Reform leaders who are advocating that Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion (HUC-JIR) should deny rabbinic ordination to students with non- or anti-Zionist views have forgotten the lessons of the College’s recent failed experiment with red lines.

When I entered HUC-JIR in 2003, students were required to sign a pledge promising that if they were to get married while enrolled in the program, their spouse would be Jewish. Violating that commitment would make them ineligible for rabbinic ordination.

I am not aware of the College having to enforce the policy, but enforcement was never really the point. The pledge was a symbolic act designed to show the movement’s commitment to an ideal that was already slipping beyond its grasp.

In 2001, the Central Conference of American Rabbis declared that Reform rabbis should teach their congregations that “Jews should marry Jews.” Yet by the early 21st century, intermarriage rates were approaching 70 percent. The effort to encourage Jewish endogamy by requiring clergy to model it had clearly failed. In 2024, HUC-JIR repealed the policy.

The proposal to require rabbinical and cantorial students to affirm a Zionist pledge is similarly misguided.

Supporters argue that the Reform movement is proudly Zionist and its clergy should uphold that commitment. They ask whether HUC-JIR would........

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