With Passover starting Saturday evening, April 12, Tzedek Chicago is honored to present our annual seder supplement, “Passover as Collective Liberation.”
As we witness fascism growing in the US and around the world, Passover arrives this year with a special urgency – and a sacred opportunity. As our supplement notes:
Merely telling the story is not enough. The seder requires us to interrogate this sacred narrative: to contemplate its meaning and to examine the questions it raises for us in our own day. Most critically, Passover demands that we connect the lessons of the Exodus story to Pharaohs that arise “in every generation.”
To that end, we encourage you to use the Passover narrative as a template to understand – and respond – to the stakes of the current political moment. First and foremost, we encourage you to universalize the Exodus narrative; to view our sacred liberation story in the context of collective liberation; to understand that the Jewish struggle and liberation is ultimately inseparable from so many other liberation struggles, past and present.
I believe it is more critical than ever to make these connections. As the Columbia grad student Mahmoud Khalil wrote in his “Letter from a Palestinian Political Prisoner in Louisiana.” (which we include in our supplement):
The Trump administration is targeting me as part of a broader strategy to suppress dissent. Visa-holders, green-card carriers, and citizens alike will all be targeted for their political beliefs. In the weeks ahead, students, advocates, and elected officials must unite to defend the right to protest for Palestine. At stake are not just our voices, but the fundamental civil liberties of all.
As another Palestinian American, Noura Erakat has noted (in an article that we quote in our supplement as well):
But resisting fascism is our collective goal. We just know that in order to resist it, we have to fight it on two fronts of U.S. state violence: at home and abroad. Because if the United States, together with Israel, manages to disembowel the ICJ, the ICC, the UN, and a broader global order built after the Holocaust and World War II, no one is safe… As Colombian President Gustavo Petro warned back in December 2023, ‘“What we are seeing in Gaza is a rehearsal of the future.’”
Yes, resisting fascism must be our collective goal. Those of us who have been advocating for Palestinian liberation must understand that their liberation is irrevocably connected to the liberation of all who are targeted by state violence. At this moment, the stakes could not be higher. Under the current regime, we are witnessing a terrifying state backlash about those who have publicly voiced their support for the Palestinian people. At the moment, activists of color with student visa are the primary targets. But as Mahmoud Khalil rightly noted in his letter, soon “visa-holders, green-card carriers, and citizens alike will all be targeted for their political beliefs.”
As Jews, we have a unique role in the current political moment. Indeed, we must fail to note that this state violence is being cynically carried out in our name, justified by concern for “Jewish security,” More than ever, we must to refuse to let our safety be used as a pretense to strengthen fascist state power. We must insist that this pretense will only endanger Jewish security all the more. We must affirm in no uncertain terms that Jewish safety and security is inseparable from the safety and security of all.
This Passover, let us insist that the Exodus story must be about the liberation of all who are oppressed by the contemporary Pharaohs of our day. This Passover, may we discover the true meaning of collective liberation – and find the inspiration to make it real in our world.
Yesterday I received a DM that read: “Evil, kapo, judenrat, self hating Jew.” (If you don’t know the meaning of some of those words, let’s just say that two of them are historical terms for Jews who collaborated with the Nazis during WW II.) As this kind of thing isn’t an uncommon occurrence for me, it wasn’t particularly upsetting. I’ve been receiving these kinds of messages for over a decade now, to the point that it’s become a kind of background noise – as I’m sure it is for any Jewish activist who dares to publicly affirm the humanity of the Palestinian people.
This time, however, I received the message as I was reading news of the heinous abduction and disappearing of Columbia grad student Mahmoud Khalil – and it caused me to pause and think: given the message, who are the real Jewish collaborators at this particular moment?
As has been widely reported, Khalil (a prominent leader of the student Palestine solidarity protests at Columbia) was walking home with his wife last Saturday when they were approached plain-clothed agents from the Department of Homeland Security who informed them that the government was revoking Khalil’s student visa. When they showed them his Green Card, which made him a legal US resident, an agent made a phone call and told them they had now revoked his Green Card. When they protested, the agents threatened to abduct Khalil’s wife, who is 8 months pregnant. Then they put Khalil in a car and drove him away.
For the next several hours, Khalil’s loved ones had no idea where he was. His lawyers immediately filed a writ of habeus corpus in a New York City court; they later learned that the authorities transported Khalil to an infamous ICE detention center in Louisiana, where he will almost certainly be subjected to a more government-friendly immigration court. In the meantime, a federal judge in Manhattan has ordered the government not to remove Khalil from the US while the judge reviews his lawyer’s petition challenging his abduction and detention.
There is so much that is so deeply chilling about this story it’s difficult to know where to start. For me, however, one of the most disturbing aspects was the report that Khalil had sent multiple emails appealing to Columbia’s interim president Katrina Armstrong for protection from harassment, doxxing and the threat of ICE agents. He sent his final email to Armstrong on March 7 one day before he was abducted and disappeared:
Since yesterday, I have been subjected to a vicious, coordinated, and dehumanizing doxxing campaign led by Columbia affiliates Shai Davidai and David Lederer who, among others, have labeled me a security threat and called for my deportation.
Their attacks have incited a wave of hate, including calls for my deportation and death threats. I have outlined the wider context below, yet Columbia has not provided any meaningful support or resources in response to this escalating threat.
I haven’t been able to sleep, fearing that ICE or a dangerous individual might come to my home. I urgently need legal support, and I urge you to intervene and provide the necessary protections to prevent further harm.
Khalil’s emails, of course highlight the very real likelihood that Columbia actively collaborated with ICE and DHS, thereby compromising the physical safety and security of their own student. They also illuminate the active role of Jewish Zionist activists in the events leading to Khalil’s abduction and disappearance. Shai Davidai is an Israeli assistant professor of business at Columbia Business School who has a documented history of harassing students and school employees. David Lederer is a junior in Columbia’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and the co-chair of Aryeh, a self-described “student-led organization that aims to provide opportunities to engage with Israel and Zionism.”
It should not come as a surprise that Zionist activists and organizations played a part in Khalil’s abduction. Last December, it was reported that the US chapter of Betar, a worldwide Zionist youth organization (originally founded by Revisionist Zionist leader Vladimir Jabotinsky in 1923) had recently been revived. It’s Executive Director, Ross Glick, made it clear that targeting college students would be its first order of business. Most ominously, Glick revealed that Betar US “had amassed a large repository of video footage from college protests over the past year” and was employing a team of professionals using facial recognition software and relationship databases to identify foreign students appearing in the videos.
Glick has now been openly bragging about his role in the government’s abduction and disappearance of Mahmoud Khalil. In an interview with the Forward, Glick said that he had met with aides to Senators Ted Cruz and John Fetterman in DC to discuss Khalil during the Columbia encampment protests and that the senators promised to “escalate” the issue. He also said that “some members of Columbia’s board had also reported Khalil to officials.” In the interview, Glick referred to Khalil’s unmasked presence in the protests, commenting “This unfolded very quickly because it was very obvious… This guy was making it too easy for us.”
The Forward article also reported that David Lederer, circulated photos of a pamphlet labeled as coming from the “Hamas Media Office,” suggesting it was distributed at the protest. Lederer also claimed Khalil was “known to have been on a foreign visa last year.” Clearly, the government was aided and abetted by well-known Jewish Zionist activists who made no secret of their intentions to work with authorities to target Palestinians and pro-Palestine student activists who protested Israel’s genocidal violence against the Palestinian people in Gaza last spring.
The government abduction and disappearance of legal residents who exercise their right to free speech is, of course, a basic staple of fascist regimes. What can we say about Jewish activists and organizations that collaborate with such a government – a regime led by a president that actively emboldens antisemitic hate groups and has given significant power to a billionaire who promotes antisemitic theories and publicly sig heils at rallies? While I won’t use the vile terms that extremist right-wing Jews sling against Jewish activists who dare to express their solidarity with Palestinians, I do believe it’s important to name them what they truly are: collaborationists.
It’s important to note that this most recent Jewish collaboration with rising fascism is not limited to small extremist actors such as Betar US. The Anti-Defamation League itself responded to Khalil’s abduction with this statement on X: “We appreciate the Trump Administration’s broad, bold set of efforts to counter campus antisemitism — and this action further illustrates that resolve by holding alleged perpetrators responsible for their actions… We also hope that this action serves as a deterrent to others who might consider breaking the law on college campuses or anywhere.”
For its part, the Trump administration celebrated Khalil’s abduction on X with the statement “Shalom Mahmoud” – a cynical and appropriative expression of “solidarity” with the Jewish people. Even more chillingly, the statement went on: “This is the first arrest of many to come. We will find apprehend and deport these terrorist supervisors from our country ‒ never to return again.” By now we should know that Trump should be taken at his word. If Mahmoud Khalil, a legal resident of the US can be disappeared by this government, they will almost certainly continue with any American citizen whom they identify in their growing data base: and not only Palestinian Americans and Muslims.
I’ll make it plain: collaborationist Jews will not help make Jews safer. In the end, Glick, Davidi, Lederer and their ilk are extremely useful idiots who are actively working with an antisemitic regime that has zero interest in Jewish safety and security. Even more important, collaborating with fascism will not make anyone safer. It feels somehow ridiculous to have to say these words out loud, but here we are. For the sake of our collective liberation, we must all actively resist and stand down this fascist regime – as well as those who aid and abet it.
It occurs to me that this form of collaboration with illegitimate authority really is a form of idolatry. In this week’s Torah portion, the recently-liberated Israelites, who have just entered into a sacred covenant with God, construct a Golden Calf, bow down to it and exclaim, “This is your god, O Israel, who brought you out of the land of Egypt!” (Exodus 32:4) This narrative is powerfully resonant to the current moment, in which members of the Jewish community are betraying the sacred, liberatory core of Jewish tradition through idolatrous attachment to corrupt state power.
But in the end, this is a fatal form of idolatry: a Faustian bargain. And we know all too well from history where this will lead. Please join me in answering this call from Jewish Voice for Peace to contact our senators and representatives demanding that they do everything in their power to secure Khalil’s release and to protect student activists and immigrants.
In the week’s Torah portion, Parashat Yitro, the Israelites stand at Mt. Sinai and collectively enter into a covenant with God. With a message conveyed through Moses, God says to the people:
“(If) you will obey Me faithfully and keep My covenant, you shall be My treasured possession among all the peoples. Indeed, all the earth is Mine, but you shall be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.” (Exodus 19:5-6)
Shortly after, the Israelites collectively accept:
…All the people answered as one, saying, “All that God has spoken we will do!” (19:8)
In this mythic moment, the Israelites become a nation unified in a shared, transcendent purpose.
But do they really, though? Most of the Torah’s narrative post-Sinai is less a record of a nation united by a shared purpose than a portrayal of a deeply fractured collection of tribes struggling mightily to live up to the covenant they made with God at Mt. Sinai. This certainly tracks with the evolution of Jewish peoplehood throughout the centuries. Though the organized Jewish community routinely clings to the mythic notion that “We are One,” we have always been a nation of sub-communities: a family divided by a of myriad of assumptions over what it means to be and behave as a Jew, often rancorously.
Of course, in the current moment the Jewish people are experiencing an exceedingly powerful and painful division. As I suggested in my sermon this past Yom Kippur:
Jewish life is going through … a monumental crisis and transformation right now. I’m speaking of course, about the abyss that has opened over the issue of Zionism – an abyss that has widened considerably this past year as a result of Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
This mythology of national unity, however, is not unique to the Jewish people. Those of us raised in the US are all too familiar with such tropes, socialized as we were with the famous line from the Pledge of Allegiance: “One nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.” In truth, however, the US has been a deeply divided nation since the day it was founded. While the preamble of the Constitution reads “We the People,” the “people” it referred to were white, landowning men. The Naturalization Act of 1790 limited access to citizenship to “free white persons.” Later on, the US broke in two after slaveholding states succeeded – and the nation only became “one” again after fighting a bloody civil war. In too many ways, it’s a war that has never really ended.
As we see the rise of nativism and authoritarianism in nations around the world, it’s fair to say that this reckoning over national identity is truly a global phenomenon. Like many, I’ve been watching with alarm the rise of the far right nationalist AfD party in Germany (with the unabashed support of the ubiquitous Elon Musk) as they seek to build a coalition with conservative opposition parties. German Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck has warned ominously that such an alignment would “destroy Europe.”
So where does this leave us? Can we actually affirm these narratives of national unity in good faith? Do they serve us in any way – or do inevitably lead to authoritarianism and genocide?
I personally believe that national mythologies should not be literal oaths to be sworn to, but collective narratives to be interrogated deeply. In the case of the US narrative, we must ask honestly: what is the place of dispossessed indigenous nations in our national narrative? What is the place of descendants of kidnapped Africans who were brought here in chains to build up this nation? What is the place of immigrants who come to these shores seeking a better life – or to escape certain harm in in their home countries? What is the place of LGBTQ+ people, disabled people and members of other historically marginalized groups?
Those who uphold national mythologies must ask honestly, who exactly is the “we” in “We the People?” Because these narratives will only be useful if they lead to actual collective liberation for all. More critically, those of us who are committed to a truly inclusive national vision must prepare for the inevitable, often violent backlash from those who do not share our narrative. Indeed, history has proven all too often that a truly inclusive national vision never comes easily. On the contrary, it must be fought for.
At the end of the Torah, God says to the Israelites:
“I make this covenant and this oath, not with you alone, but both with those who are standing here with us this day before the ETERNAL our God and with those who are not with us here this day.” (Deuteronomy 29:13-14)
This Shabbat Yitro, as we stand once more at Sinai, let us ask ourselves: “Who are not with us on this day?” Why are they not here? What are we willing to sacrifice to ensure that they will be included in the covenant as well?”
(There) are plenty of Jewish congregations out there: why does the world need another? What do we have that’s unique to offer? As I think about it, this is a critical question for any Jewish community. Do we exist just to exist or for a more transcendent purpose? Does our existence actively seek to repair the world or does it merely serve to use up Jewish community resources? Or worse still, does our communal existence contribute to harm in the world?
I recalled those words last week when I learned that Anshe Emet, a prominent Conservative synagogue in Chicago planned to host a program with invited guest Yoav Gallant, the former Israeli Minister of Defense and one of the primary architects of Israel’s genocide against Gaza – who currently has a warrant out for his arrest issued by the International Criminal Court.
It should go without saying, but I’ll say it out loud: it is appalling and sickening that a prominent synagogue welcomed – and in fact celebrated – a genocidal war criminal in their house of worship. I’m proud to say that a massive protest was organized by a wide coalition of Palestine solidarity groups, including US Palestine Community Network, American Muslims for Palestine, Jewish Voice for Peace and #IfNotNow to voice a message of outrage, solidarity and collective conscience.
Hundreds of us gathered last night across the street from the synagogue in the freezing cold to express our outrage and mutual solidarity. There were many speakers from our diverse coalition and it was my honor to be among them. Here are my remarks, below:
photo: Love and Struggle/Sarah Ji
My name is Brant Rosen; I’m a proud member of Jewish Voice for Peace, the Jewish Voice for Peace Rabbinical Council, and I’m the founding rabbi of Tzedek Chicago – a proudly anti-Zionist synagogue here inI Chicago with members here and around the world.
In Jewish tradition there is a central concept we call Hillul Hashem. It literally means “desecration of God’s name.” This is at root a deeply moral concept that goes to the heart of what it means to be a human being. When we diminish the humanity of another, we diminish God’s presence in the world – and we commit the worst kind of Hillul Hashem when we commit the crime against genocide against another people.
In October 2023, Yoav Gallant, Israel’s then defense minister, said:
We are imposing a complete siege on Gaza. There will be no electricity, no food, no water, no fuel, everything is closed. We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly.
The Palestinian people know what it means to be robbed of their humanity. They have been deemed a collectively disposable people by Israel for over 100 years. Their very presence is a problem for Israel. We Jews should know all too well what happens when a state robs a people of its essential humanity.
The ICC has put a warrant out for Yoav Gallant’s arrest as a war criminal because he actively dehumanized the Palestinian people in word and in deed. Over 60,000 Palestinians killed in Gaza to date and over 100,000 injured, the majority of whom are women and children. According to one estimate, the ultimate death toll may eventually be nearly 200,000. Whole extended families, entire Palestinian bloodlines have been wiped out completely. Much of Gaza has been literally reduced to a human graveyard, with scores of bodies buried beneath the rubble of destroyed and bulldozed homes. Neighborhoods and regions have been literally wiped off the map.
Gaza’s infrastructure and health care system has been decimated. According to the UN an “intentional and targeted starvation campaign” has led to widespread famine and disease throughout the Gaza strip. Health care workers, humanitarian workers and journalists are being killed, injured and imprisoned in massive numbers. Human rights agencies have documented widespread torture and abuse of prisoners, including sexual abuse, throughout a network of torture camps.
This is dehumanization, this is Hillul Hashem of the worst kind. And to you Yoav Gallant, we say, “We Charge Genocide!” “You are not welcome in our city!”
But Yoav Gallant and the nation he served could not have succeeded if there where not those who normalized this genocide. And that is why we are here tonight. As a rabbi, as a Jew, as a person of conscience, I am morally outraged – I am sickened – that this war criminal is being hosted – and in fact celebrated – at a synagogue, a Jewish house of worship. This is what it has come to.
And here I want to address the members of Anshei Emet and the Jewish community of Chicago. Our community has a profound moral choice to make. What is the Judaism we will affirm? Will we uphold Zionism – and its ideology of Jewish supremacy – or will we stand for the sacred divine image of all people? Will we stand with war criminals or will we stand with those who are deemed to be disposable? Will we stand with the genocidal state of Israel or will we stand with the Palestinian people?
Now I’d like to address my friends and comrades in the Palestinian community:, please know that are so many of us in the Jewish community who stand in solidarity with you. There is nowhere else we can possibly be at this moment. And there are so many of us who are voicing the alarm, marching in the streets, taking arrest to demand justice for Palestinians
It is not an overstatement to say this: history will remember what we did or did not do in this moment. We are ready, together with you, to call out those who, in our name, are committing the worst kind of Hillul Hashem against you, whether it is in the streets of Rafah and Deir al Balah, the halls of Washington DC or a synagogue in Chicago. And we will not cease until all are free, from the river to the sea!
It’s been a busy week. This past Wednesday, I was in Springfield with friends and comrades to announce new IL state legislation, “The Illinois Human Rights Advocacy Protection Act,” which would repeal our state’s 2015 anti-boycott legislation that punishes advocacy for Palestinian human rights. This unconstitutional and immoral legislation, signed by then Gov. Bruce Rauner, directed the Illinois Investment Policy Board to restrict public funding to companies that use human rights filters that exclude doing business with Israel.
The new legislation, which is being introduced in the IL State House by Palestinian-American representative Abdulnasser Rashid, will “(remove) provisions requiring the Illinois Investment Policy Board to include companies that boycott Israel in its list of restricted companies.” An identical bill will be introduced in the IL Senate as well.
You can watch the entire press conference here. My remarks follow below:
Here in Illinois and around the world, we are at a critical and frightening moment. The US is governed by an administration that openly considers certain populations to be disposable. Whether it is undocumented immigrants, birthright citizens, trans youth or the Palestinian people. Just yesterday, our president announced his intention to depopulate the entire Gaza strip of over 2 million Palestinians and turn it into the “Riviera of the Middle East.” This after a previous administration helped to arm Israel in its crushing military assault – one that many reputable human rights organizations have termed a genocide against the Palestinian people.
In Jewish tradition, one of our most central theological tenets, which is repeated over and over, is that God responds to the cries of the oppressed. The Palestinian people have long been crying out to the international community. Over the past sixteen months, their cries have reached a fever pitch. The question before us, that has ever been before us, is how will we respond?
That is the essence of the Palestinian call for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions. It is a call from an oppressed people who are seeking support and solidarity from the international community. It originated in 2005, when a wide coalition of Palestinian civil society organizations made a crie de cour for solidarity and support. They issued a call to the world to use the time-honored nonviolent strategy of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions.
There are three essential demands of this call, which are all are based in international law: to end the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, full and equal rights for Palestinian citizens of Israel, and to honor the UN mandated Palestinian right of return. Like all boycotts, it allows private citizens, companies and civil society organizations around the world to actively and meaningfully respond to the legitimate and collective cry of the Palestinian people.
It is also a form of free speech. Just like historic Montgomery Bus Boycott, the United Farm Workers Boycott, the boycott of apartheid South Africa before it. When the state of Illinois passed legislation restricting participation in this pro-peace, pro-human rights movement, it actively criminalized free speech. It was immoral and illegal to do so when it was enacted by Governor Rauner in 2015 – and it remains so today. In the current moment, when our country is ruled by a regime that is actively and unabashedly criminalizing free speech, we should see this legislation for what it is. The state of Illinois has no business aiding and abetting in this stripping of our right to free speech. It has no moral standing to stifle and stigmatize the legitimate cry of the oppressed.
In the Jewish community this week we are reading from our Torah, the Exodus story. And the Exodus story makes it very clear: that God responds to the cry of the oppressed and demands their liberation. We also read that this process began with brave people to defy and resist oppression. That is how liberation happens.
We are at just a moment right now. This is truly a which side are you on moment. Will we hearken to the cries of the oppressed, or will suppress their voices – and those who support their call for liberation? We urge the state of Illinois to stand the right side of history.
A Jewish letter of support for the Illinois Human Rights Advocacy Act will soon be made public as well. I’ll make sure to post it when its available.
It’s difficult to describe the feelings I experienced this past weekend, as I watched hundreds of thousands of Gazans in a long and seemingly endless line, heading on foot to their homes in the north. Crossing the Netzarim corridor – the border the Israeli military demarcated separating north from south – they headed back with whatever possessions they were able to carry. Family members who thought each other dead clutched each other in tearful embrace. It was truly a wonder to behold: this resilient people who had defied and withstood the most destructive miliary onslaught in modern times. As Gazan activist Jehad Abusalim put it:
Gaza today, for now, disrupts and defies the global agenda of rendering entire populations disposable and rightless. This was achieved through the resilience of an entire population that has endured months of displacement, starvation, disease and bombardment.
Though this is a fragile and temporary ceasefire, it’s striking to note the depth of Israel’s failure to achieve any of its stated objectives of its genocidal war. It failed to destroy Hamas and the Palestinian armed resistance in Gaza. It failed to rescue hostages taken on Oct. 7 through military means. It failed to implement its so-called “General’s Plan” – its blueprint for ethnically cleansing northern Gaza. And perhaps most importantly, it failed to break the will of the Gazan people to survive its genocidal war.
Jehad’s words “for now” are appropriate. The overwhelming number of Gazans are returning to homes that are rubble – and it is by no means certain how they will be able to rebuild their lives. The ceasefire is a tenuous one; there is still no agreement on the second or third phases of deal and there is every possibility that Netanyahu will use the deal as cover to eventually depopulate Gaza of Palestinians. Trump’s recent comments (“I’d like Egypt to take people, and I’d like Jordan to take people…we just clean out that whole thing”) have made his intentions clear, even if his plan has been rejected outright by Arab states.
As I read the reports and analyses in the wake of this ceasefire, one thing seemed consistent to me: as ever, there is little, if any, concern for the humanity of the Palestinian people. On the contrary, every pronouncement by Western governments and the mainstream media treats their mere existence as a problem to be dealt with. In this regard, Jehad’s reference to “the global agenda of rendering entire populations disposable and rightless” is spot on. Palestinians in general – and Gazans in particular – have always been the canaries in the coal mine when it comes to the use of state violence against “problematic populations” deemed “disposable” by authoritarian states seeking to consolidate their power.
“Entire populations rendered disposable and rightless” certainly applied to events in my hometown of Chicago this past Sunday, where the Trump launched “Operation Safeguard,” a shock and awe blitz spearheaded by ICE, the FBI, ATF, DEA, CBP and US Marshals Service. Led by Trump’s so-called “border czar” Tom Homan (and surreally videotaped live by “Dr” Phil), heavily armed and armored forces terrorized Chicago neighborhoods all day, mostly going door to door, staking out streets in search of undocumented people, taking them away in full-body chains. While there is no definitive information on the numbers of people taken, federal immigration authorities claim to have arrested more than 100 people in recent days.
On a positive note, however, we are seeing that the strategies employed by local immigrant justice coalitions are making a real difference. My congregation, Tzedek Chicago is part of a local interfaith coalition called the Sanctuary Working Group, which has been mobilizing Know Your Rights trainings and Rapid Response teams. From our experience in Chicago over these past few days, we’ve seen that this kind of mobilization really does have an impact. Perhaps the strongest validation of these resistance strategies came from Homan himself, who said on an interview with CNN:
Sanctuary cities are making it very difficult to arrest the criminals. For instance, Chicago, very well educated, they’ve been educated how to defy ICE, how to hide from ICE. They call it “Know Your Rights.” I call it how to escape arrest.
in my previous post, I wrote that “the current political moment has left many of us breathless.” But over the course of the last several days, we’ve seen it is indeed possible “to disrupt and defy the global agenda of rendering entire populations disposable and rightless.” If we had any doubt at all, let us take our inspiration from the Gazan people, who have refused to submit after 15 months of merciless genocidal violence and are returning to their homes, vowing to rebuild and remain.
The most powerful shock and awe in the world could not break them. Let this be a lesson to us all.
Benyamin Netanyahu and Steve Witkoff, January 11, 2025
For Palestinians and those who stand in solidarity with them, the news of a ceasefire agreement between the Netanyahu administration and Hamas was welcome news. When the reports first broke, and I saw images of Gazans singing and dancing in the streets, I couldn’t help but feel a joyful solidarity with them. But like all brokered agreements between Israelis and Palestinians, this deal is also fragile and fraught – and filled with deeply disingenuous political maneuvering.
Some history: according to reports, this ceasefire deal is identical to the one brokered by the Biden administration last May, which was accepted by Hamas leaders in early July. At the last minute, however, Netanyahu later backed out, insisting on nothing less than the total destruction of Hamas. Israel then assassinated Hamas’ political leader and chief negotiator, Ismail Haniyeh and continued its relentless bombardment of Gaza.
Though this was all a direct affront to the Biden administration, the US government responded not by pressuring Netanyahu to accept the deal but by rewarding Israel with a $20 billion arms sale. Biden and Secretary of State Blinken also actively promoted the lie that it was Hamas and not Israel that had kiboshed the deal. In the meantime, the Israeli military continued with its genocidal onslaught. From the time that the talks fell apart until now, the death toll of Palestinians rose from at least 39,000 to 46,707, including more than 18,000 children.
So why is Israel accepting the very same deal a half a year later? We now know it was due to the efforts of Donald Trump, who has made it clear he didn’t want to deal with the distraction of Israel’s war on Gaza as he began his presidency. Last week, Trump asked his friend, Steve Witkoff, a billionaire real estate developer, to call Netanyahu and tell him in no uncertain terms that Israel’s military operations in Gaza must end before the inauguration.
In other words, a President-elect was able to do with a single visit from a private citizen what the Biden administration was either unable or unwilling to do for over a year.
Though the ceasefire deal was welcome news, it was not accomplished through the “tireless efforts of the Biden administration.” Neither was it due to the altruism (needless to say) of the President elect. Trump is nothing if not transactional – and there is already speculation over what he might give Netanyahu in return, whether it’s a brokered diplomatic deal with Saudi Arabia or the annexation of the West Bank (or both).
In the meantime, within 24 hours of the announcement of the deal, Israel escalated its bombing of Gaza, killing 80 Palestinians. According to analyst Yousef Munayyer, Israel has a habit of late-hour bombing to empty its stockpiles in anticipation of larger military aid packages from the US. In this case, since Israel has not realized its military objective of obliterating Hamas, “there may be an urge to do great damage while they can before ceasefire comes in, reacting to that disappointment.” As of this morning, the Netanyahu government, is indicating his government is prepared to accept the deal, which is set to go into effect on Sunday, but it is still yet to be signed.
But even if it is finalized, we should have no illusions. Like past deals, there is so much that Israel can do to pursue its own designs going forward. Like past deals, this one is set to unfold in stages. The first phase will feature a ceasefire, a withdrawal of Israeli troops, an initial swap of hostages and prisoners and an influx of humanitarian aid into Gaza. However, the second and third phases are far less developed. There is no agreement on the rebuilding of Gaza, the future of the Israeli military presence, who will govern, or how.
When I read the details of this agreement, I couldn’t help but recall the Oslo Accords in 1993, which was also negotiated in phases. The first was an interim phase, in which Israel would gradually withdraw from Palestinian areas in the West Bank and transfer administrative power to a temporary “Palestinian Authority.” The second phase involved permanent status details such as Jerusalem, refugee rights, settlements and borders. In the end, Israel agreed to the first phase as a cover to extend its settlement regime across the West Bank – all the while enacting policies that further dispossessed Palestinians from their homes.
Oslo was a hard lesson on the ultimate designs of all Israeli administrations, from left to right. No matter who is in power, the Israel’s goals are the goals of Zionism itself: the maintenance of a Jewish majority in the land. This goal necessarily entails the ongoing ethnic cleansing – an ongoing Nakba – of the Palestinian people. After the genocide in Gaza, we can honestly add the words “by any means necessary” to this sentence. No matter the diplomatic rhetoric around this current deal, we must not lose sight of this crucial history. Put simply: Netanyahu is all too likely to assent to phase one of the deal, get back a requisite number of hostages, then continue with the genocide in Gaza in order to destroy Hamas completely, ensure a maximum number of Palestinians are either dead or unable to return to their homes, and re-entrench Israeli civilian settlement there.
In this week’s Torah portion, Parashat Shemot, there arises a new Pharoah who “did not know Joseph.” Threatened by the demographic growth of the Israelite people in the land, he institutes murderous policies to stem their birthrate and reduce their number through harsh enslavement. But there are also those who resist Pharoah’s tyranny through acts of courageous civil disobedience: Hebrew midwives who refuse to kill Israelite baby boys, a mother and sister who save an Israelite child and a daughter of Pharoah who adopts him. All of these events set in motion a chain that will inexorably, inevitably lead toward the liberation of the Israelite people.
So in this moment, let us welcome the prospect of the cessation of hostilities. But let us have no illusions about the designs of all Pharoahs past and present. Like the Israelites in our Torah portion, the Palestinian people continue to cry out for liberation.
The centerpiece of this week’s Torah portion, Parshat Vayechi, is Jacob’s final soliloquy to his individual sons: a Biblical poem that is equal part blessing and curse, history and prediction. While his words are complex and wide ranging, Jacob saves his harshest words for his sons Shimon and Levi:
Shimon and Levi are a pair/Their weapons are tools of lawlessness. Let not my person be included in their council/Let not my being be counted in their assembly. (Genesis 49:5-6)
Jacob’s curse of Shimon and Levi seems to be a reference to their role in the calculated and deadly attack on Shechem that occurred in Genesis 34. Biblical scholars surmise that these verses likely reflect the tribal biases of the original author. But whatever the reason for Jacob’s words, his characterization of Shimon and Levi have come to represent the cursed impact of calculated and unrestrained violence.
As I read these words this year, I recalled something I hadn’t thought of in a long time: a speech delivered by the late Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin on February 28, 1994. Four days earlier, a Jewish extremist settler, Baruch Goldstein, had murdered 29 Muslim worshippers in the Cave of the Patriarchs/Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron/Al Khalil in a calculated, vicious attack. In an address before the Knesset, Rabin actually quoted Jacob’s words to Shimon and Levi. He then continued, addressing the late Goldstein, who was already becoming viewed as a martyr in the eyes of his zealous followers:
To him and to those like him we say: You are not part of the community of Israel. You are not part of the national democratic camp to which we in this house all belong, and many of the people despise you. You are not partners in the Zionist enterprise. You are a foreign implant. You are an errant weed. Sensible Judaism spits you out. You placed yourself outside the wall of Jewish Law. You are a shame on Zionism and an embarrassment to Judaism.
A year after delivering this speech, Rabin was dead, murdered by another Jewish extremist settler.
Since his death, Yitzhak Rabin has since achieved mythic status in Liberal Zionist circles as a heroic figure who was struck down for daring to make peace with the Palestinians. And for many years, I was among those who believed he was indeed a casualty of the curse of Shimon and Levi to which he referred just one year earlier. As I read Rabin’s speech 30 years later, however, I believe the reality is not nearly that simple.
I’m particularly taken by his characterization of Goldstein as an “errant weed” and “foreign implant” to the Zionist enterprise, as if we can draw a meaningful line between “good Zionism” and “bad Zionism.” It’s worth noting that Rabin himself was the general who oversaw the most massive expulsion of Palestinians during the Nakba: the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian villages of Lydda and Ramle in July 1948, which included the infamous Lydda massacres and the Lydda death march. Rabin personally signed the expulsion order which stated, “The inhabitants of Lydda must be expelled quickly without attention to age….”
Years later during the First Intifada in 1988/9, Rabin was Israel’s Defense Minister when he issued the well known order to “break Palestinians bones” – a directive that was intended “to permanently disable Palestinian youth by inflicting lasting injuries that incapacitate them.” As generations of disabled Palestinians will attest, the legacy of this order has had a devastating impact on their lives to this day.
Although many promote the mythology of Rabin as a former military man who later became a man of peace, the truth is much more problematic. In fact, Rabin never supported Palestinian statehood throughout the Oslo “peace process.” It is more accurate to say he used the veneer of this process to enable an Israeli settlement regime that has since become permanently entrenched in the West Bank. Rabin’s role in Oslo can be directly linked in a straight line to the systemic violence against Palestinians that is now raging with impunity throughout the Occupied Territories.
In other words, while Liberal Zionist mythology attributes the curse of Shimon and Levi to “bad apple” Zionists, this kind of systemic, unrestrained violence has been central to the Zionist project from its very beginning. Indeed, Israel’s still ongoing genocide in Gaza is not the result of “errant weeds” in the Israeli government like Netanyahu, Smotrich and Ben-Givir. It is the logical end game of Zionism itself: an ideology and movement that has from its very origins dehumanized and dispossessed Palestinians to make way for Jewish settlement.
As the book of Genesis comes to a close, Jacob’s deathbed words ring out to us with renewed clarity. Zionism’s weapons are tools of lawlessness. Let us not be included in their council. Let our being not be counted in their assembly.
Mahmoud Al-Fasih holds the body of his three-week-old daughter, Sela, before laying her to rest. (Photo: CNN)
I’m sure there are many people who read what I write regularly (or scroll through my social media feeds) and think to themselves, “What a ‘one-note’ rabbi, just going on and on about Gaza. Why doesn’t he write or talk about other things for a change?”
If I could answer, these hypothetical folks, I’d say, yes there are surely many things in the world I could be writing or talking about. But when you live in a time of genocide – particularly one that is being funded by your government and carried out in your name as a Jew – it seems to me that being “one note” is a moral imperative.
All the more so as Israel’s genocide on Gaza is now in its fourteenth month and the rest of the world seems have moved on – treating Israel’s genocide in Gaza as mere background noise. In such a context, it seems to me, bearing witness – i.e., to remember when others have forgotten – is a profoundly sacred act.
Though it is not being widely reported, Israel’s mass killing of Gazans has been increasing dramatically in recent weeks. Earlier this week, it was reported that Israel’s genocide claimed 77 lives in one day. Two days ago, Israel attacked five journalists in a clearly marked news van outside Al-Awda Hospital in Nuseirat. (One of the journalists, Ayman Al-Jidi, was waiting for his wife to give birth inside the hospital.) It is also being reported that Gazan babies are freezing to death inside their increasingly frigid tent encampments. Truly, in the face of such shameful and shameless genocidal violence, how can we not bear witness?
Remembering Gaza is at the heart of Tzedek Chicago’s new Hanukkah supplement, “Rededicating our Solidarity with Gaza” which highlights a different group of Gazans who have been subjected to grave and deadly harm during the course of the genocide (including journalists and children). Each group is represented here by individuals whose lives and deaths testify to the dignity and humanity of the Palestinian people. We encourage you to read them aloud each night after reciting the Hanukkah blessings bear witness to their stories and sanctify their memories.
Remembrance is also an important theme in this week’s Torah portion, Parashat Miketz. At the very end of last week’s Torah portion, while Joseph was languishing in Egyptian prison, he interpreted the dreams of his cell mates, the chief baker and the royal cupbearer. He told the cupbearer, “Think of me when all is well with you again, and do me the kindness of mentioning me to Pharaoh, so as to free me from this place.” But after the cupbearer is released from prison, we are told, “Yet the chief cupbearer did not think of Joseph; he forgot him.”
At the start of this week’s portion, the cupbearer learns of Pharaoh’s nightmares and tells him, “I must make mention today of my misdeeds.” He then tells Pharaoh about Joseph, the young man in prison who has the gift of dream divination. On the surface, this might be the self-effacing rhetoric of a royal courtier addressing his king. But on a deeper level, his statement could be understood as a kind of confession: admission that he has sinned by allowing the incarcerated to remain forgotten.
Of course, systems of incarceration themselves are inherently sinful inasmuch as they treat humanity as disposable – and too easily forgotten. Whether it is the massive for-profit prison systems, the cages on our border, or the people of Gaza, who have been incarcerated in an open-air prison for over a decade and are now being subjected to genocidal violence at the hands of their captors.
This Hanukkah, let us shine our lights to remind the world of what it would just as soon forget. Let us commit the kind of hope that is rooted in action: toward a world free of prison walls, a world where no one is disposable and the divine image in all is cherished and nurtured and liberated into its full and unfettered potential.
A photograph shows soldiers posing with an orange banner that reads: “Only settlement would be considered victory!” The color orange was used by the settler movement in 2004 and 2005 to protest Israel’s disengagement from Gaza.
It’s becoming ominously clear that the end game of Israel’s genocide in Gaza is the end of game of Zionism itself: namely, settlement. The writing has been on the wall for some time now. As I mentioned on Rosh Hashanah, we now know the existence of the so-called “General’s Plan,” in which:
Israel will control the northern Gaza Strip and drive out the 300,000 Palestinians still there. Major General Giora Eiland, the war’s ideologue, proposes starving them to death, or exiling them, as a lever with which to defeat Hamas. The Israeli right envisions a Jewish settlement of the area, with vast real estate potential of convenient topography, a sea view, and proximity to central Israel…
News accounts bear out that the General’s Plan is well underway. The vast majority of residents of Northern Gaza have now been ethnically cleansed from their homes and Israel has said it has no intentions to let them return. At a recent two-day conference, “Preparing to Resettle Gaza,” Israel’s National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir told the hundreds who gathered, “If we want it, we can renew settlements in Gaza.”
With Trump now poised to take power, there will very likely be new wind behind these plans. Last March, Jared Kushner was quoted as saying: “Gaza’s waterfront property could be very valuable … It’s a little bit of an unfortunate situation there, but from Israel’s perspective I would do my best to move the people out and then clean it up.” With Kushner widely expected to be “pivotal” to Trump’s Middle East policy, his words now take on a terrifying new resonance of possibility.
Even more ominously, there is every reason to expect these plans will be aided and abetted by the American Jewish communal establishment. One week after Donald Trump’s reelection, Karen Paikin Barall, the Jewish Federation’s VP of government relations, remarked to a group of local Jewish community relations councils, “We should all look forward to the day we can hope to buy townhouses in the West Bank and Gaza.”
As a settler colonial movement, Zionism was always focused on the maintenance of a majority Jewish presence in historic Palestine. However, the seizing and control of resources has been no less integral to this project. The settler colonial reality of the 21st century is driven in no small part by the corporate interest of weapons manufacturers as well as the billionaire and oligarch class that seek to profit off the spoils of war and genocide. In the current moment, it should come as no surprise that there is also unabashed talk about the annexation of the West Bank and even parts of South Lebanon.
Such is the natural result of a movement and ideology that prizes real estate over the well-being of the actual people who happen to live on the land. I’m particularly mindful of this as I contemplate this week’s Torah portion, Chayei Sarah, which begins with the famous episode in which Abraham negotiates with the Hittites to purchase the Cave of Machpelah as a burial site for his recently deceased wife Sarah. This story is often wielded by many Zionists as a deed of sale to this sacred site – and contemporary land acquisition in Palestine as the “inalienable possession of the Jewish people.”
There is, of course, another way to understand the spiritual meaning of this story: it is not about land acquisition but love and loyalty. Abraham is not motivated to purchase this land in order to claim exclusive entitlement to it: he is driven by his desire to honor his beloved wife Sarah, and to ensure that she and his extended family will have a permanent resting place. To read this episode only about entitlement to land is limited at best – and to judge by the apartheid and violence by which Israel maintains its control of this site today – a moral sacrilege at worst.
At the end of the portion, following the death of Abraham, we read that his sons Ishmael and Isaac buried their father together in the Cave of Machpelah. I can think of no better image to underscore the critical importance of pursuing a Judaism that prizes love over land. This Shabbat Chayei Sarah, may we rededicate our commitment to this sacred vision.
Like all of you, I’m sure, I’m still in deep shock and anguish over Donald Trump’s electoral victory this past Tuesday. And while I certainly have my opinions about how this terrifying outcome could have possibly happened, I’m going to resist the urge to engage in post-election punditry. There’s more than enough to go around right now, some of it interesting, some of it clarifying, but to my mind, much of it tone-deaf and destructive. There will be time for the analysis, the interrogating and the strategizing. For now, however, I think it is critical that we sit with what has happened and give ourselves space to grieve and respond emotionally to the enormity of what has just occurred.
Of course, none of this happened overnight. Well before last Tuesday, were all too aware of the growth of fascism in the US and around the world, the scourge of state violence and mass incarceration, the loss of reproductive freedoms, the genocide against Palestinians, political targeting of immigrants, LGBTQ+ people, Muslims, disabled people, and other vulnerable minorities. After Tuesday, however, the stakes of these threats have reached a terrifying new level. Yes, what happened this week was shocking and heartbreaking. But it was also clarifying. We should no longer have any illusions about what we are up against.
I know that many of us who have been on the front line of the resistance to these threats are feeling exhausted and demoralized. Those who are members of targeted groups are understandably feeling a new level of fear for their own well-being. That is why, I believe to the core of my being, that the most important thing that those of us who have been organizing movements for justice can do in this moment is to reaffirm our commitment and care for one another.
In order to do that, we will need to resist the politics of division lest they infect the movements of solidarity we’ve been building so carefully and lovingly. During this past election, there was strong and passionate disagreement on whether a vote for Kamala Harris was a vote for genocide or a vote to hold back a Trump presidency. There were good, principled arguments to be made on both side of that debate. Even so, it was immensely painful to witness what this election did to the Palestine solidarity movement. Those who chose to vote for Harris were accused of “supporting genocide.” Those who chose withhold their vote for Harris were accused of being “MAGA enablers.” Our movement was faced with a profoundly untenable choice. There were times I feared it would rip us apart.
But after last Tuesday’s election, none of this really matters anymore. We simply cannot afford to turn on each other. Not now. We need each other more than ever.
I don’t yet know what kind of political strategies we will need to employ to resist the fascist reality posed by the MAGA movement – but I do know that whatever happens, we will need to show up for one another now more than ever. We will need to protect and defend one another. We will need to be clearer than ever about the values we hold sacred and be prepared to ground everything we do in the conviction that every single human life is of infinite worth – and is worth fighting for.
We will need to be clear-eyed about the challenges ahead and stand together to face them. For those of us in the Jewish community, that means lifting up solidarity as our most central sacred imperative. All the rest is mere commentary. As I said this past Yom Kippur:
In the 21st century, I believe this is the sacred calculus the Jewish people have to offer the world: Creation + Exodus = Solidarity. More than ever, the Jewish communities we create simply must value solidarity as our most sacrosanct mitzvah. In an age in which we are witnessing the increased scapegoating, yes of Jews, but also of Muslims, LGBTQ+ people, people of color, disabled people, immigrants, indigenous people and so many others, our sacred tradition must promote collective liberation first and foremost.
The predominant theme in this week’s Torah portion, Lech Lecha, is the act of going forth into the unknown with nothing but a promise of blessing and liberation. But unlike the literal meaning of the words in our portion, we must affirm that this liberation cannot be for one privileged group of people alone. We must affirm a Lech Lecha of collective liberation, where all people are God’s people and all people are chosen and the boundaries of the Promised Land extend to include all who dwell on earth.
In this moment, like Abraham and Sarah, we are all being called into a land we do not yet know. But as we read in our portion, it is a collective going-forth – for the sake of both the living and future generations.
Yes, in this current moment, there is much we do not yet know. But we do know that we will have the hearts and minds to resist what is to come. That there is still a world worth fighting for. And that the way to that world is through our solidarity and care for one another.
Shalom Rav 