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Deborah Waxman

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Apr 19, 2024, 10:08 PM

As Reconstructionists, Our Litmus Test is Centering Relationships Over Politics

This Passover, our Jewish community feels more vulnerable and more divided than in recent memory. As most North American Jews—and the people who love us—gather next week to discuss the meaning of freedom and its significance in our lives,...

Jan 24, 2023, 11:28 PM

A Clarion Call against Ethnonatioanlism

Recently I joined hundreds of fellow American rabbinic colleagues in signing a letter protesting the most hardline government in Israel’s history and pledging not to invite its most extreme cabinet ministers, including Itamar Ben Gvir and Betzalel Smotrich, into...

Dec 14, 2022, 5:07 AM

The situation in Hebron is Oppressive

Rabbi Deborah Waxman

A lifelong knitter, I worked on a sweater as the bus wound through the Hebron Hills to the center of Hebron. The bus was carrying CEOs of organizations of the Jewish Social Justice Roundtable, at the mid-point of an...

Nov 1, 2022, 8:17 PM

Ethnonationalism is a grave threat to democracy

As a rabbi, scholar of American Jewish history and communal leader, I look through these prisms and see a grave threat to democracy and am very worried. Ethnonationalism is surging around the world, fueled by economic dislocation and the pandemic...

Mar 14, 2022, 8:54 PM

Reconstructing Gatherings for a Hybrid World

More than 700 people attended Reconstructing Judaism's 2018 convention in Philadelphia. (courtesy)

From March 22-27, hundreds of Reconstructionists will gather in person in suburban Washington DC, and online for “B’Yachad: Reconstructing Judaism Together” a multiaccess, movement-wide convention. We come together with the clear sense that the world is changing and that...

Dec 13, 2019, 7:29 PM

Fiddler on the Roof and Trump’s Executive Order

When I first read about President Donald Trump’s Executive Order that would effectively, if not explicitly, define the Jewish people as a nationality, I thought of someone, a fictional person actually, who harkens back to a very different time...

Feb 26, 2019, 6:41 AM

Reconstructing Pluralism through Conversation

Pluralism is dead. Long live pluralism. American Jews helped to bring to life the 2oth century concept of pluralism, a key facet of civil society that is becoming increasingly endangered. Through intentional engagement with Judaism, North American Jews have the...

Feb 2, 2018, 3:06 PM

Why the Reconstructionist movement is rebranding

Doing Jewish may mean attending synagogue, learning Hebrew, immersing in social action, or making ecologically-kosher meals

May 28, 2017, 6:58 AM

March on Harrisburg

Why are we on this planet? What are we supposed to do while we are here? How are we supposed to do whatever it is we are supposed to do? These are the big questions. Some of us spend much of...

Jan 31, 2017, 11:52 PM

Light through the cracks

Demonstrators protest President Donald Trump's executive immigration ban, at O'Hare International Airport in Chicago, Illinois, January 29, 2017. (AFP/Joshua LOTT)

Taking comfort in Jewish resilience, human empathy, and community, as her beloved liberal landscape shifts underfoot

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About Me

Rabbi Deborah Waxman, Ph.D., is president and CEO of Reconstructing Judaism.