Israel will always matter to us. But it’s been difficult for family and friends to talk about Israel, lately. It was true last year when we debated judicial reform. It’s truer now when the debate is existential. Shortly after October 7^th, the Jewish world drew close together and built new foundations of strength on which to stand against a ferocious enemy in Hamas terrorists. Those ferocious terrorists still exist and they probably always will. The shocking aftermath of the October 7^th attack on Israel continues to be the prolonged wait for the return of the hostages, the intensifying war against Hamas terrorists, and the destruction of any innocent civilian lives in Israel and Gaza. It’s just all too much.

Worse, the unraveling of otherwise civil and educated responses to the war that Israel wages against Hamas terrorists has disoriented many of us. It’s not normal to call for the end of Israel, a sovereign state, and the death of all its people. However, it is normal to demonstrate one’s civil rights to protest for what one believes is right and just. On college campuses, young adults are engaging in protests with fierce determination to protect their view of the world, limited as it might still be. The same is true for adults who march down the streets of our city to demonstrate for change. It’s our American rights and freedoms that permit it; but it reaches an untenable limit when death and destruction of Jews and Israel are their call-to-arms.

In the synagogue, after October 7^th, I laid down the same strong foundation to ensure our commitment to Israel’s sovereignty and the life of its people—all of its people, Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Druze. I also relied on the mission of our synagogue to guide us to provide more education on Israel and Jewish history. Speakers from Israel and scholars in America came to address us online and in person. Some were centrists and others were not. They helped us find our place on a spectrum of Jewish responses to this war and crisis.

Our cue comes from Torah (Deuteronomy 29), where the Israelite people stood at Mt. Sinai to receive Torah. God said to the people, “I make this covenant with you who stand here this day, and with those who do not stand here this day.” For them and for us, the same eternal covenant exists. The same Torah exists. The same teachings exist and we, in our generation, have to ask ourselves, what do these teachings that bind us to God, Torah, and our people mean to us in this time and this place?

What age are we living in now? “I’m not a prophet nor the son of a prophet” (Amos 7), but I’m a realist. And this is our time to be profoundly Jewish in all the ways we were taught to be and the ways we need to learn to be, today. As a Reform Rabbi, and a national leader in the Reform movement, being profoundly Jewish, to me, means taking hold of our obligation to ask, to discern, to learn, and to model what it means to be Jewish in the best of times and the worst of times. You decide which times we’re living in, but my assessment is that these aren’t the worst of times. But they do call on us to do more than we’ve done and to show up more than we have.

I’m not an Israeli. I can’t vote in Israel. But I’m profoundly Jewish, and 100% Ashkenazi Jewish according to my DNA test. It’s not my privilege to break the chain of Jewish continuity and it’s not yours, either. It’s also not our privilege to give up on Israel and the hope of 2,000 years to return to our ancestral home. Theodore Herzl, founder of political Zionism, entertained the idea of any land, including North Africa, to settle the Jewish people during rising threats in Europe long before WWII. It was a prophetic vision to create a space in our ancestral land that would enable Jews to live in a sovereign state that would never betray them. As Herzl famously said, “If you will it, it is not a dream.”

From the Shema in Torah to Herzl’s famous exclamation, and from 1948 to this day, a place for Jews and Arabs, for Israelis and Palestinians, still exists in a land that stretches properly from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. In Israel and among Palestinians, too, we need to find peace partners. We need to bring reasonable people to the table to talk about bringing this age-old war and recurring battle to an end. Borders exist for a reason and as one Israeli peacemaker once said, “We make peace with our enemies, not with our friends.” There will always be people whose hearts we cannot turn from hate to love, but that’s not our goal. Our goal is to use this opportunity to make a difference with those who will make a difference with Israel, with Jews. Is there an obstacle in our way even though we march, debate, and argue for peace? Yes. Deborah Lipstadt, twice a guest at Beth Israel, a professor at Emory University, and currently U.S. Ambassador, Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism, recently said, referring to some college students, “Never before have so many known so little about so much.”

Congregation Beth Israel is beginning its 170^th year, the oldest synagogue in Texas. In decades past, Beth Israel weathered the storm by staying true to its mission. And though the mid-1940s and the birth of Israel divided the congregation, today there is nothing that can divide us when we talk about the future of Judaism. Let’s lean in, learn together, ask questions, and devote ourselves to our generation’s obligation to prepare the ground for us and our children to live proud, engaged, and meaningful Jewish lives here and in Israel.

L’Shalom,