The political interference by the rabbis is getting more and more unbearable. The attempt to impose their opinions and lifestyles, regardless of the preferences of the majority of their fellow citizens, is outrageous. They are arrogant and anti-democratic and coercive.



I am, of course, referring to the Reform rabbis in the United States.



While not every rabbi or every member of the Reform synagogue movement has been recruited into the "Political Liberalism as Judaism" school of pseudo-Judaism, enough have. The "Political Liberalism as Judaism" doctrine and pseudo-religion dominates the main institutions of the Reform synagogue movement, including their Council of Rabbis. And of course, the leftist SWAT team for the Reform movement is the Ridiculous, er, I mean, the "Religious" Action Center, under the commissarship of David Saperstein, who recently launched a Reform jihad against Israel's attempts to defend its children from terrorists by constructing a security wall. The RAC is more worried about inconveniencing the Palestinians than about the rights of Jewish children to ride buses without being blown up. It is far more critical of the Boy Scouts for not hiring gay scout leaders than of the PLO.



But no less outrageous is the theological coercion efforts of the Reform rabbis, attempting to impose their liberal political theology not only on fellow American Jews, but on the US as a whole. While whining about supposed Orthodox religious coercion in Israel, the Reform establishment today embodies the worst form of Jewish religious coercion on earth, with the religion in question being liberal politics and liberation theology.



The Reform movement has adopted the entire agenda of the American Left, down to and including bashing Israel for daring to defend itself. The Reform establishment is today barely distinct from the buffoons in the Tikkun-Aleph-Renewal cult of Michael Lerner and Arthur Waskow, other than the fact that they have not - yet - endorsed LSD use by Jews. The Reform establishment opposes school choice for Jews and wants Jewish children confined to public schools; it supports every wacky idea to emerge from the most extremist environmentalist movements; it supports affirmative action quotas that discriminate against Jews. The number one item on its agenda these days is gay "marriage" and David Saperstein's comments opposing welfare reform were so outrageous that a few years back they were cited with approval by the American Communist Party newspaper.



The Reform establishment blocks school vouchers by trotting out the old bogeyman of religious coercion, while at the same time, its entire raison d'etre is religious coercion - liberal theological PC fad "religion" coercion, that is. No tradeoffs, no policy analysis, no understanding of markets, no thinking any deeper than a leftist bumper sticker.



The Reform establishment supports partial-birth killings of babies, but vehemently opposes execution of convicted murderers and terrorists. It wants Israel to return to its 1949 borders with all "settlers" expelled. Reformies in Israel have led the anti-globalization hoodlums seeking to make the world safe for Marxism. The US Reform movement has conscripted itself on behalf of jailed Stalinist terrorist Lori Berenson in Peru.



I have a serious question for David Saperstein and the Reform establishment (and for parts of the Conservative synagogue movement as well). I am not being facetious:



In your opinion, are Michael Moore, Teddy Kennedy and Ralph Nader Jewish?



I am serious.



After all, if being Jewish is nothing more than liberal political activism, why are these people not to be regarded as Jewish? And don't answer that it is because Jews eat kosher and keep shabbos, because we know how common that is among Reform Jews. And do not reply that it is because Reform Jews base their liberal politics on the Bible. Come on now. Where does the Bible endorse homosexuality and abortion and Palestinian statehood in the West Bank? And many of the Reform leaders I have met know the Bible far less well than your average Mormon.



So seriously, if all of Judaism is liberal self-sanctimonious agitprop, why can't Moore, Kennedy and Nader be considered Jewish? And if a Jewish liberal marries a non-Jewish liberal, why should anyone consider that an intermarriage? After all, they have exactly the same "religion".



There is virtually no religious coercion in Israel. True, the politicized religious parties once forced the cinemas closed on Sabbath, but today the whole country has DVDs. True, once the Orthodox politicos forced the buses to stop running on Sabbath, but who cares when everyone has a car? I would venture to say that almost no Israelis ever are forced to observe any religious ritual against their will. And other than some minor difficulties for those wishing to have a "civil" wedding, which is quite possible today, no secularist in Israel has to have any contact whatsoever with the Orthodox institutions if he/she does not want to.



It is not the religious parties who are responsible for the national self-destruction in Israel, but the secularist ones, although the religious parties display cowardice in not stopping it.



But contrast that with the political interference and coercion by the Reform movement in the US. In an era when true believers in liberalism are an endangered species outside the Bay Area and Hollywood, the Reform establishment lobbies in the name of "Judaism" and "Biblical ethics" to impose its leftist political biases and lifestyle on all Jews and on the entire United States. It seeks to hijack Judaism, Jewish holidays and Jewish ethical authority on behalf of the PC fads of the liberal-Left.



The time has come to get these rabbis and other Reform leaders out of our bedrooms, out of our politics and back to their proper roles. Stop this liberal pseudo-theological coercion!