Josh Weinberg

Friday, January 16, 2026 – כ״ז טֵבֵת תשפ”ו

“When Pharaoh does not heed you, I will lay My hand upon Egypt and deliver My ranks, My people the Israelites, from the land of Egypt with extraordinary chastisements.”
—Exodus 7:4

The streets of Iran have been filled with fire, chants, and fear. Protesters pour into city squares knowing that the price of being seen may be imprisonment—or worse. Security forces move quickly and violently. Phones go silent. The internet is blocked, leaving the world in the dark. Families wait in anguish, unsure whether their loved ones have been arrested, injured, or killed. In the silence that follows each wave of protest, rumors replace facts, and fear fills the vacuum left by enforced darkness.

No one knows the precise human cost. Estimates range from several thousand to well over ten thousand people killed, out of a population of roughly 90 million. That may sound abstract until placed alongside events we already carry in our collective memory: the approximately 1,200 murdered on October 7 in a country of just over 9 million; the nearly 3,000 killed on September 11 in a nation of more than 330 million. Percentages matter. Scale matters. They do not diminish grief—they sharpen our understanding of it. The uncertainty surrounding Iran’s death toll is not accidental. In response to the demonstrations, the regime imposed prolonged internet shutdowns, deliberately severing the country from the outside world. The regime understands that obscuring reality is itself a form of power. Both Iran and its adversaries have described this uprising as the most intense and violent challenge to the Islamic Republic since the 1979 Revolution that installed clerical rule—a moment that now appears less like a foundation than a fault line.

In recent days, that fear crystallized around a single name. A young protester arrested in the city of Karaj was reported by a Kurdish human rights organization to be facing imminent execution. The charges—collusion against internal security and propaganda against the regime—are deliberately vague, elastic enough to criminalize dissent itself. For hours, the world watched and waited. Iranian state media later claimed that such charges do not automatically carry the death penalty if reviewed by a court, and officials insisted publicly that no executions were imminent. Yet human rights monitors continued to warn that the protester’s life remained in grave danger. In Iran today, reassurance is fragile, and the law offers little protection against political vengeance.

This is what authoritarianism looks like in real time. It is not only the violence itself, but the uncertainty. Not only the arrests, but the darkness that follows them. Power exercised through fear, ambiguity, and silence.

It is here—precisely here—that the ancient story of Exodus begins to feel uncomfortably contemporary.

Pharaoh, too, governs through fear. When he senses his authority slipping, he does not negotiate; he hardens his heart. When the Israelites ask for relief, he increases their suffering. When he fears their growth, he orders their children killed. Oppression in Exodus is not chaotic—it is systematic, deliberate, and self-justifying. Cruelty becomes policy in the service of control.

And then comes one of the most haunting moments in the narrative: the plague of darkness.* Not destruction. Not death. Darkness so thick it can be felt. A paralysis that leaves people unable to see one another or rise from their places. Communication collapses. Isolation sets in. Only later does the Torah quietly note that among the Israelites, there was light.

Iran’s internet blackouts function as a modern version of that plague. When the regime shuts down access, it is not merely controlling information—it is enforcing isolation. Protesters cannot document abuse. Families cannot locate the detained. The outside world cannot fully see what is happening. Darkness becomes a strategy. And like Pharaoh’s darkness, it is meant to break the spirit as much as the body.

Nor is this dynamic confined to Iran alone. Across the globe—and uncomfortably close to home—we see powerful states testing how far they can go in exercising force against vulnerable populations. In Minneapolis and in cities across the United States, ICE raids have torn families apart in the early hours of the morning, often with little transparency, due process, or public accountability. These actions are not equivalent to Iran’s repression—but they rhyme with it. They remind us that democracies, too, can drift toward practices that rely on fear, spectacle, and the selective suspension of rights. Darkness does not always arrive at once; sometimes it advances one policy, one raid, one silence at a time.

Yet Exodus insists that darkness is never the final word. It exposes a regime that can rule only by concealment. Pharaoh’s power depends on preventing people from seeing one another clearly—from recognizing shared humanity and shared resistance. The same is true today.

Exodus also presses us with a harder, more uncomfortable question: How do we, who are watching from afar, respond?

Global moral attention is fractured. Many people rightly mourn the immense suffering of Palestinians—the deaths, displacement, and grief that continue even amid a tenuous ceasefire. That mourning is necessary and just. And yet, too often, that compassion does not extend to Iranians risking everything to confront a brutal theocracy—one that is also singularly committed to the destruction of the Jewish state. Our job is to make sure that their struggle is not ignored, minimized, or treated as politically inconvenient.

At the same time, there are those who passionately champion the Iranian protest movement while appearing indifferent to Palestinian suffering, as though moral clarity requires choosing sides rather than widening empathy. Each camp claims righteousness. Each risks narrowing its vision.

Exodus does not allow for such moral compartmentalization. Egypt is not punished because another people elsewhere is suffering. The Israelites’ cries are not diminished because the world is complicated. The Torah rejects the idea that justice is a zero-sum enterprise.

The true test of moral gravitas is the ability to hold more than one truth at once: to stand with Iranians resisting tyranny; to grieve Palestinian suffering; to worry, legitimately, that Israel’s security is imperiled when the Ayatollahs feel threatened; to oppose authoritarian violence wherever it appears. Pharaoh’s greatest weapon was not the whip—it was the ability to divide, distract, and darken the moral landscape.

Which raises one final, difficult question: Should the United States intervene?

External pressure, sanctions, and even rhetorical support can sometimes entrench regimes rather than liberate people. Exodus offers no blueprint for foreign intervention, only a moral orientation: liberation cannot be imposed from afar, but neither can suffering be ignored. The task of powerful democracies is not to play Pharaoh in reverse, but to protect light—through diplomacy, asylum, information access, and solidarity that empowers rather than exploits.

Resistance, then and now, begins with refusing darkness—refusing silence, erasure, and the normalization of fear.

From ancient Egypt to modern Iran, the struggle remains unfinished. But the demand endures: Let my people go. Let them speak. Let them be seen. And let our moral vision be wide enough to recognize that wherever people rise against repression and erasure, the story of Exodus is still being written.

Shabbat Shalom.

January 9, 2025 – כ׳ טֵבֵת תשפ”ו

New leadership often brings with it uncertainty and big questions. This week, we read one of the most politically charged verses in the Torah: “A new king arose over Egypt who did not know Yoseph.” (Exodus 1:8) With that sentence, memory collapses. Gratitude dissolves. History is severed from responsibility. Yoseph—the immigrant who saved Egypt from famine, stabilized its economy, and ensured its survival—is erased not because his story was unknown, but because it was inconvenient.

The Torah’s language is deliberate. The king did not forget Yoseph. He chose not to know him. This is willful amnesia, and it becomes the moral precondition for oppression. Once Yoseph’s legacy is denied, the Israelites can be reframed—from contributors to threats, from neighbors to a demographic problem. Policy follows narrative. Fear replaces fact. Power and subjugation masquerade as necessity.

That dynamic feels painfully familiar today.

In the moments following his swearing-in ceremony, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani swiftly revoked executive orders issued by his predecessor, Eric Adams, including those referencing the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism. A revocation that was framed as a civil-liberties correction—an effort to prevent the misuse of state power and protect free speech. Those concerns warrant serious consideration. But for many Jews, especially in the aftermath of October 7 and the rise in antisemitism, the message landed differently: that Jewish experience, fear, and history were again being treated as insignificant.

Many in the Jewish community feel that the new Mayor’s policy choices demonstrate his apparent unwillingness to acknowledge—let alone assuage—the fear and unease that his candidacy brought, despite his having remained outspoken and committed to the safety and security of the Jewish community of New York, the largest Jewish community in the world outside of Israel. Leadership, especially in moments of fracture, requires more than ideological consistency; it requires empathy. Instead of reassurance, many Jews have experienced his actions as confirmation of their deepest concerns.

That sense has only been reinforced by Mayor Mamdani’s repeated insistence on foregrounding his anti-Zionism, even when doing so appears unconnected to the policy question at hand. The call to reassess the long-standing academic partnership between Cornell University and the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology—a collaboration rooted in scientific research, innovation, and education rather than politics—felt to many like a symbolic escalation rather than a substantive reform. Why target a partnership devoted to medicine, engineering, and climate research, if not to make a broader ideological statement? Why threaten this partnership, centered at the Cornell Tech campus on Roosevelt Island, which is reported to generate significant revenue for NYC through tech innovation, job creation, and successful startups, contributing hundreds of millions in economic impact annually (e.g., $768M in FY2024) and projected to reach $1.5 billion by 2030, fostering a vibrant tech ecosystem and attracting global talent to the city? Especially for a politician who seeks additional funds to reduce costs and increase affordability?

This is the moment when the Torah’s warning sharpens. When a leader repeatedly chooses gestures that alienate a particular community—when they underline opposition rather than build trust—it raises unavoidable questions. Is anti-Zionism here a means to justice, or has it become an end in itself? And if so, what happens to the Jews who understand Zionism not as supremacy or silencing, but as peoplehood, memory, and responsibility? According to recent surveys, eighty percent of American Jews feel that the Jewish State of Israel is important to their identity as Jews. Mayor Mamdani seems to ignore the importance to our community of the first Jewish State in two thousand years. And that ought to concern us all.

To ask these questions is not to deny Mayor Mamdani’s commitment to equity or civil rights – nor should we see him as a modern-day Pharaoh attempting to enslave or oppress the Jewish people. It is to ask whether leadership that claims to stand against exclusion can afford to disregard how its actions are received by a minority with a long and painful history of being told that its fears are exaggerated, inconvenient, or politically expendable. Pharaoh, after all, did not announce himself as a villain. He framed his policies as prudent, necessary, and even protective. The damage came not from his rhetoric alone, but from his refusal to recognize the humanity and history of those standing before him.

Judaism insists that memory is a moral obligation. Leaders are judged not only by what they oppose, but by whom they choose to see. To govern while consistently signaling disregard for Jewish concern—especially in a moment of global antisemitic resurgence—is to risk becoming, however unintentionally, a new king who did not know Yoseph.

And that is precisely the leadership failure Parashat Shmot warns us against.

Here, nuance matters.

The Reform Movement has articulated a principled position that resists false binaries. We support the IHRA definition as an essential educational and analytical tool—one that helps institutions recognize contemporary antisemitism, including when it disguises itself as anti-Zionism. At the same time, we oppose codifying IHRA into law, precisely because legal enforcement risks chilling speech, flattening complexity, and undermining democratic norms. This is not hedging. It is a deeply Jewish approach—holding tension rather than collapsing it. One could make a strong case that IHRA was never intended by its framers and early adopters to be codified as law, but rather as a guideline and tool for evaluation.

But rejecting codification is not the same as rejecting memory. When IHRA itself is dismissed, rather than debated thoughtfully, when antisemitism is minimized as a distraction from “real” justice work, when Jews are told, implicitly or explicitly, that their vulnerability must wait its turn—that is when we hear echoes of Pharaoh’s logic. A politics that prides itself on moral clarity can still choose not to know Yoseph.

This danger is not limited to the political left.

In Israel, many of us have been engaged in a sustained campaign to resist and push back against the tyranny of Itamar Ben Gvir. That effort is not a side issue; it is a moral imperative. Ben Gvir’s embrace of Jewish supremacism, his incitement against Arab citizens, and his willingness to weaponize state violence corrode Israel’s democratic foundations and desecrate Judaism itself. Opposing him is not anti-Israel—it is an act of Zionist responsibility, rooted in the belief that Jewish power must be accountable to Jewish values, which is what led Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara to say in a High Court of Justice filing that Netanyahu must be ordered to explain why he hasn’t fired Ben Gvir, accusing the far-right minister of systematically abusing his powers.

The same is true of recent pieces of legislation proposed by MK Avi Maoz, which seek to abolish the recognition of Reform and Conservative conversions for the Population Registry and to abolish the Grandchild clause of the Law of Return. They are both scheduled for discussion soon by the Governmental Committee for Legislation. These initiatives aim to erase entire populations—LGBTQ Israelis, non-Orthodox Jews, and others—from full belonging. Passing such a law would create an unprecedented rift between Israel and the Jewish world and would undermine the very idea of Israel as the home of all Jews. It represents another form of deliberate unknowing: the refusal to recognize the pluralistic, evolving Jewish people who actually inhabit the State of Israel.

Seen together, these moments— in New York and Jerusalem—reveal the Torah’s enduring insight. The greatest threat to justice is not disagreement; it is erasure. Not argument, but amnesia.

Shmot teaches that oppression begins long before forced labor. It begins when leaders detach present policy from historical responsibility. When they decide that certain stories no longer matter. When memory becomes optional.

The Reform Movement’s stance—supporting IHRA without codifying it, fighting antisemitism without surrendering democracy, opposing Minister Ben Gvir and MK Maoz while remaining fiercely committed to Israel—models a different kind of leadership than Pharaoh’s. It insists that memory is not a weapon, but a compass. That Jewish safety and democratic integrity rise or fall together. That liberation cannot be built on selective recognition.

Judaism commands us: Zakhor. Remember. Remember Yoseph. Remember what happens when leaders choose not to. And remember that the work of justice—ours and others’—begins not by erasing hard truths, but by facing them honestly.

That is the warning of Parashat Shmot. And it is the test of leadership in every generation.

Friday December 26, 2025 – ו׳ טֵבֵת תשפ”ו

It was an odd and quietly moving scene inside the Knesset this week. In a building more accustomed to arguments, protests, and procedural tension, two Reform rabbis—one of them also a cantor—sat and ended a Knesset committee session by pulling out a guitar and singing Debbie Friedman’s Lechi Lach (later followed by an egalitarian minyan in the halls of the Knesset!). The song, itself a modern midrash on God’s call to Abraham and Sarah, filled the committee room with words of courage and forward motion: “Lechi lach, to a Land that I will show you.” For a moment, the noise of politics receded, replaced by melody, memory, and hope.

This unlikely moment took place during a meeting of the Knesset’s Committee on Diaspora Affairs, Aliyah, and Klitah (Immigration and Absorption), led by MK Rabbi Gilad Kariv, marking the 90th anniversary of the ordination of Rabbi Regina Jonas, the first woman rabbi in Jewish history, and examining the role of women in Jewish and halakhic leadership today. The hearing brought together women leaders from across Jewish denominational lines—a rare and powerful sight in a political space so often defined by division. The presence of Reform, Conservative, Orthodox, and pluralistic voices in the same room was itself a statement: that Jewish leadership is strongest when it is broad, inclusive, and rooted in shared responsibility. That such a moment could occur—song instead of shouting, reflection instead of rhetoric—felt almost countercultural. And yet, it was deeply Jewish.

The Torah teaches us that transformation often begins not with power, but with approach. In this week’s Parashat VaYigash, the Torah opens with just such a moment: “VaYigash elav Yehuda”—“Then Yehuda stepped forward.” Yehuda approaches the Egyptian ruler, unaware that he is Yosef, his long-lost brother, and risks everything. This is not the Yehuda we first met, the brother who proposed selling Yosef into slavery (ostensibly as a milder option to killing him). This is a changed leader—one who takes responsibility, who offers himself in place of Binyamin, who understands that leadership means standing in the breach for others. His speech is the emotional turning point of the Joseph story, the act that makes reconciliation possible and sets the stage for the survival of the family—and eventually, the people.

Jewish tradition understands heroism not as domination, but as moral courage: the willingness to step forward when it would be easier to step back.

Between Yehuda’s act and our own moment stands another, often overlooked figure of quiet leadership: Serach bat Asher. According to the midrash, Serach lived an extraordinarily long life, spanning generations from before the descent into Egypt through the Exodus itself. It was Serach who gently told Jacob that Yosef was still alive, using song to avoid shocking him. It was Serach who later identified the authentic redeemer by recognizing the language of redemption passed down through generations.

Serach did not lead with force or title, but with memory, continuity, and moral clarity. She bridged eras—between freedom and slavery, despair and redemption—and preserved hope when history itself seemed to fracture. In many ways, she is a precursor to later forms of female Jewish leadership: leaders who sustained the people not by commanding power, but by carrying tradition forward and ensuring it could still speak to a new moment.

That legacy echoes powerfully in the story of Rabbi Regina Jonas. Ordained in 1935 in Berlin after rigorous halakhic study, Jonas argued—correctly—that there was no Jewish legal basis to exclude women from the rabbinate. Her leadership emerged in a time of growing darkness; she would later perish in the Holocaust. Yet her ordination planted a seed that would take decades to flower fully. Remembering her today is not only an act of historical justice—it is a declaration about the future we are still trying to build.

That this commemoration took place in the Knesset matters. It comes at a moment when many Jews in Israel and the Diaspora feel deep unease about the direction of Israeli public life. A pronounced rightward shift is evident not only in rhetoric but also in governance, with figures such as MK Tzvi Sukkot chairing the Education Committee. Prior to becoming an MK, Sukkot was a prominent radical settler activist who was arrested at least three times for his actions during demonstrations outside the home of the head of the IDF’s Central Command. He was arrested in 2010 by the police due to Shin Bet suspicions that he was involved in the arson of a mosque in the northern West Bank, close to where he lived in the Yitzhar settlement.

In addition to MK Sukkot, MK Limor Son Har Melech is pending confirmation to chair the Health Committee. Medical experts have raised serious concerns over her support for Israel’s withdrawal from the World Health Organization, as she has given platforms to fringe figures spreading baseless conspiracy theories. Prof. Hagai Levine, chair of the Israeli Association of Public Health Physicians, sees Israel facing an unprecedented rabies and measles outbreak, alongside worsening mental health problems, increased suicidality, and rising chronic illness following the Gaza war, and that Son Har-Melech’s conservative-messianic worldview is likely to shape the committee’s agenda. “We are concerned she may push restrictions on abortion,” he said.

This unease is not unique to Israel. In the United States, recent comments by Vice President J.D. Vance about American Christianity have reflected a broader global trend: the instrumentalization of religion in the service of political power rather than moral responsibility. Across democracies, faith traditions are being tested—will they narrow into tools of exclusion, or rise as sources of conscience, compassion, and courage?

These roles shape not just policy, but values—what and how we teach, for whom we care, and whose voices are legitimized.

Against that backdrop, a committee hearing affirming women’s leadership, Diaspora pluralism, and the legacy of a Reform woman rabbi is not incidental. It is an act of resistance and of hope. Like Yehuda’s approach, it says: We will not retreat from responsibility. Like Serach bat Asher, it insists on continuity across generations, even when the present feels unstable.

Heroism in Jewish life rarely announces itself with fanfare. It appears in the willingness to step forward, to sing in unlikely places, to widen the circle of leadership rather than constrict it. It seems in remembering those—women and men—who carried our people through rupture and renewal alike.

In a time of anxiety and polarization, the lessons of VaYigash, of Serach bat Asher, and of Regina Jonas converge into a single call: Lechi lach. Go forward. Carry memory. Take responsibility. Build a future expansive enough to hold all who belong to it.  Join us as we push forward by organizing Israeli expats to fly and vote in Israel’s next elections, forge new partnerships with our Israeli Movement, reimagine Israel education, and continue to organize and mobilize our Movement in support of Reform Zionist values.

Shabbat Shalom.

Friday, December 19, 2025 –  כ״ט כִּסְלֵו תשפ”ו

Yesterday in Sydney, the Jewish and broader Australian community gathered for an emotional funeral for 10-year-old Matilda, the youngest victim of the Bondi Beach Hanukkah massacre. Friends and family remembered her as a bright, joyful child — a “ray of sunshine” whose sudden loss was nothing short of a nightmare for those who knew her. Mourners clutched flowers and bumblebee symbols reflecting her nickname “Matilda Bee,” and her grieving father implored the world, “Just remember — remember her name.” Hundreds gathered to honor her life alongside other victims, including an 87-year-old Holocaust survivor, Alexander Kleytman, who died shielding his wife.

In Jewish tradition, memory and mourning carry deep spiritual weight. The verse נֵר יְהֹוָה נִשְׁמַת אָדָם — “The soul of a human is the candle of God” (Proverbs 20:27) evokes the idea that each human life is a divine light, entrusted to illuminate the world. When a child like Matilda is murdered in the midst of celebrating Hanukkah — a festival of lights — that image becomes especially poignant: not only has a young life been extinguished, but a small flame of joy and potential has been violently snuffed out. This verse poignantly captures the sorrow and sacred remembrance that now surround Matilda’s memory.

The Bondi Beach shooting was a targeted act of antisemitic terror during a Hanukkah event, leaving deep wounds in Australia’s Jewish communities and beyond. Yet amid the grief, stories such as Ahmed el-Ahmed’s heroic intervention — rushing a shooter and disarming him despite being shot himself — have become powerful symbols of courage and shared humanity. His actions likely saved countless lives and have inspired widespread admiration and support.

At the same time, the way that heroism has at times come to overshadow the specific nature of the attack reflects broader tensions in public discourse about antisemitism. Some commentators have emphasized el-Ahmed’s bravery without equally centering the fact that the victims were targeted for being Jewish and killed while observing their festival, illustrating how narratives of solidarity can sometimes divert attention from the central injustice suffered by the Jewish community.

This dynamic finds a haunting parallel in Israel. A recent investigative broadcast on Uvda revealed hours of footage collected by Hamas of six Israeli hostages held in Hamas captivity in Gaza tunnels — Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Eden Yerushalmi, Ori Danino, Alex Lobanov, Carmel Gat, and Almog Sarusi, known by some as the “beautiful six.” On camera, they were filmed performing extraordinary acts of resilience, such as lighting Hanukkah candles together under duress. These intimate moments transformed abstract headlines into human lives with hopes, rituals, and dignity, forcing viewers to confront the tragic reality that all six were later murdered. The footage captures a powerful and heartbreaking moment, when immediately after they lit candles on a makeshift paper-cup Hanukkiyah, they began to sing Maoz Tzur. Ori Danino, who grew up in a traditional home, carried on by singing the first of six verses. A few others, puzzled, asked, “Wait, there are more verses to that song?!?!” He explained, in so many words, that the song recounts Jewish history through cycles of oppression and miraculous redemption, celebrating God as the ultimate “Rock of Ages.” To which then Eden Yerushalmi chimed in, saying, “Maybe now we need to add another verse…” whose context was lost on no one.

It is unthinkable that today we may need another verse as Jews lit candles in tunnels as captives just minutes and hours from their homes, and were eventually murdered. It is unthinkable that Jews were murdered on Bondi Beach in daylight as they gathered to light candles, following the Talmudic dictum of פִּרְסוּמֵי נִיסָּא, “publicizing the miracle”.

We, of course, don’t need or want an additional verse.  We need action, protection, and a global refusal to accept this hatred of our people as a norm. And yet, the struggle does not end with moral clarity alone; it continues in how leaders name violence, assign responsibility, and shape the public narrative that follows.

The political responses have further highlighted how narratives are shaped and contested. In Australia, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese initially faced criticism for what some saw as hesitancy in framing the attack as an unequivocal antisemitic incident. Under increasing pressure, he later acknowledged the need to do more to address antisemitism, and he announced a comprehensive action plan to strengthen protections, counter hate speech, and confront violent ideology. But one cannot ignore the shockingly low level of security surrounding the event. What is more, the buildup of anti-Jewish and anti-Israel sentiment can neither be overlooked nor seen as disconnected. Over the past two years, we seen protesters yell “Death to the IDF,” “Globalize the Intifada,” and in some reports, “Gas the Jews.”  In January 2025, two synagogues in Sydney were targeted and spray-painted with red swastikas and graffiti that glorified Hitler and the Nazis. “F*** the Jews” was the message sprayed across a child care center that was set on fire near an Orthodox shul. (Here is a complete timeline of antisemitic attacks in Australia.) Those who were paying attention were, of course, shocked but not necessarily surprised.

Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s remarks attempting to link the Bondi attack to Australia’s earlier recognition of a Palestinian state drew sharp rebukes for conflating unrelated foreign policy decisions with a domestic act of antisemitic terror. Such rhetoric risks instrumentalizing Jewish suffering for geopolitical ends rather than centering attention on the antisemitic violence itself.

Beyond praise for el-Ahmed, some progressive commentators and organizations largely refrained from confronting the antisemitic core of the attack, focusing instead on narratives of heroism and intercommunal unity. This critique argues that emphasizing moral hope at the expense of naming antisemitism for what it is may unintentionally mute the specific harms inflicted on Jewish life.

For American Jews today, these events carry urgent implications. Antisemitism in the United States has surged in recent years, manifesting as harassment, vandalism, and threats against Jewish institutions and individuals. The Bondi tragedy — and Matilda’s funeral — highlight that Jewish vulnerability is not limited to distant contexts: children, elders, and everyday community members can be violently targeted anywhere. The attempt to universalize or soften the narrative through heroism or political framing can diminish the recognition of Jewish suffering as a discrete issue requiring specific acknowledgement and response.

Likewise, the Uvda footage of the hostages serves as a stark reminder of the human cost of prolonged conflict and the deep wounds it inflicts on families and communities. For American Jews — who often straddle concerns about domestic antisemitism and emotional investments in Israel — there is a need to affirm Jewish life and memory both at home and abroad without dilution.

In both Sydney and Gaza, the image of a light extinguished — a “ner,” a candle snuffed out — resonates strongly with Jewish memory and mourning. The challenge for Jews in America and around the world is to hold that light with clarity: to honor the souls taken, to confront hatred where it appears, and to insist that Jewish lives and memories are acknowledged with precision, empathy, and spiritual seriousness, not merely woven into broader narratives that risk obscuring their particular pain. In doing so, communities keep alive not only the memory of Matilda and the six hostages, but the enduring truth that each soul — each candle — matters profoundly in the world.

Hag Urim Sameah, Shabbat Shalom, and Hodesh Tov!