The day that Israel was suddenly and viciously attacked by Hamas terrorists—October 7, 2023—is a date, like December 7, 1941, and September 11, 2001, that will live in infamy. Over 1,100 murdered, over 3,000 wounded, and over 240 men, women, children, babies, and seniors taken hostage. Women raped, families bound and burned alive, and parents and children forced to witness one another’s murder. As of this writing, more than 130 souls are still held hostage in Gaza, where they have been captive for more than six months.
So many emotions, so many questions. Who had been killed? Who had been captured? What was the fate of the hostages? How did Israel not see this coming? How had they been so badly caught off guard? Would Israel’s northern border with Hezbollah be the next front of war? Would the Palestinian community inside Israel and the West Bank erupt in violence? Would this first attack be seen as an opportunity for Israel’s enemies—Iran’s proxies and others—to pounce? October 7th was not spontaneous: the events of that day reflected careful, long-term planning. What else was being planned?
I understood that this was a leadership moment—that I would need to say something to my community. But what? I had no idea. Shockingly, in the days that followed the attack, much of public opinion began to turn against Israel; though victimized, Israel was already being portrayed as an aggressor. In the week that followed the attacks, anti-Israel rallies sprouted up across the United States; incredibly, the participants voiced solidarity with Hamas.
Hamas and its allies declared that Friday, the first Shabbat following the attacks, a Global Day of Rage, with social media posts bearing instructions to “attack Israelis and Jews.” Shabbat is when we gather as a congregation, and the security concerns for my community—a large, public-facing urban synagogue—were not inconsequential. As I was wondering what to say to my congregants, I knew that many of them were understandably wondering whether it was safe to enter the synagogue at all.
“Stay in your lane,” I remember counseling myself. “You are neither a political scientist nor a military strategist. You are a rabbi, a pastor to your flock, and preacher and teacher of sacred texts.”
In its purest expression, the rabbinic vocation is a calling to interpret sacred Jewish texts through the prism of personality in a manner that speaks to the needs of the day. This was a time to get back to basics. I decided to ask myself the same three questions I ask whenever I sit down to write a sermon: What is the scriptural reading of the week, how does it speak to this moment, and what message does my community need to hear?
Over the course of the services on Friday night and Saturday morning, I preached from three texts from that Shabbat’s Torah reading—the opening chapters of the book of Genesis. On that day, and every day since, those three texts have informed how I view the events of October 7th. As we move further from the attacks, they speak with increasing urgency.
GRIEF
And God created humankind in the divine image, in the image of God, God created humanity.
(GENESIS 1:27)
This verse from the first chapter of Genesis roots the primordial origins of our species and holds unique primacy in biblical theology. The creation of humanity in God’s image—in Hebrew, tzelem elohim, reflects far more than a comment on the human figure—that our physical features somehow reflect the divine form. Throughout the ages, the verse has come to be understood to speak to humanity’s shared spiritual essence—namely, that every human being is created with an element or, as the mystics would say, a spark of the divine.
Long before October 7th, this verse has been the foundational building block of my theology. Every human being—male, female, or nonbinary, old and young and in between, straight and gay, rich and poor, believer and nonbeliever—is created equally in God’s image. No matter one’s race, religion, or nationality, regardless of whether a person is a friend or foe—they are created in the image of God. As such, they are to be accorded equal and infinite dignity as befitting God’s creation. Insofar as a religious life can be understood as the quest for the divine, tzelem elohim reminds us that this quest is pursued not only by way of prayerful petitions to the heavens. A religious life is also constituted by a lifetime of inquiries into the condition of other human souls—inquiries aimed at identifying, nurturing, and protecting the divine spark embedded in every fellow creation. The rabbis of old teach that humanity, created as we are in the image of God, is endowed with the ability to “be godly” in our actions—in Latin, imitatio Dei. By performing acts of kindness (visiting the sick, feeding the hungry, clothing the poor), we imitate God’s compassionate ways—junior partners, if you will, in completing God’s creation.
Why begin here? Because October 7th was a violation of first principles—God’s image had been desecrated. My heart was broken, presumably God’s too, and that sorrow needed to be named.
The murders of that day? One would have been too many. As the Talmud teaches, “Whosoever destroys a single soul, it is as if they have destroyed an entire universe.” The attacks were a vile crime perpetrated against innocents, the very foundations of our faith, and the underlying bond of our common humanity.
In the days and weeks that followed, the brutal inhumanity of Hamas’s attacks would emerge. A hall of horrors, filled with premediated acts of sheer savagery. Charred wrists bearing marks of individuals’ hands bound behind their backs before they were burned alive—the soot in the trachea revealing that they were still living when immolated. The remains of two individuals—one adult, one child—showed that they had been tied together by metal wire before they were set aflame. Evidence of countless horrific crimes of sexual violence. Rape, bodily mutilation, and the two occurring simultaneously.
The facts are damning and indisputable—based on firsthand testimony and incontestable forensic evidence. Unlike other instances of war crimes, in which the perpetrators managed to deny or cover up the atrocities they committed, no such obstacles to investigation were encountered. Indeed, the strongest testimony came from the perpetrators themselves, who, by way of their phones and GoPro body cameras, documented their deeds, celebrated them, uploaded them to their social media accounts, and called home to their beaming parents to tell them of the gruesome deeds they had committed that day. “Look how many I killed with my own hands! Your son killed Jews!” relayed one Hamas terrorist in a recorded call to his parents. “I wish I was with you,” the mother replied. No matter one’s faith, political leanings, or connection to the Middle East, look and you will see that this was the face of evil, revealed and unleashed in our lifetime.
It was and is too much to bear. The vicious murders, the heart-wrenching grief of the family members who escaped harm, the lifetime of trauma in store for the survivors, the ongoing nightmare of the hostages and their families. Every victim—a unique contribution to creation, a spark of the divine—had been violently snuffed out.
As we read the profiles of the victims, the tragedy was compounded and given texture. Many were idealistic kibbutzniks—from Israel’s peace camp—some had been deeply invested in Palestinian-Israeli coexistence, people who, prior to October 7th, would help transport Gazans to Israeli hospitals for medical care. Young men and women attending a music festival—364 murdered in a single location. The victims robbed of their lives and their dreams; their shattered loved ones staring at a lifetime of loss and sorrow.
As a rabbi who has shepherded countless families through loss, I understood that my first task at hand was a pastoral one—to help a community grieve a devastating blow. The sorrows of the moment were overwhelming—some congregants were less than a few degrees of separation from the victims and their families. For those who weren’t, it was nevertheless a profound blow to the global Jewish family. The victims were members of the human family, but within my community they were members of the Jewish family; in Hebrew, my mishpacha. There was, and remains, a palpable sense that Israelis were not murdered that day, but rather Jews. I recall seeing a colleague at a rally the week after the assaults, who shared that he wished he could wake up from this nightmare. I responded that I only wished I could fall asleep. In the years to come, I have no doubt that studies will show how deeply our patterns of sleeping, eating, intimacy, and more were impacted by the events of that day.
That first Friday night service following the attack began with the feeling of a funeral—or at least a memorial service. Indeed, in the wake of October 7th, I was reminded of the wisdom of the ritualized phases of Jewish mourning, the one week (shiva), the thirty days (shloshim), and the year (kaddish); phases that track, more or less, the stages of grief associated with loss—shock, sorrow, acceptance. In my years serving families through loss, I have learned that no rabbi can remove a person’s grief—it is an emotion we manage but never transcend. Often the role of the rabbi is merely (but importantly) to “name” the moment for what it is, with the hope that the mourner will sense that what they are experiencing is normal, that they are not alone, that although no two people experience loss alike, others are walking through that same valley of the shadow of death.
God’s creation, members of our extended Jewish family, had been killed. Our grief needed to be given a name, an emotional scaffolding and community of support. We needed to be reminded what had been lost, the divine spark of so many that had been snuffed out.
CLARITY
Cain said to Abel his brother . . . and when they were in the field, Cain set upon his brother Abel and killed him.
(GENESIS 4:8)
The crowning glory of the first chapter of Genesis is the creation of humanity in the image of God; the shedding of human blood that follows shortly thereafter reveals the depths to which humanity can sink. This second text, the first instance of biblical fratricide, serves as a scriptural backdrop for contending with the pernicious moral equivalencies that emerged in the wake of the attacks of October 7th.
Born to Adam and Eve following their departure from the Garden of Eden, the first brothers of human history have a famously fraught relationship. Cain is a tiller of soil, and Abel a sheepherder. Each brother makes an offering to God, but for reasons that are never made clear, God pays no heed to Cain’s offering. Downcast and distressed, Cain refuses to be consoled by God, understandably so, given that God’s earlier rejection of his offering is the root of his frustration.
Genesis 4:8 is the key verse, and its significance is not immediately self-evident. It requires a bit of explanation. The text is not just laconic in style, but awkwardly incomplete. It reads: “Va-yomer kayin el hevel . . . vay’hi b’heyotam ba-sadeh.” (“And Cain said to Abel . . . and when they were in the field, Cain set upon his brother and killed him.”) It is clear that the brothers speak to each other, and it is clear that once in the field, Cain kills his brother. What is not clear, and what is never stated, is what Cain says to Abel. The lacuna is part of the text itself. There is no biblical record of the exchange that prompted Cain to rise up and kill his brother.
Interpreters through the ages have made much about the missing text. This is, after all, the Bible, a holy book not imagined as susceptible to typos, editorial slips, and verses poorly stitched together. The Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Bible, fills in the gap with this dialogue: “Come let us go to the field.” Other ancient translations do the same. Some later rabbinic commentators imagine an exchange filled with enmity; others, fraternal jealousy. Still others suggest that a dispute erupts between the brothers over their inheritance from their parents. There are as many explanations as there are interpreters.
I can understand the impulse to fill the textual gap and in so doing provide a context for Cain’s heinous deed—but with all due respect to my rabbinic predecessors, I think that they all have it wrong.
The fragmented nature of the text is altogether intentional; the ellipsis within it is its very point. There is nothing that could have happened, nothing that could have been said to justify Cain’s murder of his brother. In leaving the dialogue unstated, the Bible provides moral clarity. It is not about context, no dueling “he said / he said,” no misunderstanding that could justify Abel’s murder, that he somehow “had it coming.” Nothing can justify Cain’s criminal act of aggression, so the Torah refrains from doing so. This message is consistent with that of an earlier biblical scene, the eating of the fruit of the garden in which humanity is endowed with the Godlike ability to differentiate between good and evil. Indeed, if there is a point to these first chapters of the Torah (Garden of Eden, Tower of Babel, Noah’s Ark), it is to remind us that we have agency over our decisions. There is right and there is wrong, and no context or circumstance can justify Cain’s murderous deeds.
If the first task of rabbinic leadership in our post–October 7th reality was to name the sorrow and provide comfort in the face of tragic loss, then the second was to provide moral clarity. By a certain telling, this is the underlying reason why people turn to religion. When our world becomes untethered, we turn to faith, scripture, and tradition for stability. October 7th unleashed unspeakable evil: an ideology that would kill Jews for being Jews and commit murder for sport. This ideology represents neither the Muslim faith, the national interests of the Palestinian people, nor any vision of future coexistence between Palestinians and Israelis. Rape is not a form of protest. Killing babies is not an expression of conscience. Taking hostages is not the tool of a freedom fighter. There is no justification, no moral equivalency, nothing that could satisfactorily contextualize the murderous crimes committed by Hamas on October 7th. Evil is evil.
The community I serve is fairly centrist in its politics regarding the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Notwithstanding outliers on the far left and far right, generally speaking, my synagogue’s love for Israel carries with it commitment to a vision of peaceful coexistence between Israelis and Palestinians. Jews were once strangers in a strange land. How could Israel, a state with a Jewish majority, not be sympathetic to the rights of the minority in its midst? How could Israel fight for its own right to self-determination and deny Palestinians access to that same right?
Palestinian self-determination is considered a practical matter to most members of my community. The thinking goes like this: Isn’t a Palestinian homeland the best way to ensure Israel’s security? Let them enjoy all the opportunities and headaches of sovereignty, and let everyone get on with their lives. It is not a perfect solution, nor for that matter does it exculpate either side of its responsibility for the heartbreaking conflict—but it is the only path forward. We may quibble over the status of the borders, the timing of any such agreement, and the precise nature of Palestinian self-determination (statehood, self-rule, autonomy), but the general outline is there to see, and as non-voting, non-military-serving, non-tax-paying diaspora stakeholders in Israel’s well-being, we acknowledge that the particulars are best left to Israelis and Palestinians to work out.
As textured and balanced as my inner dialogue (in my community and in my own head) may be, as committed as I am to interrogating my own views, the events of October 7th do not permit any such nuance. No historical land dispute, no he said / she said debate over competing narratives as to how we arrived at this point, is conscionable in the face of an ideology of violence aimed at my people to destroy them. As the late Israeli author and champion of Israel’s political left Amos Oz once reflected: “One cannot approach Hamas and say: ‘Maybe we meet halfway, and Israel only exists on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.’” The charter of Hamas is unambiguous in its call for the destruction for the Jewish state. October 7th revealed its intentions in full, bringing to mind Maya Angelou’s comment: “When people show you who they are, believe them the first time.” Much as we seek and pray for the prophetic day when swords will be turned into plowshares, Israel has every right to defend itself against those who seek its destruction.
In that first post–October 7th Shabbat, I was compelled to note the atrocities and to name the evil, because I knew what was coming next. I knew to expect the usual traffickers in online hate. Even the anti-Jewish hatred of the intelligentsia—like the Cornell University professor who described the actions of Hamas as “exhilarating”—though shocking was not surprising. But naively, I didn’t imagine that the brutal facts of the day would need to be stated again and again. How could the rationale behind the atrocities be denied when their perpetrators celebrated them and expressed their intent to repeat similar actions until Israel is destroyed?
And yet, this is exactly what happened—from online platforms to the streets, from the statements of conspiracy theorists to the campus debates denying, minimizing, or contextualizing the events of October 7th and every subsequent action Israel took in self-defense. As the US ambassador Deborah Lipstadt noted: “The speed at which denialism has spread since October 7th is unprecedented.” Akin to the Holocaust denier, who seeks to undercut the argument for the Jewish people’s need for self-determination, those who airbrushed the atrocities of October 7th cast Israel’s efforts to secure its defense, root out Hamas, and return the hostages as an indefensible act of aggression—a war of obligation reframed as a war of choice. Lest we forget, because hostages were taken, the atrocities of October 7th were not limited to October 7th. Every day that every hostage remains in captivity is an additional terror attack of sorts.
One of the most shocking aspects of the rhetoric of Israel’s detractors, who decry what seems to them an out-of-proportion response to the crisis, is that they do not extend their righteous indignation to the suffering of the hostages by demanding their release. Such a move would be in accord with international law (article 34 of the Geneva conventions), and if accomplished, it would fundamentally change Israel’s justifications for prosecuting a war. But in the months following October 7th, the plight of the hostages was not front and center in the eyes of progressives, revealing that hatred for Israel, not love for progressive principles or respect for international law, fueled their efforts.
“From time to time, evils appear on the world scene which are in a class unto themselves . . . ,” wrote the late political philosopher Michael Wyschogrod. Horrific as the events of October 7th were, for a fleeting moment they provided moral clarity. As Jews, not only do we believe that such evil can exist in this world, but we have a word for it, and that word is Amalek.
“Remember what Amalek did to you as you came forth out of Egypt; how he met you on the way, and cut down all the stragglers at your rear, when you were faint and weary” (Deuteronomy 25:17–19). When the Israelites left Egypt for the Promised Land, they had scarcely crossed the sea when Amalek attacked. In the biblical and rabbinic tradition, the pedigrees of those who have persecuted Israel—Agag, Haman, Rome, and others—are all traced back to Amalek. The enemies of the Jewish people are not one and the same—the Roman Empire is not Khmelnitzky, the Iranians are not the Nazis, Haman is not Hamas—it is both inaccurate and unhelpful to draw the analogy too close. But what these disparate ideologies have in common is the Amalek belief that Jews should not achieve the thing every person and every nation wants: safety and self-determination.
“In the face of abnormal evil, abnormal responses are necessary,” writes Wyschogrod. “There comes a point when military intervention is justified, and the religious community has a duty to speak clearly when that point is reached.” In Hamas, our generation is confronting Amalek’s latest incarnation. An Israeli response is both justified and necessary. It is precisely because Jews in Israel today, unlike those of bygone days, have a standing army to defend themselves that the threat of Amalek can be confronted. As Amos Oz reminded us, in 1945 the lives of those in Theresienstadt were saved not by peace demonstrators with placards and flowers but by soldiers and submachine guns.
In the months since October 7th, Israel has engaged in a terrifying war with Hamas. Its campaign to root out Hamas (often situated in hospitals and civilian populations), free the hostages, and secure Israel from future attacks is justified, but it has come at a terrible human cost. As of this writing, tens of thousands of Palestinians have been killed, even more injured, and millions displaced and suffering unimaginable hunger. This humanitarian crisis and human tragedy is beyond comprehension. Yet as excruciating as the questions surrounding it may be, it is altogether reasonable to ask about the human cost of Israel’s campaign. To do otherwise is to lack compassion for a suffering humanity. It is also why, whenever I speak about the war, without fail I mention October 7th and the ongoing plight of the hostages. In the face of the tsunami of denialism and disinformation, it is not much. But to those who are listening, it is a reminder of the moral footing upon which we stand.
The third biblical verse that has been ever-present in my mind since the attacks is Genesis 4:9: “The Lord said to Cain, ‘Where is your brother Abel?’ And he said, ‘I do not know. Am I my brother’s keeper?’”
I preached from this text on that fateful Shabbat, and it continues to guide my response to the attacks of October 7th. The verse comes immediately following the previously quoted one about the murder itself. Cain has killed Abel, and not a verse passes before his deed is discovered. As was the case when God called out for Adam and Eve following their eating of the hidden fruit, God’s question to Cain regarding Abel’s whereabouts is not just about location. God knows exactly where Abel is and what Cain has done. In Genesis 4:10, the following verse, God offers an evocative rejoinder: “The sound of your brother’s blood cries from the ground.”
Cain’s missteps are manifold—his inability to master his impulses, the murder itself, and the shoulder-shrug lie regarding the whereabouts of his brother’s body. The sin for which he is most remembered is his impertinent retort: “Am I my brother’s keeper?” There is much to be said about Cain’s response. His evasiveness, his denial of moral responsibility, his chutzpah before God even as he acknowledges his fraternal bond.
Whatever thought motivated his response—he got the answer wrong. “Thou shalt not stand idly by your fellow’s blood,” we read later in the Torah (Leviticus 19:16). The moral exemplars of our tradition take a tack opposite to Cain’s. Abraham pleads before God on behalf of Sodom, a city of wickedness. Moses, while still living in the household of Pharaoh, witnesses an Egyptian taskmaster beating his Hebrew kinsman. “And he looked this way and that way and saw no person, and he struck down the Egyptian” (Exodus 2:12). In a moment when nobody was stepping up—Moses stepped up to save a life. In this scene Moses proves himself worthy of leading the people out of Egypt. By such a telling, we are measured according to our willingness to refuse to be a bystander—always, and especially, when the blood of one’s brother cries out from the earth. This is the test that Cain fails. A teacher of mine once said that the entire system of Jewish ethics may be viewed as a response to Cain’s impertinent question. Yes—we are our brother’s and sister’s keeper. It is the backbone to who we are.
That first Shabbat after the attacks, I called on my community to step up to the calling of the hour. We would not stand by as the blood of our brothers and sisters was shed. Unlike Hamas, our response would not be days of rage, but days of ḥesed—the Hebrew word for kindness and advocacy on behalf of our kinsmen.
I reminded my community of an earlier chapter in Israel’s history, a story told to me by my father in 1967 when, with the outbreak of the Six-Day War, Israel’s fate hung in the balance. The chief rabbi of the United Kingdom at that time, Rabbi Immanuel Jakobovits, called for a massive rally at London’s Royal Albert Hall. Thousands turned out. My father, a newly minted physician, was present there that day. The chief rabbi demanded that everyone do something, one of three things, he said. First: If one could go to Israel, go. Help Israel defend itself. My father was one of the many volunteers who spent that summer in Israel’s hospitals, tending to the wounded. Second: If you can’t go, then look after the interests of a person who is going. Kol Yisrael arevim zeh ba-zeh: “All of Israel is responsible for one another,” as stated in the Talmud. Make sure their business or job or place in school is there upon their return. Third: If you are not positioned to do the first or the second thing, then give. Give money to support those who are positioned to save Jewish lives under threat. Every person has an obligation, by the bonds of Jewish history and Jewish peoplehood, to stem Jewish suffering in this dark hour.
That was 1967. This was 2023.
On the day of attacks, UJA Federation, New York’s primary Jewish social service agency, established a fund specifically to provide relief to the hard-hit communities in Israel. My synagogue decided to print QR codes, to distribute in person and on the livestream feed for those watching from afar, which would send potential donors to the site where they could contribute. Unorthodox as it is to raise money on the Sabbath, I believed, and continue to believe, that in breaking the laws of Sabbath I was serving the higher law of saving a life (in Hebrew, pikuach nefesh). When I told everyone to take out their phones to do some fundraising, my daughter, who was in the pews that night, gasped audibly. To see her father raise funds on Shabbat? This was new territory. I explained to my community that when God calls me to account for my breach of Sabbath law, I will stand tall at the gates of heaven with questions of my own regarding the deaths of innocents in the week gone by. Prepared as I was for blowback from my rabbinic colleagues for fundraising on the Shabbat, the feedback I would receive in the days that followed was otherwise. Reform, Conservative, and Orthodox rabbis of stature reached out to me thanking me for my leadership.
My goal was $18 million—according to Jewish numerology, the number 18 corresponds to the Hebrew word chai, meaning life. I remember two things about announcing the goal to the full sanctuary. First, a silence punctuated by someone’s awkward giggle of disbelief. “Who does this guy think he is, citing that number?” I imagined that person thinking. And then, I continued. “I am not unprepared. We are already sixteen million in.” And the room broke out in applause.
What I hadn’t shared before that moment was what I had done over the past week. I had spent every waking hour calling every philanthropically minded congregant I knew of, to ask them to contribute. Every dollar raised was going to Israel’s relief. As a congregational rabbi, I spend a good deal of my time raising funds needed to keep the synagogue afloat, and Park Avenue isn’t just any synagogue. The names of some of its members can be found on hospitals, institutions of higher learning, and charities of every variety. I admit that I wondered if it was for exactly a moment like this—for such a time as this—that I had become rabbi of Park Avenue Synagogue: to mobilize my congregation on behalf of the Jewish people. The pace was frenetic. When I felt tired, I thought of the lives lost, the hostages whose fate was unknown, and the IDF soldiers on the front lines. They were, in retrospect, the most profound and no-nonsense fundraising calls I have ever made.
Not one person said no. By early the following week, I received a call from Lori, the fundraising professional at UJA. We had blown past the goal of $18 million. Should we announce the actual total we had raised? For two reasons we agreed not to. First, as any fundraiser knows, a campaign is never “closed”; one never announces that a goal has been reached—more support is always needed. Second, we both understood that, as proud as we were of our efforts, the funds we had raised were just a drop in the bucket. The news coming out of Israel was getting worse and worse. Billions, not millions, were needed to address Israel’s needs.
Philanthropy was and remains the primary means by which my community or any diaspora community can help alleviate a crisis on the other side of the world. Most gratifying was the grassroots spirit that energized the community. Bake sales, collection drives, educational initiatives. One resourceful parent baked challahs, selling her wares week in and week out. Another three mothers proclaimed themselves “Yisrael Yentas” and set in motion a slew of initiatives. Many congregants began to mobilize politically, hosting and attending events in favor of officials and would-be officials who supported Israel’s right to self-defense and self-determination. We began to wear dog-tag “Bring Them Home” necklaces—reminders to ourselves and everyone we met of the plight of the hostages. We wrote letters and attended rallies in New York and Washington, DC. In the months following October 7th, our congregants stepped up to advocate on behalf of Israel in the public sphere. Our congregation offered two solidarity and volunteer missions to Israel; each one sold out within hours.
As I’ve repeatedly said to the community, “We are traumatized, but we are not paralyzed.” Announcing to the world that we are indeed our brother’s keeper, our community rose up in more ways than can be counted or will ever be known.
Months have passed, and much has transpired since October 7th. We live day by day with the plight of the hostages, the death toll of the Palestinians, the fallen and wounded Israeli soldiers, and the ever-changing global response. Yet no matter the distance traveled, my moral compass continues to point to the grief that resulted from the attacks themselves, which left an indelible scar on the soul and psyche of the Jewish people. I also stay focused on the right of Israel to defend itself in the face of an enemy that would see it destroyed. The obligation to stand in solidarity with our brothers and sisters in their hour of need has not diminished.
In the face of a world turned upside down, I am steadied by the texts of our tradition that provide solace and guidance. Ancient as our sacred texts may be, with every passing day they speak with an urgency to me, to the community I serve, and to the ever-evolving landscape of our post–October 7th world.