World Religions News

(RNS) — Kate Bowler spent the past decade bashing the American cult of positivity and the pursuit of optimal happiness.

Her experience battling stage 4 colon cancer in her 30s taught her the fallacy of such thinking.

Where her earlier books pondered mortality and grief, Bowler’s latest book is, of all things, about joy. Perhaps ironically, Bowler has found that skirting death pushed her to also consider opening herself up to experiencing joy.  RNS invited Kate Bowler, who teaches American religious history at Duke Divinity School, to talk about her new book, “Joyful, Anyway.”

Yonat Shimron: Kate, thank you so much for coming to talk to us.

Kate Bowler: I always love talking to you.

When did it dawn on you, even in the midst of your pain, and maybe because of it, that joy can sometimes make an appearance?

I think mostly when I realized I’d had an experience of it that felt almost embarrassing to talk about, because joy is weirder than I think I realized. I had that stretch right after I was diagnosed with cancer. It was just a time of undoing. Everything that mattered was slipping away from me so quickly, and I was very angry, and I was heartbroken, and I just had this one strange little stretch where I felt bubblewrapped in love, love from other people, love from God, and it was such a difficult thing to explain, how can something so beautiful coexist with a moment of utter devastation, and I think it took a long time for me to be able to look back on that experience and realize that there was something very mysterious in the quality of joy that had really broken into my life.

I wonder if a lot of people who experience grief or are in mourning might look at these episodes of joy and feel guilty about them?

Yes. I’ve now spent years in this community of people who have survived, sometimes just barely, terrible undoings and their aftermath, and when people report to me these surprising moments of elation, when you somehow feel a ‘yes,’ bubbling up inside of you, or you just randomly start crying in something that should be devastating. People typically say, “Oh my gosh, I felt so bad, I felt so guilty, I felt like it was so inappropriate. But I really recognized myself in the psychological description of joy, in which it says that it can engage both our reward system and engage our stress systems. Meaning, we can have these both/and experiences of elation and also undoing, in which we feel weirdly, bizarrely, not just happy, but like, OK — everything matters, and nothing matters. I think that’s why whenever you hear someone tell a story where they were genuinely surprised by joy, it has a very sleepover giggly quality to it, like, ‘Oh my gosh, what is even happening?’ because it came out of nowhere.

Explain the difference, which you do really well in the book, between happiness and joy.

I thought they were the same. I thought they were both just positive emotions, and they must just be different flavors of the same ice cream. But it turns out they have a distinct psychological profile. Happiness will feel like ease, it will feel relaxing, it will feel like the accumulated good things, where you’re kind of climbing a ladder of good feelings, and you get to have a beautiful view, and that’s because even just the word happiness comes from the word ‘hap.’ It’s the Norse word for chance, which just means like happenstance, the stuff that happens to you. We experience happiness that way — it’s the temperature of our coffee and the music playing and the friend you get to call later and the job that came through. It’s very contextual and circumstantial, and it’s also very incremental. It takes a lot of things coming together to make us happy. As someone who studies the happiness industry, I think I can hear it in the prescriptions and the homework that we get about breathing practices and hydration, and all that sense of accumulated incremental good feelings. So, happiness will feel like a lot of things going our way.

Joy, on the other hand, is not relaxing. Joy is this big, bright enlivening feeling. It’s like it startles us awake. It will make us say, ‘Yes, yes, it is good to be alive.’ And that’s why I think, whereas happiness is just a lot of positive things happening to you, joy isn’t just a positive emotion. It’s a story. That’s why it touches existential themes, like, ‘Is it good to be alive?’ Joy, when it bubbles up inside of us, presents itself as an answer to that question.

And how does a person open oneself up to joy? I mean, should we expect it, or is it something that we have to prepare for?

It’s very annoying, because it is very one hand clapping. How can you make yourself into a joyful person when, as Karl Barth says, joy is a gift, so that’s a surprise, as well as a task. So how can we make ourselves people who are more likely to have joy happen to them? I think most of the ways we could think about it are kind of counterintuitive. You think it would just be like the lady on Instagram yelling “Choose joy” in a really loud voice, you think it would be something you could will your way into. I think this is where a lot of our culture’s obsession with mindfulness and careful attention also makes us think, well, I just have to be somebody who focuses on the positive things, and then joy is going to come my way.

Unfortunately, because joy is such a surprise, and we can’t will it, we’re left with trying to cultivate it indirectly, and one of those things is to clear out of our path some of the stuff that makes us unsurprisable. Joy is a surprise. What makes us unsurprisable? You would think it would be sadness, right? But as we talked about, sadness and joy can coexist, so it’s not that. It’s very likely going to be a lot of the qualities that characterize the age of AI, the age of this certain kind of producer self. If we are hyper dedicated to our routines, to our efficiency, to making everything useful, to saying, well, rest is only just going to make me more productive. If we are that kind of person, that kind of person is going to be very hard to surprise. So we have to clear out, I think, a space inside of us that says, ‘Am I someone that can be interrupted even by something beautiful?

And you write about how joy is often mixed in with sorrow or pain. You can’t detach the two. Explain that.

Sometimes I think about joy through musical analogies, just because it helps. Maybe it’s just because my mom’s a singer. It just helps me think about what truths we have to play in both a major and a minor key. I guess, first we should probably say that there is language about the human condition that is maybe more useful in helping us understand where joy has to meet us. I think joy has to meet us in a place of aching humanity. There’s different historical theological language for that ache, like Friedrich von Schiller, a German playwright, called it “sehnsucht” like bittersweet longing. Other people use musical words for it, like the Fado, the blues, like “saudade,” musical forms that are bittersweet, that are beautiful and stir in us a feeling that we are longing for something we may never have. I think that is the human condition. That is where joy has to meet us. So I think when joy comes to us, it, it meets us as the sweetest response to our longing.

It reminds us, especially in the way that grief and love are part of the same language, it reminds us that we can have beauty, but just for a moment, because that’s what joy is. It’s just a moment, it’s not a stable state, we don’t get to stay there, which really sucks, but like it meets us in a moment of temporary wholeness. It’s as if all the broken pieces are somehow glued together, and then it’s gone. So, yeah, I think joy meets us as an already longing, grieving self, and when it happens to us, it’s not like it convinces us that everything will always be okay. It’s like it rings a note that will keep on ringing. It’s hopeful in that way. It will tell us, there’s still a song, and we’re still singing it, even when the music fades.

You don’t discuss this in your book, but I wondered if there is a Christian obligation to be joyful?

There’s certainly the garbage version of that, too. There’s definitely a Christian performance of joy as a form of spiritual mastery. I think this is our most aggressive Easter self: He is risen. He is risen, indeed! I will prove it with a huge smile on my face. But I do think that’s a lot of American evangelicalism, (she said lovingly and respectfully), having absorbed a lot of our happiness cultures mandating that a huge smile on our face has become a kind of culture-warring, where we say, ‘Look what the Lord has done. I’m happy all the time. I’m joyful all the time.’

And sometimes when I talk about joy, I do get a lot of responses like, ‘My joy is in the Lord’ kind of defensive certainty. How dare you tell me I’m not constantly joyful? So I do think sometimes joy, hilariously, makes its way into the way we’ve expressed our religious certainty. But I think that joy has a special place in Christian theology, and as a glimpse into the divine mind — as a reminder that God didn’t just make us and robots and sent us out.

There’s sort of three parts that are qualities of joy, where we can notice it. One is gratitude. The other is hope. But the other is delight, and delight is for no reason. That’s what makes it delight. Otherwise it would just be useful. I think joy delighting us ends up really being part of our best guess about why God created us. It gets down to our kind of deep ontology. What are we for? And sometimes we are for loving and doing and serving. Sometimes we are just for being. That in and of itself is a good spiritual argument. Before you needed to have anyone die for your sins, or before any kind of, like, atonement theory kicks in — what are we (made) for? I think we might be both made with an incredible capacity for joy, but also we require these kinds of perennial reminders that before we had to do anything that our greatest response to having been made is just, thank you.

One last question. There’s a lot of lists in the book, and I wondered, is it helpful to keep jotting down experiences of joy? Does that help?

That’s such a great observation. I think that there’s a couple things that joy can do for us. One, it can just appear to us in the present, and isn’t that delightful? Two, it can remind us of how, in the future, because we have incredible capacity for joy, there will be more. So we can relinquish some of our obsessive control, and know that, regardless of how great our attitude is, what we plan on doing with our lives, that we can be visited by joy. But I think the best use of the past is to treat it like a series of little bread crumbs, small reminders (of) our hope and our delight and our gratitude. They sparkle wherever we have lived and wherever we have loved. When we feel like maybe the present is empty or the future is uncertain, I think turning toward the past and writing down our own little reminders that it happened at all is a really beautiful way to set us up for more.

That’s great. Feels like your book is like that.

Thanks. I really loved how weird joy is, and this has been a really nice part of doing that book tour, is just hearing other people’s (stories). Even in our brokenness, even in our terrifying fear of the headlines, people are still being found by joy.

(RNS) — I have devoted my career to soccer. I teach a college course on Soccer & Global Politics. I’ve conducted research in 35 countries on the social dimensions of the people’s game.  I truly believe soccer is the closest thing that the secular world has to a universal religion. 

This summer, eight World Cup matches will be held in Atlanta, where I live, yet I am not going to any of the games. As much as it pains me, I’ve decided to boycott the 2026 Men’s World Cup in Canada, Mexico and the United States. 

I am not a fervent FIFA critic, and I am looking forward to going to Brazil for the 2027 FIFA Women’s World Cup. But I cannot in good conscience attend matches, watch matches on television or collect Panini stickers of the players this summer.  

Here is why. 

First, the world was promised it could come to these games — that is false.  

On May 2, 2018, President Donald Trump wrote a letter to FIFA proclaiming that “all eligible athletes, officials and fans from all countries around the world would be able to enter the United States without discrimination.” FIFA President Gianni Infantino recently echoed that, saying, “America will welcome the world. Everyone who wants to come here to enjoy, to have fun and to celebrate the game will be able to do that.” 

In fact, fans from Haiti and Iran are banned from entering the United States, and those from Algeria, Cape Verde, the Ivory Coast, Senegal and Tunisia have been de facto excluded by Kafkaesque, constantly changing, on-again-off-again impediments, including a $15,000-per-person bond program that was canceled too late for fans to make plans to attend the tournament. 

According to a filing by U.S. Customs and Border Protection, fans from 42 countries, including the UK, France, Germany and South Korea, are subject to five-year social media searches and may be arbitrarily denied entry into the United States. Human rights organizations warn these U.S. policies could also result in risks for racial profiling and arrest.  

And for those allowed in, what exactly will they be asked to celebrate? 

Early on, the Trump administration made threats to move venues from blue to red cities, and FIFA made a calculated decision to win over the president through constant adulation and sycophancy. This led to the surreal creation of the FIFA Peace Prize, which was awarded to President Trump at the FIFA 2026 World Cup group-stage draw in December 2025 at the Kennedy Center.  

At the 2025 FIFA Club World Cup — the tournament FIFA uses to test facilities ahead of the World Cup itself — President Trump kept the original championship trophy, forcing the winner, Chelsea, to accept a replica. He also pilfered a medal reserved for the winning players. He awkwardly hovered over the awards ceremony, photo-bombing the champions’ photo and drawing side-eyes from Chelsea star Cole Palmer.  

This scene was reminiscent of another ugly moment in the sport. In 1934, when the second FIFA World Cup was held in Italy, the phrase “Mussolini is always right” was plastered across walls throughout the country. The World Cup — known as ‘Mussolini’s World Cup’ — was a propaganda tool for glorifying Mussolini and for making Italy great again. He personally handed the championship trophy to the captain of the victorious Italians, and he delighted in the cheers and fascist salutes from the Italian players and fans.  

I would like to think that if I were a soccer fan in Italy in 1934, I would have passed on that World Cup, too.  

Ugly politics is not the only issue. FIFA is committing a red-card offense by treating fans as mere spectators to be exploited, rather than as partners and participants in creating the atmosphere and spectacle that characterize soccer competitions. Soccer fans are the twelfth player, bringing the chants, the imagery and the passion. Without the fans, especially the Argentines and Moroccans, the 2022 World Cup would have felt like the Disneyland World Cup. 

The bright orange Dutch flash mobs, the Japanese Samurai Blue Ultras that entertain and clean up their section after the match, the choreographed celebrations of the Brazilians and the vibrant body painting of the Senegalese are as integral to the World Cup as the players.  

FIFA is manipulating and deceiving fans by releasing batches of tickets in an opaque manner to create a sense of scarcity that artificially inflates ticket prices. While FIFA does have a responsibility to generate funds for its operations from the World Cup every four years, which in part are invested in grassroots initiatives around the world to develop the game, this needs to be balanced with an awareness that the most passionate fans of South Korea, Colombia or Germany are stakeholders and irreplaceable performers in the matches that are televised around the world. The matches played in empty stadiums during the COVID pandemic confirmed that truth: Televised games without enthusiastic fans are dreary affairs. 

Many of the most enthusiastic fans are working class and effectively excluded by the sky-high prices in 2026 for tickets, parking, transportation and concessions. After an outcry from fans, FIFA created a new category with around 1,000 tickets for each of the 104 matches at $60 each to be allocated to the confederations for distribution to hard-core fans. That is not nearly enough. 

Soccer is the people’s game, with a universal language and shared vernacular that cuts through class distinctions and unites people in a community of fervor for the game and faith in one’s team. The Infantino-Trump partnership is debasing it and the 2026 FIFA Men’s World Cup. 

And so, I am passing on the World Cup this year. I do not encourage others to make the same choice, nor do I judge those who choose to take part. I submit, however, that the spirit that makes the World Cup so special is now found in the women’s game. The tickets are affordable; Brazil will enthusiastically welcome all the teams and their fans; and the game will be used to applaud incredible players and teams, not politicians. I invite you to join me in 2027 for the beautiful game. 

(Kirk Bowman is a professor in the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs at Georgia Tech. He is the author/editor of six books, including Soccer, Globalization and Innovation: The Beautiful Game in the 21st Century. The opinions expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of Religion News Service.)

NEW YORK (RNS) — An estimated 60,000 marchers and more than 100,000 spectators gathered on Fifth Avenue on Sunday (May 31) for New York City’s Israel Day Parade, an annual event that has drawn criticism from those who oppose Israel’s military actions and government.

By not attending the event, Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a pro-Palestinian activist and staunch critic of Israel, became the first sitting New York City mayor since the parade’s founding in 1964 to skip it. 

The parade’s supporters say participation is foremost about supporting the New York Jewish community — which has faced escalating antisemitic incidents since the Hamas attacks of Oct. 7, 2023, and the ensuing war in Gaza — rather than the actions of the Israeli government. The city is home to the largest population of Jews outside of Israel.

Several other state and city leaders joined in the festivities and gave speeches, including Gov. Kathy Hochul and former NYC mayors Michael R. Bloomberg and Eric Adams. Jessica Tisch, the city’s Jewish police commissioner, was a marshal.

“What an incredible display of unity, love, and resilience as tens of thousands of New Yorkers turned out for the Israel Day Parade in NYC,” Adams tweeted after the parade. “Today, we boycotted antisemitism and sent a powerful message: New York will always stand with its Jewish community, and New Yorkers will always stand with Israel.”

A February poll conducted by the Jewish Federations of North America found that 9 out of 10 Jews said they support Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish and democratic country, but only one-third said they identify as a Zionist — a word that has become a pejorative in many circles. While those statistics indicate how Jewish support for Israel’s policies — especially after nearly three years of war with Hamas, Hezbollah and now Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps — has eroded, the poll suggests that many of them “are not rejecting Israel’s existence or the idea of a Jewish state. They are reacting to an understanding of Zionism that includes policies, ideologies, and actions that they oppose, and do not want to be associated with,” according to Mimi Kravetz, chief impact officer for JFNA.  

In an op-ed for the Jewish Telegraphic Agency days before the parade, Rabbi Jill Jacobs, the CEO of T’ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights, argued that the parade “has become a litmus test, pressuring Jews essentially to sign on to the Israeli government’s agenda to participate in mainstream communal Jewish life, while also reducing New York Jews to a single aspect of Jewish identity, namely, a connection to another country.”

At the parade, Gordon Josey, a Westchester, New York, resident, said that support for Israel as a country should not be dependent on its government’s actions.

“I’m not a Trump supporter, but I’ll still be celebrating the Fourth of July as an American,” he said. “People can disagree with Israel’s government but still support the only country where Jews are 100% safe and accepted.”

Amid rising antisemitism, this year’s parade theme, “Proud Americans, Proud Zionists,” slapped back at age-old antisemitic tropes claiming that Jews can never be loyal citizens of the countries where they live.

For Mark Medin, executive vice president of the UJA-Federation of New York, watching group after group of American Jews joyfully marching in the parade, singing Hebrew songs and waving American and Israeli flags “was an overwhelming display of pride and love for Israel and for America and for Judaism — you can love all these entities at the same time.” 

Standing behind New York Police Department barricades in what was described as an unprecedented level of security precautions for an Israel Day Parade, spectators said they felt safe wearing yarmulkes and Jewish stars around their necks — something many Jews have stopped doing out of fear of being targeted by antisemites, as visibly Jewish residents and visitors to New York have increasingly been harassed or attacked in recent years.

“We came to the parade to show support for Israel and to protest antisemitism,” said David Himber, a Long Island resident. “It’s important for everybody, regardless of their view of Israel, to support Jews in New York and around the world.”

Spectators and marchers agreed that the parade was the most well-attended and joyous Israel parade in recent memory. While it featured almost none of the polished marching bands and grand floats seen in other parades, the enthusiasm of its participants — mostly local Jewish schools, youth groups, synagogues and communal organizations — gave the parade the feel of a hometown event.

Not all of the participants were Jewish. A group called the Judeo-Christian Zionist Congress and another called the American Muslim & Multifaith Women’s Empowerment Council also marched.

By contrast, Mamdani’s refusal to attend what is considered one of the largest and most public displays of Jewish and Israeli pride in America has angered many Jews, who view the parade not only as a demonstration of support for the Jewish homeland but also as a vital celebration of Jewish communal unity and identity at a time when antisemitic incidents in New York occur on an almost daily basis.

“The question is not whether a mayor may criticize Israel. Of course he may,” Stephen M. Flatow, president of the Religious Zionists of America, blogged in The Times of Israel. “The question is whether the mayor of New York City understands that for much of the Jewish community, Zionism is not a foreign-policy preference. It is part of Jewish identity, Jewish history, Jewish memory and Jewish survival.”

Flatow wrote that generations of New York mayors have marched not because they agreed with every Israeli policy but because they recognized the parade’s importance to New York’s Jewish population.

Moshe Davis, former executive director of the Mayor’s Office to Combat Antisemitism under Adams, told The Jerusalem Post that the parade is a “celebration of the Jewish community that helped build this city, and the enduring relationship between New York and Israel — a relationship that has made our hospitals, our universities, and our economy stronger.”

At the same time, mostly left-leaning American Jews have expressed discomfort with the parade, arguing it amounts to support for the far-right government headed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Some said that the presence of more than a dozen Israeli lawmakers, including Israel’s far-right finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, at Sunday’s parade proves their point.   

“I truly look forward to the day when leaders of major New York Jewish institutions are more incensed by Smotrich and other Kahanists marching in the Israel Day Parade than they are about the mayor skipping it,” Jacobs, the T’ruah chief executive, said on her Facebook account. 

Rather than bringing Jews together, she said, the parade “doubles down on the most politicized and contentious issue dividing Jewish communities,” referring to Israel. She called for an alternative liberal Jewish parade that would focus on Jewish culture, religion and communal life, in which Israel would be just one component for the Jews who support it.  

However, Gavin Rostin, 13, who came to the parade with his family from upstate New York, said for him, the parade was simply a joyful way to spend time with fellow Jews.

“Where we live there aren’t many Jews,” he said, “so we came to be with our community.”

(RNS) — I’m Jewish and an advocate for water and toilets. I never expected to speak in the shadow of the Vatican. But a few weeks ago I joined more than 100 experts and advocates in Rome for the largest-ever summit on the challenges to provide clean water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) at hospitals and clinics around the world lacking these basic needs.

A big part of my message at the event, under the patronage of the Vatican, was this: Those closest to the frontlines need to be asked about WASH conditions, and those on the frontlines need to speak up and be heard. 

While it should be unimaginable that healthcare could lack these critical needs, the data says otherwise: In 60 fragile state countries, 37% of healthcare facilities did not have basic water services in 2023, according to a joint report by WHO and UNICEF. Eighty-one percent did not have basic sanitation services. Faith-run facilities are no exception. To be a patient in a facility without WASH is to be the most vulnerable of the most vulnerable. 

Solving the global WASH crisis would be cost-effective for global health, so the fact that it is so widespread is as nonsensical as it is dangerous. Some clinics receive pharmaceuticals but have no safe water to swallow a pill. They receive medical equipment that they can’t adequately clean. Women must bring their own water to give birth. Newborns die preventable deaths. 

Consider the current Ebola outbreak spreading in Africa, showing us once again, diseases know no borders. Detection alone does not stop an outbreak — infection control does. WASH is foundational to preventing and curtailing scores of illnesses and diseases. Clean conditions also curb the overuse of antibiotics, which has increased antibiotic-resistant infections that cause millions of deaths and make even routine care costlier and more dangerous everywhere. 

So why hasn’t the global aid community solved this crisis already? Part of the answer is that WASH suffers from a lack of prioritization and also a kind of invisibility. Those who don’t face healthcare without WASH are often the ones setting global health priorities. Those who do face healthcare without it, have accepted it. They do not see realistic alternatives.

Few know the challenges of working without WASH better than Catholic sisters. They have been the global backbone on the frontlines of healthcare for centuries. They’ve not only staffed healthcare facilities, they’ve founded them, professionalized them and built systems of care — especially in underserved and resource-scarce places. 

An informal survey of sisters is a real eye opener. Sisters Rising Worldwide supports Catholic sisters “responding to humanity’s greatest challenges” as they define them. Its founder and president, Sr. Irene O’Neill, hadn’t heard much about WASH in the healthcare setting, so in preparation for the Rome event, she asked a sample of sisters in 12 countries about WASH conditions. 

The result: 90% of sisters responding reported no regular access or unreliable access to clean water on-site; 80% reported insufficient or poor condition toilets for patients and staff; 75% reported there was “rarely/never” or only “sometimes” water available at points of care; 55% reported that medical waste is not safely managed or only partially managed. 

Had Sr. Irene not asked, she would not have known. 

In 2020, the Vatican’s Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development did ask, and the result is a pilot initiative to get WASH in 150 Catholic-run healthcare facilities in 23 countries. To date, 87 of the 150 facilities in 19 countries and across 44 dioceses have improved WASH. The price tag is $3.6 million in private funding so far. It’s a start. A good one. At the Rome summit, scores of leaders and technical partners across faiths, including Anglicans, Methodists, Adventists and evangelicals, committed to WASH improvements. 

In his statement, Pope Leo XIV said he was “pleased to see so many organizations of various faith backgrounds working together on this pressing issue and seeking to improve the living standards of our brothers and sisters” and extended “the assurance of his spiritual closeness” to those working on the challenges, from the frontlines to the funding. He also imparted his Apostolic Blessing. In September, he will dedicate his monthly prayer intentions to the theme of water. 

Archbishop of Canterbury Sarah Mullally also said in a video statement to the gathering that she was “encouraged by the work already underway to strengthen Anglican health facilities in several countries with more to come.” She encouraged all Anglicans to support “this vital work.” 

As Cardinal Michael F. Czerny, prefect of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, said in 2023, “No one needs lofty theological concepts to justify proper WASH. Without it, healthcare cannot be healthy. No treatment, no surgery, no delivery can be safely performed without meeting basic WASH conditions. Providing them for all is an elementary step toward equal human dignity.”

What once felt like an orphan problem is growing into a global health movement. The question remains, will our political representatives, ministers of health and water, non-profits and private donors coordinate and direct funds to break through the wall of invisibility and give WASH in healthcare the home it deserves? What we do know is: They won’t if they aren’t asked.

(Susan K. Barnett is the founder of Faiths for Safe Water. A former investigative journalist with the network newsmagazines PrimeTime Live, 20/20 (ABC News) and Dateline NBC, she now leads Cause Communications. The opinions expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of Religion News Service.)

(RNS) — A New Yorker cartoon has lived rent-free in my head for years. In it, some kids are playing in a progressive early childhood center. One kid looks to the teacher and asks: “Do we still have to do what we want to do?”

Today, that cartoon is Reform Judaism’s portrait in miniature.

I was in New York City for the Re-CHARGING Reform Judaism gathering last week at Stephen Wise Free Synagogue. The event was spearheaded by the synagogue’s senior rabbi, Ammiel Hirsch. Rabbi Hirsch is one of Reform Judaism’s most prophetic voices. He has spent years naming what many in our movement would rather not hear: that Reform Judaism has drifted from its Zionist commitments, and that it has shifted too much weight from the particular to the universal. (Check out his impassioned keynote on these themes.)

Full disclosure: I’ve been active in Amplify Israel, the Stephen Wise initiative that sponsored this conference, and I was one of the planners. This has been my battle, too.

And hardly just mine — more than 300 people were at this conference, including rabbis, cantors, educators, lay leaders and philanthropists of all generations. The youthful energy in the air was palpable. People flew in from all over the Jewish world, and beyond the borders of the Reform movement itself. Its great lineup of speakers included author Dara Horn; activist Adam Louis-Klein, who has figured out the sources of antizionism; and Rabbi Angela Buchdahl. Leaders of our movement were present and responded to the moment. There were great workshops. There was prayer, singing and laughter. 

And, at its core, there was a vigorous, sometimes uncomfortable debate about Zionism and antizionism — and, most intensely, the training of Reform professionals around those issues. (Read this essay by my colleague, Rabbi Samantha Kahn.)

My late parents chose Reform Judaism as a way into active and engaged Judaism. It offered my family meaning and community — the two best things any religion can deliver. This movement nurtured several generations of my family. It gave me a profession, a deep life and lifelong friendships that span generations and continents.

Reform Judaism’s strong suit has always been getting people to ask: “What do I need from Judaism?” The products of that question are inclusivity, creativity and personal meaning-making. Those are not small gifts.

But, somewhere along the road, we put a little too much weight on the personal, on what I want, and too little on what God, Judaism and the Jewish people need. You can have a religion that is based entirely around personal preference, but it will become something less than a compelling faith structure. 

We already knew it in our bones, but the 2020 Pew Research Center report gave us the numbers to prove that Reform Jews attend worship less regularly than their Conservative or Orthodox counterparts. Synagogue membership among people who identify as Reform Jews sits under 40%. Far too many people say: “I don’t do anything Jewish, so I guess you’d say that I’m (cringe alert) very Reformed.”

Shabbat, some kind of Jewish dietary discipline, prayer, worship and home ritual are all personal choices. Religion has become privatized, detached from community, from the Jewish people, from Israel. The late sociologist Charles S. Liebman put it plainly: religious congregations in America are responsive to the religious market. They accommodate prevailing cultural norms rather than challenging them.

So what do we do?

The late Israeli author Amos Oz gave us the most useful image I know. He said he saw himself as the heir to a very large house, full of furniture — some beautiful, some junk. You don’t have to throw anything away, you can put some of it in the attic, some in the cellar and keep some of it in the living room. The task is to decide what belongs where. What is meaningful for us in these times, and what is irrelevant or offensive? What needs to stay in plain sight, and what might we someday redeem from the attic and breathe new life into?

If I could, I would put those words in the lobby of every Reform synagogue and in every Jewish home in America.

We don’t discard everything, neither do we freeze-dry our faith. We gaze upon the precious heirlooms we’ve inherited — all of them — and choose wisely and courageously.

What does that look like in practice? It looks like what the conference was actually about underneath all the debate: creating Jewish Velcro.

Velcro to our tradition. Velcro to the Jewish people across time. Velcro to the Divine — through worship that demands something of us, through learning that moves and challenges us, and through a relationship to Israel that is based, first and foremost, on love. 

Why was the energy at the conference so intense?

The Jewish world is at an inflection point. Antisemitism is rising. Ideological fracture — both within Reform Judaism and within the broader Jewish world — is accelerating. And this is precisely the wrong moment for a movement that represents more American Jews than any other to be confused about what it believes, indifferent to what it asks or silent about where it stands.

At its best, Reform Judaism has never been the path of least resistance. It has been the path of considered, courageous, engaged, thoughtful, covenantal choice.

If I were a betting man, I would be putting my money on this movement. A lot of people would agree with me.