The Blogs: A Prayer for Australia: May This Land Know Peace

Sydney Airport. My heart is full.

As I prepare to travel home, I carry with me profound gifts – of healing, of presence, and of unexpected joy. This journey has been sacred in ways I could not have anticipated. To sit with survivors. To listen. To embrace. To pray. To witness courage that does not erase pain but grows around it. I have been blessed not only to offer strength, but to receive it.

One afternoon, my beloved sister Tzeira and I walked through the Royal Botanic Gardens. We came upon this ancient eucalyptus tree. The moment I saw it, I felt drawn in. Its vast branches stretching outward, its trunk impossibly wide, roots gripping the earth with quiet insistence. When I placed my hand upon it, I felt time itself pulsing – rising from deep within the soil into my palm. The land carries memories. All of them. Sorrow and celebration. Trauma and tenderness. Standing there, I felt the ache of recent violence and the deeper, older resilience of life that refuses to disappear, something I’ve witnssed and appreciated in Australia’s culture – acknowledgement and reverence for the land and those who have walked it.

Healing is not forgetting. It is choosing to remain open. It is choosing presence. It is choosing joy when joy returns.

I am deeply grateful to my UJA-Federation of New York family for making this journey possible, for standing behind the sacred work of Jewish solidarity, for ensuring that no Jewish community feels alone, and for supporting me in being physically present here in this tender time. That embrace was felt across oceans.

As I board my flight, I offer a prayer for safety and protection for our Jewish family here in Australia, for all Australians, and for the world we share. May our roots hold firm. May our branches reach wide. And may the memories yet to be written on this land be blessed with peace.