William Hamilton

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Mar 14, 2025, 4:34 PM

Right-sizing your ideals

“But what about your hope?” a sincere fellow-learner asked me recently. We were sharing coffee. Discussing the prospects for a conflict-solution in Israel’s neighborhood. I’d shared my position with him, that it required a massive identity-overhaul for Palestinians that would...

Mar 7, 2025, 5:51 PM

‘You cannot build a true future from a false past’

Our own stories get used against us. Gifted journalist Matti Friedman recently made this observation, when he noted how our enemies turn us against ourselves. The result? We get remade into the villains of our own stories. The Pharaohs...

Feb 28, 2025, 5:31 PM

Powerless or Compassionate-Power

A visit last week to the Tel Aviv Art Museum revealed two works that evoke Jewish powerlessness. One from 2023’s Nova Festival Massacre. Another from 1945 of a kneeled, desperate woman called Longing. The curator’s choice to put them...

Feb 21, 2025, 5:42 PM

70

How can forces that threaten to break me, remake me? This question, posed earlier this week by a friend in Jerusalem, is rummaging through my heart this morning. And I’m sure you know why. Our enemies continue to redraw the...

Feb 14, 2025, 5:37 PM

Emotional pain doesn’t take well to wearing a cast. A broken heart doesn’t heal the same way a fractured forearm does. Actually, such pain grows twice as big when it’s encased, when it’s held inside, when it’s left unshared. This...

Feb 7, 2025, 5:59 PM

The Hebrew word for faith, emunah, is prominent in this week’s portion of Torah. The Children of Israel sing their belief in God and Moses at the seashore, following the parting of the Red Sea. But it’s toward the...

Jan 31, 2025, 5:38 PM

How To Tell Your Story

Golda Meir had just arrived in Ghana in 1957. The occasion was the First All-African People’s Congress, with representatives from countries across the continent. Friction greeted her entrance into the room. The representative from Algeria demanded to know how...

Jan 24, 2025, 5:12 PM

How You Make Your Decisions

“Get me Amit’s family on the phone! I won’t breathe until I speak to Amit’s family!” Amit, a 22-year-old paramedic, was murdered on October 7, 2023 by Hamas enemies-of-peace (this describes them as well as ‘terrorists’). From his hospital...

Jan 17, 2025, 5:18 PM

“There was a moment when they (young IDF casualties) were laid out next to each other. And I went up to each one and touched their faces gently, I caressed them for a moment, and then I told them...

Jan 10, 2025, 5:39 PM

‘Because I wasn’t running alone’

“I was so worried about you,” said the young rabbinical student, Gerald Wolpe, to a frail Holocaust survivor in 1947. They were awaiting a Madison Square Garden viewing of the UN vote, authorizing the State of Israel. Everybody had...

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About Me

Rabbi William Hamilton has served as rabbi (mara d'atra) of Kehillath Israel in Brookline, MA since 1995.