I know that many of you, our newsletter subscribers, have been reading these weekly messages regularly, for up to three years. It has been an honor and a privilege for me to write for our community, to share thoughts, ideas, convictions and consolation. It has been especially cathartic for me, after October 7th, to crystallize our community’s pain, its love, and what it needed to do in these unprecedented times.
Today’s message will be different. Today, I’m setting aside gentle suggestions, patient requests for solidarity, easy-to-do yet meaningful demonstrations of love for our sisters and brothers in Israel. On the day that the bodies of murdered Oded, Shiri, Kfir and Ariel are returned and laid to rest, as the ghouls caper and howl amidst Hamas’ cruel,macabre performance, (And late yesterday it was determined that Shiri was not the body returned with her sons, a deliberate and cruel addition to a long list of horrors). We need to talk about what we’ve learned. What we know. What we must do.
Our great sage Hillel the Elder taught us many things, but among them are the famous questions he asks - “If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am only for myself, what am I? And if not now, when?”
According to my family’s tradition, we are descended from Hillel. So I will paraphrase the words of my ancestor as I ask each and every one of you to consider these questions.
In the wake of all that our family in Israel and the entire Jewish people have experienced since October 7th - the massacres, the torture, the abductions, the rapes; the pogroms in Dagestan and Amsterdam; the rabid mobs on our streets in our state; the synagogues firebombed and schools shot up in Canada; the universities overrun worldwide; the all-too-common silence of our “friends” and the betrayal of our “partners” with few exceptions; the ‘genocide’ blood libelers in our town halls shilling for terrorists; the academia, media, cultural and diplomatic spaces that have betrayed our trust and turned our support into deadly weapons - In the wake and in the face of all of this, and all the pain, who is going to tell our adversaries “No further”, if not you?
Who is going to advocate to, thank, and meet our elected officials for all they do to stand by us, and hold them accountable when they fall short, if not you?
Who is going to tell candidates not to use our community and the scourge of antisemitism as a political football in their ads, their speeches, their videos, if not you?
Who will be a builder of the volunteering, the cooperation and the resources needed to build a security infrastructure now encompassing almost 250 Jewish institutions in Rockland initiated and funded by the Federation and our partners if not you?
Who is willing to be a part of Federation’s comprehensive approach to advocating for the Jewish people and confronting the antisemitism that has grown and metastasized almost beyond our worst fears, if not you?
So many of you have supported our community campaign for years, providing the resources needed to secure, support and bring together the breadth of our community in unity, solidarity, and action. We thank you for your continued support, and we need you to do more, if you can. To those who read this and have not yet stepped up, I ask - is it really someone else’s responsibility, or is it yours?
A record number of you contributed to an incredible $1 million + emergency appeal to help our family in Israel at a time of unprecedented need. Our Federation system has sent an incredible $900 million, deployed to protect, sustain, heal and rebuild in Israel. Israel needs all of that help, but it needs you to advocate, it needs you to pray, and it needs you to get on an airplane and come. We’re going in June. Who will come with us, if not you?
The feelings we’ve experienced these last few days are raw, visceral, and painful. Are you angry, enraged? Is it hard to think about anything other than those beautiful red-haired kids, all of the hostages, and the gaping jaws of darkness that swallowed them?
Do you want to scream at an at best uncaring and at worst complicit world that still welcomes the emissaries and harbingers of a culture founded upon the eradication of Jews, our sovereignty, and our permanence in our ancestral land? If you are, use that rage to motivate and energize. If not, why not?
Can Jewish security, Jewish peoplehood, Jewish sovereignty, the very legitimacy of our Jewish identity ever be subject to political nuance or satisfaction with the positions of one leader or one government, or do these go far beyond such considerations? What does this moment mean to you?
If none of this makes an impression on you, then consider this: What would the generations who came before you - the Holocaust survivors, the escapees from cossacks and crusaders, those who fled the inquisition, the farhud, or the pogroms - expect of you? Would they expect you to be silent, be paralyzed, or shrink away from Jewish identity and community, slowly losing any vestige of distinctiveness or purpose? Or would they expect you to take pride in all they sacrificed to ensure our strong Jewish existence now and forever? Do you owe it to them, and do you owe it to your children to shake off the fear and sadness that holds us unmoving like quicksand?
Today I learned that my niece in Israel gave birth to a healthy baby girl. I'm delighted for her and her husband and young son, for my brother and sister in law and their whole family. We need such joy and light and celebration to pierce the darkness that shrouds and threatens to overwhelm us. We only get to the light by sweeping away the dark.
So, what are you waiting for? Pick up a broom and sweep!