Once again, the threat is not a Jewish problem. It is a human problem
There are moments when we cannot be silent. When our voices need to be heard for Am Yisrael, Eretz Yisrael, for American Jewry and for America itself.
On October 6, 1943, three days before Yom Kippur, 400 Orthodox rabbis arrived in the nation’s capital to participate in a march calling attention to the plight of the Jews of Europe. It was the season of teshuvah and the time when our tefillos are best received, b’himatzo, yet these rabbanim chose to dedicate some of that sacred time to the decidedly nonspiritual activity of lobbying in Washington.
They understood that in this world we must raise our voices both to the heavens and to the humanly powerful. America was the country best positioned to stand up to the existential threat facing the Jewish People, and they needed to make every effort to raise their voices and activate its leadership. And, in the words of William Randolph Hearst, the threat was not a Jewish problem. It was a human problem.
Eighty years later, world Jewry faces what are arguably the most serious threats it has faced since the Holocaust. On October 7, Israel was brutally attacked, hundreds of its citizens taken hostage, and continues to face existential threats on multiple fronts. In America and the world over, the attacks and their aftermath unleashed a surging and shocking wave of anti-Semitism that has engulfed the universities and the streets of many of our cities, creating genuine fear for the future of the Jews in this blessed country. Jews have opened their hearts with extra tefillos after every minyan, via their WhatsApp chats, in the middle of their day’s work, and at innumerable communal tefillah gatherings. Along with tefillah, there has been an outpouring of tzedakah and meaningful teshuvah, reflecting on communal failures of machlokes and more. In a sense, the Yamim Noraim of 5784 have not yet ended.
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