From the Otef to Kashmir

I write this from my study in suburban America, yet the pain that reached me this late April felt as close as my own heartbeat. That afternoon, 26 tourists—25 Indian Hindus and one Nepali guide—climbed a winding road into Kashmir’s Baisaran Meadow, expecting alpine vistas and quiet reflection. Instead, militants opened fire, methodically asking victims their religion, sparing those who answered “Muslim,” and murdering the rest where they stood. Seventeen more were wounded in what became the deadliest civilian massacre in Kashmir in almost 20 years.

As a rabbi, I cannot separate this atrocity from our own tradition’s mandates on the value of a single life: every person is made in the image of God (b’tzelem Elohim) and “whoever destroys a single life… it is as though they destroyed an entire world” (Sanhedrin 37a). When I read that Lashkar-e-Taiba—rebranded here as the “Kashmir Resistance”—claimed responsibility, I felt that ancient moral fissure crack open again. India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi cut short his trip abroad, returned to Srinagar, and vowed on X: “Those behind this heinous act will be brought to justice… they will not be spared!” Yet such words offer scant comfort to grieving families.

Behind the headlines of diplomatic tit-for-tat—India suspending the 1960 Indus Waters Treaty, Pakistan closing airspace, both expelling diplomats—stands a more profound rupture: a rupture in our shared humanity. From Washington, President Donald Trump declared, “The United States stands strong with India against terrorism. Prime Minister Modi, and the people of India, have our full support and deepest sympathies.” France, Britain, the UN, the UAE, and Israel’s Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar, all condemned the killings as “senseless violence” and “barbaric attacks.” Yet we remember how condemnations alone cannot bind the national or personal wounds of lives stolen in broad daylight.

I cannot help but recall October 7, 2023—the day Hamas militants infiltrated Israeli communities and Nova, across the Western Negev, slaughtering 1,200 civilians and abducting over 250 hostages, too many still in captivity today. They murdered families in their homes, set fire to cars, in the worst single-day massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. Both in Israel and in Kashmir, extremists chose civilians—women, children, the elderly—as their prey, not soldiers, not combatants, but innocents living their lives.

The ideological cruelty runs deeper than tactics. Both Lashkar-e-Taiba and Hamas justify their violence by dehumanizing entire communities: Hindus as “outsiders,” Jews as “colonizers.” In each act, terrorists cast their victims as enemies unworthy of compassion. Our tradition teaches the opposite: every soul is sacred, every life a universe. Pikuach nefesh—the imperative to save life—overrides almost every other commandment. To remain silent when innocents die is to betray that sacred duty.

In the wake of October 7, many in India spoke out for Israel; I now call on Jewish communities to return that solidarity. When we stand with Hindu families mourning on Kashmir’s mountain slopes as fervently as we stood with Israeli families at candlelit vigils, we defy the terrorists’ goal of division. Silence in the face of evil, we know, becomes complicity. Every murder of a civilian undermines the moral fabric that binds all humanity.

All humanity must proclaim that terrorism cannot break our resolve. Whether on the banks of the Yamuna or the banks of the Mediterranean, when terrorists rob the innocent of life, they assault God’s image in all of us. We stand with India against inhumanity.