Alas! Lonely sits the Jewish people. Antisemitism rises and our breath catches in our throats.
Barely a moment passes without anguish. Bile bubbles within us as we witness baseless hatred around the world.
Could the days grow darker still? Caught between fear for our own safety and catastrophe for all the peoples of the Land, we can’t bear this.
Day after day we watch atrocities unfold– some in our name, some directed at our doors– all devastating.
Each day brings news that brings us to our knees. Everything teeters on or over the edge of tragedy.
Famine wrecks the Palestinian people. Food distribution comes too little, too late, and at too great a risk
Gazans drop to their death clutching empty pots, felled by IDF bullets and their own failing bodies.
Hostages languish, abandoned by all with power to free them. Hamas cares not as the death toll soars, innocents buried beside combatants beneath the rubble.
Is any end to this horror to be found? Israel and Palestine weep without consolation
Jerusalem’s peace seems a distant dream. Justice goads us, too far off to grasp.
Knowledge of You is obscured. Innocent people are being killed and kicked to the ground. We cannot know You when we do not know our fellow.
Look within, O my people! Look upon your souls and see where your hearts have closed to your wholly human sibling.
Mouths of babes seek morsels of bread and are met with only sand. Mothers wail as their children march to war.
“Never Again” taunts us. Nazis in American and Rightwing Messianists in Israel speak more boldly by the day and are met with less and less resistance.
Oceans away and down the road, the horror of this time roils and ripples until it becomes an overwhelming roar.
Pain begets pain begets pain.
Quickly, we must move to quell the violence, questioning loudly those with power to make vast change and quietly urging our inner circles to do more. Quake though we may, we cannot risk staying silent.
Rape used as a weapon of war. The daughters of Jerusalem weep. Raise your voices against this rabid ruthlessness.
Soldiers, young people with their futures ahead of them, sent home in bodybags. So much possibility squandered.
Torture in the tunnels of Hamas! The hostage families cry out, thrust aside by those who exploit pain for political gain.
Unnerved and shaking we enter into our sanctuaries. Ubiquitous are antisemitism and hatred. When will we be unburdened from fear?
Viciousness has clouded vision.
War without end cannot be a solution. Will this ever end?
X tremist voices threaten to pervert your vision of peace, O Zion. Xenophobia rears its ugly head, trampling on the Torah and her prophets.
Yet, we will not despair. Yesterday is lost, tomorrow is unwritten. Yearning for a better world, we turn to You and to each other.
Zion, may a new light shine upon you soon and in our days, for all Yisrael, for all peoples of the Land, for all who dwell on earth.
