Liberal Jewish groups extoll solidarity but await ‘next government’

Over 30 organization dealing with Jewish peoplehood issues pledge to integrate those issues into the policies of Israel’s “next government” and turn the country into “a true national home for all Jewish people.”

The declaration of intent published by the 41 groups, many of them liberal-leaning, follows the fading of public interest in debating polarizing religion-and-state issues that had dominated public discourse in Israel before they were sidelined by the outbreak of war with Hamas on October 7.

Initiated by Women of the Wall, a group that seeks egalitarian worship at the Western Wall in Jerusalem, the document stops short of criticizing the current Israeli government, which comprises Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party, five Orthodox religious parties and Benny Gantz’s National Unity, which joined due to the October 9 emergency. It also does not go as far as stating that Israel in its current form is not a true national home for all Jewish people.

Many liberal and other Jews in Israel and beyond have been critical of the right-wing, Orthodox-centric policies of Netanyahu’s government.

The document further extolls Jews’ “tenacious support for each other…thanks to the long-standing solidarity between the Jewish people living in the Diaspora and those people living in Zion.”

All Jews are united also by a “new wave of antisemitism” that “does not distinguish between the various streams of Judaism,” the authors also write in the letter, co-signed by the Israel Movement for Reform and Progressive Judaism, Ne’emanei Torah Va’Avodah and the Hartman Institute, among other groups.