Can we step forward from fear this Yom Kippur?
Suddenly, my Instagram feed has been filled with violent imagery depicting Palestinian supporters attacking Jews across the globe, including in Santa Monica, California, where I lived, and UCLA, where I went to school. I’m not alone and perhaps late in being force-fed this Jew-hate. Before, I told my children to safeguard their serenity by steering clear of these fearsome videos, let alone those showing the Hamas atrocities on 10/7. But now I wonder if I’ve been sending the wrong message? Yes, it’s important to protect your peace of mind, but instead of turning away, shouldn’t we be stepping forward? Don’t we need to lean in?
While struggling with this, I happened upon an impassioned speech by Melanie Phillips.[1] She is a British Jewish journalist currently writing for the Times of London, who describes herself as a liberal who has “been mugged by reality.” In her cri de coeur, Phillips calls on the Jewish community to move from the back foot to the front foot and start proclaiming truths, which many Jews find too uncomfortable and think extremist. The truths she calls out are that:
-Everything that Israel does is in accordance with international law
-The Jews are the indigenous people of the land, the whole land
-The Arabs are the colonialists
-There is no such thing as the Palestinians
-The Palestinian cause was invented only to steal the Jews’ identity and history in the land from them
-The Jews alone have legal and historical right to the land
-Anyone who supports the Palestinian cause is supporting Nazi style demonization of the Jews, ethnic cleansing, and genocide.
If Phillips is not wrong, who is ready to hear this? She acknowledges that the default position in public debate in the West is that Israel is a rogue state guilty of crime. Western elites fail to see that the war against Israel is an Islamic holy war first against Israel and then against the West. They blame Jews and Israel because they have fallen into a trap that has resulted in an onslaught against its core institutions and values. Accepting the provocation that the West was born of sin and is an oppressor that can do no right, they have surrendered their identity, conscience, justice and rationality. They blame Israel for doing what they cannot–to defend themselves. Will they listen to the truth? As a great Rebbe once told his distressed student: “I don’t have answers for you. But I can cry with you.”[2]
Perhaps these truths are most important for Jews to hear for themselves so they might maintain moral clarity. The Jewish imperative is to choose life (Deuteronomy 30:19) and not surrender solidarity, mutual compassion, or what is right and just (Gen. 18:19). Not only in the best of times, but in the worst, Jews need to engage for their people and themselves. The Bible tells us not to shrink from the good fight, neither in fear, nor panic nor dread (Deuteronomy 20:1-3; Mishneh Torah, Kings and Wars 7:15). To be sure, Judaism doesn’t seek a complete absence of fear, but rather management of it through faith and courage. Rabbi Nachman of Bratzlav explained, “the main thing is not to make yourself afraid,” rather than “to have no fear at all“.
At Yom Kippur, we confront the presence of evil both within ourselves and in the world. The day is about acknowledging and actively dealing with it. We pray that our great fear of G-d (יִרְאַ֣ת אֲ֭דֹנָי) will free us from all the lesser fears. But we also recognize that, “The fear of God is the hatred of evil” (Proverbs 8:13). Two years ago, on Simchat Torah, a great sin was perpetrated upon the People of Israel. In reverence of our shared memory and the fate of our hostage being held for ransom, we recognize there is no opportunity for atonement or forgiveness of the sins committed by Hamas and their supporters. We cannot retreat from their continuing evil and all the calumny we are suffering because of it, but must step forward and free ourselves to pray (Psalms 104:35 ): “May sinners disappear from the earth, and the wicked be no more.”
Endnotes
- M. Phillips, Israel’s secret weapon, JNS Policy Summit (posted April 29, 2025), at 2:43:18, https://melaniephillips.substack.com/p/israels-secret-weapon
- Recounted by Rabbi Simon Jacobson and quoted in, O. Bergman, What Do Jews Believe About Evil, Sefaria, https://www.sefaria.org/sheets/29877?lang=bi
