Interview | Rabbi Gilad Kariv on the Knesset’s Future

In 2021, Rabbi Gilad Kariv was elected to the Knesset, becoming the first Reform rabbi to serve in Israel’s parliament. Elected as part of the Labor Party’s slate, Kariv now represents the Democratic Party (a merging of Labor and Meretz) and has become a leading voice against the current far-right government. Kariv speaks out forcefully against statements he considers demeaning or far-right. For example, on the anniversary of the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, the speaker of the Knesset said that Rabin was Israel’s “Chamberlain,” because he had signed an agreement with the Palestinians. In front of a nearly empty Knesset, Kariv responded that Netanyahu was a “Chamberlain” because he encouraged Qatar to finance the arming of Hamas, which led to the October 7 attack. 

Kariv grew up in what he describes as a typical secular Israeli family, leaning toward the political left, but “not antireligious.” Like so many Israeli secular families, they followed the Jewish calendar, celebrated the holidays and had a weekly family dinner with grandparents on Friday night. As a child Kariv wanted to know more and went on his own to the local Orthodox synagogue, but he didn’t find it satisfying. “The first time I stepped into a non-Orthodox synagogue was in Memphis, Tennessee, where I was a ‘delegate’ of the Israeli scouts movement and spent a summer working in the JCC day camp near Memphis,” he recalls.

Kariv was ordained as a Reform rabbi at the Hebrew Union College’s Jerusalem campus in 2000. He has headed the Israel Religious Action Center and the Israel Movement for Reform and Progressive Judaism. Below is an edited version of a discussion with him held in early November. Kariv has been a member for 35 years of Beit Daniel Synagogue in Tel Aviv.

The next election must take place before October 2026. Tell us about the current political climate in Israel and the opportunities for a change in leadership. 

I am deeply troubled by the fact that our government appears to be renewing the “judiciary coup,” designed to restrict the role of Israel’s Supreme Court. We had hoped that the government would set aside these efforts. In 2022 Hamas identified Israel’s internal conflicts as an invitation to launch an attack. We know this from statements of Hamas leaders as well as documents discovered inside Gaza. 

I believe that in the coming weeks, democratic protests in Israel will resume. We may see the hundreds of thousands of Israelis who marched in the streets to bring back the hostages return to call for the protection of Israel’s democracy. 

Those of us in the democratic camp have many lessons to learn from the last national elections held in 2022. In a sense, Netanyahu did not win that election—we simply lost it. Our political mistakes led to the loss of more than 300,000 votes, a result of the fact that one of the Zionist liberal parties (Meretz) and one of the three Arab parties did not meet the threshold of 3.5 percent of the electorate, which is the minimum to achieve representation in the Knesset. 

For three decades, the average liberal Israeli stepped away from Israel’s political and public arenas. In effect, we “privatized” ourselves as a liberal community and looked at public involvement in politics as something to avoid, while the Orthodox and the ultranationalists worked to control the IDF, the education system, academia, and the media.

Without guidance or political leadership, Israelis understand that the current battle is not only over Israel’s democracy, but also about what it means to have a Jewish state that is both liberal and Zionist. You could see it by the fact that after a few weeks, three years ago, suddenly the streets were covered with the blue-and-white flags of the nation. Without any coordinated communications, people began to bring and wave these flags from their homes. The newspapers and the street signs increasingly referred to Israel’s Declaration of Independence, which emphasizes democracy and shared society.

We have now brought together the Labor and Meretz parties to create a unified political bloc (the Democrats דֵמוֹקרָטִיָה) which today is the natural political home for the Zionist left. At the same time, I also believe that our political system should reflect the full political and public awareness of Israel’s liberal side. I believe that all the liberal democratic forces in Israel should run together and include the new political initiative led by Gadi Eisenkot [former chief of staff of the Israeli army who has just established a new party] as well as possibly others. One of the great mistakes of the Israeli liberal camp over the last few decades has been to enable Netanyahu to set the parameters of good citizenship and of being a loyal Jew. The way to resist this is to stand firm and present a clear, not radical, political philosophy.

Thousands of non-Jews, including Arabs, have supported the liberal parties. In the past some were represented in the Knesset. Today, there is a debate about whether the next coalition should include one of the Arab parties. My answer is a clear yes, provided the party agrees with the basic principles of the others in the coalition.   In the end, a democratic society cannot tell 20 percent of its citizens that their votes do not count. In the previous government, the Arab party led by Mansour Abbas, who was a minister in that cabinet, was a political success. 

Could you look further down the road and tell us your vision of a future where the various parts of Israeli society accept the legitimacy of the other? 

There are political forces in the opposition who say that we need to deal first with healing Israeli society before reaching out to the Palestinians. I believe that you cannot truly heal Israeli society as long as you control the lives of three million Palestinians. This status quo creates tremendous damage to our national security as well as our moral values. 

With regard to the future, Israel is a very diverse country, but we do not have an ongoing conversation between the liberal and conservative views of the nature of the State of Israel. We need to do our best to strengthen areas of national consensus. The fact that we have a strong public higher education system helps. And we have a tradition of strong social service offerings. We need to reinforce these elements of Israeli society. We must also recognize the strength of our younger generation, many of whom are fully committing themselves, especially through volunteerism, to the defense of the country.

Who are the leaders of the future?

U.S. politics is based on a system that, in the end, invests a great amount of power in the executive branch. The Israeli system is different. Israelis vote for a party rather than for a specific person. We do need charismatic leaders. But in the end, it is much more important to organize the Israeli liberal camp in a sophisticated way than to solely focus on who is the person to lead it. It could be Gadi Eisenkot, maybe Naftali Bennett. But in any event, we must form a coalition to win the election. So, I am more concerned with how to bring the different forces together than whom to identify as a leader. 

Do you plan to continue to run for the Knesset?

Yes, definitely. I expect to play an important role in the leadership of the Democrats and to hold a Ministerial position. But I have always said I will eventually end my career as a Reform rabbi and not as a politician. 

What is the situation regarding the Reform movement in Israel?

I strongly believe that the Reform movement has both a duty and an opportunity to move the Jewish Zionist liberal and democratic energy found in the streets into long-term communal and public involvement. A crowd is waiting for our rabbis, educators, lay leaders and professionals to help to rebuild the infrastructures of the liberal and democratic Jewish community in Israel. This is a moment of great opportunity for the movement.