Dear Temple Beth El Community,
We write to you with grief, with frustration, and with deep uncertainty about the unfolding war in Israel and Gaza. We do not write with answers. We write because we are struggling.
We are still mourning the horrors of October 7 and praying fervently for the safe return of the hostages. We condemn Hamas unequivocally for its brutality and for the way it continues to endanger both Israeli and Palestinian lives.
At the same time, we are grieving the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza and struggling with what it means to hold onto both moral clarity and compassion in such a painful moment. We know many of you are struggling too.
What is happening in Israel and Gaza is painful and bewildering. The facts seem to shift by the hour. The narratives are contested. The images and videos are harrowing. And the landscape feels almost impossible to navigate.
We know that Hamas bears responsibility. We know they embedded themselves in civilian life, diverted aid, and have used suffering as a strategy to provoke outrage. Their cruelty is not incidental. It is deliberate. They have refused deals that could have freed hostages and brought relief to their own people.
We also know that the Israeli government has made choices — some strategic, and others, in our view, deeply reckless. Whether intended or not, those choices have caused destruction, and they have contributed to the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
We know there are Israeli leaders and citizens — activists, protestors, thinkers — who are crying out for a different path. For moral restraint, responsibility, and compassion. They are loudly arguing for an end to this war. Those voices rarely make headlines. But we hear them, and we believe they need our support.
And we know there are Israeli leaders who speak and act as if vengeance were a strategy. Who treat Gaza and the West Bank not as places filled with human beings but as territory to be punished or claimed. That rhetoric dehumanizes and is not one we can defend.
We know that many of you, like us, are carrying impossible tensions. You are mourning for Israelis. You are devastated for Palestinians. You are afraid that speaking too loudly or too softly will cost you a sense of belonging, relationships, peace of mind. You are worried that people will misunderstand you. Or judge you. Or tell you that you’ve betrayed something sacred.
Shielding ourselves from pain does not make it go away. Our Torah demands something more from us than silence.
We are not generals. We are not politicians. We are not negotiators.
We are your rabbis and cantor.
And we believe that sacred community is not built on shared opinions, but on shared commitments to truth, to dignity, to compassion, to moral courage.
Judaism teaches us that wisdom lies in the ability to hold multiple truths at once. We know that we can hold fierce love for Israel and our people and still speak uncomfortable truths. We can mourn our dead and still see the suffering of others as real. We can condemn Hamas and grieve the innocent lives lost in Gaza. We can honor Jewish history without losing sight of our ethical future. And we can remain rooted in Torah even when the ground beneath us is shaking.
We know this will be too much for some and not enough for others.
We’re not trying to win an argument. We are trying to do what rabbis and cantors have done through the centuries: to help our community live with the ache without abandoning each other. We are trying to ask the questions that keep us up at night.
At Temple Beth El, we choose to live in the tension.
To grieve fully.
To speak imperfectly.
To hold each other with compassion and with truth.
To resist certainty and lean into courage.
To refuse to look away.
This is what it means to be Jewish.
This is what it means to belong to one another.
We are here. To talk. To sit. To cry. To pray.
We will be offering opportunities for reflection and communal processing following Shabbat services on Friday, August 8 and Friday, August 22. These sessions will offer a supportive, nonjudgmental environment to come together to share, listen, and struggle with difficult questions. An additional session will take place on Wednesday, August 13 at 7:00pm. Please register if you plan to attend this session.
If you would like to meet with clergy on an individual basis, please reach out to Renata Rosenberg, Clergy Assistant.
If you are interested in reading some articles that have been informing our understanding and processing of this moment, please feel free to visit our Israel Engagement page.
With love, with sorrow, and with courage,
Rabbi Asher Knight
Cantor Danielle Rodnizki
Rabbi Lexi Erdheim
Rabbi Beth Nichols
