On November 2 I had the pleasure to engage in a public conversation with journalist/author Peter Beinart in a program co-sponsored by Jewish Currents and my congregation Tzedek Chicago, We explored a wide range of issues arising from the current moral-political moment in Israel Palestine.
I was particularly grateful to interrogate the issues raised by Peter in his recent book “Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza: A Reckoning:”
• Is the Jewish community currently facing an unbridgeable ethical divide?
• Is it possible to make community with Jews whom we believe support – or remain silent over – the genocide of Palestinian people in Gaza?
• Does Peter identify as a Zionist now? What is his opinion of the growing movement for antizionist Judaism?
I appreciated Peter’s honesty and willingness to engage over these issues – and many others. The entire program is available on the video recording above.
This Yom Kippur, amazingly, is Tzedek Chicago’s tenth Yom Kippur. And since Yom Kippur is a day for taking stock of the year that’s past, I want to to share some thoughts about our congregation’s first ten: to explore our history, our growth and perhaps most importantly, to offer some thoughts about what has changed in the Jewish world since Tzedek Chicago first began.
This will be a significant sermon for me for a number of reasons, so let’s just get it out of the way at the outset: this is not my goodbye. It may be my final sermon at Tzedek Chicago, but the year is young. There will be time for goodbyes later – but for now, please know I’m not going anywhere just yet. And there is so much work to be done in the coming year.
When I think back over the first ten years at Tzedek Chicago, I can clearly see critical milestones that fundamentally and irrevocably shaped our congregation. Like most things in life, the majority of these milestones were wholly unexpected. And yet they ended up being transformative.
How we began is a classic example. Just to give some context, in early 2015, Israel had just finished a military assault on Gaza it called “Operation Protective Edge.” At the time, it was Israel’s most brutal attack on Gaza yet, killing nearly 2,500 Palestinians and wounding 11,000 over the course of a month. It’s hard to imagine now, but at the time it felt like the most devastating massacre any of us could possibly fathom. Of course, we couldn’t begin to fathom the nightmare Israel would unleash upon the Palestinian people of Gaza nine years later.
Still, like other Israeli assaults before it, it was a last straw for many Jews, including me. A few months earlier I had painfully resigned from the congregation I had served as Rabbi for 16 years and I was fairly sure I’d never work as a congregational rabbi again. And there were others in Chicago who felt Jewishly adrift – many of us knew each other through our connection to the Chicago chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace and had marched together in Palestine solidarity protests for years.
At the time, we felt as if we were at a crossroads, not knowing where or how to express our Judaism in a community that seemed so thoroughly enmeshed in Israel and Zionism. But beyond the political, we had an underlying, perhaps still imperceptible yearning to be part of a religious community that expressed a different kind of Judaism.
So after Rosh Hashanah 2014, we began to meet semi-regularly as a havurah, a completely lay-led group. We got together for occasional Shabbat dinners and some Jewish holidays, including a memorable Palestine solidarity Passover seder. In those days, we called ourselves the Haymarket Havurah. Very quickly, it felt like we were organically creating the spiritual community we had been yearning for. We were celebrating Jewish life together, observing the Jewish rituals that we cherished so deeply, but we also included readings, prayers and music that reflected our political convictions, consciously centering solidarity with Palestinians as a sacred Jewish value.
Eventually, we started to talk together about what it would mean to actually turn our group into a formal congregation. Some of us had been members of synagogues for many years, others had never belonged to one in their lives. None of us however, had any experience founding a congregation. We decided fairly quickly that if we did start something, it would have to be a consciously intentional community. So before we recruited a single member, we drafted a list of core values that would be foundational to the life of our congregation. We listed them under seven categories: “A Judaism Beyond Borders,” “A Judaism of Solidarity,” “A Judaism of Nonviolence,” “A Judaism of Spiritual Freedom,” “A Judaism of Equity,” and “A Judaism Beyond Nationalism.”
By spelling out our values so specifically, we were consciously going against a major tenet of liberal synagogue life, which is to hew to the path of least resistance. If truth be brutally told, the central value of most liberal synagogues – most liberal congregations for that matter – is growth. I can’t tell you how many times, in my former congregations, I’ve sat at board and committee meetings convened to discuss the question, “What are our strategies for growth?” “What is our outreach plan?” “How can we attract more young families with school age kids?”
In building our new congregation, we approached this question from the opposite direction. We knew our congregation wouldn’t be for everyone, and we didn’t expect it to be. At the same time, we just knew there was a genuine desire for the Judaism we wanted to see in the world. So if we had a plan for growth, it was to be loud and proud about our values, and let our growth take care of itself.
So during the summer of 2015 we held a series of orientation meetings in people’s homes throughout Chicago. As word began to spread, the meetings got larger and larger. When we held our first High Holiday service that fall at Luther Memorial Church in Lincoln Square, over 200 people attended. Here is what I said at my very first Rosh Hashanah sermon:
I’ll be honest with you: I still can’t quite believe that we pulled this off. It was only a short time ago that we even began to think about creating this new congregation. The leadership of Tzedek Chicago began these conversations a few months ago, and we held our first orientation meeting just this last summer. Our start up period has been astonishingly short – but I think I can speak for the entire leadership of Tzedek when I say I’m not surprised by how far we’ve come in this relatively brief period of time. I’ve known in my heart that there is a very real need in the world for a congregation such as ours.
Those who attended that service will attest to the excitement we felt in that sanctuary on that first Rosh Hashanah when we said the Shechehianu blessing together. It all felt so right and so transgressive at the same time, which I guess means it felt so Jewish.
When we started out we were almost completely lay-driven. Our first board was a volunteer steering committee, led by our founders, Susan Klonsky and Mark Miller. My wife Hallie was our first part-time administrator. And I served as part-time rabbi for the congregation while I worked full time at the American Friends Service Committee, who very graciously allowed me to organize this new congregation as my side gig for our first five years. Our first family education program was created by our member families themselves, organized by member Erin Weinstein, of blessed memory.
In those early days, we were essentially a part-time congregation, careful to do what we could within our capacity. We held Shabbat services and Torah Studies once a month, observed all the major holidays and held educational programs throughout the year. We also became a regular presence in the Chicago justice community. One of our first acts of solidarity was with the hunger strikers at Dyett High School, which was one of 50 Chicago public schools closed in 2015 by then mayor Rahm Emanuel. On the second day of our first Rosh Hashanah, in fact, we hosted a solidarity action with hunger strikers at Chicago City Hall.
Despite our size, however, word about us spread fairly quickly. I remember getting regular emails from folks asking if there was a congregation like us in their community. We knew that we had tapped into a very real and growing desire in the Jewish world for a synagogue that centered justice-focused core values such as ours.
In 2019, we marked an important milestone when I made the decision to leave AFSC to serve as Tzedek Chicago’s full-time rabbi. When I officially started at the beginning of 2020, our first order of business was to find a more permanent rental space for our congregation. Of course, we all know what happened that year. When the pandemic descended upon us, everything changed for everyone.
We all recall the profound fear and uncertainty of those days. It was a time of so much grief and loss, so much fear and isolation. We weren’t sure what the future would hold but we knew the world would never be the same. We also knew we had to find creative, unprecedented ways to connect with each other and create community, which we realized more than ever was so essential to our collective well-being.
So like the rest of the world, we did find new ways to connect and care for each other. Our Chesed Committee, tasked with community care, quickly became our most important committee. We instituted a weekly virtual check-in gathering for members and friends that still meets every Wednesday. We also went from being a part time congregation to a full-time one, expanding our services and programs significantly. This was when we initiated our weekly Friday night online candle lighting and Shabbat morning Torah study. These gatherings also continue to meet every week, and are still the anchors of our congregational schedule.
Our congregation also grew. Significantly. By the end of 2020, we had almost doubled in size. But we didn’t only grow in numbers – we also grew geographically, gaining members throughout North America and from around the world. We attracted people from far outside our shtetl in Chicago who had long been seeking a Jewish congregation such as ours. We now had regularly attending members from across North America and as far away as the UK, Ireland, New Zealand, and Singapore. We also gained members who were disabled and immunocompromised who never had access to a congregation before. By going online, our community became available to the outside world in ways we never could have imagined.
To put it simply, that year transformed Tzedek Chicago into a Chicago-based, world-wide Jewish congregation. And that will always be the case. As we continue to grow, our leadership remains committed to maintaining this balance, to find creative new ways to build community in a congregation that is both local and global. And while this may be a challenge, it also makes perfect sense. Our congregation was never a neighborhood shul. We’ve always been more values-based than location-based. I personally never dreamed I would be leading Shabbat services and Torah Studies from my laptop every week, but then again, everything about our congregation has been a leap into the unprecedented.
I am also mindful that it would be a mistake to refer to this milestone as a historical or past tense phenomenon. Of course, the pandemic is by no means over. As I look out into our sanctuary now, to a room full of masked people gathering for Yom Kippur, I see a powerful visual of our congregation’s commitment to the health of all its members. This value will always be sacrosanct to us as well. Whether you’re a member or a guest with us today, we’re grateful for your readiness to honor our congregation’s mandatory community health policy – our congregation’s commitment to our collective well-being.
Another major milestone for our congregation occurred in 2022, when we voted to formally change our core value from “non-Zionist” to “antizionist.” Once again, it began rather unexpectedly, as an initial board conversation, that eventually turned into a unanimous vote. Since the board did not want to approve of this change unilaterally, however, it facilitated member meetings over a series of months, to discuss what this change would mean for our members and for our congregation. In the end, we held a vote and more than 70% of our membership quorum voted to approve the change. Since then, Tzedek Chicago has been, openly and officially, an antizionist congregation.
This was much, much more than a semantical change – it was a decision that reflected our moral commitment as a congregation. In our original core values statement, we define Zionism as “the creation of an ethnic Jewish nation state in historic Palestine” and affirm that “(Zionism)” resulted in an injustice against the Palestinian people – an injustice that continues to this day.” In other words, we make it clear that Zionism, at its core, is a form of systematic oppression.
The term non-Zionist, however, is a neutral term. It doesn’t take a stand or make a judgement about this injustice. In our deliberations, many of us were impacted by Angela Davis’ famous quote: “In a racist society, it is not enough to be non-racist – we must be anti-racist.” That is to say, we cannot remain neutral about systems of oppression. If we truly oppose them, we must affirm transformative justice: we must commit to dismantling oppressive systems and replacing them with ones that are more equitable and just.
I strongly recommend reading and sharing the board statement that explained the reasoning behind our decision; it is, in its way, just as important as our original core values statement. I truly believe it offers a critical vision for the direction and future for Jewish life, reflecting a consciousness that far transcends the simple label “antizionist”:
While we affirm that Tzedek Chicago is an anti-Zionist congregation, that is not all we are. This value is but one aspect of a larger vision we refer to in our core values statement as a “Judaism Beyond Borders.” Central to this vision is an affirmation of the diaspora as the fertile ground from which Jewish spiritual creativity has flourished for centuries. Indeed, Jewish life has historically taken root, adapted and blossomed in many lands throughout the world. At Tzedek Chicago we seek to develop and celebrate a diasporic consciousness that joyfully views the entire world as our homeland.
Moving away from a Judaism that looks to Israel as its fully realized home releases us into rich imaginings of what the World to Come might look like, where it might be, and how we might go about inhabiting it now. This creative windfall can infuse our communal practices, rituals, and liturgy. We also believe that Jewish diasporic consciousness has the real potential to help us reach a deeper solidarity with those who have been historically colonized and oppressed.
When Tzedek Chicago was first founded, we were something of a voice in the Zionist hegemonic wilderness. In 2015, one newspaper article about us included a snarky quote from a rabbi who said, “Statistically, they don’t exist.” Ten years on, I think it’s fair to say that antizionist Jews are now standing up to be counted. If there could be any doubt, just look at the dramatic increase in political efforts to label and legislate antizionism as antisemitism. Why would Israel and Israel advocates bother if they didn’t take us seriously? This is a reactionary response to a phenomenon that is very real – and growing.
Today, our congregation is on the vanguard of this emergent movement. Jewish Voice for Peace formally became an antizionist organization in 2019 – and for the past several years, JVP has coordinated a growing network of antizionist Jewish ritual spaces. Some are congregations with rabbis, some are lay-lead havurot, some are more traditional, some are more progressive in their liturgy, but all are committed to creating and building a Judaism beyond Zionism.
In addition, there are educational initiatives such as Jewish Liberation Learning in New York City, an “antizionist education program for kids,” Achvat Olam Diaspora Community Day School in Boston and Shel Mala, a queer, antizionist Talmud study program that meets online. There are antizionist Jewish student groups proliferating on universities and college campuses across North America. There are antizionist artists creating new Jewish liturgy and ritual art. There are antizionist spiritual resources such as “For Times Such as These,” the already classic “radical Jewish guide” to the holidays written by my colleagues, Rabbis Jessica Rosenberg and Ariana Katz.
Speaking of antizionist rabbis, more and more of them are being ordained every year. I know many of them through the JVP Rabbinical Council and Rabbis for Ceasefire: gifted, passionate Jewish leaders who have much to offer our community. Perhaps more than anything else, the emergence of new Jewish leadership is the most powerful signifier that antizionist Judaism has a real future – that it will continue to grow and thrive.
Though we’re still at the nascent beginnings of this movement, its emergence is surely a sign that Jewish life has changed dramatically over the past ten years. It’s also a validation of the leap of faith we took when we founded Tzedek Chicago, just knowing in our hearts there were growing numbers of Jews out there who shared our passionate vision for the kind of Judaism we wanted to live – or more to the point, the kind of world we wanted to live in.
I’ve just highlighted a few of the milestones that I believe have been critical in our congregation’s growth during our first decade of existence. In the coming year, we will mark another one: this spring Tzedek Chicago will be hiring a new rabbi to lead us into the next chapter of our journey.
Naturally, I have all kinds of feels about this, but mostly, I’m excited and proud. I’ve been doing the work of a congregational rabbi for a very long time – since I’ve been in my twenties, actually – and I’m genuinely ready for this change. But I’m also so proud that we’ve created a robust and thriving congregational community that will provide a full-time rabbinical job to one of the growing number of very talented antizionist rabbis who are emerging into the Jewish world.
As I said before, this is not goodbye yet. And I also want to say that while I’ll be stepping down from the day to day work of the synagogue, I’ll still be around. Soon enough I’ll have a conversation with the board about what an appropriate future involvement with Tzedek Chicago might look like for us. But for right now, there is still much work for us in the year ahead – and I’m eager for the blessings and challenges that the new year will bring.
I’d like to end on a personal note. I have often said, one of the most painful experiences of my life – resigning from my former congregation – led to one of the biggest blessings in my life: the opportunity to help found Tzedek Chicago. To be the rabbi of a congregational community of conscience, where I could for the first time in my rabbinical career, be my authentic self and speak my authentic truth.
I cannot begin to tell you how liberating this has been for me. I’ll offer you one small but telling example: Last year, as I was considering participating in the Rabbis for Ceasefire Passover action at the Gaza border, I was stressing because it came during a particularly busy, event-filled week in the congregation, not least of which was our annual Pesach Seder.
When I mentioned my hesitance to our then board president Nate Goldbaum, he said to me, “You have to do this. You need to be there. We need you to be there.” Mind you, this was the president of a congregation telling the rabbi that their congregation needed him to protest at the Gaza border. It was only later when I realized how revolutionary this actually was, how rare it is that any of us are given the permission to be our full moral selves, to speak our consciences openly, freely and without fear.
The opportunity to be one’s authentic self is a rare gift, and it is one that I have never taken for granted. I fervently hope that Tzedek Chicago has provided this gift to you as well. Because at the end of the day, isn’t this what our spiritual communities should be: places of authenticity and conviction, where no one has to bury their most deeply held values, where we have the permission to express our truest and best selves? It really shouldn’t be too much to ask: that our congregations reflect the world we want to see, or as I so often put it, the world we know is possible.
I don’t think I can put it any better than I did in 2015, at the conclusion of my first sermon for our congregation. So I will conclude with those very same words:
I want to express once more how blessed I feel that I have been granted such an opportunity at this point in my life and my career. I am so very grateful and excited to be embarking on a journey such as this with all of you and many more who will be joining us as we make our way. I know it will be a complex and challenging journey in many ways. We’ve set our sights high and it goes without saying that we will be learning together as we go.
To be sure, it is not easy to do this kind of work. It is challenging, it is painful, it can often mean being alienated or isolated from family and friends, from the larger community. But for so many of us, we don’t have a choice but to do this work – and we know that we will ultimately find the strength to continue through the sacred relationships we cultivate along the way. In the end, this is a journey we must take – and I can’t think of anyone I’d rather take it with than all of you. Speaking for myself and the leadership of Tzedek Chicago, thank you for putting your faith in us and in one another. Wherever our steps may lead us, I know we will be going from strength to strength.
And finally, please join me in expressing gratitude at having been sustained long enough to reach this incredible new season together:
Holy One of Blessing, your presence fills creation, you have given us life, sustained us and brought us all to this very sacred time together.
Protesters outside an ICE processing facility, Broadview Chicago. (Credit: Vincent D. Johnson/Block Club Chicago)
I’ll be honest with you: I never liked High Holiday services when I was a kid.
There were so many things that just rubbed me the wrong way: they felt interminably long, the old school Reform choir music wasn’t my thing, and my parents would constantly shush me and my brothers when we got squirrelly (which was often). But most of all, I resented the seeming irrelevance of it all. I just couldn’t relate to the content of the services – and there was never any effort to explain why it should be relevant to me.
On Rosh Hashanah in particular, I just couldn’t relate to the constant stream of prayers singing God’s praises, extolling God’s greatness and invoking God’s power. It all seemed designed to make us feel small and insignificant: this repeated glorification of an all-powerful God to whom we must beg and plead for another year of life.
I realize now that I was a pretty astute kid. “Malchuyot,” which literally means “sovereignty,” is one of the central themes of Rosh Hashanah. Every new year we declare over and over that God is our supreme ruler. This theme is repeated throughout the liturgy, particularly during the Musaf service, when it is traditional to physically prostrate oneself on the floor before the divine throne during the Aleinu prayer.
Over the years, however, as I began to attend services on my own terms rather than under duress, I came to appreciate Rosh Hashanah, yes, even the idea of Malchuyot. In fact, the older I get, the more relevant and important this concept feels to me. On a personal level, I understand to be a Malchuyot is a reminder that we often labor under illusions of our own power and control. We face these illusions head on during Rosh Hashanah when we do the work of teshuvah: the sacred process of return and repentance.
Of course, we are not all powerful. But ironically, acknowledging the limits of our power can actually be liberating. By affirming a transcendent source of power greater than our own, we can better focus and identify the things we can control in our lives. When we invoke God’s Malchuyot on Rosh Hashanah, we do so in the spirit of this liberation, to break free of our illusions of power and put ourselves on a more productive, healing path during the Days of Awe.
Beyond the personal, I’d suggest Malchuyot has a collective and political dimension as well. It’s deeply rooted in Judaism’s central sacred narrative, the Exodus story. I actually made this very point during my very first sermon for Tzedek Chicago on Rosh Hashanah ten years ago:
At its core, I would suggest affirming Malchuyot means affirming that there is a Force Yet Greater: greater than Pharoah in Egypt, greater than the mighty Roman empire, greater than the myriad of powerful empires that have oppressed so many peoples throughout the world.
I would argue that this sacred conviction has been one of the central driving forces of Jewish tradition throughout the centuries: that it is not by might and not by power – but by God’s spirit that our world will ultimately be redeemed. I would further argue that this belief in a Power Yet Greater has sustained Jewish life in a very real way. After all, the Jewish people are still here, even after far mightier empires have come and gone. It might well be said that this allegiance to a Power Yet Greater is the force that keeps alive the hopes of all peoples who have lived with the reality of dislocation and state oppression.
I went on to suggest that through Zionism, the Jewish people have tragically betrayed this sacred Jewish narrative of liberation. When you think about it, the raison d’etre of Zionism literally is human sovereignty. It is an ideology that unabashedly deifies state power as a redemptive force in Jewish life and overturns centuries of Jewish tradition. It has subverted the sacred ideal of Malchuyot by centering and sacralizing human power above all else.
When I delivered that first Rosh Hashanah sermon, however, I never could have predicted where Zionism’s bargain with state power would lead us. In the misguided name of Jewish safety and supremacy, Israel has doubled down on its assumption of human Malchuyot to an unbearable degree. As we gather for Rosh Hashanah this year, Israel has been perpetrating an almost two-year genocide against the Palestinian people. Nearly 70,000 Palestinians have been killed, with real numbers likely to reach the hundreds of thousands. Whole families have been killed and entire bloodlines erased. Untold numbers of people have been buried under rubble, burned alive, dismembered and starved to death. At this very moment, Israel is literally bombing the entire north of Gaza off the map, trapping scores of residents who cannot leave their homes and sending scores of others to the south into active war zones.
And yet of course. Of course it has come to this. From the very beginning, the goal of establishing a Jewish-majority nation state could only be realized by dispossessing another people – what the Palestinian people refer to as the Nakba. Israel’s genocide against the Palestinians did not begin on October 7; it has been ongoing for over 70 years. There is a direct line leading from Zionism’s idolatrous attachment to Malchuyot to the crimes we are witnessing daily in Gaza.
This idolatrous attachment, of course, is not unique to Zionism. Looking back, I realize that Tzedek Chicago’s first Rosh Hashanah service took place shortly after Trump announced his first Presidential campaign. It’s also fair to say when I gave that first sermon, I never would have dreamed that just ten years later, the US would be rapidly descending into authoritarian fascist rule. That ICE would serve as our President’s secret police force, prowling the streets in plain clothes and face masks, abducting immigrants and student activists in unmarked vans. That thousands of National Guard troops would be mobilized to occupy American cities. That so many of our nation’s institutions would be defunded, plundered and centralized by unelected oligarchs. That our government would openly declare whole groups of people, including immigrants, trans people, people of color and unhoused people to be literal “enemies of the state.”
In the wake of Charlie Kirk’s murder, the incitement against these imagined enemies has reached a terrifying fever pitch. Trump and the movement he spawned are now seizing this moment to foment fury against a broad array of individuals and institutions they call the “radical left.” Trump’s aide Stephen Miller has chillingly characterized the current moment in America as a battle between “family and nature” and those who celebrate “everything that is warped, twisted and depraved.”
Words such as these should not sound new to us; the Trump regime is using a time-honored tactic from the fascist playbook. We know that totalitarian regimes have historically consolidated their power during times of instability by fomenting a toxic “us vs. them” narrative. Hannah Arendt identified this mentality very clearly seventy-five years ago in her book The Origins of Totalitarianism: “Tribal nationalism always insists that its own people are surrounded by a ‘world of enemies’ – one against all – and that a fundamental difference exists between this people and all others.”
Although the context of 21st century fascism is different in many ways from fascisms of the past, the fundamental building blocks of this phenomenon remain the same. In the parlance of Rosh Hashanah, the fascists of today are claiming Malchuyot – ultimate power – for themselves. And they are consolidating their power by demonizing those who do not fit into their idealized, privileged group as enemies who must be fought and eradicated at all costs.
However, as overwhelming as the current political moment might feel, there is a textbook for resisting fascism as well. The essential rules for fighting fascism remain the same as they ever were. And the first order of business is: do not collaborate.
This may seem obvious, but given the hard truth of the moment, I don’t think it can be repeated enough. It has been truly breathtaking to witness how quickly ostensibly independent non-governmental institutions have capitulated to Trump’s bullying and blackmail: from universities firing professors and defunding whole programs to businesses eradicating their DEI programs; from corporate media outlets becoming state mouthpieces, to law firms allocating hundreds of millions of dollars in legal services to defend the federal government.
Has the liberal establishment been up to the challenge of this moment? Just consider its response to the murder of Charlie Kirk. Let’s be clear: Kirk was an unabashed white Christian Nationalist who incited young people on college campuses to hatred under the cynical pretense of “open dialogue.” Even so – and even as the MAGA movement is dangerously exploiting this moment – liberal leaders and institutions have been normalizing Kirk by openly praising him as a paragon of free speech and good faith debate.
After he was killed, CA Governor Gavin Newsom eulogized Kirk by saying: “The best way to honor Charlie’s memory is to continue his work: engage with each other, across ideology, through spirited discourse. In a democracy, ideas are tested through words and good-faith debate.” Similarly, following Kirk’s murder, the Dean of Harvard College, David J. Deming publicly vowed to protect conservative students on campus, adding that Kirk’s enthusiasm for publicly debating his opponents could be a model for Harvard’s own civil discourse initiatives. And for his part, liberal New York Times columnist Ezra Klein wrote an op-ed entitled “Charlie Kirk Practiced Politics the Right Way.”
It’s not clear if these apologists honestly believe what they are saying or if they’re just trying to avoid the government’s takedown of anyone who has anything remotely critical to say about Charlie Kirk. But in the end, it really doesn’t matter. The bottom line: liberal normalization will not appease fascists.
To put it frankly, the government has declared war on us – and we must respond accordingly. The days of partisan cooperation and dialogue are over. The days of good faith debate and civic compromise are over. Capitulating to demagoguery and hatred will not convert the MAGA movement to the values of democracy and civil discourse. Yes, in a healthy democratic society, the concept of “collaboration” is something to be valued. But in a fascist regime, the term “collaborator” has a different meaning entirely.
The first step in resisting collaboration is to accept that none of this is normal. We must let go of old assumptions, many of which, frankly, have led us to this moment. If we are to be totally honest, it must be said that the Democrats and the liberal establishment have been collaborating with corporate interests along with Republicans for years. As we interrogate the abnormality of this moment, we must admit that the entire system has been disenfranchising whole groups of people in this country for far too long.
Resisting fascism also means letting go of our ultimate faith in the “rule of law.” Indeed, both the left and the right tend to fetishize the rule of law as an absolute good. And while it’s true that the law can be a tool to ensure a more just society, it can just as often be used as a blunt instrument to dismantle democracy.
We know from history that governments routinely create laws that are inherently unjust. Slavery was legal in the US for almost 250 years. Apartheid in South Africa was legal. Apartheid continues to be legal in Palestine/Israel. In the face of such legal injustice, the obvious moral and strategic response is not to follow but to break the rule of law. As Dr. Martin Luther King famously wrote in his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail:”
We should never forget that everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was “legal” and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was “illegal.” It was “illegal” to aid and comfort a Jew in Hitler’s Germany. Even so, I am sure that, had I lived in Germany at the time, I would have aided and comforted my Jewish brothers.
This is, in fact, the radical truth we affirm every Rosh Hashanah. When we affirm Malchuyot, we affirm that there is a moral law yet greater than any law levied by a government or regime. On this Rosh Hashanah in particular, the sound of the shofar calls on us to resist conformity; to vow to become criminals when confronted with laws that are inherently unjust. More than any Rosh Hashanah in our lifetimes, we must be ready to defy the illegitimate laws wielded by the illegitimate rulers who would govern us.
Even if we do accept this challenge, however, the question remains: where does Malchuyot, ultimate Power, reside, if not with governments, politicians or the rule of law? Here, I’d like to quote yet another one of my heroes, the Puerto-Rican Jewish liturgist Aurora Levins Morales:
They told me we cannot wait for governments. There are no peacekeepers boarding planes. There are no leaders who dare to say every life is precious, so it will have to be us.
Yes. God’s power is revealed in our readiness to show up for one another. When we acknowledge Malchuyot on Rosh Hashanah, we affirm that the Divine Presence is manifest whenever we struggle and resist and fight for our communities, for a world where all are liberated and cherished and protected. When there are no leaders who dare to ensure that every life is precious, it will have to be us.
Here are two concrete examples of Malchuyot in action: this last January, shortly after the inauguration, the Trump administration launched a series of raids in Chicago they called “Operation Safeguard” where, over the course of a few days, ICE, the FBI, the ATF and other federal forces coordinated massive raids in neighborhoods throughout the city and suburbs. We don’t know how many were arrested or detained, but we do know that this federal blitzkrieg was deeply frustrated by local organizing. Trump’s so-called “border czar” Tom Homan later complained that immigration organizers in Chicago were “making it very difficult” to arrest and detain people. He said, “They call it Know Your Rights. I call it how to escape from ICE.”
Of course, even as we win these battles, this fierce war continues to escalate. ICE violence continues to rage in the neighborhoods of our cities. In Chicago, ICE has now launched another sweep, this one called “Operation Midway Blitz.” Just last Friday, at an immigrant processing center in the Broadview section of Chicago, federal agents shot tear gas, pepper spray and flash bang grenades into hundreds of demonstrators. Ten protesters were taken into custody by federal agents over the course of the day. Even amidst this escalating violence, however, local organizers here in Chicago continue to hold the line.
Another example: in Washington DC which is still under occupation by National Guard troops, groups of local residents called “night patrols” have been regularly patrolling the streets. According to journalist Dave Zirin, whose reports from the ground have become invaluable:
These night patrols watch over the city to ensure that people are protected from state violence, false arrest, abduction, and harassment. Failing that, their goal is to document the constitutional violations or brutality they witness, so people can see the truths about the occupation that a compliant, largely incurious media are not showing.
Critically, these neighborhood patrols are being led and stewarded by members of impacted groups: As one night patroller put it: “a lot of young people, a lot of people of color, queer and trans folks, people who have been directly impacted by policing, and folks with street medic backgrounds. It skews toward people who already know what it’s like to be criminalized.”
Though it isn’t being highlighted by the corporate mainstream media, this local organizing is happening in communities all over the country: in Los Angeles, where there are also still hundreds of National Guard troops, as well as New Orleans, Memphis, Baltimore and other cities that the Trump administration is directly threatening with military invasion. I know that many Tzedek Chicago members have long been active in these organizing efforts, here in Chicago, around the US and even around the world. But again, we can have no illusions over what we are up against.
I know that the magnitude of these events often leads us to a state of overwhelm and despair. We doom-scroll through the news every day, we read about Trump’s newest executive order, the latest regressive Supreme Court ruling or some other heinous event and the ferocity of this onslaught can literally leave us breathless. This is, of course, yet another page from the authoritarian textbook: to neutralize the population through a calculated strategy of shock and awe. They want us to feel that all is lost, to give in to our despair that their power over us is all but inevitable.
Our experience of shock and overwhelm is compounded all the more by an all-pervasive sense of grief. So much of what we have fought for has been lost. So many of the institutions we assumed would be eternally with us are being plundered and dismantled. Some of these losses may be permanent, some may not, but the harms they are causing are very, very real.
I feel this grief myself, believe me, I do. But I also know that if we surrender to it, then their victory over us will become self-fulfilling. The way through the fear and the grief, I trulybelieve, is to never forget that we have power, that our words and actions matter and that nothing is ever inevitable unless we let it be so.
Whenever we feel overwhelmed, I think the critical first step is to reclaim our equilibrium by asking ourselves, what matters most to me? What are the issues that are nearest to my heart? Most of us have the capacity to devote our time and energy to one or two causes at most. What are the most effective organizations fighting for this cause? Who are the people in my life that can connect me with the people doing this work? If I don’t have the capacity or physical ability to engage actively in these kinds of responses, what are other meaningful ways I can show up?
Amidst all this loss, we must never forget: even if our victory is not guaranteed, there are still things in this world worth fighting for. Generations of resisters have understood this axiom well: “If I’m going to go down, I’m sure as hell going to go down swinging.” In the words of my friend and comrade, Chicago organizer Kelly Hayes, who I’ve quoted in more than one High Holiday sermon over the years:
I would prefer to win, but struggle is about much more than winning. It always has been. And there is nothing revolutionary about fatalism. I suppose the question is, are you antifascist? Are you a revolutionary? Are you a defender of decency and life on Earth? Because no one who is any of those things has ever had the odds on their side. But you know what we do have? A meaningful existence on the edge of oblivion. And if the end really is only a few decades away, and no human intervention can stop it, then who do you want to be at the end of the world? And what will you say to the people you love, when time runs out? If it comes to that, I plan on being able to tell them I did everything I could, but I’m not resigning myself to anything and neither should you. Adapt, prepare, and take the damage done seriously, but never stop fighting. Václav Havel once said that “Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something is worth doing no matter how it turns out.” I live in that certainty every day. Because while these death-making systems exist both outside and inside of us, so do our dreams, so long as we are fighting for them. And my dreams are worth fighting for. I bet yours are too.
This New Year, I realize I’ve come a long way from that beleaguered kid who felt disempowered on the High Holidays to a rabbi telling you Rosh Hashanah is our clarion call to fight facism. But here I am. And here we are. May this new year inspire us all with the knowledge that true sovereignty, true Malchuyot, lives at the heart of the struggle.
On this, my final Rosh Hashanah with this amazing community, this is what I am feeling to my very bones at this moment: that while Pharaohs may rise, they will inevitably fall, that beyond the horizon of Olam Hazeh, this terribly broken world, there lies Olam Haba: the world we know is possible. And no matter what may happen this new year – and every new year to come – that world is always worth fighting for.
I’m sure I’m not the only anti-Zionist Jew who experiences cognitive dissonance when we get to the line that ends every Passover seder, “Next year in Jerusalem!” In the age of Zionism, what do these words really mean: when a Jewish person can fly to Jerusalem not next year, but tomorrow, and become an instant citizen upon arrival? How can we joyfully shout these words knowing that Israel ethnically cleansed half of Jerusalem in 1948 and militarily conquered and occupied the other half in 1967? What do they mean while scores of Palestinians who have deep generational ties to the land are forbidden from even setting foot in that city?
Over the years, I’ve come to the conclusion that the only way I can say this line with moral integrity is to understand the word “Jerusalem” not as referring to a physical city but to a spiritual ideal. This ideal, in fact, is central to Jewish tradition. After the destruction of the Temple and the ruination of Jerusalem by the Romans, the rabbis posited the existence of two Jerusalems: Yerushalayim Shel Mata (“Jerusalem Below”) and Yerushalayim Shel Mala (“Jerusalem Above”). Earthly Jerusalem is the physical city we know while the Heavenly Jerusalem is the messianic Jerusalem: a mirror reflection of the city on high: the Jerusalem of our highest aspirations.
In other words, while a small number of Jews always lived in the city after the destruction of the Temple, for the majority of Jews who lived throughout the diaspora, the concept of Jerusalem became a spiritualized symbol. I’ve often been struck that diaspora cities that were centers of robust Jewish life have typically been referred to as “Jerusalems.” In the late 16th and early 17th centuries, for instance, Amsterdam was referred to as the “Jerusalem of the West” following the immigration of Sephardic Jews from Spain and Portugal. Likewise, Vilna was known as the “Jerusalem of Lithuania” and Tlemcen, Algeria was called “Jerusalem of the Maghreb.”
When the ideology of Zionism emerged, and this spiritual ideal was subsumed into a physical place, the words “Next Year in Jerusalem” became a literal battle cry. But when we limit our understanding of Jerusalem to one specific city, we do damage to the very idea of Jerusalem itself. It’s tragically ironic that while the Hebrew word Yerushalayim literally means “City of Peace,” it has rarely known a moment’s peace in its history. It certainly hasn’t since the establishment of the state of Israel.
While the metaphor of Jerusalem still has a prominent place in Jewish tradition and liturgy – the words “Next Year in Jerusalem” mark the end of Yom Kippur as well as the Pesach seder – this ideal can be deeply meaningful even for those of us who do not ascribe to the messianic aspects of Jewish tradition. They can continue to be deeply aspirational, indicating our hope for a future of justice, equity, and peace throughout the world – and our commitment to the work it will take to make that future real.
For anti-Zionist Jews, these words are not only a statement, but an affirmation of our opposition to the violence and dispossession that continues to be wrought in the name of the Jewish people in that city and throughout the land. “Next Year in Jerusalem” can mean “Next Year, a Jerusalem for all its inhabitants.” It means “Next Year in Jerusalem without Jewish Supremacy.” It can mean “Next Year, may there be a return for all who have been dispossessed from their homes.” When we affirm that Jerusalem is not only an earthly location, we affirm the true Jerusalem cannot be destroyed, conquered or reconquered: it continues to live in our hearts and motivate our actions.
May it be so this and every Passover: “Next Year in Jerusalem!”
(Rabbi) Shemiah said, “Love work. Hate authority. Don’t get too friendly with the government.” Pirke Avot, 1:10 (translation, Jacob Neusner).
This classical rabbinic saying comes from “Chapters of the Fathers,” a well-known collection of rabbinic sayings and aphorisms from the 2nd century ACE. While there are many more finessed English renderings of this particular saying (one version, offered by Talmudic scholar Dr. Joshua Kulp reads: “Love work, hate acting the superior and do not attempt to draw near to the ruling authority”), I’ve always appreciated the bluntness of Jacob Neusner’s more direct translation. We don’t know much about Shemiah, but we do know that he was a Jewish leader in the 1st century BCE and the he wasn’t a big fan of Herod, the appointed authority over Palestine during the reign of the Roman empire.
As a member of the Jewish community, I definitely appreciated Shemiah’s caution over cozying up to state power after reading reports from yesterday’s inauguration of Donald Trump, which featured a prayer from Rabbi Ari Berman, the President of Yeshiva University. Among other things Rabbi Berman hailed this “moment of historic opportunity” and prayed for the new administration to “unite us around our foundational biblical values of life and liberty, service and sacrifice, and especially of faith and morality.” (Americans who do not adhere to Biblical tradition were presumably left out of his vision of national unity.)
Needless to say, Rabbi Berman’s legitimizing of Trump’s inauguration did not speak for many of us in the Jewish community, especially when you consider that Trump has now pardoned virtually all of the Capitol insurrectionists, including their white supremacist, neo-Nazi leaders. When you consider that Proud Boys were seen marching and chanting through the streets of DC for the first time since January 6 while Trump was being sworn in as President.
Then there was the moment in which Trump’s new friend Elon Musk – who has made no secret of his support for the European far right – made two clear and unmistakable Nazi salutes at an inaugural event. As painful as this was to witness, for me the even more nauseating moment occurred when the Anti-Defamation League subsequently issued a statement dismissing the salute as an “awkward gesture,” adding: “This is a new beginning. Let’s hope for healing and work toward unity in the months and years ahead.” Apologizing for Nazi messaging at Presidential Inaugural is a truly new low for the ADL – and that is saying a lot.
I also couldn’t help but think of Shemiah’s teaching yesterday as I watched so many public figures, corporate leaders and politicians (from both sides of the aisle) flashing cheerful smiles as they were wined and dined in Washington by this new authoritarian administration – on MLK Day, of all days. “Don’t get too cozy with the government” would have been particularly good advice to New York Mayor Eric Adams, who reportedly cancelled previously scheduled appearances at events celebrating MLK after he received a last-minute invitation to attend the inauguration.
There has been much commentary about how dramatically different Trump’s inauguration feels in comparison to his previous inaugural in 2106, when the resistance was actively organizing and protests would soon fill the streets. This time around, the main theme seems to be political resignation and capitulation. I have no doubt that Michigan’s Democratic governor Gretchen Whitmer spoke for many in her party when she said last week, “My job is to try to collaborate and find common ground wherever I can.” (Couldn’t she have at least chosen a better word than colloborate?”)
As yesterday mercifully came to a close, I finally decided on a new rendering of Rabbi Shemiah’s teaching – one more apropos to the current political moment:
Love the work of resistance. Hate fascism. And don’t expect politicians to save you.
Some final thoughts on Hanukkah as we say farewell to this complex holiday:
I’m mindful that many of us struggle to find meaning in the historical events commemorated by Hanukkah. It’s a complicated story that I won’t recount in detail here other than to say that the “heroic” Maccabees were actually religious zealots who engaged in a civil war with the assimilated Hellenistic Jews of their day – and that when they succeeded in overthrowing the Seleucid empire, the independent Hasmonean commonwealth they established was corrupt and oppressive. This period of Jewish independence lasted a little more than 100 years before the Hasmoneans fell to the Roman empire.
The rabbis of classical Pharisaic Judaism were not, to put it mildly, fans of the militaristic, corrupt shenanigans of the Maccabees and the Hasmonean dynasty, which is why this story is nowhere to be found in rabbinic writings (and why the books of the Maccabees were not canonized as part of the Hebrew Bible). The Rabbis knew this all too well: empires, nations and states are artificially-created entities, manufactured through military might and inevitably destined to fall. It was not by coincidence that the famous line from Zechariah: Not by might and not by power but by My spirit says the Lord of Hosts was chosen to be the prophetic portion chanted on the Shabbat of Hanukkah.
Their famous Talmudic story about rededication of the Temple in Jerusalem and the cruse of oil that miraculously lasted for eight days is much more than a quaint legend. At its heart it’s a spiritual-political allegory about the limits of human military power – and the enduring resilience embodied by faith and light. Although the short-lived victory of the Maccabees is valorized by political Zionism and the state of Israel, I’d argue that the enduring aspect of this holiday is a rejection of the ephemeral, temporary nature of empire and state power – and the recognition of a Power yet greater.
This Faustian bargain with state power is also at the heart of this week’s Torah portion, Parashat Vayigash, in which Egypt becomes ravaged by famine. In response, Joseph (who is second in power only to Pharoah) offers to sell the Egyptians their own food back to them from Pharaoh’s storehouses that they had previously stocked. When they run out of money, they sell him their livestock. When they run out of livestock, he buys up their land. In the end, the only things they have left to sell are their own bodies and their labor, so they agree to become indentured servants (i.e., slaves) to Pharaoh.
This part of the Joseph story, needless to say, is not an easy read. Over the years, my shocked Torah study students have compared Joseph’s draconian policies to the mandatory collectivization of agriculture in Maoist China and the US government’s foreclosure of mortgages/repossession of Dust Bowl farms during the Great Depression. Among other things, this episode offers a stark commentary on the wages of absolute political power, and how this power is invariably built upon shaky and precarious foundations. (We will learn about this all too soon when we get to the Exodus story and meet “the Pharaoh who knew not Joseph.”)
The Jewish liberation theologian Marc Ellis, of blessed memory, wrote and spoke a great deal about the complex interface between Jews and power in the post Holocaust era, viewing Jewish state power embodied by the state of Israel as fatally “Constantinian.” At the same time, however, he had no desire to return to the days of Jewish disempowerment at the hands of Christian Europe. “Jewish empowerment,” he once said in an interview, “is important and should be affirmed…I want Jews to be empowered and act justly. Of course, minority communities around the world need empowerment, too. My ideal, which includes Palestinians, is an interdependent empowerment.”
With Hanukkah now behind us, I’m more convinced than ever that this is the sacred core of that holiday: not the ignoble story of the Maccabees and the ill-fated Hasmonean Kingdom, but the light-filled spirit of interdependent empowerment. Let us hold onto this vision as Hanukkah recedes into the daunting challenges of the new year 2025. Let us put our trust in a Power yet greater than the power of the mightiest empire. Let us reject narratives that glorify nationalism and militarism – and instead embrace a vision of Judaism rooted in justice, peace, and collective liberation.
My remarks introducing the Yom Kippur “Martyrology” Service this year:
We’ve reached the final point in the Yom Kippur morning service known as Eleh Ezkarah, which means in Hebrew, “These I remember,” also known in English as the Martyrology. It was added to the Yom Kippur liturgy to remember the ten leading rabbis, including Rabbi Akiba, Rabbi Shimon ben Gamliel and Rabbi Yishmael, who were publicly executed for their resistance to the Roman empire in the year 132. On Yom Kippur, we honor their memory – and the memory of all who have paid the ultimate price for taking a stand against injustice and intolerance.
Many people often define martyrs as people who “give their lives so others may live.” It’s worth noting, however, that most of the people we remember as martyrs did not give their lives – their lives were taken from them. And while there are many martyrs who were killed while taking a stand for justice, there are many others who simply did not have a choice. Emmett Till, whom we regularly refer to as a martyr, certainly did not take a stand against injustice – he was on vacation with his family, visiting Mississippi from Chicago, when he was brutally tortured and murdered by white supremacists.
So too, the millions of Jews who were murdered during the Holocaust had no intention to become martyrs. Among tens of thousands of Palestinians who are being martyred during the ongoing genocide in Gaza are scores of children, mothers, fathers who want nothing more than to live a life of normalcy – but have been forced to live and die in an environment of massive, murderous injustice. In all these cases, if it were up to them, most would certainly choose life, not martyrdom.
The word “martyr” comes from a Greek word meaning “to witness.” The Arabic word “shahid” has the same meaning. While there are many religious takes on martyrdom as witness, one meaning, it occurs to me, is that those whose lives are unjustly taken from them are, in a sense the ultimate witnesses to injustice. But their witness, their martyrdom, also contains a challenge to us, the living. It is up to us all to remember and tell their stories, in life as in death. To carry forward their witness. To ensure that their unjust deaths will not be in vain.
On October 8, novelist, poet, and educator Heba Abu Nada, a beloved figure in the Palestinian literary community and the author of Oxygen is Not for the Dead, was killed by an Israeli airstrike. She was thirty-two years old. In her final tweet on that day, Heba wrote these words of witness in Arabic: “Gaza’s night is dark apart from the glow of rockets, quiet apart from the sound of the bombs, terrifying apart from the comfort of prayer, black apart from the light of the martyrs. Good night, Gaza.”
Here is her poem, “Not Just Passing:”
Yesterday, a star said to the little light in my heart, We are not just transients passing.
Do not die. Beneath this glow some wanderers go on walking.
You were first created out of love, so carry nothing but love to those who are trembling.
One day, all gardens sprouted from our names, from what remained of hearts yearning.
And since it came of age, this ancient language has taught us how to heal others with our longing,
how to be a heavenly scent to relax their tightening lungs: a welcome sigh, a gasp of oxygen.
Softly, we pass over wounds, like purposeful gauze, a hint of relief, an aspirin.
O little light in me, don’t die, even if all the galaxies of the world close in.
O little light in me, say: Enter my heart in peace. All of you, come in!
Let us now take a moment of silence in to respond to the witness of all of our martyrs, past, past present and ongoing.
Shalom Rav 