Maybe because of the images from Rafah all week, maybe out of a sense of being misunderstood, or maybe because of the opening lines of this week’s parasha*, I am going to take a risk, and share with you a few pages from my diary. The entry is dated October 29, 2023. I share it out of a sense of wanting to be in this with you all – setting aside the recent verdict for a minute to remember what the headlines were all week until then.

It feels… risky. Raw. Here goes.

I’m on the El Al flight to Israel. There is a beautiful woman two rows up by whom I’m captivated – haredi (ultra-orthodox), dressed expensively in black, fully made up. Clearly wealthy. Her wig is so good and so chic I thought it was her hair, which I can’t understand as she is only my age or younger, and has children with her. Now, though her hair is covered, completely, by a beautiful maroon chenille snood, only maybe her head is shaved, it does not seem to be holding much hair, or perhaps it’s just pulled back tightly. I think she’s reciting tehillim (psalms), I could be wrong.

The man in front of her just stood up to daven (pray). I love that, so admire it, a man who gets up to pray because it’s time.

Dear God – if I do that, if I stand up to pray when it’s time, three times a day – if I shave my head out of modesty and devotion to you – will you stop this war?

I’m scared to go. Scared of what I will see and hear. Scared of sirens and bombs and rockets. Scared to see real destruction. But most of all, I’m scared of the stories. That’s why we’re going, after all: to collect stories and bring them back, like souvenirs. Instead of candy and rugelach from the shuk, we will bring home horror.

I’m scared, too, of not knowing how to help us hold multiple truths. We will see and hear stories, and experience real moments that are true and real – and as with everything, this will only be part of the story. There are terrorists. Yes. It is true. It is awful. But I too do not want – refuse – to teach some kind of jihad, some kind of battle cry, in the name of defense or loyalty to the miracle of a Jewish homeland. I understand there is no bargain, no deal to be made here with the world. I know that if we said, “Fine, world, you win, we give back all of the land, everything we’ve built over a century. Take it, and then we’ll live wherever we want, just in peace” – that it would not happen. We still would not be given peace. We have been and always will be, it seems, an at-risk minority, on the edge and in danger. We – I – my children, my parents – are feeling it for the first time in our generation, and perhaps the first time in American history. We are scared. We feel we are outsiders after all. So the experiment in Israel cannot fail. We need Jews everywhere, including there, because no place is safe. Having our own country, it turns out, was not the solution to The Jewish Question.

But – to have an army, of Jews, killing other people? Destroying people’s homes and hospitals and cities? No, I cannot teach that that is good. We are at war. They have taken our children and grandparents and brothers and sisters hostage. We must go, as Abraham did – as every people in the history of time has done and would and should do – to get them back. And it is wrecking our souls and the soul of our nation, the souls of every soldier and family, which is everyone, all of us, because we feel we have no choice except to root for war, if we care at all.

I am a pacifist who loves the Jewish people. Not because we are better or more special, but because I am a Jew. Am Yisrael (the People of Israel) is my people. And humans were made to need tribes, to need one another. I am a Jew who loves Jews and Torah, which means I love the story of our Promised Land. But even more than that, I love. I want this war, this violence, to end. I want to love not only Palestinian people but also even Hamas, not the group but the boys who wake up and eat breakfast and think they are liberators. That, too, is truth, to hold their humanity too.

I don’t know that my ‘flock’ is ready to hear that. I suppose that is just for me, for now. The beginning of a vision that I pray to find a way to bring to the world.

The entry ends there. 

Seven months later, I still don’t know if the “flock” is ready to hear it. The part about wanting to love even our enemies, to cultivate compassion – for they too are somebody’s children – is hard. I’ve been saying all along that our spiritual work in this is to stretch our hearts as big as they will go. Our work is also to figure out how to hold love for Israel – the people and the country – during a very difficult war. Maybe not everyone is ready to hear both of those truths, to work on holding both. But I am ready to preach it, and to continue to pray for the softening of our hearts, the ability to hold multiple truths in a complex world, the goodwill of nations toward the State and People of Israel wherever we dwell, and most of all, for peace.

Today is day 237 of captivity. So much awfulness has ensued. Please God, help us know what to do to make peace in this world, and in our hearts. Amen.

*This week’s parasha, B’hukkotai, Leviticus 26: “If you follow My laws and faithfully observe My commandments…I will grant peace in the land, and you shall lie down untroubled by anyone…”