BOSTON (RNS) — On Yom Kippur in 2024, one year after Israel began its fierce assault on Gaza, Rabbi Greg Hersh’s small Massachusetts synagogue voted to raise money to buy military gear for the Israel Defense Forces.
Hersh, a 40-year old graduate of the Reconstructionist Rabbical College, remembers feeling perplexed.
“This is the holiest day of the year,” Hersh remembers he told the synagogue’s board. “Do you really think we should be buying weapons for soldiers on this day?”
The board’s answer was a resounding yes. For Hersh, it was a sign that it was time for him to go.
Five months ago, Hersh started a new congregation called V’ahavtah, from the Hebrew, “You shall love.” Using the moniker “Judaism Beyond Zionism,” it meets in rented space, mostly in Cambridge.
Hersh’s new synagogue was among 30 mostly new Jewish organizations whose representatives came together to imagine a new Jewish future less defined by Zionism, if not entirely anti-Zionist, at the third annual Conference on the Jewish Left at Boston University last week (Feb. 12). Hosted by the university’s Institute on Culture, Religion and World Affairs, the conference drew nearly 1,000 people — 480 in person and the rest online.
Organizations like Hersh’s gathered in an exhibit hall to give out banners, books, stickers and other items to introduce partici …