MIAMI — Shayna Burack, a joint cantorial and rabbinical student at Hebrew Union College, the Reform movement’s seminary in New York, came out as a Zionist in her senior sermon before her classmates earlier this year. She paid a price.

“I almost lost a friend over the sermon, just because he had such a hard time being friends with a Zionist,” Burack told Jewish Insider on Monday. “I wish it didn’t take courage to get up and say I’m a Zionist or I support Israel.”

Burack also shared the story at the opening session on Sunday night of an exclusive convening of Reform, Conservative and Orthodox rabbis at a glitzy Miami resort to discuss how to bring their love for Israel to the pulpit — and to strategize about how to fight what they see as waning support for Zionism among some young rabbis. She spoke about the loneliness she felt after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks, which left her distraught.

Her remarks made waves among the attendees at the gathering, called “Zionism: A New Conversation.” It was organized by the Leffell Foundation, with support from The Paul E. Singer Foundation and the Maimonides Fund. Many of the 125 rabbis in the room have decades of experience in the field and lead congregations in which expressing support for Israel is expected. Learning that there are students who identify as anti-Zionist at HUC came as a shock to some. 

“I think it was surprising to a lot of the rabbis. I think it was eye-opening to them. I think they had no idea,” said Michael Leffell, the New York investor whose foundation spearheaded the conference. The son of a Conservative rabbi, Leffell has focused his philanthropic efforts on encouraging American rabbis to build a deep connection with Israel. 

Since 2012, his foundation has brought more than 250 rabbinical students to Israel as part of a program called the Leffell Fellowship. The fellows also used to attend the annual AIPAC policy conference, which would bring hundreds of rabbis together alongside thousands of other pro-Israel advocates. But AIPAC stopped hosting policy conference after 2020, leaving a void that the Leffell Foundation is attempting to fill. The Miami conference operates as a space for rabbis to talk about Zionism and be unabashedly pro-Israel at a time in which conversations about Israel, even, at times, in the Jewish community, have become increasingly fraught. 

“We were looking for spaces where we could come together and talk about Zionism, what it is  and how we can work together and sit in this space of people who, at least, are lovers of Israel, and that being a starting point,” said Rabbi Brigitte Rosenberg, a Reform rabbi at United Hebrew Congregation in St. Louis. 

The class sizes at Reform and Conservative rabbinical schools have shrunk in recent years. With fewer people stepping forward to become rabbis in the liberal denominations, their seminaries are forced to decide — among other things — whether to limit enrollment to students who fully buy into the institutions’ avowedly Zionist ethos, or to allow some wiggle room for aspiring rabbis who do not view support for Israel as a crucial part of their work. 

“I do think that most rabbis are Zionist rabbis in the sense of, they’re pro-Israel. They want the best for Israel. They consider Israel to be important to the American Jewish community and an important component of their own Jewish identity,” said Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch, senior rabbi at the Reform Stephen Wise Free Synagogue in Manhattan. “The younger you go, the less true that is.”

The Zionist rabbinic conference is one of few opportunities for rabbis from across the Jewish community — ranging from frum Yeshiva University scholars to liberal female rabbis — to come together in one room. Rabbi Samuel Klibanoff, an Orthodox rabbi at Congregation Etz Chaim in Livingston, N.J., encouraged fellow Orthodox rabbis to come see the challenges facing their Reform and Conservative counterparts. 

“We have to go out of our silos a little bit. And we have to see, these people are really, really struggling,” said Klibanoff, who noted that the Orthodox world has generally been spared from the divisiveness around Israel that has permeated more liberal streams of Judaism. “Israel is a given. It’s a big part of our lives. All of our kids, they go spend a year there after high school, if not more, and I think that that’s because we don’t run into those pitfalls of social justice versus these progressive values.”

Rabbis from across the country discussed the localized challenges they face. In one conversation, rabbis were asked how they would act if a student showed up to a local Jewish day school wearing a Free Palestine T-shirt. 

“Depending on geographic region and type of community, rabbis are approaching challenges in different ways,” said Leffell. “A rabbi in Florida reported that his school might say, ‘Throw them out,’ and tell the family the student’s shirt is not appropriate for this setting.’ The rabbis up north say, ‘Well, it’s not that easy’ and have to juggle conflicting groups within their community.”

At the end of the conference, the rabbis sang “Hatikvah” and prepared to leave. Three days of programming, even in sunny South Florida, had worn them out. The big questions about the future of Zionism and American Judaism would still be waiting for them the next day. But first: a visit to the hotel’s waterpark on the way out.