White House meets with rabbis to assuage concerns on Israel

WASHINGTON — If you tell the rabbis, they will spread the word.

That was the thinking behind two intimate White House meetings — the second of which took place on Thursday, May 13— with a carefully selected slate of 15 rabbis from across the country and representing the Orthodox, Reform and Conservative streams.

The two meetings, the first of which was held last month, were part of a charm offensive after relations between the Obama and Netanyahu governments hit a low in early March, when Israel announced a major building start in eastern Jerusalem during a visit to Israel by U.S. Vice President Joe Biden. The Obama administration wants Israel to freeze settlement in the West Bank and building in the eastern part of Jerusalem.

The rabbis in attendance — whose congregations were spread from Florida, the Midwest, Las Vegas, the Northeast and the South — seemed receptive.

While not all the rabbis came away entirely mollified, they were nonetheless impressed at the seriousness of the outreach.

Efrem Goldberg, the rabbi at Boca Raton Synagogue, which is Orthodox, said he left the meeting still wondering if the administration is on the right track, but still “cautiously optimistic” because of the depth of commitment to Israel he heard.

“I left with a clear impression that these individuals have a real passion about Israel,” even if he did not agree with them on tactics, Rabbi Goldberg said.

Another Floridian at the meetings, Rabbi Aaron Rubinger of Congregation Ohev Shalom, a Conservative synagogue, told the Heritage Florida Jewish News that he had gone into the first meeting, “with grave concern that even the public perception of too much space between Israel and the U.S. might give a signal to Iran that the U.S. was not as committed to Israel’s security as previous administrations were.”

Now, he said, he was assuaged. “We are mending and moving beyond this controversy,” he said.