Hope and Rage: A Rabbi Reflects on the Hamas Incursion

Photo by Cole Keister on Unsplash

The war in Israel and Gaza is a horrific fact. Events unfolding along Israel’s northern border threaten to expand that horror. And perhaps most stunning of all is that the 24 hours starting with Hamas’ assault on Israel saw the single largest loss of Jewish life in any single day since the end of the Holocaust. This is also deeply personal as I, like so many thousands of other family members, wait to hear that my relatives who are called up to serve are safe. 

But whether it is personal or not, and regardless of one’s views regarding Israel, Palestine, or the ongoing conflict in general, this is a moment when all decent people must condemn Hamas for the way in which it is assaulting Israel. It is directly borrowing tactics and practices from the Nazis and the Islamic State: mass decapitations, gang rape, the purposeful kidnapping and caging of children and the elderly, the desecration of corpses. 

These are documented facts, and the failure to speak out against them, without qualification, regardless of the circumstances that some think may have led to this war, is a moral failure that will haunt those who commit it for generations. And for those who speak in the name of God, the sin is especially terrible, as it will stain their faith no differently than it did in previous generations, when religious leaders—from whatever faith—have made similar equivocations about atrocities against those not of their religion.

I readily accept that such moments of moral paralysis are often unintentional, and even though the damage that it does can never be fully undone, I just as readily embrace the power of people to correct our pasts in ways that allow us to create better and more humane futures. In fact, that impulse to reflect and correct is as central to our shared humanity as is our fallibility. That is why, having written what I just wrote, I turn my greater focus to the question that I also think animates most decent people at this time:

How, at this moment of terrible loss and almost unspeakable pain, can we—each and every one of us—make some positive difference? That is Clal’s question, because that is the leadership question that each of us can answer, regardless of position, status, role, or viewpoint. Clal, by the way, is both a Hebrew word meaning inclusion or the collective community, and an acronym for The National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership, where I have the privilege to serve as President. 

Founded almost 50 years ago by Elie Wiesel and Rabbi Yitz Greenberg, we are a national, and increasingly international, think tank, educational institution, and leadership development consultancy that works both within and well beyond the Jewish community, including at various Christian seminaries, secular universities, philanthropic foundations, the media and more. In all cases our work is animated by a deep commitment to pluralism without the surrender of integrity, and the fundamental notion that Jewish ideas can be a resource to all people—Jewish or not, religious or not—as they seek to build increasingly meaningful, purposeful, and ethical lives.

So, while there is no single solution to the problems we face right now, we are not free (to paraphrase an ancient Jewish teaching) to turn away from responding to the question of how each of us can make a positive difference in addressing those problems.

For some, that response will involve many, or even all, of the things for which some of you have already been asked, in messages you have no doubt received from other organizations—things including your money, your prayers, your participation in public demonstrations of solidarity, and your messages to elected officials, to name the most common. There is value and wisdom in each of those, but I want to ask us, starting with myself, and anyone else who wants to make a positive difference, especially as people of faith, for something more. 

I ask us to follow in the footsteps of both Abraham Lincoln and a student of Clal, who also happens to be a former officer in Israel’s Special Forces. (I withhold his name out of respect for his privacy.) 

Like these two heroes, I invite you to hold together a wider range of ideas, emotions, and relationships than comes easily to any of us when we are in the midst of terrible conflict. I ask that because holding that wider range is what real leaders do: they remain both in the trenches and above the fray. I invite that mindset now, one which dares to engage and advocate, without succumbing to either simplistic moral calculations or self-seducing relativism, because it is precisely from the ability to be both in the trenches and above the fray, that the solutions we seek—both short-term and long-term—can emerge.

So I invite you, as you march, donate, and pray, for whatever and whomever you do those things, to follow the lead of President Lincoln who, when asked at the height of the Civil War if “God was on our (the Union’s) side," responded, “Sir, what concerns me is not whether or not God is on our side, but whether or not we are on God’s side." Yes, we must fight the good fight, as Lincoln did, which includes the willingness to continue asking hard questions of ourselves, of our most deeply held convictions, and the side with which we most identify, even as we do so.

Raise your voice for that which you most believe but do so while experiencing what our second hero—the former officer in Israel's Special Forces—shared with me as he reflected on the past 72 hours: “I am grappling with sadness, anger, humiliation, disappointment, vengeance … and hope.”

We all know people currently feeling and acting on some of those emotions, but how many of us can hold them all? How many of us can embrace genuine hope and equally genuine rage—not letting the latter block out the former or the former insulate us from feeling the latter? 

I know how hard that is, as I am wrestling with it myself, deeply and profoundly, but that is what it means to be both in the trenches and above the fray, and that is our aim at Clal. Our histories as nations, both the United States and Israel’s, remind us that when that is our path, we can be at our strongest, most secure, most compassionate, and most successful. May that day be soon, and may we all count ourselves among those who made it so.

Rabbi Brad Hirschfield is President of Clal, The National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership. He is the author and editor of numerous books, and founder of the Stand and See Fellowship, which brings Christian seminarians and ministers to Israel, animated by six words, “It’s more complicated than we know.”