Let Them Come to Hollywood

By Rabbi Ari Plost

My first visit to City Hall in Hollywood, Florida, was actually a pretty ordinary one. I came to make sure I was properly registered with the city to officiate weddings. A few weeks later, I came back to support our city in another way: to pay a parking ticket.

On October 7, I returned to offer remarks as our city raised the Israeli flag, three years after the massacre.

But I like that my first reason for walking through those doors was for a wedding, because what is most remarkable about being a rabbi, or really any religious leader, is how we are invited into people’s lives on the days they will remember forever.

We stand beside families at weddings and births, at b’nai mitzvah and anniversaries, at graduations and celebrations.

And then there are dates we wish had never entered our calendar.

October 7 will forever be such a date.

It is a date when parents lost children. Children lost parents. Husbands lost wives. Friends lost friends. Entire communities woke to a world that would never again feel quite the same.

It is a date that left bedrooms empty, dinner table chairs that would never again be filled, and families desperate for word of loved ones taken hostage.

Three years later, that trauma has not simply disappeared. How could it?

But in the three years since that terrible day, even as we have wept and mourned, we have refused to surrender all of our other special days.

We have stood beneath wedding canopies and watched couples begin their lives together. We have held babies in our arms and given them Hebrew names. We have watched children stand before the Torah for the first time. We have filled our sanctuaries on Shabbat and our tables on holidays.

We have continued to mark all of those dates not because we have forgotten October 7, but precisely because we remember it.

We honor those whose lives were stolen by refusing to allow hatred to determine how openly, proudly, and fully we live as Jews.

A few months ago, I marked a date of my own. I turned 50. And I have always felt a particular connection to my birthday because I share June 12 with Anne Frank.

Anne was born in Germany in 1929, into what was then a democracy. She should have grown up in freedom. She should have gone to school, laughed with friends, argued with her parents, fallen in love, and wondered what her life might someday become.

But democracies can falter when people slowly become accustomed to hatred they once would have recognized immediately, when neighbors become afraid to speak, and when institutions that should know better begin to look away.

What should have been the ordinary life of a teenage girl became smaller and smaller until hatred pushed Anne and her family out of public life and into a dark, cramped, attic.

On October 7, terrorists murdered more Jews in a single day than on any day since the Holocaust.

Antisemitism has worn many uniforms. It has spoken many languages. It has adapted itself to different times and different places. But one of its methods is always painfully present: making Jews afraid to live openly.

To make us smaller.

To make us quieter.

To convince us to hide who we are, to make us think twice before walking into a synagogue, to lower our voices when we speak about Israel, and to push us from the public square and back into the shadows.

When facts can be distorted until truth itself becomes difficult to recognize, when double standards become acceptable, and when intimidation succeeds in silencing people, it is not only Jews who are pushed into the shadows. Our democracy itself is diminished.

That is why raising the Israeli flag at Hollywood’s City Hall matters, and why what it symbolizes matters, for Jews, for non-Jews, for Israelis and for all Americans..

The answer to those who would push Jews from our public squares is for us to live more openly. And I do not mean only the steps of City Hall.

I mean our schools and universities. Our grocery stores and coffee shops. Our theaters and restaurants. Our parks and playgrounds. Our beaches and boardwalks.

Wherever we work, shop, study, worship, or simply live our lives, Jews should be able to live openly as Jews, and anyone who stands with Israel should be able to say so without fear.

We hear the chant all the time, “This is what democracy looks like.”

Well, this is what democracy looks like. Democracy protects our freedom to live openly.

Hollywood is a city of more than 150,000 people in a county of more than two million. In a community this large and diverse, we see what it looks like when a city refuses to let its Jewish neighbors stand alone.

Raising the blue and white flag is a statement about who we are here.

It says that support for Israel does not disappear when it becomes unpopular.

It says that Jews should not have to hide who we are or check our support for Israel at the door.

And it says that civic courage still matters. And thank you to our Mayor and all of our elected officials who are with us today and have been with us these past three years.

For those who watch other city councils vote to divest from companies doing business with Israel, and hear the mayor of America’s largest city describe Israel’s war in Gaza as genocide, let them see a mayor and city commission that repeatedly and publicly stand with Israel and our Jewish community. Let them come to Hollywood.

For those who believe these years have divided communities of faith, let them see Reform, Conservative and Orthodox Jews, secular and observant, standing beside Christian neighbors and so many other friends of faith. We may pray differently. We may worship differently. But when antisemitism threatens our Jewish community, let them bear witness to how we stand as one community. Let them come to Hollywood.

For those who hear clergy hesitate to speak plainly about Israel, let them hear our faith leaders affirm what both the Bible and Jewish history teach: Israel is the Jewish people’s ancestral homeland. It is the land of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel and Leah, and the land where Jesus was born and lived as a Jew. America is our home, and our connection to Israel endures. From our pulpits, our faith leaders proudly affirm the Jewish people’s return to the land from which our ancestors were exiled. Let them come to Hollywood.

For those who chant “from the river to the sea,” let them see a community that answers calls for erasure with acts that sustain life. Let them see how we have supported lives with hundreds of thousands of pounds of aid sent from Hollywood to people in Israel, and how members of our own fire department have served beside Israeli first responders. Let them come to Hollywood.

For those who do not have the protection they need, let them see Hollywood police officers outside our synagogues and schools. Let them see how the good men and women who wear the blue protect our Jewish families, and why we are grateful. Let them come to Hollywood.

For those who doubt whether Jewish families should still feel comfortable living openly, let them drive or walk our streets on a Friday afternoon or Shabbat morning and see Jews make their way to synagogue. Let them see a vibrant Jewish community, devout and diverse. Let them come to Hollywood.

And for those who wonder whether our children will grow frightened of showing the world who they are, let them see our children wearing their Stars of David and chai necklaces, entering synagogues and schools, singing Hebrew songs, learning Torah, and living their Judaism in the light. Let them come to Hollywood.

Across Florida, Israeli flags are raised not only by Jews, but by friends and neighbors who have refused to abandon Israel or the Jewish people through these difficult years.

Israel is not a perfect democracy. No democracy is. Raising this flag does not require us to agree with every policy of an Israeli government any more than loving America requires us to agree with every policy of an American government.

When we raise the Israeli flag, we remember our commitment to love our neighbors as ourselves.

We raise it because true friends do not abandon one another when the moment becomes difficult.

We raise it because democracy requires our willingness to speak the truth, resist double standards, and reject political purity tests.

And we raise it because no Jewish child, no Jewish student, no Jewish family in this city, or in any city in America, should ever come to believe that the safest place for a Jew is back in the shadows.

We can disagree over policies. We can disagree over governments. We can argue passionately about Israel. That is part of living in a free society.

But disagreement must never become a demand that Jews surrender who we are, hide our connection to Israel, or earn our place in the public square by passing someone else’s political test.

When we raise this flag high above City Hall, we are saying something simple but essential:

Jewish life belongs here.

Our love for Israel belongs here.

We belong here, in the light.

Let those who wonder what that looks like come here. Visit here. Live here. Walk our streets and see a Jewish community that does not hide and a city that does not ask us to.

May we continue to raise our flags high, raise our voices when necessary, and live together as Jews, as neighbors, as Americans, and as supporters of democracy here and in Israel, always together and always in the light.

Rabbi Ari Plost is senior rabbi of Temple Solel in Hollywood, Florida, and president of the Broward Board of Rabbis. This essay is adapted from his remarks at the Israeli flag raising at Hollywood City Hall on October 7, 2026.