In the last number of weeks, Rozana International began operating a mobile clinic in Gaza to begin to address the overwhelming health tragedy there. Rozana’s staff of two doctors and a nurse—all Palestinian Gaza residents—are treating 100 Palestinian patients every day in a large tent; men, women and children who were bombed out of their homes and who themselves are living in makeshift shelters. In this fragile setting, a team of local medical professionals is on the ground every day—treating injuries and addressing urgent health needs. With a planned increase in staff and sufficient supplies, the clinic looks to serve 10,000 patients a month.
Rozana International is an organization that uses health diplomacy to strengthen ties of communication and cooperation between Israelis and Palestinians. I have been a supporter for about ten years and believe not only in its humanitarian mission but in its success as a way to help Palestinians in dire need of medical help, but also as an Non-Governmental-Organization (NGO) that brings out the best in Israelis and Palestinians, working together to save lives.
On Sunday, November 9, I invite you to join a webinar with Mohammed Asideh, Rozana’s director of advocacy and the head of Rozana’s Palestine NGO office in Ramallah. He is in charge of Rozana’s Gaza Mobile clinic.
Rozana’s short-term aspiration, once the first clinic is fully operational, is to open and fund a second clinic to handle minor surgeries that are not getting the attention of the severely diminished hospital system. Rozana also has separate funding to provide a “warm line” for a lactation counseling pilot project for Gazan mothers. These projects are the building blocks that will allow Rozana to establish a permanent Rozana Palestinian NGO office in Gaza. When that happens, it will allow Rozana to play a significant humanitarian role there going forward.
Rozana Palestine’s operations include a variety of policies that comply with U.S. government guidelines regarding counterterrorism and money laundering.
Both the Quran and the Talmud teach that if we are able to save even one life, we save the entire world. We who support Rozana believe that precept must include our Palestinian brothers and sisters. Despite the ongoing tragedy of the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, the creation of Rozana’s Mobile Clinic gives Americans of all faith traditions and those with no faith tradition as well the opportunity to help save Palestinian lives.
I believe in Rozana, its leadership, its health care physicians and nurses, and what it has done so successfully over many years in bringing Israelis and Palestinians together in partnership. It is an organization worthy of our support.
Please join us in this Webinar to learn more about Rozana’s life-saving work. You will be moved. To register – join us on November 9 at 1:00 PM EST .
In response to a landmark congressional letter to President Trump led by Senator Adam Schiff (Democrat – California) and signed by 46 Democratic Senators (all but Senator Futterman of Pennsylvania) voicing clear opposition to potential Israeli annexation of the West Bank or Gaza, J Street President Jeremy Ben-Ami issued the following statement:
“This is a tremendous show of unity across the Democratic caucus. Together, Democrats are sending a clear message to extremists in the Israeli government: If they think they can get away with annexation without consequences, it’s time to think again.
The letter demonstrates a broad, principled commitment to Israel’s long-term security, aspirations for Palestinian statehood, a viable path to peace, and a sustainable US-Israel relationship rooted in shared democratic values. We applaud the senators’ leadership in making clear that illegal, unilateral annexation runs counter to American values and would harm Israel’s interests by reversing the progress toward regional integration achieved by the Gaza ceasefire and weakening the US-Israel relationship.
J Street has long believed that Israel’s future as a secure, democratic homeland for the Jewish people depends on the Palestinian people’s ability to live in freedom and dignity in a state of their own in the West Bank and Gaza. Extremists who want to claim the entire land for Israel are pursuing annexation to make that outcome impossible, locking in endless conflict, destroying Israel’s democratic character and entrenching Israel’s status as a pariah state.
We urge the Trump Administration to continue making clear that any steps toward annexation are unacceptable and undermine progress made through the ceasefire, and to prioritize the pursuit of a renewed diplomatic effort to achieve a regional peace.”
Note: J Street is a pro-Israel, pro-democracy and pro-peace political organization in Washington, D.C. that affirms that only a negotiated resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that is agreed to by Israelis and Palestinians peacefully working together can the legitimate needs and national aspirations of both peoples be met. J Street endorses more than 200 Members of Congress and has chapters in most major American cities as well as chapters on more than 40 college and university campuses across the country. For more information about J Street policies and advocacy work, go to http://www.Jstreet.org.
I signed onto this important letter as a proud American Jew and Reform Rabbi, liberal Zionist and supporter of the people and State of Israel, despite my strong criticism of the most extreme right-wing messianic and anti-democratic government in the history of the State of Israel. As I discussed in detail in my Kol Nidre sermon at Temple Israel of Hollywood (for those interested, you can view it on YouTube here – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28uW3QLeE28), I believe that this is the time for the American Jewish community and especially young liberal and progressive American Jews who feel alienated from Israel and the organized American Jewish community, to stay engaged with Judaism, the Jewish people and the State of Israel at this most horrific inflection moment in modern Jewish history and in the context of the dramatic increase of antisemitism in the United States and around the world in decades. To date, hundreds of American Rabbis have signed onto the following letter and more are signing on every day. It will be released soon. No letter of this kind has been written or signed before by so many American rabbis.
“As rabbis from across the United States committed to the security and prosperity of the Jewish people, we are writing in our personal capacities to declare that we cannot remain silent in the face of rising anti-Zionism and its political normalization throughout our nation. When public figures like New York mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani refuse to condemn violent slogans, deny Israel’s legitimacy, and accuse the Jewish state of genocide, they, in the words of New York Board of Rabbis president Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch, “Delegitimize the Jewish community and encourage and exacerbate hostility toward Judaism and Jews.”
As prominent New York City Rabbi Elliot Cosgrove stated in a recent sermon, “Zionism, Israel, Jewish self-determination—these are not political preferences or partisan talking points. They are constituent building blocks and inseparable strands of my Jewish identity. To accept me as a Jew but to ask me to check my concern for the people and state of Israel at the door is a nonsensical proposition and an offensive one, no different than asking me to reject God, Torah, mitzvot, or any other pillar of my faith.”
We will not accept a culture that treats Jewish self-determination as a negotiable ideal or Jewish inclusion as something to be “granted.” The safety and dignity of Jews in every city depend on rejecting that false choice.
Therefore, we call on all Americans who value peace and equality to participate fully in the democratic process in order to stand up for candidates who reject antisemitic and anti-Zionist rhetoric, and who affirm Israel’s right to exist in peace and security.
We also call on our interfaith and communal partners to stand with the Jewish community in rejecting this dangerous rhetoric and to affirm the rights of Jews to live securely and with dignity.
Now is the time for everyone to unite across political and moral divides, and to reject the language that seeks to delegitimize our Jewish identity and our community.”
I posted the following description of a TYRANT during the first Trump Administration from a book worthy to be read by anyone interested in how a very small and petty man can take power over a nation. The book is Tyrant – Shakespeare on Politics (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2018) pages 53-54 by Stephen Greenblatt, the John Cogan University Professor of the Humanities at Harvard University.
I offer Professor Greenblatt’s insights again the day after “No Kings Day” (October 18, 2025) celebrated by millions of Americans in thousands of locations across the United States.
“Shakespeare’s Richard III brilliantly develops the personality features of the aspiring tyrant already sketched in the Henry VI trilogy: the limitless self-regard, the law-breaking, the pleasure in inflicting pain, the compulsive desire to dominate. He is pathologically narcissistic and supremely arrogant. He has a grotesque sense of entitlement, never doubting that he can do whatever he chooses. He loves to bark orders and to watch underlings scurry to carry them out. He expects absolute loyalty, but he is incapable of gratitude. The feelings of others mean nothing to him. He has no natural grace, no sense of shared humanity, no decency.
He is not merely indifferent to the law; he hates it and takes pleasure in breaking it. He hates it because it gets in his way and because it stands for a notion of the public good that he holds in contempt. He divides the world into winners and losers. The winners arouse his regard insofar as he can use them for his own ends; the losers arouse only his scorn. The public good is something only losers like to talk about. What he likes to talk about is winning.
He has always had wealth; he was born into it and makes ample use of it. But though he enjoys having what money can get him, it is not what most excites him. What excites him is the joy of domination. He is a bully. Easily enraged, he strikes out at anyone who stands in his way. He enjoys seeing others cringe, tremble, or wince with pain. He is gifted at detecting weakness and deft at mockery and insult. These skills attract followers who are drawn to the same cruel delight, even if they cannot have it to his unmatched degree. Though they know that he is dangerous, the followers help him advance to his goal, which is the possession of supreme power.
His possession of power includes the domination of women, but he despises them far more than desires them. Sexual conquest excites him, but only for the endlessly reiterated proof that he can have anything he likes. He knows that those he grabs hate him. For that matter, once he has succeeded in seizing the control that so attracts him, in politics as in sex, he knows that virtually everyone hates him. At first that knowledge energizes him, making him feverishly alert to rivals and conspiracies. But it soon begins to eat away at him and exhaust him.
Sooner or later, he is brought down. He dies unloved and un-lamented. He leaves behind only wreckage. It would have been better had Richard III never been born.”
I am 75 years old. The last time I attended a massive march was in 1987 in Washington, D.C. on behalf of the right of Soviet Jews to immigrate to Israel or to the United States. Before that I was a frequent public protester against American involvement against the Vietnam War and in civil rights demonstrations in the 1960s. Since then, after serving as a congregational rabbi for more than 40 years, my social justice activism has been expressed in the context of my community’s activism and in my writings. But, I will be at one of Los Angeles’ No Kings Rallies with my children and grandchildren this weekend because my outrage at what Trump is doing to innocent Americans and to our democracy needs outward expression.
The only actions that are now making a difference and protecting our democracy are the many court cases and judges who are rejecting in rulings Trump’s illegal executive orders. Also, we have to be grateful to the many Democratic state governors who are courageously resisting Trump in their states and the Democratic Congressional Representatives and Senators who are doing everything they can to resist the malignancies of Trump.
The only action we American citizens can take before the mid-term election that might begin to persuade Trump and his sycophantic Congress and the many voters who voted for Trump in the 2024 election but who are now appalled by his excesses and immorality is to participate in non-violent demonstrations throughout the country and support financially candidates for election in the mid-terms whose values align with our own.
I am at once excited and anxious to participate in a No Kings Rally this weekend. I’m not anxious for my own safety, but on account of my fear that Trump’s minions will be sent deliberately in plain clothes to violently disrupt peaceful demonstrations and give Trump the excuse he wants to send more federal soldiers into “blue cities and states” to quell what he characterizes as “anti-American traitors.”
I urge everyone to attend one of these rallies. If more than ten million Americans turn out, which I heard is one goal of the organizers, we will be furthering the movement to take back our democracy in the mid-terms and to break through the “ice” of the MAGA movement.
No matter what the provocations we might encounter, everyone who attends these rallies must remain absolutely non-violent.
The videos of the 20 returning Israeli hostages with their families in Israel show the love and depth of fulfillment they feared would never happen.
We mourn with the families of all those hostages who died/were murdered in captivity, with the families of the 1200 souls murdered on October 7, 2023, and with the families of the 1000 Israeli soldiers who were killed fighting Hamas in the past two years. May all their memories be a blessing.
The returning hostages are:
Alon Ohel, Ziv and Gali Berman, Matan Angrest, Guy Gilboa-Dalal, Omri Miran, Eitan Mor, Yosef Chaim Ohana, Bar Kuperstein, Evyatar David, Segev Kalfon, Avinatan Or, Elkana Buhbot, Maksim Herkin, Nimrod Cohen, Matan Zangauker, David and Ariel Cunio, Eitan Horn and Rom Breslavski.
May you all find a way to heal from the trauma of captivity and the brutality that you experienced. The Jewish people around the world are with you as are all decent human beings of every nation.
This war has been a nightmare for Israelis and for the masses of Palestinian civilians who have suffered and been injured in body, heart, mind, and soul – may they all and their loved ones find the path to heal from their losses.
May the future for both of our peoples be one of peace and security and the end of terror and war.
The recent death of the remarkable anthropologist, primatologist, ethologist, climate activist, humanitarian, and author Dr. Jane Goodall (1934-2025) is a huge loss to the world and to all those who have respected, admired and loved her for her foundational work with chimpanzees in Tanzania and her teachings about the relationship between the primate species and how we humans ought to regard who we are in relationship to the natural world. In recent years, she spoke in a series of interviews about aging and what was important to her that enabled her to live a life of meaning and significance that sustained her until the day she died this month. The following is a list of what she strove to do every day:
Learn new things;
Avoid stress by accepting whatever happened to her as a part of the natural process of living;
Accept death as the next great experience;
Spend substantial time in nature;
Clarify her sense of purpose and strive to make a difference in the world;
Walk and exercise;
Eat a plant-based diet;
Surround her life with animals thereby enhancing her joy, empathy and comfort (she loved dogs most of all);
Take time to “step back, recalibrate, and maintain balance in my life”;
Build strong relationships with the people she loved and trusted – family, colleagues and young activists in her Roots & Shoots youth program;
Travel (she was on the road 300 days a year);
Live simply without acquiring unnecessary things that cluttered her life;
Feel gratitude for what she had without focusing on what she lacked;
Be hopeful, optimistic and think positively. She once said: “Hope is what enables us to keep going in the face of adversity. It is what we desire to happen, but we must be prepared to work hard to make it so.”
As the “Baby-Boom” generation (those of us born between 1946 and 1964) enters our senior years (73 million Americans) along with those of older living generations, I offer the following quotations of writers, thinkers, and religious figures on the theme of aging. Taken together, I hope they are as meaningful and inspiring to you as they are to me:
“There is a fountain of youth: it is your mind, your talents, the creativity you bring to your life and the lives of the people you love.” -Sophia Loren (b. 1934)
“In youth we learn; in age we understand.” -Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach (1830-1916)
“Wrinkles should merely indicate where smiles have been.” -Mark Twain (1835-1910)
“One day, you will look back and see that all along, you were blooming.” -Morgan Harper Nichols (b. 1990)
“The great thing about getting older is that you don’t lose all the other ages you’ve been.” -Madeleine L’Engle (1918-2007)
“No one is as old as those who have outlived enthusiasm.” -Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)
“Know that you are the perfect age. Each year is special and precious, for you shall only live it once.” –Louise Hay (1926-2017)
“The more the bodily faculties weaken and the fire of the passions subsides, the intellect is strengthened, its lights extend outward, its apprehension is purified, and [the soul] rejoices in what it apprehends. [This continues] until the…individual is advanced in years…[and] grows very powerful, and the joy in that apprehension and an ardent love for that which is apprehended grows [with it]...” -Rabbi Moses ben Maimon (AKA Maimonides or RAMBAM) (12th-13th century C.E.)
“Nothing is inherently and invincibly young except spirit. And spirit can enter a human being perhaps better in the quiet of old age and dwell there more undisturbed than in the turmoil of adventure.” -George Santayana (1863-1962)
Maria Branyas Morera believed her longevity stemmed from “order, tranquility, good connection with family and friends, contact with nature, emotional stability, no worries, no regrets, lots of positivity and staying away from toxic people.” –Maria Branyas died at the age of 117 (1907-2024). She was at the time of her death the oldest person in the world.
“A person is not old until his/her regrets take the place of dreams.” -Yiddish proverb
“You are only as old as you feel.” –President Jimmy Carter (1924-2024)
“One who greets an elder is as though s/he has greeted the face of the Shechinah [the face of the Divine].” –Midrash, Genesis Rabbah 63.6 (400-500 CE)
“Accept her counsel and do not despise her on account of her old age, for she has experienced many things and knows well how to dispense proper counsel. On this account, the sages of blessed memory have said: ‘An old woman in the house bodes well for the house.’” –Israel ibn al-Nakawa (14th century CE)
“Scholars, at the time of their old age, decrepitude,and bodily deterioration, grow in knowledge, strengthen in intellect, and increase in perfection, as it says, ‘Wisdom is with elders and understanding comes with length of days.’” –Maimonides (12-13th century CE)
“Beautiful young people are accidents of nature, but beautiful old people are works of art.” -Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1962)
Introductory Note: I delivered this sermon on Kol Nidre at Temple Israel of Hollywood where I served as Senior Rabbi from 1988 to 2019. The YouTube above is available to watch or the written text below.
Shanah tovah.
It’s so good to look out from this bimah once again and see so many friendly faces. I’ve missed you.
I thank our Board of Trustees and my clergy colleagues for extending to me the invitation to speak with you on this holiest of nights. I’m honored to have this privilege. The adage that you can’t go home again doesn’t apply to me here. Temple Israel was and remains a home away from home for my family and me. Our sons were educated here, and now our two grandchildren are enrolled in our schools. L’dor va-dor.
Since I became Rabbi Emeritus six-plus years ago so much has happened in each of our lives and our families, in the life of this community, in our country, Israel and the Middle East, and around the world.
And here we are, together again at this annual reunion, as we begin Yom Kippur and Temple Israel’s 100th anniversary year.
Tonight commences our day of fasting, reflection, self-criticism, and renewal, and is an opportunity to count our blessings too, to cherish each other, to remember those who have passed on who have been dear to us, and those who built this community and left it to us as part of their legacy.
Particularly in these soul-crushing and heart-breaking times in which we’re trying to make moral sense in this new era that began on October 7th two years ago, it’s important to remind ourselves who we are and who we’ve been as Jews over our long history.
Judaism includes many things, a moral and legal tradition founded upon the principle of tikun olam (repairing the world), a religion and faith, a culture, history, languages, a Homeland, literature, art and music.
Though twice we were forcibly exiled from the Land of Israel, we’ve kept the Holy City of Jerusalem in our hearts. In exile we’ve suffered persecutions, but we survived as Jews despite all those who sought to destroy us.
Our liturgies, philosophies, theologies, and ideologies evolved as we’ve lived and adapted in lands throughout the world.
We are therefore not a religious and faith community alone. We’re a people and civilization distinguished by our moral values, ideas, and sense of community, lived experience and history no less significant than the Greek, Roman, Ottoman, and British empires, though we’ve never occupied as much territory as any of them.
I was asked to speak tonight about Israel, the war, Zionism, and our relationship as American Jews to the Jewish State, and I confess that after accepting the invitation, I asked myself how I ought to speak about this most horrific inflection moment in modern Jewish history and in the history of Israel.
To start, the 20-point peace plan unveiled on Monday at the White House, has many good things in it, including an end to the war, the immediate return of the hostages, a plan for the day after in Gaza, the surrender of Hamas, a surge of humanitarian aid, no forced displacement of Palestinians from Gaza, an eventual Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, a recognition of the Palestinian aspiration of self-determination and a “credible pathway” toward statehood, and the support of the Arab world, not a small thing at all.
The proposal needs Hamas to support it and we’ll know soon enough if it does. Word is that it intends to reject it, but even if Hamas accepts the plan, it’s likely that Prime Minister Netanyahu and Hamas’ leadership will, for their own domestic political reasons, drag their feet and put obstacles in the way, or even derail the initiative altogether.
A significant weakness of the plan is that no Palestinians were involved in developing the agreement and there was no mention of the future of the West Bank. For true peace and a two-state solution ever to emerge, Israelis and the Palestinians must work face-to-face, from the ground up, not top down with one of the parties excluded, as Trump’s plan does.
After the press conference, PM Netanyahu, speaking in Hebrew, rejected Palestinian statehood as he has done throughout his political career.
I fear, therefore, that the status quo before Monday’s announcement hasn’t really changed, though I would love to be wrong.
My initial intent in speaking with you tonight was not to talk policy; rather, to reflect about who we are as Jews, and what impact the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023 and these two years of war have had on our identity as liberal American Jews, our Jewish values, and our relationship with the people and State of Israel.
Since October 7th, like so many of you, I have continually felt despondent, outraged, grief-stricken, vengeful, and deeply worried about the families of those murdered on that day, the well-being of our hostages and young soldiers and their families, and about the thousands of innocent Gazans who have lost their loved ones, homes, and communities.
I’ve been a Zionist since my earliest years. My family was among the earliest pioneers to Palestine starting in 1880, and I have many dear Israeli friends. I’ve studied, taught and written about Zionism, the State of Israel, and Jewish history, about Jewish texts, literature and values. But, nothing has pierced my heart and soul like what we have experienced during these past two years. Consequently, no sermon I have ever given has been more difficult and painful for me to write than this one.
The founding of the State of Israel only three years after the greatest tragedy ever to befall our people, transformed who we were to become as Jews in this era. The new state returned us to our ancient Homeland and to history. Israel gave us confidence and agency. It restored our pride as a people. It offered us protection from antisemitic hate and violence. And it became a laboratory in which our people’s ethical tradition could be tested in the context of our attaining power and sovereignty for the first time in two thousand years.
But, what happened on October 7th represented the greatest existential threat in most of our lifetimes to everything we have been as a people in the modern era.
Israeli commanders feared in the initial days after the attack not only that Hamas would continue its savage rampage going north killing Jews with the ultimate goal of destroying the Jewish state, but that Israel’s enemies on all sides would join the war in a coordinated attack. Such a combined assault would have overwhelmed Israel’s defensive capacity.
Even before that awful day, Zionism and the State of Israel had come to be regarded by many in the United States and around the world cynically, with derision and in the most pejorative terms. That downward trend intensified and metastasized almost immediately as Israel began fighting back. Those hostile to Israel have for years sought to re-frame Israel’s narrative as discriminatory, racist, colonialist, and as a cancerous foreign element in the heart of the Islamic Middle East that had no legitimate right to exist.
An increasing number of progressive left-wing Americans, people many of us thought were our friends and social justice allies, agreed openly with the harshest Israel critics, justifying morally what Hamas did and some even celebrating Hamas by calling its brutal and savage terrorists, inexplicably, “freedom fighters.”
Every people has the right of self-definition, and we liberal American Jews and Zionists who support and love the State of Israel have that right as well. Especially now after two years of war, a dramatic rise in antisemitism around the world, and Israel being labeled a pariah nation, we Jews cannot allow Israel haters, antisemites and right-wing extremist Jews to define us or to determine the inner life of the Jewish people. We need to be able to restate our liberal Jewish narrative and lead with it whenever we discuss with those who know much or little about the history of the Jewish people, Judaism, Zionism, and the State of Israel.
I want to express to you tonight as clearly as I can, from the deepest place in my being, in an effort to reclaim our narrative, why I remain a liberal American Jew, a liberal Zionist and a supporter of the people and State of Israel despite my very strong protest against the policies of the most extremist, anti-democratic, right-wing, messianic, and myopic ruling coalition government in the history of the Jewish state.
As a liberal American Jew, I believe in the right of the Jewish people to a state of our own in our historic Homeland and in the right of Israel militarily to defend itself whenever it’s attacked by terrorists and hostile states set on its destruction.
As a liberal American Jew, I affirm that the universal humanitarian values advocated by the ancient prophets of Israel, developed by rabbinic tradition over the past two millennia, and included in Israel’s Declaration of Independence, including equality, justice, compassion, empathy, human rights, and peace – all foundational virtues in Judaism – must be the core values guiding all of the Israeli government’s policies and reforms, its military and civil society.
As an American Jew, I acknowledge that I am not an Israeli citizen. I do not pay Israeli taxes nor do I send my children and grandchildren to the Israeli military. Nor do many of us American Jews know people who were murdered on October 7, though two of the young people killed at the Supernova music festival, Norelle and Roya Manzuri (aleihen b’shalom), grew up here in our own Briskin Elementary School.
Few American Jews have family members who were taken as hostages, and few among us have been subjected to missile attacks forcing us to run quickly with our children and babies in our arms into shelters with only seconds to spare before the explosions and the walls of our home shake.
Only Israeli citizens have the right to take the hard decisions that impact their lives and well-being. However, as an American Jew who loves Israel and who cares deeply about Israel’s citizens and future, I insist that I do have the right to share my ideas and criticism of Israeli government policies and trends that I believe are harmful to Israel as a Jewish and democratic state, that threaten our security and well-being as Diaspora Jews, and are contrary to our liberal Jewish and democratic values.
I had little doubt that Israel had to respond militarily in order dramatically to reduce Hamas as a military threat to enable Israelis safely to return to their homes in southern Israel, just as Israel had to defang Hezbollah in Lebanon to allow Israelis to return safely to their homes in the north.
However, I’ve been haunted ever since I read words written soon after the war began by a dear Israeli friend, Nadav Tamir, who wrote:
“After October 7th, I understood the anger and desire for revenge, but I feared Hamas would win the battle for our souls if they succeeded in making us as murderous and vengeful as they are…” (1)
I knew Hamas couldn’t win this war on the battlefield. Thankfully, Israel is too strong and strategic a military power, but like my friend, I worried too that Hamas would succeed in corrupting the heart and soul of the Jewish people.
This war began as a just war of self-defense against a cruel and vicious enemy that committed massive war crimes against our people. Israel’s initial war goals were to bring the hostages home and to degrade Hamas’ ability ever to attack Israel again as it did on that day.
Like many Israelis and American Jews, I too have felt the need for revenge, but I’ve asked myself at what cost to my heart and soul and to the soul of the Jewish people should I or any of us continue to harbor such self-destructive emotions? And at what moral cost to our people have these two years of violence and killing had upon Israelis and the Jewish people around the world?
Earlier this year, 600 retired Israeli security military and intelligence officials wrote to President Trump to urge him to apply pressure on Israel to end the war because they believed that Hamas was no longer a military or strategic threat to Israel and that there was nothing more to be gained in continuing the battle, that the war was harming Israel’s international legitimacy, causing immense suffering for Gazan civilians, and that the war was no longer a “just war.”
But, despite their advice and expertise, the fighting has gone on and on. Though Trump has now tried to end this war, over the past two years, Israeli bombers, missiles and tanks have utterly destroyed Gaza, house after house, apartment building after apartment building. Water, electricity and sewage infrastructure no longer exist. It’s estimated that 90 percent of all homes, 436,000 residences, are either destroyed or damaged beyond repair with tens of thousands of innocent Palestinian civilians dead – men, women, children, babies, the elderly, entire families wiped from the face of the earth. They and so many of our own Israeli soldiers and hostages that have been killed could have been saved had the war ended long ago.
If all of this isn’t awful enough, from March to May of this year, the Israeli government withheld all humanitarian aid from Gaza allegedly to force Hamas to release the hostages and to surrender. But that tactic backfired. We’ve seen the images of starving children. Even if Hamas doctored some of the photographs for its corrupt propaganda purposes, is there really any doubt that thousands of children were starving because Israel used humanitarian aid as a weapon of war? This tactic was not only immoral and un-Jewish, but according to international law, a war crime.
After heavy criticism from the United States, Israel opened the gates and aid began flowing again on hundreds of trucks daily into Gaza, but far more is needed to address the horrific long-term effects of famine.
It is American policy that Israel and all recipients of United States’ weapons must adhere by law to standards concerning humanitarian aid and the use of force. As painful as it is for me to say this because I have always supported American military aid to Israel throughout my life, I support those 27 Democratic Party Senators who in July voted to block the sale of U.S.-made heavy bombs, guidance kits for bombs, and assault rifles to stem Israel’s use of these offensive weapons to harm civilians, block humanitarian aid, and contribute to mass starvation in Gaza. Though the bill didn’t pass in the Senate, the intent of those Senators was to put maximum pressure on President Trump, Prime Minister Netanyahu and his extremist government to end this war.
Those 27 Senators are friends of Israel. In their vote to withhold offensive weapons they carefully distinguished between those weapons and the defensive weapon systems of Iron Dome, Arrow, and David’s Sling that save Israeli lives. These Senators should not be accused of being anti-Israel as some in the American Jewish community have done. They are not that. They instead should be praised for acting on behalf of the best interests of Israel and the Palestinian civilians of Gaza and for applying necessary pressure on the Israeli government to do what is just and compassionate.
Many of us are aware also of the organized right-wing extremist settler violence and murder of Palestinian civilians in the West Bank, the demolition and burning of their homes, orchards and fields with impunity and often with the participation of uniformed Israeli soldiers. The intent of these violent settlers, with the backing of this extremist Israeli government, is to drive Palestinians out of the West Bank altogether, from their homes and villages in which they have lived for generations, to make way for more Jewish settlements and the eventual annexation of the West Bank into a Greater Israel, also contrary to international law.
Several weeks ago, I was stunned when Prime Minister Netanyahu arrogantly boasted that Israel will become “Super Sparta” – a reference to the ancient hyper-militaristic, self-reliant society that was isolated from the rest of the world. The “Super Sparta” vision prizes armed-force prowess above all else and is not a vision for Israel’s future that most of us would recognize or of what early Zionists hoped for Israel to become as a nation amongst nations. It’s a road-map to deepen Israel’s pariah status around the world and to accelerate Israel’s moral and political decline.
It ought to be clear by now that given the massive destruction and killing that continues day after day that Israel has crossed red lines and committed war crimes. War crimes are committed in every war, and in this war, it’s likely that rogue commanders and rogue soldiers have shot civilians without provocation, and missiles and bombs have destroyed buildings inhabited by Hamas commanders without nearly enough concern for the number of civilians who would certainly be killed. Those commanders and soldiers should be held accountable when the war is over.
We Jews know better. Our own people have been the victims of war crimes throughout our history. Judaism gave the world a system of justice and a moral tradition of compassion based upon the principle that every human being is created b’tzelem Elohim, in the divine image, and therefore is of infinite value and worth.
Israeli soldiers have long been trained in what’s called Tohar HaNeshek, purity of arms, meaning that every means and every effort must be taken at all times by every commander and soldier to preserve innocent human life. (2)
To their great moral credit, hundreds of Israeli reserve soldiers are now refusing to report for military duty because they know that Israel is now fighting a cruel and unjust war. The vast majority of Israelis too, according to polls, are demanding that the war, killing and suffering end, and the remaining hostages be returned home.
This war has shaken Israelis and world Jewry to our core. The wounds of each of our peoples, of Israel and Palestine, are going to be difficult to heal or overcome for generations.
In the United States and around the world, we Jews are dealing also with a rise of antisemitism – much of it exacerbated by this war – that most Jews alive today have never seen, experienced or imagined before.
The Palestinian-Israeli struggle is amongst the oldest unresolved conflicts in the world. The Israeli historian and writer Fania Oz-Salzberger put it exactly right when she wrote a month ago:
“Here’s a truth to reckon with: neither Israelis nor Palestinians are going to disappear any time soon. No one can destroy their respective claims to a sovereign state in their ancestral homeland, which happens to be the same land. Barring a cataclysmic event, there will be no river-to-sea Palestine and no Greater Israel. This is a conflict that can only be solved by territorial and political compromise.” (3)
There are serious ideas, in addition to what we heard on Monday, that have been developed over the last number of years between Palestinians and Israelis working together, from the bottom-up, who recognize and accept each other’s legitimate national aspirations, needs and rights. Despite whatever despondency I have felt, there are two related ideas that I actually find hopeful and visionary.
One is called “Eretz L’kulam – A Land for All: Two States, One Homeland”, a political vision developed by Israeli Jews and Israeli Palestinian Arab citizens. The proponents of the idea envision two democratic and sovereign states alongside each other – Israel and Palestine – linked together in a confederation much the way the European Union functions. (4)
The second idea is a “23-State Solution” that includes all the western Arab states and Israel in coalition with each other, complete recognition of Israel for the first time in Israel’s history by most of the Arab and Muslim world, and the creation of a demilitarized Palestinian state, perhaps as part of the confederal model. (5)
This isn’t the time or place to discuss the details of these ideas, but it’s important to know that there are creative and pragmatic ideas that can offer hope and a way forward. After the holidays, this sermon will be posted on our synagogue’s website and on my personal blog (6), and I will include links to both of these proposals that spell out the details, if you are interested.
All ideas about how to resolve this conflict are, of course, not risk-free, but the status quo is unsustainable. Violent rejectionist Jewish Israelis and violent rejectionist Palestinian Arabs will have to be controlled harshly by each state’s respective police forces in any future negotiated agreement.
To be Jewish, especially in these times, means, in part, to lift ourselves up out of the morass of confusion and despair, to reclaim our virtue as critical and creative thinkers who raise moral questions and seek practical solutions, and who can argue with one another without withdrawing from the fight or being intimidated by Israeli zealots or their supporters in the United States who slander us as self-hating Jews, antisemites, Kapos, and traitors because we dare to be critical of Israeli policies and actions as a matter of conscience and moral outrage about this war that long ago should have ended.
We Jews have always viewed our purpose through an aspirational lens. We have striven as a people to be better than we are, that we do not ever settle for the status quo, and that we stay committed to correct moral wrongs and move forward as best we can.
Some of our own young liberal and progressive American Jews, however, are decoupling the State of Israel from their Jewish identity, and others are closing the door behind them and disavowing being Jewish altogether. Many are walking away from the American Jewish community because they believe that we rabbis and teachers, Jewish leaders of synagogues, national Jewish organizations and Jewish summer camps, who taught them Judaism’s moral principles emphasizing compassion and empathy, justice, human rights, and peace are, in their minds, hypocrites because we have not been nearly critical enough, or critical at all, of Israel’s bad behavior in this never-ending war.
I want to speak now to you, our young generation of Jews.
I understand how many of you feel and why you feel as you do. But, I believe that this is not the time to turn your backs on our people, on Judaism, on liberal Zionism, or on the State of Israel.
Our Jewish moral and ethical principles transcend any specific point in time or series of events. Judaism is not what we see in war or as a consequence of our having to cope with antisemitism, though both can teach us much about ourselves as Jews.
Judaism is what we rabbis, teachers, synagogues and Jewish summer camps tried to impart to you, our young people, about the vitality in living an enriched Jewish life, about the multitude of ways to be spiritual beings within Jewish community, about the wisdom our sages, mystics, and great thinkers have left for us, about ways to live the rhythms of our holidays and life cycles, and about the meaning of the establishment of the State of Israel as the greatest single accomplishment of the Jewish people in two thousand years.
Though you may wish to turn away, I hope you will decide to stay engaged in whatever way is meaningful to you because we need you, your way of thinking, and your critical moral voice.
Another thing about us Jews – our struggles are nothing new. We are, after all, Yisrael – a people who wrestles with God and with the moral challenges and complexities we face every day as individuals and as a people.
We Jews have always recognized the wide chasm between what is and what ought to be. The best of us, however, have not sat on the side-lines nor given up without entering the fight on behalf of our people and for human rights, justice and peace for all peoples and nations, including the Palestinians.
We live in a violent and corrupt world. It’s understandable that so many of us want to turn away from the news out of the Middle East and throw up our hands and shout “enough already!”
But, once we do that and we’ve had a chance to breathe and restore our moral and emotional equilibrium, it’s better for us to draw close to one another again and reaffirm our Jewish identity, our age-old principles and values, and our faith that eventually there will be a better day for Israelis and the Palestinians.
I keep reminding myself that history swings like a pendulum, from the death of the spirit to renewed life, from division to unity, from war to peace, from despair to hope, and that we Jews have lived this swinging back and forth over and over again throughout our history.
I remind myself that every human-made problem has a human solution if we apply critical and creative thinking, our understanding of the needs and truths of the “other,” and the will to compromise in order to solve the seemingly unsolvable.
As a Jewish community, each of us has the right to think what we want and to feel what we feel – as I have shared with you my thoughts and feelings here tonight – and the Jewish community ought to be a safe space for everyone to find their place and their voice, to argue with one another passionately but respectfully, to disagree without becoming disagreeable, and where even our harshly contrasting ideas and perspectives, our many different life experiences, and our generational distinctions can live alongside each other with humility as we engage in discussion, argument, criticism, and self-criticism.
Our people’s safety valve is that we talk and discuss and argue, and hopefully that we also listen to each other, especially to those with whom we disagree the most.
Our challenge as American Jews in these days is to find ways to come together and to affirm our foundational Jewish values as we struggle to cope in these painful and disturbing times and not to become numb to the barrage of terrible events that are all around us.
And it’s our challenge as well to look to the future with fortitude and hope. Our history of survival as a people teaches us to do so.
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks wrote:
“To be a Jew is to be an agent of hope in a world serially threatened by despair …No Jew knowing Jewish history can be an optimist, but no Jew worthy of the name abandons hope.” (7)
This new era in Jewish history begins with a darkly written chapter, but this is not the last chapter. It’s upon us, all of us, to write what comes next.
I wish us all the strength, perseverance, thoughtfulness, and moral courage necessary in this New Year.
I often sign-off my emails to my Israeli friends saying:
“Stay safe and sane. With love – John.”
And I say to you too, my beloved congregation:
Stay safe, sane and strong. And most importantly, hold those whom you cherish very close. We need each other.
With love – John.
G’mar chatimah tovah.
Notes:
Nadav Tamir, “Never Again”, The Times of Israel, August 22, 2025.
Rabbi John Rosove's Blog 