Resources

In the wake of the events of October 7, 2023, many of us in the global Jewish community have found ourselves longing for liturgical language to speak to the sense of loss, hopelessness, and heartbreak we have felt over the past year. The following words are an adaptation of El Malei Rachamim (“God full of compassion”), a prayer traditionally recited over the dead at funerals and during Yizkor on Yom Kippur, created by Rabbi Sharon Cohen Anisfeld, President of Hebrew College.

We offer these texts, sermon ideas, articles, talking points, and insights about the Israel-Hamas war and its reverberating effects to make it a little easier to meet the needs of your community at a tremendously difficult time. 

We are not just meant to see the good land, but the whole of it, even what is hard to look at. And when we witness injustice, bitterness, and badness, we are meant to take up the sacred task of picking up the shattered pieces of destruction and building something good, building something worth gazing upon.

How can we take on our own “marking of the doorposts” for this moment? What am I prepared to do, or say, to help bring this cursed war to an end? How might I “mark” myself as someone committed to the collective liberation of Palestinians and Israelis?

This is the work before us this Pesach. We must abandon our worship of the false idol of correctness. We have to start with what we know. We know that all people need peace to survive. We know the liberation of Israelis is bound up with the liberation of Palestinians and vice versa. We know being traumatized is not a way to live. We also know that clinging to the crumbs of winning an argument only takes us further away from peace.

A missile cannot tell righteous from wicked.