Post AIPAC Policy Conference Mini-Reflection
© Rabbi Menachem Creditor
When it comes to AIPAC, there are perceptions that are true and perceptions that are not. The most important thing I came away with after this year's Policy Conference in Washington DC is this: AIPAC's annual confab is the gathering place of the American Jewish community and has made important programming, staffing, and marketing decisions that reflect this. Further, AIPAC has made the correct and difficult decision to reflect the American landscape, including prominent representatives of the Latin-American, African-American, GLBT, and many other communities, knowing that the US-Israel partnership, so vital to Israel's future, depends upon support for Israel never becoming one party's or community's "issue." Israel's security is an American strategic priority. That's good for the Jews and it's good for the world. Both matter profoundly for me, as a religious leader and as a global citizen concerned for human rights. Humanity is my family, and my most immediate relatives deserve as much as my distant ones, for whom I frequently toil.
I believe in two states for two people. I am a social progressive American Conservative Rabbi. I love my People and my Homeland. I found AIPAC moving and inclusive, profoundly moreso than in years past. I'm proud to be one of 500 rabbis who attended Policy Conference. We do not agree about everything. But we are part of this important gathering.
One day, I look forward to bringing my children, and for that to be a year when we don't need to lobby from the very real fear of a nuclear Iran, a year when the promises of the Peace Process have been fulfilled. We'll be there because we love Israel and want to celebrate both the miracle of its existence and the magnitude of its gifts to the world. I pray for that day with every fiber of my being.
Until that day, we've got a lot of work to do to secure and support the global home of the Jews. It's not the only work that calls, but it is a call that pulses every second in my Jewish heart.
To be continued in a forthcoming HuffPost piece....
