Two beautiful young sisters who grew up in my synagogue’s Day School, Norelle (age 25) and Roya (age 22) Manzuri, were murdered along with Norelle’s fiancé of 2 weeks, Omit Cohen, at the music festival in southern Israel on October 7. The hellish and excruciating pain their parents, Sigal and Menashe, and their young brother, Shai, feel is unbearable. My community at Temple Israel of Hollywood grieves with them and the families of all Israelis who have been murdered and we pray for healing of those thousands who have been injured. We share the anxiety of all Israeli families whose loved ones have been taken as Hamas hostages and of families whose children are Israeli soldiers preparing to fight and risk their lives on behalf of the people and State of Israel.

As Israel prepares to enter Gaza to remove Hamas’ authority and capacity to murder and terrorize our people (as well as Gazan Palestinians), everyone will have to hold onto mixed emotions and conflicting values in the prosecution of this war. Our higher Jewish moral aspirations for peace and non-violence cannot keep us from supporting what Israel must do in this war, to fight, because not fighting and leaving Hamas in place sends the message to Hezbollah and Iran, advocates of the destruction of the State of Israel and the indiscriminate murder of Israelis, that they can attack Israel and Jews with impunity.

Israel’s going to war based on revenge alone, however, is not morally justified, but failing to fight back is suicidal. Therefore, Israel has little alternative against the uncompromising terrorist organization of Hamas. I hope that Israel’s commanders and soldiers will fight with cool precision according to international standards of war, and they will do so with the courage necessary to prosecute this war as it needs to be done and not according to red-hot vengeance.

I respect pacifists for the non-violent moral principles by which they live, but there are times when aggressive self-defense is our people’s only option. This is one of those times. For me, who has been peace advocate my entire adult life, I feel the cursed tension in my advocacy for fighting to victory over Hamas knowing that Israel’s necessary actions are going to result in the death and injury of many of our own soldiers and the death and injury of many innocent Palestinians caught in the middle of this fight, who do not support Hamas, but who live as human shields to that terrorist organization. This is the burden that comes with national sovereignty and this is the call of moral responsibility.

Tonight (Wednesday, October 18) at 6:45 pm Pacific Time, there will be a memorial service at Temple Israel of Hollywood for Norelle, Roya, and Omit. You can join in person or by zoom – Click here to join the Zoom

You may also make a donation on behalf of the Manzuri family that has been set up by their relatives at Manzuri GoFundMe

Zichronam livracha – May Norelle, Roya, Omit and all who have perished be remembered with love and as abiding blessings to their families, to all who know and love them, and to the people of Israel.

Allison Kaplan Sommer, a journalist with Haaretz, wrote to me to let me know that the Image of the soldier with the two babies is fake. Please do not forward it to others. But, the Israeli flag in lights is real. I am going to delete that fake photo.

My apologies and gratitude to Allison.

Like so many of you, I have been reading non-stop and watching the news coming out of Israel, as well as communicating with my friends in Israel who are living during these unprecedented days of suffering and sadness in the loss and disappearance of family, friends, and fellow Israelis.

Many have asked me how they can help Israel and where they can contribute to support our people. There are many good causes, and I offer J Street’s site below for you to look and then decide the best avenue through which you can contribute and make a difference.

There will be ample time to analyze what went wrong with Israel’s intelligence and the political ramifications that this historic failure and the war against Hamas will mean for Israelis and innocent Palestinians.

Now is the time, as I stated in an earlier blog-post, for the Jewish people to stand united with Israel, to give our full moral and emotional support to our people there, to condemn Hamas’ inhumanity and brutality, and to pray for the well-being of our soldiers fighting this necessary war and the hostages taken so cruelly from their homes and families.

Ways to Support Those Impacted by the Ongoing Crisis

All politics aside, when Israel is attacked, the world Jewish community is called to unite with the State of Israel as it seeks to protect its people, defend its borders, and eliminate Hamas military installations and terrorism that pose a threat to the people of Israel and the Jewish state.

Israel characteristically comes together in times of war. There is no left or right. There is only a united nation in defense of its people. The Talmud reminds us “Kol Yisrael aravim zeh ba-zeh – All Israel is responsible one for another.” It was true centuries ago when this statement was first uttered, and it is true now. Political divisions ought to be set aside.

Fifty years ago at this time, I was in Israel during the Yom Kippur War, and I remember as clearly as if it was yesterday not only how the entirety of the Jewish state and people came together in common cause, but how Diaspora Jewry responded. That sense of unity has been repeated time and again since.

As one Jew, one Zionist, and one lover of the people, Land and State of Israel, I pray for the success of Israel’s defensive campaign in this war and that peace is restored as quickly as possible, that Israelis captured by Hamas terrorists are returned to their families and homes unharmed, that those who have lost loved ones find comfort amongst all who mourn in Zion and Jerusalem, and those who have been injured amongst our people are healed.

Much ink has been spilled in recent years commenting on the descent of millions of Americans into the acceptance as “normal” the dark spirit of intolerance, bigotry, hate, cruelty, suspicion, and mistrust. These corrosive tendencies, characterized in Judaism as יצר הרע – Yetzer HaRa (“the evil inclination”) is contributing mightily to the breakdown of community in America, to a lack of faith in America’s democratic institutions and traditions, and to the increasing incidence of violence directed at minorities and threats against elected officials, their families, and career professionals in the Department of Justice across the country. If all that weren’t bad enough, Donald Trump’s relentless mob rhetoric of vengeance and hatred threatens everyone who challenges him as he shamelessly unleashes his black-hole of hatred into the bloodstream of America.

The spirit of unity within diversity that characterized the aspirations of the founding generation of the United States in the Declaration of Independence, the US Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the 13^th, 14^th, 15^th, and 19^th Amendments, the New Deal and Great Society legislation, among many other progressive efforts since, seems to be dissipating before our eyes as right-wing autocratic extremists, still a minority of Americans, use democratic processes to justify themselves as they appeal to the lowest common denominator of anger, hate, frustration, greed, resentment, intolerance, and arrogance.

The High Holidays have just concluded during which, hopefully, our minds and hearts were opened to the truth that we need not be victims to the ruthlessly evil, that moral depravity need not control us, that history is not predetermined, that we can change our circumstances through concerted and willful action, and that human agency can expand in real terms the principle first articulated in the Book of Genesis (1:27) that we human beings are created בצלם אלוהים – b’tzelem Elohim (in the Divine Image), meaning that every woman, man, and child is endowed with infinite value and infinite worth, and that the principles of equality, justice, mercy, and respect for the “other” (those unlike us) are imbued in the human spirit if we allow our better angels to inspire us to act ethically and compassionately towards all.

A colleague told his congregation on Erev Rosh Hashanah: “Tomorrow hasn’t happened yet…” Those three dots at the end of that phrase is the space within which we American citizens can shape the outcome of the coming 2024 election cycle as well as what our criminal justice system can do in effectively and fairly prosecuting alleged perpetrators of crime thereby protecting us from unwittingly being sucked into the black hole of the ruthlessly evil that now defines a formerly great American political party.

Yes – America has changed over the years, for better and worse. But good people can be found in every community. President Barack Obama reminded us once that “anyone who threatens our values, whether fascists or communists or jihadists or homegrown demagogues, will always fail in the end.”

This next year will be pivotal to the future of American democracy and what it means to be American. Tomorrow hasn’t happened yet… It really is up to us to determine the future.

I wish for us all in 5784 an אומץ לב – Ometz Lev (a courageous heart) and much love. We will need a great deal of each as we move through the days, weeks, and months ahead.

Postscript – On February 1, 2024, Pearl passed away after 114 years 123 days of life since the day of her birth on the first day of Sukkot, the 15th day of Tishre, 5670 corresponding to Thursday, October 1, 1909. At the time of her death, Pearl was the 9th oldest living human being in the world, the 3rd oldest American, the oldest living Jew in the world, and the longest living Jew in recorded history. Zichrona livracha.

I celebrated with Pearl Berg’s family and friends today, October 1, 2023, Pearl’s 114^th birthday. Pearl is now the 9^th oldest living human being in the world – the 3^rd oldest living American – the oldest living Californian – and the oldest living Jew in the world. The oldest living person is Maria Banyas of Spain at 116 years 201 days.

I have written about Pearl several times over the years. She is a long-time member of my congregation, Temple Israel of Hollywood in Los Angeles. She was born on October 1, 1909 in Indiana.

I first met Pearl 35 years ago when she was a spry 79 years-old. Pearl is still sharp, though clearly slowing down. Her sons Dr. Robert Berg of Washington, D.C. (age 86) and his older brother Dr. Allan Berg of Philadelphia (age 88), come to visit their mother regularly in her home in Los Feliz, an old Los Angeles neighborhood just east of the famed Hollywood sign and down the hill from the famed Hollywood Observatory.

Pearl is a marvel not only because of her extreme old age, but because she remains a positive and kind woman who welcomes graciously all visitors. In seeing her today, her eyes were closed but when I asked if she could hear me, she nodded affirmatively.

My connection with Pearl and her family precedes my birth. Pearl’s husband Mark (z’l) employed my mother in the early 1940s as an office worker in his Los Angeles scrap metal business when my mother was 25 years-old (born in 1917). When Mark died 35 years ago and I prepared my eulogy for him, my mother told me that Mark was the kindest of bosses. When she departed from his business to volunteer at an army base in San Luis Obispo, California during World War II, Mark gave her a going-away office party. She never forgot it. My mother died in 2015 at age of 98, and I thought she was old, but she was a youngster compared with Pearl. Actually, we’re all youngsters, regardless of our age when compared with Pearl.

Pearl’s parents were itinerant photographers, traveling in the winter months throughout the Midwest and South, going by train from city to city as they sought opportunities for work. In the summer months they worked in the North. From Indiana, they moved to Canton, Ohio after their second daughter Selma was born in 1913. Her family moved then to Pittsburgh where they joined the large Reform synagogue, Rodef Shalom, where Pearl was confirmed in 1926. An excellent student but with few professional opportunities for young women available except teaching, nursing, or secretarial work, Pearl enrolled at a secretarial school in Pittsburgh and easily got a job upon graduation.

When Pearl’s father’s used car business failed during the Great Depression, her family moved to Los Angeles. After a week in LA, Pearl met the love of her life, Mark, on a blind date. Mark was smitten at first sight, and that evening he told his mother that he met the girl he was going to marry. Pearl and Mark were married on November 15, 1931 in Boyle Heights at the home of the rabbi of the local shul.

Pearl and Mark Berg – the year of their wedding in 1931

Jewish life was always a priority in Pearl’s life. She and Mark joined Temple Israel of Hollywood in 1938 where they raised their sons Alan and Robert, each distinguished in their own right. She was an avid supporter of Hadassah over eight decades and a life-long supporter of the State of Israel.

When I offered a blessing for Pearl at her 110^th birthday, I added the traditional “to 120!” She quipped: “Please God ‘NO!’”

Well, Pearl – the Eternal One seems to have other plans for you.

Happy Birthday and with love – to 120!

An edited version of the above is posted at the Times of Israel – https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/pearl-berg-at-114-10th-oldest-living-person-in-the-world-and-oldest-living-jew/

For a list of the oldest recorded living humans in the world, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oldest_living_people

The praises are forthcoming throughout the media for our late Senator Dianne Feinstein. I have nothing to add except to say זכרונה לברכה – May she be remembered for a blessing as a woman whose good name, common decency, and immense pioneering accomplishments as a leader in America uplifted the vocation of “politician,” set high standards for her colleagues in government and for the nation as a whole, and exemplified prideful identity as a committed Jew and supporter of the State of Israel as a bastion of dignity for the Jewish people, for its liberal and democratic values, and for peace with the Palestinians and the Arab world.

I awoke early in my dorm room at Beit HaStudent, a short block from Beit HaNasi (The President of the State of Israel’s House) in the Rechaviah neighborhood of Jerusalem in order to walk to the Kotel (Western Wall) to daven at that holiest site in Judaism on that holiest day in the Jewish calendar year of Yom Kippur, 1973.

I dressed quickly, put on my kippah, took my tallit, and left the dorm to begin the 30-minute walk to the Old City. The dawn was breaking and all was quiet in the streets of Jerusalem. Not a car moved. As I passed the President’s House, I saw a single guard at the gate and we greeted one another with “Gmar chatimah tovah – May you be inscribed in the Book of Life.”

I heard in the far distance the siren of an ambulance, but nothing more. The stillness of the day was in stark contrast to any other day in Jerusalem. I descended past the famed King David Hotel on my left and walked down through Mishkenot Sh’ananim, the first neighborhood built in the 19^th century outside the Old City walls. Passing through what was called “no-man’s land” between 1948 and 1967 when Jordanian troops guarded the walls of the Old City (I was studying for the year at the Hebrew Union College in my first year of rabbinic studies), I reached the nadir of the valley and headed up to the Jaffa Gate.

Suddenly, three American made Phantom Jets flew in triangular formation over the Old City streaking south at between 5000 and 10,000 feet. The crack of the engines shattered the quiet of the Jerusalem morning, and I thought to myself, ‘What’s going on? How could Israel send its aircraft over Jerusalem on this day of all days?’

I arrived at the Kotel at about 6:30 am as the Chassidim were flowing into the Kotel Plaza. I found a space at the Wall, took out my Machzor and began reading the Shacharit service. The din of prayer was all around me, but the sound of those Phantoms stayed in my mind.

I spent about two hours there and then returned to the dorm by way of David Street through the Arab Suk and through Jaffa Gate back into West Jerusalem.

Along with the rest of Israel and the world, we learned the meaning of those Phantom Jets flying over Jerusalem. At about 2 PM, sirens screamed throughout the Jewish state announcing that Israel was at war once again for the fifth time in 25 years (1948, 1956, 1967, and 1970-72). I turned on my transistor radio to the BBC and learned that 1300 Syrian tanks were crossing the Israeli border on the Golan Heights and that Egypt had attacked and penetrated into Israel over the Bar Lev Line that was supposed to stop any Egyptian attack. Throughout the day, Israeli radio called unit after unit and instructed where every soldier was to report immediately.

The first days of the war were a disaster for Israel. General Moshe Dayan, the Defense Minister, believed that Armageddon was at hand and that Israel was facing the fate of Masada. PM Golda Meir was terrified, but publicly reassured the nation that Israel would prevail in the end, as it did in 1967. The story of the war is now well known, and the most recent film “Golda” starring Helen Mirren, tells of the inner life of Israel’s leaders in that fateful three weeks of war.

On the third day of the war, I took a bus from the center of Jerusalem to Hadassah Hospital in Ein Kerem to give blood. As I stepped down from the bus, a helicopter descended near the ER to deliver injured soldiers from the Sinai front. Already on that day by early afternoon, a dozen Israeli injured soldiers had been brought to Hadassah, some severely injured. By the end of the war 2656 Israeli soldiers were dead and 11,656 soldiers were injured, some severely for life. Everyone in Israel knew someone who died in defense of the Jewish state – a parent, spouse, sibling, cousin, friend.

Israel eventually turned around the tides of disaster with a daring operation led by General Ariel Sharon across the Suez Canal and surrounded the Egyptian Third Army thereby forcing Egypt to call for a cease fire. The American Secretary of State Henry Kissinger persuaded President Nixon (in the midst of Watergate hearings) on the 10^th day of the war to send massive armaments to Israel to replenish all that was lost in the fighting of the first days. Israel prevailed on the battlefield in the end, but the shock of the war on the Israeli psyche was as great as anything since the War of Independence in 1948.

During the nearly three weeks of war, I volunteered for night duty (10 pm to 6 am) at one of Israel’s large bakeries, Berman Bakery, and worked alongside 40 international volunteers and a skeletal staff of 20 Israeli Jews who were assigned by the government to bake bread for the Jerusalem municipality and for the troops in the south. On the night before Sukkot that year, we baked 80,000 loaves of Hallah, a grueling task. At the end of our shift each morning, we volunteers were transported back to the center of Jerusalem where we were picked up the night before and dropped off. From there, in the dark, I walked back to my dorm in a totally blacked-out city. Thousands of stars sparkled in the moonless night before dawn belying the ferocious fighting in the north and south. Cold and filthy from work, I took a cold shower (all heat in the dorm was shut down), climbed into a sleeping bag on my bed in my 45 degree Fahrenheit room, and fell asleep. The Israeli Civil Guard had taken up residence in the downstairs of the dorm throughout the war. (Years later that dorm was torn down and converted into an expensive condominium complex.)

My dean of students, Professor of Hebrew Literature Ezra Spicehandler (z’l), had told my class of 53 rabbinic and education students on the 2^nd day of the war that Israel would be victorious within a week. He was expressing the over-confidence (and hubris) of a nation that won the 1967 war in 6 days. Only Golda, her generals, and the troops on the two fronts thought otherwise. It was a terrible three weeks. Yom Haaztmaut in April, 1974 was low-key. The country was in mourning throughout the year.

The day I left Israel to return home to Los Angeles in May 1974, Palestinian terrorists dressed as Israeli soldiers sneaked into Maalot in the north and took hostage over a two-day period 115 Israelis including 105 children. The attack ended in the murder of 25 hostages and six other civilians including 22 children were killed. 68 more were injured.

Anwar Sadat, President of Egypt, needed to be able to claim a victory (as limited as it was in the first days of the war) to make peace with Israel 5 years later.

The memories of Yom Kippur 1973 and those three weeks of war have never left me. It was a turning point for Israel and resulted in the resignation of Moshe Dayan and Golda Meir, among others, though Golda was not blamed by the Agranat Commission of Inquiry into the war the next year. As she herself said, “I am a politician, not a general.” But, the loss of Israeli life weighed heavily upon her for the rest of her life.

Zichronam livracha – May the memory of all those who gave their lives in the defense of Israel be an abiding blessing.

Also posted at the Times of Israel – https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/memories-of-yom-kippur-50-years-ago-today/

The central theme of these High Holidays is teshuvah (תשובה) – lit. return, turning, response, repentance – a process that brings us back to ourselves, to our families and friends, to our community, Torah, and God. Teshuvah is ultimately a process of restoring hope that the way we are and where we are in our lives today need not be who and what we become tomorrow.

Teshuvah is a step-by-step process of turning and re-engaging with our most basic inclinations, the yetzer hara (יצר הרע) – the evil inclination – that is propelled by desire, ambition, lust, and need for dominance and control, and our yetzer tov  (יצר טוב) – the good inclination – that is inspired by humility, gratitude, generosity, kindness, and the need for partnership and a shared identity of oneness with others.

A key beginning in the process that is teshuvah is, however, a sense of despair, hopelessness, resignation, cynicism, pessimism, and sadness, the feeling that we’re stuck and can’t change the nature, character, and direction of our lives.

Judaism rejects despair, pessimism, cynicism, and everything that impedes personal transformation and a hopeful future.

In the story of Jonah, to be read on the afternoon of Yom Kippur (the last of the scriptural readings of the High Holiday season), we read the tale of the prophet’s descent into hopelessness and what is required for him to change his direction and restore himself into life.

Jonah is the epitome of an unrealized prophet who runs from himself, from civilization, and from God. Every verb associated with his journey is the language of descent (ירד yod-resh-daled). He flees down to the sea. He boards a ship and goes down into its dark interior. He lays down and falls into a deep sleep. He is thrown overboard down into the waters by his terrified ship-mates. He is swallowed and descends down into the belly of a great fish, and there he stays for three days and nights until from that place of despair and utter darkness Jonah decides that he wishes to live and not die. He cries out to God to save him.

There is a chassidic notion that in order to rise to our full potential – לעלות (la-alot) – we must first fall to the depths of despair – לרדת (La-redit).

God responds to Jonah by causing the fish to vomit Jonah out (and up) onto dry land. Jonah agrees this time to do God’s bidding and preach to the Ninevites to repent from their evil ways. While the town’s people are all putting on sack cloth and ashes and promising to change, God provides Jonah with shade and protection from the hot sun. Jonah, however, becomes mortified because he still believes that change is impossible (his cynicism is difficult to transform into hope) and that the Ninevites are destined to fail. Their success, in his mind, makes him to appear the fool.

Teshuvah is never easy. It is for those of us who are strong of mind, heart, and soul, who are courageous enough and willing enough to work hard and suffer failure, but to get up every time, to own what we do and why we do it, to acknowledge our wrong-doing and imperfections, to apologize to ourselves and to others we have harmed by our words and deeds, and to recommit to the struggle, step-by-step, patiently, one-day-at-a-time, one-hour-at-a-time, and even one-moment-at-a-time.

When successful, teshuvah is restorative and utopian, for the process of turning and returning enables us to realize our truest selves, the place of soul, the garden of oneness.

Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik taught that in teshuvah we are able even to transcend time. He said, “The future has overcome the past.”

It is this process of teshuvah that enables us to affirm at the close of Yom Kippur that, even in small ways, we are as if reborn and renewed into life.

G’mar chatimah tovah u-l’shanah tovah u-m’tukah. A good and sweet New Year to you all.

Originally published – September 13, 2015