10/08/2023
A Note from Rabbi Jeremy:
There's a moment after tragedies when someone says that we shouldn't talk about it, that it's disrespectful to talk about politics now, and let's just wait a few days and then we can talk.
By now, I'm sure you've learned at least a little bit of what has happened in Israel and the Gaza Strip over the course of the last day-plus. I'm not going to try to keep you up to date on the news. I won't try to change your mind on who's right and who's wrong.
But I am going to ask you to talk about it, this Sunday evening (October 8), at 6 pm. (Please contact me directly at [email protected] for access to the meeting.) Because if we don't talk, we won't. Because if we don't talk now, we won't talk the way we need to.
I said on Yom Kippur morning that being a community means bringing who we are and what we believe to the table. If we're not all talking about it and hearing one another, instead of avoiding the political because it's "too soon," what we say won't matter. Not because we'll solve anything happening in Israel or Gaza or the West Bank -- we won't! -- but because we don't actually really know who we all are when it comes to Israel/Palestine.
Some of us feel like we've been here before: a surprise attack nearly 50 years to the day of the start of the Yom Kippur War is frightening. Some of us feel like this is worse than what we've lived through before: we have friends and relatives in Israel, but it's never been so acutely frightening to learn of a Hamas attack because this is massive in comparison to what's come before. Others feel darkly justified: of course this was going to happen, because there's only so much pressure that can be applied before it bursts out some other way.
If we don't hear those voices, and others, we might keep laboring under the false impression that we know who we are when we probably don't.
For now: here's an ongoing timeline of the attacks.
At least 300 killed, 1,590 injured, hostages taken in multi-pronged infiltration from Gaza, as terrorists attack civilians, soldiers at 22 sites; thousands of rockets fired at Israel
