Adir Glick
Rabbi
Rabbi Adir Glick began his tenure at Temple Har Zion in August, 2015.
January 11, 2026 | Social Justice | Spiritual
Our Beautiful Community of Freedom and Light
My family was recently vacationing in New York, and despite the inclement weather we made the iconic trek to see the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. I did not expect it, but I was deeply moved. My daughter Shalva later said she saw me teary eyed and she wondered why. I tried to explain.
So many of us have family members who first entered America through Ellis Island. Over 50% of immigrants to the United States from other countries eventually returned to their homelands, but 95% of Jews stayed—a fact we had learned a few days earlier at the Lower East Side Tenement Museum.
Why this discrepancy? Because we Jews knew what would happen if we returned to the countries we left. It was powerful to see an exhibit of what people came with, for example, a suitcase containing tallit and tefillin. But what they really came with were suitcases full of hope and dreams for their families.
Many of them went on to live in New York in those tenement buildings on the Lower East Side, turning them into garment workshops by day. And many of them only earned a few cents an hour. But they found their feet and their voices—like the women who organized a protest when kosher meat became prohibitively expensive.
Right now, there is much that seems threatened in our beloved land. However, we must remember and reflect on what we have accomplished over the past 100 to 150 years. It is incredible to think of our success, from those suitcases to the stores and businesses of the first few generations, to the professionals, academics, and businesspeople at the height of every field. We are probably the most successful minority in world history. We have given much to our country in return for what we have received.
Likewise, our synagogues have been places of gathering for our people for worship, study, and kinship, but they have also been places of giving back—giving back for the bounty received.
It must have been very moving for those who came to this nation and viewed Lady Liberty for the first time, standing so strong, so big, speaking to the values of the Enlightenment that are also our Jewish values—freedom, precious freedom, to live and be. She is holding the law in her left hand as she thrusts a torch high overhead with her right hand, while radiant light shines forth from the crown on her head.
The promise she proclaims is still potent. We are still here to give back for the stability and freedom we have received in this nation. We are here to keep it going. It feels under threat right now. But these are still our values as a community.
The Conservative Movement
These are the same as the values of our Conservative movement of Judaism.
The Conservative movement was always about being a big tent. The Jewish people flourish best as one community, with some who observe a lot, pray every day, do Shabbat, keep kosher, and come to shul to study, and with others who have a different connection to their religious lives, more individual and personal and less bound by tradition and organized religion.
Conservative Judaism is about the freedom for everyone to do Judaism as they want and to have a path within the community to learn and to grow as people and as Jews. It is a big tent.
This is still important because, right now, a majority of the new people joining our Jewish community do not have a grandparent or great-grandparent who came in through Ellis Island as a European Jew. Yet, these people still have those same values of freedom, of giving back, of widening the torch of freedom, and of passing on the blessings to their families and the broader society and world.
Last year we were part of an intensive yearlong pilot program with 18doors, a national organization devoted to learning how to help provide Jewish interfaith families with a place in our synagogues and communities, and a sense of belonging in the big tent for everyone in our community. We learned from the program that we are doing well, but there is always more to do.
Conservative Jews also embody a big tent in politics. We should be able to bring together people of different viewpoints. We also strive to be a big tent in what we believe about God, Judaism, the Universe, and how we express it.
Freedom and a Big Tent…
Perhaps I am stuck on the Statue of Liberty carrying the tablet of the law—the tradition—in one hand, and in the other, the torch.
You see, for me, the Statue of Liberty embodies one of the greatest visions of our people, the vision of the Prophet Isaiah about our people bringing light to others. The same beautiful light that comes through our windows. The light of Shabbat in a dark world.
We share light by bringing clothing to those who lack proper garments, food to those who have lost their livelihood, help and support for those who are too afraid to go out to earn wages.
In the coming year, I would like to create opportunities for every single member of this congregation to give back to the community and to people in need. It is the light of the Biblical quote from Zachariah blazoned on our building, “Not by might nor by power but by my Spirit.” It is the light of acts of chesed ve’met, of kindness and truth, a name for pure acts and mitzvot of loving kindness that open our hearts and the hearts of others.
This is what it means to be a community, to be a big tent, as the Jewish community always has been, where all of us can feel at home, can feel the light of friendship, and live a life of values. Our tent is a place from which we spread the light and love of those values to all who enter our building and on to the broader world until the entire planet becomes filled with light.
Sincerely,
Rabbi Adir Glick
This is the text of the speech that Rabbi Glick gave at the 2026 Har Zion Annual Meeting, on January 11.
