Stepping Forward: Heroism, Hope, and the Future of Jewish Leadership
Friday December 26, 2025 – ו׳ טֵבֵת תשפ”ו
It was an odd and quietly moving scene inside the Knesset this week. In a building more accustomed to arguments, protests, and procedural tension, two Reform rabbis—one of them also a cantor—sat and ended a Knesset committee session by pulling out a guitar and singing Debbie Friedman’s Lechi Lach (later followed by an egalitarian minyan in the halls of the Knesset!). The song, itself a modern midrash on God’s call to Abraham and Sarah, filled the committee room with words of courage and forward motion: “Lechi lach, to a Land that I will show you.” For a moment, the noise of politics receded, replaced by melody, memory, and hope.
This unlikely moment took place during a meeting of the Knesset’s Committee on Diaspora Affairs, Aliyah, and Klitah (Immigration and Absorption), led by MK Rabbi Gilad Kariv, marking the 90th anniversary of the ordination of Rabbi Regina Jonas, the first woman rabbi in Jewish history, and examining the role of women in Jewish and halakhic leadership today. The hearing brought together women leaders from across Jewish denominational lines—a rare and powerful sight in a political space so often defined by division. The presence of Reform, Conservative, Orthodox, and pluralistic voices in the same room was itself a statement: that Jewish leadership is strongest when it is broad, inclusive, and rooted in shared responsibility. That such a moment could occur—song instead of shouting, reflection instead of rhetoric—felt almost countercultural. And yet, it was deeply Jewish.
The Torah teaches us that transformation often begins not with power, but with approach. In this week’s Parashat VaYigash, the Torah opens with just such a moment: “VaYigash elav Yehuda”—“Then Yehuda stepped forward.” Yehuda approaches the Egyptian ruler, unaware that he is Yosef, his long-lost brother, and risks everything. This is not the Yehuda we first met, the brother who proposed selling Yosef into slavery (ostensibly as a milder option to killing him). This is a changed leader—one who takes responsibility, who offers himself in place of Binyamin, who understands that leadership means standing in the breach for others. His speech is the emotional turning point of the Joseph story, the act that makes reconciliation possible and sets the stage for the survival of the family—and eventually, the people.
Jewish tradition understands heroism not as domination, but as moral courage: the willingness to step forward when it would be easier to step back.
Between Yehuda’s act and our own moment stands another, often overlooked figure of quiet leadership: Serach bat Asher. According to the midrash, Serach lived an extraordinarily long life, spanning generations from before the descent into Egypt through the Exodus itself. It was Serach who gently told Jacob that Yosef was still alive, using song to avoid shocking him. It was Serach who later identified the authentic redeemer by recognizing the language of redemption passed down through generations.
Serach did not lead with force or title, but with memory, continuity, and moral clarity. She bridged eras—between freedom and slavery, despair and redemption—and preserved hope when history itself seemed to fracture. In many ways, she is a precursor to later forms of female Jewish leadership: leaders who sustained the people not by commanding power, but by carrying tradition forward and ensuring it could still speak to a new moment.
That legacy echoes powerfully in the story of Rabbi Regina Jonas. Ordained in 1935 in Berlin after rigorous halakhic study, Jonas argued—correctly—that there was no Jewish legal basis to exclude women from the rabbinate. Her leadership emerged in a time of growing darkness; she would later perish in the Holocaust. Yet her ordination planted a seed that would take decades to flower fully. Remembering her today is not only an act of historical justice—it is a declaration about the future we are still trying to build.
That this commemoration took place in the Knesset matters. It comes at a moment when many Jews in Israel and the Diaspora feel deep unease about the direction of Israeli public life. A pronounced rightward shift is evident not only in rhetoric but also in governance, with figures such as MK Tzvi Sukkot chairing the Education Committee. Prior to becoming an MK, Sukkot was a prominent radical settler activist who was arrested at least three times for his actions during demonstrations outside the home of the head of the IDF’s Central Command. He was arrested in 2010 by the police due to Shin Bet suspicions that he was involved in the arson of a mosque in the northern West Bank, close to where he lived in the Yitzhar settlement.
In addition to MK Sukkot, MK Limor Son Har Melech is pending confirmation to chair the Health Committee. Medical experts have raised serious concerns over her support for Israel’s withdrawal from the World Health Organization, as she has given platforms to fringe figures spreading baseless conspiracy theories. Prof. Hagai Levine, chair of the Israeli Association of Public Health Physicians, sees Israel facing an unprecedented rabies and measles outbreak, alongside worsening mental health problems, increased suicidality, and rising chronic illness following the Gaza war, and that Son Har-Melech’s conservative-messianic worldview is likely to shape the committee’s agenda. “We are concerned she may push restrictions on abortion,” he said.
This unease is not unique to Israel. In the United States, recent comments by Vice President J.D. Vance about American Christianity have reflected a broader global trend: the instrumentalization of religion in the service of political power rather than moral responsibility. Across democracies, faith traditions are being tested—will they narrow into tools of exclusion, or rise as sources of conscience, compassion, and courage?
These roles shape not just policy, but values—what and how we teach, for whom we care, and whose voices are legitimized.
Against that backdrop, a committee hearing affirming women’s leadership, Diaspora pluralism, and the legacy of a Reform woman rabbi is not incidental. It is an act of resistance and of hope. Like Yehuda’s approach, it says: We will not retreat from responsibility. Like Serach bat Asher, it insists on continuity across generations, even when the present feels unstable.
Heroism in Jewish life rarely announces itself with fanfare. It appears in the willingness to step forward, to sing in unlikely places, to widen the circle of leadership rather than constrict it. It seems in remembering those—women and men—who carried our people through rupture and renewal alike.
In a time of anxiety and polarization, the lessons of VaYigash, of Serach bat Asher, and of Regina Jonas converge into a single call: Lechi lach. Go forward. Carry memory. Take responsibility. Build a future expansive enough to hold all who belong to it. Join us as we push forward by organizing Israeli expats to fly and vote in Israel’s next elections, forge new partnerships with our Israeli Movement, reimagine Israel education, and continue to organize and mobilize our Movement in support of Reform Zionist values.
Shabbat Shalom.