Rabbi Marla J. Feldman

Sitting at Ben Gurion Airport, awaiting my return flight, I finally have a few quiet moments to reflect on our many visits, consider all that I learned, and once again bid farewell to our homeland, now filled with so many new friends. Among our final opportunities was participation in a national steering committee meeting of WRJ-Israel at the home of our wonderful host, Resa Davids. Resa has single-handedly built WRJ-Israel, bringing her experience and training from North America to a new cohort of women’s groups in the growing Israel Movement for Progressive Judaism (IMPJ). As soon as a new congregation is envisioned, Resa is there, encouraging and cajoling, inspiring and training, scouting out and grooming potential leadership. Of course, food is often involved! She is a force to be reckoned with and has willed WRJ-Israel into being – 25 women’s groups from a pool of 35 congregations. We all owe Resa a tremendous debt for what she has done to expand the reach of WRJ, and, by doing so, building a stronger and healthier Reform Movement in Israel.

Today has been our busiest day so far on our WRJ-Israel Mission, involving meetings with many of our institutional partners in the Reform Movement. It was a veritable alphabet soup of organizations: IRAC (Israel Religious Action Center) IMPJ (Israel Movement for Progressive Judaism) HUC-JIR (Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion) WUPJ (World Union for Progressive Judaism) EIE (Eisendrath International Exchange) In a variety of ways, each of these organizations deepens the Reform Movement’s engagement in Israel, builds Reform Judaism globally, and educates the next generation of Reform leaders.

With a quiet Shabbat afternoon, Lynn and I finally have time to relax a bit and collect our thoughts about our past few days together. Yesterday (Friday) was another incredibly full day. Our Thursday overnight stay was in Jaffa, which we spent at Mishkenot...

Anyone who has traveled to Israel knows how exhausting the first day can be after an overnight flight with no sleep, fighting jet lag and struggling to stay awake through the inevitable full schedule from the moment of landing. So went today. The moment we landed, our friend, guide, chaperone and WRJ Israel maven, Resa Davids, shepherded us through visits with the leadership of the IMPJ (Israel Movement for Progressive Judaism), Beit Daniel (Tel Aviv’s premier Reform congregation) and the WRJ-Israel leaders of one of our newest progressive congregations in Even Yehuda, a growing ‘exurb’ of Tel Aviv. I almost wrote that these were ‘meetings’ but in fact, they were not. To me, the word ‘meetings’ implies sitting around a table, listening to a presentation, deliberations, and decisions. We did some of that, to be sure, but these opportunities for connections were so much more. We engaged in conversations. We shared our common challenges and struggles. We traded insights and secrets and best practices. We wrestled with big-picture issues like the future of Reform Judaism, the changing landscape of Jewish institutional life, the role of women in North American and Israeli society, the visions that we share and what we can learn from one another.