moment so long as we work together. No single individual, organization, or foundation can achieve their goals independently but combined, we have everything we need to realize our shared ambitions. The scale and complexity of both the challenges and the opportunities we face demand collaboration, humility, and shared responsibility.

In the end, I left for the airport feeling hopeful. There are extraordinary people across the country doing extraordinary work on behalf of the Jewish people, thoughtfully, courageously, and with deep care for our community. I want to hold onto this thought for 2026 and, like the California sun, soak up all its benefits.