An ingenious symbol, integrating the date and our obligation to remember

There are a few moments in life that I’ve describe as an “excruciating honor.” The times I’ve visited the death camps in Europe—especially with young people—have both sickened and inspired me. Caring for my father in the final weeks of his life—attending to his most basic needs as the life ebbed from his frail frame—was the ultimate fulfillment of commandment and an indelibly inscribed trauma upon my soul.

Walking among the ruins and the rebuilding of Kfar Aza… treading ever so lightly between the adorned shrines of the murdered dancers at the Nova site…and even admiring the triumphant resilience of wounded soldiers supporting one another at Brothers For Life…instilled in me both the deepest heartbreak at such wanton loss, and the profound hope for the transcendence of the human spirit as the engine of a restored world. To bear witness to both is a profoundly Jewish act akin to visiting the sick—an unquestioned obligation that demands that we overcome our personal discomfort for the sake of others.

In reflecting on what I saw and how I felt, John McCrae’s ode to the monstrous loss of young lives to the maw of nationalist arrogance during World War I came immediately to mind. And just as the blood of the innocent and the exploited cried from the earth of the European killing fields, the atrocities of October 7th are palpably present in the soul-stained grounds of the Otef made sacred through brutally-imposed martyrdom.

Zvi and I started the day in Sderot, the oft-neglected town abutting the Gaza Strip that endured years of rocket fire out of sight and mind of most Israelis and the world. On that fateful day, some of the most chilling images were of the Hamas pick up trucks with tailgate machine guns careening through the city strafing anything that moved or lived. Standing on an overlook to spy the now-repaired border fence and beyond into the geographic source of suffering endured and inflicted, it was hard to tell whether the oversized flag of Israel atop the vista was intended as an expression of national pride or as a distant warning.

We made our way through the stifling heat of the southern summer to our first stop at Kfar Aza, one of the most devastated of the Eshkol kibbutz communities attacked on 10/7. We came to the large yellow gate at the entrance, a familiar image from footage that provided little security from the paragliders that descended down and dozens of terrorists that overwhelmed the sleeping community. We were met by Shachar Shnorman, a long time resident and one of only a handful who have returned to replant roots there.

The first thing we noticed was the bustle of construction activity—perhaps more a symbol of hope for a mass return than a response to demonstrated need. Shachar welcomed us onto his patio and generously recounted his story.

Rocket and mortar attacks are an accepted part of life in Kfar Aza, but the last year or so before 10/7 had been relatively quiet, an unusual occurrence that, in retrospect, was a Hamas tactic to instill complacency. On the evening of October 6th, Shachar had been walking with a friend back from a party, with no indication or expectation of what was to come. That friend would be one of the first murdered when the bloodletting began at 6:29 am the next day.

Shachar and his wife heard the gunfire and called friends. It was clear that something dramatic was happening. They retreated into their safe room, which lacked a lock as it was designed to protect against mortar fire, not a terrorist incursion. He had to hold the door against intrusion—a common experience for so many that morning.

Friends called Shachar asking about their family members nearby. He went out to check on a neighbor, saw her lying dead on her porch across the path, and returned to be with his wife for what he thought would be his last moments. Having grown up amongst Holocaust survivors, he was familiar with their stories of pillaging pogroms and senseless slaughter. But he never thought he’d live through these horrors himself.

For some reason, Kfar Aza was one of the last to be liberated by the army, which took a harrowing 96 hours to clear the kibbutz. As he emerged from his home, a wounded assailant came at him with a knife, and Shachar responded in kind. Let’s hope that there will be a national inquiry exploring why the army bases just minutes away failed to send forces earlier.

And yet, Shachar was far from embittered. On his deck, there were more barbecues than at a Texas rib contest. As one of the only residents remaining after the attack, Shachar welcomed literally hundreds of soldiers who patrolled and secured the area. He and his wife provided grilled meals and Shabbat dinners for countless young men—a gesture repeated thousands upon thousands of times by Israeli citizens who rose to support and sustain one another in the fading dust of that devastating day.

Shachar took us on a brief tour of other neighborhoods, particularly of those destroyed homes preserved as a kind of memorial to the murdered and testament to the depth of depravity.

Many of the burned and broken structures were labeled with photos of the young adults who were brutalized and taken.

And there were other moments of heroism on that morning now enshrined in the testament of that community. The few Civil Defense guards on site valiantly made their way to the small kibbutz armory, striving to fend off more than 100 infiltrators. They engaged them long enough to enable many residents to escape and to prevent the Nukhba force from moving to other kibbutz communities.

As we left Kfar Aza, I was still astounded by the frenetic building and multiple cranes operating—a classic response of Israelis, who meet tragedy and loss with stubborn resolve and bounding faith.

As we made our way down the infamous Highway 232, which served as a corpse and car strewn causeway of escape for the lucky few, we stopped at a roadside oasis of sustenance, support, and love. We met Doron Tabelsi, one of the three Shuva Brothers, who have created a way station for soldiers coming in and out of service in Gaza. What began as a few tables has grown into a resource providing food, clothing, supplies, and joyous embrace. Doron’s compassion and commitment is only exceeded by his energy and positivity, as he dispensed raucous greetings and hugs to the weary warriors who passed through his outpost.

It was yet another example of the remarkable spirit of October 8th, in which beleaguered yet unbowed Israelis came together in spontaneous and organic ways to bind wounds, buoy spirits, and rebuild through the power of a devoted citizenry.

At the hottest time of the day emotionally, spiritually, and meteorologically, we came to the Nova site. The field that provided a haven for a joyous EDM rave amidst the natural wonder of a JNF park has been transformed into a powerful memorial to the loved and the lost. The beauty of each young person taken too soon is enshrined on posts with their pictures, biographies, and snippets of their personalities. Aesthetically, they all seemed to be magazine models in waiting, as if that were part of the criteria for attendance. Existentially, the annihilation of such untrammeled youthful abandon—the vibrant innocence of simply wanting to dance all night in the desert—evoked an almost insurmountable despair.

The flowers of Flanders as theme sprung from the ground all around, as red metal anemones—symbols of life-giving Spring—adorned each sacred post. They lamented the intensity of loss while affirming the power of a life force that transcends even atrocity through the healing balm of memory.

As we came to Hersh Polin-Goldberg’s display, we met two young Israeli women at the start of their army intelligence training. Their entire squad was visiting that afternoon, providing context and incentive for their course, which would—God-willing—ensure that such a catastrophe will never happen again.

The final stop of our day conveyed the spirit of the classic Jewish response to tragedy. As the Prophets taught with pedagogic insight, you cannot merely cast a message of doom and gloom. Even the most dire prophecy or experience of disaster must conclude with a note of hope if faith is to be secured.

We visited the new Brothers for Life facility in Kfar Truman near Ben Gurion airport. This organization has roots in our Seattle community, though I have been only marginally involved—something I hope to remedy. It is an amazing organization in which wounded soldiers counsel, support, buoy, and heal one another.

This was brought home to us in the compelling story of Nadav, who happens to be Rabbi Donniel Hartman’s nephew. Nadav is what is termed a datlash—kind of the opposite of a baal teshuvah—a more secular off shoot from a more traditional family. He loved and lived for basketball, and rose to play professionally in Israel. At the same time, he took great pride in serving amongst the elite of the elite unit, duvdevan.

On the morning of October 7th, he was a reserve soldier, exchanging messages with others in his former unit as scant news of the attack seeped out. He decided to join the active members of his unit and, like so many on that morning, did not await orders, but simply equipped themselves, got in cars, and drove South.

Nadav recalls joking and playing music in the car with his friends, painfully unaware of the extent of the assault. But as they turned onto the infamous Route 232, the reality of the situation shocked their senses. “It looked like the end of the world,” he recalled. Burnt cars and dead bodies were scattered across the road, forcing them to weave their cars between the detritus of death.

They reached the very kibbutz we had just visited, Kfar Aza, and immediately joined the fight. Almost instantly, one of his good friends who had a reputation for being a bit of a Rambo burst into a house seeking the enemy. He valiantly battled but was outgunned and was killed instantly.

In the midst of hours of fighting, Nadav was shot in the arm, describing a pain unlike anything he had ever experienced. He was evacuated and later underwent multiple surgeries. But eventually, he received the prognosis he most feared: He would never play basketball again. While feeling lucky to have survived and proud of his efforts on that horrific day, this was a devastating blow for someone who bound their identity so inextricably with their physical talents and capacity.

But his work with Brothers for Life gave him a sense of purpose, value, and hope for a productive and meaningful future. We left with a complex array of feelings: sadness, frustration, and anger…but also gratitude, pride, and awe at the vibrancy of the human spirit.

A concluding word: While I am painfully grateful for my journey to the Otef—one that I think all Jews should better embrace and understand—I also know that there is great suffering on the “other side” of that day and its aftermath. Thousands of Palestinians have endured devastation and death since October 7th—in no small part due to the genocidal obsessions of their leadership and its callous exploitation of their well being in pursuit of a martyrdom of madness. And yet, in the current global context of rising antisemitism and deepening hatred for the world’s only Jewish State, Palestinian suffering is acknowledged, propagandized, and even celebrated as inspiring—while Jewish suffering is often ignored and denied, rationalized and even justified.

There will be other opportunities to gauge and reflect on the broader human tragedy of October 7th, its more universal lessons of the depths of radicalization and the consequences of a recourse to cycles of violence. But as Jews bound to one another across the miles and through the generations, it is only out of a stark and unapologetic confrontation with our own loss, sorrows, and fortitude that we can perceive a path forward for all.

If you feel moved, please support the Shuva Brothers and their selfless efforts for Israeli soldiers:

Or the community of Kfar Aza:

Though I’ve been to the Old City countless times, there are still some novelties and surprises. It seems that every few years, new areas have been excavated, either incidental to some construction or in pursuit of some ideological claim of antiquity. In the past, I’ve been quite critical of those hard-right-monied Americans who have bankrolled digs to establish the Jewish bona fides of expanding parts of the area—often to the exclusion of Arab claims. But in the current climate of rampant delegitimization of Jewish indigineity and the discounting of the archaeological record, I find myself more accepting of hard, tangible proof.

It was wonderful to reconnect with my friend, the tour educator I’ve turned to for decades, Zvi Levron.

Zvi’s knowledge of the history, the people, and the politics of Israel is deep and expansive—unique even amidst the renowned expertise of the typical licensed tour guide. I can always count on him to provide updates on the current vibe of the country on top of the engaging stories he’s gleaned over the years and his mastery of the history of the region.

These are tough times for anyone involved in the tourist industry…and beyond. The war/wars have taken a significant toll on life in myriad ways. From a purely economic perspective, restaurants are closing, younger guides are struggling to make ends meet, the malls are desperate for customers, and the summer crowds of the prewar era are gone. And the rampant construction of the many high end residential towers jutting the sky line reflects a kind of diaspora gentrification—as developers overbuild residences that Israelis can’t afford and that everyone fears will be only partially occupied, insufficient infrastructure be damned.

But there is still a vibrant spirit and resilient pride in the air, despite the pall of conflict and loss. The critical need to keep the costs of the last few years fresh in the public consciousness emerges as a pop-populist phenomenon, with myriad stickers remembering fallen soldiers inundating seemingly every public surface.

This form of guerrilla grieving feels remarkably effective, as the faces of lives cut short are stark reminders of both the demands of security in a world that seeks our annihilation, and the consequences of resorting only to military options in a seemingly forever war.

Surveying the newly expanded City of David palpably illustrates the tension between the need to document identity in a time in which long-established truisms have been challenged, and the excesses of wielding an ideological cudgel against the hopes for coexistence. While it is exciting to walk through the earliest strata of a discernible Jewish presence going back 3000+ years, it is disheartening that the efforts to affirm our right to the land have been twisted by many to deny rights to others.

But on a purely historical and archaeological level, the ongoing unearthing of the structures of the first kingdom of Israel—with its palaces, mikvaot, and terraced balconies fit for a king to steal a glance of a bathing beauty down below—is a stirring experience of pride in peoplehood.

The most recent excavations have opened up the “pilgrims road”—the ascending path that took the worshipper from the bottom of the city up to the foot of the Temple.

That it opened up to the Temple’s marketplace prior to leading one to the steps of the worship site affirms that the mercantile spirit resides deeply in the human psyche—for very practical rather than stereotypical reasons (exchange of goods for coinage, not because Jews have a thing for money).

I’ve always preferred the Southern wall of the Temple site over the classic “Kotel” above. It much better reflects the contours of the Temple structure, and has the benefit of not having been bogarted by an aggressively imperialistic rabbanut (Orthodox rabbinic authority).

I would rather bask and pray amidst the fallen boulders of Roman destruction—celebrating our people’s triumph over even the most intensive assaults on our existence—than run the gauntlet of medievalists imposing their narrow monopoly over religious practice on the rest of us.

We grab a quick lunch at the famous Abu Shukri in the shuk, a must eat for truly authentic hummus and salads. And before concluding the day at the David Citadel Museum—a much more balanced and well intended exhibition than the City of David—we stop for a classic overlook from the roof of the Austrian Hospice. It is a hidden oasis of 19th Century European hospitality amidst the warren of spice and tschoke merchants in the Moslem Quarter. The view from the roof is breathtaking and reflects the overlapping, overwhelming, yet viable navigation of the multi-faceted, textured, and bound character of this miraculous place.

I prepare for tomorrow’s difficult journey to the Otef—the Gaza Envelope.

I’ve always felt that looking back at one’s home while in another country provides the situationally fresh eyes of the outsider. Yes, the indelible imprint of experience and identity can’t be so easily cast off. But as we celebrate this 250th anniversary of American independence and its convergence with my observance of Shabbat in Jerusalem, I feel not only that neshama yetara/additional soul that comes to the Jew on the Sabbath, but also some extra insight into the meaning of this moment. And adding the bread and circus of Taylor Swift’s Friday Night nuptials to the mix makes for a strange interplay of events ripe for creative interpretation.

For the true mark of any rabbi worth their sermonic salt is the ability to find meaningful links between seemingly disparate events. And the thematic through line of this temporal triumvirate is the conflicted mixture of feelings they evoke—an affirmation of our ideals and a confirmation of how far we’ve strayed from them.

Starting with the more trivial yet totalizing…the joining of pop Princess Taylor Swift to All American football star Travis Kelce has been deemed an American “Royal Wedding.” Linking it to the 250th celebration of our independence and holding it at Madison Square Garden—our national coliseum for spectacle—feels more a nod to Ancient Rome than to the strategies of a pod of publicists. Which raises concerns as to whether this distraction of fantasizing and fan-aticism is a healthy departure from the woes of an increasingly troubling world or a cocoon of denial, apathy, national narcissism. Are we figuratively winding our way—awe and dumb struck—through the fairy tale castle the couple is purportedly building within the arena at the expense of confronting the demands of a world that seems beyond our agency, let alone our control? Do these rabbit holes of respites from reality dampen our resolve at the very moment when we most need to be braced for the stark and the troubling?

And…there is painful yet compelling irony in celebrating our nation’s 250th anniversary in the midst of Trump’s Reign. Such milestones typically offer a chance to reflect on the past and envision the future through the lens of the present. And yet, to be an American during this unprecedented presidency of massacred mores, shattered norms, enabled corruption, and imperiled principles reveals our dramatic descent from a proud past and the daunting challenges that lie ahead. Bret Stephen’s recent column tersely yet powerfully reminds us of who we were and who we can be again. But collective will must be forged to realize lofty dreams if we are to come back from this dark moment.

Shabbat in Jerusalem in many ways symbolizes what journalist Ari Shavit deemed the quintessential Israeli bubble—an insulated space of an eternal present that relieves the need to think too much about past or future, the events beyond the moment or places beyond the Sabbath table. In many ways, that’s the point of the Sabbath—to reside for a scant 24 hours within an isle of tranquility and purpose amidst a sea of strife and a mortgaging of our lives to the mundane. And while an Israeli society afflicted by widespread PTSD can certainly benefit from any respite from ongoing conflict both within and beyond its borders, it’s increasingly difficult to relax on that “island” while the seas churn around us.

Shabbat in Jerusalem is a peak Jewish experience, binding one to the generations in the proverbial chain of tradition. Even navigating the throng of Sabbath preparers in the famous Machane Yehuda market seems a necessary part of the timeless ritual.

But for Shabbat to be complete—for it to be more than merely a “day off”—it must be employed for a higher purpose: To remind us of our need—our command— to strive and struggle and work for that Day of Days—that Supreme and Eternal Shabbat—when our ideals and aspirations will be realized, our failures and foibles will be forgotten, and the world will be aligned with the vision of the One who created it. We are far from that time, and there is much left to do.

But in the meantime, I wish you a Shabbat Shalom, a Happy Fourth, and all the best to Taylor and Travis.

I’ve always been emotionally partial to Journey’s song Lights. It’s a quintessential ode to San Francisco that feels like an updated version of Tony Bennett’s signature. Even as a teen, I felt it captured something ineffable about my City by the Bay. But as I walked through Jerusalem for the first time in years, and the song came on my Apple playlist timed precisely as I strolled past a late afternoon vista of the Old City’s walls—as if gauged to a soundtrack of my life—the words and melody evoked something deep and abiding in me about this other city near to my heart. The lyrics could very easily be adapted to the setting sun against the aging Ottoman walls of this timeless town.

When the lights go down in the citaaay, and the sun shines on the bay. Oh I wanna be there…in my citaaay.

I hadn’t been to Israel since the carefree pre-Covid era in 2019. And while I felt compelled to come after 10/7, I resisted what felt to me like an unnecessary “solidarity” visit that would tax needed resources for Israelis while providing a somewhat shallow opportunity for rabbinic social media virtue-signaling. I felt that my place, my role, and my efforts were best invested in the myriad opportunities for advocacy and education on Israel’s behalf in Seattle. In a moment in which even the most heinous atrocities against Jews were met with apathy, denial, and malicious lies, I believed that a rabbi’s place was “at home.”

But when the opportunity arose amidst a long-delayed chunk of a sabbatical to accompany my son as he began his first year of rabbinic seminary training, serendipity converged with convenience. And there is something fitting about my personal sabbatical overlapping with a visit after seven years away from Israel. The biblical mandate to replenish the land and to reflect upon its gifts every seventh year seemed an apt parallel to my own need for revitalization and a reimagining of my bond with this land and its people.

And to add to the bounty of b’shert-ness emerging from this moment, this week marks 40 years since I came to Jerusalem for the beginning of my rabbinic journey. Forty, too, is a propitious scriptural signifier, spanning if not a yovel/Jubilee less ten, then the duration of our people’s over-long journey through the wilderness. In some ways, this trip in time and space is an arrival to a place of promise after years of challenge and heartache.

To see this moment through the mists of the decades and the promise of my son’s growing devotion to our shared path is a blessing that rivals having walked my daughter down the aisle a mere 5 days ago. It’s been a week…in the best possible way.

As I walked bleary-eyed and foggy-brained in the first 24 hours since I touched down at Ben Gurion airport, nostalgia blended seamlessly with novelty as I surveyed streets both familiar and strange. Old makolets and falafel stands have made way for massive office buildings, 5-star hotels, and condo towers built to beckon retired Jewish baby-boomers seeking a more meaningful Third Act. The old joke about cranes becoming the Israeli national bird seems insufficient to describe the surging flocks of perpendicular steel frames that pock the skyline. Rivulets of neon orange vests and cones line seemingly every street amidst an urban renewal project to rival the PWA during its post-Depression peak.

It makes for a potent mix of summer heat and swirling dust whipped by Jerusalem’s late afternoon winds. But still…I’m in Jerusalem. A little grit and sweat is but small price to pay to walk in generational—if not millennial—footsteps.

Of course, I traversed old haunts and neighborhoods. My home during my Year in Israel on Narkis St. seemed unchanged.

And as I sauntered through the leafy lanes of residential Rehavia, I was redirected by National Police who were securing the streets during a (very) early morning demonstration at the Prime Minister’s residence. Let’s hope that the wide-spread renewal of the streets of Jerusalem portends a more critical transformation of the nation with the coming election.

To be continued….

“O workers’ Revolution, you brought hope to me, a lonely, suicidal boy. You are the true Messiah. You will destroy the East Side when you come, and build there a garden for the human spirit.
O Revolution, that forced me to think, to struggle and to live.
O great Beginning!”

This was Jewish Communist ideologue Michael Gold’s parting shot in his controversial 1930 novel, Jews Without Money. For Gold and for so many of his Jewish fellow travelers in that Third Period of Communism, fervent belief in a Soviet-style Marxist utopia—and an evangelistic passion to bring it about—supplanted both Jewish identity and Zionist dreams for a refuge from persecution. Particular Jewish pride and nationalist fervor gave way to the universal redemption of the global proletariat, greasing the gears of a dialectical history. Eventually, Stalin’s show trials, the Nazi-Soviet Pact, and the post-War Night of the Murdered Poets put the final nail in the coffin of the naive idealism and dangerous delusion of these true believers in a secular savior.

The victory of the Mamdani slate of New York Congressional candidates, augmented by significant support amongst young, educated, and well-to-do Jews, has raised to mind and heart this regrettable period in American Jewish history. Now as in those heady days, a vibrant and visionary response to rampant inequality, political compromise, and the disproportionate influence of money and power spurred a socialist pursuit of a very Jewish-inflected commitment to justice. Not to say that the extremes of the early 20th century—the geo-political tides and the movements they spawned—are completely analogous to our current moment. But the allure of the DSA’s platform seems to resonate with those who favor leaning into the urgency of now over learning the lessons of then. And yet, this is a time that calls for discretion and deliberation over impulsive scolding and knee-jerk reaction.

Mamdani’s careless and callous juxtaposition of Gramsci’s new-world-aborting “monsters” with AIPAC is a teapot tempest in a social-media-scalded cauldron. It serves the fever dreams of the extremes, while eliding more critical concerns. Was it a too-easy, ill-conceived lay-up of carnivorous dog-whistles for a hubristic “new” left? Yes. Was it the confirmation of the complete take-over of the Democratic party by the specters of Stalin’s murderous minions? No.

But just as Heller’s quip in Catch 22 cautions against dismissing the real threats underlying irrational fears, there persists reason to be worried. Many—too many—young Jewish adults have doubled down on the blindered universalism of Tikkun Olam (Repairing the World) while stubbornly blinding themselves to the particularism of Ahavat Yisrael (Love for the Jewish People). It is one thing for the wider electorate to dismiss the antizionism/antisemitism continuum of the DSA as incidental to the more pressing priorities of affordability, coalition-building, and a critique of a complacent political and economic establishment. It is another thing entirely for Jews to ignore the timeless, toxic tropes that have often dressed seemingly noble movements pursuing legitimate change in the mob-convening cloak of outing the perfidious Jews amongst us.

But an overreaction that casts bush league political rhetoric as harbingers of another Holocaust, or uncritically villainizes the tribunes of conscience of the coming generation, will evoke the very backlash we are striving to avoid, confirming the suspicions and skepticism of those we must reach. We must welcome these young people into our proverbial tents of home, work, and worship. We must dialogue and debate, sharing with them the legitimate fears borne of our past, as they share with us the legitimate fears they harbor for their future. And we must help them to discern the difference between a shallow hot take spewed to bait clicks from a moral vision made more compelling by the bridges it builds.

The lessons of Pogo and Lord of the Flies still resound for us: Enemies, beasts, and monsters live within us more than amongst us. But the ramparts of our tribes must not lock away the rooms of our hearts. Vigilance forged from memory is a tool of prudence, not an operating system for identity. And yet, to neglect the past imperils the present and betrays a better future.

The prolific Jewish writer and bon vivant Arthur Koestler, in his masterful repudiation of his previous communist passions, revealed a very human frailty that is both the boon and bane of the young, only truly understood through the lens of earned wisdom tempered by hard experience: “Nothing,” he said, “is more sad than the death of an illusion.”

The prophet Joel provides compelling coda to this intergenerational interplay of principle, in which the melding of idealism meets the rootedness of realism. When God’s inspiring spirit pours out on a people grasping for hope in the future, he prophesies: The old shall dream dreams, and the youth shall see visions. And those shared dreams and visions demand an openness to hear and to speak, and a willingness to face one another with faith to meet our fears.

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Rabbis don’t usually have favorite popes, but I’m increasingly impressed with Pope Leo XIV. Some Bishops of Rome have been more amenable to recanting the Church’s troubling past, or have reached out more concertedly to the Jews in their orbit. Some pontiffs have reflected Judaism’s foundational commitment to forging a world rooted in justice, despite a few theological tenets that depart significantly from current approaches to sexuality and women’s rights.

But Leo has hit the attention economy’s ground running at precisely the moment in which the message of faith—writ large from his balcony beacon on St. Peter’s Square—speaks to the most profound challenges currently facing humanity. Perhaps it’s his familiarity as an American, Chicago-born. Or his internationalist bona fides that belie the typical chauvinism of Western leaders. But there is something about this pope that speaks to our moment with a uniquely compelling force.

In the span of his first year, he has raised the profile of the Church—and more broadly the relevance of faith-based values—in confronting a world increasingly dehumanized by ongoing war, rising autocracy, and the seeming dominance of a technology that could relegate us to a submission seemingly scripted by the most dystopian of sci-fi fever dreams.

Magnifica Humanitas is, indeed, a magnificent tribute to humanity at a time in which we increasingly regard one another more as algorithmic commodities and means to a profit-driven end than as beings endowed with natural rights or, God forbid, children of a common Creator. And his focus on the perils of the permeation of AI into every facet of life is as symbolically potent as it is timely at this before-it’s-too-late inflection point.

Many of his metaphoric references are rooted in what he would call “the Old Testament,” and much of his theological contentions emerge from the shared patrimony of Christians and Jews. But it might be prudent to offer a more narrowly sourced Jewish lens to expand and amplify the relevance of his message. While hardly exhaustive, comprehensive, or even scholarly, here are three brief insights to stoke further discussion.

Human dignity—endowed by the fact of existence and the power of God’s grace— is at the core of Leo’s message, as it should be. While citing its biblical basis in the Genesis verse recounting that humanity was created “in the image of God,” he not surprisingly describes its source as “the triune God.” While it is a clear departure from the strict monotheism-without-compromise at Judaism's heart, an awareness of the interpretations of the earlier, original tradition can only add to Leo’s message.

Rejecting the kind of materialism and physicalization dominant in the sects of the ancient world and the incarnation of an evolving Christianity, rabbinic authorities from the Talmud to the great medieval Aristotelian Maimonides saw the “tzelem elohim/image of God” as humanity’s spiritual, intellectual, and therefore ethical sensibility. This is not surprising, in that God’s revelation to Israel took the form of a moral blueprint perfecting the human soul and sustaining the covenantal community.

This incorporeal and moral understanding of God’s image compels us to transcend the delusions and seductions of an over-reliance on technological materialism—especially those mechanisms that deceive us into believing that they possess sentient agency. Such myopic and errant belief is nothing less than a form of contemporary idolatry, with implications of a descent, if not into the sacrificial pyres of paganism, than into the immolation of human potential and an autonomous future.

The second observation emerges from Leo’s discussion of work as it relates to AI’s threats to employment. He writes,

“…work is not simply an instrument; it expresses and enhances the dignity of our lives. It is a requirement of the human condition, a normal path toward maturity, development and personal fulfilment.”

The Hebrew word for work is avodah. But this is a word that does much work itself. For it means more than merely labor. It also connotes formal elements of worship and the sacrificial rite. And perhaps most compellingly, it conveys a sense of service beyond self—either for God or on behalf of others and the community. And so, what AI could supplant is more than simply the purposeful empowerment of human labor. It threatens the most critical component of our humanity—one that links a dignified sense of self to a deep regard for the well being of others—covenantally enriched by the binding force of divine love.

And finally, a word about the Pontiff’s employ of the Babel metaphor. He contrasts the classically interpreted godless arrogance and stifling uniformity of the ziggurat project with the “communion” inherent in Nehemiah’s rebuilding of Jerusalem’s walls under the more benign auspices of the Persian monarchs. Much of classic rabbinic commentary reaffirms this view of the idolatrous industry of the Tower’s builders. But there is a famous passage from the midrash Pirke DeRabbi Eliezer (24) that offers a more trenchant lesson:

Rabbi Phineas said: There were no stones there where-with to build the city and the tower. What did they do? They baked bricks and burnt them like a builder (would do), until they built it seven miles high, and it had ascents on its east and west. (The labourers) who took up the bricks went up on the eastern (ascent), and those who descended went down on the western (descent). If a man fell and died they paid no heed to him, but if a brick fell they sat down and wept, and said: Woe is us ! When will another one come in its stead?

Again, this additional insight from Jewish tradition amplifies the sins of prioritizing material progress over human survival. And to laud Nehemiah’s critical reconstruction of the destroyed walls of Jerusalem without the associated spiritual reconstitution brought about by Ezra is to offer an incomplete picture of a return and renaissance that Jewish tradition regards as both miraculous and proto-messianic.

Far more than theological and scriptural nit-picking, this brief response is a thank you note of deepest appreciation for Leo’s courageous and visionary leadership, embracing the very Jewish principle of dialogue and debate for heaven’s sake. May it inspire and spark a continuing reliance on the message of faith to temper the blinkered business models of the builders of the Tech Tower.

A recent article in the San Francisco Chronicle unleashed a torrent of nostalgia and memory. And while I’ve certainly reached an age in which looking back and reminiscing has become more frequent, and probably as annoying to others as it was to my younger self, this bit of self-spelunking reminded me less of my salad days and more of those artifacts of the past whose passing has lamentably left us all poorer and diminished.

The piece recounted the golden days of the old Coronet Theater on Geary Street in San Francisco. Though built in the late 40’s, it reflected the high water mark of a 70’s commitment to cinematic sight and sound. It was an era that fell between the ornate movie houses of the early years of film and the multi-plex cubicles that justifiably gave way to home viewing. What the Coronet lacked in decor was amply compensated in scope. The 2000 seat venue, equipped with the newly emerging Dolby Sound and a screen seemingly the size of a football field, became the go-to location for the post-Jaws blockbusters of the late 70s. I remember first hearing about the “loge section” there, the infamous seats in the back of the theater that rocked precariously, and were often out of the purview of ushers (remember ushers?), as teens would augment their viewing experience with activities that were not quite legal and not quite kosher.

I was one of those kids who, in 1977, stood in a line that snaked around the block to see Star Wars, much to the chagrin of gas station and liquor store owners who had never seen movie fans react to a mere “picture” with such passionate loitering. Years later, some of those old locales along Geary would give way to a recreated Mel’s Diner, the franchising of that same George Lucas’ earlier paean to his youth in American Graffiti.

Word of mouth spread quickly amongst the Bar Mitzvah-aged middle school set that this was more than a mere movie. It was an “experience” that was as transformative as it was unprecedented. And the crew at the Coronet did not disappoint, striking a balance between crowd control and serving as concierges to an undiscovered celluloid country. We were herded to a seat that felt more like a space capsule than a paltry pew. As the opening text wafted vertically up the screen in ways that are now mocking memes, but at the time seemed to have descended upon us from that galaxy far far away, we realized that we were witness to a dramatic change in culture. We were immersed in an event that blew our minds and rang our ears, instilling the feeling that we were role-players in the story rather than merely observers of it. We left knowing even then, as relatively untutored and emerging cinephiles, that we had witnessed something remarkable, something that would radically change the entertainment landscape forever.

And while rivers of ink have flowed lamenting the impossibility of recapturing the many virgin firsts of youth, remembrances of things past often evoke a longing for what was lost and the hope, however seemingly futile and naive, that something of the halcyon might be reclaimed.

The power of community bound by the shared experience of a happening like the debut of Star Wars feels as quaint now as it is compelling of a kind of unrequited grief. Beyond the atomization of how we consume entertainment not merely in our homes but in the palms of our hands, much of the alienation and loneliness that has become epidemic is rooted in the paucity of the kinds of secular convocations that the great movie houses provided. Football games and concerts approximate it, but the cloistered and connected darkness of those old temples to the moving image was singular and apart—almost “holy.”

Our hard-wiring for socialization and community has careened into neurosis and dysfunction as we are denied access to our natural state and primal needs by the isolating algorithms of the robber barons of Big Tech. Putnam’s warnings from decades ago seem faint pleas amidst a maelstrom of content created—not merely to distract or to narcotize—but solely to capture atrophying attention in the service of lucre that would make Roman emperors blanche.

But even more troubling, the passing of the era of blockbusters regaling in old stories augmented by never-before-seen, cutting edge effects reflects a loss of something even greater. The arc that began with the Enlightenment’s surge of reason to quell superstition brought with it a vanquishing of the world of magic and enchantment that has culminated in our current secular materialism—a shackling to the here and now that has left us in a cold, stark, and soulless void. Bruno Bettelheim famously asserted the power of fairy tales to shape us at the most impressionable stages, providing a crucial foundation for meaning-making later in life. Thus, the loss of these widely-consumed and dynamically-shared stories through film has left us with a diminishing sense of purpose and despair for the future.

And it is no coincidence that one of Lucas’ inspirations for Star Wars was the work of the mythologist Joseph Campbell, whose popularized scholarship revealed the power of narrative precisely when the 70s pantheon of new auteurs found its footing. And so, it is even more tragic that, a mere half century later, we seem to have squandered the potency of that apex of visual art, as we’ve conceded the creative spirit and its deep human resonance to the machinations of technology and the avarice of commerce.

It is perhaps too late for my children’s generation to recapture the glories of the past. But I hope that my grandchildren might benefit from the emerging backlash to social media and AI in a quest for meaning, purpose, and connection. May their film experience recapture the power of community and the re-enchantment of youth, as the theater dims, the flickering flame of fantastic light fills their hearts as fully as it commands the screen, and the smell of authentically-buttered popcorn forever triggers a madeleine-like transport to better times.

Most American Jews and supporters of Israel justifiably condemned the neglect and apathy that confronted the emerging witness to these crimes. Amongst the most ardent supporters of Hamas, violence against Israeli women was perversely justified as a legitimate tool of combat. For others merely sympathetic to the jihadist cause, testimony to these attacks was dismissed as propaganda or hyperbole. For how could righteous Palestinian freedom fighters rising against Israeli tyranny debase themselves and taint their cause through the degradation of women, humanity’s most perennial victims? The viability of their narrative could not bear the actuality of the act.

A recent column recounted in excruciating and nauseating detail the sexual assault and torture of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons. What was once considered the infrequent abuse of a few bad actors was purported to be a systematic practice, if not condoned, then certainly overlooked by the authorities. Not surprisingly, the current supremacy-besotted Israeli government vigorously denied the charges as a kind of “blood libel,” refusing to even investigate the accusations. And for so many of us—Lovers of Israel and proud Zionists—it is difficult to reconcile these accounts with our faith in Israel’s vaunted purity of arms and the enduring sense that, despite the inevitable evils of marginal individuals, “Jews just don't do these kinds of things.”

But apparently a few do—and perhaps more than the outliers that we might grudgingly accept as typical of any nation. This is especially true in a post October 7th/post traumatic era which has altered the broader Israeli psyche in unprecedented ways: From an IDF confronting ideological extremism that threatens discipline, to broad nonchalance in the face of rising attacks in the West Bank against innocent Palestinian villagers and farmers. Beyond an understandable radicalization that would emerge in the aftermath of an assault as devastating as October 7th, a mindset has taken hold amongst a small but disproportionately empowered segment of Israelis in which an impulse toward vengeance has given way to a more enduring devaluing of Palestinian life.

Since the article’s publication, the Israeli government and its most ardent American supporters have leveled scathing attacks on its author. They cite the lack of credible sources, such as the dubious NGOs with notorious bias against Israel, and a reliance upon Hamas operatives masquerading as “journalists.” Others have cited the consequences of an increase in the Palestinian prisoner population and the employ of scantily trained army reservists as guards. Most concede that wide-spread physical abuse likely occurs in a penal system under the auspices of Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir—whose very status in the current government is a blight upon the Jewish people.

But the spurious scope of the charges of systematic rape seems similar to the kind of moral inversion intended with the use of the term “genocide” to inflict psychic harm on the very people whose victimization sparked the term’s coinage. And many see more than coincidence in the article’s publication on the very day that an Israeli commission released its own documented account of Hamas’ strategy of rape on October 7th. As if there is an equivalency between Hamas’ defining brand of brutality and the rarity of such abominations amongst Israelis.

While it may offer comfort to dismiss much of this as cherry-picked propaganda designed to demonize and delegitimize the Jewish State, this situation, combined with other alleged war crimes, suggests a growing sickness in the Zionist body politic. Thus, the narratives around Israel that have forged so much of American Jewish identity chafe at the actuality of Jewish malfeasance.

I understand the reticence to air our dirty laundry—our shonda for the goyim— to a world seemingly salivating to leverage any Jewish failures as fodder to destroy the Jewish State and relegate global Jewry to its previous pariah status. That will inevitably happen. But with the stakes so high, a resistance to moral clarity cannot impede our need to act. The world may hold Israel and Jews to unreasonable standards. But that does not justify an abdication of the sacred ethic which inspires our actions and defines us as Jews.

For our historic superpower in overcoming millennia of persecution was a strength of character and commitment to a faith rooted in values that enabled us to rise above how others defined us. We were assured of who we were and who God wanted us to be. If we compromise or dilute those core beliefs now, especially now, amidst a resurgence in global hostility, then we will have lost that power—-that fire of the spirit—celebrated by the biblical prophets. It is a power that defies petty politics and military might. And if we squander it in pursuit of a knee-jerk denialism in a PR war we will never win, we will have aided our enemies in our own destruction.

This process will require painful admissions and concessions, both within Israeli society and amongst the American Jewish community. It will produce an uncomfortable confrontation between the liberal democratic values that most American Jews hold sacred and an Israel careening down a dangerous and dire path toward autocracy, ethno-nationalism, and messianism. It will require that we exert the political and cultural influence we’ve garnered over decades in support of the burgeoning Jewish State toward a reclamation of our beloved homeland from the throes of impassioned extremism. If we refuse to act out of an obsession with our illusions, or if we fear aiding and abetting our enemies more than we feel an obligation to bring healing and wholeness to our people, than we will sacrifice more than a nation in time. We will diminish our eternal souls.

For we possess a process of teshuvah—of repentant return—that is as powerful for nations in crisis as it is for individuals during our High Holyday season. And the first step in that process is to embrace a heshbon nefesh—an honest accounting of our deeds towards an effort to rectify them. We must lead the chorus calling for investigations into these charges, as well as for the creation of a commission to ferret out the failures of October 7th. And we do so not merely to purge the prison system of this poison, or to clear the good name of our homeland and our people. We must embrace this painful but purposeful process for the integrity of our being as Jews.

In his Second Inaugural Address, Lincoln envisioned an end to the Civil War and a hope for a reunited nation, free of bitterness and a lust for retribution. In words that bound statecraft with soul craft to heal a riven society, he intoned his prayer for renewal “with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right.” Our moment demands from us a similar firmness in the right against the tremulous compromises of unexamined character. It is the only way of true return toward the path of repair, reconciliation, and ultimate redemption.

The tension in King David’s throne room must have been thick enough to cut with the kind of iron age sword his son Solomon would later wield to teach quarreling baby-mothers a lesson. The Prophet Nathan devised a clever way to confront David’s troubling abuse of power in taking the married Bathsheba as wife while sending her husband into the maw of the Ammonite front to die. Still unsure of the monarch’s wariness of limitations, Nathan recounts a story of a wealthy man possessing of many flocks, who takes the beloved sheep of a poor man to feed his guests. David falls crown over sandals into Nathan’s rhetorical trap, cursing the pitiless rich man and demanding recompense from him. The prophet mic-drops the clincher: You are that man!

For millennia, temporal and religious power have vied for supremacy in leadership. Rather than remaining in their respective lanes of authority and credibility, secular sovereigns have often cloaked their agendas in the garb of religious witness, and agents of the divine have sought the service of the sword to embolden the message of faith.

The biblical prophets in particular offered a cogent and potent response to both political excesses and clerical corruption. And those voices of conscience and propriety have resounded tellingly through the ages in the recent exchange between President Trump and Pope Leo XIV. But this Battle of the Instagram Icons reflects a growing and disturbing pattern of boundary crossing between holy precincts and halls of power.

Even prior to the Petulant POTUS’ latest tirade, his administration had wrapped a profane political agenda in sacramental vestments. The ascendant minions of White Christian Nationalism—a theological oxymoron that punches well above its eight syllable weight—had already forged a symbiotic bond of mutual metastases with the current US regime. In particular, War Chieftain Pete Hegseth’s fanboy passion for the Crusades, emblazoned across a too-Tik-Toked fleshy canvas, has trans-substantiated the Pentagon into an evangelical tent meeting and battle reports into devilish quoting of scripture.

But perhaps the most troubling testament to this shallow and cynical perversion of church for state was on global display in the President’s last few days of late night lunacy. He posted threats of civilizational-extermination-as-war-crime on the day billions of believers celebrated the Prince of Peace’s transcendence over death. And when the Vicar of that same Christ dared to preach the Gospels to quell the world he had torched, the Mandarin of Mar-a-lago clapped back at the Pontiff as if he was Rosie O’Donnell in a white tunic. And to add his ignorance to our injury with a temerity best expressed in emphatic Yiddish as chutzpah, Trump drafted the bible-thumping sycophant Mike Johnson and Catholic-come-lately JD Vance to lecture the Holy Father on the finer points of Canon Law! The blasphemous posting of the AI-slopped “Dr. Jesus” was almost anti-climactic after the hail of PR heresy that preceded it.

This episode would be merely laughable for its outrageousness and stupidity if we were not in the midst of a hot and ill-conceived war, and if the leader of the world’s most powerful military possessed something beyond the moral rectitude of an addled adolescent playing Call of Duty. But the stakes are, indeed, painfully high, the consequences disturbingly dire, and the outcome a cross that all of us must bear.

In the midst of another conflagration, a more discerning and courageous president faced a similar opportunity to invoke divine support for his cause. When asked if God was on the side of the Union against the enslaving Confederacy, Abraham Lincoln was said to have responded, “...my concern is not whether God is on our side...my greatest concern is to be on God’s side, for God is always right.” It was a display of humility and judiciousness that is starkly refreshing when gauged against what passes for leadership in this fraught moment. And it reflected a faith rooted less in rhetorical certainty than in spiritual wonder, less in a justification for military might than a concession to moral necessity, less in the love of power than in the power of love.

As the United States and Israel confront the evil of the Iranian regime with a war strategy that is as multi-faceted as it is unclear, one thing is certain: Iran’s citizens, the region, and the world will be far better off without an extremist leadership devoted to exporting its regressive and violent vision throughout the world. And while the United States has significant interests in disarming and replacing the ruling government, for Israel the threat is existential. Both in the proximity of its geography and the intensity of its ideological hatred, Iran is an implacable enemy that has pursued Israel’s annihilation.

In our tradition, while the pursuit of peace is ideal, concessions to the reality of dire enemies bent on our destruction fostered the development of a just war doctrine. The concept of a milchemet mitzvah—an obligatory war against an intractable foe—struck a judicious balance between the need for a defensive military response and inherent limitations on the way in which war is prosecuted. In the heat of battle and fog of war errors happen and the innocent inadvertently get caught in the crossfire. But there is a difference between intended barbarism and remorseful tragedy.

Not surprisingly, 93% of Israelis on the front lines of this conflict support the war. And while fewer the 41% of Americans are rallying to the ramparts for yet another distant Mideast intervention, many American Jews are deeply conflicted. As Jews, our love for the people of Israel and commitment to their defense are unquestioned. But as Americans, we have profound concerns for the troubling manner in which this war has unfolded. And while we are proud of the tactical success of our servicemen and women, we lack faith in the murky strategy and rank incompetence of the top tier of civilian leadership.

Some see this as a reflection of the political liberalism of a majority of American Jews. Others diagnose Trump Derangement Syndrome for the inability of many Jews to give credit to an operation they might otherwise embrace if not for its origins in the current POTUS. But these obvious attributions mask a much more insidious fear: This war is the most egregious and dangerous exercise of an executive power cascading toward untrammeled authoritarianism, with devastating consequences for American citizenship and Jewish survival.

In many ways, it is the climax of a year of unrestrained attacks on the institutions and structures of our liberal democracy. The complete and total thwarting of the constitutional process in going to war--with its established checks, required consents, and critical debates—feels to many like the final straw of a presidency constrained more by the dubious moral sensibilities of an individual than the well-conceived mechanisms of our Founders. Most American Jews find themselves struggling between competing obligations: Support for Israel’s mandatory defense against a treacherous and threatening enemy, and the need to confront the stark abuses of power and prerogative of this President-who-would-be-King.

In many ways, Israelis have the luxury of a surety born of necessity in pursuing this conflict. They are clear in the need to end the Iranian threat once and for all before the regime races toward a nuclear capability that insulates it from further attack. Thus, Israelis contend that American Jews must put aside doubts about the nature of our leadership and fall in line behind the short term gains of a defanged Iran. But we American Jews have a longer, more complex horizon of consequences, those unintended and those deftly foreseen. And while we must do all we can to ensure that Israel endures, we cannot do so at the expense of our security, our safety, and the integrity of the Republic upon which our very lives depend.

The pithy wisdom of the rabbis, Pirke Avot—The Ethics of the Fathers—reminds us: Be careful about the government, as they approach a man only when they need him. They seem like good friends in good times, but they don’t stay for him in time of his trouble. American Jews who love Israel must always approach our government with care and caution, binding our hopes abroad with vigilance at home, lest we gain the wellbeing of our brethren and lose the blessings of our sacred citizenship.

And yet, we are wary and worried about the profound lack of consent, consensus, and consideration in launching this military operation. The administration’s refusal to align international allies and its rejection of the Constitutional requirements for Congressional approval raise stark concerns for the integrity of our democracy—with far-reaching implications for our rights as citizens and security as Jews.

And the last century of American adventurism in the Middle East has rarely produced the kind of positive change we envisioned. More often, our doubling down on the faults and follies of decades of ill-conceived Western intervention have deepened divides and amplified dangers.

We pray that this operation will proceed quickly and effectively. We pray for the safety and wellbeing of the people of Israel who bear the brunt of Iranian retaliation. We pray for the brave US servicemen and women who risk the last full measure of their devotion in defending our nation. We pray for the citizens of the Arab partners for peace who stand in harm’s way. And we pray that the vast majority of the Iranian people will seize this opportunity to reclaim their place and their promise amongst the family of nations.

My son Ben has grown into a thoughtful, well-versed, empathetic, and politically-engaged young man. His recent acceptance into rabbinic school and commitment to a pathway of service to the Jewish people and beyond has deepened his concerns about spirituality, morality, and how they are lived out in the world.

When I have questions about the experiences and views of young adults—a perspective that I am increasingly distant from over the years—I reach out to Ben. And I’ve asked him about a disturbing pattern of thought amongst his generation: A growing sense of cynicism, hopelessness, and even nihilism. Much of this is reflected in what so many of us hear from so many young adults: That in light of our current trajectory—the world is not a place in which to bring children.

In typical “Ok-Boomer” fashion, I try to respond from a broader, historical perspective: As bad as things are now, they are far better as a whole for more people than ever in human history—especially for Jews despite the troubling rise in antisemitism. And I share what I think is a closer of a comment: If Mom and I, our parents, or our grandparents felt and acted in this way, none of you would be here and we would face an even bleaker future.

Now, Ben is emerging and evolving as a person of faith, one who now by vocation is committed to working to defend and to forge a better future for all. But he is acutely sensitive to his peers, and answers with the ultimate closing comment: Dad, the existential threats of climate change are a unique, unprecedented, and absolute threat to our future that is distinct from what any generation before has faced.

And he’s right—as he often is. The climate crisis is totalizing, all-consuming, and despair-inducing. And while we are rightly concerned about threats to our liberal democracy, the rise of authoritarianism, a State of Israel on a perilous path and the resurgence of the world’s oldest hatred—antisemitism—all of these considerable threats pale against the darkening specter of an unlivable environment and dying world.

One of the pithy axioms of Pirke Avot—The Ethics of our Ancestors—teaches that “Im ein kemach, ein Torah. Im ein Torah, ein kemach—if there is no flour or sustenance there can be no Torah. And if there is no Torah there can be no flour or sustenance.” The lesson is simple: Without a concern for the basic material needs of life, there can be no higher appreciation of ideals and values. And without a grounding in core principles, our most basic needs amount to little more than mere existence, not the full panoply of true living.

This week we celebrated Tu Bishvat—a focus on the critical role of trees in our lives and our world—an annual commemoration that has expanded to encompass a broader environmental consciousness. And juxtaposed to that as if by serendipity—this week’s Torah portion is Yitro, recounting the giving of the Ten Commandments. Sometimes, these seemingly random intersections of text and event speak powerfully to our moment.

It is easy to become consumed by the doom-scrolling litany of daily obscenities and outrages that fill our newsfeeds and chats. Larger, slower-moving threats seem to fade into the catastrophic background hum as the price of modernity. But Jewish wisdom and observance seek to shake us out of this complacency, concession and negligence, rousting us to remember the issues that are most important in our lives and the ideals that speak to us across the centuries—guiding and inspiring our attitudes and our actions.

And just to add one more overarching crisis to the mix—not to pile on or overwhelm, but to highlight and prioritize yet another dire concern that might have slipped your attention. Yesterday, our government allowed the final nuclear arms treaty with Russia to lapse, ushering in another nuclear arms race that, decades hence--with weapons better equipped to evade and destroy—and international relations at a nadir of negativity and disconnect—returns us to the precipice of global annihilation. If left unchecked, the climate will get us in years. Nuclear neglect or accident in the age of greater AI control of our lives would end us in a matter of minutes.

As the modern prophet George Carlin quipped, if we continue on this course, the world will survive and shake us off like gnats. Our self-centered sense of the end of the world is merely the conclusion of the anthrocene—the end of our life and viability on it. Without a more concerted addressing of the climate crisis and nuclear threat, our kemach—our sustenance—will be endangered. And without a clear-eyed commitment to the Torah—the transcendent values of our faith--apathy and alienation will be the hallmark of humanity’s fall.

But like the prophets of old, I can’t leave you with doom and gloom alone-- without some sense of hope and promise. For me, Ben’s embrace of moral leadership—and that of so many others like him—affirms my faith in a future that we of this generation must do all we can to help them secure. But we need to give them some sense that we recognize the challenge, are committed to answering this critical call, and are willing to put ourselves on the line to gift them a better world.

The song Nature’s Way by the band Spirit was written by Randy California—a name given to him by Jimi Hendrix when they were in the same band. He was born Randy Craig Wolfe, and I like to think that his Jewish background played some role in penning a song for the burgeoning ecological movement of 1970. It is both a heightening of awareness and a warning—to heed the call of nature to serve and secure this resource as God commands in the Book of Genesis. But as our covenant reminds us, the choice to defend and protect or to squander and surrender the blessings of Creation lies within our hearts and within our hands.

Analogies can be deceptive or instructive. They can simplify to the point of stereotyping or inspire a parallel response to similar conditions. Godwin’s law cautions against using Nazi analogies that trivialize atrocity and end constructive debate. But sometimes analogies—especially visual comparisons—convey far more than a thousand words of exposition. The prohibition against overgeneralizing comparisons conflicts with the obligation to mark eerie similarities to past descents. Thus, analogies can starkly juxtapose how little progress we’ve made as a society, and how little we’ve learned from a troubling past.

The above image pairings were provided by others (here, here, here, here, and here). And they seem to be seeing something more than the typical use of an unfair rhetorical cudgel against ideological enemies. They reveal a quite deliberate donning of a fascistic bearing and embrace of a militaristic approach to statecraft that is meant to intimidate and subdue precisely because of its historic antecedents. What was once considered embarrassing and shameful behavior long relegated to a primitive past has been recast as a kind of authoritarian cosplay. Untrammeled violence against peaceful protesters, the masking of governmental officials akin to the guises of those who commit atrocities, the normalization of extrajudicial killing, nationalist appeals to a bellicose-style of manhood, and sartorial references to Nazi officials reflects something more insidious and more blatant than random trolling. It is a full-throated commitment to the trappings of tyranny.

The peaceful amongst the protesters in Minneapolis (the vast majority) are wielding one of the most powerful tools to confront and expose the excesses and injustice of abused governmental authority and power: The Act of Witnessing. As a next-gen iteration Dr. King’s calculated use of televised images to reveal to the world how Bull Connor’s firehoses and dogs viciously attacked non-violent protesters (including and especially children), our era of a video-camera-in-every-pocket ensures both the widest possible exposure of state-sanctioned violence and provides documentary evidence to counter the administration’s discrediting propaganda.

The concept of “eidut” or testimony is foundational in Judaism as a cornerstone of a just society. The consequences of bearing false witness rose to inclusion as one of the Ten Commandments. Rabbinic literature comments extensively on how to interrogate witnesses and the requirement to glean testimony from at least two witnesses when judging the most serious crimes. Voices in the tradition even describe the entire Torah as God’s recorded witness for humanity. The implementation of justice through a judicial system—let alone the sustaining of some consensual form of truth and reality—depends upon trust in truthful testimony.

This Jewish virtue is most dramatically reflected in the critical need for witnesses to the Shoah. Holocaust denial emerged early in the post War era, and it has metastasized as the generation of witnesses has passed, general knowledge of history has waned, and the specter of social-media-amplified-antisemitism has accelerated. When the last direct survivor dies, our access to the past will depend upon who has the most robust digital platform.

But even more broadly, the growing prevalence of AI deep fakes has both consumed the cultural consciousness with false fodder for our lying eyes and rendered even the most accurate visual record vulnerable to claims of manipulation. When even the witness of our most elemental senses can no longer be trusted or endorsed by others, those who have power will define reality for all of us. Thucycides’ dictum will rule absolutely: The strong will do what they can, and the weak will endure what they must.

We must be careful in crafting and wielding our analogies for fear of perverting the past or misrepresenting the present. But we must not recoil from seeing in this current moment’s trials the all-too-familiar echoes of darker days if we are to forge for ourselves a better tomorrow. Our collective witness must be our badge and our bond if we are to face the future honestly.

A triggering talisman that reveals founts of memory is not confined to the literary realm of Proust’s madeleine. Even the passing of a pop cultural icon—-most recently guitarist Bob Weir of psychedelic Americana’s Grateful Dead—can palpably replay nostalgic echoes of the soundtrack of our salad days.

I came to the Dead in the last third of their trippy tenure, beginning my journey on that long strange trip in the early 80’s. It was a time of transition from teen dependence to unsupervised adult freedoms. And attending a Dead show seemed the pinnacle of benignly licentious liberation, an exploration of individual boundaries amidst a community bound by the esoteric knowledge of riding “on the bus.” The elbows-on-the-boards good fortune of proximity to the pulsing and kaleidoscopic core of this movement transformed arenas, meadows, and stadiums from generic public gathering spaces to vehicles of a utopian Oneness that would have seemed naive idealism in any other place.

The news of Bob Weir’s passing filled me with a sadness and loss that transcended the inevitable death of aging legends. It brought me back to those moments of my youth, when sleeping in unheated vans, traversing tribal tents festooned with swirling colors for hours upon hours on an ocean of parking lot, and finally rushing to get a prime spot on the floor in the hopes of hearing a favorite “Terrapin” or “Dark Star” had a disproportionate impact upon my consciousness. And the feeling of strolling—sweaty and spent from dancing—into the cold night air after sharing such a seemingly profound and connected experience left a spiritual impression that endures to this day.

Amongst the many insights and observations emerging in the wake of Weir’s transition to the Undiscovered Country, three resonate with my own reflections on our shared past. First, Weir’s role as youngest member of the band—seeming more a teenage runaway than pioneering founder amongst the elder bluesmen, folkies and psychonauts—testified to the capabilities of youth to transform culture. Weir embodied the broader message of the era: The rising generation would chart their own course apart from the mores and mandates of ebbing authority.

Weir also affirmed the foundational power of rhythm guitar—an instrument and slot in an ensemble that until that point had been relegated to the stage’s shadows (Keith Richards being another notable exception). Wielding the sonic singularity of ragtime inversions lifted from the keyboard, his interweaving partnership with Garcia’s lead wizardry propelled rhythm playing from background beat to intricate complement. It offers a larger life lesson regarding the potential of those amongst the ostensible second tier to share the spotlight with humility and purpose.

And finally, Bobby modeled aging gracefully, clearly aspiring to rise to the role of eminence gris for the throne that Jerry vacated with his passing more than 30 years prior. His transformation from glamor guy in Izod shirts and cut-off shorts (relative to the rest of the band’s more hippie aesthetic) to wizened and graying sage reflected a comfort with the intractable passing of the years that seemed a natural evolution from his previous persona and the classic image of rock stardom. In particular, Bobby (if we could still call him that) seemed inspired by the vibe of the Book of Ecclesiastes, in which a king who has seen it all and done it all reflects on what is most important in life. With a Solomonic flair, he intoned, "I look forward to dying. I tend to think of death as the last and final reward for a life well lived. That's it."

In that spirit, this living room performance of one Bob’s signature rendition of another Bob’s words is a fitting coda.

This balance between engagement and avoidance, an embrace of the wider civic culture and the need to regard centers of power with care and vigilance, fueled the concerns of so many in the Jewish community during the recent electoral cycle. In particular, Zohran Mamdani’s campaign and victory in New York City divided its Jewry. Most communal leaders decried his anti-Israel activism, seeing his rise to power as seeding a climate in which anti-Zionism easily slips into antisemitism. While the majority of younger Jews, wary of Israel’s actions under Prime Minister Netanyahu and more driven by the affordability crisis and economic fairness, propelled the millennial mayoral candidate to Gracie Mansion.

Here in Seattle, Mayor-elect Katie Wilson’s campaign seemed to ride a West Coast wave of Mamdanism in its focus on housing and cost of living. And yet there seemed to be only scant expressions of a similar antipathy toward Israel, save for a misguided embrace of the genocide canard in a random social media post. But in the current climate of metastasizing antisemitism in the post October 7^th era, any indication that our civic leaders might foster a wider license to normalize antisemitism is a cause for grave concern.

It is easy and obvious to cite antisemitism coming from the Progressive Movement in its decades-long crusade against the Jewish State. But if we are to be consistent—and thus effective—in our fight against this and all forms of bigotry, then we must condemn the stark resurgence of anti-Jewish hate coming from the next generation of the Conservative Movement.

The commentator Jonathan Rauch employs the analogy that the excesses of the Left are like cancer—slow growing, insidious, and ultimate deadly—while the extremes of today’s Right are a heart attack—imminent, urgent, and lethal. If we are exorcised about the cultural rot at the heart of progressive indoctrination of the young, then we must be equally alarmed at the emerging extremism from the empowered Right. The ascendance of the neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes, as he forges a Gen-Z iteration of Hitler Youth, has been amplified and sanctioned by the mainstreamed toxicity of Tucker Carlson—this generation’s Jew-hating Henry Ford.

Echoes of this insidious ideology resound in the halls of power, emanating from the highest reaches of our government. We are justified in our wariness of a percolating grassroots antisemitism coming from the far reaches of academia and activism. But to do so while ignoring—or worse—justifying its dramatic rise and normalization in the Conservative movement is both delusional and dangerous. Even tacit endorsement of Israel’s radical government or the camouflaging of culture war in the guise of combatting antisemitism is not, as is often framed, “good for the Jews.” And it is equally perilous for Jews as Americans, and for all of those who cherish our liberal democracy.

I truly hope that Mayor-Elect Wilson will, indeed, unite all Seattle citizens in her efforts to foster equal access, opportunity, and wellbeing as fundamental rights.I also ardently hope she will resist the larger ideological trends of her political affiliations, refusing to render grand pronouncements on foreign policy that are well beyond her responsibilities to secure the safety and prosperity of our city.I stand ready to work with her and all in our community, guided and inspired by the values and ideals that bind us in building a better Seattle.

The lessons of Chanukah have inspired and sustained Jews throughout our tumultuous and tenuous history. Millennia ago, the courage and resolve of the small band of Jewish fighters rising against the tyranny of Greek religious oppression have continued to resonate in every age as Jews sought the fundamental freedoms of liberty and faith. And a celebration of light in the darkest days of the year provided a powerful metaphor for broader efforts to dispel the pall of human evil with the brilliance of moral possibility. But yet again, the forces of darkness seem ascendant, transforming family gatherings on a Bondi beach into a killing field of intolerance.

Perhaps one of the most heartbreaking realizations of our current moment is that young Jews are experiencing a scope of antisemitism more akin to the challenges that our parents and grandparents faced than our own. Those of us who came of age in the last quarter of the 20^th century were living in what in retrospect seems a Golden Age of acceptance. The moral trajectory that shaped the embrace and support of so many historically marginalized communities over the decades feels as if it has passed over the Jewish community--a kind of Groundhog Day of pathological hatred.

At our Sunday morning worship service for families, the very young were oblivious to the events of the day, as they should be. But the older students and parents were clearly affected. They sought the solace and comfort that so many Jews feel in communal spaces to allay the tension between a concern for security and a determination to be present. I shared the powerful and newly relevant lessons of the Chanukah story: The need to stand up and fight for our freedom to believe and to practice our faith against those determined to deny us; and the hope that we can be bringers of light and life to an increasingly dark and desperate time. It was a message that could speak to all levels of experience and understanding.

But I’ve come to realize that the simple metaphor of illuminating the darkness, while compelling, is insufficient to meet the trials of the moment. Judaism envisions the sacred scripture of Torah and the wisdom of tradition as a more authentic and enduring source of “light.” And so, what is needed now more than ever is an enlightenment of mind and soul: The beacon of education, knowledge and truth to pierce the veil of ignorance, misinformation, and falsity; the brightness of empathy, understanding, and dialogue to tear through the shroud of tribalism, mob mentality and siloed thought; the radiance of dignity, respect, and love to cast out the gloom of bigotry, selfishness, and contempt.

Later that evening, we welcomed the first night of Chanukah with a joyous gathering geared toward young families. Our community has become accustomed to a prominent security detail, and so the additional presence of police was more reassuring than distracting. We lit the first candle, chanted the prayers and sang the melodies of the season. And then...the children began to dance. Toddlers giggled and teetered on wobbly legs, as preschoolers twirled and spun, joining in rotating rings of uninhibited glee.

I sat on the stairs of the sanctuary, surveying the scene as my heart overflowed with the power of the moment and my admiration for an expression of pride and passion unburdened by the trials of our times. But I came to understand that this was, indeed, the ultimate response to the myriad foes who sought--and continue to seek--our demise and dissolution. Even in the face of a terror designed to intimidate, exclude, and repress, our people meet hatred with hope, fear with faith, rising violence with enduring love. It is a sacred and eternal insight that offers much to salve the wounds of our broken world. And perhaps only the youngest amongst us can truly lead the way

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The Bible recounts the struggle of the Patriarch Jacob on that dark night of the soul along the banks of the river Yabbok. Confronted with the prospect of a violent reunion with a resentful brother the next morning, Jacob sends his family away to remain alone in his fear and trembling. With a terse description that amplifies vagueness and mystery, he wrestles with a divine being, suffers a cosmic charley horse with dietary implications, and seems to vanquish his foe, earning a blessing and a new name: Yisrael—a God-striver.

The account is ripe for interpretation and projection. But one take on the text has been as resonant through the centuries as it remains today: Jacob was wrestling with himself. The selfish schemer and exploiter is transformed through the crucible of his possible death to become a figure worthy of the mantle of leadership of his tribe, and by extension, successive generations of Jews.

In this moment, American Jews are in a similar bout of self-struggle regarding our relationship with the State of Israel. Since its founding, the vast majority of us offered vigorous support for Israel’s existence and survival through its vigilant defense against dangerous and implacable enemies. After October 7^th, we rallied against the existential threats that echoed the Holocaust and the War of Independence. Through a year of bitter conflict and extensive civilian casualties in Gaza, most American Jews held fast in their constancy, even in the face of rising antisemitism at home. This despite waning trust in Israel’s extremist governing coalition and a prime minister seemingly willing to pay any price to stay in power and stay out of jail.

But as the first phase of the war ebbed into the present, with Israel standing astride a Middle East remade through a degraded Hamas, an eviscerated Hezbollah, and a defanged Iranian patron of both, sentiment has shifted. Concern for the fate of the hostages—both the living and now the growing dead—supplants Netanyahu’s phantom military objectives and fantastical promises of “total victory.” The continuing civilian death toll, empowerment of West Bank settler violence, and exploitation of Gaza humanitarian aid as a bargaining chip has turned a justified act of defense into a war of attrition and futility.

In the current, neccessary conflict with Iran, some claim that we must postpone these probing moral discussions while engaged in the heat of battle. How can we dare to question broader Israeli policy—the thinking goes—while the missiles of the mullah’s fall on Tel Aviv? In many ways, this has been the Netanyahu camp’s claim over the last 18 months, hoping that a forever war in Gaza will delay or deny the reckoning due for the government’s arrogance and neglect leading to October 7^th.

But like thoughtful, intelligent people individually, a society or nation can confront two existential issues simultaneously. Indeed, they must navigate these concerns if they truly are or aspire to be moral entities. The messianism, radicalism, and corruption of the Israeli government, and its prosecution of a war in Gaza that increasingly appears to serve political expedience, are dire threats to Israel’s survival that amplify Iran’s vision of the demise of the Jewish State.

Most Israelis have soured on this longest of the nation’s conflicts in Gaza, as cynical political machinations eclipse the fate of long-suffering captives. Increasing numbers of former intelligence and military officials have spoken out against the threats to national security emerging from the status quo. And a recent poll revealed that 70% of citizens demand a ceasefire that will keep faith with the promise of Zionism to bring home the taken and the fallen.

Those of us who have loved, advocated, and fought for Israel’s survival have walked the narrowing tightrope of unconditional support for Israel as a national refuge and core of Jewish identity, while criticizing—sometimes quite vehemently—the actions and policies of specific governments. In many ways this mirrors the efforts of so many Americans, who cherish the liberal democratic foundations of the United States, while decrying an administration that seeks to undermine its tenets toward authoritarian rule in the service of shameless graft.

But as the prospects for the war’s end and a resolution to the conflict become more distant, we seem to have arrived at a point in which a conceptual defense of Israel becomes more strained in the face of the actuality of its actions. Jewish tradition describes a Jerusalem of supernal ideals (yerushalayim shel mala) and the messiness of its earthbound reality (yerushalalyim shel mata). This is echoed in David Ben Gurion’s famous hope that a mythic Israel might become a “normal” nation, with prostitutes and thieves speaking Hebrew.

But Jews see Israel as a unique and special nation, guided and inspired by Jewish values, aspiring to exceed the normal requirements of statecraft. Thus, expectations for Israel’s exceptionalism vie with concessions to its realpolitik. The challenge lies at the point in which those concessions become too costly, subsuming our ideals, trying our faith in Israel’s future, and jeopardizing continuing support of a beloved homeland on a tragic trajectory.

Israel is at a crossroads. One path leads to a pariah state, one that doubles down on continuing war and endless occupation masking radical extremism, authoritarian governance, and unchecked corruption. The other road is one of return and repair, as the dream of Zionism once again drives a military devoted to defense rather than forced into subjugation, a civic life that shines a democratic light unto the nations rather than casting a dimming shadow of global autocracy, and a spirit that inspires the pursuit of visionary ideals rather than a surrender to ethno-nationalism.

Jews the world over have a stake, a voice, and a responsibility to speak out, to stand up, and to declare unequivocally that this war must end. We must join with Israelis who are rising in the streets and shouting in the public squares to bring our beloved homeland back from the brink of a descent into a culture that has more in common with European dictatorships and Islamic theocracies than Western democracies founded upon Jewish values. We must bridge the growing chasm between the arc of Israel’s current policies and the liberal values—borne of the Torah’s wisdom-- cherished by most of American Jewry. We risk losing not only the current but certainly future generations of Jews who will see in Israel not the flowering of Jewish redemption but the sorrow of unrequited dreams. This is not a threat nor an ultimatum, but rather an inevitable cause and consequence. It is a warning as old as the biblical prophets and as imminent as the call of conscience in this moment.

Like the reborn Jacob on that dark and tussling night, we—all Jews--are Yisrael—destined to struggle and to strive—torn between the obligations of the world and the demands of the spirit—with a heart yearning and an eye gazing toward a Zion that is exceptional in its pursuits, judicious in its compromises, and exemplary in its reconciliation of the world as it is with the world that can be.

For the last few centuries, Jews have flourished in the acceptance and prosperity afforded by liberal democracy. And the hallmarks of that value system emerged from a vigilant defense of the rights to speak, to learn, to teach, and to believe. And so, with the current rise of a new brand of American authoritarianism, unprecedented attacks on these civil liberties pose unique threats to Jews as citizens of this nation and as members of a faith community.

In the few years before October 7^th, antisemitism was a mutating and metastasizing menace that percolated through the fissures of our culture at a time of increased tribalism and polarization. Since October 7^th, a generation of Jews who have only known relative quiet and acceptance were shocked out of complacency into a hyper-vigilance and justified concern. But those genuine fears are being manipulated for a troubling agenda.

The attempted deportation of student-activist Mahmoud Khalil without due process, and the embargoing of $400 million dollars against Columbia University for its failures, are a canary-in-the-coal mine moment for lovers of liberty. It is clear that Khalil’s activism was a noxious attack on the State of Israel that most likely crossed the line into antisemitism. And it is equally clear that amongst the many universities that failed to protect Jews after October 7^th, Columbia was negligent to the point of institutional malpractice.

But the current attacks on Khalil and Columbia strike at the heart of the democratic system that has sustained American Jews for centuries. Speech and opinions alone cannot be punished without careening down the slippery slope of censorship. And a haphazard cutting off of government funding to universities will most likely eviscerate the least ideologically driven science departments—the engines of our medical research--while little affecting the crisis within the humanities.

But the bitterest irony is the way this assault on civil rights has been justified in the name of fighting antisemitism. Jewish fear is being exploited and leveraged to undermine the Constitution and the rule of law. And too many Jews are willing to sacrifice systematic freedoms for a fleeting sense of momentary comfort. This cloaking of authoritarianism in the guise of religious freedom is dividing the Jewish community and alienating it from the larger society in which we live. If the abuse of accusations of racism and transphobia are the cudgels of the illiberal left in imposing its ideological purity, the same is true with the misuse of claims of antisemitism from the right.

Almost fifty years ago, the Jewish leadership of the ACLU was viciously denounced for supporting the rights of the Nazis to march in Skokie, Illinois, a community with a substantial cohort of Holocaust survivors. Those leaders courageously argued that contempt and disgust for Nazi ideology can never supersede an unqualified defense of civil liberties. Indeed, those liberties are truly tested when we sustain them in defense of speech and ideas we abhor.

In the primary text for Jews--the Torah--we read of the Israelites at the foot of Mt. Sinai, waiting for weeks while Moses ascended to receive this divine document. Their spirits, crushed by bondage, constrained what little faith they had in a relatively unknown God. Their fears ran wild, consuming them with doubts in Moses’ ability and God’s promise. They built a Golden Calf, an idol familiar to them from the gods they had seen in Egypt.

To have allowed fear to undermine sacred ideals is one of the greatest failings of our people. To have pursued the soothing idols of immediate gratification over the courage and sacrifice required to live by higher principles reflected the limits of a primitive and immature soul. It is a lesson that all of us must take to heart in this time that tries our spirits and our bonds with one another.

As published in the Seattle Times, April 2, 2025