Did Israel’s President Really Refer to Reform Judaism as “Idol Worship”?

Got a question for Philologos? Ask him directly at philologos@mosaicmagazine.com.

Though not himself an Orthodox Jew, Israel’s president Reuven Rivlin has “failed miserably when it comes to having good relations with practicing Jews who are not Orthodox.” So writes the Israeli political commentator Shmuel Rosner in a June 10 New York Times op-ed. As an example of Rivlin’s “troubling track record” in this area, Rosner cites his having once referred, long before becoming president, to Reform Judaism as “idol worship.”

Did Rivlin really say such a thing? It would have been stupid of him to have done so, since whatever sins Reform Judaism can be accused of, worshiping idols in its temples is not one of them. And yet that he said it would seem to be a matter of record. In 1989, according to a recent Jewish Telegraphic Agency dispatch, Rivlin, then a Knesset member from the Likud party, commented after attending his first Reform service in a New Jersey synagogue: