The Reform Israel Rabbinic Cabinet has created a monthly forum where rabbis share their thoughts on teaching and preaching about Israel in the month ahead. For Rosh Chodesh Kislev, Rabbi Yael Dadoun shares her wisdom on moving Americans beyond their own narrative on race as they deepen their understanding of Israel’s and the Jewish people’s beautiful diversity.
I once tried to explain to a colleague that Jews come from diverse backgrounds and that we have the wonderful responsibility to honor those differences by celebrating distinctive rituals and experiences in Judaism. With a flick of the wrist she responded, “Yeah, but we all eat lox and bagels!”
Having grown up in a Moroccan-Tunisian-Israeli household in Connecticut, I only first heard about lox in my sophomore year of high school—and to be honest, lox is still not my preferred bagel topping. For those of you wondering, I’m also not going to spread hummus on my bagel either, but that’s not the point.
What I wished my colleague would have said was, “Tell me more about your rituals! What do you eat on special occasions?”
In the last few years, I’ve observed that some Americans assume all Jewish people have an Ashkenazi background. There’s a similar assumption made about Israeli society—that Israelis are all “white” and of European descent. This is one of the reasons Israelis are often called colonizers, implying that Israelis come from foreign backgrounds and are not indigenous to the Holy Land. Thus, when we try to understand what is happening in Israel, we make incorrect parallels between American and Israeli society, superimposing American challenges with race and oppression upon Israel.
Author and journalist Matti Friedman points to a recurring narrative he sees in the United States. He argues that many Americans are using their image of home to construct their image of Israel. He brings to our attention that some conflate the conflict between Jews and Muslims in the Middle East with American struggles of racism. They peer out into the world making claims about others but are actually looking at a mirror in which they mistakenly see their own unique struggles as the reason for conflicts across the globe—conflicts with their own unique set of circumstances as the root cause. Ultimately, America’s history of slavery, racism, and the struggle of Black communities in America have nothing to do with the history of the Jewish minority in Europe and the Islamic world who fled centuries of death and religious persecution by returning to their historic homeland in Israel. Israelis are diverse, and very real and challenging divisions and separations exist within the society, though for very different historical reasons than American segregation.
In 2019, The New York Times published an op-ed by the respected scholar Michelle Alexander, the author of an important book on incarceration. She described Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians as “one of the great moral challenges of our time,” claiming that Israeli society is guilty of “practices reminiscent of apartheid in South Africa and Jim Crow segregation in the United States.” For Alexander and other American writers, Jews living in the distant Middle East have wrongfully become an embodiment of American racial oppression. Rather than taking time to learn about the complex history of the region, the remarkably diverse background of Jewish Israelis who are over 50 percent Mizrachi and Sephardic (i.e., non-European), and the wide-ranging political beliefs of Israeli society, they seem to fall back on age-old tropes in which Jews are blamed for whatever problems may exist in a given society.
As American Reform rabbis, we have the incredibly joyful opportunity to showcase how truly diverse Jewish people are, both in our ethnic backgrounds and religious rituals. This perspective can help to counter a simplistic and flawed narrative that paints Jews in the US and Israel as a homogenous group and can elevate the many different voices of our people. Such an approach would go a long way in enriching our American Jewish tradition while more accurately describing Israel’s fervent diversity and culture.
The Reform Israel Rabbinic Cabinet asks that if you choose to respond to this author, you do so only with kavod harav—respect for the rabbi sharing their wisdom, experience, time, and talent.
The Reform Israel Rabbinic Cabinet has created a monthly forum where rabbis share their thoughts on teaching and preaching about Israel in the month ahead. For Rosh Chodesh Cheshvan, Rabbi Allie Fischman shares her perspective on teaching and learning about Israel at Reform Jewish summer camps.
We are sitting at a fork in the road in terms of Israel engagement with the next generation of URJ leaders. Overall, we had a fantastic summer at URJ Camp Newman, where I serve as director. We also received multiple emails from Newman alum who are calling upon us to shift our Israel education to “share a more true and wider narrative about the land of Israel, the people of Israel, and the evolution of the current State of Israel.”
Since 2016, we have been working with The iCenter in Chicago to find a model that feels like the holy grail of Israel education in a camp setting (spoiler alert: no one has discovered it yet). How do we teach a “balanced” narrative, as some folks ask for, when we only have two to three hours during a two-week camp session to focus on Israel? How do we teach campers and staff to understand the nuances that young adults can handle? How do we convey the importance of the teachings of the movie Inside Out: that we can hold multiple truths and narratives at once, and feel compassion and love for multiple groups of people at once?
This summer, we saw a handful of our fifteen- to seventeen-year-old campers and eighteen- to twenty-four-year-old staff members unwilling to embrace the concept of holding multiple truths about Israel. Rather than criticizing the Israeli government’s choices in the war, but still loving the Jewish homeland, they instead choose to forge a Reform Jewish life that simply does not include Israel as a main component. They feel comfortable singing Israeli or Hebrew songs but not ever stepping foot on the land. My heart hurt to speak with these campers and staff members. Israel remains such an important component of my Judaism, and these young future leaders of the Reform Movement want to create Reform Jewish life without Israel. Though this was a small percentage of 175 staff members, their stance reveals a shift from alumni before them.
We need to come together as a Movement to consider the path ahead for Israel education. Congregations, youth groups, URJ camps, Reform Jewish parents—we could all be stronger together by creating a more unified plan of Israel education across all Reform Jewish platforms. No single religious school, no single camp, no single Reform Jewish parent or mentor should bear the entire weight of teaching our children about Israel and its complexities. I imagine a future where we work together across different areas of engagement to ensure that we teach our young leaders that understanding, holding, and embracing multiple truths and narratives displays strength, humility, empathy, and compassion.
Though we encountered difficult conversations around Israel from some of these young folks this summer, our URJ camps also provided a vital haven for campers, staff, and faculty across the country. We provided another safe space to come together and be joyfully Jewish. We did everything we could to hold with care and love the hearts and souls of our visiting Israeli staff members and campers. Ultimately, I wonder how and if we can come together as the teachers of our future generations to find ways to teach about the nuances and complexities of Israel, while also passing on the importance of embracing and holding multiple truths.
The Reform Israel Rabbinic Cabinet asks that if you choose to respond to this author, you do so only with kavod harav—respect for the rabbi sharing their wisdom, experience, time, and talent.
Rabbi Allie Fischman has served as URJ Camp Newman Associate Camp Director from 2014 to 2018 and as Camp Director since 2018.
Rabbi Tamir Nir is an Israeli Reform rabbi and the founder of the Israeli Reform congregation Achva Ba’Kerem in Jerusalem. Here, he shares his hope for regrowth and renewal even in tragic, trying times, and he shares how his Reform congregation, which includes a community garden, has provided a spiritual refuge during the war.
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“It’s not the same old house now; it’s not the same old valley You’re gone and never can return again. The path, the boulevard, a skyward eagle tarries… And yet the wheat still grows again.”
Dorit Tzameret wrote this song after the 1973 Yom Kippur War. In it, she wonders how wheat can grow again after everything has gone and is simultaneously amazed and excited by nature’s regenerative capacity.
This is how I have found encouragement, hope, and motivation since the beginning of the war and even today.
These days, the squill is the only plant that grows and blooms in Israel after a long and dry summer. It emerges from the dry and barren land without leaves or branches, an upright, white, proud inflorescence like the phoenix. It renews itself, like the new year, which comes out of the void, and the moon, which is covered and then shows the ability of renewal.
I founded the Achva Beit HaKerem—a Reform congregation in the Keram community in Jerusalem—in 2007 because I understood the acute need to build communities for secular Israeli urban society. The necessity of fostering identity and belonging and creating frameworks for support and mutual responsibility to build personal and community resilience. We need to achieve political power to make a difference in the neighborhood, the city, and even the country.
The reality in Israel proves that the traditional synagogue is not suitable for most of the Israeli society: Secular Israelis want to contribute and immerse themselves in acts, in tikkun olam.
We built a community garden with the understanding that this is the place where the community can grow. The garden is where trees and vegetables grow, and people create a community. It is a gathering space open to all, without fences or definitions—a synagogue without walls. Since it is an open public space, the garden invites residents from all sectors and genders so everyone can feel welcome and significant.
Our garden calls for an endless and continuing encounter with the cycle of nature. Working in the garden requires faith, even in the simple act of sowing: “Those who sow with tears will reap with Joy” (Psalms 126:1). We need faith that the seed will sprout, grow, and bear fruit. This action encourages faith and hope and a call for action that leads to social action. This act proves our ability to repair and create with nature, with the help of rain and the sun, in partnership with God.
I want to share two new projects that have grown in our community this past summer.
During the war, we started holding carpentry workshops in the garden, focused on repairing old and broken furniture and recycling wood. Here, too, we witness our ability to mend what is broken, despite the brokenness. Many of the participants in the workshops today are reservists who left Gaza, as well as their spouses.
“Beer Garden” has become a regular weekly event lately, attracting hundreds of people. We learned that sitting with neighbors over a glass of beer opens hearts and creates closeness, as well as new interactions between people. Sometimes, it even leads to new initiatives and projects.
“How awesome is this place! This is none other than the abode of God, and that is the gateway to heaven.” Genesis 28:17
The services held in the garden on Shabbat and holidays call us to pause, rest, admire our joint effort, and enjoy “the fruit of our labor.” We connect to each other and God. This profound experience of joining together offers spiritual renewal and strength, which is needed in these difficult days.
In prayer for good days, peace, growth, and peace.
Rabbi Tamir Nir is an ordained Reform rabbi who serves as the congregational rabbi for Congregation Achva Ba’Kerem, which he founded in 2007. Rabbi Nir teaches Jewish and Islamic thought in a high school for religious and secular Israelis.Herecently served as Deputy Mayor of Jerusalem, where he bridged differences between the many diverse communities that make up the city, as the head of the BINA Secular Yeshiva, and as chair of the Heschel Center for Sustainability. He has an MA in Jewish Education and a BA in Architecture and Urban Planning.
Rabbi Karyn D. Kedar shares this poem to commemorate one year since the October 7 attacks. It is entitled El Malei Rachamim (“Merciful God”) after the traditional Jewish memorial prayer.CCAR Press has also put together a full collection of poems, prayers, and readings to mark one year since October 7. Download the collection here.
El Malei Rachamim
In blessed memory of you
hiding in the fields and bushes, and the joggers out for a run, and the moms and dads making breakfast for their toddlers in their kitchens, and the parents in their safe rooms, holding the door handles for hours, and the babies—innocent infants—and the grandfathers, and the grandmothers, and entire families, parents watching their children die, children watching their parents, and entire neighborhoods of young adults who were waiting to begin their lives, and you, the brave, throwing hand grenades back out of the shelters without doors over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again, and you, the courageous, who ran towards the carnage to save who you could over again, and you who were trapped in hundreds of incinerated cars, and the fathers who frantically drove from the north to find their children who cried, Abba, they are near, and I’ve been shot, find me, and the friends who escaped but returned to rescue their friends and were killed, and you who were raped and maimed and mutilated, and you, who danced as the sun rose and will never see another sunrise and never dance again, and the hostages stolen, beaten, tortured, starved, kept in dark tunnels and family homes, and killed cruelly in captivity, and the young women who stood guard on the towers over Gaza and who watched from screens in darkened rooms showing us, warning us, and were ignored, and were slaughtered, and the civilian guard who held the line to the last bullet without help for hours, and the brave police who fought to the end, and the superheroes of the Israel Defense Forces, valiant, brave lions of Judah…
Your lives were brutally taken on October 7, 2023 and in the relentless aftermath. El malei rachmim, have compassion upon your souls, El malei rachmim, have compassion upon our broken hearts.
October 7 has indelibly left its mark in our hearts and memories. We remember where we were, what we were doing, and the sinking sense of horror and loss on what should have been a day of celebration and joy in our Torah. Too many Israeli lives were lost; too many hostages were taken; too many families were displaced. The aftermath has unleashed one horror after another: rising waves of antisemitism in the Diaspora, widespread evacuations in Israel’s north, hundreds of Israeli soldiers fallen in battle, and tens of thousands of innocent Gazans killed because of Hamas’s actions and Israel’s response.
There are times to address each of these horrors—to demand hostages be returned home, to reckon with antisemitism at home and abroad, to soothe the divisions within the Jewish community. There will be a time for healing and rebuilding—God willing, speedily. But today, on the anniversary of the worst violence against Jews since the Holocaust, our task is to bear witness, to remember, and to mourn.
These readings may be shared as part of services and ceremonies with attribution of the authors and the CCAR. We hope these readings, prayers, and poems will provide support, meaning, and connection as you commemorate the anniversary of October 7, 2023.
The Reform Israel Rabbinic Cabinet has created a monthly forum where two rabbis will share with Reform rabbis their thoughts on teaching and preaching about Israel in the month ahead. For Rosh Chodesh Elul, Rabbi Melissa Simon has shared her thoughts, and Rabbi Dan Moskovitz has shared a Davar Acheir, a second perspective.
Writing About Israel in Advance, by Rabbi Melissa Simon
When I was asked to write this piece, my first question was “How late can I submit it?” This was not just because I have a tendency to procrastinate, but rather because every passing hour seems to see shifts and changes in the reality on the ground in the Middle East. So how can someone write about Israel in advance? Writing about Israel in advance requires flexibility, an awareness of the possibility of a last-minute edit or rewrite, and creativity. It means identifying goals or themes and then ideating around them. Sometimes these initiatives can lead to meaningful adaptations and ideas.
Over the first seven months of 2024, I organized and led three trips of Hillel campus staff from the United States, Canada, and Poland to Israel to better understand the post-October 7 reality. We painstakingly crafted a journal full of poetry, songs, prayers, and art. But then we faced a challenge: we desperately wanted to believe that our hostages wouldn’t still be held captive by the time the trip took place, yet it was a possibility (and sadly a reality throughout each trip). What did we do? We found an image that resembled a torn piece of tape, like the one Rachel Goldberg—the mother of hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin—has been wearing attached to her clothing, what she calls “an emblem of pain,” marking the days of captivity of her beloved son, who was tragically murdered by Hamas. In solidarity, many of us around the world have been wearing the torn tape with the unbelievably increasing total number of days. We printed the blank tape image at the top of each day’s journal page and invited the participants to fill out the number of days each morning. It became a painful yet powerful ritual each day, as we marked the difficult passage of time. It centered the people of Israel and their reality at the forefront of our minds and hearts.
The take-away I have from this experience is that however difficult it is, we must talk about Israel, we must write about Israel, we must engage in the work of Israel education—even when it is hard, even if our old systems and plans have failed us, even if we fear we will make a mistake.
We need to center Israeli voices in our work, and we need to travel to Israel to experience the changed realities. We need to read books and articles, listen to podcasts, and watch TV and movies in order to add to our knowledge. We need to be creative with how we engage with Israel, and we need to be expansive in how we understand the people, land, and State of Israel.
The greatest danger is the silence. The fear of getting it wrong causes some people to freeze and to fail to act. Our Jewish communities need prophetic and strong voices. They need sermons that make sense of what is hard to understand. They need classes that explain history and how present realities have come to be.
Yes, sometimes you might need to edit that sermon right before services because something has shifted in world events. Yes, sometimes you might need to throw out the lesson plan to hold space to deal with a challenging reality. Yes, sometimes we can confess that we too are confused or scared or challenged.
But even when it is hard—perhaps precisely because it is hard—we need to write, speak, and teach about Israel today and every day.
Davar Acheir / Another Perspective: Always in the Wilderness, by Rabbi Dan Moskovitz
Thank you, Rabbi Simon, for your thought-provoking and honest reflections on the challenges of writing about Israel amidst the daily uncertainty and dynamism of a post-October 7 world.
I too have been putting off my High Holy Day sermon topic selection let alone outlining and drafting, which by Elul is usually at least in my head if not on paper. Shabbat sermons and divrei Torah have been similarly “eleventh hour” as events impact perspective on a daily basis.
And yet some things about Israel and the experience of Jews in the diaspora never change, even as they appear new to us as twenty-first-century Jews. For over seventy-five years, the miraculous existence of the State of Israel, to say nothing of Jews in the West in general; the nature, character, and acceptance among the community of nations of both the Jewish State and the Jewish People has been fragile and under attack from enemies “foreign and domestic.” The fantasy we tell ourselves is that the forces unleashed on October 7 are new and different, rather than revealing something that has been there all along, and that our people have faced for millennia.
Franklin Foer’s piece in the Atlantic, “The Golden Age of American Jews Is Ending,” makes the point that what we are experiencing now is not the exception but rather normative of attitudes toward Jews and becoming normative toward Israel. I draw some degree of strength from that sad reality. We have been here before and are still here.
I think of the tens of thousands of sermons and articles written by our rabbinic predecessors in their own precarious times; the strength (koach) and wisdom they gave their communities in dire moments such as these that guided our people through the wilderness. Maybe that is the burden and the blessing of being a Jew or a Jewish State—we are always in the wilderness striving toward a promised land, a promised time, but we never quite get there. In the striving, in the wilderness journey, our true character is formed and the dangers to our survival are revealed so we can confront them.
The Reform Israel Rabbinic Cabinet asks that if you choose to respond to these authors, you do so only with kavod harav—respect for the rabbi sharing their wisdom, experience, time, and talent.
Rabbi Melissa B. Simon is the director of Israel education for Hillel International and lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Rabbi Dan Moskovitz is the senior rabbi of Temple Sholom in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
The Reform Israel Rabbinic Cabinet has created a monthly forum featuring the thoughts of two Reform rabbis on Israel. This content provides Reform rabbis with material for teaching and preaching about Israel in the month ahead. For Rosh Chodesh Av, Rabbi Jeremy Barras has been invited to share his perspective, and Rabbi Keren Gorban shares a Davar Acheir, a second perspective.
The Many Faces of Zionism, by Rabbi Jeremy Barras
A few days after this year’s CCAR Convention in Philadelphia, I wrote a note to my colleagues urging us to respect each other’s views on Israel. For many years, as someone who stands to the right of many in the Conference on such issues, I have been frustrated by what I perceived as a lack of support for Israel amongst our colleagues. In the past I would spend parts of the workday debating with one colleague or another. Over time, I realized these exchanges were not productive. On the contrary, they often unnecessarily caused hurt feelings.
For the past few years, and especially since October 7, I have softened my approach even further. It became perfectly clear to me after October 7 that we each care deeply about what happens in Israel, and we each share equally in the pain and suffering that October 7 and its aftermath have caused. I will admit that I felt a tinge of resentment when the war began, and many of us called on the Biden Administration to support Israel in her time of need. For the past twenty years, some of us—including myself—have been criticized for being so active in AIPAC. Now that we have seen such incredible support from our government for Israel, I resented that some of us have been working tirelessly on Capitol Hill to build these relationships that have produced such incredible results, all the while taking criticism for being “too right wing.”
That is how I felt in the days immediately following October 7. I no longer feel that way. As the war drags on, I feel that each one of us brings an important approach to support for Israel. What is important is that we each feel like we are fulfilling our responsibility to support Israel in the way we best see fit.
Recently, I finished reading Yehudah Mirsky’s excellent biography of Rav Kook. I have always been drawn to Rav Kook and his willingness to open the bounds of traditional Judaism to the innovations of modern Zionism. Mirsky beautifully describes Rav Kook’s ability to see the holiness in the commitment of secular Zionists. While the ultra-Charedi world dismissed the secular Zionists as antithetical to Judaism, Rav Kook recognized that through Zionist activity a Jew could be brought into the realm of spirituality.
From my perspective, October 7 intensified Jewish identity for Jews around the world. Overnight, we found ourselves frightened for our futures. But that fear caused us to look deeply at why we care so much. And when the encampments were disassembled and the protesters finally gave way, we could not help asking ourselves a couple of questions: What is it about being Jewish that is so important to us? Why do the lies and vitriol of our enemies hurt us so profoundly? And in these moments, when we ask these questions, we may each draw different conclusions. This is no different than the early Zionists. There were so many different schools of thought on how the goals of Zionism should be achieved. But ultimately, it was clear that all of them were necessary to build the State of Israel. Likewise, today, just as Ben Gurion argued with Begin, and A.D. Gordon debated with Rav Kook, our differences should not stifle our contributions, they should complement them. No matter what our views are, we will do better to begin with the baseline that we each love the State of Israel, and our differences no matter how profound, are imbued with the holiness of the Zionist spirit.
Davar Acheir, Another Perspective, by Rabbi Keren Gorban
We have entered the season when we remember, mourn, and seek comfort after the destructions of Jerusalem. The second of those destructions, our tradition teaches, resulted from שנאת חינם, sinat chinam, the free-flowing hatred and intolerance of others and their ideas, positions, and priorities. As Rabbi Barras rightly notes, the strength of our community depends on us valuing pluralism and learning from diverse perspectives.
I think it’s critical for us to recognize that our community also benefits from including the perspectives of those who identify as anti-Zionist and non-Zionist. When I meet with someone who tells me that they don’t believe in God, I invite more conversation: “Tell me about the God you don’t believe in.” Invariably, I don’t believe in that God either, but they and I can only discover our shared values and beliefs when we approach each other with respect and curiosity. From their opposition, I strengthen my own connection to God and learn more about how to teach theological complexity. They deepen their understanding of what people might mean when they refer to God, even if they ultimately decide that a relationship with God isn’t meaningful.
Likewise, we, as rabbis and as a movement, need to invite anti-Zionists and non-Zionists into conversation about the Zionism they oppose. These are not debates with the goal of proving one side right and the other wrong. These have to be open, curious, respectful opportunities to learn more about our hopes, visions, frustrations, etc., for and with the State of Israel. We will not always agree—in fact, we may often disagree—but let it be the result of deep understanding and love for each other rather than שנאת חינם, sinat chinam.
The Reform Israel Rabbinic Cabinet asks that if you choose to respond to these authors, you do so only with kavod harav—respect for the rabbi—sharing their wisdom, experience, time, and talent.
Rabbi Jeremy Barras is Senior Rabbi at Temple Beth Am in Pinecrest, Florida. He also serves on the CCAR board of trustees. Rabbi Keren Gorban serves Temple Beth El in Tacoma, Washington.
Rabbi Oded Mazor is a Reform rabbi living in Jerusalem, where he leads Kehilat Kol Haneshama. During CCAR’s annual rabbinic Convention—held this March 2024 in Philadelphia—he was asked to address an audience of his rabbinic peers and reflect upon life in Israel during the war, specifically the day after the war ends. Below are his powerful reflections.
We were asked to talk about “the day after.”
In the last few days, two quotes from the תפילה (t’filah, prayer)passed before my eyes, bringing two different feelings that many of us feel these days, about the present and about the future.
On Shabbat, the words that struck me the most were not easy ones. Do you remember the words ואל תטשנו יי אלוהינו לנצח (Al titshenu Adonai Eloheinu l’netzach)?i How should we translate these words? What does the word לנצח (la’netzach, forever) refer to in this phrase? Does it mean, “God, don’t ever forsake us?” Or does it mean, “God, don’t forsake us forever?” It’s not the same thing.
I’m going to refer to a few people in my congregation, Kol HaNeshama in Jerusalem.
The first, her name is Esther. She is eighty-seven years old. She teaches a Torah class every other week, for twelve years now. She’s incredible! And she comes to me every other week with a suggestion for an alternative Haftarah for the next Shabbat, a different reading that we can have from the נביאים (n’vi’im, Prophets) or from the כתובים (k’tuvim, Writings), to understand the Torah portion in a different way, two weeks from now!
Two years or so ago, when we were in the middle of Covid, and I met with her and spoke with her—and, thanks to her, we still have a morning meditation twice a week on Zoom, because even now that we’re allowed to be in the synagogue, the pace that we set during Covid, to meeting on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 9:30 in the morning for meditation, we’re still doing it, with more than a minyan on most days. I remember sitting with Esther in her room, and the way she looked at reality and היום אחרי (ha-yom acharei, the day after), she said, “I know the cure is going to be found. We’re going to get over Covid. I’m just not sure I’m going to be here.” ואל תטשנו יי אלוהינו לנצח (V’al titshenu Adonai Eloheinu l’netzach). This feeling of my personal נצח (netzach), my personal “ever,” I feel that I’m already forsaken. Maybe this is going to be the reality. That’s what Esther was feeling during Covid. I think she feels like that again right now, these days.
But when we were saying the Hallel here in Philadelphia, the verse לא אמות כי אחיה (Lo amut ki echyeh, “I shall not die but live”) came to me from the Hallel, as an answer to my feeling of ואל תטשנו יי אלוהינו לנצח (V’al titshenu Adonai Eloheinu l’netzach), insisting on this לא אמות כי אחיה (Lo amut ki echyeh), ואספר מעשי יה (V’asaper ma’aseh Yah), “I will not die but live, and I will tell the deeds of God” (Psalms 118:17). Now obviously, we all know we’re not going to live forever; but as a mental source of strength to ourselves, we may affirm: לא אמות כי אחיה (Lo amut ki echyeh, “I will not die but live”).
Thinking about the day after, I’m also thinking about the manager of our congregation, Anna. Her cousin is Karina Arayev.She’s one of the women soldiers kidnapped from the Nachal Oz base on October 7. For many, many, many awful weeks, Anna’s uncle and aunt (Karina’s parents), and the whole family—which is a rather small family of Ukrainian Jews—didn’t know anything about Karina and her situation. Three weeks ago, Hamas released a short film with three women talking. One of them was Karina. That’s the first time that they received any message, if we can call it that.
When Anna is thinking about היום אחרי (hayom acharei, the day after), there is no יום אחרי (yom acharei, day after) without Karina coming home. Karina’s parents, Anna’s aunt and uncle, told her that very explicitly: If she doesn’t come home, there is no day after. We try as a community to be there with Anna and her family the whole time through. When we say “the whole time through,” it means that, weeks ago, too many weeks ago, when the first groups of hostages were released, every time a group of hostages came back home and Karina was not amongst them, we were rejoicing with the families who received their loved ones back home; but we were in pain with Anna’s family, with Karina’s family, and the families of all the hostages who are still waiting and have no idea—and had no idea, until the first group of people came off the Hamas vehicle, and still have no idea.
Nati is not a member of our congregation. She is definitely a very close friend of our congregation. She’s not a member of our congregation because she lives on Kibbutz Or Haner, a few kilometers from Gaza. The next kibbutz up the road, further from Gaza, was not evacuated. The next kibbutz to the west was the kibbutz that stopped the terrorists from infiltrating Or Haner, Kibbutz Erez. Nati and others from Kibbutz Or Haner were moved to Tiberias on October 8. They were there for a month, and then they were offered to move from Tiberias to Jerusalem, to the Orient Hotel. Have you ever been to the Orient Hotel? That place was, for three months, a refugee camp for the people from Or Haner. Nati is the chair of K’hilat Sha’ar HaNegev, led by our dearest colleague, Rabbi Yael Vurgan. When they were moved from Tiberias to Jerusalem, Yael made the connection between Nati and me, and we met in the lobby of the Orient Hotel, which didn’t look anything like what you remember from the Orient Hotel’s lobby. The walls were the same, but nothing else. And I sat there with Nati and her husband, Damian. From that meeting on, every Kabbalat Shabbat and every Shabbat morning, Nati and their younger son, Noam, were with us at Kol HaNeshama. Noam would come and stand next to me and with the other children from Kol HaNeshama for opening and closing the Ark. And his job came to be holding my סידור (siddur, prayer book) when I put the Torah Scroll inside the ארון (aron, Ark), and then I would give him a hug when we sang דרכיה דרכי נועם (d’racheiha darchei no’am, its ways are ways of pleasantness).
A month ago, they returned to their home in Or Haner. What does היום אחרי (hayom acharei, the day after) mean, when you return to your kibbutz, just a few kilometers from Gaza, and the kids go to school, and some of their friends are not there anymore and will never be? And some of their friends will be there, but still are someplace else around Israel and not yet allowed to come back. What it meant for Nati: Returning home is to go pick the lemons from the lemon tree in their yard. היום אחרי (hayom acharei, the day after) will be to know that this lemon tree will give lemons again next year as well.
And if we’re talking about picking lemons, Debbie is a member of our congregation. Debbie retired from being a lawyer at משרד הרווחה (Misrad HaR’vachah, the Ministry of Welfare) just a few months ago, in August. She didn’t know what she was going to do in her retirement. What she has been doing for the past five months—on top of worrying about her three children, all three of whom were recruited to the army—she has been organizing our volunteering in agriculture, twice a week, every week, for the past four months. Ten to twenty people on each group from Kol HaNeshama, from the area, and people from abroad who hear about it and ask, “Can we join?” One of them is a very dear friend of mine, Rabbi Aaron Goldstein from London. When he told me that he was coming to visit a month and a half after October 7, he asked, “Can I do anything with you?” I said, “OK. Let’s join the agricultural volunteering,” and we planted broccoli. The name Aaron gave it is “brocco-therapy.” It was walking in the field and planting broccoli, one after the other, one after the other. “The day after” will be when Aaron comes again with his congregation and shows them, “You see, this field? Now we’re going to plant another line of broccoli together.”
My deepest sense of היום שאחרי (hayom sh’acharei, the day after)—and I hope this time I won’t dissolve into too many tears—every day is when I drive my children to school, to the יד ביד (Yad b’Yad, Hand in Hand), bilingual school in Jerusalem, that has been functioning incredibly in these months. Since it’s a rather new building, they have enough shelters in the building, so they were able to return to a regular schedule in the school as soon as anyone was allowed, because they have enough shelters. Many other schools had to require the children to come in shifts—a day yes, a day no; in the morning or in the afternoon—because they only had so much room in the shelters. But the Yad b’Yad school in Jerusalem, of all places, has enough room in the shelters to have everybody coming on the same day from the first day that was allowed in Jerusalem. And every day when I get the privilege that my schedule allows me to drop them off and pick them up at school, and see their teachers and see their friends—Jews and Arabs, Palestinians who live in West Jerusalem, Palestinians who live in East Jerusalem, Palestinians from across the checkpoint to Bethlehem, from Beit Sahour and Beit Jala.
Some of their teachers were not allowed to come to school in the first few weeks, because they’re on the other side of the checkpoint. Some of their teachers couldn’t come to school because they have little children who had nowhere to go, and the other parent was in מילואים (miluim, reserve duty). And these teachers have to come to school and teach in the same class. And I was told an incredible story by one of my kids’ teachers. In another class, the Jewish teacher was teaching, and the Muslim teacher was there with her. One of the grown children of the Jewish teacher walked in the room in uniform, having come back home from the army. He asked his mother to go out with him for a coffee. His mother told him, “I can’t go. I’m teaching now.” And the Palestinian teacher said, “Of course you should go with him! He’s your son! He came home!” She understood that as a mother, even though that son came into the class in uniform, and I can only imagine what that meant for the Palestinian teacher. That mother had to go with the son who came from the battlefield. What they didn’t know was that the reason he came to get her to go out for coffee was that, at the coffee shop, the other son who came home from מילואים (miluim, reserve duty) was waiting.
My children came with us to many of the הפגנות (hafganot, demonstrations) in Jerusalem in the past few months. The two younger ones said that they’re not willing to come any more after, at one of these demonstrations, they saw how I was screaming, לא תהיה לבן-גביר מיליציה (l’Ben-Gvir lo tihyeh militziah, “No private militia for Ben-Gvir!”). There was a proposition that there would be some kind of force that would be under Ben-Gvir’s direct supervision. I think that got them really scared, not so much Ben-Gvir’s militia, but seeing me screaming that way. They prefer being with their Arab Palestinian homeroom teacher, their Jewish homeroom teacher, and their friends, whom they might get along with or not get along with. It’s OK. They’re children in school; that’s what happens. It’s not heaven in that school. It’s the normal life that we want to see.
It’s the day after that we pray for.
Will Esther live to see it? Will Karina come back to see it? Will Nati really be able to feel it also in Or Haner, seven kilometers from Gaza? Will Debbie’s three children, coming back from the army, be willing to take part in it, after what they have experienced?
But my children are going to school. And on מוצאי שושן פורים (motz’ei Shushan Purim, the night that Shushan Purim ends), in Jerusalem, in the courtyard of Kol HaNeshama, we’re going to have an Iftar meal for the families of our daughter’s class.
In the months since October 7, 2023, CCAR members have shared powerful prayers and meditations focused on the war in Israel and the release of the hostages. The CCAR has compiled some of these resources into a Haggadah supplement, available to the public as a free PDF download. We hope that these readings make their way into Passover seders throughout the Jewish community.In this introduction to the supplement, Rabbi AnnieVillarreal-Belford, Editor at CCAR Press, reflects on celebrating Passover at this fraught moment.
Passover is our celebration of redemption. We remember that in ancient Egypt, we were slaves; we celebrate our miraculous exodus and freedom. We raise each of the four cups of wine to acknowledge the joy we feel that we live as free people today.
This year, however, our joy is tempered with the knowledge that not all Jews are free. The war in Israel that began on October 7, a day on which over 240 Israelis were taken hostage and approximately 1,200 Israelis were killed, is an ever-present reminder that in every generation, Jews must do the work to ensure our safety and freedom, so that we can work for the safety and freedom of all.
This year, our hearts are grieving for the more than 600 Israeli soldiers who have been killed in action, for their families and friends, and for the entire country—to which we are intimately connected—that has been thrown into turmoil, terror, and sorrow. May their memories be a blessing.
During our seders, we will remove ten drops from our wine glasses for each of the ten plagues that caused such destruction on the Egyptians because of Pharaoh’s hard-heartedness. So too, our hearts are heavy with the thought of the innocent Palestinians who have died or are suffering. The wine drops are a reminder that compassion is part of our seder experience, and our compassion this Passover is heightened.
Every single hostage who remains captive in Gaza is one too many. Echoing the words of Yehuda Amichai in his poem “The Diameter of the Bomb,” the diameter of the impact of each hostage taken is so much larger than just the impact on an individual. Their families, their friends, their communities, the entire country, and the worldwide Jewish community have felt the shuddering impacts of October 7. As we gather around our Passover tables—both personal and communal—our hearts are with our fellow Jews who are desperate for freedom. We hope that the readings included in this supplement can be woven throughout your seder so that our awareness—and our prayers—hold each hostage in our thoughts until all are free.
Rabbi Annie Villarreal-Belford is the Editor at CCAR Press.She is a contributor to Inscribed: Encounters with the Ten Commandments (CCAR Press, 2020). A graduate of the University of Judaism (now American Jewish University), Rabbi Villarreal-Belford was ordained at Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion in New York and holds a doctorate in Pastoral Logotherapy from the Graduate Theological Foundation.
Rabbi Lisa Rubin shares a personal reflection on the surreal nature of processing October 7 and the personal and professional challenges and strain of living in a world that’s forever changed.
THEN:
When the Nazis came for me in my dreams, I bit the arms of the soldier who had me in his grip. I bit him again and again. I eventually broke free, and ran until I was awake—drenched and terrified, with terrible tooth and jaw pain. My front teeth veneers had cracked, and now fell out. My dentist said a hockey puck couldn’t have done much better.
A few weeks later, when I was still using Fixodent to attach my temporary teeth each day, the eye surgeon said he needed to operate.
Me: Surgery for a little stye?
Him: It’s clinging to your tear duct, and you keep crying, so it’s agitated and compromising the integrity of the duct.
I was still enjoying a general anesthesia fog when I vaguely heard the procedure went well and I shouldn’t wear eye makeup for seven weeks. Wait. What? I looked at my husband. “Did he say seven?” He nodded. “Just while the stent is in.” For those who don’t know me, there is no time I am not wearing makeup. I felt the tears well up (the duct worked!). “Did my teeth at least stay in during surgery? Are they in now?” They did, and they were.
As I got up in the middle of the night for eye drops, I tripped and broke my toe. And dislodged my dentures.
~~~
I am usually the person you want in a crisis. Calm, resourceful, and competent, I’m an expert at compartmentalizing. I can always do the next right thing.
And yet, the catastrophe that befell Israel on October 7, and the aftermath, has been one of the most excruciating things I’ve ever had to process. Like so many of us, I’m walking around in a stupor—anxious, unsettled, exhausted. Calm and resilience elude me. My body is protesting prolonged strain.
Maybe epigenetics is to blame. My grandfather narrowly escaped Hitler. His sister and mother— and scores of extended family members—died in Theresienstadt. While I know this family history (and even visited the camp many years ago), I’ve never truly felt it. The details were facts, not feelings; history, not the present. “The latent transmission of trauma is manifesting under stress,” my doctor said. Both tear ducts did their thing. “Hang in there,” she added.
My profession certainly doesn’t help. I am a rabbi working in New York City. I walk through NYPD to get inside our building. I pass through retired NYPD to clear our security. My commute is often disrupted by protests. Counseling hours have exponentially increased, considerably lengthening the work day. I start my regular classes thirty minutes early to give students a chance to connect and talk through their anxieties.
What could be on par with the loss and devastation of October 7? The universe answered with two personal, tragic blows.
On the morning of December 10, Rabbi David Ellenson, z”l, was laid to rest. He was a giant in the Jewish world—my world. He was president of my seminary when I was in graduate school. No one was ever as lucky as me to study under and be ordained by Rabbi Ellenson, except every other one of his thousands of students. Each obituary and eulogy got it right: he was a blessing to humanity.
On the night of December 10, a lifelong friend of my husband was killed in a freak accident. I adored Rajeev Shah, z”l. A pediatrician, devoted friend, and family man, Raj was one of the rarest people with his warmth, decency, and integrity. All that is good in the world manifested in Rabbi Ellenson and Raj. Yet the same world, represented so favorably in these souls, snatched them both away in a heartrending and untimely way.
My lower back went out from grief. I was moving into my new office and unpacked one too many books. As I laid on the floor—my very own Rock Bottom—with fake teeth, an eye stent, a taped toe, a seized back, and a shattered heart—I wondered verbatim from Psalm 121, “From where will my help come?”
NOW:
So much is still unknown: The fate of those precious hostages. The remedy for the virulent antisemitism worldwide. The future of Israel. The reckoning on university campuses. A host of other things.
I pray that acknowledging a new year on the secular calendar is invigorating. I hope fellow Jews and clergy colleagues have found a way to refill their reservoirs; find their strength. I hope everyone realizes they are not suffering alone.
My personal health has not fully resolved, but I’m getting there. My new teeth look natural enough. My back can once again support me, and my toe can withstand exercise. My eye is a work in progress.
Like a camera lens set not to allow the maximum amount of light in, my eyelid curiously opens two millimeters less than before surgery (and less than the healthy eye). That seems perfect. The world will always look a little darker to me, anyhow.
Rabbi Lisa Rubin was ordained from HUC-JIR NY in 2007. She first served Temple Beth El of Great Neck, NY before becoming the founding Director of the Center for Exploring Judaism at Central Synagogue in Manhattan in 2010.
