Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

Reform Movement Biennial Opens With Mogel, Sharansky

Best-selling author Wendy Mogel and Chairman of the Jewish Agency for Israel Natan Sharansky will be among the speakers at tonight’s opening plenary of the Union for Reform Judaism’s biennial conference. The gathering, which runs through Sunday, will also feature keynote addresses by President Barack Obama, U.S. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, and Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak.

The event marks a major transition for the URJ, which is set to install its new president, Rabbi Rick Jacobs, the longtime spiritual leader of Westchester Reform Temple in Scarsdale, N.Y. Outgoing President Rabbi Eric Yoffie is retiring after 16 years at the helm of the Reform movement’s congregational arm; Yoffie recently sat down with the Forward to discuss his tenure at the URJ, and that exit interview can be read here.

Speeches by Obama, Cantor, Barak, as well as those by Yoffie and Jacobs, can be watched on the video player below. A schedule of those webcasts can be found here.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.