This holiday season rabbis are thinking about Israel — and say you should too
'Being able to refocus and center our highest values feels even more important this year'
As the holiday season approaches, rabbis are refining ideas, retooling speeches and preparing to engage more people in the pews. The backdrop, however, is that midway through the Days of Awe communities will mark one year since the Oct. 7 massacre by Hamas in Israel.
Both the attack and subsequent 12 months are weighing heavily on Temple Sinai’s Rabbi Daniel Fellman.
“I’m clearly thinking about what it means to be a Jew in America today and what it means to be a Jew in the world today,” he said. “This last year has been brutally painful in too many ways to count. I suspect my words on the holidays will talk about Israel, very directly, antisemitism and anti-Zionism, but will also wrestle with what it means to be a Jew in the world today, what it means to be a Jew in America, and more intimately, what it means to be a Jew in Pittsburgh and in our Reform Jewish community. And, where are we headed?”
This won’t be the first time Fellman has raised those questions since Oct. 7.
“I’ve been having conversations with congregants all the way through,” he said.
Dor Hadash’s Rabbi Amy Bardack has thought and taught much about Israel during the past year, but won’t speak about the Jewish state or its war with Hamas from the pulpit this holiday season.
“I never incorporate Israel into sermons. I incorporate it into readings,” she said. “Everyone has a lot of thoughts about Jewish life post-Oct. 7, but that’s not something that any of us at Dor Hadash would directly address from the bimah.”
Throughout its nearly 60-year history, Dor Hadash has been primarily member-led. Bardack, the congregation’s first full-time rabbi, was hired in 2022.
During Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, she’ll speak only once. Other speeches will be delivered by lay leaders and will cover a range of topics.
Although none of the High Holiday addresses will involve Israel or the war, Bardack hasn’t shied from the subject.
“We provide lots of different sessions to talk about Israel,” she said. “We did classes on anti-Zionism and antisemitism. We engage in learning about Israel, just through other mechanisms like dialogue and education — everything that happens not on Shabbat.
“It’s not that we don’t talk about Israel,” she explained. “We just do it through other learning mechanisms.”
Rabbi Hindy Finman, senior director of Jewish life at the Jewish Community Center of Greater Pittsburgh, said her seasonal efforts are in response to conversations she’s had with community members as well as internal and external stakeholders.
“I’ve just been listening to people and hearing how much trauma people are holding on to, how much fear, how much anxiety, how much it has fractured family members, and this lament and desire for something more,” she said.
Finman noted that some discussions have involved Oct. 7, while others have concerned Oct. 27, 2018, the date of the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting.
“Within all these conversations, there’s been this real cry for hope, and that people are really craving leadership that’s instilling a sense of hope,” she said.
In partnership with JCC colleagues and community members, Finman is aiming to deliver that sense of optimism.
“What are other ways that we can engage people — whether it’s conversations, or actions or fitness-related — that really instill a sense of hope and remind people that we live on a beautiful planet, that we have a beautiful world, we are existing, we’re alive and thriving? Yes, the election might be scary, but we have the right to vote and that’s amazing, and we still have all our freedoms, and we still have amazing resources, and we’re still a beautiful, holy kehila kedosha (sacred community),” she said.
The rabbi pointed to several programs designed to enable individuals to opt into the holidays.
On Sept. 3, in honor of Rosh Chodesh Elul, educators and mental health professionals provided meditative wellness activities and Jewish learning to prepare the heart and mind. On Sept. 18, the JCC welcomed Mohammad Darawshe, a member of the faculty of the Shalom Hartman Institute, to discuss what life is like being an Israeli Arab and how best to create a shared society.
Darawashe’s work prompts challenging questions, but they’re worthwhile, Finman said. “How do you actually love your neighbor when you know there’s a war going on?”
Temple Emanuel of South Hills’ Rabbi Aaron Meyer said he’s mindful of the “tension” generated by this year’s holidays.
Yom Kippur falls between Oct. 7 and Oct. 27, “and I think that many in our communities are feeling as they may have felt after Oct. 27, 2018: a draw to feeling the importance and necessity of Jewish community, while also feeling an uncertainty about being in Jewish spaces, based on the rise of antisemitic actions and rhetoric in this country,” he said.
Temple Emanuel, Meyers said, is approaching the holidays with sensitivity.
“We’re going to be adding to the liturgy of the service more contemporary pieces — be they poems or musical settings that will allow us to acknowledge the difficulties of both the one-year commemoration of Oct. 7 and what will now be the six-year commemoration of Oct. 27,” he said. “It’s a time of heightened anxiety, not only with the commemoration of these significant anti-Jewish events, but also the anxieties people, regardless of political parties, feel headed into a presidential election while living in the swing state.”
Meyer hopes congregants give thought and commit to action this High Holiday season.
“There is a lot of emotion to balance and hold,” he said. “Being able to refocus and center our highest values feels even more important this year.”
Rabbi Chananel Shapiro, executive director and menahel of the Kollel Jewish Learning Center, is encouraging people to look to the shofar for guidance.
Beginning Rosh Chodesh Elul, the shofar is blown every weekday morning of the Jewish month, throughout services on Rosh Hashanah and again at the end of Yom Kippur.
Many people attribute the shofar’s blast to the start of a new year, but in biblical times the sound indicated a call to war. Nowadays, when the shofar is blown, it’s important to remember its various uses and intentions, Shapiro said.
On Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish people proclaim God’s kingship. The shofar is one mechanism for doing so; hopefully, when it’s blown, people will pay attention to its call and “the seriousness of the day,” the rabbi said. “If we listen to the shofar with more meaning maybe this will be the year Hashem says, ‘You don’t have to listen to the sound of battle as much.’”
Rabbi Moishe Mayir Vogel, executive director of the Aleph Institute – N.E. Regional Headquarters, called the past year “quite a rotten one.”
Whether it was the Oct. 7 attack or resulting war, the past 12 months have been extremely challenging, he said.
Vogel spoke by phone from Harrisburg, where he attended a conference for 80 chaplains, and delivered a message about the upcoming holidays and the need to focus on joy.
Immediately after the mournful day of Tisha B’Av is Tu B’Av, a holiday “when weddings are made and Jewish houses are rebuilt,” he said. Similarly, of the three Jewish festivals — Passover, Shavuot and Sukkot — there’s no biblical imperative to be happy on Passover, there’s only one command to rejoice on Shavuot, but when it comes to Sukkot “we are told three times to be joyous.”
This message is essential, especially this year, Vogel continued.
“We have been through so much,” he said. “We have lost so many of our brothers and sisters, who have died fighting. Antisemitism has risen to a new level around the world, and here in the U.S. — where we thought it was all over. The new year is coming to tell us to be joyous. And we hope and pray that it will be a good and healthy year and all the negativity has passed.” PJC
Adam Reinherz can be reached at areinherz@pittsburghjewishchronicle.org.
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