An Open Letter to Rabbi Michael Chriqui
By Danny Hochberg – Co-President of the UPJ
The Australian Jewish News, July 28, 2025
‘May we aspire to unity, but not through uniformity, but rather through celebrating and tolerating our differences. Let that fine balance be our strength’
Dear Rabbi Chirqui,
Just before the end of the WZO elections in Australia, you sent out a phone message to the Sydney Beth Din data base.
In it you asked “what should be the position of Torah true Jews in relation to the elections of the WZO?” You went on to endorse the “Torah true” parties in the election: Mizrachi and Eretz HaKodesh. You warned your database, “There are forces at play that are using every means at their disposal to negate the strength of Torah Judaism with their fight for pluralism”. You concluded by telling your members “it is incumbent to vote for one of the parties (Mizrachi or Eretz Hakodesh).”
I write to you, publicly, to take umbrage at your suggestion that there are “forces at play that are using every means at their disposal to negate Torah Judaism”.
Pluralism celebrates Torah Judaism, its many interpretations, and the variety of its followers. Rabbi Chirqui, in exhorting your membership to deny this pluralism, in fact, you disqualify yourself and all who follow your direction from the very essence of what the WZO stands for, which is the unification of the Jewish people and the strengthening of the bond with Eretz Yisrael.
The Jerusalem program, which all who vote must sign onto specifically states: “Strengthening Israel as a Jewish, Zionist, and democratic state and shaping it as an exemplary society with a unique moral and spiritual character, marked by mutual respect for the multi-faceted Jewish people, rooted in the vision of the prophets, striving for peace and contributing to the betterment of the world.”
The Jerusalem program recognises the unmistakable characteristic of contemporary Jewish life is its diversity. Democracy is the framework through which pluralism is promoted and protected.
Sadly, in Israel today, and in the Diaspora, the issue of civil and religious rights for non-Orthodox Jews is under attack by those who, like yourself make claim to ownership of “True Torah Judaism”, thus negating the two million Conservative and Progressive Jews, let alone many others who practice a variation of your “True Torah Judaism”.
The very term “True Torah Judaism” is not only ambiguous but reflects an arrogance that cannot be defended on a historical basis, let alone Halachic. There are plenty of examples from the history of Jewish study to reinforce the premise that there is more than one way to be Jewish.
So let me be clear. Your exhortation to exclude Jews sitting at the table of Zionism, is a transgression not only of the unity of Klal Yisrael, but of the very principles of the Jerusalem Program. Uniformity will not bring unity. It will lead to alienation and exclusion. Only through pluralism can we hope to unite the Jewish people. Never has this been more urgent in today’s troubling times.
We are in the midst of the “Three weeks”, the period of mourning commemorating the destruction of the first and second Temples. In both circumstances. It was the disunity of the Jewish people, according to historic records, that contributed to these tragedies. May we aspire to unity, but not through uniformity, but rather through celebrating and tolerating our differences. Let that fine balance be our strength.
