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Overdue or overdone? Two scholars hope to secure the legacy of ‘Jewish Renewal’
(JTA) — Rabbi Arthur Green gave the commencement address last week at the Jewish Theological Seminary, the Conservative flagship where he was ordained 56 years earlier.
His talk was mostly a response to political turmoil in Israel, but he also urged the graduates to pioneer a “new Judaism.”
“I had the good fortune, as a young seeker, to run into the Jewish mystical tradition, especially the writings of the early Hasidic masters,” said Green, who taught Jewish mysticism and Hasidic theology at Brandeis, the University of Pennsylvania and Hebrew College. “I have been working for half a century to articulate what could simply be called a Judaism for adults living in freedom. I am now near the end of my creative course. But you young people are just at the beginning of yours. We need you to enroll — however you can — in the task of the generations, that of re-creating Judaism.”
That is the language of Jewish Renewal, with which Green, 82, is deeply identified. Renewal isn’t a denomination, really, but a movement that was born in and reflects the 1960s and 1970s counterculture. Baby boomer Jews disillusioned with the large suburban synagogues that they considered soulless embraced Jewish practice that was spiritual, egalitarian, environmentally conscious and largely lay-led.
Baby boomer Jews disillusioned with the large suburban synagogues that they considered soulless embraced Jewish practice that was spiritual, egalitarian, environmentally conscious and largely lay-led. Renewal’s signature institution was the havurah — intimate prayer, study and social fellowships. Its soundtrack were the liturgical melodies composed by the hippy-ish, “neo-Hasidic” Orthodox rabbi, Shlomo Carlebach. And its rebbe — to the degree that an egalitarian movement had a central figure — was Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi (1924-2014), a refugee from Hitler’s Europe and former Lubavitcher Hasid whose Judaism channeled the spiritual “New Age” of the 1970s.
These ideas and approaches may be familiar to you even if you’ve never heard of “Renewal.” Rare is the synagogue that doesn’t try to offer a more intimate spiritual experience for its worshippers, to shrink the distance between pulpit and pew, to incorporate new Jewish music and, in non-Orthodox and a number of Modern Orthodox synagogues, to increase the participation of women in prayer and study.
Those prayer shawls with rainbow stripes? That was a Schachter-Shalomi innovation.
How a counterculture movement came to be absorbed by the mainstream is the subject of a paper in a new collection, “The Future of American Judaism,” edited by Mark Silk and Jerome Chanes. Chanes is the co-author, with Shaul Magid, of the chapter on “Renewal” that claims it as one of the most influential if not defining Jewish movements of the last 50 years.
“While Jewish Renewal has never boasted a large number of members, its influence on the larger American Jewish community has been significant, in terms of its liturgical experimentation, its revisions of ritual and its overall metaphysics,” they write. “It has also served as an ongoing conduit of information and inspiration from its own past — the havurah movement, radical politics, feminism — to the next generation.”
I came to the paper after giving a lecture at my own synagogue on “The Crisis of the American Synagogue.” I spoke of declining affiliation rates, plunging enrollment in supplementary schools, the shrinking number of non-Orthodox synagogues. Most of my adult life has been spent in synagogues, havurot and institutions heavily influenced by Renewal. If the Jewish Renewal movement revitalized synagogue life in the last century, could it also be blamed for its struggles in this one?
Magid, a fellow in Jewish studies at Dartmouth College, and Chanes, an adjunct professor of Jewish Studies at Baruch College, presented their chapter at a conference dedicated to the release of the book, held Tuesday and Wednesday at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut. Magid made the claim — considered bold, at this small gathering of Jewish historians — that the three most important Jewish figures of the 20th century were Mordecai Kaplan, Menachem Mendel Schneerson and Shachter-Shalomi.
Kaplan, the founder of Reconstructionist Judaism, downplayed the supernatural element of Judaism and instead called it a “civilization” defined by its people and culture. Schneerson, the Lubavitcher rebbe, turned an insular Orthodox sect into an outreach movement that promotes ritual practice among secular Jews.
Rabbi Arthur Green delivers the commencement address at the Jewish Theological Seminary in Manhattan, May 18, 2023. (Courtesy JTS)
Schachter-Shalomi combined their visions and imagined a Judaism, said Magid, that “is no longer used as a tool for Jewish survival, but rather as a project for Jews to become part of the global community, to contribute to the global community.” Environmental awareness became a hallmark of Renewal, as did absorbing influences from other religions, especially Eastern ones. “He really did take Schneerson’s teaching about bringing Judaism to the streets and expanded it further to bring Judaism to the mosque, to bring Judaism to the monastery, to create another way of being Jewish which was not afraid of the world.”
In an interview with Magid before the conference, I asked if he and Chanes might be exaggerating Renewal’s influence.
“I’m sure there will be people who will claim that case but I don’t think so, no,” he said. Magid acknowledges that few people regard themselves as direct disciples of Schachter-Shalomi, and yet, like Kaplan, his influence is felt widely and deeply. “Each one of them had a futuristic vision,” he said. “They were able to cultivate a way of thinking about Judaism that was before their time and that eventually came into being in many ways.”
One of those skeptical of Schachter-Shalomi’s influence is Jonathan Sarna, professor of Jewish history at Brandeis, who gave the keynote talk at the conference. In his response to the panel on Renewal, Sarna doubted Schachter-Shalomi was as influential as Carlebach, the Conservative theologian Abraham Joshua Heschel or the Modern Orthodox philosopher Joseph Soloveitchik. “I don’t think we should delude ourselves into thinking that every innovator is a new Moses,” Sarna said.
Benjamin Steiner, a visiting assistant professor in religion at Trinity, also wondered if Renewal had spread “everywhere in the country, or only in large urban areas with critical masses of educated Jewish students.”
Listening to Magid’s response to such caveats, I thought of the quote often attributed to music producer Brian Eno: “The first Velvet Underground album only sold 10,000 copies, but everyone who bought it formed a band.” Renewal’s influence spread beyond its founding havurot because many of their principals went on to important positions in academia and Jewish organizations, including Green, Rabbi Everett Gendler, Sharon Strassfeld, John Ruskay and Rabbi Arthur Waskow.
Small but influential Gen X and millennial institutions also bear Renewal’s fingerprints: the “Jewish Emergent Network” of independent congregations; New York’s Romemu and B’nai Jeshurun synagogues; egalitarian, traditional-style yeshivas like Hadar. Bayit, with a number of principals associated with ALEPH: the Alliance for Jewish Renewal, is an online artist’s collective and publisher of Jewish books, including a forthcoming Shabbat prayer book.
One of its contributors, Rabbi Rachel Barenblat, who was ordained by ALEPH, has argued that the influence of Renewal is felt even within Orthodoxy. “If you look at the Open Orthodoxy movement, if you look at the ordination of women as ‘maharats’ [by Yeshivat Maharat, a women’s seminary], the future of women as rabbinic leaders in Orthodoxy is already here,” she said on an episode of the “Judaism Unbound” podcast. “It’s not everywhere, but someday it will be.”
Magid and Chanes similarly claim a number of leading Jewish feminists as products of Renewal — they mention Paula Hyman, Eva Fogelman and Judith Plaskow — although some in the audience at Trinity insisted they gave Renewal too much credit for a movement by and for women. In there essay in the Silk/Chanes Book, Sylvia Barack Fishman of Brandeis University offers a counter-narrative of Jewish innovation over the past 50 years. In her chapter, she credits the “active partnership” of women in revitalizing American Judaism: Women’s religious expressions, she writes, “create social contexts and are distinguished by a communal dynamic, quite unlike the isolated, personalized Jewish experience, which some have claimed defines contemporary Jewishness.”
I came away convinced that Renewal has had an outsize influence on Jewish life, especially for baby boomers like me. But I also wondered if its outward-facing, syncretic Judaism failed to instill a sense of obligation to Jewish forms, institutions and peoplehood — unlike, by contrast, Orthodoxy in all of its booming present-day manifestations.
I asked Magid in what ways Renewal might have fallen short.
“Part of its failure is that it is very, very anchored to a certain kind of American counterculture that no longer exists. It hasn’t really moved into a 2.0 phase,” he said. “There are students and staff members that are still very tied to [Schachter-Shalomi’s] vision, and then there’s a younger generation, Gen Z, who have read some of his work and they’re influenced by it, but they really are thinking much more about, well, how does this translate into a post-countercultural America?”
Magid also feels the ideas of Renewal will become more important as American Jews’ attachment to Israel wanes, and the living memory of the Holocaust recedes.
If Rabbi Green’s speech at the JTS graduation was any indication, then the ideals of Jewish Renewal still hold their appeal.
“We need a new Judaism in America… where we also have the fresh air needed to create it,” he said. “How do we move forward… in articulating a Jewish theology for today that is both intellectually honest and spiritually rewarding?”
The audience of future Jewish leaders and teachers leapt to its feet.
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Israel Votes in Favor of Iran Joining International Cheer Union: ‘The Iranian People Are Not Enemies’
Ludmila Yasinska, far right, posing with members of the Israeli Cheer Union competing at the 2026 ICU World Cheerleading Championships in Orlando, Florida. Photo: Provided
Israel’s representative at the International Cheer Union (ICU) General Meeting in Orlando, Florida, this week voted in favor of Iran becoming a member nation of the organization.
Ludmila Yasinska, president of the Israeli Cheer Union, attended the annual meeting in-person and voted for Iran joining the ICU, the official world governing body for cheerleading.
The decision was approved, and a total of five applicant countries have newly joined the organization: Iran, Sint Maarten, Iceland, Ethiopia, and Sierra Leone. The ICU now has 126 national federation members across all continents, and each receives one vote for all General Meeting voting processes.
“The vote in favor of Iran’s participation in international competitions expresses a clear distinction between the Iranian people and the terrorist regime,” Yasinska told The Algemeiner. “It is a values-based position that sees the Iranian people not as enemies, but as human beings who seek to take part in the international arena, to compete, and to be partners in an open and fair world. It is also a statement of hope — that despite the complex reality, there is room to distinguish between citizens and leadership, and to extend a hand toward a different future.”
“May the day come when we can stand side by side and cheer together,” she added.
According to experts, the vast majority of the Iranian people oppose the authoritarian, Islamist regime that has ruled the country since 1979. In January, the regime’s security forces killed and imprisoned tens of thousands of civilians to crush anti-government protests that erupted across Iran.
The ICU General Meeting took place before the start of the 2026 ICU World Cheerleading Championships. This year, Israel competed in the international competition for the first time ever. The championships started on Wednesday and concluded on Friday.
“It was an amazing feeling and a great source of pride to represent Israel on the world stage,” Yasinska told The Algemeiner. “Despite all the difficult times and the situation in Israel before the championship, we never stopped believing or working toward this moment.”
The competition occurred amid a ceasefire pausing the US-Israeli military campaign against Iran, whose leaders regularly call for Israel’s destruction. Before the temporary truce went into effect, Israelis spent weeks running to bomb shelters as the Iranian regime launched barrages of ballistic missiles at the Jewish state. Iran’s chief terrorist proxy, Hezbollah, also fired rockets at northern Israel from Lebanon.
“There were times when we had to train on Zoom because we could not leave our homes. We also had one intensive week where some of our girls from the north stayed in our homes, just so we could have the opportunity to train together as one team,” Yasinska explained. “After all of this hard preparation, sacrifice, and determination, to finally represent our country was incredibly emotional and meaningful. It is a huge honor for us, and it was very important to show the world that Israel is on the international map of this sport — standing strong, competing proudly, and doing the very best we can.”
In 2021, the ICU was granted full recognition by the International Olympic Committee.
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London Gallery Cancels Antisemitic Art Exhibit After Pro-Israel Lawyers Intervene
Demonstrators attend the “Lift The Ban” rally organised by Defend Our Juries, challenging the British government’s proscription of “Palestine Action” under anti-terrorism laws, in Parliament Square, in London, Britain, Sept. 6, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Carlos Jasso
A gallery in southwest London has canceled a traveling art exhibition that it was set to host next month after a group of pro-Israel lawyers expressed concern about the show’s artwork promoting antisemitic content, including conspiracy theories about Jews and images that demonize Israeli and Jewish individuals.
“Drawings Against Genocide” by British artist Matthew Collings was set to be open at the Delta House Gallery in Wandsworth from May 16-24. The gallery is owned by Pineapple Corporation and Delta House Studios Ltd. After UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI), an association of British lawyers who support the Jewish state, wrote a letter to the gallery’s owners about the exhibit’s antisemitic content, they canceled the event.
“We were unaware of this intention for an exhibition as it was arranged without any consultation with the owners of the artist studios at Riverside Road,” Pineapple Corporation Chairman Tom Berglund wrote in a letter to UKLFI on Friday that confirmed the exhibit has been called off. “We all hope the issues on the ground in the Middle East can eventually be resolved,” he added.
Last month, “Drawings Against Genocide” was displayed at a gallery in Margate, a seaside town in England, and garnered widespread criticism for promoting anti-Israel and antisemitic narratives and imagery.
A spokesperson for UKLFI said freedom of expression “does not extend to the promotion of material that relies on antisemitic tropes, dehumanizing imagery, and conspiracy narratives about Jews.”
“There is a real danger in normalizing antisemitic imagery and narratives in cultural spaces,” the spokesperson added. “When material that demonizes Jews or recycles classic antisemitic tropes is presented as legitimate artistic expression, it risks lowering the threshold for what is considered acceptable in public discourse. At a time when Jewish communities in London and across the UK are already facing a significant rise in antisemitic incidents and attacks, it is particularly important that institutions act responsibly. The wider environment in which hatred is trivialized or excused can contribute to a climate in which such attacks become more likely.”
Collings’ drawings feature swastikas, often alongside the flag of Israel, show Jews surrounded by skulls, depict ancient Israelites with horns, and compare Israel to Nazi Germany. One drawing shows Sotheby’s French-Israeli owner Patrick Drahi as a “fanatic Zionist” who eats babies alive. Others demonized in Collings’ work include Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, pro-Israel writer and journalist David Collier, and film director Quentin Tarantino, who resides in Israel with his family.
Some drawings also address the deadly Hamas-led terrorist attack on Oct. 7, 2023, in Israel. One artwork denies that sexual violence took place during the massacre while another falsely claims there is “no reliable evidence whatsoever” about some of the violence orchestrated by the Hamas terrorist organization.
UKLFI told the gallery’s owners that Collings’ artwork could “potentially engage provisions under the Public Order Act 1986 and expose both the artist and the gallery to legal risks.”
Collings insists that his artwork is criticism of Israel and Zionism, but not antisemitic. He wrote in an Instagram post that his drawings “are a window into the Zionist lobby’s connection to our government, mainstream media, and the art world. The images depict individuals implicated in the genocide in Gaza as well as challenge the notion that being against Zionism is antisemitic.” He said in a separate post that his art exhibit “fights against the atrocities Israel is committing” and will “go on touring until Palestine is free.”
“Venues around the world are lined up to host it. Sold works are replaced by new ones,” he added. “Ongoing realities are pictured. A real bloody genocide is the subject. And be damned to unreal absurdities uttered by Zionist defenders of the indefensible.”
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Shabbos Kestenbaum: Administrators Have a Duty to Protect Jewish Students and Continue to Fail
The campus of Smith College in April 2024. Photo: Instagram/Screenshot
Across the country, we’re watching the same play staged, with the same script. Earlier this month, students at Ohio University passed a BDS referendum. Last week, a different BDS referendum passed at UC Berkeley. At Smith College, the Advisory Committee on Investor Responsibility considered a BDS proposal on April 16 and then went silent on its timeline. On April 22, at San Diego State, the student government held its final vote and passed a BDS resolution.
Four campuses, four tests, and the question for every administrator is the same: Will you stand up now, or will you do what Harvard did and let the crisis metastasize? I know the answer when administrators fail.
As a former Harvard student, I watched an institution ignore more than 40 written appeals to its antisemitism task force. I filed a federal Title VI lawsuit as a last resort. A federal judge rejected Harvard’s motion to dismiss. Harvard adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism in January 2025 as part of a related settlement, and my case settled four months later. But none of that had to happen. If Harvard had rejected the ideological premises of the BDS movement clearly and early, rather than treating them as legitimate academic discourse, the crisis that engulfed its campus might have been contained.
The four campuses now facing BDS votes should learn from Harvard’s failure, not repeat it.
Ohio University represents the worst kind of response: the response that isn’t. When a BDS referendum passed on campus, the university’s only pushback came through Senior Director of Communications Dan Pittman, who told Jewish outlets that the university “will neither consider, nor act upon, any resolution or referendum that proposes illegal actions.” The statement was never posted on the university’s official channels. The president’s office has said nothing publicly. A quiet quote buried in the Jewish press is not a condemnation. It is a hope that the story will disappear. American Jewish students at Ohio University deserve a public, forceful, unambiguous rejection from President Lori Stewart Gonzalez, delivered on university letterhead and posted to the university’s own website.
UC Berkeley now faces the same test. On April 18, the student government’s referendum passed, yet Chancellor Rich Lyons has not publicly rejected the result. Berkeley has already lived through the consequences of administrative hesitation. In March 2026, Berkeley Law paid $1 million to settle a federal discrimination lawsuit after its “Jewish-free zones” and harassment of American Jewish students became national news. The university has been sued once for antisemitism. It should not need to be sued twice before its chancellor states plainly that the endowment will not be conscripted as a political weapon.
Smith College has an easier task and has somehow found a way to fail at it. In March 2024, the Advisory Committee on Investor Responsibility rejected an earlier BDS proposal, finding Smith’s exposure to the targeted companies “negligible and entirely indirect.” On April 16, the committee considered a second, nearly identical proposal. Smith spokesperson Deb McDaniel stated that she “was not aware” of any formal timeline for the board to vote on the matter. That is the institutional equivalent of closing the blinds. Smith does not need a new study, a new committee, or a summer recess before delivering the same answer it delivered last year. The trustees should reaffirm the 2024 decision on the merits, in public, before the next academic year begins. Every week of silence is a week in which American Jewish students at Smith spend wondering whether their college has quietly switched sides.
This week, San Diego State University passed its BDS resolution, and the administration must clearly demonstrate that no divestment demand will be acted upon. President Adela de la Torre should not wait for the student government to humiliate itself on camera before defending the university’s fiduciary duty. American Jewish students at SDSU are entitled to know where their president stands, and they are entitled to know it in public, in writing, and this week.
These four cases share a single feature: Administrators who know the right answer and are hoping someone else will deliver it for them. Brown’s Corporation rejected divestment in October 2024. Bowdoin rejected it in March 2025. Dartmouth’s committee rejected it nine to zero. Columbia’s president said the university “will not divest from Israel.” Every institution that has engaged the question seriously has reached the same conclusion. The problem is not that the case against BDS is weak. The problem is that too many administrators would rather be quietly correct than publicly brave.
Quiet is not an option anymore. A 2026 study found that 42 percent of American Jewish students have experienced antisemitism on campus, and 34 percent hide their Jewish identity out of fear. These numbers are not abstractions. They are the direct product of administrative timidity in the face of a movement whose explicit goal is the delegitimization of the Jewish state and the isolation of American Jewish students on American campuses.
On Oct. 7, 2023, young American Jews woke up. We are not going back to sleep. We are watching Ohio University, UC Berkeley, Smith College, and San Diego State. We expect administrators who were hired to protect students to do their job.
Shabbos Kestenbaum is a political commentator at PragerU and a former lead plaintiff in a civil rights lawsuit against Harvard University.