Rabbi Rick Jacobs

The URJ recognizes that transparency must include effective communication with victims/survivors and the greater community, and we want to share our progress as we continue to implement and uphold our commitment to ethics accountability. On the URJ Ethics

Here are some ways you and your community can support Israeli democracy and the Israeli Reform Movement during this critical moment.

The URJ’s ethics accountability efforts over the past year have included a key commitment to accountability and restorative justice for all victims-survivors of abuse and misconduct in URJ spaces.

Twenty-eight congregational leaders met in Cincinnati in the summer of 1873 to establish the Union of American Hebrew Congregations (UAHC), which we now call the Union for Reform Judaism. And so, 150 years ago, the Reform Movement in North America was born.

Last week, we traveled together to Israel and the Palestinian territories with a remarkable group of Black civil rights leaders and Reform Jewish leaders, including those who sit at the intersection of being Black and Jewish. We imagined that there would likely be bumps along the way, and there were. However, our group knew one another from our ongoing social justice and racial equity work in the United States, so there was a reservoir of goodwill and commonality that served us well.