“Courage, my friends, you do not walk alone; we will walk with you and sing your spirit home.”
We sang this chant often during those first Trump years—in marches and vigils, prayers and protests. It’s a powerful anti-apartheid South African chant, and it’s time to relearn its lyrics and add our voices once again to the chorus of solidarity, strategic resistance, endurance, and resilience.
This week has already been turbulent, bringing both tears and moments of good news. The ceasefire between Israel and Hamas began, celebrating the safe return of three Israeli hostages into their loved ones’ arms, multiple homecomings for Palestinian prisoners, and the slow beginning of reckoning and healing in Gaza.
Then came the inauguration and the first set of executive orders. Along with the ominous tone and troubling hand gestures emerging from these initial days of this new Trump era, it’s clear: the assault on many of our values, as well as on our loved ones, families, and friends, is real, complex, and terrifying. To our family members and friends, partners and allies in the LGBTQ+ and immigrant communities—you do not walk alone. We will walk this path together, along with leading partners, allies and friends in the Jewish community like Keshet and NCJW who published this powerful statement yesterday.
Come what may, this chant is just one of many tools we have at our disposal to help us respond to our unfolding and uncertain political reality with dignity and humanity, clarity and compassion. Together, we will protect and demand justice, democracy, dignity, and peace. Courage, friends, we do not walk alone.
I’ve been thinking a lot about courage these days, reflecting on the packed month I just spent in Israel and Palestine and on the realities unfolding here in the U.S. Throughout my trip, I met incredibly inspiring and courageous people. I participated in both intimate and large-scale anti-war and pro-peace encounters and events that took tremendous bravery to bring to life.
I met tired yet tireless Palestinian and Israeli peacemakers. I joined weekly protests for peace in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, visited with distant cousins in the heart of anti-Zionist, ultra-Orthodox Jerusalem, attended the funeral of a fallen soldier—the son of friends of mine—and sat for long conversations with Palestinian peace activists in Jericho, Bethlehem, East Jerusalem and Masafer Yatta, bearing witness to their struggles and hopes.
I met people who are broken yet brave enough to insist on speaking their truth, listening face to face to others they don’t agree with, and imagining better futures. Leaders and ordinary individuals of all ages showed the courage to ask hard questions, risk their freedom for morality and justice, and persist in finding a better path forward. Their stories and choices have stayed with me, giving me energy to keep going.
I will share my full trip report with you soon, hopeful that it will help us learn more about what’s happening on the ground in the holy land—a place both hurting and hopeful. Even in the face of dire situations, we have the agency to show up for and with each other, bringing care, compassion, and the courage to be as present as possible, even when it hurts.
We need courage to face tough facts, to confront our fears, tell our truths, and step up to defend our democracy and support those who need us most. As a community, we will gather strength and courage from one another and from the ancestral wisdom that has been carefully taught, generation to generation. We do not walk alone.
Activists and faith leaders, politicians and poets walk with us in this moment, as they have before. It isn’t easy to speak truth to power or to resist injustice, but I am heartened by the courage of the Right Rev. Mariann Budde, the Episcopal Bishop of Washington, who spoke directly to the president during her sermon at the National Cathedral on his first day in office. Budde’s powerful appeal for mercy ended with a plea for “strength and courage to honor the dignity of every human being, to speak the truth to one another in love, and to walk humbly with each other and our God for the good of all people.”
In the days and weeks ahead, we will share more about how our Lab/Shul community can support, respond, and show up to protect rights and protest injustice. We invite you to reach out with your suggestions, needs, and ideas for community activism.
We will also need courage and compassion to deepen our commitment to conversations across the aisle—with others in our families and world with whom we don’t agree. How else will we be able to be allies and co-create safe and brave spaces? These spaces must be founded on the values we still share as we strive to make sense of what’s happening and be as strategic, kind, and helpful as we can.
One way we invite you to be brave is by joining the upcoming season of Courageous Conversations. This series of gatherings will include art, reflection, and open dialogue focused on how to talk about feelings and facts concerning Israel and Palestine.
The 2025 season of Courageous Conversations will feature a remounting of Becoming Israel, an original play I wrote and that was directed and performed by members of Storahtelling in 2008 to mark Israel’s 60th anniversary. After recent revisions, we’ll present a staged reading of highlights from the play, followed by dialogue. These gatherings invite us to wrestle with questions of identity, memory, and belonging while building empathy, understanding, and communication skills in an inclusive and supportive environment. There is much to talk about.
Our first event is on 2/22, and I invite you to read more below and sign up to join us. Details are included below.
We know there will be difficult days ahead, and many of us will feel fear and face challenging realities. Let’s do all we can to be present for each other—creating sacred and safe spaces for grief and rage, relief and repair, soul sustenance and support.
Rabbi Denise Eger, a leader in the Reform Movement and LGBTQ+ Jewish community, taught us: “Courage isn’t about not being afraid. Courage is about doing the sacred work even when you are.”
We do not walk alone.
Wishing us all kinder days of healing and hope, step by step, warmed by each other’s courage and compassion, face to face, forever now.
With courage, love, and hope,
Rabbi Amichai Lau-Lavie
Co-Founder, Senior Clergy & Spiritual Leader
