(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.