Kehillat Natan-Ya, part of the Israel Movement for Progressive Judaism, is a mosaic of nationalities. Looking around the packed room during the Shabbat services, I saw people who came here from Africa, Russia, Ukraine, Thailand, Georgia, Central and South America, the Philippines, the U.K., France, South Africa, and the U.S.—as well as the stam Israelis who were there. Part of the miracle of this place is that many of these are people who would not have found a place in a more mainstream Jewish community, for any of a variety of reasons. But Rabbi Edgar Nof brought them all home.

Edgar is a whirlwind of Mitzvahs. The Kavod Tzedakah Fund, which my friends and I founded over 30 years ago, has supported Edgar’s organization Bridges for Hope (Gesharim LeTikvah) since its inception. He’s supporting impoverished families, victims of terror, new immigrants, elderly Holocaust survivors, and other people living on the fringe. He’s in a half-dozen of the poorest schools in Haifa, teaching pluralistic and open-hearted Judaism and working with administrators to get supermarket food cards to the neediest families.

Like everyone else, Edgar’s life and the life of this community was profoundly changed after October 7. He once told me about how, in the wake of the massacres, he officiated at a funeral of a family of four. And there are memorials all around the synagogue of its local heroes who were killed that day and in the aftermath.

Most indefatigably, he’s doing Jewish life-cycle events for those who may not have had any Jewish connection otherwise. Edgar must have officiated at four bar/bat mitzvah ceremonies this week alone. And conversions to Judaism: he tells Heidi and me that at this point he’s brought over 800 people to Judaism in his career. Just amazing, and we got to see some of it up close on Friday.

I arrived at Netanya to teach my class. Edgar said he couldn’t be with us beforehand—he had a memorial service earlier in the day and a bar mitzvah in the afternoon; then my class, which segues into Shabbat. (I used to think I had a busy schedule.)

The service is gloriously energetic. It’s noisy, and there are no formalities, and there aren’t enough  siddurim. Children are up and down to the bimah to help Edgar out throughout the service; so, too, are adult honorees who come up to mark joyful milestones. Half the room has been given percussion instruments to tap or shake as we sing out the Shabbat prayers; it’s Shabbat Shirah, after all. The whole thing is a whirlwind and it’s wonderful.

In the middle of the service, a boy and his father are called up to the pulpit. Edgar opens the Aron Kodesh and places the Torah in the boy’s arms. He’s been studying and preparing for conversion—his mother is not Jewish—and this moment will make it official. He processes the Torah around the room, as everyone else rains candies upon his head and sings, Siman Tov u’Mazel Tov! The boy is composed, but his father has an awestruck look in his eyes—the echo of a hundred generations of Jews before him—as if he can’t believe that this moment was actually possible.

And then the entire room—this congregation from at least five continents—erupts and cries out: Achinu Atah! Achinu Atah! Achinu Atah! (Three times: “You are our brother!”).

Excuse me a moment, there’s something in my eye.

The service continues, Edgar strumming his guitar. Singing beside him is his longtime volunteer cantor Anna—she’s a young Philippine immigrant whom Edgar also brought to Judaism.

And then, breaking with the idea that the sequel is never as good as the original, another woman is called to the podium. She’s originally from Guatemala; she came to Israel and married a Sefardi man. Her husband and a handful of children stand beside her; she’s the second person tonight to celebrate a conversion to Judaism. She’s taken the Hebrew name Elisheva.

Elisheva takes out her prepared notes, and starts to thank her family, and the rabbi, and this community… but she gets choked up; it takes a while for her to regain her composure. And so, too, for the rest of us. And then, in unison and resounding with unbelievable excitement:  Achoteinu At! Achoteinu At! Achoteinu At! (“You are our sister! You are our sister! You are our sister!”).

In the language of our tradition, she has been embraced “under the wings of the Shekhinah.” But she’s also just been embraced by the Jewish people, as represented by this beautiful mosaic of worshippers.

Frankly, it was one of the most joyful and loving Shabbat services I’ve been to in a long time, amidst the joyful cacophony. This is the authentic face that I wish Israel were more adept at putting forward to the world: pluralistic, joyful, and welcoming—with room for everyone.

This has been a poignant week in Israel, a week of shadow and light.

First, the shadows.

I hope that by the time you read this we are not at war with Iran. This is a war-scarred and traumatized society; nearly two-and-a-half years since the terrorist massacres of October 7, it seemed as if some sort of equilibrium was, at least, within sight. Everyone seems to be going about their daily lives with some semblance of normality, but the emotions beneath the veneer are complicated.

Last July, Iranian missiles fell from the skies, sending people in the middle of the nights into their shelters and safe rooms. Everyone is geared up for that to happen again this week, as American carriers are in place in the Persian Gulf, the U.S. Air Force is conducting drills, and Iran is threatening to respond in kind on Israel.

I’ll admit I’m a little nervous about all this, but my Israeli friends have told me how to take precautions and prepare for an attack that seems like it’s coming.

Beyond that, Israelis are wrestling with a parallel dilemma as Americans: the assault on democratic institutions by a corrupt administration. The horrible situation of unchecked settler violence in the West Bank — as well as surging rates of intra-Arab violence — is at a boiling point here. So we joined, with thousands of others, the pro-democracy rallies and demonstrations that have been running perpetually for years. Everyone knows that the status quo can’t hold.

So of course there are shadows in Israel. But shadows don’t exist in unrelenting darkness, and we’ve also experienced an enormous amount of light.

The biggest story in Israel this week was—finally, 843 days after that cursed Oct. 7—the retrieval and return of Ron Gvili’s body from Gaza. For the first time in 12 years, there are no Israeli hostages, alive or dead, in the dungeons and tunnels of Gaza. Every Israeli is cognizant of this; everyone was aware of his funeral that took place this week. Ron Gvili was an Israeli hero, and his family had been desperately holding on to the slimmest hope that he was perhaps still alive. This week they received the closure of at least knowing his fate.

So the yellow and blue ribbons are coming down. The Hostages and Missing Families Forum / “Bring Them Home Now” organization held its final Kabbalat Shabbat service in Tel Aviv.  Synagogues no longer recite special prayers for the hostages. And I removed “Bring Them Home” from my email signature. People are finally trying to move forward and confront the long process of healing a traumatized generation.

Considering the trauma and the healing, there were two particular points of light that I want to share with you:

Transcending Trauma: We visited with my friend Anita Shkedi this week. I’ve written about Anita before; she is an internationally recognized authority on hippotherapy, using horses for physical and emotional therapy. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Anita’s most recent book is Horses Heal PTSD, and since Oct. 7 she and her Transcending Trauma team have been caring for survivors of the massacre and the IDF soldiers who have been in Gaza and elsewhere. How clearly can I say this? She puts shattered lives and bodies back together, teaching her clients the art of grooming and caring for and bonding with horses, and then the therapy that takes place on horseback. It’s awesome to be in her presence and to hear the stories of her people; it’s a great privilege to support her work through the Kavod Tzedakah Fund.

 Shai Tsabari with Avner Gadasi and Yehuda Keisar: Heidi and I did some volunteer work and spent time listening to a lot of Israeli stories over the past few days. By Wednesday night we were ready for a break, and I spotted that Israeli musician Shai Tsabari was performing with two of the most renowned Jewish Yemenite musicians of the generation, Avner Gadasi and Yehuda Keisar. Tsabari is of  the generation of Israeli rock stars whose music is a mixture of western (rock, dance, psychedelia) and eastern (Jewish piyyutim, and especially the melodies of Tsabari’s ancestry in Yemen). He’s also known for his engaging and soulful personality that draws people in and gets them up and dancing.

I knew the concert would be fun—but I didn’t realize how deeply it would move me. The place was packed with Israelis, who by the second half of the show were on their feet, singing every word, and some dancing on chairs and tables. It struck me: here is a nation that has been so traumatized and so soaked in grief; a society that for the past two-and-a-half years could recite the name of every hostage. Tonight I felt a catharsis, a release, a transcendence that is reflected in the slogan “We Will Dance Again.”

It doesn’t mean that the next morning the nation won’t resume confronting its PTSD. But for one night, a few hundred of us were smiling, slapping hands, dancing to the old-new sounds of Jewish musicians, and realizing that there is an unspoken spirit that binds this people together in history and hope.

 There is only one thing we say to Death: “Not today.”
—Syrio Forel, Game of Thrones

 
What an extraordinary moment in history this is.

For two years—738 days—I’ve started every online class I’ve taught with a prayer for the hostages, the 251 babies, children, teenagers, and adults who were kidnapped by the Hamas death cult on Oct. 7. On Monday the last of the living hostages were brought home to their families (although as I write, only four of the bodies of those who were murdered by the terrorists have been returned).

Emotionally, this is a complicated moment. We’ve been through so much: The death and destruction of war. The surging Jew-hatred locally and around the world. The silence or outright abandonment of friends who turned away from Jewish suffering.

Yet for two years my priority has been the hostages. I’ve woken up in the morning thinking of them and gone to sleep at night thinking of them. So the outrageous (but not unmitigated) joy of seeing the survivors coming home is just staggering.

In case you haven’t seen this clip yet, this 5-minute collection of some of the hostages being reunited with their families is one of the most incredible videos I’ve ever seen. Pay attention to the father reciting Sh’ma Yisrael when he sees his son for the first time in two years; listen to the voice of the mother when she says the Shehecheyanu blessing:

There remain, of course, many things to parse about this moment—politically, socially, and religiously. But in the short term, there are some Jewish priorities to attend to. We’re on the eve of Simchat Torah, the culmination of the Sukkot holiday when it is a Mitzvah to be joyful and dance with our communities and our Torah. The past two Simchat Torahs have been so utterly ambivalent. We all asked: how dare we celebrate and dance when the reality of Simchat Torah is the Yartzeit of 1,195 people who were massacred and the date when 251 people were taken hostage? Would we ever celebrate this holiday again?

This year, we’ll dance.

The Book of Ecclesiastes—that is, Kohelet, which is traditionally read on Sukkot—knows a secret about dancing. In the famous poem at the beginning of Chapter 3 (“To everything there is a season… A time to be born and a time to die,” etc.), one of the couplets is: A time for mourning and a time for dancing.

Do you see it? For Kohelet, dancing is life; it’s the antonym of mourning!

Simcha doesn’t simply mean “be happy.” Jewish texts speak of  שִׂמְחָה שֶׁל מִצְוָה /  the simcha of being involved in a Mitzvah. But some Mitzvot are sad: burying the dead, comforting mourners, and so on. Where is the “joy” there? The answer is that “simcha” is something much deeper:  It means choosing life, connecting ourselves with the Source of Life, and turning our backs on cults of death and destruction.

“Simcha”—choosing life—feels like a countercultural value; it’s an act of spiritual resistance against the forces of nihilism that can threaten to swallow us up.

There is so much to be skeptical about; about the reliability of the bad actors involved, about the ability for cease fires to hold, and so on. But that video of families reunited tells us everything about what simcha is all about. On Simchat Torah, we should dance, and we should dance like everything depends on it—because in a sense it does.

Let’s dance on Simchat Torah because we embrace life, not annihilation. Dance with the simcha of the families that have been reunited. Dance as the Kotzker Rebbe instructed his disciples: “Imagine yourselves on a mountain peak, on a razor’s edge, and now: dance, dance, I tell you!”[1]

[1] In Elie Wiesel, Souls on Fire (1972)

“Tisha B’Av in 2025 is the diagnosis, not the cure.”

The music critic Lester Bangs (1948-1982) was one of the great chroniclers of rock and roll. He emerged in the late 1960s with the maturation of rock—after The Beatles psychedelicized, after Dylan went electric, after the Velvet Underground teamed up with Andy Warhol—and wrote in a style that read like the noise and chaos of the music. Just as the Beat Generation wrote books that bopped with the rhythms of jazz in the 1950s, Lester wrote lines that pounded like drums and spun off like electric guitar solos.

I’m thinking of Lester (his writing invites the informality of first names) because of a few sentences he wrote in August 1977, on the occasion of the death of Elvis, a pivotal “changing of the guards” moment in rock history. In an extraordinary obituary in the Village Voice, Lester wrote:

If love truly is going out of fashion forever, which I do not believe, then along with our nurtured indifference to each other will be an even more contemptuous indifference to each other’s objects of reverence… We will continue to fragment in this manner, because solipsism holds all the cards at present; it is a king whose domain engulfs even Elvis’s.

But I can guarantee you one thing: we will never again agree on anything as we agreed on Elvis. So I won’t bother saying goodbye to his corpse. I will say goodbye to you.[1]

I don’t have much affinity for Elvis beyond his place in the history of pop culture; I was seven years old when he died and it barely registered. At the time of his demise his significance had long since passed, and his musical descendants fragmented into many camps and styles.

But that final line of Lester’s elegy haunts me in a much deeper place than, say, “Don’t Be Cruel.”

Part of the reason I cling to that sentence “I will say goodbye to you” is because I think Lester inadvertently (he was raised a Jehovah’s Witness in southern California) gets at the heart of Tisha B’Av, at least on its spiritual and emotional levels.

And for me, Tisha B’Av seems to be more and more spiritually relevant every year, especially this year.

The 9th of Av, of course, is the most sober and solemn day in the Jewish calendar. Ostensibly it is about historical horrors: most obviously in the destructions of the First (586 BCE) and Second (70 CE) Temples that stood in Jerusalem, but also G-d’s decree that the generation that came out of Egypt would die in the wilderness (Numbers 14); the plowing over of Jerusalem by the Romans; and the quashing of the Bar Kochba revolt at Beitar in 135 CE. (All this is enumerated in the Mishnah, Ta’anit 4:6.)

As horrific as those historical moments were, they’re also meant to be understood on a spiritual level. They all emphasize the idea of Exile; that is, the forces of entropy that drive us away from our foundations, and one another, and G-d. The destruction of the Temples, the plowing over of Jerusalem, and end of the rebellion against Rome at Beitar were all historical traumas—but they were also moments when the chasm between our ideals and our reality felt insurmountable.

Does that describe our reality today? Some days it feels that way, and that makes Tisha B’Av for me feel more relevant and meaningful than ever. The centrifugal forces that pull us apart from one another, and ever further from our Source, seem incredibly powerful.

Certainly I’m thinking about Israel—I’m always thinking about Israel.

I’m thinking of my brothers and sisters in Israel who have endured months of sitting in bomb shelters. Who have been conscripted to fight three, four, and more tours of duty to defend their homes. Who endured the hail of Iranian missiles at the beginning of the summer. Who have shown over and over again what it means to be a society that cares for one another at a time of crisis.

I’m thinking of Israelis who day in and day out demonstrate that they are much better and more decent than the government that speaks for them.

Israel once was supposed to be the thing that bound all Jews together. Even if we located ourselves at different places along the political, religious, or ideological spectrum, we agreed on one thing: the creation of a democratic Jewish state in the 20th century was our response—our antidote—to the centuries of hate and exclusion of Jews, and an awesome new chapter in Jewish history.

But now Israel is the stick we use to beat each other with.

There was a moment—a few weeks after Hamas terrorists massacred, raped, and took Jews hostage on October 7, 2023—when it seemed like unity would rule the day. Jews everywhere mourned together and the world’s capitals were lit up with blue and white.

But that seems as long ago as the Second Temple. Outside the Jewish community, we are increasingly perceived as aggressors of a war we didn’t ask for. Inside the Jewish community, we rip ourselves apart by analyzing what we’ve become after two years of this horrific war. Has fighting this just war coarsened our souls to the point where we cannot empathize with the pain of others, including our enemy’s children?

And in Jerusalem today, just as on the eve of destruction in 70 CE (see Gittin 56a), a minority of political and religious zealots are manipulating the destiny of the majority of Jews who are seeking a just path out of this morass.

Maybe disunity and unraveling will describe the rest of our lives, as Lester Bangs described in 1977: “We will never again agree on anything as we agreed on Elvis.” Maybe our fate is the same as the one that Joseph faced: “I am looking for my brothers” (Genesis 37:16).

Maybe. But I hope not.

So what is Tisha B’Av in 2025? It’s the diagnosis, not the cure. The diagnosis is estrangement, distance, the utter failure to see in one another a sense of suffering and pain that might in some way resemble our own wounds.

Only after the diagnosis can we reach for a cure. “Only those who mourn for Jerusalem will get to see her future joy,” says the Talmud (Ta’anit 30b).  After recognizing on Tisha B’Av how far we have moved from each other, something remarkable happens in the rhythms of Jewish life: Gravity takes over. We begin to move back towards one another.

In synagogue life this is marked by seven weekly Haftarah readings, each one on the themes of comfort and restoration taken from the final chapters of the Book of Isaiah. Seven weeks mark our return to first principles, until we arrive at Rosh Hashanah and culminate with Yom Kippur. The forces that pull us apart begin to reverse themselves in their courses, and we start to draw closer together once again.

This year, I hope we can make it back. I’m not quite prepared to draw the line that Lester Bangs did when Elvis died and he wrote I will say goodbye to you.

Instead I’ll say I’ve seen that point of estrangement—politically and otherwise—and I don’t want to live there. Instead, I’ll say: I’m looking for you, and maybe we can find a way back, together.

Forwarded to you? You can sign up to receive updates from me via A Tree with Roots.

[1] Lester Bangs, “Where Were You When Elvis Died?”, collected in Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung, ed. Greil Marcus, 1987.

“Offensive, unworkable, dangerous.”

While I occasionally write about political issues in this blog, I don’t do so very often. I don’t feel like it’s my responsibility here to reply to every crisis, especially when there are those who can do so with much more knowledge and authority than me. I’ll write when I feel like I have a perspective that isn’t being addressed by others, or when it simply feels like a moral responsibility to speak out in this forum.

I suppose the astounding announcement on Tuesday of Donald Trump’s vision for Gaza falls into the second category. Sane Zionists—the overwhelming majority of American Jews who represent the widest swath of the political spectrum, left, center, and right—need to call out Trump’s proposal to forcibly displace two million Gazans for what it is: offensive, unworkable, and dangerous.

A plan to remove two million people from their homes and resettle them in another country is obviously abominable. The Jewish historical experience speaks directly to the moral revulsion of being forcibly removed from our homes. The fact that once-glorious and vigorous  Jewish civilizations flourished in Europe, Asia, and a dozen Arab countries that are now judenrein speaks to this. But what part of “What is hateful to you, do not do to other people” is so hard to understand?

There’s also that fact that the Trump scheme is unworkable. Others will address this more directly than I can, but certain aspects seem obvious. Two million Gazans will not submit to being forcibly repatriated. And the Arab nations of the Middle East have no capacity nor intention of absorbing hundreds of thousands of refugees, many of whom are surely Hamas radicals. Jordan’s population is already predominantly Palestinian; it surely is not going to destabilize itself by bringing them in. Egypt, too, can hardly be expected to bring in potential radicals to bolster the Muslim Brotherhood that already gives it enough problems. Lebanon and Syria are failed states that have no capacity to absorb thousands of refugees. And so on. It’s hard to imagine any of these countries giving the Trump administration a “win” on this anyhow.

But what I don’t hear people talking about is how utterly reckless and dangerous the Trump plan is—dangerous for people whom Zionists are supposed to care about. For instance, just as the hostages are finally starting to be released from their terrorist captors, Trump and Netanyahu drop this bomb about depopulating Gaza. I pray that there is not a violent counterreaction to Trump’s irresponsible declarations—with the hostages as the victims.

Moreover, there is the issue of surging antisemitism—locally and around the world. I’m thinking of the Jews of central and western Europe. Typically I would not blame antisemitism on Jewish behavior; antisemitism is the derangement and the problem of antisemites, not Jews. (Same goes for every other form of hate: It is always abominable to say that the victims “asked for it.”)

But that doesn’t mean that Trump and Netanyahu aren’t brazenly pouring gasoline where there are already open flames. While I’m concerned for Jewish communities in America, especially on our disgraced college campuses, I’m downright fearful for the well-being of the Jews of France, the U.K., Australia, and across Europe, where it is already open season and Jewish blood is cheap. Violent responses, G-d forbid, against Jews across the globe are not hard to imagine.

One of the true horrors of Trump’s rise and Netanyahu’s relentless grip on power is the way that each of them have brought into the fold extremists who were once beyond the pale. For decades there have been voices that urged the “transfer” of Palestinians out of Israel—but those voices were always the radical far-right that were considered unacceptable in civilized discourse. In the 70s and 80s, those voices were represented by the despicable Meir Kahane and his followers; but Kahane’s party was outlawed in 1988 by a special law prohibiting racist political parties. In the 90s, Kahane’s ideology of “transfer” was adapted by the Moledet party—but they, too, were recognized as the lunatic fringe, even if they garnered a few ultra-right Knesset seats. But Netanyahu legitimized and elevated Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, both adherents of violent strains of Kahanism, and brought them and their parties into his bloc. Even if “transfer” wasn’t Netanyahu’s plan all along (and I think Trump took Netanyahu totally by surprise with his scheme), he has empowered and normalized those voices that were once considered too extreme for decent society.

As a Zionist, I believe passionately in the legitimate Israeli narrative to be a free people in our historic homeland. And also as a Zionist, I believe it is our absolute imperative to work toward a just solution to the horrible status quo, under which Israelis live under the fear of terror and Palestinians are subject to constant humiliation—and no small amount of terror from far-right thugs.

Look, I know that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a disaster, and I share the desire for a game-changer about how to live in an Israel free from terror. Especially post-October 7, I appreciate that the old thinking has been more than non-productive; it’s been catastrophic. There is a genuine need for new thinking and big ideas. This is where the Abraham Accords emerged from, which was the last time there were any glimmers of optimism in the Middle East. But “new thinking and big ideas” must come with a sense of moral obligation and decency.

So what should we American Zionists do? A few obvious responses are demanded of us:

·      SUPPORT Zionist organizations that offer a different vision of the future:  the Israel Movement for Progressive Judaism, ARZA, Zioness Movement, Hiddush, and so on.

·      VOTE in the upcoming World Zionist Congress election: It is crucial that American Zionist Movement is represented by Zionists who are committed to democracy, pluralism, and human rights.

·      SPEAK OUT AS SUPPORTERS OF ISRAEL against this plan—for the sake of Zion and Judaism.

As Zionists, we have a moral responsibility to say: This is not the path for a sustainable future. It is a road to moral oblivion.

            We spent Christmas Eve in the traditional Jewish manner: we went to the movies. And there was really only one movie I had any interest in seeing: the new Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown, which tells the story of Dylan’s arrival and departure from the Greenwich Village folk scene from 1961-1965.

            There’s a scene at the beginning of the film that reveals a lot in a very understated way. There are three characters in a hospital room in Morris Plains, New Jersey: Woody Guthrie (played by Scoot McNairy), who is dying of Huntington’s disease; his loyal friend Pete Seeger (Edward Norton); and twenty year-old Bob Dylan (Timothee Chalamet).[1] Dylan is singing “Song for Woody” to its namesake, his hero. It was the first great song that Dylan ever wrote.[2] The camera pans to each man’s face, and without a word of dialogue, each shot speaks volumes.

Dylan’s eyes are focused far away, on a land that only he can see, as if he knows that his musical journey will soon travel far beyond the confines of “trad. arr.” music.

Woody, devastated by illness, has a look of awe in his eyes, as if this young acolyte whom he’s just met already has absorbed all of his influence and transcended it; as if the dying legend knows that Dylan will inhabit a space towards which he could only gesture.

            And Seeger’s eyes, too, indicate that he can see where this is going. Seeger is a political radical but a cultural conservative, determinedly preserving old forms and styles. His gaze indicates that he intuits that Dylan will take Woody’s legacy to unimagined places—and yet Dylan’s progress will bring no small amount of pain and destruction in its wake, at least for those who refuse to get out of the new road if they can’t lend a hand.

            It’s all unspoken and subtle, and my interpretation may be wrong. Still, I liked the movie a lot. The 2:20 running time flies by, and it’s one of those rare films that I wished was longer. But be forewarned: the title of the movie should be a tipoff that there are no astounding revelations about Bob Dylan’s life and art here. If anything, the greatest songwriter in American history remains an enigma, even as the movie explores some important ideas.

            In fact, I’m sure the real Bob Dylan wouldn’t have it any other way. No one is a bigger liar about his past than Dylan—and I consider that to be one of the fascinating things about him. Robert Zimmerman famously arrived in Greenwich Village in the early 1960s with a new name and a farcical biography. In retrospect, his stories about hopping freight trains and joining traveling carnivals are so funny and ridiculous that it’s hard to imagine people took him seriously. But part of the folk music scene of the day was so sanctimonious that they took him at his word; after all, you can’t recognize a joke if you don’t have a sense of humor.

            To this day, Bob Dylan loves obscuring his background. His memoir Chronicles was published to great fanfare in 2004, and immediately Dylan’s biographers howled about all its distortions, inaccuracies, and outright fictions. Even more to the point, many people pointed out that the book managed to ignore many of the moments that most fans would actually be curious about! (But there sure is a lot about the Oh Mercy! sessions in 1987...!) As ever, Dylan performed a biographical sleight-of-hand and delivered only what he wanted to deliver.

            I think there’s integrity in that position. By stubbornly refusing for seven decades to reveal too much about his personal life, Dylan has just as stubbornly made his songs his definitive statement. Just think about how contrarian that is today. When “CELEBRITY” is the primary cultural value in our world—far more than “ART”—then the art simply becomes saleable product. The TikTok revelations of today’s “influencers” who want to tell you all their private thoughts, likes and dislikes, political views, and fashions preempt creating anything in particular. Or, more to the point: THEY have become the product, more than their creations.

            This has never been a problem with Bob Dylan. He flees from making his biography the focal point, so much so that even the most dogged biographers can’t really keep track of how many times he’s been married or how many children he has.  He is the anti-celebrity in an age when Nothing is Private. And—in a postmodern twist—that attitude has made him one of the most famous performers in the world. Crazy.

            So A Complete Unknown is decidedly not history—and I don’t think that mitigates the movie’s success. Much of it is terrific. The key performance at the heart of the film is stellar: Timothee Chalamet is just superb. He looks and sounds just like a youthful Bob Dylan without seeming forced or self-conscious at all.

            Other aspects of the movie are less satisfying. Some of the supporting characters are flat and one-dimensional. The weakest part is the romance with Dylan’s first “true love of mine,” Suze Rotolo. Her character is far enough removed from the real Suze that the filmmakers had the courtesy to change her name. (They call her “Sylvie,” which is a nice allusion to the old-world folk scene represented by the Lead Belly song, “Bring Me a Little Water, Silvy.”) The real Suze Rotolo was a sophisticated and worldly denizen of the cultural and civil rights scene in Greenwich Village, but in the film she is basically a jilted lover who spends most of her scenes on the verge of tears.

            Joan Baez gets slightly better treatment. She was a star before Dylan and jumpstarted his career when he needed it. Monica Barbaro does a fine job portraying Baez, and again the musical performances are impeccable (although Baez’s music is much less interesting than Dylan’s). Still, the real Joan Baez has much more gravitas than her onscreen character, and in the film she’s largely reduced to being the “other woman” in a love triangle. I imagine that the real Joan isn’t too thrilled with this movie.

            The biggest liberties in the film concern elevating Pete Seeger as the full-fledged second protagonist in the story. Again, the performance is fantastic: Ed Norton completely inhabits Seeger’s persona, with its contradictory aspects of Pete’s inherent decency and goodness, passionate love for tradition, and egoless support of artists who deserve recognition alongside his flashes of anger, frustration, and self-doubt.  There’s a grain of truth in the way their relationship is presented, but it’s also a convenient ruse for the filmmakers to set up Seeger as Dylan’s foil. He is an emblem of the old-world folk scene that Dylan quickly found stifling, but I sense that Pete didn’t loom as large in Dylan’s life as he does in the film.

II.

            What’s missing is Dylan’s Judaism, which, in my viewing, received a nanosecond of screentime. The scene is a house party at Sylvie’s place, where Dylan has been crashing. Someone spots his old Minnesota yearbook and some other memorabilia and says, “His name is Zimmerman?” The scrapbook seems to be open to a few photos of teenage friends at summer camp. Yes: Camp Herzl, where Dylan learned about Judaism and Zionism. It goes by in a flash; I’ll have to freeze the scene when it’s available to stream to see if my suspicions are confirmed. But nothing else in the film alludes to his Jewish identity.

            That doesn’t bother me much. At this time in his life, Dylan was obscuring everything about his past.

            But in a world where there are scores of Dylan biographies, critical analyses, and annual scholarly seminars, it’s important to note how Dylan’s Jewish identity is constantly shortchanged. Perhaps that’s because so many Dylanologists aren’t Jewish themselves, so they miss that essential feature in his make-up.

            That’s why Louie Kemp’s 2019 biography Dylan & Me a is so important. Kemp has the advantage over other Dylan biographers of actually being an intimate friend of the artist. Kemp was a childhood pal and a recurring figure in most of Dylan’s life: he was there for Dylan’s teenage “first public performance” at Camp Herzl, he was a producer on the barnstorming Rolling Thunder Revue, Dylan was best man at Louie’s wedding—and his frozen fish business even catered The Last Waltz! Kemp is also a baal teshuvah who takes his Judaism seriously—and has shared many Jewish moments with Dylan. His book is important because it fills in this dimension of Dylan’s character where every other biography falls short. (Louie Kemp made Aliyah in the summer of 2024 in a show of solidarity while Jewish people were under attack. When asked if he has family in Israel, Kemp answered, “I have 7 million family members in Israel.” Kemp is a mensch.)

III.

            The essential conflict at the heart of A Complete Unknown is centered on that lefty cultural and political scene of the early ‘60s, indeed a portentous moment in U.S. history. There’s no wonder that a young Dylan was drawn there. He was in love with songs, the “Old, Weird America” that murmured beneath the surface of “official” post-War history, as recorded by hillbilly and blues performers. Dylan was already a walking encyclopedia of that secret history.

            But the folk scene was also stifling. One thing that comes through loud and clear in Chronicles is how nauseating Dylan finds the idea of being called the “voice of a generation.” He devotes significant space to saying, essentially, who the hell would want to be the “voice” of anyone’s generation?!  He has an ornery streak—a need to do the opposite of people’s expectations—which I’ve written about elsewhere and which I personally find appealing.

            In the movie, we see how the folkies’ embrace starts with warmth but soon becomes suffocating. “Blowing in the Wind” is a revelation when Suze/Sylvie first hears it. But soon everyone was solemnly intoning it like scripture, especially the humorless Peter, Paul and Mary who drove it to the top of the charts. So the expectation was that he would continue to rewrite such anthems for pious liberals, as they nodded and stroked their goatees.

            But Dylan always was more than that. At one point in the film, he warms to a TV appearance of Little Richard, his teenage favorite, before the Seeger-character shuts it off, as if rock and roll was beneath them. (The fact that Little Richard and Chuck Berry were African-American, and that early rock was as Black as folk music, raises interesting questions whether or not the folkies, for all their activism, were really more racially enlightened than other music scenes in the 60s.) The Beatles don’t appear in the movie at all, but in real life, hearing “I Want to Hold Your Hand” for the first time was, for Dylan, a revelation opening up entire realms. Rock was open-ended, anarchic, and filled with possibilities; folk was orthodox and governed by rules and hierarchies.

            The film’s climax is the Newport Folk Festival of 1965, where Dylan showed up with the Paul Butterfield Blues Band behind him, a mixed-race electric group with the great Jewish guitarist Mike Bloomfield playing icepick leads. The conservative curators of the festival freaked. So did many fans. (The film conflates the events of Newport with the drama in Manchester, UK from the following year, where an outraged folkie yelled “Judas!” at Dylan, the Jew on the stage.) In real life, after Dylan’s scorching three songs, a desperate Peter Yarrow returned to the stage, coaxing “Bobby” back out, “This time with an acoustic guitar.”

            What A Complete Unknown is really about is: the fight for an artist to be true to himself, and to prevail over the stifling orthodoxies where “everybody wants you to be just like them.” That is much easier said than done. We’d still be talking about Bob Dylan today even if he never left the rarified air of the folk scene—I mean, he’d be immortal for “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” alone. But we wouldn’t be talking about a once-in-a-lifetime artist who upset established pieties and pushed boundaries. Instead, he’d be remembered as one who stayed in his lane and wrote anthems of validation for people who were already believers.

IV.

So, Chanukah. Does the timing of the movie’s release shed any light on Chanukah this year? I think it does.

Chanukah celebrates the world’s oldest fight for religious freedom. The Maccabees fought against the anti-Jewish edicts of Antiochus IV and his regime. But the bigger backdrop of the Chanukah story is the world of Hellenization.  Greek clothes, Greek philosophy, the gymnasium, the celebration of the human body… this was the cultural zeitgeist of the era. Greek civilization was seductive for everyone, including the people of Judea.

The first meaning of the Chanukah battle is: the right to be a Jew in the face of overwhelming opposition—against political persecution, sure; but also against a raging cultural tide that mocks our values. In the Maccabees’ time—quite like today—civilization looked at Jewish difference and said, “Really, how is it that you are still here?”

Sometimes that opposition was expressed as oppression. Sometimes it was expressed with excessive love. (Yes, there are those out there who will love you to death. Just ask Bob Dylan.)

At the heart of freedom is the freedom to be different, to go against the grain. Freedom includes the assumption that the majority is not always, or even often, right.

That may sound platitudinous. I don’t mean to say that all forms of cultural assimilation are wrong. Obviously there are elements of secular society that we accept into our lives. After the Chanukah revolution, Jews became free to experiment with Hellenism, to figure out for themselves what aspects of assimilation made their cultural identity stronger, versus those aspects that merely diluted their Jewishness away. (After his electric revolution, Bob Dylan would return to folk music forms throughout his career—but on his own terms.)

That ancient challenge recurs in every generation. That is the Chanukah battle yet to be won.

Especially in the past year, Jews have felt this tension. Everywhere since Oct. 7—in the press, in social media, and especially on America’s disgraced college campuses—we have slanders thrown in our faces. “We’re not antisemitic,” the world keeps telling us, “we just hate Zionism”—as if the impulse for peoplehood and building up our homeland were somehow separate from authentic Judaism. And we’ve spent an enormous amount of capital trying to defend ourselves, explain our positions, build bridges.

Perhaps it is time for Jews—especially young Jews—to realize that there is something fundamentally countercultural about Judaism. For all our efforts to explain our story, and Israel’s, more cogently and directly, for all our efforts to conform and adapt and build coalitions, we should recognize the places where we embrace “the dignity of difference” (in Rabbi Jonathan Sacks’s phrase). Being true to one’s self and one’s people can be challenging and occasionally painful. Periodically someone may howl “Judas!”—or worse—in your face on your way across the quad.

But in the end, the Chanukah struggle for integrity—to “know my song well before I start singing”—is worth every tear. Just ask Bob Dylan.

Forwarded to you? You can sign up to receive these blog posts and updates from me at this link.

[1] The scene is a fiction. Of course Dylan famously did visit Woody’s bedside and sing Guthrie’s songs to him, but there is no indication that these three men were ever there alone together.

[2] More precisely, “Song to Woody” is the first great lyric that Dylan set to music; the melody is Guthrie’s “1913 Massacre.”

Belief in coincidences is a theological category, so I don’t know if you buy into them or not. But on Sunday evening, I was at a conference in New York that happened to be taking place at my alma mater, Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in New York. In fact, I was sitting in the Beit Knesset, listening to a lecture by the great social activist Ruth Messinger, when I received a text on my phone telling me that Rabbi Leonard Kravitz had died.

The astonishing serendipity of that moment: This was my first time back on the New York campus of HUC-JIR in many years. And there I was, getting this news while I was in the very chapel where I often sat next to Rabbi Kravitz during Tefillah over the four years that I was a student there. The wave of emotions, memories, and warm feelings was just amazing.

I loved Rabbi Kravitz dearly. He was an expert in medieval Jewish philosophy and Maimonides in particular, and I cherish my copy of his scholarly work, The Hidden Doctrine of Maimonides’ Guide for the Perplexed (1988; only $230 on Amazon!).

I had the great pleasure of having him as my rabbinic thesis advisor all those years ago.  Rereading that previous sentence, I wonder how many people look back on writing a graduate thesis as a “great pleasure.” I truly do, in large part because of my relationship with him. At that time, I used to meet with him on a weekly basis for an hour of studying the Rambam in his office. It wasn’t always germane to my thesis-writing, but it was like having a weekly one-on-one hevruta-study with someone who was a great scholar and a generous teacher.

Rabbi Kravitz’s classroom could be dizzying, because he tended to speak very quickly. There was a good reason for that: he would simultaneously be delivering a philosophy lecture, a Yiddish lesson, and doing standup comedy. So of course he had to speak three times faster than a typical teacher.

Here are a few more of my cherished memories of him:

·      Delivering my final thesis to him in his office. He leapt up from behind his desk, grabbed my 116-page document with zeal, and cried, “This calls for a L’chayim!” And he went straight to his file cabinet and pulled out the bottle of scotch that was stashed away for just such a moment.  (He was very partisan for his favorite distilleries. I remember bringing him a bottle of The Glenrothes in gratitude before graduation. He smiled and told me I was truly a disciple who had learned his lessons.)

·      Once, some joker put a full-size poster of his namesake the rock star Lenny Kravitz on the door to his office, with dreadlocks flying in the air. Rabbi Kravitz got such a kick out of it that it stayed on his door for the whole semester.

·      He was a kind and gentle soul, but definitely mastered the time-honored art of the putdown. If he disapproved, say, of a sermon that was delivered during Tefillah, he could say with perfect inflection, “That was nice.”

·      And he had a wonderful sense of humor and was even a bit of a raconteur. I recall him once emerging from the elevator at HUC-JIR and saying in a loud voice to anyone in the vicinity, “My friends! Please! Study Torah! It’s not too late!” And then he whispered to me, out of the corner of his mouth, “It is too late, but don’t tell them.” (For that matter, he used to translate the Mishnah’s statement וְתַלְמוּד תּוֹרָה כְּנֶגֶד כֻּלָּם as: “It’s across the street.”)

·      As a scholar of Maimonides, his philosophical outlook was decidedly rationalist (and he used to fondly remind us that he fit in quite well during his years at a Jesuit school). So one time, when he earnestly quoted a Hasidic story to me, I fell off my chair. “Rabbi Kravitz, did you just tell me a Hasidic story?!” He just laughed.

Even though he loomed quite large in my life—in my hevruta studies with Rabbi Ben Levy, it’s remarkable how frequently his name comes up—I hadn’t been in touch with him in a long time. Then, in 2022, I was receiving my Doctor of Divinity honorary degree from HUC-JIR, and Rabbi Joel Soffin gave me very important advice: to write to some of the professors who were especially important influences on me. Rabbi Kravitz was one of them, of course. Each of the professors whom I contacted wrote back to me, but I was bowled over when I got a phone call from Lincolnwood, IL. It was his daughter: “He wants to talk to you.” And suddenly I was his student again; he was speaking Yiddish, and quoting the Rambam, and saying, “Of course, I’m not telling you Torah you don’t already know…” We had a series of calls after that, and I feel so lucky to have resumed this relationship with such a unique and precious soul.

He died this week at 96 and is no doubt speaking a mile-a-minute in the olam ha-ba, explaining his elaborate map through the Guide of the Perplexed that he alone could decipher. He was a wonderful rabbi, mentor, and mensch. His memory is a blessing forever.  

And of all the images that remain seared in my mind, I can’t stop thinking of the kibbutz Sukkah that remains standing—now, one year later:

The 2023 sukkah from Kibbutz Nir Oz, still standing in the summer of 2024. Photos: NG

The roof is gone, the walls are falling down, but the sukkah is still there. And it is chilling to see.

A sukkah, by definition, is an impermanent structure. It’s designed to be flimsy and makeshift. By the end of seven days of exposure to the elements—and seven days of eating, singing, and hosting guests—a sukkah is supposed to look pretty dilapidated. The whole idea of this holiday is to prompt a mediation on the elements of our lives that are permanent and enduring and those that are fleeting and ephemeral. (And to prompt gratitude and delight in what we have; that’s where the “season of our joy” comes in.) And when the holiday is over, the sukkah gets taken down and packed away until next year; a “permanent sukkah” is supposed to be contradiction in terms.

So I sit in my Sukkah in Massachusetts, and I reflect on those things in my life which are truly enduring, and those which are transient and can disappear in a heartbeat. I look out at the gorgeous technicolor leaves on the trees, and know that soon they’ll be on the ground, with snowfall not far behind. It gives me some sense of eternity, but little peace this year.

Because I keep thinking of the Nir Oz sukkah, with no one to refurbish it or renew it for 2024. It’s frozen in 2023.

Now the culmination of Sukkot and the entire fall holiday season is drawing close: Shemini Atzeret on Wednesday night and Simchat Torah on Thursday night. And as these arrive, it’s impossible to separate them from the Yartzeit (the one-year anniversary according to the Jewish calendar) that they represent: last year’s cursed Simchat Torah, when over 1,200 Israelis were massacred in their homes and at the Nova Music Festival.

Simchat Torah is, of course, supposed to be a day devoted to raucous, joyful simcha—a time of dancing in the streets with the Torah in our arms. How in the world are we supposed to do that this year, in the shadow of the Yartzeit and knowing that 101 hostages still remain in the dungeons of Gaza?

That question is a popular topic of conversation in the Jewish press and Jewish blogs this week. Some teachers have reminded us that Jews danced with the Torah during many dark times in the past. (I recall the story—perhaps only legendary—of Leo Baeck asking a child in Theresienstadt if he knew how to recite the Sh’ma. When the boy said yes, they hoisted him up in a chair and said, “You will be our Torah for Simchat Torah this year,” and commenced to dancing around him.)

I can only offer my own responses. I won’t cancel Simchat Torah this year, nor will I boycott my community’s dancing with the Torah. Part of me will do so out of defiance. Hamas will not strip me of my Jewish observances, nor will antisemitic professors or Students for Justice in Palestine or other apologists for terrorism. I will dance with the Torah because you can’t stop me; that’s a cord of defiance that runs through my nervous system. Zionism taught me, among many things, not to be a victim.

But I’ll dance for a holier reason, too. Here, I recall a lesson that Danny Siegel first taught me many years ago. He taught me that the Hebrew word שמחה/simcha can’t be reduced to a simple meaning, “joy” or “happiness.” How do we know that?

We know that because Judaism has a crucial idea called שמחה של המצווה/simcha shel ha-mitzvah, “the simcha of doing a Mitzvah.” And there are some Mitzvot that are inherently sad, such as: visiting someone in a cancer hospital, or preparing a body for burial, or making a shiva call. All these things should be done in the spirit of שמחה של המצווה, but they can hardly be considered “happy” or “joyful.” So a different principle, a spiritual one, must be at play here.

That’s where Danny (I don’t recall if he was quoting another teacher or book, or if the teaching is his own) proposed that simcha needs a more refined definition. Simcha means something like: the joy that comes by connecting ourselves to the Source of Life and Existence. That is, when you find yourself doing what you know you were made to be doing, the reason for which you’re here.

Musicians speak of this as “being in the pocket” and athletes talk about the “x-factor.” For Jews, this is the spirit in which we do Mitzvot, the purpose for which we are made. We do Mitzvot, and that is, in a deep and primal sense, joyful—even if the Mitzvah of the moment is honoring the dead or comforting mourners. Doing Mitzvot with full intention connects us to one another, to our history, and ultimately to G-d.

So on Simchat Torah, let’s dance. Perhaps the dance will be subdued, or, conversely, perhaps it will be more spirited than ever, in order to push back the darkness. No matter how you celebrate, let’s celebrate that Torah and its eternal promise of Life, renewed—even as we recommit ourselves to work to Bring Them All Home.

May these final days of this holy season bring you blessing, hope, and Simcha.

.בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה ה׳, אֱלֹהֵֽינוּ מֶֽלֶךְ הָעוֹלָם, פּוֹקֵֽחַ עִוְרִים
Blessed are You, O G-d, ruling spirit of the universe,
who opens [the eyes of] blind people.

I say it every day, but I’m sure I’m not the first hearing-impaired person to wonder, why isn’t there a parallel prayer that reads:

.בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה ה׳ אֱלֹהֵֽינוּ מֶֽלֶךְ הָעוֹלָם מַשְׁמִיעַ חֵרְשִׁים
Blessed are You, O G-d, ruling spirit of the universe,
who allows deaf people to hear?

I don’t know the answer to that question. Perhaps it’s because deafness in ancient times was linked with cognitive disability (the heresh, or deaf-mute, in the Talmud is considered developmentally disabled and relinquishes some legal rights). Or maybe it’s because the word Sh’ma, “Hear,” means so much more than just the physical ability to hear; it means intellectual understanding as well.

Neither of those answers are satisfying, but they do make me wonder about the place of G-d in my own journey from hearing loss to restoration…

Almost exactly five years ago, in August 2019, I had cochlear implant surgery on my left ear, which gave me a new way of hearing and improved my quality of life in countless ways. I’ve often wondered how different my Covid pandemic experience would have been if I hadn’t had the surgery six months earlier; I’m sure the isolation and distancing would have made for a much lonelier experience.

On Thursday I’ll return to Mass Eye & Ear in Boston and have the surgery on my right ear. I have all of the appropriate trepidation that one has before a significant operation. But—knowing much better what to expect this time around—I’m very excited to be on the road to “bilateral hearing.”

The surgery is wondrous stuff, and even though I understand what will happen, the truth is I only understand it a little bit. There’s still an element of magic that takes place.

In essence, the surgery enables me to “hear without my ears.” The implants in my head, together with the external processors that I wear, will process electronic signals and send them directly to the audial parts of the brain. They literally bypass the ears, and the brain itself does all the heavy lifting to process sound. That’s what happens; but I still find it astonishing and rather miraculous—and despite all my reading up on the subject, I really can’t explain how the result is comprehensible sound.

What I do know is this: the cochlear implants have enabled me not only to function, but to flourish. Ever since hearing aids really stopped being sufficient for me—I am now just about totally deaf—the CI has enabled me to hear Heidi’s voice, to teach classes over Zoom, and to enjoy music again.

In the weeks ahead, all this will be enhanced for me. Not only has my hearing been restored, but I’m anticipating bilateral hearing, where finally my ears work work in synchronicity with each other. My first CI literally brought music back into my life; this second one… well, it will be like when the Beatles moved from the black-and-white mono of “I Want to Hold Your Hand” and exploded into the stereo kaleidoscope of sound of Sgt. Pepper. (I don’t think I’m exaggerating here.) These things are just miraculous. 

I use that word miraculous purposefully but carefully. Miracle can be such a grandiose term.  I think we all have a “miracle threshold,” where everyday wonder overflows into genuine spiritual astonishment. And the CIs definitely surpass my personal miracle threshold.

In his new and important book The Triumph of Life, my teacher Rabbi Yitz Greenberg makes some important and startling observations about miracles. Rabbi Greenberg suggests that, since the advent of modernity, we are living in the third great religious era of Jewish history. The First Era was the period of the Bible, which essentially ended two thousand years ago; and the Second Era saw the flourishing of Rabbinic-Talmudic Judaism, which extended through the end of medieval times.

In this Third Era, Rabbi Greenberg maintains, we live at a time of an amazing religious paradox. On one hand, G-d is more hidden than at any other time in human history. Yet, simultaneously, miracles are more abundant than ever! The wondrous medical advancements that have eradicated once-terrifying diseases (polio; smallpox) are only one illustration of the maturation of the human role in living in covenant with G-d.  What makes them miracles is the synergistic partnership of divine inspiration and human ingenuity. In Rabbi Greenberg’s words:

In this moment, G-d becomes totally hidden, not to distance from humanity but to come closer… Henceforth, humans will execute the Divine interventions that rise to the level of miracles. G-d will be present and participating, but miracles will not represent changes of natural law by an “outside” or Divine mind. Rather, they will represent human actions and understandings of G-d-given nature that trigger remarkable outcomes, using natural phenomena and directing them consciously to needed results and cures. The miracles are inherent in the natural laws that govern the interactions of matter; humans will bring them out. (The Triumph of Life, p.185).

This is daring and radical theology. It will be on my mind on Thursday as I enter Mass Eye & Ear and in the days ahead as I recover from the operation.

I’m aware of the remarkable good fortune and privilege that I have to live in a time and place where surgery like this is available and affordable. (Although it’s spreading around the world. Through my rabbi, Joel Soffin, and the Jewish Helping Hands organization, I’ve recently been in touch with a young man in Rwanda who is the recipient of a cochlear implant.) That only deepens my sense of awe and wonder—wonder for the unfathomable intricacy of adaptability of the human brain; for my surgeon, nurses, and audiologists; for my family and friends and their caregiving and support. And with the wonder—also the determination to respond with gratitude and thanks.

Jewish tradition has long had a few of these as well—commemorations that are just known by their dates on the calendar. The 17th day of Tammuz is a minor fast day that falls this year on Tuesday, July 23. According to the Talmud (Ta’anit 26a-26b), 17 Tammuz is associated with historical tragedies for the Jewish people. Some of these calamities can be seen as “preludes” for disasters that would fall on the 9th Av, exactly three weeks later:

…חֲמִשָּׁה דְּבָרִים אֵירְעוּ אֶת אֲבוֹתֵינוּ בְּשִׁבְעָה עָשָׂר בְּתַמּוּז
,בְּשִׁבְעָה עָשָׂר בְּתַמּוּז נִשְׁתַּבְּרוּ הַלּוּחוֹת
,וּבָטַל הַתָּמִיד
,וְהוּבְקְעָה הָעִיר
,וְשָׂרַף אַפּוֹסְטְמוֹס אֶת הַתּוֹרָה
.וְהֶעֱמִיד צֶלֶם בַּהֵיכל

Five terrible things happened to our ancestors on the 17th of Tammuz…

1. The tablets were shattered (by Moses upon seeing the Golden calf; Ex. 32:19);
2. The Tamid/daily sacrifice in the Temple was cancelled (by the Roman authorities);
3. The city walls of Jerusalem were breached;
4. The Roman general Apostemos publicly burned the Torah;
5. And an idol was placed in the Sanctuary of the Temple.

It's that third item that cuts to the quick this year. It’s not difficult to imagine the carnage of the “breaching of the walls.” After all, we saw it with our own eyes on October 7, nine-and-a-half months ago, when Hamas terrorists tore through the Israeli villages and kibbutzim in the western Negev, murdering and raping their victims, setting fire to the towns, and seizing hostages, 120 of whom are still being held prisoner in Gaza.

Last week, I visited the ruins of Kibbutz Nir Oz. Of the 427 residents of that community, one in four were murdered, wounded, or taken hostage on October 7, 2023, that cursed Simchat Torah. Nine-and-a-half months later, the kibbutz is a ghost town—desolate and frightening. And like a prehistoric insect embalmed in amber, Nir Oz is frozen in time. Broken glass still carpets the ground, the walls remain ashen, children’s toys litter the floor—and the sukkah is still standing.

It was brutal to be there, and I struggle to post this here. But it’s essential that we keep sharing the images and telling the stories of what happened in Nir Oz (and Be’eri, and Kfar Aza, and all the other devastated towns, and at the site of the Nova music festival), so that the world can bear witness.

Images are more powerful than words (at least they’re more powerful than my words), so I’ll share this as a photo-essay of what I saw at Nir Oz last week. The images are devastating, but important. Please note: I’m posting this from a laptop computer, and the photos are neatly arranged on my screen—my apologies if the formatting is messed up on phones or iPads.

Some of the destroyed homes of the kibbutz:

The Hadar Ochel / communal dining hall and kitchen of the kibbutz:

The kindergarten classroom of Nir Oz:

The sukkah is still standing, in shambles, nine months after the festival (“the Season of our Joy”) ended:

And the rage and resentment against this government’s failures - in preventing the attack and in bringing the hostages home - is palpable everywhere:

A few more images from the houses of the kibbutz, include the burnt house of Oded Lifshitz, an octogenarian journalist and lifelong activist for peace between Israelis and Palestinians, now one of the hostages.

The names that are on everyone’s lips in Israel are those of the Bibas family of Nir Oz. Their family of four - parents Shiri (age 32) and Yarden (age 34), and their children Ariel (age 4) and Kfir (age 9 months) - were kidnapped and remain hostage in Gaza today. Shiri’s parents Yossi and Margit Silberman were murdered on Oct. 7. Kfir Bibas has now lived more than half of his life as a hostage to the Hamas terrorists. The scene at the Bibas home is devastating:

THIS is why we’re fighting this just war. THIS is what is at stake when we say “BRING THEM HOME.” It pains me to post these pictures here, but the world must know about what happened here and elsewhere on October 7.

But even in this quiet place of reflection and intellectualism, the trauma of the war pervades. There is a profoundly moving exhibition near the entrance to the main hall of the library. A chair is set for each and every person still held hostage in Gaza. And on each seat lies a book, custom-selected to reflect the interests or passions of that unique individual:

Some of the books are history, or sports, or classic literature; each has been selected by a family member, or loved one, or by volunteers in honor of that person. Everyone is just waiting for each of them to come home (now!) to claim their book.

My eyes gaze from one seat to the next, as I read the names and ages and the books that have been selected: fiction, non-fiction, hardcovers, paperbacks, old books, recent books…

And then I get to the end of the row, and I see this - and the tears come again:

Israel is a traumatized nation this summer. On the surface, the cafés are occupied, the beaches are full, the tourists are touring, and so on. But the trauma is everywhere, barely beneath the surface. Even if every hostage were to return home tonight (amen!), and if Hamas were to surrender, and if Hezbollah were to cease raining missiles on the North—still it will take a generation to heal the trauma.

My friend—truly one of my heroes—Dr. Anita Shkedi is an authority on trauma, and earlier this week I went to observe the power of the therapeutic work she is doing.

I’ve known Anita for 30 years; she’s one of many Mitzvah-heroes I first met through Danny Siegel. She is a world-renowned expert on equine therapy (“therapeutic horseback riding”), which uses the holistic power of horses to heal broken bodies and broken spirits. In recent years, her attention has moved to healing trauma; her book Horses Heal PTSD: Walking New Paths is full of staggering stories of love and hope that should be read even by people who have never given horses more than a moment’s thought.

And then, October 7 and its aftermath: the massacres, the hostages, the horrors of war; the 125,000 Israelis from the Gaza envelope and the northern border who have been forced from their homes. The nation is grieving and writhing. In response, Anita and her team pivoted and created a new program: TRANSCENDING TRAUMA, “supporting individuals in the early, mid, and post stages of trauma, and then later if chronic PTSD has developed. It provides immediate intervention and treatment, builds resilience and encourages post traumatic growth. Transcending Trauma is an excellent way to regain a sense of trust and learn to manage this ongoing crisis.”

They’ve created groups from survivors of the Nova Festival. They’ve had groups of survivors from the kibbutzim that were devastated by the terrorists. Today, it’s a group of traumatized soldiers.

I visited Anita and the team at “Piloni’s Place” on Moshav Hibbat Tzion, at the backyard horse farm of Nikki Kagan, a noted leadership consultant and horse expert. I met the group of eight participants who had gathered there for the day’s program:

·      A soldier who is the lone survivor of his unit of thirteen fighters. Can you imagine the trauma that he carries with him?

·      Another soldier whose job in Gaza is to recover the dead; to piece together pieces of bodies, give positive IDs, and get the bodies out of the combat zone to central command. Can you imagine…?

·      A young soldier from Westchester County, New York, who came to be in the army of the Jewish people…

·      And so on; five more people each of whom has seen death and destruction among friends and comrades-in-arms.

None of them, as far as I know, was a “horse person” before discovering this place.

The day unfolds this way:

First, the group gathers to say good morning and greet each other in the mercifully air-conditioned patio. They’ve become an intimate group in a short amount of time. Prior to finding Piloni’s Place, they had never met each other; each comes from a different army unit and lives in a different part of the country. As they arrive, we discover that each has brought a snack to share with the group: a watermelon, pastries, cookies, and so on—far more than we could eat that morning. As each person comes in and places onto the table the snack they’ve brought for the others, the whole groups bursts into laughter. No one asked anyone to bring anything! Anita tells me this instinct to take care of each other is a sign of their growing camaraderie and friendship.

Next, Nikki leads us in a short meditation and spiritual intention. And Anita gives gentle instructions for the day: “Talk to your horse as you’re riding,” she tells each participant. Not superficially, but she encourages each one to share how they’re feeling—what terrifies them, what keeps them awake at night, what they’re feeling deep inside. The bond between horse and rider is remarkably deep and holistic.

Then we adjourn to the stable, where the participants began to dress and groom the horses. But I also observe a process of getting in sync. The grooming is so physical and tactile: human hands caress the horses’ bodies as manes are combed, saddles are assembled, hooves are cleaned of debris, and so on. I can see the horses grow calm and comfortable, and the riders, too, are becoming attuned to their animals.

Then it’s time for riding and exercises. Each student mounts their horse and rides, occasionally raising their hands, or moving through obstacles, and following some basic exercises as instructed by Anita and her daughter-in-law Shani. There are smiles, serenity, a growing sense of security and self-awareness. The horses are steady and calm. Even though the day is brutally hot, I could stand in this spot and watch these riders for hours.

When the exercises end, the riders hose down their horses, return the equipment, and reassemble in the room where we began. There is some discussion and processing of emotions, as in any sort of therapeutic support group. There is laughter. Everyone seems looser, relaxed, and enjoying each other’s company.  A beautiful sort of camaraderie has taken place among them; over the weeks that they’ve become part of this group, they’ve shared some intense therapeutic time together. They’re on the long, slow march to a place of confidence and self-worth, and fewer night terrors and isolation and doubt.

Tomorrow, a different group will be meeting here: Anita will be training trainers, who can spread out around the country and offer similar therapeutic groups on horseback for a traumatized nation.

I’m glad to be an emissary for the Kavod Tzedakah Fund, and I deliver a check for a few thousand dollars (each day’s session costs about $1000 to run; of course none of the participants pay anything). I’m also eager to give Anita some of the cash that friends entrusted me to give away in Israel: This, I tell her, is for ice cream and snacks for future groups, to make everything that much gentler.

This is an awesome place, and Anita and Nikki and their team are doing life-saving work. But the need is huge, for a damaged nation coming to grips with its trauma.

If you’d like to support the work of Transcending Trauma (the non-profit is officially registered as “Friends of Jonathan”) from America, there are three ways to do so: 

1.     A wire transfer directly to their bank in Israel; more information here: https://www.anitashkedi.com/transcending-trauma/

2.     The Good People Fund, run by my friend Naomi Eisenberger in Millburn, NJ: www.goodpeoplefund.org;

3.     The Kavod Tzedakah Fund, for which I am a volunteer allocations director, founded by Rabbi Yoshi Zweiback: www.kavod.org. (If you give through Kavod, please send me an email saying that you’ve directed a donation for Transcending Trauma.)

But below is a collection of images of Israel from the past 24 hours, especially the graffiti of Tel Aviv, that tell a story about the national pain, anguish, and resilience of the extraordinary nation, the Jewish people. Last year the graffiti was all about the fight for democracy against Israel’s internal demagogues; today it’s about the shared destiny of the nation.

Upon arrival at Ben Gurion airport, on the long ramp from the gate to passport control, we are confronted with the faces of every hostage that remains captive in Gaza - not one is forgotten - courtesy of Bring Them Home Now-The Hostages and Missing Families Forum:

Their faces, and the message BRING THEM HOME, is everywhere. This is one people, one family - and when part of the people is in pain, the whole people feels it:

And so it goes, throughout Tel Aviv - on billboards, placards, and on the sides of skyscrapers:

In this most progressive of cities, there is a spirit of defiance against the hypocrisies of the world that have come out into the open since the war began. For instance, all those who consider rape a war crime, always and forever—except, it seems, when the victims are Jews. So here are two powerful images asking: where have the UN women’s forums and everyone else been as Hamas’s sexual assaults have been documented over and over, including by the perpetrators themselves?:

But below are the ones that I’ve found most powerful - and haunting. These are images from the walls of one of the train stations in downtown Tel Aviv. Each sticker is about one of the victims: who they are, who’s missing them at home, and so on. If they are a hostage, there’s a call to bring them back to the circle of family life. And if they’re dead - massacred on Oct. or killed in the line of duty - each is a howl of pain that they will not be forgotten, by their loved ones or by their people.

Actually, it’s astonishing how many of these contain a message of optimism, or love, or hope; epitaphs that represent the love the each of these individuals brought into the world:

What a country this is! From the Midrash:

.וְאַתֶּ֧ם תִּהְיוּ־לִ֛י [מַמְלֶ֥כֶת כֹּהֲנִ֖ים וְג֣וֹי קָד֑וֹשׁ]…מלמד שהם כגוף אחד ונפש אחת…לקה אחד מהן כולן מרגישין…

You shall be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation (Exodus 19:6).

This teaches that they, Israel, are like a single body and a single soul…
And if one of them is stricken, all of them feel pain.

More to come in the days ahead…

תָּנוּ רַבָּנַן: בֵּין הַשְּׁמָשׁוֹת סָפֵק מִן הַיּוֹם וּמִן הַלַּיְלָה
.סָפֵק כּוּלּוֹ מִן הַיּוֹם, סָפֵק כּוּלּוֹ מִן הַלַּיְלָה

Our Sages taught:
Bein Ha-Sh’mashot, twilight, is a place of uncertainty. Day or night?
It is uncertain if it belongs to the day or if it belongs to the night.  
(Talmud Bavli, Shabbat 34b)

The Israeli national calendar does something rather extraordinary: it juxtaposes Memorial Day and Independence Day, so the former segues directly into the latter.

I’ve often wondered, as an American, how each of those days in our calendar would be more profound and meaningful if our national holidays were similarly positioned. As it is, the American Memorial Day, the last Monday in May, mostly becomes a three-day weekend of barbecues and the informal beginning of summer—unless, of course, you happen to be in a military family.  And the 4th of July becomes a day of fireworks and beachgoing. Physically separated by five-and-a-half weeks in the calendar, these days are distinct and isolated from one another. Imagine how the meaning of each day would be deepened if they weren’t so far apart.

By contrast, in the Israeli model, the two days are inextricably connected, and each throws light upon the other. In other words, Israel’s fallen soldiers (and victims of terror) are remembered in the context of paying the ultimate price for everyone else’s gifts of freedom.

The flow from Yom HaZikaron into Yom HaAtzma’ut is organic, meaningful, and solemn.

This year, that seam between the two days seems to be the profoundest metaphor of the condition of Zionism. We truly find ourselves בֵּין הַשְּׁמָשׁוֹת /  bein ha-sh’mashot, in a twilight place between memory and freedom.

Please, please this year take a moment on Yom HaZikaron to remember. Remember not only the victims of Israel’s wars and the terrorist onslaughts she has faced throught the decades. Remember, too, the Hamas butchery of innocents on October 7: 1,139 people who were murdered, including the 364 who were killed at the Nova Music Festival in the desert, and the others from the kibbutzim and towns where the terrorists ruthlessly went door-to-door, executing children, elders, women, and men.

Remember that 250 people (in some situations, several generations of a single family; toddlers and grandparents) were kidnapped and held hostage in the dungeons beneath Gaza.

Remember that many of these women were raped and assaulted by the terrorists, and then their humiliations were sadistically posted to terrorist social media (with beheadings, torture, and more).

Remember that 128 people remain hostages today. May they be returned home before the holidays conclude on Tuesday.

And yes, we have room in our hearts to remember ALL the victims of war and terror, including the innocent Palestinian victims in Gaza. We have not forgotten, and we weep for all the victims. By mourning all the innocents, we assert that we are of a different moral caliber than our enemies.

But we also remember that there are such things as just wars, and we did not seek out or choose this war. The massacre of innocents and the hostages who are still behind enemy lines, without any Red Cross lifelines:  we remember them, and we will not forget, until every one is brought home.

Our Day of Memory will segue into our Day of Independence. And it may be hard to celebrate this year. But even acknowledging our diminished joy, I believe it is incumbent upon us to observe Yom HaAtzma’ut this year; to say in awe: “My G-d! We live in a generation that knows a State of Israel. What would our great-great-grandparents have said to us, to remind us that we live in one of the most extraordinary moments in all of Jewish history?”

Included in that sense of wonder is this: The reminder that Israel represents our refusal to be victims ever again. We have known pogroms and hostage-taking before in Jewish history. But the difference in our generation is the agency to fight for our freedom, to stand for justice and decency and independence and not to wait desperately for “deliverance from another place” (as Esther 4:14 would have it).

With that agency, of course, comes grave responsibility. A just war must be fought with just means. And the internal debates and wrestling that are going on within the Jewish community are (mostly) fair and, in the very fact that they are happening, a fruit of Independence.

As the world seethes—as antisemites aggressively spew their hate on college campuses and hypocrites dominate the opinion pages, as Jews are threatened once again from every quarter and every political angle—it occurs to me: I will observe Yom HaAtzma’ut with a renewed sense of vigor this year.

Observing Yom HaAtzma’ut with gratitude, commitment, and no small amount of wonder, will demand a certain amount of intention:

It will be an act of commitment to truth, which is in ever-diminishing supply.

It will be an act of pride in all the marvels that make up modern Israel.

It will be an act of solidarity with Jews everywhere, who continue to look towards Zion in hope.

It will be an act of rededication to working towards building the democratic and free society that is described in its Declaration of Independence:

The State of Israel will be open for Jewish immigration and for the Ingathering of the Exiles; it will foster the development of the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants; it will be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel; it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex; it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture; it will safeguard the Holy Places of all religions; and it will be faithful to the principles of the Charter of the United Nations.

In other words, celebrating Israeli Independence this year will be an act of countercultural DEFIANCE that is at the heart of the Torah and Jewish tradition.

It may be hard to tell if this moment between memory and freedom belongs primarily to day or night, as the Talmud (above) would have it. But Israel and its extraordinarily resilient people continue to shine the light of courage, and I for one will raise a glass this year with my community to celebrate that unextinguished hope.

Forwarded to you? You can sign up to receive these notifications via email: https://www.atreewithroots.org/contact

Chanukah is: stubbornly kindling lights in the encroaching winter’s darkness, filling the cold nights with luminescence and warmth.

Chanukah is: eating latkes, sufganiyot, and sharing sweet times with family and friends.

Chanukah is the sum total of the past Chanukahs in our lives, the memories of celebrations going back to our childhoods, and sharing the holiday with those whose physical presence may be gone, but whose memories endure.

Chanukah is also: the Maccabees, fighting the world’s oldest battle for religious freedom against an insatiable tyrant, who 2,188 years ago was (already) asking the Jews: How is it that you still exist?

Chanukah is also: the miracle of the oil, reminding us that sometimes a flickering light endures even when we least expect it, and the light of love and hope has a way of lingering much longer than anyone anticipated.

Chanukah is also: a spinning dreidel, and the recognition that our fortune or misfortune is often as random as a game of chance; the difference between a windfall and a bad medical diagnosis is rarely something we earn or deserve. So we might as well adopt a posture of gratitude and appreciate what we have.

Chanukah is also: “Ma’oz Tzur” and “Mi Yimallel” and “Anu Nos’im Lapidim” and “I Have a Little Dreidel,” the abandonment and delight of singing together with pride. (Where, outside of religious life, do people gather just to sing together these days?)

Chanukah is also: the Jewish self-confidence to stand up for ourselves and be countercultural, no matter how small in numbers we may be compared the to the culture around us. It is the stubborn insistence that sometimes the weak can overcome the mighty, the few can overtake the many, and good can defeat evil against all odds.

Chanukah is also: putting the Menorah in the window, on public display, unabashed and unafraid.

Chanukah is also: increasing, not decreasing light, because in matters of holiness we are instructed always to add and not detract (Talmud, Shabbat 21b).

And ultimately, Chanukah is about miracles, because all those other things I’ve just listed qualify as miracles. There are miracles from ancient times and miracles that persist today, every day, even just waking up in the morning; miracles of which we are perpetually aware and those to which we are completely oblivious.

There are brilliant scholars in the world, and there are incredibly kind and compassionate people as well. But it is astonishingly rare to have both of those dispositions bound up in the same soul. Yet that was Rabbi Ellenson, as anyone who knew him will affirm.

David—and I mean no disrespect by calling him by his first name; he insisted on it, and he had a way of making you feel like such a cherished friend that it would seem impolite not to call him “David”—was an extraordinary leader. For much of his academic career, he was Professor of Jewish Religious Thought at the Los Angeles campus of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion. Since I was ensconced at HUC-JIR’s New York campus, I didn’t have the pleasure of studying with him in rabbinical school; I only got to know him after graduating.

I did things backwards: I had the great fortune over the years to become his friend, and subsequently I became his student. When HUC appointed him President, David invited me to be a founding member of something he called the “President’s Rabbinic Council.” He needed a kitchen cabinet of advisors, he said—with his ubiquitous smiling eyes—because he had no idea how to be a college president! That sort of modesty was characteristically David, and just one aspect that made him so beloved.

But no one was fooled by that self-deprecation. He was one of the most serious thinkers about liberal Judaism of this generation or any other. His scholarship on the development of modern Orthodoxy, modern Jewish philosophy, the meaning of liberal Judaism, the evolution of Jewish liturgy, the ethics of halakha, and so much more was impeccable. And just as important was his way of using knowledge and scholarship to articulate an ethical imperative for contemporary Jews of all stripes.

Here's a story. For many years my family lived in Highland Park, New Jersey, which has a unique mix of Jews from across the religious spectrum living alongside one another. Our next door neighbors were friends who became family (they remain so); they are observant Jews who are very active and committed to modern Orthodox institutions. I remember on occasion my neighbor would come over and ask, “Did you see Rabbi Ellenson’s editorial in the NY Jewish Week?” No, living in New Jersey and entirely overextended, I was not a regular reader of the Jewish Week. “I’ll clip it for you, it’s brilliant,” she said. And then: “How lucky we”—we, as in the entire Jewish community—“are, to have a voice like his.”

She was absolutely right. His intellect, his interests, and his menschlikhkeit overflowed the boundaries in which Jewish communities have fenced ourselves. Sure, much of his career was devoted to leading the academic flagship of Reform Judaism. But his intellectual seriousness and his generous disposition gave him credibility throughout the Jewish world. That sort of leader is, tragically, an endangered species in Jewish life today, and we need more of them desperately.

Others will trace his academic and writing career more completely than me. If you’d like a taste of his scholarship, I’d recommend the anthology Jewish Meaning in a World of Choice: Studies in Tradition and Modernity (2014), a collection of essays in the JPS “Scholar of Distinction” series.

Instead, let me make myself vulnerable by telling you what he meant to me.

When I was going through the hardest time in my life—when I was at a turning point in my career, abandoned by some people and institutions who said they “cared” about me—there were a few foundation stones in my life who totally embraced me: my family, some friends and colleagues… and David Ellenson.

At the time, David was the Director of the Schusterman Center for Israel Studies at Brandeis University. He was, by that point, a dear friend. When I didn’t know where to go or where I might land, he said to me, “Neal, I want you to come to Brandeis and study with me.”

Let me parse that: it was one thing to be there for me as a friend, confidante, and counselor. But at a time when my self-esteem was shot, and I was feeling quite lost both personally and professionally, David said to me: “I want you.”

So I enrolled at Brandeis, and eventually received my second Master’s degree. The biggest privilege was to write a Master’s thesis with David, which included studying with him one-on-one, and eventually defending the thesis before him (and another brilliant Brandeis scholar and mensch, Yehudah Mirsky). He believed in me, and I can only hope to honor his memory by doing likewise and paying it forward.

He taught our A Tree with Roots community on two occasions. Two years ago, when his most recent book was published, he came to me and asked if he and his co-author Rabbi Michael Marmur could do a program on our platform. They were, of course, wonderful: insightful, enlightening, and funny.

The second occasion was just five weeks ago. As part of the 30th anniversary of the Kavod Tzedakah Fund, we asked David to give the closing Torah teaching. It was scholarly discussion of the ethics of war in the writings of Maimonides and Rabbi Shlomo Goren. But the passion and complicated human emotions of Israel’s war with Hamas also came shining through; it was quintessential David Ellenson:

Rabbi Ellenson’s teaching begins at 39:45 in this video from A Tree with Roots

There is one mistake I’m proud that I didn’t make in this relationship: I told him often in the past few years just how much his love and support meant to me.

There’s a passage I’m thinking of tonight from Tony Hendra’s extraordinary book Father Joe (2004). Hendra[1], an English comedian perhaps best known for his role as band manager Ian Faith in the movie This is Spinal Tap, had a private and remarkable spiritual sanctuary. His mentor was a monk who lived for decades at Quarr Abbey on the Isle of Wight, and Hendra throughout his life would visit Father Joe there, for centering and counsel. He always presumed that Father Joe was “his” priest, and that their relationship was special and unique. At the end of the book, he goes back to Quarr for the Father Joe’s funeral—and he is astonished to discover that there were hundreds, if not thousands, of people all over the world who also loved him went to Father Joe for solace and guidance:

Common sense suggests it would be hard for one person to maintain in one lifetime more than a few such friendships. It would be taxing physically—the toll it would take on time, energy, patience, concentration—and brutally hard on the emotions, let alone the spirit. Yet as the tributes came in and I dug farther, it became clear that Father Joe had undertaken not just a few, or even a few dozen, but hundreds of such life-altering voyages.

I’m under no such illusions: I know that David Ellenson loved and was beloved by countless students all over the world. I also know that part of his brilliance, part of his awesomeness, was that he loved each one of us uniquely and in our own way.

In Judaism, that sort of spiritual mentorship is called being a Rebbe. And among his accolades and accomplishments, surely that title is the most precious of all.

זכר צדיק לברכה / The memory of the righteous is a blessing.

[1] I’m quite aware that after Father Joe was published, sexual assault allegations were made against Hendra by his daughter. It was an early “Me Too” moment, and Hendra died in 2021 scarred by the scandal. I will not whitewash him, for sure. But I can’t unread his book, nor can I deny that it is truly powerful.

Simultaneously, the Jewish community is thunderstruck by the surging antisemitism that we’re experiencing. On Tuesday, the presidents of three elite universities—Harvard, MIT, and the University of Pennsylvania—testified at a congressional hearing on the Jew-hatred that is raging on America’s elite college campuses. They were each asked if calling for the genocide of Jews constituted antisemitic hate speech and violate their schools’ code of conduct. Not one of those presidents had the courage to answer “yes.”

Self-evident are the disgraces of America’s college campuses, the aggressions that every Jew is experiencing on social media, and the hypocrisy of “progressives” who deserve no claim to the term—as the antisemitism of the far-left bends around backward so far that it kisses the far-right. When you say you believe that rape is always and forever a war crime—except when it is perpetuated by Hamas against Israelis—you forfeit your right to be called “progressive.”

The ripple effects of the war are broad, but here I want to address one in particular: the fearfulness of PDJs, “public displays of Jewishness.”

There are many reasons to be nervous. More and more Jewish institutions have been vandalized in the past few months with anti-Jewish slogans. In my suburban town, swastikas have found in both a middle school and the high school in the past few weeks. Every synagogue has a security guard or police officers keeping a carefully eye on Shabbat worshippers; in more densely populated communities, there’s a police car out front during Shabbat services.

(Still, it’s hardly as fearful as it has been for Jewish communities in Europe, who in many places have learned that in order to be tolerated by their neighbors they have to remain as innocuous as possible. If you intend visit a synagogue as a tourist in much of Europe these days, expect to tell them of your visit weeks in advance and to send ahead a copy of your passport; it is simply not safe in much of the world to pray as a Jew in a synagogue unannounced. No doubt your local sociology professor can explain why this is an aspect of an emerging social justice movement.)

What I hear from many of my students is an increasing fear of being recognizably Jewish in public. Some parents are telling their children—even in the tony suburbs of Massachusetts—to tuck in that chai or Jewish star before going out in public. I’ve even heard, with shock and sorrow, of children asking their parents to take down the Mezuzah from their front door. (Ironically, a Mezuzah case is often decorated with a biblical name of G-d, “Shaddai,” which is often interpreted as an acronym for shomer delatot yisrael, “Guardian of the Doorways of Israel.”)

I understand these fears, even while I chafe at them and push back. Chanukah couldn’t be timelier.

After all, the core of message of Chanukah is: when the world seems dark, have courage to assert yourself. This is found in the basic Mitzvah of lighting the Menorah:

נר חנוכה מניחו על פתח הסמוך לר"ה מבחוץ אם הבית פתוח לר"ה מניחו על פתחו
ואם יש חצר לפני הבית מניחו על פתח החצר, ואם היה דר בעליה שאין לו פתח פתוח לר"ה מניחו בחלון הסמוך לר"ה
ובשעת הסכנה שאינו רשאי לקיים המצוה מניחו על שלחנו ודיו

We place the Chanukah light at the entrance which faces the public domain, on the outside.
If the house opens to the public domain, place the Menorah at its entrance. If there is a courtyard in front of the house, place it at the entrance to the courtyard. If one lives on the upper floor, with no entrance to the public domain, one should place the Menorah in a window that faces the public domain.
In a time of danger, it is enough to place the Menorah on the table.

—Shulchan Arukh, Laws of Chanukah, 671:5

 This is the central Mitzvah of Chanukah. Most people know about lighting the Menorah, but many forget that an essential aspect is to put the Menorah prominently where it can be seen, to announce to the world the miracle of the Maccabees long ago, and that miracles still happen today.

In other words, Chanukah is about proclaiming our identity without apology, even at a time when our instinct is to be more circumspect. Personally? I feel prouder than ever to be a Jew, as Israel fights a just war and as apologists for terrorism rip down posters of 5 year-old Jewish hostages in Gaza.

I realize that I write from a place of privilege. I really am in no danger, even at this time, in asserting my identity, but the same is not true for others. For instance, I realize that as a male, I don’t experience the vulnerabilities that women feel. Nonetheless, even with the caveats, I think this is a time like never before for Jewish self-assertion:

1. To wave those signs that say BRING THEM HOME or STAND WITH ISRAEL AGAINST TERRORISM or to wrap our trees and mailboxes with blue ribbons.

2. To represent as a Jew publicly, unafraid. (I wear a kippah all the time in public now—as much a celebration of my identity as it is an act of spiritual awareness of the omnipresence of the Shekhinah.)

3. And by all means, and most importantly, to put that Menorah in the window as its light increases day by day.

As Judah Maccabee might have instructed us: Let the world know we’re here, and we will not be cowed by those prefer their Jews quiet and quavering.

Let them know that we are committed to sharing the light of the season—and that we are, as we have always been, full-fledged partners in the work of freedom and justice and peace. But when hypocrisies and slanders are flung in our faces, or when they dissemble about dead Jews or consider Zionism to be racism, we will defend ourselves, and stand prouder for our values that go against the grain of the cultural conformist fashion. 

Forwarded to you? You can sign up to receive these notifications via email: https://www.atreewithroots.org/contact

A few days ago, I wrote about how this week’s Rally for Israel in Washington, DC, was arousing old and important memories for me. Namely, I’ve been thinking of Freedom Sunday, the national march for Soviet Jewry in this very same spot back in 1987—and what a pivotal moment that was in my life, the awakening of my own political consciousness.

So how profound that this afternoon, as my son Avi and I entered the National Mall, I turned and bumped into—Natan Sharansky.

Sharansky, of course, was the “face” of the Soviet refusenik movement. When I was a kid, his face peered down from posters in the Temple Shalom Hebrew school, with the slogan PRISONER OF ZION or LET MY PEOPLE GO! (He was called Anatoly back then; only when he was freed and reached Israel did he start going by his Hebrew name, Natan.) Of course, he became a prominent public figure in Israel—but he was also there that day on the Mall back when I was in high school, a searing voice of conscience from the stage.

This time, Sharansky was the first invited guest to speak, and he reminded everyone of the rally for Jewish freedom thirty-six years ago. His presence this week made clear: this, too, is a moment for Jewish people to stand in support of one another in the face of another tyrannical, violent regime.

Looking around, the numbers were astounding. We’ll see what the news reports say in the days ahead; the Times of Israel is putting attendance at 290,000. (That seems right – I’ve been in football stadiums with 80-90,000 people before, and this felt much bigger.)

There were some inspiring speakers from the podium. I was particularly moved by the passion of Ambassador Deborah Lipstadt, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, and—most especially—by the families of Israelis who are currently being held hostage in Gaza. The politicians were from the left and right, and most everyone stayed on-message: Israel is fighting a just war; bring the hostages home now; and we are all united in the fight against the antisemitism that has emerged aboveground in the past 37 days.

But speakers were besides the point. The point was presence, showing up in the face of all that’s happened in such a short time: the massacred Jews and towns and kibbutzim that have been decimated; the 240 hostages held in Gaza’s dungeons; the insane apologetics for terrorism against Jews; the silence of so many who, ahem, see “very fine people on both sides.”

This wasn’t a warmongering crowd. (Sure, in any crowd of nearly 300,000, there will be some who are off-message.) This was a gathering in support of a people ravaged by terrorism, who are responding with justice. As I’ve written before, anyone who doesn’t grieve for all innocent victims of war has lost their moral bearings. But yes, we believe that the sadism of Hamas must be uprooted—for the well-being of Israelis and Palestinians alike; and, for that matter, for the good of America, Europe, and the Arab world that fears the rise of Iranian-backed terror groups.

Did we accomplish anything? I hope so.

First, it was invigorating to hear the Congressional leadership declare that standing by Israel is a bipartisan American ideal. Here’s an idea: let’s hold one another to that as the presidential campaign unfolds!

Second, there was a feeling of klal yisrael / Jewish unity in the air: while it is sad that such a tragic crisis has brought a fragmented Jewish community together, the truth is it has brought us together. 

And third, I hope that our Israeli friends and family see such a massive demonstration and find some sense of comfort and strength in this testimony that they are not forgotten. Indeed, they are in our thoughts perpetually.

I do know this: attending the rally was personally important to me. Living as a Jew in the Diaspora is difficult when Israel is under siege; there is a heartsickness that comes with being far away. (And Moses’s words in Numbers 32 continue to haunt me:  הַאַֽחֵיכֶ֗ם יָבֹ֙אוּ֙ לַמִּלְחָמָ֔ה וְאַתֶּ֖ם תֵּ֥שְׁבוּ פֹֽה / “Are your brothers and sisters going to go to war—while you stay here?”) There is a desire to be there, to want to do something more. (Surely that’s why I can’t stop clicking on each of those Tzedakah opportunities—to support the families of the hostages, to send necessary supplies to the reservists, to care for the victims and the communities that have been devastated…)

More than anything, this rally restored in me—and perhaps in you—a much-needed sense of hope. I admit that, even at the beginning of this week, I was feeling very low on hope. The brutality of Hamas is clear. Even worse, their knee-jerk, juvenile supporters in the streets and on campus were making me feel terribly disheartened and alone. Surveying the scene on university after university, never before I have been so acutely aware that there is no correlation whatsoever between being educated and being moral. And that was making me terribly sad.

And then… this. Hundreds of thousands of us, insisting by our very presence that the abandonment of the Jews is not moral and it won’t happen on our watch. This war against Hamas will be won—but today I’m a bit more hopeful about what comes afterward as well.

And on a very personal note, I must say: It was also wonderful to be there alongside my son Avi, who works at the Israeli Embassy in DC. I hope it’s not maudlin to observe: in 1987 I stood for Jewish peoplehood on this historic patch of land with my father. On Tuesday, I stood here with one of my sons.

Am Yisrael Chai! 

Forwarded to you? You can receive these blog posts in your inbox by signing up for our distribution list here.

December 6, 1987, was “Freedom Sunday,” a similar rally on the National Mall in Washington, DC, opposite the site where in a previous generation the civil rights movement gathered to hear Martin Luther King, Jr., describe his Dream. A junior in high school, I was just figuring out about political action. Alongside posters of Led Zeppelin, the Grateful Dead, and the New York Giants, my teenage bedroom had a large poster that read: GLASNOST FOR SOVIET JEWS!

The movement to free Soviet Jews from their relentless persecution, imprisonments and exiles, and inability to emigrate had been around for twenty years. My classmates and I all “twinned” with Soviet Jews for our bar/bat mitzvahs: We included the names of Soviet Jewish 13 year-olds on our invitations, and reserved a seat on the bimah, saying, “This is for my Soviet Jewish twin who is prohibited by law from practicing Judaism.” At our suburban shul, we gathered together on Sunday mornings to make public phone calls to the Mendeleev boys—Karen Schwartz’s bat mitzvah twins—and to insist to the apparatchik on the other end that we would not forget them.

But the culmination was that rally in DC. Our synagogue chartered buses and headed for the capital, where we joined 250,000 others, carrying signs and chanting slogans and singing “Am Yisrael Chai” and “We are Leaving Mother Russia.”

The amazing thing about “Freedom Sunday” is that we won. Not long afterwards, Gorbachev began to thaw the totalitarianism of the Soviet Union—and Jews began to abandon Russia in massive numbers. Over 1 million left for Israel; over 300,000 came to America, and a quarter of a million went to Germany. And those who stayed were permitted to rediscover and renew Jewish life in Russia, which a century earlier had by far the largest Jewish population in the world.

It's for these reasons that the Soviet Jewry movement has been called “the most successful human rights movement in history.”

These things leave a mark on an impressionable teenager. That was the beginning of my political consciousness—of the power of a group of like-minded people in a democratic society to bring about change, and to support one another when the forces of evil seem to have the upper hand.

Now, this generation is being called to show up. Next Tuesday’s rally will take place on that same patch of land, steeped as it is in the history of justice and protest. And once again, we’ll be called upon to raise our voices against hatred, fascism, and antisemitism.

The stakes are higher than ever. Not just in Israel, where war is being waged against a satanic sort of evil—the perpetrators of murder, rape, and social media-enhanced beheadings; the kidnappers of 240 innocents between the ages of 5 and 85—but also against the closer-to-home evil that considers Hamas to be some sort of social justice movement, the hideous apologists for terrorism on social media and on the disgraced campuses of America’s colleges.

We will be the voices of decency, truth, and freedom. On November 14, we will demand in a single voice to bring the hostages home. We will let our Israeli friends and family know that they are not alone: that despite the echo chambers of hate online and on campus, the overwhelming majority of us stand with them against terrorism.

The assembly will include people from across the political spectrum, left and right; and will it cross the religious spectrum: orthodox, liberal, and secular. This is a political movement but not a partisan one; people of all persuasions will prove they can (still, in 2023) come together as one in the face of unmitigated evil.

There are moments when we are called to show up to lift our voices, to say no to hate, to call for moral clarity and truth—even at a time when truth seems to be a trampled-upon and degraded idea.

קְרָ֤א בְגָרוֹן֙ אַל־תַּחְשֹׂ֔ךְ כַּשּׁוֹפָ֖ר הָרֵ֣ם קוֹלֶ֑ךָ
Cry with a full throat without restraint!
Raise your voice like a shofar! (Isaiah 58:1)

Will I see you there? I hope so! (Now, I wonder if I can still find those old posters from my childhood…)

Thank you for your note. I, too, am saddened that the Jewish-Muslim program in which I was invited to participate was cancelled for Sunday. I am very committed to these sort of programs and agree that they are more important than ever.

And I very much appreciate the spirit in which your note was written.

I probably should stop writing here. But I cannot.

 
You write, “I am someone who believes in both Israel’s right to be a nation as well as the rights of the Palestinian people to have their own state.” I do too.

But: Is that what you think this war is about? Seeking a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?

Two weeks ago, at least 1,400 Jews were massacred; more Jews in a single day than at any other time since the Shoah (“the Holocaust”). Perhaps you saw the videos of the teenagers who were slaughtered at a desert music festival in Israel. Or the images of towns where most of the populations were murdered by terrorists who went house to house, executing everyone within. (I recommend Anderson Cooper’s “The Whole Story” on the festival massacre, which was released on HBO-MAX today.)

Perhaps you have seen how the terrorists have posted videos to social media of beheadings, burnings alive, desecrated bodies, and humiliated hostages, with the same sort of twisted satanic joy that we saw on the faces of the perpetrators of the lynchings years ago in the American south.

There are currently at least 230 Jewish people who have been kidnapped and held hostage by Hamas, secreted away in subterranean tunnels that were constructed for the purpose of terror. Some of them are octogenarian grandmothers and grandfathers. Some of them are children.

Today, a friend of mine—an Israeli rabbi, a lifelong advocate of peace and interfaith bridge-building—officiated at the funeral of a family of four; two parents and two of their children. One son, the lone survivor of his family, spoke, somehow, at the ceremony. They were members of Kibbutz Be’eri, a communal town that in 2021 had a population of 1,047. At least 10% of Be’eri is dead.

Do you think this massacre of Jews is about the failure of the two-state solution? It is not.

“Hamas” is not equivalent to “the Palestinian people.” Speaking as someone who knows Palestinians, who has spent time in their homes and knows well their frustrations and true grievances and injustices they have suffered, I know that those of good faith are likewise held back by the Hamas—a fascist and repressive terrorist organization. What Israel is experiencing is the proportional equivalent of twenty 9/11’s. The elimination of Hamas is not only just—it is rational and necessary for both Israelis and Palestinians in order to have any sort of livable future.

What about Iran? Every indication is that this terrorist assault was planned meticulously for months—and that it has the fingerprints and probably a greenlight from Tehran on it. Do you think Hamas and Iran are working for a two-state solution? They are working for the goal that is articulated in the Hamas charter: the annihilation of the Jewish state.

I appreciate that you believe in “Israel’s right to be a nation,” but please consider what a paltry statement that is. “We agree you have a right to exist.” That’s really not a very high or generous standard, is it? (Although there are plenty of monstrous people in the world who will not even grant that.)

Reverend, I want you to know about the conversation that is happening in every Jewish community in America right now:

First, we are grieving. Jewishness is first and foremost about being part of the Jewish people. Our history and our traditions emphasize that Jews are one interconnected family, a subset of our larger human family. So there is pain—an open, bleeding wound—in every Jewish community in the world right now.

We are praying collectively for the hundreds who are being held hostage in terror cells. We are praying for those families that have been ripped apart. We are praying for the dead.

Second, we grieve for the suffering of innocents everywhere. Most every Jewish community grieves for the suffering of innocent Palestinians, and those who will inevitably suffer in this war.  Anyone who cannot feel compassion for all innocents who suffer has surely lost any figment of a moral compass. I know that my community prays for all the victims of war and terror everywhere, and we pray for peace.

But we also know that the Palestinian people suffer from Hamas’s fascism and cruelty. We are not warmongers—but we also are not pacifists; we recognize that there are moments when evil must be counteracted with the force of justice. We learned that lesson in World War 2 and many other times in the history of the past century.

Third, Jewish communities are asking today who our allies are. Every day, I’m hearing shock and dismay—and worse—from Jews who are experiencing the ugliest sort of old-school antisemitic hate, especially on social media. We see the pro-Hamas rallies in the streets of some cities, where the protestors seem positively euphoric about the deaths of Israeli Jews. We see demonstrations on college campuses from “progressive” faculty and students who point their fingers at us to say: It’s your fault. While we’re attending funerals, these people tell us that we are responsible for the rapes, beheadings, and abductions.  

Jewish students on college campuses are shocked by the amorality of their professors, administrators, and others in authority, in their “both-sidesism”. Every synagogue and Jewish community center in America has amped up its security for protection in ways that we never imagined we would have to do in the 21st century. We are waiting to see who our allies are.

Last year, we all flew Ukrainian flags in support of the victims of unchecked terror and aggression. We suspect that, no matter how many Jews are murdered, our neighbors will not be flying Israeli flags anytime soon. The title of Dara Horn’s recent book on antisemitism is People Love Dead Jews, and she has a point: Dead Jews can be martyrs, but Jews who defend themselves from those who would murder them are somehow less sympathetic.

After Charlottesville—when white supremacists chanted “Jews will not replace us”—the President of the United States claimed he saw “good people on both sides.” He was appropriately excoriated for it.  Hamas is the “good people on both sides” moment of 2023, especially for progressives. Anyone who cannot unequivocally say, “We stand with Israel in its fight against terrorism,” will fail the test.

So, L., please know that I understand where you’re coming from; you thought you were being compassionate with your note. I appreciate that. Please know that I wouldn’t have taken the time to write if I didn’t hold you in high esteem as a man of peace. But Jews need to know who our friends are right now, and who will stand on the sidelines, in that Swiss sort of amoral neutrality.

Sincerely,

Neal