Dear friends,
I have been crafting this message to you all week, trying to figure out what to say to our beautiful community at a time of such grief and trauma in our world. My heart hurts. It hurts for every suffering human being, every family with a loved one taken hostage, every family who lost someone to Hamas’s massacre on Shabbat two weeks ago, every family with soldiers now preparing to invade Gaza, every family in Gaza whose innocent beloveds have been killed since the war began, every person in the region who is living in terror. I read just now of the 2 hostages who were released today and I offer up a prayer of thanks for that small sign of hope.
My heart also hurts for us and for the pain we are causing one another in this country and in our own sacred community right here. Whether or not we have family in Israel, every person lost in Israel is our family, and the epigenetic trauma that is being triggered by this war is showing up as micro and macro aggressions all around us, not just between left and right, between Israelis and Palestinians, but between us and us, between friends and fellow Jews and family members who have lost their language of kindness and compassion. We are on edge and triggered; scared and sad. I have heard people in our own synagogue community say unspeakably horrible things this week. I have witnessed friends hurting each other by thoughtlessness, and by a powerful conviction that their position on the war is right and true. That theirs is the only acceptable position to have. We all know in our moments of calm that suggesting that there is a simple or clear answer to the horror unfolding in Israel and Gaza is impossible, and yet that is where we go in our fear, to the assumption that if we just cling to our position with a steely grip, then maybe this nightmare will end.
But I know, we know, that the answer in times like this is never to double down on the need to be right, because there is no right. There is only pain and suffering. I am not talking about the intricacies of the war. This email is not about the fact that Hamas is a terrorist organization with a declared mission to destroy the state of Israel and all Jews along with it. It goes without saying that what Hamas did is unjustifiable, inhumane, and horrifying. Am Yisrael Chai, always and forever. This email is also not about the urgent need for the Palestinian people to be able to live in freedom on the land that is also sacred to them. It should also go without saying that peace in the land of Israel will never be achieved if our agenda is for one people to rule over another.
No, this email is not about the war. This email is about the way we are treating each other, and about how we move forward with even a sliver of hope in our hearts if we continue to hurt the people in our own community. My Torah to teach in this world, my most sacred lesson to share with you as your rabbi, is not about right and wrong, but about the powerfully uncomfortable in-between place where we all sit right now. Mine is a Torah of the unknown, a Torah of navigating this place of unprecedented fear we find ourselves in because we cannot see how any of this is going to work out. What will the future of Israel look like after this is all over? Will the rest of the hostages be returned? How many people will have to die in the process? I do not know. But what I do know is that the only way for us to wade through this madness together is by turning our hearts to one another with love. We must surrender and believe that it is only by unclenching our fists that we will maintain our humanity and survive this time. We must call out like the psalmist in Psalm 118: From a narrow place I called out, and God answered me from the expanse.
Last week at our Israel solidarity event I shared that I do not believe that God controls the outcome of any war. But I do believe with all of my being that God comes to those who are suffering. And so our medicine at this time, our community Torah, must be love and prayer and an insistence on shining our bright Jewish light into the world especially when it is darkest.
May our prayers, our voices, and our love reach those who are injured and captured and may they know that God is with them, and they are not alone. May we feel the comfort of community and know that we, too, are not alone in our suffering, in our rage, in our grief. May this Shabbat bring even just a measure of peace to us and to the world. And may our prayers be answered. Amen.
Shabbat shalom,
Rabbi Chabon