A letter from our Administrative Coordinator, Emily Albert:
To our community,
Throughout the Days of Awe this year, reflecting and making any sort of clear meaning of this moment has felt an almost impossible task. Honestly facing the overwhelming suffering that has been inflicted upon Palestinians this year is overwhelming, painful, and difficult to fully comprehend. And yet, it is our responsibility to hold vigil, to be awake to our world. This is the work of Yom Kippur, and this is the work of solidarity.
At High Holiday services when I was a kid, my mother was the one who would stand on the bima–the pulpit– to make the annual appeal to the congregation to buy Israel Bonds. Guaranteed loans to the state of Israel, these were advertised to congregants as not only financial but also moral investments in a collective Jewish future. My synagogue was not unique. Like so many of us, Zionism was entirely embedded into my Jewish life, my holy days used to garner moral and financial support for apartheid.
Today, I am thankful to be in community with all of you instead. Today, we get to affirm a different vision, one of Palestinian liberation and a collective future beyond Zionism. This year, like so many Jews, I will not be attending my childhood synagogue. Zionism has become a wedge, forcing myself and other people of conscience out of so many community spaces. Instead, I have the privilege of speaking at a local anti-Zionist organization’s kol nidre service, where I’ll reflect on a recent solidarity trip in Palestine.
Perhaps you too are relishing the chance to mark this day with a new community this year. Perhaps you are choosing not to mark it at all this year because it is just too painful, or because that new community has not yet been built.
We are building a Jewish experience beyond Zionism. However hard these weeks, months, years have been, my wish for all of us is that we can allow ourselves to draw strength from one another in the spaces we create for ourselves, holding room for rage and grief and love and even hope.
At kol nidre tonight, I’ll be talking about testimony. About what it could possibly mean to bear witness. What that asks of us during a live-streamed genocide. On a day where we often grieve loved ones who have died in the past year, so too will we be grieving the unthinkable number of Palestinian deaths at the hands of the state of Israel. Yom Kippur calls on us to take stock and to take collective responsibility. May we all find room for reflection and renewal, and take good care while doing so.
We remind you of the following resource, in case it might be supportive: Days of Awe 5785: Resources for Ritual and Reflection.
And if part of your Yom Kippur tradition involves tzedakah, please consider making IJV a part of it.
G’mar chatima tova, may we renew our commitment to solidarity and the fight for freedom and justice together this Yom Kippur.
Yours in struggle,
Emily