Reform leader says he can't speak to Netanyahu 'as if nothing happened'

Leaders of the Reform movement in Israel and abroad have called off their planned meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu this Thursday.

Rabbi Rick Jacobs, president of the Union for Reform Judaism and a member of the Jewish Agency’s Board of Governors, said the meetings could not go on “as if nothing happened.” He said that cancelling the plan to construct an egalitarian section at the Western Wall and cabinet ministers’ approval of the Conversion Bill were the culmination of a serious crisis between the Israeli government and the Diaspora Jewry. He added that Jewish leaders felt they had nothing to talk about with the prime minister.