Israel / Palestine

What does it mean to be righteous or blameless? In a time of rampant corruption and injustice, surely [obeying God] was not enough. Surely, the times called for more than being a good person and quietly following God’s ways.

Use your bodies — your arms, hands, legs, feet, voices, hearts — to act on your burning desire for justice.

A lifetime of Jewish observance has prepared me with the tools for spiritual resilience and meaning-making when it is our community who suffers... What I need are the tools for when the people I love are the ones inflicting suffering.

A briefing with Breaking the Silence about the current reality in Israel, the plan for Gaza, and the mass devastation in Gaza from a lens of understanding of the military and the work needed to build a just future.

Freedom is never an end, nor is independence, nor is sovereignty. They are modes of existing in this world that allow us the ability to choose how we act. Are we free of Pharaoh only to set up new Pharaohs of our own? Have we achieved independence and sovereignty only to deny it to others? Have we been released from Egypt to serve ourselves?

This resource has been created ahead of Yom HaAtzma’ut 2025 but is designed to be adaptable for year-round use, offering educational tools, programs, and texts that support ongoing learning within your community.

By Rabbis Felicia Sol and Roly Matalon of B’nai Jeshurun in New York City.

The most significant moments aren’t those of harsh words, and demonstrations, but rather intimate moments of humble connection. Those are the moments that can change everything.

In the aftermath of trauma, there is a natural desire to protect, to retaliate, and to secure our own safety at all costs. But in seeking safety, in seeking justice for our own pain, we can risk perpetuating cycles of violence that dehumanize others — and ultimately ourselves.

Unetaneh tokef grants us no illusion of covering up our failures, both of deed and of will. It says that we are counted and our deeds are measured, whether we like it or not. Our discomfort is what this day demands, not the easy promise of reconciliation and repentance.