A Primer for Our Community to Navigate this Moment

Messages from Our Clergy October 17, 2023

These are incredibly challenging times for our community—as Temple members, as Jews, as Americans, and as human beings.

We are grief-stricken, sickened, and angry for our friends, family, and fellow Jews in Israel who will be forever changed by the atrocities committed against them on October 7th.

We are concerned for our safety and status as Jews living in our community and coming together at Temple.

We appreciate the outreach of support and love from beyond the Jewish community, especially from civic and interfaith leaders.

We lament the silence and victim-blaming of so many friends and colleagues we’ve supported in their times of need.

And we empathize with the suffering of the innocent in Gaza—feelings inspired by the values of our tradition.

We want to share a few important and useful insights to navigate this difficult moment:

Is it safe to come together as a Temple community?

Logistically, we are in close contact with local law enforcement and national security agencies, who provide up to the minute insight on any credible threats. We are quite experienced with our own, ongoing security needs, and have augmented them to meet the current crisis.

As individuals, we recognize that each of us has a different comfort level when it comes to security. And despite our assurances, some of us will need to take some time away from public gatherings. We hope that you will also keep in mind that the goal of terrorism is exactly that: To prevent us from living out our faith in community. The generations that came before us balanced concerns for well being with the courage to defy those who sought to deny us our faith in community. And we continue to do so down to this day.

Won’t Israel’s response to Hamas’ atrocities against its most vulnerable civilians inflict unnecessary suffering on innocent Palestinians in Gaza?

As we learn more about the depth of the depravity and barbarism of the Hamas murderers, it is difficult for even the most peace-minded and empathetic of us to extend concern for the residents of Gaza when the wounds of this massacre are still so raw.

However, we are compelled by our tradition to do all we can to protect the innocent, and to see them as created b’tzelem Elohim—in the image of God.

But that regard does not come at the expense of our own survival—especially in the face of adversaries whose demonstrated disregard for life and deliberate attacks on women, children, and the elderly require a determined and definitive response.

Israel is unique amongst modern militaries in amplifying their adherence to international law with the additional constraint of tohar neshek—a purity of arms—rooted in our tradition. When excesses inevitably occur in the fog of war, Israel holds itself to a singular level of accountability.

We deeply lament the loss of innocent lives amongst civilians in Gaza, and we will mourn the IDF soldiers who will give, in Lincoln’s words, “the last full measure of devotion.”

But it is the obligation of every nation—and especially for Israel—to defend itself against the brutality of extremism, and to do all it can to ensure that such horrors will never happen again. And sadly, even the most just military defense requires heartbreaking collateral loss—especially when Hamas purposely launches attacks from mosques, schools, and hospitals to amplify the deaths of their own people as human shields.

It is important to remember that there is no moral equivalence between a military that strives heroically to avoid civilian casualties, and a gang of terrorists whose sole objective is to kill innocent civilians—-even amongst their own people!

How can some progressives in academia and in supposed social justice circles defend Hamas’ crimes against humanity?

The Israeli/Palestinian conflict is perhaps one of the world’s most complicated. Unfortunately, in the flattened and binary ideology that divides the world and all of its conflicts into “oppressor vs oppressed,” a false and simplistic narrative casts Israel as a “colonizing power” and the Palestinians as the perennial victims of Zionism.

For some, this rigid rhetoric cannot be modified, even in the face of unimaginable acts of evil. Thus, through this perverse lens, Hamas’ mass murder of children is the legitimate, liberationist fight for Palestinian freedom, and Israel’s very existence is a provocation justifying heinous violence.

While Israel, like any nation, is deserving of criticism for its failures and mistakes, nothing—no historical context, policy, or military action—justifies the Holocaust-like horrors inflicted on the most vulnerable Jews on Simchat Torah.

Why have so many of our friends, neighbors and allies stayed silent in the face of such an overwhelming tragedy, thus exacerbating the pain we feel?

There are a number of possible reasons for this void of support:

The most generous explanation is that many outside the Jewish community don’t appreciate the deep connection we have to Israel as a critical part of our identity. In essence, this is seen as an attack on Israelis—citizens of another nation—rather than a pogrom against Jews because they were Jews—Jews who just happen to be Israeli.

Some people, even if not overt in their contempt for Israel, are uncomfortable with what appears to be an endless cycle of conflict that is one of many that tend to fade into the background as simply the “way of the world.”

And some who are immersed in more left-leaning circles may feel intimidated from expressing their support for fear of alienating friends, colleagues, and co-workers.

How can I help beyond contributions and community gatherings?

Each of us is an ambassador and advocate for Israel and the Jewish people. Especially in the coming days when Israel will face withering criticism and daunting pressure to limit its critical objectives, we must educate ourselves with background on the larger context and keep current with evolving events.