Earlier this week, I joined 125 rabbis at a conference entitled Zionism: A New Conversation. I filled a notebook with information and ideas. Here are my top 12.

1.    Antisemitism is a shape-shifter. Right now its form is anti-Zionism. It was the Soviet propaganda machine that first swapped the word Zionist for Jew. The blood libel, the accusation of dual loyalty, the myth of secret power? The Soviets made it all about Zionists instead of using the J-word. In a post-Holocaust world in which saying things about Jews was no longer in good taste, the rebrand stuck.

2.    It is easier to retain moral purity when you hold no power. Powerlessness has become romanticized, because when you hold power you have to make hard ethical decisions.

3.    Gaza is excruciatingly tragic. In Gaza, Haviv Reteg Gur argued, Israel’s victory is total and will be complete, and it is tragic. Some wars, he noted, are won and it feels morally wonderful. This war may be won, or not, but if this is victory it feels awful. It is awful. The worst part? Because Israel is fighting an enemy who vows over and over again to destroying Israel (to be clear: that sentence was about Hamas, not innocent or peaceful Palestinian people caught up in this), there is no choice. That is tragic, too. We should rend our clothes and sit in ashes and mourn the tragedy for what it is. (That last point is mine, not Gur’s. I think we can hold both responsibility and mourning in this very complex geopolitical situation. The midrash about the Egyptians drowning in the sea has God scolding the Israelites for celebrating when their enemies suffered.)

4.    The younger you go, the less people know what Zionism or anti-Semitism are. Prof Rachel Fish’s work has shown that among 18–34-year-olds asked to rank forms of hate, hatred of Jewish people is not cool… but hatred of the state of Israel, and the belief that the state of Israel shouldn’t exist, rank as super cool. This is true across all religious lines including evangelical Christians… and Jews. For Jews under age 40, the majority believe that Israel complicates their lives and embarrasses them.

5.    Particularism v. Universalism. Part of what’s going on with that is that in order to be part of the universal, you have to check your particularism, if you’re a Jew. For example: in order to be part of the LGBTQ+ club at college, or the climate club or whatever, you have to disavow Zionism. You can’t be a Zionist and part of those clubs at most places these days. That includes SOMA, by the way, where it is increasingly hard to participate in the progressive activist community and also a committed Zionist. The pressure is on to eschew the Jewish and/or Zionist part. At UCLA, a student had to drop out of the race for student government last year because she’d been on a Birthright trip to Israel. Anti-Zionism has become a litmus test for progressivism. Zioness is doing great work here.

6.    No more outsourcing the education of our children on these issues. Statistically parents of kids and teens do not have the knowledge they need to feel competent on Israel history and Zionism. Advocacy, it was powerfully noted, is not education, and our kids watching us advocate is not the same as our kids absorbing our knowledge.  I’m putting together a class on Parenting in an Anti-Zionist World to help us here. Register here [make up a link please] to express interest for when I’m ready to get it going.

7.    What we need on university campuses: a) bridge-builders. Our kids can be that, but only if they know who they are and are solid in their knowledge and values. B) Faculty appointments need to be diversified so that the lens of settler-colonialism (currently the only approach in most humanities departments to the topic) is only one of many ways that professors have studied and look at Israel. C) most of all, we need to keep sending our kids to these schools despite the ruckus. As Columbia Law School Professor David Schizer put it, in 30 years, we want our Secretary of State to be someone who has Jewish friends (or is Jewish themselves) – not someone who has never met a Jew.

8.    It’s not conspiracy, it’s incompetence (on campuses), and ignorance (online). People aren’t trying to be anti-semitic. People aren’t doing the research and then deciding to say things that are repetitions of age-old myths about Jews. They just don’t know.

9.    The strategy of ingratiating ourselves to our host communities, which has been the strategy of the American Jewish community, has become obsolete. Bret Stephens put it this way: we want to be Jonah Salk inventing world-saving medicine; or Julius Rosenwald, quietly funding historically black colleges; or Jerry Seinfeld, entertaining millions. None of them made being Jewish part of their public persona. Things are different now. We need to show up as proud Jews, as proud Zionists, as people who may criticize Israel or its government or policies…or not…but who are committed to the safety of the Jewish people in all the places we reside.

10.  The ideology behind the protests has inspired people to give. All those tents on campus last spring were new, and identical. Someone donated and shipped them. Student Justice for Palestine’s social media went dark in May 2023, and turned back on again on…October 6. There’s a lot of money behind all of that. We have to match it. It’s good to give to world causes, but right now the Jewish people needs us.

11.  We need to prioritize Jewish community over the other community circles in our lives. Not because those other circles are not important. But because right now we need each other. The way we stay strong individually as by showing up collectively. So… keep showing up. I’m being super specific here: show up at Oheb. If you’ve stopped coming, it’s time to come back. If you’ve stopped giving all you can, start. Pick the thing – minyan, First Friday, shabbat, a class, volunteering, an additional free will gift, all of the above. It’s the #1 thing you can do for the Jewish people right now because it’s the most local source of strength we have. Our bridge-building only works if the abutment is firmly rooted in place. First we ground then we build across the divide.

12.  When God called to Moses from the burning bush and told him to go save the Jewish people, Moses resisted. Moses argues that the people will never listen to him, that he’s slow of speech, that it will never work. Which, as Rabbi J.J. Schachter taught us, is nuts, since the only reason Moses was out there in the desert tending Yitro’s sheep in the first place was because he himself saw the suffering of the Israelites, killed a man who was beating a Jew, and then fled the scene. So he knows the people are suffering. Dear God, he says, don’t send me! According to the Talmud, Moses spent a whole week arguing with God that God should send Elijah the Prophet to save the Jews instead. What about us? We (and at this point Rabbi Schachter was shouting so loudly that security actually came in to check in on things) we must argue for all eternity that God help us, that God should send Elijah, that God should redeem us, end this war, bring back the hostages, end the suffering, that God should to turn us into Moses to save the Jewish people. Moses got the message that it was up to him, and now it is our turn. It is up to us.

Over President’s Day weekend, I went to visit my daughter Naomi, who is a student at Boston University. She had no classes over the long weekend, and we were excited for the mother-daughter time. Part of the fun was to be the sleepover at the hotel; Naomi is a light sleeper and her (otherwise wonderful and very lovely) roommate is an early bird with a heavy tread. We went to dinner Sunday night, watched some “Sopranos,” and turned out the lights relishing the luxury of sleeping in on a Monday morning.

We were dead asleep at 3 a.m. when the emergency system sounded. Louder than loud, strobe lights and all. We jumped at least a mile, even though the ceiling wasn’t that high. The voice on the loudspeaker instructed us to evacuate. Wide awake, we pulled on our coats and boots (this was that single-digits week, remember?) and trudged down the six flights of stairs to the lobby. Joined the zombie parade, feeling grateful we weren’t part of the business convention. Clearly there were colleagues who were not happy to be seen in pajamas and hairpins at 3 am.

Twenty minutes later, we got the all-clear and headed back up to the room. Naomi fell asleep first, somewhere around four. I must have finally dozed off too… because at 5 am, the alarms went off again. This time the voice on the loudspeaker said to stay in place. Lying in bed trying to relax proved futile as the fire warden provided the required updates every few minutes: the fire department has been notified. The fire department is on their way. The fire department has arrived… by 5:30, the all-clear.

Took a while, but we fell back asleep. Until… you guessed it, the alarm system triggered again. Two more times, actually, until we finally gave up and started the day.

So much for a restorative, full night of sleep.

It wasn’t yet Adar then, but it is now, and that story feels top of mind. Because this month of Adar is the month on the Jewish calendar where we say: let go of your expectations. Whatever happens, find the humor in it. Purim (the word) means “lots,” as in “casting lots.” On Yom Kippur we focus on fairness, justice, getting what we deserve, doing what we need to do to clean up our act… but on Purim? We throw it to the dogs. To the wolves and hyenas and goldfish and whomever else we might toss our expectations. Because you know what? Sometimes life just doesn’t happen as planned, makes no sense, doesn’t feel fair, and you can’t see which way is right or wrong or make sense of anything anyway.

Hmm, that sounds about right for this cultural-political moment we are living through right now, doesn’t it?

All those emergency alarm signals going off every other minute in our heads, feeds, news channels: they might mean something. We should probably take them all really seriously. And also, maybe not. Sometimes, those alarms are just… accidental, funny, part of a story that reminds us that life doesn’t go as planned or as you wanted and you know what? It’s okay. It’s Purim. Laugh. Don’t take it all so seriously. Yom Kippur will come around again all too soon. Plenty of time to be serious. 

Tradition holds that we are to get so drunk on Purim that as we read the Megillah (7:30 pm this Thursday night) we can’t tell the bad guy (Haman, boo!) from the good guy (Mordechai, yay!). Sometimes it’s Yom-Kippur-obvious who has sinned and who has transgressed… and sometimes it’s Purim free-for-all, unclear which is which, and anyway, aren’t most of us some of both, bad guy and good guy, isn’t it all mixed up and crazy? That’s part of the story, too.

On Thursday night, we will gather to play and be silly. We will shout and boo as we read sacred, holy texts. We will read the one book of the Bible that doesn’t mention God even once (Esther). We will don costumes and set aside the worry and stress. 

We get there via Shabbat Zachor, this Saturday, where we fulfill the mitzvah of remembering Amalek, one of the Torah’s original arch-villains. We are commanded to remember how he attacked us when we were weak and tired. Pretty apt in an October 8 world. Pretty serious stuff. And then once we’ve remembered… we get silly, we get drunk, we get irreverent. I have to say, pretty cool for a religion to include a holiday that features making merry of its own sense of God-absent historical events, of the stuff that makes zero sense… and pretty cool that holding both, the serious and the silly, is part of the magic of Jewish survival from Amalek’s days, 3,000+ years ago through today.

The emergency alarms are sounding all around us. But sometimes, they can make us laugh. Sometimes, they are waking us up to how funny (odd, unexpected, weird) life can be. Sometimes, they are telling us to wake up with a sense of humor, even in the middle of a cold winter night.

On some level, we knew. When Shiri Bibas and her children were not exchanged in the first prisoner swap after 54 days of captivity, on some level, we knew. When they weren’t listed among the first waves of this agreement. When we lived without any signs of life these 501 days. And yet, as journalist Matti Friedman put it in yesterday’s episode of Dan Senor’s podcast Call Me Back: we refused to believe, refused to give up hope.

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Each of us is made of holy sparks. That’s Kabbalah 101: the nitzotzot, tiny sparks of Divine energy, which animate all life and all creation. They need tending. We need tending.

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Just yesterday, I was seated in the shade by the glistening Sea of Galilee, listening to my new friend Reverend Cynthia Atkins preach.

Rev. Atkins began by teaching the non-Christians (three rabbis and one Hindu pundit) what the eight Christians in the group already knew about Jesus’s teachings in the first-century synagogue there in Capernaum. And then she preached, bringing me to tears. About how to bring our truth, our messages, to people who don’t see what we see. About how to build a shared society even when people aren’t ready for it. She quoted her husband, Bishop Reginald Atkins—a NJ State Assemblyman, who was there with us—on the work of making the world a better place: “You gotta see what you believe, and not believe what you see.”

The first Interfaith Clergy Mission to Israel run by the Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC) and Greater MetroWest Federation was potent and powerful. We visited the Old City of Jerusalem. We drove north, through the West Bank, to reach the baptismal site at the Jordan River. My Christian friends dipped their feet in the water, but you cannot cross, as the river is the international border with Jordan; we wished the man across from us a good morning in Arabic. We met the religious leader of the Druze community and learned from an Israeli-Arab journalist. We drove south and met with the Jewish, Arab, and Bedouin schoolchildren of the bilingual public school in Beersheva. We learned that Israel is imperfect as is our own nation, but that it is deeply invested in building a shared society with its diverse population.

In Kibbutz Nir Oz—where one in four residents was killed or taken hostage—a former hostage described her experience on October 7 and being held by Hamas. She showed us how they are restoring the desecrated kibbutz without damaging the trees or gardens they have lovingly nurtured in the desert. We placed flowers and balloons at the home of the Bibas family, and witnessed the country covered in signs praying for the return of the hostages. In Tel Aviv, we visited Hostage Square and met Ilay, the brother of Evyatar David, taken from the Nova music festival, who as a 26-year-old man is not on the list of the current hostage-ceasefire deal. “We are worried that after this everyone will forget the rest,” Ilay said. We assured him we would not.

For me, this was against the backdrop of the protests in front of Oheb Shalom the day before I left. All week I’ve been holding two truths: that there are those who really don’t see the world the way we do, whose antisemitism is devastating in Israel and terrifying to us here. And that we have many friends and allies, and that is where hope resides.

I believe in goodness, not evil. In love, not hate. In hope, not despair. Don’t just believe what you see—see what you believe. And then manifest it, make it true.

I saw, but can’t believe, that such mean-spirited protesters came onto our property and called us horrible things last weekend. I can’t believe that hosting two IDF soldiers committed solely to search and rescue (of all nations) would bring such condemnation from some. I can’t believe that anyone could fail to see what I see, that accusations of genocide and racism are deeply antisemitic. I can’t believe that in 2025 so many people are so invested in taking down Israel through alignment with a cause that sounds just but is so deeply misinformed. I see, but can’t believe, that the Jewish community explaining over and over our terror of that alignment falls on deaf ears and hard-hearted denial of wrongdoing.  

But I also see that there is only one letter of hate in my email inbox, and dozens of notes of support. That in addition to the many Jewish institutions that reached out, the SOMA Interfaith Clergy Association publicly posted a letter (here, below my letter to you and that of the other synagogues) decrying hate and standing with us. That the mayors of South Orange and Maplewood condemned the protests and offered their help. That we heard from Congressman Mikie Sherrill, who came to meet with our president and immediate past president this week, as well as Congressman Josh Gottheimer, who expressed his support. That a group of a dozen clergy of various faiths were willing to travel all the way to Israel to deepen their knowledge and their own spiritual connections to the land and to us, the Jewish people.

At our closing dinner, we took turns sharing what we were taking away. Every single person around the table shared that their understanding of this war, and of Israel as a whole, had transformed. That the number of dead doesn’t tell enough of the story, doesn’t help anyone understand how we got here and how hard it is to get out. As Suzanne Ludlam, one of the leaders of the Latter Day Saints community, put it: the generation of young people in Israel is standing up to defend themselves against an enemy who wants them dead. It is our turn to stand up for them and teach our children to do so as well.

“It is not your task to complete the work, nor are you free to ignore it,” taught Rabbi Tarfon (Pirke Avot 2:16). We have a lot of work to do, too much for any one of us. What we see is not the end of the story. We build the world we believe in by seeing it in our hearts. And then, together, we can do our part in making that a reality.

May it be a shabbat shalom here and in Israel.

P.S. The next time I will be in Israel will be with Oheb Shalom! Priority registration for our Family Trip to Israel is open. Families with children around b-mitzvah age are invited to register now. For more information on the trip, click here. Please note that registration for other age/stage cohorts will be based on availability. To express interest in joining, click here. 

This morning a group of pro-Palestinian protesters gathered on the sidewalk outside of Oheb Shalom, their visit timed with our Israel Today Committee’s program then underway. A graffiti message was written on the ground, and a caring neighbor came by to wash it away after the protesters left.

We are grateful to our security officers and South Orange Police who were on site to ensure everyone’s safety. SOPD and the Essex County Prosecutor’s Office are investigating the incident, and we are fortunate for the security layers we already had in place. At no point was anyone in danger, and our program went on uninterrupted.  We remain in contact with local law enforcement and our Federation’s security team.

We are connected to Israel in a myriad of ways and are deeply bound up with the fate of am yisrael, Jewish people living in Israel and around the world. We continue to pray for the safe return of all of the hostages, for the safety of the troops protecting Israel, and for the sagacity of the leaders of that nation as well as our own. More than anything we pray for peace between Israel and its neighbors. 

As in all things, we are a diverse community. We do not insist that we all keep kosher the same way or have identical prayer lives or ways of celebrating shabbat and holidays. So too we do not require a set of beliefs around Israel, domestic politics, or any other issue. Since October 7 we have offered an array of programs that seek to reflect the diversity of the Oheb community in how we hold our connections to Israel. We have held Listening Circles to hear from each other, heard from West Bank Palestinians and Israeli settlers speaking together on our bimah, and we pray daily for Israel and for peace.

The program this morning featured an elite rescue unit of the Israel Defense Force, whose sole mission is search and rescue. This unit has saved the lives of people in Israel and around the world, including from natural disasters in countries such as Turkey and Haiti. Ironically, as protesters outside were calling those driving past “baby killers,” those attending the program were hearing firsthand accounts of infants and children rescued around the world – including civilians in Gaza during this war.

In February, we will gather for a discussion of Strangers in the House by Raja Shehadeh.  I write this because we get ourselves worked up, we walk around feeling – some of us, sometimes – that the “other side” has some sort of hegemony at Oheb. And I want to keep stating, over and over again, that we are committed to the Jewish people and to holding our diverse community with safety and curiosity, with calm and respect, and, of course, with security and safety. There is room for lots of questions, grappling, ideas and opinions.

However, there are limits to even the widest of tents. People who stand outside our building, calling us terrorists, making us feel threatened or on the defensive as we undertake the peaceful work of joining in local community, do not have a place here. Not at Oheb, and I know not at our neighboring synagogue partners, either. Our tent is a large one, but it has walls. 

Tomorrow, as it happens, I fly to Israel. I will be traveling with a group of interfaith clergy from the Greater Metrowest area, so that we can get to know one another and explore our shared relationship to the Holy Land. This summer I will take the mantle of leading this group in our on-going, year-round work of building relationships and mutual understanding.  For me, this feels like the perfect response to this morning’s protest.  During my absence, questions can be directed to Lorraine Survis, Michelle Strassberg, or Gavin Hirsch. 

Do you know what you were doing 100 days ago?

I think I do. Here’s a hint:

If an airplane takes off from JFK heading to Paris and is 1% off course… the plane will end up in Spain or England instead. It’s the 1 in 60 rule, highlighting how even a small deviation in course can result in significant errors over long distances.

Jog any memories? Maybe not (unless you’re a pilot). Give up? It was one of the factoids I shared over Rosh Hashanah… 100 days ago.

Happy New Year, my friends… again! The Mishnah teaches that there are four new year’s days in the Jewish calendar. The rabbis were on to something. Seems to me that living double-calendar lives (as Americans living 2025, as Jews living 5785) gives us a great opportunity to check in on all those vows we made while the leaves were turning from green to gold… 100 days later, as we shiver in the ice and wind of winter.

Unlike the Jewish New Year’s season, which focuses inwardly on our character development and relationships, the secular new year tends to focus outward on things like exercise, financial planning, and training ourselves to like kale smoothies. January can be where the rubber meets the road for the character-development-type resolutions we made 100 days ago (and sealed 90 days ago at Yom Kippur), a chance to incorporate some course corrections as we dive into the good habits we often try to undertake come January.

So back to that 1%. It can be overwhelming, to live up to our greatest ambitions of self. But what if we make just a tiny adjustment instead? Just 1% is all it will take, to steer us on to a different course and land us at an entirely different destination.

One percent of 24 hours is… 12 minutes. What might you do differently for 12 minutes each day, that helps you course correct to the person you want to be?

Or maybe it’s not a time-bound thing; maybe easing your load (figuratively speaking) by 1% is what it will take for you to feel less stressed or less cranky… or more joyful?

Now here’s a wild coincidence (or a wink and nod from a Higher Power): the Talmud, too, has a 1 in 60 rule! It is most often invoked as part of the rules of kashrut (keeping kosher): if, say, you accidentally drop a glass of milk into the pot of chicken soup you’re making… how do you decide if you need to throw the whole thing away because it’s treyf (not kosher because of the mixture of milk and meat) or not? Turns out the magic ratio for deciding if it’s kosher is… 1/60!

How cool is it that the rabbis didn’t make it a clean 100%? How cool that “we’re doing our best over here,” quantified, comes down to… 1/60?

That rule is not the only place the 1/60 shows up. It is also invoked in a beautiful passage about extremes and small doses:

There are five matters in our world which are one-sixtieth of their most extreme manifestations. They are: fire, honey, Shabbat, sleep, and a dream. 

The Gemara elaborates: our fire is one-sixtieth of the fire of Gehenna; honey is one-sixtieth of manna; Shabbat is one-sixtieth of the world-to-come; sleep is one-sixtieth of death; and a dream is one-sixtieth of prophecy. (Talmud, Brachot 57b)

In other words: we could go to extremes and try for all or nothing at all. Or, when it comes to creating a good life, we could make little adjustments along the way that keep us on course. Our homes should be heated and we should light candles for Shabbat, Chanukah, aromatherapy, whatever – but not on fire like we are witnessing in L.A. right now. That is too much.

(In fact, it is too much to bear, and we would all do well to contribute tzedakah to help those who need it right now there. In particular, consider this fund to help the 100-year-old Conservative synagogue of Pasadena, which has burned to the ground, rebuild. To those with family and beloveds in the L.A. area, please let us know how we can support you and them.)

We should add 1% more sweetness (that’s the honey) and Shabbat (rest, family, spiritual renewal). We should get a little more sleep. We should nurture our dreams a little bit more. How much more? Just 1% more. 

One hundred days ago, we thought about taking on one new mitzvah, each of us, to help the Jewish people. How’s that going? Whether you took one of the slips of paper from the basket on the way out of the sanctuary that day or chose one of your own, have you formed it as a habit? If you have no clue what I’m talking about, you can reread my Rosh Hashanah sermon here or rewatch it here… or skip to the punchline, which is: what one mitzvah you can do to step up your game as part of the Jewish people?  

Ten days into 2025, 100 days into 5785: who do you want to be this year, and what 1% change can you make to your habits to become that person? I’d love to hear your answer. For me, I continue my commitment to connection. I write these emails as part of that commitment, and I love nothing more than to hear from you. If you’ve never hit reply… but you’ve gotten this far… send me a little note! (My kids’ guidance counselors used to do that to get students to read to the end. So I’ll try it, too. The 18th person who writes me back gets… a little treat from the Miriam Sisterhood Gift Shop that I’ll choose for you. Or forget the bribe, and let your response be part of your 1/60 mitzvah move for today.)

One hundred days from now, I hope we will find ourselves that much closer to reaching our goals – the inner-focus ones and the outer-focus ones, too. I hope that we’ll have developed the habits that help us stay on course. I hope we’ll have a little more honey and fire (the good kind), sleep and Shabbat and dreams. 

After all, 100 days from now, it will be Passover.

Choosing the best preschool for your toddler is a big decision. After all, you want your child to be happy, safe, and well-prepared for kindergarten. As the Director of the Mickey Fried Preschool, I help countless families navigate this important choice.

Here’s what I’ve learned along the way:

Look Beyond the Bells and Whistles

It’s easy to get caught up in the “wow” factor of a fancy preschool. But remember, the most important aspect is the quality of the interactions between teachers and children. Look for a program in which:

1. Teachers are warm, nurturing, and responsive. They should be attuned to your child’s individual needs and create a safe and supportive environment.
2. The curriculum is play-based. Play is how young children learn best. A good preschool will offer plenty of opportunities for exploration, creativity, and social interaction.
3. The environment is stimulating and engaging. Age-appropriate toys, books, and activities should be readily available.

Consider Your Child’s Needs

Every child is unique. Some thrive in large, bustling environments, while others prefer smaller, more intimate settings. Think about your child’s personality and learning style:

Does your child enjoy being around other children, or do they prefer one-on-one interactions? Is your child active and energetic, or more quiet and reserved? What are your child’s interests?

Ask the Right Questions

When you visit a preschool, be prepared to ask questions. Here are a few to get you started:

1. What is the teacher-to-child ratio?
2. What are the teachers’ qualifications and experience?
3. What is a typical day like?
4. How does the preschool handle discipline?
5. What opportunities are there for parent involvement?

Trust Your Gut

Ultimately, the best way to choose a preschool is to visit and see how it feels. Pay attention to your instinct. Does the environment feel warm and welcoming? Do the teachers seem genuinely happy to be there? If something doesn’t feel right, it probably isn’t.

Choosing the right preschool is an investment in your child’s future. Take your time, do your research, and trust your instincts.

Read more about Cara on the Staff Page.