After insult, Reform Jews boycotting Israel's tourism minister

Meeting with Yariv Levin in US next week canceled; Likud minister derided Reform Jewry as ‘dying world,’ invoked Chelsea Clinton’s marriage as proof

Israeli and American Reform Jews will boycott Israeli Tourism Minister Yariv Levin, after Levin made disparaging comments about the Reform Movement.

During a cabinet meeting last month on a proposed expansion to the non-Orthodox section of the Western Wall, Levin called Reform Judaism a “dying world” that has succumbed to assimilation. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu condemned the statement.

In response, Israeli Reform Movement CEO Rabbi Gilad Kariv called on his American counterparts to shun Levin. Rabbi Rick Jacobs, president of the American Union for Reform Judaism, accepted the call.

A meeting between Levin and Reform leaders in the United States next week has been canceled.

Reform movement head Gilad Kariv (photo credit: CC BY Gilad Kariv/Facebook) — Reform movement head Gilad Kariv (CC BY Gilad Kariv/Facebook)

“As long as he (Levin) doesn’t think that Diaspora Jews have a right to voice opinions on matters such as the [Western Wall], there’s no reason to give him a platform in Jewish communities and organizations in the United States,” Jacobs told Israeli Army Radio Thursday. “Minister Levin will not teach us what support for Israel is.”

In his comments last month, Levin cited the marriage of Chelsea Clinton, daughter of Hillary and Bill, to a Jewish man as an example of the extent to which American Reform Jews have become assimilated, and said all Reform Jews would disappear in two or three generations.

Democratic presidential candidate former secretary of state Hillary Clinton waves to supporters as her husband former president Bill Clinton, second from right, Chelsea Clinton, second from left, and her husband Marc Mezvinsky, join on stage Saturday, June 13, 2015, on Roosevelt Island in New York. (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II)

“Reform Jews in the US are a dying world,” Levin, who is a secular Jew, said of the largest Jewish denomination in America. “Assimilation is taking place on a vast scale. They’re not even tracking this properly in their communities. It’s evidenced by the fact that a man who calls himself a Reform rabbi stands there with a priest and officiates at the wedding of the daughter of Hillary Clinton and no one condemns it and so it gets legitimized,” Levin said.

Levin said that the issue at hand – the debate over whether to allow non-Orthodox prayer at the Western Wall – would become redundant anyway in “two to three generations” because all Reform Jews would be assimilated by then.

Rabbi Rick Jacobs (photo credit: URJ via JTA)

Levin then voted in favor of the compromise.

The Reform Movement in Israel’s Kariv slammed Levin’s comments at the time as showing “ignorance, condescension and hatred” and said he was “inciting against millions” of Jews in the Diaspora.”

Kariv added that “Levin should rest at ease that the number of Reform Jews will only grow in two generations, also thanks to hundreds of thousands of Israelis who choose to believe in a tolerant, moderate and egalitarian Judaism.”