The highest official in Reform Judaism urged Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday to cancel his upcoming speech to Congress, adding his voice to a growing list of American Jewish leaders calling for him to reconsider the controversial appearance.

Rabbi Rick Jacobs, president of the Union for Reform Judaism, said calling off the March 3 address will be “something people will respect [Netanyahu] for.”

Netanyahu is set to speak about the Iranian nuclear threat, as Congress debates a bill that would increase sanctions on Tehran.

Get The Times of Israel's Daily Edition by email and never miss our top stories Free Sign Up

The timing, arrangements and likely content of the speech have infuriated the Obama administration.

In an interview with The Jewish Daily Forward, Jacobs termed the address “ill-advised” and a “bad idea.”

“I would want him to re-think it,” Jacobs said on Friday. “He should find another way to express his voice.”

Jacobs insisted that scrapping the address now, following the uproar and the tensions the planned address has caused between Israel and the United States, “will not be an embarrassment.”

“It will be something people will respect him for,” he said. The leader of US Reform Jewry also argued that the speech would not serve Israel’s interests on Iran, but would only exacerbate bipartisan tensions on Israel.

“This is something we in the Jewish community cannot afford,” Jacobs said. “That’s what’s [at] stake.”

Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, and Seymour Reich, a former chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish American Organizations, also called on Netanyahu to cancel the address.

Foxman, a prominent Jewish-American leader, said that while Netanyahu’s warnings about Iran were serious, the political furor over the speech “turned the whole thing into a circus.”

“Now is a time to recalibrate, restart and find a new platform and new timing to take away the distractions,” Foxman told the Jewish Daily Forward on Friday.

Reich appealed to the prime minister to “bite the bullet and postpone his address.”

Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, meanwhile, downplayed concerns that Netanyahu’s speech would cause further tension in US-Israel ties.

“Israel cannot be a partisan issue,” Hoenlein said. “I do not think the prime minister’s speech will do what people think. He did not come to attack the president or take sides.”

Netanyahu has come under increasing pressure to scrap the speech, both at home and in the US.

In the latest blow, Vice President Joe Biden’s office announced Friday that he would not attend, claiming he was scheduled to travel abroad at that time. President Barack Obama and US Secretary of State John Kerry said shortly after the speech was announced on January 20 that they would not meet with Netanyahu during his visit, citing the proximity to Israeli elections set for March 17.

A Channel 10 news report Saturday indicated that some 60 Democratic legislators were expected to stay away from the address.

In Israel, opposition leader and head of the Zionist Camp (the Labor-Hatnua joint list) Isaac Herzog also called on Netanyahu to cancel the address, saying the antagonism it was causing in Washington was too great.

Herzog spoke with Biden on the sidelines of a security conference in Munich Saturday, in what some saw a snub to Netanyahu.

Netanyahu remains determined to go ahead with the address, to highlight the dangers of a deal that would leave Iran as a nuclear threshold state, but is making an effort “to soften” the Obama administration’s anger, and that of many Democrats, by stressing he believed the invitation to address Congress by House Speaker John Boehner was truly bipartisan, according to Channel 10 news.