Coffee With Rabbi David Spinrad
Beth El Hebrew Congregation's leader on this difficult time for Israel and Jews everywhere
A Californian Moves East
Rabbi David Spinrad, the leader of Alexandria’s historic Beth El Hebrew Congregation, drives a powder blue Ford Mustang.
Spinrad grew up in Marin County, California, and counts the San Francisco Giants and 49ers among his devotions. In 2018, he came to Beth El, which was founded i in 1859, from The Temple, a large synagogue in Atlanta with an influential and accomplished congregation and a commitment to social justice.
Spinrad graduated from the University of California, Davis where he majored in political science. “I always wanted to do something meaningful, significant and contributive,” he said. “I was better at knowing what I didn’t want to do then what I did want to do.”
Spinrad said that he “grew up with a strong Jewish cultural identity” but was not involved in Jewish youth groups or Jewish studies. He describes himself growing up as “culturally Jewish” and observant of the major Jewish holidays, but he “never really regarded myself as someone who was going to become a spiritual leader.”
In the 1990’s, he moved to New York City and tended bar for several years. He later combined an avocation with a vocation by starting a personal training business in San Francisco. He said, “Wellness was always a vehicle for deeper question: What does it mean to live life well? How do I shine my gifts on the world?”
In 1999, Spinrad met his wife at Burning Man, an annual desert festival which describes itself as, “A temporary metropolis dedicated to community, art, self-expression, and self-reliance.” He took an extended sabbatical from his fitness business for foreign travel and reflection. In Israel, he “discovered an actual language for the feelings I had in my heart.” Ultimately, he started rabbinical school in 2007.
Israel’s Crises, Beth El, and American Jews
Describing America and Beth El today, Spinrad said, “People are hurting. It’s been a hard stretch for our country,” he said. “Everything is up to volume 11—reactivity, anger, and fear. It’s been so loud, and then we went through Covid.”
“I’m trying to learn how to be the rabbi for this congregation now… I’m trying to be a little more gentle, a little bit more pastoral, and recognize that people are weary and be a little more of an uplifter and less of an instigator,” he said.
Spinrad stresses that the conflict in Israel extends beyond Gaza, but that opinions within the Beth El community vary markedly. “It’s no cliché when they say, ‘Two Jews, three opinions’—It’s actually woven into the fabric of the [Jewish] tradition. The Talmud is our recording of rabbinic debates.””
Beth El has been overwhelmingly supportive of Israel which Spinrad describes as, “a sovereign entity that was attacked by a terrorist organization that did many horrible things, and abducted, at the time, 250-plus civilians and brought them back to a terrain that was designed to maximize civilian casualties.” Spinrad has been to Israel twice since the October 7, 2023 attacks and other Beth El leaders have also been there.
“Simultaneously, we have seen a story told where Israel is the oppressor, Israel is the aggressor. Antisemitism is unfortunately a pillar of Western Civilization—it contends that Jews are the locus of evil in the world and that whatever is most detestable is Jewish,” he said. “It [antisemitism] shape shifts over time. It probably predates Christianity, but it gets traction with early Christianity.”
Spinrad says that Nazi race theory—that Jews were another race—is a platform for hatred. “We’re not a race; we’re only called a race when people want to hate us and hurt us…we are an ethnicity.”
Spinrad does not minimize or rationalize the tragedy of the Palestinian population in Gaza. He said, “Have civilian children died? Yes, and one is too many—please make me on the record for that. The civilian casualties have been horrible. But, to call it a genocide, which is a version of the Holocaust? It [genocide] is a word to describe the Holocaust. There is no systematic attempt to annihilate an entire people. It is a horrible war against an adversary that embeds itself beneath civilians to maximize casualties.”
“People want peace. People want a two-state solution. People want everyone to live in peace and harmony and prosperity. People understand that freedom for the Palestinian people has to mean security for Israel,” Spinrad said. “This is a regional war. The struggle between Israel and Palestine is not a struggle over borders. One side wants there to be a state and the other side does not want there to be a state and is funded by Iran which sees not just infidels, but sees historically in Europe and in their own land, the weakest of the weak, the Jews on Muslim land.”
The Shifting Understandings of Zionism
Zionism, according to Spinrad, originally described the return of an indigenous people, the Jews, to an ancestral homeland to pursue self-determination and self-defense, a desire that dates to the first century AD. Now, he said, Zionism has evolved into an epithet, depending on who is using the term. Among other negatives, Zionism has been used to condemn Israel for what is called “white settler colonialism.”
“I hope the Jews in North America and the United States appreciate how incredible this country has been, and is, for the Jewish community and don’t ever take it for granted—if they do, they don’t know our history,” he said.
One of Beth El’s six core values is “we devote ourselves to wrestling with our dreams for Israel.” Since the October 7, 2023 Hamas attacks, Beth El’s Israel Committee has held several open forums that have stressed respectful and constructive discussion of what Spinrad called “the cacophony” of voices and opinions about events in Israel.
“We want people to be engaged, be informed, have an opinion, participate. We don’t all have to agree. We want people to be educated and engaged when it comes to Israel. I would rather that you and I disagree if you are a member of the congregation. I would much rather we disagree about it and [find that] we’re never going to find common ground, but we’re going to shake hands and recognize that we are all part of one people,” he said.
Israel’s Prime Minister and Its Future
Spinrad saw Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s recent address to the U.S. Congress as “sending a message back home.” Spinrad viewed the address as political theater and describes Netanyahu as “speaking to his base.” While Spinrad agrees with much of what Netanyahu said in his speech, he said, “I think he [Netanyahu] is very much an impediment not only in the current war with Hamas, but an impediment to peace.”
Spinrad draws a parallel between today’s situation in Israel and the destruction of the Second Jewish commonwealth and the Second Temple because of a corrupt priesthood and religious zealotry. “This is what is going on in Israel now. A year ago Israelis were in the streets protesting against judicial reform and protesting against Netanyahu and his far-right cabinet. He [Netanyahu] made a deal with the devil and ultra-nationalist, ultra-religious, xenophobic” interests to stay in power, he said.
“I think the settlements are a huge impediment to peace—that’s not controversial--and the fact that Netanyahu, for over a decade, has let it [the settlements] go on unabated,” he said. “There has been settler violence since October 7 and the predominant opinion is that Netanyahu has been playing politics to prolong his position.”
Anti-Israel and Pro-Palestinian Protests in America
Spinrad said that “There have been some unfortunate incidences,” in the schools in Northern Virginia. He said, “Jewish safety and security as Americans rests on a wide, liberal, accepting and tolerant society which includes freedom of speech.”
Speaking of some of the protests in America, Spinrad said, “It’s hurtful when you’re saying what’s happening is a genocide—I don’t take that word lightly. You are accusing Israel of genocide…Do they recognize how hurtful that is? Is there any context as to why this war is happening?”
He responds similarly to those who refer to Israel as an apartheid state. “Do we have a problem in the West Bank? Yes, because there are civil and military governments there. Look who serves in the government: there are Arab Israelis and Palestinian Israelis” in the government, he said. Spinrad says that Israel is, “imperfect, but it’s not an apartheid state.”
Spinrad says that the other institutions in Alexandria’s faith community have reacted in varying ways to the October 7 attacks and the rise of antisemitism. He said that Fairlington United Methodist Church, Commonwealth Baptist Church, and a small group of others have reached out to the Beth El community. From other congregations, he said, “The silence is deafening. It’s been a lonely time to be a Jew.”
Spinrad thinks, “the way the story has been told in the media has made Israel villainous.” Spinrad cites a July 29, 2024 front page story in The Washington Post headlined “Israel Hits Targets in Lebanon” with a picture of family members mourning a dead child. The headline and picture imply that the tragically portrayed death was caused by Israeli troops.
Neither the headline or its subheadline said that the picture was taken after a Hezbollah strike killed 12 children on a soccer field and playground in the Druze town of Majdal Shams. The Post said, in a later editor’s note, “the headline and subheadline that accompanied a July 29 Page One photo and article about Israeli strikes on Hezbollah targets in Lebanon did not provide adequate context.” The note added, “[t]he headlines should have noted that the Israeli strikes were a response to a rocket strike from Lebanon that killed 12 teenagers and children in the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights. The photo depicted mourning for one of those victims, as the caption noted.”
Understanding the Nature of Antisemitism
Spinrad sees antisemitism not as a prejudice against a religion, Judaism, but rather as a persistent and ingrained antipathy toward Jews as a people.
“If I could explain one thing to the wider world, it would be to understand that we [the Jews] are an ethnoreligious people. It’s very easy for this country to identify hatred when it is directed at a religion…Nobody is coming after the Jewish people for how we pray. Religious antisemitism—that’s the Middle Ages, quite honestly. Nobody is coming after me because I do not accept Jesus as my savior—they are coming after me because I am a Jew.”
Spinrad asks and answers a rabbi’s teaching question: “What do you call a Jew who does not believe in God and who does nothing at all Jewish? A Jew.”
“When someone, God forbid, paints a swastika on a synagogue, it’s really easy for the broader community to say ‘Whoa, that’s wrong,’ but it is not religious prejudice,” he said. “It just happens to be where Jews hang out. That’s an attack on us as a people.”
“It’s unique. There is not really another people like us, so there is not really an analogy,” Spinrad said.