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As summer is winding down and kids are heading back to school, it’s time to launch our next year. Every August we spend a lot of time getting ready for the next Jewish year and all we can look forward to doing together. Without a doubt, one of the highlights for this upcoming year will be the 50^th OVS Sisterhood Hanukkah Bazaar. It’s something I look forward to every year as we shine and enjoy our heritage and traditions. I’m also excited for the upcoming holidays and enjoying services with you. This year we are happy to announce we’ll be offering more at our weekly Shabbat morning services. We are looking forward to having our Kavanah services twice a month along with youth Shabbat services. Those will be on the first and third Shabbats each month unless something else, a holiday or a Bar/Bat Mitzvah, is happening. The other two Shabbats of the month will also be special. One of them will include a guest speaker at services and the other will be a themed Shabbat. The first is on August 29 and it will be a Jewish Summer Camp Shabbat service. If you’re a Jewish Summer Camp camper or an alumni, this Shabbat is for you.

Please contact me at rabbi.hearshen@orveshalom.org with the name of the camp and years you went there so we acknowledge it during the service. We’ll have a camp-style Shabbat lunch following services. We invite you to show your camp pride and wear your camp shirt.

Jewish Summer Camp has been transformational to the Jewish world of today. A largely disproportionate number of Jews who are engaged in Jewish life today trace their engagement back to their days at summer camp. The impact it makes on our Jewish world is something we should all celebrate.

We are excited to invite your family to join Building Blocks Sunday School, where Jewish learning comes to life in a warm, engaging, and hands-on environment.

At Building Blocks, children explore Judaism through Hebrew, Jewish holidays and traditions, Israeli culture, music, art, baking, games, and meaningful experiences that help build a lifelong connection to their Jewish identity. Hebrew reading is taught at each child’s individual level, allowing every student to grow with confidence and success.

We welcome children in the following age groups:

– Ages 2–4
– Kindergarten–2nd Grade
– 3rd–5th Grade

Our goal is to create a joyful community where every child feels welcomed, valued, and excited to learn.

Registration is now open, and we would love to welcome your family to Building Blocks. Click here to sign up.

If you have any questions or would like to learn more about our program, please scroll down for details or feel free to contact me at chana.mayer@orveshalom.org.

Warmly,

Chana Mayer
Director of Education

Parshat VaEtChanan is a monumental parsha. It contains two of the most foundational texts of our tradition: the Shema and its first paragraph, and the second telling of the Aseret HaDibrot (Ten Commandments). This is no ordinary Torah portion.

What is it about the word Shema that makes it so extraordinary? It serves as Judaism’s declaration of faith, our spiritual “pledge of allegiance.” We’re commanded to recite it twice each day, in the morning and at night. Recently, I have found myself reflecting on its very first word: Shema.

Shema is the imperative form of the Hebrew verb meaning “to hear”, but it is better understood as “listen”. What does it mean to listen—to truly listen? Are we actually listening to one another, or are we simply waiting for our turn to speak?

Today is Tisha B’Av, the ninth day of the month of Av, our national day of mourning. It’s a day marked by grief, loss, and remembrance. Across our long history, the Jewish people have endured profound tragedy, and we have set aside this day to commemorate those calamities through fasting and other expressions of mourning.

Our tradition teaches that the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE was brought about by a particularly destructive evil: sinat chinam—baseless hatred. Hatred is terrible enough; hatred without cause is even more devastating. To illustrate this, the rabbis tell the story of Kamtza and Bar Kamtza.

The Gemara teaches:

Jerusalem was destroyed on account of Kamtza and Bar Kamtza. There was a certain man whose friend was named Kamtza and whose enemy was named Bar Kamtza. He once prepared a great feast and instructed his servant to invite Kamtza. The servant mistakenly invited Bar Kamtza instead. When the host saw Bar Kamtza at the banquet, he demanded that he leave. Bar Kamtza pleaded to stay, offering to pay for everything he ate and drank. When that failed, he offered to pay for half the feast. Then he offered to pay for the entire feast. Each time the host refused. Finally, he seized Bar Kamtza, stood him up, and threw him out. (Babylonian Talmud, Gittin 55b–56a)

The rabbis continue by explaining that Bar Kamtza, humiliated before the assembled guests, sought revenge by betraying the Jewish people to the Romans, setting in motion the events that culminated in the destruction of Jerusalem and the Second Temple.

Whenever I read this story, I’m struck not only by the hatred, but also by the complete absence of listening. What if the host had paused for even a moment to hear Bar Kamtza’s plea? What if one of the guests had listened, intervened, and worked to calm the situation? What if Bar Kamtza had recognized the irrational anger of the host and chosen to walk away?

At every stage of the story, no one truly listened. Pride drowned out compassion. Anger silenced understanding. The result was hatred that ultimately led to destruction.

Our world today often suffers from the same affliction. We have become remarkably skilled at acting deaf to one another. We ignore the pain of others. We make assumptions instead of asking questions. We spend more time speaking than understanding. Even within the Jewish community, we have drifted further apart, and too often we allow sinat chinam to deepen the fractures between us.

Hatred struggles to survive where genuine listening exists. Truly hearing another person’s words, experiences, and perspective—even when we disagree—has the power to prevent so much of the pain that divides us today.

Perhaps that’s one of the enduring lessons of the Shema. Before we are commanded to love God, before we affirm God’s oneness, we are first commanded to listen.

The antidote to sinat chinam is not necessarily agreement; it is genuine listening. Not the kind of listening that merely hears words before dismissing them, but the kind that seeks to understand, wrestles with another’s perspective, and treats every person with dignity. We don’t have to agree with one another, but we do have to begin by hearing one another.

On this Tisha B’Av, may we hear the call of the Shema with renewed purpose. May we learn to listen more deeply—to God, to our tradition, and to one another—so that the hatred that once destroyed Jerusalem never finds a home among us again.

Next week we will observe Tisha B’Av (תשעה באב), the Ninth of Av. Traditionally, this is a day associated with calamity for the Jewish people. It’s the day on which both the First and Second Temples were destroyed, the city of Betar fell, the Romans plowed over Jerusalem, and—long before all of these events—the Israelites wandering in the wilderness were told that they would not enter the Land of Israel. These are the five calamities listed by the Rambam (רמב”ם) in Mishneh Torah, Hilchot Ta’aniyot 5:3. Since the Rambam’s time, many other tragedies have also befallen the Jewish people on this date, reinforcing its place in our collective memory as a day of grief, pain, and loss.

Grief is an inevitable part of the human experience. From an early age, we grieve all kinds of losses, both great and small. Sometimes it’s something as simple as a vacation coming to an end or a favorite toy breaking. Other times it’s the end of a relationship, the loss of a job, the conclusion of a friendship, or the death of someone we love. Grief takes many forms, and it’s something we must learn to live with rather than avoid.

For far too long, people have searched for ways to push grief aside or ignore it altogether. More often than not, that approach only prolongs pain. Judaism offers an exceptionally thoughtful framework for mourning the loss of a loved one. We begin with shivah (שבעה), the intense first week during which mourners remain at home and are surrounded by community. This is followed by sheloshim (שלושים), the thirty-day period during which one gradually returns to daily life while many of the practices of mourning remain in place. Finally, there is the year of mourning, during which mourners continue to adjust to a new reality. Although Kaddish is recited for only the first eleven months following the death of a parent, the mourning period itself lasts a full year, creating space to remember, to grieve, and to slowly embrace a changed life.

Less well known is the stage of mourning called aninut (אנינות), the period between death and burial. This is a time when grief is at its most immediate and overwhelming. During aninut, the mourner is exempt from nearly all positive mitzvot because caring for the deceased and confronting the initial shock of loss take precedence. Those in aninut also refrain from bathing and shaving, observing many of the same restrictions that apply during formal mourning. Two additional practices stand out: they do not eat meat or drink wine. Those restrictions are especially striking at this time of year.

Among Sephardic communities, it is customary to refrain from eating meat and drinking wine during the week in which Tisha B’Av falls. This year, that means from Sunday until Wednesday afternoon, since the fast begins Wednesday evening. In Ashkenazic communities, the custom begins with the start of the month of Av and extends throughout what is commonly called the Nine Days.

Although the abstention from meat and wine during aninut and during the Nine Days arises from different halachic contexts, considering them together offers meaningful insight. In the days leading up to Tisha B’Av, we prepare ourselves for our national day of mourning. We wait together for the inevitable encounter with loss. The tragedies we commemorate each year can sometimes feel distant or abstract, so our tradition gives us tangible practices that remind us we have something to mourn.

Abstaining from meat and wine reminds us that grief is approaching. It invites us to slow down and become more attentive to what our hearts are telling us. Going without these symbols of celebration acknowledges the world is not yet as it should be, and living with brokenness is neither easy nor acceptable. Our tradition teaches that grief is not something to escape but something to engage. To abstain is to grieve, and to grieve is to be human.

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.

I still remember, vividly, sitting in the Washington Convention Center and witnessing Alon Ohel come onto the stage and perform the song Superman with the artist who made it famous, Five for Fighting. I had chills then, and when I remember it, I have chills now. This moment was the culmination of many factors: Alon had been an accomplished piano player for several years when he was taken hostage. His mother looked for connection and advocacy and found one part in a picture of him dressed as Superman. His mom connected with Five for Fighting, and he became an outspoken advocate for the hostages and of course Alon Ohel, who was freed last year in the final hostage handovers.

All of these factors brought about this moment, and I had a seat in the room when it happened. This song, Superman, has always been a thought provoking one for me. “I can’t stand to fly, I’m not that naïve, I’m just out to find, The better part of me. I’m more than a bird, I’m more than a plane. I’m more than some pretty face beside a train, And it’s not easy to be me.” The fictional Superman is seen by us as a hero and as someone we can all depend on. But what about his point of view? What if he hated flying? What if he had thoughts and feelings that ran contrary to our projected view of him. Do the people actually know him or do they merely project onto him whatever it is we want and need of him? What if, in fact, it is not easy to be him?

The origin of Superman is in this week’s פרשה/Parshah/Portion: נשא/Naso. This week we learn about a particular category in ancient Israel called the נזיר/Nazir. A נזיר was someone who wanted to be closer to God and as such he took an oath to abstain from many things to gain closeness or to show piety. That’s not the origin story exactly, but it is the beginning of the road to get to Clark Kent and his alter-ego Superman.

The הפטרה/Haftarah for this week is thematically linked to the פרשה by using the נזיר as its hook and then telling the story of the most famous נזיר to have ever lived, שמשון/Shimshon/Samson. שמשון was a man who took a vow to be a נזיר and gained incredible power as a result. His power was derived from his closeness to God and as such he had a weakness (the original kryptonite). His hair needed to be left uncut in accordance with the oath of the נזיר. That’s the origin of the Man of Steel. I wonder what שמשון felt over his lifetime. Was it easy to be him? Was it easy to be a strongman? Was it easy to be filled with such power and such vulnerability?

Heroes come in all shapes and sizes. They do all sorts of things for other people. To be a hero means sacrificing something and to help others. To be a hero means to give up some autonomy and hand one’s real “stuff” over to others. To be a hero means to be seen by others as they see the person and not necessarily as the person sees themselves. In the case of the נזיר, there is an additional nuance.  The נזיר, who was already making the sacrifice of the oath and abstaining from certain things, also had to make a sin offering at the end of the time they had vowed to abstain. Our tradition has two ways of seeing this: one positive and the other negative. The two views are seen here:

Positive as explained by the Ramban in his commentary to the תורה:
Until now he was separated in sanctity and the service of God, and he should therefore have remained separated forever, continuing all his life to be consecrated and sanctified to God, as it is said, I raised up some of your sons for prophets, and your young men for nazirites (Amos 2: 11). Thus, Scripture compares the nazirite to a prophet . . . Accordingly, [when he completes the period of his vow and returns to ordinary life] he requires atonement, since he goes back to being defiled by the [material] desires of the world.

The negative is quoted from the תלמוד/Talmud in Taanit 11a and Nedarim 10a:
Samuel said: whoever indulges in [voluntary] fasting is called a sinner. This is in accordance with the view of Rabbi Eliezer Hakappar Berebi, who stated: What is the meaning of the phrase (Num. 6: 11), and make atonement for him, because he sinned against the soul (usually translated as “by coming into contact with the dead”). Against which soul did he sin? We must conclude that it refers to denying himself the enjoyment of wine. From this, we may infer that if one who denies himself the enjoyment of wine is called a sinner, all the more so one who denies himself the enjoyment of other pleasures of life. It follows that one who keeps fasting is called a sinner.

To harmonize these two views, we can understand that heroes live in two worlds: one of joy and one of pain… one is permissive and one is restrictive. With the power to be a hero, there’s always a risk of being misunderstood and being overtaxed. To be a hero means to carry the burden of those around them. To be a hero means not to control their own time. And to be a hero means to know that at the end of the day, the world was made better because the hero stepped forward and did what others wouldn’t or couldn’t do.

The New York Times famously describes itself as publishing “all the news that’s fit to print”. At times, however, the Jewish community has struggled to see that principle reflected in reality. During the 1930s and 1940s, as Jews were herded into cattle cars and murdered in streets, ghettos, and camps across Europe, the Times often failed to place those atrocities prominently on its front page.

This week, The Times published a story about Israeli efforts to influence voting in the Eurovision contest. A summary video can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwPc7q8jTP8. The article itself presents no evidence of illegal or immoral activity. Rather, it describes a country attempting to succeed within the established rules of an international competition. Yet the framing of the piece seems to hint at something more sinister, feeding into longstanding suspicions that Jews or Israelis are engaged in coordinated efforts to manipulate global institutions.

But that article is not the one that most concerns me. The article that deserves our attention is an opinion piece by Nicholas Kristof titled “The Silence That Meets the Rape of Palestinians”. To begin, we must recognize the difference between reporting in a newspaper’s news section and writing in its opinion section. Both should meet journalistic standards and rely on corroborated evidence. Both should be researched and responsibly sourced. But their purposes are fundamentally different. News seeks to inform; opinion seeks to persuade. News strives for objectivity; opinion argues a position. News presents multiple perspectives; opinion emphasizes one side of a debate. These distinctions matter because words carry consequences. As the 11th-century Spanish Jewish poet and philosopher Solomon ibn Gabirol wrote: “Before I speak, I am master of my words. After I speak, I am their slave”. Once words are published, their impact cannot be controlled.

Kristof leveled serious accusations against the State of Israel, its military, and its supporters. Such claims must be taken seriously. Sexual violence is never acceptable, regardless of who commits it or who suffers from it. That principle should be absolute and without ambiguity. At the same time, it’s also true that wherever there are imbalances of power—whether in prisons, militaries, or other institutions—there is always the possibility of abuse. This is a tragic reality seen across societies worldwide. Israel is not unique in facing allegations of misconduct within its prison system; similar abuses have occurred in the United States, France, Japan, Australia, and countless other countries. The issue is not whether misconduct can occur, but rather its scale, frequency, and whether it reflects systemic policy. That context matters, especially when considered alongside the broader editorial choices of The Times.

Why publish this as an opinion piece at the same time the paper was also amplifying accusations surrounding Eurovision? Why publish it at the same moment reports were being released documenting the sexual violence perpetrated by Hamas on October 7? Many Jews understandably feel that Israel and the Jewish people continue to receive a level of scrutiny and condemnation that is disproportionate compared to other nations and conflicts. That perception cannot simply be dismissed.

I encourage readers to examine a variety of responses and perspectives on these issues. Among them are comments from journalist Haviv Rettig Gur and Palestinian activist Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, as well as reporting from The Times of Israel addressing some of the more inflammatory allegations that have circulated publicly.

Ultimately, Israel, like every nation, is made up of imperfect human beings. Governments, soldiers, police officers, and prison guards are all capable of wrongdoing, and when abuses occur, victims deserve justice and perpetrators must be held accountable. But accountability must not become collective condemnation. There is no evidence of a government-sanctioned system of sexual violence in Israel. The actions of individuals, however reprehensible, should not be used to demonize an entire country or an entire people.

The Jewish people should not be judged by a standard applied to no one else.

 

This week we read the double portion, בהר בחקותי / Behar–Behukotai, concluding the book of ויקרא / Vayikra / Leviticus. These two פרשיות / parshiot focus extensively on ארץ ישראל / Eretz Yisrael, the Land of Israel, and on what it means for the Jewish people to live in, and steward, a sacred land. We encounter laws requiring the land to rest every seventh year and the return of ancestral property during the Jubilee year every fiftieth year. We also read the powerful blessings and curses associated with life in the land. Taken literally, these blessings and curses can seem to present a simple system of reward and punishment that’s difficult to fully embrace. When religion is reduced to a kind of spiritual transaction—where actions automatically produce exact outcomes—we risk oversimplifying both faith and human experience.

The Torah’s vision is far deeper. With power comes responsibility, and our actions carry consequences, both good and bad. At the same time, we must be careful not to interpret suffering as divine punishment for specific behavior. Such thinking leaves us vulnerable to believing tragedies like the Holocaust or October 7 happened because of the victims’ actions. That approach not only removes responsibility from perpetrators of evil but also places blame on those who have already suffered unimaginable pain. We also cannot deny that our actions matter. What we do affects the world around us. Acts of goodness shape society for the better, while wrongdoing leaves damage in its wake. The challenge is finding the balance: recognizing that our choices carry real consequences without reducing human suffering to a simplistic theology of punishment.

The Jewish people experienced both profound blessing and profound challenge with the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948. After centuries of longing, Jewish sovereignty was restored in our ancestral homeland. At the same time, self-governance brought with it the burdens and complexities of political power in a world still deeply shaped by antisemitism. Many hoped Israel could simply function like any other nation, yet the reality has proven far more complicated. The blessing of national independence carries with it the burden—and sometimes the curse—of governing.

This tension is increasingly visible within the Jewish community itself. Many Jews see Zionism as inseparable from Jewish identity, while others insist that moral and ethical concerns must be paramount in evaluating the actions of the state. Too often these perspectives are presented as mutually exclusive: one side accused of overlooking moral failings, the other of holding Israel to impossible standards.

This week, my Facebook feed has been filled with debate surrounding graduating students at the Jewish Theological Seminary protesting President Isaac Herzog serving as commencement speaker. Once again, the conversation has been framed as a clash between uncompromising Zionism and uncompromising moral critique. But this framing is itself flawed.

Zionism is not devoid of morality, nor is moral concern incompatible with support for Israel. The modern State of Israel is a democratic state governed by laws and shaped by moral aspirations, even as it struggles—as all nations do—with the realities and imperfections of governance. Israel has made mistakes, just as every democracy has. Yet the global fixation on Israel often subjects it to standards rarely applied elsewhere. A nation cannot survive on idealism alone while ignoring reality. To be a Jew is to support the State of Israel and to hold ourselves and others to moral standards. It is to recognize that love of Israel and ethical responsibility are not opposing values, but intertwined obligations.

Ultimately, to be a Jew is to live within the tension of blessing and curse, independence and responsibility, power and accountability. That tension is not a contradiction to resolve, but a reality we are called to navigate with honesty, humility, and faith.

We’re currently in the Omer period, the time between Passover and Shavuot. Each year, we count 49 days beginning on the second night of Passover, concluding on the eve of Shavuot. Within this sacred time, we observe several modern commemorations: יום השואה (Yom HaShoah/Holocaust Memorial Day), יום הזיכרון (Yom HaZikaron/Israeli Memorial Day), and יום העצמאות (Yom Ha’Atzmaut/Israeli Independence Day). We’ll also mark לג בעומר/Lag B’Omer, which is not exactly modern—but for a people as ancient as ours, even events from the past two thousand years can feel relatively recent.

Since October 7, 2023, much of the Jewish world has found itself engaged in one central, ongoing conversation: Israel. In that time, we have experienced a wide range of emotions—grief, anger, pride, confusion, and hope. Many of us have sought to deepen our understanding of both the State of Israel and the Land of Israel. In doing so, we are reminded of a fundamental truth: Israel is not simply another place on the map. It’s a cornerstone of Jewish identity—the foundation of our peoplehood and the heart of our shared heritage and destiny.
I’ve had the privilege of being in Israel for יום הזיכרון and יום העצמאות, and the experience is unforgettable. These two days, so starkly different in tone, exist side by side. In truth, they form a single, continuous 48-hour observance that tells the story of Israel—and, in many ways, the story of the Jewish people. We begin with mourning: remembering those who were lost, sitting with grief, honoring sacrifice. Then, almost seamlessly, we transition into celebration: marking independence, resilience, and life. Mourning gives way to hope; remembrance transforms into renewal.

This duality is deeply Jewish. To be a Jew is to understand that life is at once difficult and beautiful, heavy with burden and filled with possibility. It’s to live with fear and uncertainty while still holding onto optimism. It’s to feel both at home in the diaspora and, at times, like outsiders. It’s to belong wherever we are, while always carrying a sense of elsewhere.

The past few years have intensified these tensions. They’ve brought moments of deep sorrow and moments of profound pride. We’ve seen hatred and distortion directed at our people, and we rightly grieve a world that can feel unrecognizable. At the same time, we’ve witnessed extraordinary unity within the Jewish community and remarkable strength and courage in Israel’s defense of its people. These, too, are reasons to rejoice.

Each of us carries a responsibility in this moment: to stand with Israel, to support it, and to take pride in our connection to it. To be a Zionist is, at its core, to affirm a simple and enduring truth—that the Jewish people, like all peoples, have the right to live together in their ancestral homeland, the Land of Israel. Efforts to redefine or distort that idea obscure its essential meaning.

As we approach יום הזיכרון and יום העצמאות, we’re invited into that uniquely Jewish rhythm of memory and celebration. We grieve, and we rejoice. We look backward with honor and forward with hope. In doing so, we affirm not only the story of Israel, but the enduring spirit of the Jewish people.