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Friends, 

We’re about to enter the holiest days of the Jewish year – and they are
never easy. 

It’s the time we as a people are called to the work of repentance:
Confession. Regret. Change.

As a child in synagogue, the language of “judgment” and being “sealed in
the Book of Life” filled me with awe. As an adult, I’ve come to recognize
the unique opportunity these days provide for introspection. 

To measure ourselves against our values. Confess where we have strayed. To
turn back toward what is just and right. 

Confronting hard questions isn’t supposed to be easy. How have I failed?
How has my community failed? Where have we hardened our hearts? Where have
we looked away?

We engage with the burden of our sins and – metaphorically – we cast them
away as breadcrumbs onto moving water in a New Year’s afternoon ritual.

This year, none of us can step into synagogue without carrying the
unbearable weight of Gaza. The horror, bloodshed and suffering – from the
hostages still captive to the two million people living, starving and
dying amid the rubble.

Rabbis across the country are wrestling with what to say. Some hear the
plea not to “bring politics” into sacred space. Others feel the unshakable
moral demand to speak out against the horrors unfolding before us. 

This is a test: For rabbis, leaders and all of us. 

Do we choose safety, convenience or approval – or do we speak the truth as
we understand it, even at personal cost? Will we water down our message to
avoid offense, or will we summon the moral clarity this moment demands?

I have said for many months: Silence in the face of this level of human
suffering and ethical transgression is not neutrality – it is complicity.

Jewish voices across the spectrum are calling us to honesty and courage. 

Former Jewish Theological Seminary Chancellor Ismar Schorsch has asked:
“Where is the religious voice today, so that long after today we can still
proudly be Jews?”

This summer, 80 Orthodox rabbis reminded us that Israel’s future depends
not only on military strength but on “justice, righteousness, and peace
for all people – even and especially in the hardest of times.”

In his recent book Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza: A
Reckoning, Peter Beinart warns that unchecked ethnonationalism will
corrode the very soul of Judaism.

The liturgy of the days ahead itself gives us no escape. 

In the Vidui – the communal confession – we name sins both ours and not
ours, personal and collective, individual and systemic. We strike our
hearts for transgressions we may not have committed, but on whose account
we still bear responsibility. 

We cannot say: This is not my doing, I am innocent.

We reflect, we confess, we ask forgiveness – not to wallow in guilt, but
to take responsibility and begin again. That’s the essence of the High
Holy Days. 

We ask: Could I have done more? Should I have done more? That, too, is
part of our reckoning in the days ahead.

This is not about despair. It is about honesty. It is about remembering
that to save one life is to save an entire world, and to destroy one life
is to destroy a world. 

And today, when worlds are being destroyed daily, the question for each of
us is urgent: What is within my power to save, to change, to repair?

My hope is that our leaders – in pulpits, boardrooms, congressional
offices and communal institutions – will reckon with their responsibility,
and call us all to do the same. 

May we not only confess, but commit to the prophetic call at the heart of
Judaism: To pursue justice, protect life and honor the image of God in
every human being.

Shanah tovah to all who celebrate, 

Jeremy Ben-Ami
President, J Street

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J Street is the political home for pro-Israel, pro-peace, pro-democracy
Americans who want Israel to be secure, democratic and the national home of the
Jewish people. Working in American politics and the Jewish community, we
advocate policies that advance shared US and Israeli interests as well as Jewish
and democratic values, leading to a two-state solution to the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict.



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