Month: July 2026

Does it matter that the mayor of a large American city calls our people monsters? Does it matter that people accuse the Jewish officiant of a mega celebrity wedding, for two non-Jews at a non-Jewish ceremony, of being a genocide supporter? Does it matter that candidates for elected offices across our country say profoundly awful things about our people and the country that we look at as our Homeland?

As children we’re taught the very important lesson of “sticks and stones may break bones but words will never hurt me” but why? Why do we tell our children that words are inherently meaningless? Why do we say such things when we know better? We know that the likelihood of sticks and stones actually breaking bones is minimal and we, likewise, know that words do, in fact, hurt us. We know that physical wounds, by and large, will dissipate and heal while emotional ones can linger and cause us trauma for a long time or even a whole life.

In recent years, we’ve begun to employ the phrase “words matter” and some of us feel this is silly because of course words matter. They are building blocks of communication and enable us to achieve so much more each day. Words should be chosen carefully by the writer or speaker because they do, inherently, matter. This week we’re reading the words of פרשת מטות – מסעי/Parshat Matot-Masei. This double portion begins with a lengthy (the entire first עליה/Aliyah) discussion of people who take oaths and the harsh, or not harsh, reality that those words are binding on the speaker. One could argue they are just merely words and thus not powerful or meaningful, but they are immensely important and need to be taken as such.

We thus return to our original conversation of the power of words and the risks that are both knowingly and unknowingly taken by those who speak them. The תלמוד/Talmud draws an equivalent, contrary to the childhood rhyme we are taught (sticks and stones), between violent actions and violent words.  In בבא מציעא/Bava Metzia we find on page 58b a long and multipage conversation about something called אונאת דברים/OnaAt Devarim/wronging with words that begins with the following משנה/Mishnah:

Just as there is wronging in buying and selling (business affairs) so to there is wronging with words. Do not say to him: how much is this worth when you do not want to buy it. If someone was a בעל תשובה/BaAl Teshuvah/a repentant person (a term used for a person who became religious after not being religious) do not say to them: remember your earlier deeds/actions. If someone is a child of converts do not say to them: remember what your father used to do, as it is written: ‘And the convert shall you neither mistreat, nor shall you oppress him.’ (שמות כב:כ/Exodus 22:20)

These words begin the process of demanding we guard our tongues and be careful in what we say. It begins by saying we can hurt people in dealing with money in the same way that we can hurt someone with our words and then demonstrates this equivalency with a few examples. The גמרא/Gemara goes into much more detail of this issue with the eventual strong assertion that “anyone who whitens the face of his fellow is equal to one who murders (spills blood).” Evil speech can and does cause immense harm. We know this from both distant and recent history. The Church emphasized a part of the New Testament that accused the Jewish people of killing Jesus (in their eyes this was Deicide). This emphasis on the words led to centuries of discrimination, vilification, forced conversion, expulsion and ultimately murder. How did the Nazis manage to murder 6,000,000 Jews in front of the entire world? How did they convince ordinary members of societies to help them round up, outlaw, contain and murder their neighbors? There was a well-constructed and thought-out plan of miseducation and propaganda that explained that the Jewish people were vermin and a danger to the entirety of the Aryan way of life. With time, it became easier and easier to get ordinary people to do what was unthinkable. We can see this same methodology employed by Hamas and other terror groups today indoctrinating the people (especially the kids) with hatred and murder in their hearts.

So the answer is yes… yes it matters. It matters a great deal how we speak and what we say. It matters what others speak and say. Words do matter and can both build and destroy. When the mayor of a major American city calls the Jewish people monsters, he’s playing with fire that has, can, and will lead to bloodshed of innocent people. When people accuse the Jewish wedding officiant of being a genocide supporter, they know exactly what they are doing. They are asserting that his words and his values and his life are all invalid and unworthy. They are drawing a direct line of equivalence between the genocides perpetrated on the Jewish people, to a false accusation that the Jewish people are now the perpetrators  of the same crime. And yes, when candidates for political office say disparaging things about Jews and the State of Israel it does, in fact, lead to a deeper suspicion and fear of innocent people. Sticks and stones do hurt and can cause severe damage. Words also hurt and can do such great damage that each of us needs to be all the more careful with them then we are on a day to day basis.

In 1894 something happened that forever changed the Jewish People and the world. From that year until 1906, a Frenchman named Alfred Dreyfus, a captain in the French military, was accused, convicted of, and punished for the high crime of treason. There would be multiple trials and retrials and eventually his name was cleared but the damage was done. It was made clear that even in France, one of the great birthplaces of enlightened thinking and democracy, a Jew was an outsider and always subject to suspicion. After all, it was in the early 1800s that Napolean Bonaparte emancipated the Jews and declared them to be equals and loyal Frenchmen. It was at one of Captain Dreyfus’ trials that a 35 year old correspondent for an Austrian newspaper witnessed the antisemitism first-hand and determined in 1895 that there could never be a time or a place where Jews could truly be free and safe other than in their own homeland. Theodore Herzl had never been an engaged or serious Jew. He felt that Jews who shook off their stigmas and their otherness would assimilate into the majority culture. All that changed when he witnessed enlightened people displaying the world’s oldest prejudice, antisemitism. He would later write in his book: Der Jedenstaat.

“[I]f France – bastion of emancipation, progress and universal socialism – [can] get caught up in a maelstrom of antisemitism and let the Parisian crowd chant ‘Kill the Jews!’ Where can they be safe once again – if not in their own country? Assimilation does not solve the problem because the Gentile world will not allow it as the Dreyfus affair has so clearly demonstrated.”

These words were published in 1896, 130 years ago, and foreshadow where are we today. Over the past month, we’ve seen two examples of Jews who have made statements and choices regarding Israel that would make many of us sick… we’ve seen them fail the litmus test that demands hatred of everything and anything Israel and by extension Jewish… here in America. In the past few weeks, we’ve seen the most Jewishly populated city in the world outside of Israel nominate three people who have made statements so beyond the pale that I refuse to repeat them anywhere. The mayor of that same city called us monsters and refused to accept any opportunity to apologize or explain his statements any differently.

At camp this summer I had the privilege to teach our next generation. One of the sessions I taught was about the State of Israel. One day I overheard an intense political argument between two older campers: one was conservative and the other was liberal. I tried very hard to ignore them and then decided I needed to use it as a teachable moment. I brought the whole group back together and explained that we, the Jewish community, cannot afford to be the subject of debate. We cannot allow our views and our support to be seen as a reason that one side wins or loses. When we, the Jewish people, become the conversation, it will never end well for us. There’s no denying there’s a very strong and dangerous voice rising on one side that’s forced many Jews to make difficult decisions. At the same time, an equally extreme voice has grown on the other side saying almost the same awful antisemitic things.

The reality is we’ve fallen into a trap of only noticing it when it comes from the side opposite of our own. These are difficult times for the Jewish people. We’ve lived in America since before it was founded. We’re natives to this country and have never been outsiders in need of emancipation. We’ve served in almost the highest of high levels of leadership. We’ve always assumed we were safe and would never be treated as we had been over the generations of history… we were wrong.

The Jewish People have again become the outsider struggling to be accepted as an equal without any precondition. For those who thought assimilating was the way to go, I offer the examples of a Brooklyn coffee shop and a Pride Parade in the Bay Area. Their experiences are no different than Captain Alfred Dreyfus’. To those who think the sky is falling and that America will never be the same for us, I offer the reality that there is in fact a pendulum, and it will swing and correct itself at some point. To those who think we can just ignore this and do our own thing, I offer the reality that we’ve spent far too much time with our heads down and now is the time to lift up our heads and walk proudly as the light we are to the world, even if they choose to remain in darkness.

This is America’s 250^th anniversary. There is documentation that Congregation Mikveh Yisrael, a Sephardic community in Philadelphia, served kosher food at a celebration of this incredible country’s twelfth birthday in 1788. We need to celebrate this unique and incredible country that’s exceptional in so many ways. At the same time, we need to celebrate our own unique and exceptional identity. The two are not mutually exclusive. America is still a work in progress and while for us, we’re at a low point, may it be that we will be a part of the people who help bring us back out of this darkness and into the light.

Happy 250^th Birthday America.