Josh Weinberg

Friday April 17, 2026 – ל׳ נִיסָן תשפ”ו

There is a moment that happens every year in Israel just after sundown on Yom HaZikaron, Israeli Memorial Day, when the flag at Har Herzl (Israel’s National Cemetery in Jerusalem) is raised from half-staff to full height. In the span of a few seconds, the country pivots from grief to celebration. Tears give way to rejoicing. Mourning turns into dancing. The transition is abrupt and jarring in its speed.

This year, that moment comes as Yom HaZikaron begins at sundown on the 4^th of Iyar, Monday, April 20, 2026, followed immediately by Yom HaAtzmaut at sundown on the 5^th day of Iyar, Tuesday, April 21st.

For those of us in the Diaspora, the whole experience can feel disorienting and hard to connect with. How do you make that shift? How do you hold a mourner’s candle in one hand and a flag of celebration in the other from so far away?

This year, I’m not sure I can make the turn cleanly. I’m not sure any of us can.

Maybe that’s why it matters that this Shabbat, which comes between Yom HaShoah and Yom HaZikaron, has come to be known as Shabbat Tekumah—a Shabbat of rising, revival, and rebuilding. Not moving on but moving forward. This “revival” represents the dramatic turn from the tragedy of the Holocaust to the realization of the dream of a Jewish State.  Not leaving grief behind but carrying it with us as we stand back up and look forward.

First, We Grieve

יום הזיכרון/Yom HaZikaron asks something simple and devastating: Remember. Say the names. Sit with the cost, generation after generation, of what it has taken for the Jewish people to have a home in the world and our own Jewish sovereign entity.

This year, that grief continues to feel raw and unresolved. We mourn Israeli soldiers and civilians lost over decades of conflict. We mourn the 1,200 murdered on October 7, 2023, and the over 900 soldiers who have fallen since. And we carry, however uneasily, the images of the thousands of Gazan civilians in the rubble and in squalor, even as we struggle with how to hold all of that at once. And Iran, and Lebanon, and, and, and…

The Jewish world itself feels more fractured, more exposed, more uncertain than it has in a long time.

Grief that refuses complexity isn’t really grief. It’s something flatter, more like loyalty performing as mourning.

As Reform Zionists, we’ve never pretended this is simple. Loving Israel has always meant taking its necessity and contradictions seriously. That’s not a bug of the system. That’s what real love looks like.

Then, We Celebrate

יום העצמאות/Yom HaAtzmaut marks 78 years since David Ben-Gurion stood in Tel Aviv and read that aspirational document known as Megilat Haatzmaut, Israel’s Declaration of Independence. That document didn’t only declare a State, it articulated a vision: “Complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants,” and a commitment to the principles of the United Nations Charter.

Those words are aspirational and a measuring stick.

Reform Zionism has always understood Israel not as a finished story, but as an ongoing mission, a promise that still needs to be lived up to.

That’s where Tekumah comes in. Rising doesn’t mean everything is resolved. It means we don’t stay on the ground. It means we take the grief, the questions, the contradictions, and we keep building.

So yes, we celebrate. We celebrate because Jewish sovereignty matters. Because Jewish history has made painfully clear what it means to not have power, not have refuge, not have a place to go. Because Israel exists—and that is not something we take for granted.

We celebrate not because Israel is perfect, but because we are proud of what Israel has achieved and deeply believe in what it can become.

What Reform Zionism Demands of Us Right Now

It would be easier to choose a simpler posture. To wave the flag without hesitation. Or to step away entirely. A lot of people are doing exactly that right now.

I understand the pull.

But Reform Zionism was never meant to be easy. It asks us to hold tension: to insist on Israel’s right to exist and insist on its responsibility to be just. To fight antisemitism and not look away from Palestinian suffering. To feel pride and discomfort, often at the same time.

It asks us to stay in a relationship, to debate and argue, to push and show up, to roll up our sleeves even when wringing our hands would be easier.

That’s the work. And honestly, that’s the only version of being a Reform Zionist that feels serious and right.

This week, I was inspired yet again by people who are taking the Zionist ethos of transforming a pipe dream into practicality. We Jews pride ourselves on how much we want peace and how often we pray for it. You don’t have to be a scholar or even a synagogue regular to recognize how often peace comes in our prayers. Sim Shalom, Shalom Rav, Oseh Shalom, Shalom Aleichem… are uttered morning and night and weekly. We must dispel with the common Hebrew-school misunderstanding that “Shalom” means “hello, goodbye, and peace.” It just means peace. And we use ‘peace’ as a salutation and as a way to bid farewell. It is so entrenched in our lexicon, in our Jewish frame of interaction with one another and the world, and in how we approach the divine (for whom another name is, in fact, Shalom). Yet, it largely feels like a pipedream and unattainable in the current reality. It is not difficult to look around and see all those who hate us. Those protesting to “End Zionism,” and those like the Iranians, Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis, and more, who actively seek our destruction. So, logically, there can’t and won’t be “Shalom” until those forces of hatred and intolerance come around and want it themselves. And there is great merit to that argument. It’s hard to make peace when terrorists steal children out of their beds and mow down revelers at a party. Hard to make peace when a ballistic missile lands in the living room of a family in Haifa. And we have our own work to do as well.

Maoz Inon and Aziz Abu Sarah refuse to give in to that, and like the Zionist pioneers and visionaries before them, say “let’s make the impossible possible.”

In their book The Future is Peace, published this week, they explore how compassion and unity can pull humanity back from the precipice of blind hatred and eventually lead toward peace. Both have lost family to the conflict – Maoz’s parents were burned alive in their home on Netiv Ha’Asarah on October 7, 2023. Aziz’s brother was killed during an interrogation by Israeli police for allegedly throwing rocks. Both have known the bitterness of righteous anger. Yet, they chose a different path. Their story is a rebuttal to a broken world and a bold challenge to the belief that more violence can ever bring security.

This is what tekumah looks like in practice: not a clean emotional pivot, but a decision to keep standing, to keep engaging, to keep caring.

This Yom HaAtzmaut, I’m not aiming for a seamless transition. I’m not interested in pretending everything fits neatly. I’m committing to presence. Complicated, unresolved, but hopeful.

What You Can Do Starting Now:

If liberal and Reform Zionism is going to mean anything, it has to show up in what we do:

• Learn the names. The fallen. The murdered. The living, who are injured, scarred, and traumatized. Don’t let them become abstractions.
• Support Israeli civil society through support for our Reform Movement in Israel. They are doing hard and critical work from within and on the ground.
• Create and show up to spaces that can hold complexity. Not just celebration. Not just despair. Both.
• Push elected officials toward policies that hold security and dignity together.
• Stay in it. Even when it’s exhausting. Even when you’re not sure you’re getting it exactly right.

עַם יִשְׂרָאֵל חַי—the People of Israel live.

That’s not just a slogan. It’s a statement of fact, and a challenge.

Because if Israel exists, if the Jewish people endure, then the question isn’t just what we feel. It’s what we do with that reality.

What we build. What we demand. What we refuse to give up on.

To keep asking those questions, and to stay engaged even when the answers are hard. That’s what love looks like right now.

That’s Shabbat Tekumah: not closure, but courage. Not resolution, but the choice to rise anyway.

Shabbat Shalom, Chodesh Tov, and Chag HaAtzmaut Sameach!

Friday April 10, 2026 – כ״ג נִיסָן תשפ”ו

I first met Lt. Col. David Benjamin when we were both in the army. I was accompanying him to a speaking engagement as a representative of the Army Spokesperson’s Unit. Despite being in uniform, we quickly discovered something deeper that connected us: we were both native English speakers—and both Reform Jews. Fast forward several years, and our shared path continued as we were both ordained through the Israeli Rabbinic Program of Hebrew Union College. Today, Rabbi Benjamin serves as the rabbi of the Reform congregation in Kiryat Ono, building a vibrant and growing kehillah with dedication and vision.

There are moments, however, when leadership is measured not only by what one builds in times of calm, but by how one responds in times of crisis.

This Pesach, Rabbi Benjamin was supposed to be in Durban, South Africa. Each year, he and his wife, Nancy, travel there to lead services and a community Seder for a partner congregation. This long-standing relationship is both spiritually meaningful and financially essential, providing critical support for his congregation back home. During Pesach, his own community leans on volunteers, allowing him to travel, strengthen global Jewish ties, and bring needed income back to Kiryat Ono.

But this year, the war changed everything.

The trip was canceled, and instead of traveling abroad, Rabbi Benjamin remained in Israel—serving his country through ongoing reserve duty, working 12-hour overnight shifts. And yet, even in exhaustion, when an unexpected need arose, he stepped forward once again.

Deep beneath Tel Aviv’s Dizengoff Center, four floors underground in a reinforced shelter, a different kind of community gathered for Pesach. Approximately 130 people—families with young children, elderly residents, individuals unable to reach shelters quickly—have effectively taken up residence there since the war began. Some are sleeping in tents, unsure of when they could safely return to normal life.

They needed more than safety. They needed spirit. They needed a connection. They needed hope. 

After completing a night of reserve duty, Rabbi Benjamin volunteered to lead a community Seder in that underground space. Nancy and two of their children joined him, bringing warmth, song, and the joy of the holiday into a place defined by fear and uncertainty. Together, they transformed that shelter into a sacred space. They reminded everyone present that even in the narrowest of places, we can still tell the story of freedom.

This is the essence of the Israeli Reform Movement. They need our support now!

We show up—not only in synagogues, but wherever our people are. In shelters. In moments of fear. In spaces where holiness must be created, not assumed.

But alongside this powerful story of leadership is a quieter, more painful reality.

Just days ago, a young man from David’s congregation—a soldier in the Golani Brigade—was seriously injured in Lebanon. The anxiety and heartbreak ripple through the community.

At home, the toll is even more personal. Since the war began—with the relentless sirens and constant movement in and out of safe rooms— the emotional and physical strain is immense.

This is the unseen cost of war. The stories that are not counted. The quiet losses that unfold behind closed doors.

And still—Rabbi Benjamin shows up. Still, he leads and brings light into the deepest darkness.

This is why we turn to you now.

The Israeli Reform Movement is on the front lines of spiritual resilience. Our rabbis and communities are sustaining Israeli society in ways that cannot always be obviously measured—but are nonetheless profoundly felt. They create meaning, offer comfort, and hold people together in moments when everything else feels uncertain. Rabbis are continuing to serve their communities while navigating reserve duty, lost income, and real pressures at home.

But they cannot do it alone.

We are asking for your support to help meet this moment. Emergency funds will allow us to assist congregations that have lost key revenue, provide support to rabbis and families under strain, and ensure that communities like Kiryat Ono can continue to function and serve others.

Our Movement needs over $1.5 million right now, and your contribution will help sustain the people holding their communities together under difficult, unpredictable conditions.

Thank you for being part of that effort.

רִבּוֹנוֹ שֶׁל עוֹלָם, מְקוֹר הַחַיִּים וְהַחֵרוּת,

Sovereign of the Universe, Source of life and liberation,

כְּשֶׁאָנוּ יוֹשְׁבִים סְבִיב שֻׁלְחַן הַסֵּדֶר וּמְסַפְּרִים אֶת סִפּוּר יְצִיאַת מִצְרַיִם, אָנוּ נוֹשְׂאִים בְּלִבֵּנוּ אֶת כָּל מִי שֶׁאֵינָם יוֹשְׁבִים בְּבִטָּחוֹן הַלַּיְלָה.

As we gather at the Seder table and retell the story of the Exodus, we carry in our hearts all who cannot sit in safety tonight.

אָנוּ חוֹשְׁבִים עַל חַיָּלִים וְחַיָּלוֹת בְּיִשְׂרָאֵל, הָעוֹמְדִים עַל הַמִּשְׁמָרתָם. שְׁמוֹר עֲלֵיהֶם בְּגוּפָם וּבְרוּחָם. תֵּן לָהֶם אוֹמֶץ בְּלִי אַכְזָרִיּוּת, כּוֹחַ בְּלִי קַשִּׁיּוּת, וַהֲשִׁיבֵם לְבֵיתָם בְּשָׁלוֹם.

We think of soldiers in Israel, standing in vigilance. Protect them in body and in spirit. Grant them courage without cruelty, strength without hardness, and return them safely home.

אָנוּ זוֹכְרִים אֶת הַיּוֹשְׁבִים בַּמִּקְלָטִים, שֶׁשִּׁירַת הַחֵרוּת שֶׁלָּהֶם נִקְטַעַת בִּצְפִירוֹת. הָקֵל אֶת פַּחְדָּם, שְׁמוֹר עַל בָּתֵּיהֶם, וְהָשֵׁב לָהֶם לֵילוֹת שֶׁל שֶׁקֶט וְכָבוֹד.

We remember those sheltering from danger, whose songs of freedom are interrupted by sirens. Ease their fear, protect their homes, and restore for them nights of quiet and dignity.

וְאָנוּ פּוֹנִים גַּם לְכָל הַיְּהוּדִים וְהַיְּהוּדִיּוֹת בְּכָל מָקוֹם הַנִּיצָּבִים מוּל אַנְטִישֵׁמִיּוּת גּוֹבֶרֶת, נִכּוּר, וְעוֹיְנוּת. חַזֵּק אוֹתָנוּ לַעֲמוֹד בְּכָבוֹד, לְדַבֵּר בְּבֵרוּר מוּסָרִי, וְלִבְנוֹת עוֹלָם שֶׁאֵין בּוֹ פַּחַד מִפְּנֵי שִׂנְאַת חִנָּם.

We turn to Jews everywhere facing rising antisemitism, adversity, and alienation. Strengthen us to stand with dignity, to speak with moral clarity, and to help build a world where no one lives in fear because of who they are.

בַּלַּיְלָה הַזֶּה שֶׁל זִכָּרוֹן, עֲזֹר לָנוּ לֹא רַק לִזְכּוֹר אֶת הַמֵּצָרִים שֶׁמֵּהֶם יָצָאנוּ, אֶלָּא גַּם לְהַרְחִיב אֶת הַדֶּרֶךְ לְפָנֵינוּ — לָנוּ וּלְכָל מְבַקְשֵׁי חֵרוּת.

On this night of memory, help us not only recall the narrow places from which we came, but also widen the path forward—for ourselves and for all who seek freedom.

.יְהִי רָצוֹן שֶׁנִּהְיֶה שְׁלִיחֵי גְּאֻלָּה בִּזְמַנֵּנוּ.

May we be agents of redemption in our own time.

כֵּן יְהִי רָצוֹן.

May this be the will of the Holy One.

Friday March 27, 2026 – ט׳ נִיסָן תשפ”ו

One of the things I love about Jewish holidays is that even though the stories to be told, the liturgy and texts to be read, and the songs to be sung may remain the same, it is we who have changed. We lived through the entire year leading up to this holiday with new experiences that shaped and molded us in different ways.  Upon reflecting on last Pesach, my strong memory of adorning our Seder tables with yellow ribbons and reading passages calling to “Bring Them Home,” it is almost unbelievable that many of those hostages who yearned for release will now sit around their Seder tables with families and friends recounting their own traumatic journey from bondage to freedom.

However, sadly, this year we are not out of harm’s way. Of all the meaningful moments of our Seder, I want to focus on an enigmatic yet extraordinary story in our Haggadah: five rabbis—Rabban Gamliel, Rabbi Eliezer, Rabbi Yehoshua, Rabbi Elazar ben Azariah, and Rabbi Akiva—are gathered in Bnei Brak, telling the story of the Exodus all night until their students came and said, “Our teachers, the time has come to recite the morning Shema.” We often imagine this as a peaceful scene. But historically, it was anything but. These rabbis lived under Roman domination, in the shadow of destruction and repression. Tradition suggests they were in hiding—perhaps even in a cave—recounting a story of liberation while an empire stood ready to crush them. Their Seder was likely not comfortable (despite their “mesubim – reclining”), but it was courageous. They spoke of freedom precisely when their freedom was threatened.

I imagine that, sitting around their table, they were not of one voice on matters of the day. Rabbi Akiva famously saw in Bar Kochba – the military mastermind who led the rebellion against Rome in 132 CE – the possibility of redemption, so much so that Rabbi Akiva identified Bar Kochba as the long-awaited Messiah. But other sages were far more skeptical, warning that the moment was not yet ripe, that the risks of rebellion against Rome were potentially catastrophic. Even as they told the ancient story of liberation from Egypt, they may have held profoundly different views about whether, and how, that liberation should be pursued in their own time. Around that table in Bnei Brak sat both urgency and restraint, messianic hope and cautious realism. It is not hard to hear, in their debate, an echo of our own times: questions about war and survival, about when to act and when to hold back, about the costs of power and the dangers of passivity.

Today, in Israel, that same scene unfolds in a different theater. Families will gather around Seder tables, retelling the ancient story, while sirens pierce the night and the families move to bomb shelters, fearing missiles from Iran and its proxies. They sit, quite literally, under cover. And yet the story is told. The questions are asked. The wine is poured. Like the rabbis in Bnei Brak, they insist on telling a story of redemption in a moment that feels anything but redeemed. The setting has changed, but the spiritual defiance remains the same. And they sit, literally without daylight, not knowing when the sun has risen and when it is time to say the morning Shema.

A Haggadah from Kibbutz Neot Mordechai from the early 1950s captures the magnitude of what is happening in that act of telling:

“You do not have a record of historical recognition more profound than this,” it teaches, “and you do not have a confluence of the individual and the society… larger than this ancient pedagogic imperative.”

The Exodus story is not merely the story we tell, or the accepted narrative of our collective story. It is a formation. It teaches “a loathing for subjugation” and “a love for freedom,” and perhaps most strikingly, it is “so totally directed toward welcoming the future.” Even in its earliest telling, it was not only about what was, but about what could yet be. It is, in the deepest sense, a story told forward.

That is why Pesach insists on two truths at once, and two potentially competing messages that we instill in our children.

“בְּכָל־דּוֹר וָדוֹר חַיָּב אָדָם לִרְאוֹת אֶת־עַצְמוֹ כְּאִלּוּ הוּא יָצָא מִמִּצְרַיִם”

In every generation, we must see ourselves as if we personally went out from Egypt.

And also:

וְהִיא שֶׁעָמְדָה לַאֲבוֹתֵינוּ וְלָנוּ. שֶׁלֹּא אֶחָד בִּלְבָד עָמַד עָלֵינוּ לְכַלּוֹתֵנוּ, אֶלָּא שֶׁבְּכָל דּוֹר וָדוֹר עוֹמְדִים עָלֵינוּ לְכַלוֹתֵנוּ

In every generation, someone rises up to destroy us.

To be a Jew is to live inside that tension, unresolved, and to carry it. To see ourselves as slaves is not only to remember our own past, but to cultivate a moral imagination wide enough to recognize the suffering of all those who remain trapped, oppressed, or dehumanized in our world today. It asks us to feel their vulnerability as if it were our own, and to be moved to action. At the same time, we cannot ignore the reality that hatred persists—that antisemitism is not a relic of history but a present danger, as seen in the violent attacks against Jews in recent weeks in Jackson, MS, Detroit, MI, Toronto, London, and of course throughout Israel. These twin obligations—to empathize outward and to remain vigilant inward—do not cancel each other out. They define the complexity of Jewish existence: a people shaped by oppression, committed to justice, and clear-eyed about the threats that still confront us.

As Michael Walzer writes in his 1986 book, Exodus and Revolution, “Wherever you live, it is probably Egypt.” The condition of constraint, of injustice, of yet-to-be-actualized freedom is never entirely past. But Walzer does not leave us there: “There is a better place… a promised land.” The story could be seen as a diagnosis, but it is essentially a direction. And crucially, “The way to the Land is through the wilderness… There is no way to get from here to there except by joining together and marching.” Redemption is not given. It is made—collectively, imperfectly, and often amid deep disagreement about the path forward.

So, what do we teach our children, sitting at our Seders—whether in comfort or under cover?

We teach them to inherit not only the story, but the argument. To understand that Jewish history is not a straight line, but a conversation, often even a dispute, about how to move from Egypt to freedom. We teach them to reject both despair and illusion: not to believe that the world is already redeemed, but also not to believe that it can never be redeemed. We teach them that Jewish Peoplehood means we struggle together, argue together, and ultimately walk forward together.

We teach them that to remember Egypt is to develop a moral instinct: a hatred of oppression, a sensitivity to vulnerability, and a commitment to building a different kind of society. We teach them that even when we disagree about הדרך—the path—we remain bound to one another and to a shared future.

And perhaps most importantly, we teach them what those rabbis in Bnei Brak already knew—and what those families in shelters already know: that telling the story is itself an act of faith and resistance. To speak of freedom in a moment of fear is to refuse to let fear define us in the future. To retell the Exodus is to insist that history is not closed, that redemption is not finished, and that we are still on the way.

Pesach under cover is not a contradiction. It is the most authentic expression of the holiday that nobody wanted and for which we all pray and work to avoid. It reminds us that the Jewish story has never been told in perfect safety—and never in perfect agreement. And yet it has always been told—with courage, with argument, and with an unyielding commitment to the possibility of freedom ahead.

Shabbat Shalom and Hag Pesach Sameach!