Jacob’s Dilemma: Fear, Power, and the Soul of Judaism After October 7th
By Rabbi Efrat Rotem
On Tuesday, March 17, 2026, Rabbi Efrat Rotem, Executive Director of MaRaM (The Israeli Reform Rabbinical Council), addressed the convention of the Central Conference of American Rabbis. Her address touched on the question of how Judaism changed after October 7th. The views expressed here are hers.
First, I would like to thank the CCAR, especially Rabbi Hara Person, and Rabbi Betsy Torop, for inviting me to take part in this interesting conversation. Thank you also to Prof. Marc “Mosh” Dolinger, for his eye-opening ideas.
I was invited to give a Jewish Israeli angle to this big, multifaceted question: how did Judaism change after October 7th. This is my point of view.
I was talking to a friend of mine a week ago about the war and how he sees it. In his reply, he said:
“I used to think like you, but after October 7th, I changed my mind. I still agree with you, the Palestinians deserve a country, they have a right for self-determination, but instead of building Singapore in Gaza, they decided to build a death city, full of tunnels. They did it because they want to kill us. Iran wants to kill us. Otherwise, why would they build an atomic bomb, why fund terror all over the world, why fund Hezbollah, and Hezbollah also just wants to kill us… You need to change your paradigm.”
As the conversation grew longer, I found myself feeling heavier and heavier, trying on this point of view that is coming at me from my friend, but also from most of the media outlets in Israel, on social media, and in the decisions of this current government. I also felt the story of my family and the mainstream narrative of the state of Israel in it. There is no other place, and there are no other legitimate ways of living as Jews other than here, because everybody is trying to kill us.
So I responded, “What kind of future do we imagine if this is your point of view? A future of extreme despair. A future of more and more wars, violence, and fighting getting to the enemy, which is everyone, before they get to you?”
I heard in what my friend said a deterministic paradigm. And it sent me to the many Jewish interpretations of a single verse from Jacob and Esau’s meeting.
Genesis says the following:
וַיִּירָ֧א יַעֲקֹ֛ב מְאֹ֖ד וַיֵּ֣צֶר ל֑וֹ וַיַּ֜חַץ אֶת־הָעָ֣ם אֲשֶׁר־אִתּ֗וֹ וְאֶת־הַצֹּ֧אן וְאֶת־הַבָּקָ֛ר וְהַגְּמַלִּ֖ים לִשְׁנֵ֥י מַחֲנֽוֹת׃
“Jacob was greatly frightened; in his anxiety, he divided the people with him, and the flocks and herds and camels, into two camps” (Genesis 32:8)
We all heard how Jacob is feeling, I don’t need to repeat it. Rashi takes Bereshit Raba and Midrash Tanchuma, and interprets the beginning of the verse like this:
ויירא…ויצר HE FEARED GREATLY AND WAS DISTRESSED — He was afraid lest he be killed, and he was distressed that he might have to kill other people (Genesis Rabbah 76:2).
Reading this interpretation had a calming effect on me because it aligns with my values. Killing here is seen as a burden, something Jacob wishes to avoid. But later commentators of Rashi, like אליהו בן אברהם מזרחי, who wrote in the 15th century, and שבתי בס, who wrote שפתי חכמים in Amsterdam in the 17th century, took the sentence “he was distressed that he might have to kill other people” and flat out contradicted it. Mizrahi wrote: “but he wasn’t distressed by killing other people because “שהבא להורגך השכם להורגו” which means, “If someone comes to kill you, rise early to kill them first”. He is relying on a discussion in the Babylonian Talmud Sanhedrin about a thief entering a house at night.
These commentators refer to a principle that is repeated each time Jews debate Jacob and Esau and is first cited in Sifre Bamidbar: “R. Shimon b. Yochai says: It is a known halacha that Esau hates Jacob.” בידוע שעשיו שונא ליעקב.
These commentaries represent exactly what I’m living through right now. In Jewish tradition you can always find what you are looking for. I am looking for Tanchuma and Rashi to reiterate the heartache of hurting others. One can live by the Jewish motto of הבא להורגך השכם להורגו – rise early to kill first. And I know that because my country turned this deterministic principle into an all-encompassing work plan. And if everyone wants to kill us, we have no choice. Elisha Yered, a prominent extreme and violent settler, was interviewed about this idea in a podcast lately. He said, and I quote – “People say, ‘There is an enemy here who is waiting for the day he can murder me, … and I will do everything I can to eliminate him, to harm him.” And he continues, “There is clear self-defense, and there is self-defense that you know, the best defense is an attack.” Elisha Yared’s motto which can be seen all over Israel, especially within a majority of Jewish-Israeli youth, is conquer, banish, settle. לכבוש, לגרש, להתיישב.
So הבא להורגך השכם להורגו is not just a theoretical Talmudic debate, and Jacob’s heart, as imagined by the sages, is real just as much. We need to choose. After the horrors of October 7th, the mainstream in Israel chose to let what was considered to be in the periphery to become legitimate, to take center stage, and the most extreme government Israel has ever had completed the picture with its policies.
When I try to make sense of the place in which I live, it helps me to frame what’s happening as an autocratic democracy. I know how to understand everything unfolding around me, because I made a point of learning about the spread of fascism and autocratic regimes.
I hold in very high regard this jewel I happened to be born into – Jewish tradition. In Israel right now, it is about being chosen, and therefore, always in the right. Being a Jew is about being as powerful as possible, attacking first, solving problems with force, within Israeli society, and outside of it. Of course, part of it is a reaction to unexpected horror and violence, but much of it was there before.
My understanding of Judaism is different, and the ethics of the minority is what drew me in in the first place. I draw much strength from the beauty of Jewish texts, and from the deep compassion they are written with. The rawness of feeling in the bible, acknowledgment of fear and anxiety in Jacob’s mind and heart, and the relationality in which the sages imagine Jacob in his world, facing terrifying decisions.
Throughout history, Judaism fueled people who needed to resist, who needed a stable ground in times of trouble. As I see it now, this kind of Judaism needs to give us the strength to say no to an interpretation of Jewish supremacy, to a superficial, self-indulgent culture of dichotomies.
My smart friend is right and wrong at the same time. I am right and wrong at the same time. I can see his fears, his resolve, his vulnerability, his tenacity from up close, and I can remind myself – there’s also love there.
I pray that out of this love, this shelter of closeness that love creates in us, the vast spaces it opens, we will be reminded that love, solidarity, compassion, care for others, are the reasons we came into this world. May the people in this region be safe, well, and live a life of shalom. שנביא את השלום עלינו. אמן.