Reform Judaism and the Abandonment of Jewish Peoplehood

In a speech delivered last May at the graduation ceremony of Hebrew Union College in Los Angeles—one of the major seminaries of the Reform movement—Michael Chabon sparked controversy by condemning wholesale every kind of Jewish particularism, and perhaps Judaism itself. Clifford Librach, who spent his career as a pulpit rabbi in Reform synagogues, sees the speech as the culmination of a trend embedded in the domination from its very beginning that militates against the very notion of Jewish peoplehood. To survive and flourish, Librach believes, the Reform movement must instead wholeheartedly embrace Jewish peoplehood, as he explains in conversation with Jonathan Silver. (Audio, 45 minutes. Options for download and streaming are available at the link below.)