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Ammiel Hirsch

To young American Jews who turned your backs on our people

If you do not feel a special bond with other Jews, you are, in Jewish terms, emotionally damaged. A rabbi’s Yom Kippur confession
Activists with the pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel groups Jewish Voice for Peace and IfNotNow hold a rally demanding a ceasefire in Gaza on October 18, 2023, in Washington, DC. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images/AFP)
Activists with the pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel groups Jewish Voice for Peace and IfNotNow hold a rally demanding a ceasefire in Gaza on October 18, 2023, in Washington, DC. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images/AFP)

On a cool and gray morning typical of London summers, my wife and I sat in one of our favorite cafes near the hotel. We were passing through for the weekend on our way home from Europe. We stop in London every chance to visit our daughter and reawaken fond memories from our salad days.

Much has changed in the four decades since we were students there. In some ways London is much better; in other ways it is much worse. Anti-Israel protesters now fill the streets on a regular basis, expressing vile hatred for our people. The media is especially hostile. Loathsome politicians rile the masses.

As I was ruminating on this painful year, in walked a group of four Israeli tourists: an adult woman and three teenage girls. I couldn’t take my eyes off them. I tried to be innocuous. I tried to peek at them only from time to time when I thought they weren’t noticing. My wife and daughter admonished me: they whispered that these Israelis were noticing that I was looking at them, and they would assume that I was, at best, a freak, or worse, an Israel-hater — the kind of people you encounter more frequently in London nowadays.

But the sight of these Israelis stirred up two powerful emotions that have dominated my life since October 7.

First, I felt a sort of primordial rage — a sulfurous anger I struggle to control. It can appear out of nowhere, triggered by seemingly innocuous scenes, like three Israeli teenage girls and a mother walking into a London cafe on a gray English day. Look at what those barbarians wrought: beautiful girls like these were slaughtered, gunned down in a hail of bullets as if the murderers were shooting flowers. Adolescents like these were kidnapped. Mothers like this were executed in front of their children’s eyes.

The dimensions of the evil visited upon our people surpasses my ability to articulate. Language cannot contain my feelings. We assumed that this kind of medieval bloodlust was no longer possible in our era — and we lack the verbal skills to capture our emotions. It was a spasm of savagery, a pack of feral wolves ripping their prey, blood dripping from their teeth. They were proud of what they did. They filmed themselves. And the revelry continued in Gaza, where the hostages were presented to an ecstatic population as the spoils of war. Sweets were handed out. And the ghoulish euphoria spread to the West. Social media pulsated exultantly. Soon streets and campuses erupted in jubilation, blaming the victims for their own victimhood.

I confess: I feel so violated, so angry at what these barbarians have done to us, that it is hard for me to find additional room in my heart for those whose government launched this war, who celebrated the massacres, and is still enslaving dozens of hostages. Still, the suffering of Palestinian non-combatants feeds my anguish. To ignore civilian deaths — even if inflicted in accordance with the laws of just war, to feel nothing — no compassion, empathy, sorrow or lamentation for human despair — is un-Jewish. It leaves us with only the residue of self-obsession, self-absorption, self-interest and fear. Jews are described in our tradition as rachmanim b’nai rachmanim — merciful ones, the children of the merciful. With everything else we hold in our hearts, we must also make room for the suffering of the innocent.

The strongest of all bonds

The second emotion that overwhelmed me in the cafe was love. I didn’t know those four Israelis. I had never seen them before and will never see them again. Still, a wave of love and protectiveness for our people washed over me. Judaism teaches: All were created by God, and therefore, all have equal dignity and equal standing in the sight of God. But I feel the most intense love for my own family. My strongest affections are for my own people, nation and community.

It is not chauvinism to develop the strongest of all bonds with your own family. To the contrary: it is how we learn to develop bonds with other families. That you feel this special attachment to those closest to you does not imply that you feel nothing towards others. That you spend more of your time on your own children, does not imply that you have no responsibility for other people’s children. Judaism does not discredit our loyalties to family, people and nation. Rather, our tradition insists that the universal begins with the particular. Everything Jewish begins with Jewish peoplehood. Kol Yisrael areivin zeh ba’zeh — all Jews are responsible one for the other, the Sages taught. If you do not feel this special bond with other Jews, you are emotionally damaged, Jewishly.

The weakening of these bonds is my central concern regarding the future of the American Jewish community. I worry about our young people. Two generations of American Jews have been born with no lived experience of our desperation to survive the 20th century. The pogroms, the Holocaust, the establishment of the tiny and besieged state of Israel, the Six-Day War, the Yom Kippur War — these are all history to new generations, if they are even aware of our past. When lived experience becomes memory and memory becomes history, there develops the tendency to observe Judaism rather than live it; to analyze rather than participate; to stand at arm’s length rather than in close embrace.

To the next generation: I admire you. You are our future. Disagree with me, your parents, the Jewish establishment all you want. We will soon be passing the torch to you anyway — and you will decide what is best for our people. As your teachers, educators, rabbis, and moral guides, know that we tried to instill in you a sense of justice, righteousness, virtue, honor, rectitude, honesty and decency for all people. We are proud when your generation is active in pursuance of these values. And if these ideals lead you to be critics of Israeli policies or the American Jewish community, so be it. Welcome to the club. To mourn the loss of life, dislocation and misery of Palestinian civilians is a virtue. To have different opinions about the nature and timing of the war aims or a ceasefire in Gaza is entirely legitimate and appropriate.

Detached indifference

What we did not intend is for some in your generation to turn your backs on our people. We wanted you to be Zionists. We did not intend that our emphasis on tikkun olam — social repair — would lead some Jews to join anti-Israel demonstrations. We did not intend for Jews to lead Passover seders in so-called “liberated zones” (liberated from Zionists) that not only violate university policies but also threaten the safety of Jewish students. Some of those protests contain anti-American sentiments as well. We did not intend to encourage or excuse Jews who burn American flags, or support those who do.

The supreme leader of Iran sent messages of support and thanks to student protesters. That tells you everything you need to know. While America often falls short of its ideals, still, our values are far better than our enemies’, and we are blessed to live in this country.

We did not intend that criticism of Israeli policy to lead to detached indifference and a vacuous lack of compassion for the murdered, brutalized, sexually assaulted and kidnapped of our own people. We did not intend that some in your generation give not even a passing thought to the many tens of thousands of our people who have become refugees from their southern and northern homes. We did not intend to strip Jewish solidarity, empathy, responsibility and mutuality from your Jewish identity — not only towards Israeli civilians, but soldiers your age who exhibit astonishing courage and remarkable self-sacrifice, many of whom laid down their lives protecting our people in feats of enormous heroism.

We thought we were sensitizing young Jews to the Jewish obligation of social repair. We thought we were conveying the principles of Jewish universalism. We thought we were teaching g’milut hassadim — acts of lovingkindness. We thought we were instilling our yearnings for peace and justice and righteousness and truth — shalom, tzedek, mishpat, emet. We thought we were emphasizing the equal dignity of all human beings, each created be’tzelem Elohim — in the image of God. We did not expect the Jewish spirit to dribble away while we thought we were passing it on.

I hope we can do better in the years to come, and we have already taken steps at our synagogue to address what we think, in retrospect, were flaws in our educational approach. Of course, we can only build on what happens at home; we cannot create something out of nothing. If there is no Jewish spark, there can be no flame — and no passing of the Jewish torch.

At the beginning of the Book of Exodus, before Moses was called to leadership, the Torah describes the prince of Egypt’s first encounter with Hebrew slaves: “Moses grew up and he went out unto his brethren and he saw their suffering.”

The preeminent commentator Rashi asks: “If he went out to his brethren, do we need to be told that he saw their suffering? Since he had eyes, obviously he saw their suffering.” Rashi responds: “He directed his heart and eyes towards them so that he would suffer along with them.”

To all of us, especially young American Jews: Direct your hearts and your eyes towards your people. If they rejoice, rejoice with them. And if they are suffering, suffer with them. Mourn with them. Support them. Help them. Free them. Redeem them.

About the Author
Named among New York's "Most Influential Religious Leaders" by the New York Observer, Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch is the senior rabbi of Stephen Wise Free Synagogue in New York City. City & State New York magazine named him "the borough's most influential voice" for Manhattan's more than 300,000 Jews. He previously served as executive director of the Association of Reform Zionists of America.
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