One hundred fifty Reform, Conservative and Orthodox rabbis — who represent synagogues, schools and major Jewish organizations — will congregate at a luxury Florida resort Monday and Tuesday to discuss how to bring Zionism to the pulpit at a time when pro-Israel spaces can be increasingly difficult to find, even in Jewish communities. 

The third annual “Zionism: A New Conversation” conference, hosted by the Lisa and Michael Leffell Foundation, Maimonides Fund, the Paul E. Singer Foundation, the Marcus Foundation, Inc. and the Zalik Foundation Fund, is the largest one yet, according to its organizers.

“This is a conference that’s for rabbis, planned by rabbis,” Stacey Popovsky, executive director of the Lisa and Michael Leffell Foundation, told eJewishPhilanthropy ahead of the event. “They have identified what the most critical issues are facing their rabbinate. These rabbis represent the gamut of the political, religious, geographic and gender diversity of the conference. They’ve put together something that speaks to their needs.”

In addition to rabbis, several prominent speakers will present at the conference, including author Dara Horn, who will speak about safeguarding Jewish education, and Mark Dubowitz, CEO of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, who will speak about policy execution in Washington. Mohammed Darawashe, an expert on Jewish-Arab relations, and Darius Jones, the founder and director of the National Black Empowerment Council, are also slated to address the conference. There will also be breakout sessions and rabbinic roundtables that give attendees the opportunity to discuss issues in their communities and exchange ideas. 

A 2025 study conducted by Jewish Federations of North America found that a minority of American Jews, roughly 37%, explicitly identify as “Zionist.” The topic has become especially fraught in some Jewish spaces, due in large part to the aftermath of Oct. 7 terror attacks in Israel, including the ensuing war in Gaza.

In a 2024 interview with eJewishPhilanthropy, Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch, one of the Reform movement’s most outspoken supporters of Israel, said that “the numbers” of rabbis and lay leaders in the Reform movement who consider themselves non-Zionist or anti-Zionist “are high enough to cause concern and to enact measures in our seminaries to enhance the Zionist identity of future Reform leaders, such as intensifying education around the concept of Jewish peoplehood, Zionism and support of Israel from the earliest possible ages.” 

Hirsch, senior rabbi of Stephen Wise Free Synagogue on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, will lead a discussion on Monday at the conference titled “The Rabbinic Voice at this Historic Moment.” 

The foundation, which spearheads the conference, has brought more than 250 rabbinical students to Israel since 2012 as part of the Leffell Fellowship. “We felt that seminaries were not focusing enough on Zionism, and people were then entering the rabbinate without a fulsome understanding of modern Israel. We saw there was a hunger for this kind of information and support,” Michael Leffell told eJP on Sunday. 

The fellows also used to attend the annual AIPAC policy conference, which would bring hundreds of rabbis together with thousands of other pro-Israel advocates. But AIPAC ceased running policy conferences after 2020, leaving a void that the Leffell Foundation said it is trying to fill with its Zionism conference. 

The concept for the conference was conceived in January 2023 “when there was [division] going on in Israel over the government judiciary reform and that was translated here in the U.S. with people ripping apart Israel because of the government,” said Leffell.  

“We felt it would be helpful to bring together rabbis, and create a forum for them to remind themselves — regardless of our point of entry into the Jewish world, at the end of the day we’re all one people, and Zionism is the foundation for our peoplehood.”

Following Oct. 7, the second annual conference, held in early 2024, “changed direction a bit and took on a lot [more] impact,” said Leffell. 

“Something we learned from doing the fellowship [is that] the interdenominational benefits of students learning from one another, meeting one another, were enormous,” he continued. “That’s one of the strengths of what we do in this conference. There are people from all denominations from across the country, all having both unique and common challenges. We think this provides a forum for them to gain support and learn from one another.”