Dear TEE community,

These past few days I’ve been thinking about a quotation from the Book of Jeremiah:

A cry is heard in Ramah –

Wailing, bitter weeping –

Rachel weeping for her children.

She refuses to be comforted

For her children, who are gone.

Those of us who heard Rachel Goldberg and Jon Polin speak at the Democratic Convention know that we cannot begin to imagine the grief they are experiencing. We also know that this grief is expanded five-fold to the families of the other hostages murdered last week. And over 700-fold to the families of Israeli soldiers who have died in Gaza. And tens of thousands-fold to the families of the Palestinians killed in Gaza.

Another Jewish poet, Yehuda Amichai, wrote 2500 years after Jeremiah:

The diameter of the bomb was thirty centimeters

and the diameter of its effective range about seven meters,

with four dead and eleven wounded.

And around these, in a larger circle

of pain and time, two hospitals are scattered

and one graveyard. But the young woman

who was buried in the city she came from,

at a distance of more than a hundred kilometers,

enlarges the circle considerably,

and the solitary man mourning her death

at the distant shores of a country far across the sea

includes the entire world in the circle.

And I won’t even mention the crying of orphans

that reaches up to the throne of God and

beyond, making a circle with no end and no God.*

Violence will never close this circle or end this pain. Since hearing of the six murdered hostages, tens of thousands of Israelis have been out in the streets demanding a ceasefire for the safe return of the remaining living hostages. Leaders of the Reform movement have supported them, stating, “…we reiterate our strong call for Prime Minister Netanyahu to heed the voices of the hostages families and the millions of Israeli citizens calling on him to not leave the remaining hostages behind and, instead, negotiate for a new ceasefire and hostage deal.”**

I believe we must also call for a ceasefire to end the horrific suffering and destruction of the Palestinian people in both Gaza and, increasingly, the West Bank. The Torah enjoins us to love the stranger as ourselves. Hillel asked, “If I am only for myself, what am I?” If we actually believe these values we must be willing to apply them to our own lives, especially when it is difficult.

In this season of reflection and return, may we seek ways to lessen violence and harm in our lives and the world around us, keeping our hearts open to the common humanity of all people.

Rabbi Drorah Setel

**Yehuda Amichai, “The Diameter of the Bomb,” available here.

**You can read the full statement from the URJ here.