3 Weeks After Oct 7th
October 27, 2023
Shabbat shalom everyone.
Everyone keeps asking how I’m doing. Maybe because I am looking older and more tired since October 7th, but I think mostly because everyone is feeling such intense emotions of fear and rage and despair and grief for our family in Israel and for the innocent people in Gaza. And yes, hatred, for Hamas and what they did to us on the morning of Simchat Torah.
And everyone is feeling heart-broken. And everyone is feeling traumatized. And feeling confused. And feeling abandoned. And feeling attacked.
And I think that everyone knows that of course I feel all of those feelings as an individual….and somehow feel that I need to be a vessel for all of the feelings of the community.
On top of all of those feelings, I am trying to think clearly, and to make sense of what is happening, so that I can offer some wisdom, which I think is part of the rabbi’s job description. And I am trying to find words to speak that will be true, and helpful, and encouraging.
I am trying to find things that I can do, actions, that will in some small way bring healing to some of the immense suffering in Israel, in Gaza, and even here in Santa Barbara.
I appreciate everyone asking how I am doing, and the extra hugs and words of support. I believe that this is exactly the function of community, to offer us love, and support when we need it.
Tonight I would like to share a few ways in which I have been trying to act, to be helpful, and to combat my own feelings of helplessness. I’m sharing these because I think it’s what we all want. Ways to be helpful in this time of helplessness. Almost all of these, by the way, are ideas which were presented to me by members of our community. Ideas someone else came up with, but which just made sense to me. Many of you have also taken action, in many different ways, and it has been wonderful to see. I have been incredibly proud of our community’s response in this time of crisis, just as I have been inspired by the way Israelis have come together, to support each other, in the face of this terrible tragedy.
First, my friend and colleague Rabbi Belle Michael, who just arrived here in Santa Barbara about a year and a half ago, called me last week with a brilliant and simple idea. She is Israeli, and she reached out to the leaders of two kibbutzim in the south of Israel who suffered terrible losses and trauma on October 7th, Kibbutz Nir Yitzchak and Kibbutz Kfar Azza. The leaders she reached both affirmed that they knew of members of their kibbutzim who had survived the attacks but were deeply traumatized, and would love to have a human connection with a Jew living a normal life. So Rabbi Belle asked me if I would help her recruit people in our Jewish community here who would be willing to reach out in friendship to an Israeli individual or family in Nir Yitzchak or Kfar Azza. I asked “really? does an Israeli who has just suffered the loss of their family and friends want to talk with someone like me, here in Santa Barbara?” And Belle said “yes….human connection can be very healing.” So I put it out there in my “from the rabbi” message last Monday morning and lo and behold 35 people wrote back to me…within 24 hours…. saying that they would like to participate. That made me feel useful.
About the same time, Anita Presser emailed me asked for my help. She and her sister Liza and friend Sharon Goldberg had been in touch with a doctor at the Sheba Medical Center in Israel, with responsibility for getting medical supplies to soldiers in the IDF. This doctor explained that there was a critical need for Combat Gauze, a special gauze treated with a substance that speeds up the clotting process. Anita had actually made a connection to the manufacturer in Pennsylvania, and put a hold on 17,000 units of this gauze, but needed help raising the money. I thought about it for a few minutes. One of the ways that this crisis is affecting me most personally is that I have friends living in Israel whose sons are being called up and getting ready to go into extraordinarily dangerous urban combat in Gaza. These are wonderful young people, many of them the same age as my own children, and I am terrified that they will not come back. I offered to contact a group of our Temple’s top donors, and to see if we could raise $250,000 to buy this gauze. Within three days, we have received donations totaling over $300,000…from individuals across the political spectrum, by the way. From right to left. This gauze will save lives, and that made me feel useful.
Then just the day before yesterday, our congregant Kelly Brotman wrote to me saying that she had an idea. Could we hold an interfaith bake sale, with people from many different faith communities, to help the people of Israel and Gaza. Kelly said “we will call it United We Bake and maybe we could kick it off at Mitzvah Day. Do you have someone who can help me make this happen?” I love this idea and have started asking the people I know who make the best chocolate chip cookies (at least in my humble opinion). We would like to donate the proceeds to our magnificent local non-profit Direct Relief International, which is sending aid to both Israel and to Gaza, and it is time to start reaching out to all the bakers in our community and also here at Trinity and at all the local churches and I hope at our local Islamic Society as well.
Speaking of the Islamic Society of Santa Barbara, as you may know their President my friend Jamal Hamdani reached out to me a couple of days after the October 7th attacks to express his sorrow and sympathy and to ask me if I would write a note of sympathy to their members who have family who are suffering in Gaza. Jamal told me that a simple note from me would be deeply appreciated. I wrote a letter reviewing our long relationship, and the way that we have fought both antisemitism and Islamophobia together, which they posted on their website. This week, knowing that their community is feeling just as traumatized and vulnerable and enraged as we are, for very different reasons, I wrote to Jamal suggesting some ways that we could work together to fight against hate in both of our communities. With his permission, I would like to read to you Jamal’s response to me:
Salam/ Shalom My brother Steve.
I cried after your email.
We both know what is happening. The vast majority of people of our faiths want to live in peace and harmony and love with each other. A very small minority on both sides continues to incite every one and are holding the future of our children and grandchildren hostage. I like to think of us as wise and patient people who know the truth. On both side the emperors have no clothes and the noise is so high that no one -other than the one in power-can be heard. The sad part is that the minority is infecting everyone with the Hate Virus with Covid like speed. There are no masks or shots or ventilators. The only good news is that there is always our Compassionate and Merciful Creator. His Justice is supreme. Please give me a day or two to reflect and God willing we will find a way. Blessings to All. Jamal Hamdani
Receiving that email from Jamal made me feel a little less helpless, a little less hopeless.
One last thing that happened this week that I want to report:
At the suggestion of my wise elder Rabbi Ira Youdovin, and with the guidance from the brilliant Steve Zipperstein, we have convened the first time ever an ad hoc Jewish Community leadership council, with the lay and professional leaders of all of our local Jewish organizations, to meet every other week for as long as this crisis lasts, to share information with each other, to communicate and cooperate, and most importantly, to make sure that we are not criticizing each other when we have differences of opinion. This council met for the first time this week, and it was an excellent, open, honest and productive meeting.
My friends, we are living through profoundly dangerous times. The events that we are witnessing and are actually part of, will change our world irrevocably, in ways we cannot anticipate or imagine. But we do know that we are stronger, wiser and more courageous when we work together with each other.