World Jewish News

Jack Moline

White House meets with rabbis to assuage concerns on Israel

If you tell the rabbis, they will spread the word.
That was the thinking behind two intimate White House meetings -- the second of which took place on Thursday -- with a carefully selected slate of 15 rabbis from across the country and representing the Orthodox, Reform and Conservative streams.
Jack Moline, a Conservative rabbi at Congregation Agudas Achim in Alexandria, Va., initiated the meetings after a talk he had with his friend Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff, about the Obama administration's perceived deficit of friendliness toward Israel.
The two meetings, the first of which was held last month, were part of a charm offensive after relations between the Obama and Netanyahu governments hit a low in early March, when Israel announced a major building start in eastern Jerusalem during a visit to Israel by U.S. Vice President Joe Biden. The Obama administration wants Israel to freeze settlement in the West Bank and building in the eastern part of Jerusalem, which Israel captured in the 1967 Six-Day War and subsequently annexed.
In recent weeks, several high-profile Jewish communal figures have slammed the Obama administration over the intensity and public nature of its criticisms of Israeli actions on these fronts. Some of the critics accused the White House of putting much more pressure on Israel than the Palestinian Authority.
Moline said the rabbis, all of whom attended both of the meetings, were selected because of the high profiles they have in their communities, and because they had concerns about how the Obama administration was conducting Middle East policy -- but they had not displayed outright hostility to the president.
"The rabbis who were in this group were chosen because they're in touch with their different congregations in different parts of the country," Moline said.
Not all the rabbis came away entirely mollified, but they were nonetheless impressed at the seriousness of the outreach.
Efrem Goldberg, the rabbi at Boca Raton Synagogue, which is Orthodox, said he left the meeting still wondering if the administration is on the right track, but still "cautiously optimistic" because of the depth of commitment to Israel he heard.
"I left with a clear impression that these individuals have a real passion about Israel," even if he did not agree with them on tactics, Goldberg said. Their interlocutors at the two meetings were high level: Dennis Ross, who runs Obama's Iran policy; Dan Shapiro, the deputy national security adviser who supervises policy for Israel and its neighbors; Susan Sher, the chief White House liaison to the Jewish community, and Emanuel.
"Among the rabbis, there was a diversity of those who support the administration policies and feel the message hasn't trickled down, and those who have problems with some of the policies," Goldberg said. "But the universal message was you need to show more love, this is not how you treat family."
Rabbi Stuart Weinblatt of B'nai Tzedek, a Conservative congregation in suburban Potomac, Md., said he felt it was especially incumbent upon the administrat