We met for our annual High Holidays service on Shabbat Shuvah in a time of great peril in the U.S. and genocide and expulsion in Gaza and the West Bank. Our liturgy embedded us in the High Holidays and in the uncertainty, fear, and grief of this moment, including the gun violence that is now a part of our daily lives.
We used the words of slaughtered Gazan poet Hiba Abu Nada, and responded to her dream of granting refuge to families and children by reciting the Ashamnu, a prayer of communal reciting of sins. For how dare we, as Jews of conscious, pray on Shabbat Shuvah without using words of Gazan poets, and also how dare we, as Jews of conscious, treat the words of Gazan poets as something we say then move on from?
We are, as always, indebted to the artists Wendy Elisheva Somerson and Liora Ostroff, who inspire us and give us permission to use their beauty and magic in our services.
For our torah study, we read excerpts from Abraham Joshua Heschel’s essay “Required: A Moral Ombundsman” from the collection Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity. Writing about a great war crime, he lays out the difference between guilt and responsibility. Then, in quiet, personal time, we reflected on this question:
For the ongoing, escalating genocide in Gaza and ongoing, escalating expulsions in the West Bank, in what ways are we, U.S. Citizens and/or Jews and/or Israeli citizens, guilty for having been knowingly involved in these crimes?
In what ways are we responsible, ready to be called upon to take action, to step up, to make amends, to make a way forward?
Dare we, at this moment on Shabbat Shuvah, face a God who hears the cries of the murdered guiltless?
Music and Videos (these are linked in the original slide deck, but not in the uploaded version shared here)
Alexandra “Ahlay” Blakely, Bloodlines (go buy this album on Bandcamp!)
Chava Mirel, Achat Sha’alti
Abigail Bengson, Judaism is Allergic to Fascism