Why the World Needs Progressive Judaism

Written by Rabbi Elliott Karstadt — 5 April 2025

In an address he gave to the World Union for Progressive Judaism in 1946, Rabbi Dr Leo Baeck had every right to tell the Jewish community to focus on itself: to look inward, to rebuild after the devastation of the Shoah, to ask what good it did us Jews to engage at all with the outside world. Baeck himself had been a prisoner at Theresienstadt concentration camp, where he (a man in his sixties by this point) had been put to work doing manual labour. According to legend, he was spared transportation to the death camp at Auschwitz because there was another Rabbi Beck in the camp who was taken instead of him. He had every reason to say: let’s focus on ourselves, care only about other Jews, leave the world to everyone else.

But Baeck was never the person to take the direction that others expected. Early in his career as a rabbi, he had bucked trends that his colleagues had set. In the 1930s, despite the possibility of leaving Nazi Germany, he accepted the onerous task of representing and leading the Jewish community. And when in the concentration camp, when he could easily have been overcome with a sense of futility and despair, Baeck instead dedicated himself to lecturing the other inmates about philosophy – maintaining humanity and dignity in a place designed to break human beings.

So, when Baeck stood up before the World Union for Progressive Judaism in 1946, it was both remarkable and unsurprising that he said:

Judaism must not stand aside, when the great problems of humanity, which are reborn in every new epoch, struggle in the minds of men to gain expression, battle in the societies of mankind to find their way. We must not, as Jews, deny ourselves to the problems of the time, nor hide ourselves, as Jews, in face of them; they must not be something that goes on outside our Judaism, in another sphere. We are Jews also for the sake of humanity; we should be there, quite especially in this world after the war; we have our questions to raise and have to give our answer. To rouse the conscience of humanity could here be our best title-deed. Surely we will then often have to speak a ‘No’ to much that happens on earth and that rules on earth, to speak a ‘No’ for the sake of our great ‘Yes’, of our great demand. We shall often have to accuse, for the sake of justice, of love, for the sake of the promise; say No and accuse, because we are what we are and should be, God’s most loyal opposition on earth, the steadfast and stubborn for God’s sake.

We often talk about Progressive Judaism as a form of prophetic Judaism – of continuing the tradition of the Hebrew prophets who reprimanded the people for the way in which they treated each other; who spoke truth to power and stood up against oppression and injustice. This is what Baeck means when he suggests that we might need to speak a ‘No’ – a no against injustice and oppression. And what is that great ‘Yes’ to which he refers? Surely, it is simply a society founded on principles of justice.

Our portion this week began with the first verse of the book of Leviticus – in Hebrew: Vayikra ‘and God called out to Moses and the Eternal spoke to him from the Tent of Meeting’ (Lev 1:1). It is that calling out from God to humanity that was the foundation of Baeck’s theology – the ethical demands that the Eternal makes on us human beings.

For Baeck, it is the ethics that give us the imperative to believe in God rather than the other way round. There is no theological doctrine or dogma of belief that we are required to believe before we encounter or respond to that ethical demand.

It is worth noting that the demands that follow in our portion today do not appear to be ethical ones – they are mostly centred around the sacrifices. For Baeck though this was not a problem, because history had proved that the sacrifices were only a temporary style of worship – one that would soon be replaced by prayer and meditation – much better tools by which to reflect on our moral behaviour and the requirements of our action in the world.

The world needs Judaism. The world needs for us to role up our sleeves and get involved. The world needs for us to speak when there is silence. And, in his address of 1946, Leo Baeck reminds his audience of the silence of the international community during the Holocaust. The world needs for us to speak up.

This time last year, I gave a sermon reflecting on a visit that had been made to Alyth by then Leader of the Opposition, Sir Keir Starmer, in preparation for Pesach. And I reflected on my role as a religious and as a Jewish leader in a moment such as that, when we come face-to-face with power, and when we talk about what is important to Jews and Judaism, that we do not just talk about the easy things but the things that are more difficult to say.

At the time, the thing that I spoke to Keir Starmer about was the fact that Pesach demands of us that we place ourselves in the situation of the ancient Israelites – that we could so easily be living under oppressive rule. At our seders we will hold up the matzah and say halachma anya this is the bread of our affliction. Our affliction – not just the affliction of those living thousands of years ago or thousands of miles away. Our tradition demands of us that we speak about and stand up for others and their freedom.

It seemed likely at that time, that by the following Pesach, Keir Starmer would be Prime Minister. And so it is – and it is one thing to be in opposition, another thing to be in government. This week I heard from rabbinic colleagues who are going to be directly affected by the changes the government is proposing to benefits and specifically those affecting disabled people. Proposals that threaten, by the government’s own calculations, to push 250,000 people into poverty. The numbers only tell part of the story. It was particularly moving hearing from individuals who will be affected – about how difficult it already is to apply for benefits as a disabled person, how much you need to game the system. How much you need to show yourself on a bad day, rather than a good day, to gain the support you need. And our responsibility to speak against injustice has not changed.

As well as celebrating Pesach, over the next few weeks we are going to be talking a lot about the merger of the Liberal and Reform Movements, something that is becoming more and more real as in May the membership of the two movements will be asked to formally vote on whether to move forward by dissolving themselves and becoming one new movement. This does not mean that we will all be asked to exercise an individual vote – rather the members of the movements are their constituent synagogues and communities.

As a community, last week we had the opportunity to hear from members of Alyth who are intimately involved in the process, and we were privileged to hear from Rabbi Rebecca Birk from Finchley Progressive Synagogue, who spoke passionately from Jewish sources about why she thought the merger was the right thing to do.

There are many practical questions that come with a merger like this: will Alyth have to change its name? Will we be forced into adopting a new prayer book? Will we have to pay more money? Will we still be entitled to be buried in the same cemeteries and with the same liturgy as we expected? The answer to all of these is: no. These things will not need to change. Because a new Progressive Movement will be respectful of the individuality of synagogues. This merger might actually give some synagogues and communities more freedom to try new things if they want to, and to experiment with new liturgies if they think that will be beneficial to them. But there will be no expectation that we will change any of those things.

Well then, some might say, if all those things are going to stay the same, why is it so important that we merge? I think that Leo Baeck provides us with that answer in his address from 1946. He said:

In all groupings of Jewry and spheres of Judaism we have too much little Judaism – a Judaism which exhausts itself in belonging to a Congregation or perhaps to some Association and which in such service deems to have fulfilled its share of Jewish duty. Certainly we must not belittle this service. It is so much better and healthier to be within the community than only to stand at its borders, better and healthier to belong to the Congregation than to remain outside. The Congregation is the living germ-cell of Jewish life. Judaism cannot live without the Jewish Congregation; but the Congregation is not the ultimate purpose; it is not an end in itself. It is there for the sake of Judaism, for the sake of the great Jewish whole; in that only has it its true life. That must never be forgotten. The Rabbi certainly is the Rabbi of his Congregation and must serve it with his devotion, his love and loyalty, but he must never forget that he is a Rabbi of Judaism, as it were, a Rabbi of the whole Jewish people.

Individual communities are important – and those practical questions are important. But they have to be seen in the context of the whole Jewish people, and they have to be seen in the context of the whole world. Judaism cannot simply be for itself, and Alyth cannot simply be for itself. We have to take a stand in the wider world, and we have to be engaged in what is going on outside those synagogue doors. That ethical demand is one that Liberal and Reform Judaism share. The call of the Hebrew prophets is one that both movements seek to respond.

Yesterday evening, Rabbi Hannah spoke about how it important it is to be represented – that our voice is heard.

And that is why the merger is so important – the fact that as a bigger movement, one that will represent one third of all affiliated Jews in the UK, we will have a bigger voice and a bigger presence. We will be better equipped to speak to power and to raise our agenda to the front. This does not just mean speaking against antisemitism. It means speaking up with the most vulnerable in society.

This is only potential – the institutions of which we are members only ever give us the potential to make a difference. It is up to us as individuals to decide whether we are going to avail ourselves of the opportunities to grasp that power, to use that voice that we have. And when we do, to do so wisely, to do so in a way that helps rather than hinders, and which takes account as much as possible to real people in real situations and real suffering.