Personal reflections from Rabbi Amichai Lau-Lavie
11 Heshvan 5784/October 26 2023
(This is long, and personal, and painful, raw, imperfect – and hopeful. Thank you for reading. Take a deep breath.)
Rabbi Amichai Lau-Lavie with Rabbi Sharon Brous of Ikar, LA, standing in solidarity with the captive Israelis in Tel Aviv, Israel’s ‘New Wailing Wall’, October 15 2023
Like so many of us, I lit one of those week-long memorial candles in my home in Harlem on October 7th. Another one is now lit, nonstop, in the home where I’m staying in Jerusalem. You can see them in many homes these days.
This eternal flame is a reminder not to forget. As though we could. But it’s not only about what happened – it’s about what needs to happen next. And it’s on us.
These pillars of fire can and must also light our way towards recovery – guiding each and every one of us to be part of the solution. A reminder not to perpetuate the problem but rather committing ourselves to healing, honest reckoning, and responsible repair.
This is deeply personal.
This day, October 25, 2023, 20 days since the horrific massacre and the beginning of this awful war between Hamas and Israel, also marks the 81st Hebrew anniversary of another terrible day in 1942.
Rabbi Moshe Chaim Lau
According to a few surviving eyewitnesses, on this day my grandfather, Moshe Chaim Lau, the chief rabbi of a Polish community, marched with the last remaining thousands of his congregants, including one of his young sons, into the gas chambers of Treblinka.
He led them in the final collective recital of their own Mourner’s Kaddish.
They were murdered because of racist ideology that prefers Jews to be dead, still something our community combats every day.
Today also marks the Hebrew date of the terrible day in 1995 in which a racist, right-wing Jewish zealot assassinated Israel’s prime minister, Yitzchak Rabin.
He was murdered because he dared believe in peace. Many of us still hold on to his dream.
Today, too, on this same date, some say Rachel, our matriarch from Genesis, died in childbirth. Many flock today to her supposed tomb, near Bethlehem, to pray for healing and for help from this feminine source of salvation and ancestral wisdom. According to the words of Jeremiah, Rachel is the mother who forever weeps for her children, always protecting, wishing for our safe return. That same sentiment is echoed today so loudly by mothers, fathers, friends, and our entire community.
This date, with all its layers and narratives, is a formative factor of my identity, life choices, and priorities. I grew up with the Holocaust trauma present in every meal, echoing in the names my parents chose for their children, including mine – Amichai – My People Live.
Yitzchak Rabin
I was already working as a Jewish educator when Rabin was shot. My response was to work harder for peace, determined to commit myself to advancing Jewish literacy that celebrates peace, not war, love of all people, not fear of the other. My path as an artist and social justice activist, Queer humanist and spiritual seeker led me to New York – and to the rabbinate. Now, more than ever, I am dedicated to human rights for all, determined to keep building bridges of hope and healing in a world still fueled by fearful bigotry and ignorant hate.
I hold on to these ideals, along with so many of us, with pride and faith in our core Jewish values, tried and true and tired — love and compassion for all beings, infinite persistence and hope.
Every single life is equally sacred. We are all created equally in the image of the divine life force.
There is no blood more precious than that of others. We weep for each loss, mourn every death, prevent all pain and persist with our efforts so that peace will prevail.
Despite radical views among so many – I hope and believe that our humanity will rise above the terror.
Yet it’s hard to be hopeful today.
Not everybody thinks or acts in ways that walk this talk. Many want revenge, revert to long held binary positions that blame one side or the other, that refuse to be accountable, to recognize the complexity, to be empathetic and sensitive to the shades and shadows of suffering.
Along with so many of us all over the world, I am still in shock from October 7 and the ongoing ripples of violent rage, death and despair.
I feel deep grief and worry, mixed with so many other emotions. So many of us share – if able to – the unbearable and sometimes speechless pain of our souls. I want to unburden some of mine with the hopes that it will resonate with some of you and help us open channels towards honest conversations and actions that will help.
I feel gratitude to the Lab/Shul team for stepping up and leaning in, in so many ways, to co-create sacred spaces of solace and support, information and inspiration during this difficult time. I am deeply grateful to those in the community who reached out, and keep reaching out, with simple and meaningful messages of solidarity and support, offering to help in all ways possible both to me personally and to support many urgent causes.
There is enormous generosity of spirit displayed in many ways.
You’d think I’d be swamped by caring messages. This is where I feel quite vulnerable in sharing my reaction towards this. That’s hardly the case. And I know I am not alone, in Israel and elsewhere, three weeks later, hurting with this astonished disappointment. I feel we all can do more to support and reach out to each other.
I also feel an old, ancient, speechless sense of surprised sadness — and it feels like betrayal.
I feel betrayed by many allies and friends, fans or partners, within and beyond the Jewish world, who remain silent and who have not reached out to me, personally, or publicly, with a simple message of solidarity, care and consolation, whatever their political views.
I feel betrayed by the blatant antisemitic messaging emerging on streets and screens, directed not just at Israel with understandable fury at the horrific killing and wounding of thousands of innocent Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. On college campuses and city squares, social media and schools – we are attacked with the kind of hatred we were hoping was reserved for history books. I may not like it but I respect opinions that are Anti Israel or Anti Zionist. But this is not about that. This is violent and vile Antisemitism. And it’s dangerous and wrong.
I feel betrayed by those who celebrate Hamas as freedom fighters and justify rape, murder and abuse of humanity as legitimate means toward attaining liberation for the Palestinian people. Support for Palestinian freedom and independence was, is and will be central to the belief and activism of myself and so many of us who resist the occupation while supporting Israel’s right to exist. But terrorism, and terrorism on this inhuman scale, is not the path towards freedom or peace.
I feel betrayed by Jewish allies who stand with Palestine but refuse to acknowledge our flesh and blood family’s trauma and pain, or minimize it to small print, buried in blame. The lack of solidarity with the reopened wounds and pain of Israelis – not Israel – is frankly inhumane and unfathomable.
Every message is appreciated – and yet – some shorthand platitude hurts more than helps. Emotional intelligence and careful wording goes a long way. Digital life has reduced our relationships to emojis, re-tweets and shared memes (that can often include incorrect information). We can do better if we are to help each other heal and build a better world with bonds of courage, compassion and care.
Along with so many Israelis, I feel betrayed by the Israeli government, MIA on October 7th, negligent, harmful and dysfunctional before that awful day, and still struggling to offer its citizens efficient, empathic, wise and strategic support with any clear vision of repair and responsibility for a better future. Along with many, I support Israel’s right to defend our people from ongoing rockets and attacks — but am outraged by the excessive force, the needless loss of lives, the refusal to pause and offer more humanitarian aid that will lessen the tragic reality of so many innocents caught in the crossfire of this ongoing conflict, this tragic family feud. Many feel today like Yitzchak Rabin’s assassin succeeded in killing the hopes of peace. We have no such privilege. We can never let that militant messianic Jewish voice win.
Only the incredible mobilization of millions of tireless volunteers all over Israel, working together to offer relief and rebuild infrastructure, with generous funding from all over the world, is boosting morale at this time and giving us hope. The people – not the government – are the future and the hope. Despite hateful narratives there are many who insist on dialogue and cooperation, peaceful efforts to keep alive the flame of co-existence towards a lasting solution that honors Palestinian and Israeli lives of prosperity and peace. We have to work harder to make this approach more popular than the familiar pain of either/or.
What’s clear is that at this point we are not experiencing unity. It’s not about a facile sense of unity. We are not united. But we can and must focus on partnership – partnerships between people, despite deep religious, political, ethnic and social divisions – to focus on common ground, rebuild this place, rebuild trust, with bold visions for better – and for all.
Only patient partnership — face to face, hurt heart to hurt heart – will help us root out despair and carefully nurture networks of respect and responsibility towards each other.
Trauma is healed when we hold each other, not when we hold on to dogmas and defense mechanisms that isolate and deepen loneliness and loss.
We must get beyond the same old structures to see eye to eye and transcend the old tribal loyalties, the sense of isolation that defined us for too long. This is not just true for Jews and Arabs living in this country, but also for all those associated with the Jewish family, in so many ways, all over the world.
On Saturday night, October 7, the Jewish holiday of Simchat Torah, while the details of the horror only began to sink in, I stood on a makeshift stage in Grand Army Plaza in Brooklyn, surrounded by hundreds of people, with other rabbis and Jewish leaders, allies and friends. We came together for an improvised and inspiring rally of grief and support, replacing what was going to be a celebration of our sacred Torah with dancing and joy.
I called on those of us gathered to hear the words from Genesis — to listen to the screams of our siblings’ blood calling to us from the blood drenched earth. The voice of Abel, the first human victim of violence, and the question of Cain, the first killer — am I my sibling’s keeper? And the answer was and always has to be – YES.
So what’s a sibling? How do we expand the notion of solidarity to include all humans, family or not, while still maintaining the affiliation, loyalty and commitment to our kin? Not a zero sum game but an honest, complex, challenging and moral obligation to be able to love more. Can we get beyond this sweeping sense of betrayal to be with and for each other not only when it hurts?
Albert Einstein famously wrote:
A human being is part of a whole, called by us ‘the Universe’ a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest — a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us.
Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.
Out of this day, with all its memories and stories of loss, I lift up the flame for the future.
I lift up the wish and prayer for our partnerships — patient and persistent, messy and brave. I hope we can do more to reach out to each other, to find the in-between where we can start creating an ever-expanding circle of compassion that will hold us all.
Only this middle ground, this core of goodwill will save us, and the larger that circle,the better; with care and compassion for all, beyond binary and tribal to somehow handle both/and.
Today we hurt, and we will likely hurt tomorrow, but it’s on us to minimize the hurt and lift up the flame of kindness – for our future.
Light a candle. Don’t despair. Reach out to others and find ways to offer help. Some links below may offer options to stand by so many who are working hard to make today and tomorrow held with love and care.
We don’t know what lies ahead, but come what may, it is on us to build new bridges from this crisis, to try harder, to be softer with ourselves and with each other.
Let’s not lose hope.
I thank you for reading this, with patience and with love, and I apologize if my words hurt instead of help in any way. I welcome responses and will do my best to engage in helpful conversations as together we find out how to be each others’ allies, a sacred community committed to wellbeing and better days.
Let’s hold together the flame for the future of peace, healing, and hope.
May the memories of all our loved ones and all victims of violence, terror and war be a blessing. May we hurt no more.
Keep the candle burning,
Amichai
