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Borrowing Without Bowing: Assimilation and the Recovery of Jewish Speech

Rabbi Haim Rechnitzer, Ph.D., Professor of Jewish Thought

This essay argues that Reform Judaism faces a serious educational and theological imbalance. Too often, we have taught Jews to translate Judaism into Protestant, liberal, and progressive moral vocabularies before forming them deeply in Judaism’s own covenantal language. The result is a Jewish consciousness skilled in critique but weakened in belonging, fluent in universal ethics but insufficiently rooted in Torah, mitzvah, Hebrew, peoplehood, land, exile, redemption, Klal Yisrael, and sacred obligation. Drawing on Ahad Ha’am, Rosenzweig, Sandel, Halbertal, and classical Jewish sources, the essay critiques a pedagogy that teaches deconstruction without covenantal reconstruction, historical consciousness without obligation, and universalism without sufficient rootedness in Jewish civilization. It argues that criticism of Israel is necessary and Jewishly legitimate, while anti-Zionist estrangement often reflects a deeper failure to form Jews within the fullness of Jewish peoplehood. Zionism is presented as one of modern Judaism’s central civilizational renewals. The essay calls for Reform rabbinic education that forms leaders capable of inhabiting Jewish textual, halakhic, Hebrew, liturgical, and national memory from within.