Known as “The Days of Awe,” Judaism’s High Holy Days — which begin on Wednesday — annually provide an emotional mix of celebration, introspection and atonement for Jews around the world.
This year, for many, the emotions will be extraordinarily powerful, given that the midpoint of the 10 days spanning Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur is Oct. 7 — the one-year anniversary of the Hamas attack that killed 1,200 Israelis and triggered the still-ongoing war in Gaza.
For Jews in the U.S. — the world’s second-largest Jewish community after Israel — the past 12 months have been challenging in many ways linked to Oct. 7. There’s been a surge in antisemitic incidents, and many college campuses were wracked by divisive pro-Palestinian protests. Jews grieved for Israelis killed or taken hostage by Hamas; many also are grieving for the tens of thousands of Palestinians subsequently killed during Israeli’s military offensive in Gaza.
“It’s been a very difficult time, the most difficult time for a Jew in America that I’ve been alive,” said Gayle Pomerantz, senior rabbi at Miami Beach’s Temple Beth Sholom. “I’m hoping that the holidays will help to contextualize our suffering and not let it overtake us.”
Another Miami Beach rabbi, Eliot Pearlson of Temple Menorah, took note of the civilian losses on all sides.
“It’s painful to us because we know how much it hurts when we lose a child, when we lose a mother. And just because it’s on the other side doesn’t mean it’s less painful to us,” he said.
Rabbi Rick Jacobs, president of the Union for Reform Judaism, said the confluence of the Holy Days and the Oct. 7 anniversary created “an impossible moment” for rabbis ministering to their congregations.
He noted that liturgy for Rosh Hashana – the Jewish New Year – includes posing the question, “Who will live and who will die (in the coming year)?”
“That’s going to resonate in a different way this year, for certain,” Jacobs said, evoking Oct. 7 as “a day of unbelievable grief in a war that is not only not ending, but maybe expanding.”
Reasons for hope — and apprehension — amid High Holy Days
Pomerantz and Jacobs each said they had seen signs of a resurgence of Jewish pride and solidarity. In Miami Beach, Pomerantz said, there have been higher enrollments in her synagogue’s religious school and “intro to Judaism” classes, as well as in attendance at worship services.
“This is a moment where we need one another. We need community,” said Jacobs, whose organization represents more than 800 Reform synagogues in North America.
At the same time, there is pervasive anxiety about a rise in antisemitic incidents over the past year.
Major Jewish groups have been tracking this trend, which was confirmed last week in the FBI’s 2023 Hate Crime Report.
It found that the Jewish community was the most-targeted religious group, with 1,832 anti-Jewish incidents accounting for 67% of all religiously motivated hate crimes recorded by the FBI. That was up from up 1,124 incidents the prior year. The incidents include vandalism, harassment, assault, and false bomb threats.
One consequence: A mood of vigilance. Ahead of the High Holy Days, for example, there have been online training sessions offered by the Secure Community Network, which describes itself as the official safety and security organization of Jewish communities in North America.
Topics have included how to stop severe bleeding and how to respond to an “active threat” alert.
CSS, another Jewish security organization, has offered classes in Krav Maga, a self-defense system developed for the Israeli military that uses techniques derived from boxing, judo, karate and other disciplines.
The CEO and executive director of the Anti-Defamation League, Jonathan Greenblatt, provided a stark overview of the security situation in a recent interview with The Associated Press.
“I travel around the country all the time,” he said. “Any synagogue, any Jewish community center, any Jewish home for the elderly has armed guards in it — people with firearms, in uniforms.”
“That is not normal,” he said. “You cannot find other elderly homes or YMCAs with armed guards.”
‘The Days of Awe’: a time for soul-searching and existential questions
“In these 10 days, between Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, it’s going to be a lot of soul-searching in the Jewish community about where we are and where are we going,” Greenblatt said. “If we’re not safe on the campuses where we learn, in the places where we work, in the synagogues where we pray, where are we actually safe?”
Noah Farkas, CEO of the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles, agreed that this is a difficult time, appropriate for asking existential questions.
“We are checking in with our higher selves to try to be better, asking, ‘What do we do with our lives?’”
“The thing to do is to choose and to act,” he said. “To choose righteous things to do … to be caring about others.”
Rabbi Moshe Hauer, executive vice president of the Orthodox Union, counseled anxious Jews to take a long view.
“If we’re going to look at this narrow frame of what happened on Oct. 7 and subsequently, we can become very discouraged,” he said. “We have the ability to step back and see it in the context of a long history … being misunderstood, being attacked, being hated, and then finding a way to be part of having justice prevail.”
On Rosh Hashana, Hauer said, Jews “pray for a better world, where the presence of God and goodness will be clear and where evil will wither.”
“It seems right now we’re actually as far away from that as we can be,” he added. “So there isn’t a better time … Our prayers are most powerful when they come from very deep feelings.”
Among the planned events: a service for anti-Zionists
In many Jewish communities across the U.S., special services are planned in conjunction with the Oct. 7 anniversary.
One distinctive example is in New York City, where Jews who oppose Zionism and support pro-Palestinian causes will convene for an evening service as Rosh Hashana begins on Wednesday.
Leading the service will be Rabbi Andy Kahn, executive director of the American Council for Judaism – an 82-year-old organization focused on Judaism as a religion as opposed to a nationality.
“I’ve felt a big part of my calling is creating spaces for people who want a Jewish life, but don’t identify with Zionism,” said Kahn. “I know a lot of people – Jews, non-Jews, Palestinians — who want Palestinian liberation and who are not antisemitic.”
In Florida, Pomerantz’s Temple Beth Sholom will host a commemoration service for the Miami metro area in conjunction with other synagogues and institutions on Oct. 7.
Among the participants will be Rabbi Pearlson of Temple Menorah, a Conservative synagogue in Miami Beach, where he has lived since the 1960s.
For the High Holy Days, his message will be of unity and perseverance despite the “tremendous trauma,” highlighting that Jewish people repeatedly have endured and risen stronger from attacks throughout history.
“We thought we lived in a new modern world where … we were hoping that things had changed,” he told the AP. “In reality, the players might have changed, but the game hasn’t. And unfortunately, their motivation is to destroy the Jewish consciousness, the Jewish people, and heritage and culture.”
At Temple Beth Sholom, Pomerantz plans do something new for Yom Kippur — the Day of Atonement. In the morning service, all six clergy at the temple will give short reflections about Israel, instead of one rabbi delivering a single message.
Pomerantz plans to focus on “a framework of hope.”
“It’s easy now to not feel hope. It’s easy to feel despair, discouraged, frustrated, betrayed, anguish,” she said. “My message is, we cannot see ourselves as victims. … We have to see ourselves as people who have agency, in some way. And with that comes hope.”
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