On Saturday, Oct. 7, I lost a friend — a man of peace, a visionary who believed that life between Israelis and Palestinians living in Gaza could be improved.
His name was Ofir Libstein. He lived on Kibbutz K’far Aza, and served as the Mayor of the beautiful, idyllic region of Sha’ar HaNegev, the vibrant community which turned into the epicenter of the massacre that occurred on that tragic day in Israel. Sadly, as I pen this column, I learned one of his sons, Nitzan, was also found dead in his university student housing — another victim of this painful tragedy.
Ofir and Nitzan are two of the thousands who were murdered, kidnapped, or wounded on that Shabbat and festival day. The horror of the attacks carried out has been compounded by Israelis and Jews feeling invisible — the broader community’s lack of acknowledging our pain, our goodness, or even our basic humanity.
I am a congregational rabbi, serving the largest and oldest Jewish community in San Diego, a congregation made up of seekers and critics, learners and doers and spiritual mavens. Our presence and reach go well beyond the confines of our secured and fortified campus.
We are active in our local schools and on college campuses; we work in hospitals and biotech firms; we serve on U.S. military bases, engage in politics and social justice organizations; we are studying and traveling abroad. We are your friends, your coworkers, your neighbors.
Yet, at this moment, many of us find ourselves navigating cascades of emotion: grief, despair, anger and worry, the feeling of abandonment and shame, pain and hatred. And we find ourselves in this turmoil, largely alone while navigating hateful rhetoric and threats coming from within our own extended communities.
During the week after the violence began, I met with our 10th grade students, who shared the in-person and online vitriol they have been subject to daily, leading many to hide any sign of being a Jew. This past week, more antisemitic hate incidents has been evidenced throughout our city. This is what terrorism is meant to do: to terrify us. And to make us and the world feel that maybe, just maybe, we deserve it.
Yet, my moral compass, the one that has led me to fiercely see “the other” as my neighbor and act in service to them time and again, knows this just isn’t true. We don’t deserve it. No one group deserves it.
There is no history, oppression, grievance, or intellectual contortion that can possibly justify Hamas’ acts of horror. Full stop.
Over the past two weeks, I have been asked, time and again, why it seems so hard for some very wonderful people in our lives to acknowledge, or even reach out and notice our personal and communal loss. I have come to understand that blaming the actions of Hamas on Israeli occupation is a way of trying to hold onto a world in which hurt people hurt people.
The impulse to live that reality makes a lot of sense, but blaming victims of unbearable cruelty and barbarism for their own suffering, for the sake of preserving one’s own ideological and moral convenience and comfort, is incredibly dangerous, both in the short and long-term. Opening oneself up to the complexity of the moment, reorienting with a wider lens to understand the difference between justice and depravity, between the oppressed and the butcher, takes moral courage. Unfortunately, that courage seems to be in short supply.
The great Rabbi Hillel from our rabbinic tradition teaches: “In a place where there is no human, strive to be a human.”
In other words, when we are in a place where no one is acting human, we must strive to do better. When others display fear, we must respond with courage. When we experience those who act with callousness, we must be the one to care. When others are complacent, we must respond to their indifference by taking action.
In this place, even as we reckon with unspeakable tragedy and personal as well as communal loss for the people of Israel and Gaza, we will continue to reject barbaric calls for blind vengeance, to call out extremism, in all its forms, and denounce it whenever it is present — for us and the other.
In this place, as we are met with silence from friends and mandates for moral equivalency, we will continue to stress the critical importance that innocent Israeli and Palestinians deserve freedom, safety, self-determination, and peace. We will double down on building bridges of understanding and create more space for courageous conversations.
In this place, as a Jewish community, we will not hide our identity and continue to support the need for Israel to defend itself against a terrorist organization whose charter mandates that Israel be wiped off the face of the earth. We will assemble in our synagogues to be together. We will stand as steadfast supporters of our Israeli family, who feel incredibly alone in the world.
We will not stop calling for the return of the hostages or necessary humanitarian aid to be brought into Gaza now. We will commit to checking in on Israeli friends and family, here and there. And we will not stop taking moments to find joy in a world shrouded in darkness.
In this place, our San Diego community, we can call one another in to illuminate the inherent divinity of our nature; to empathize with those that are suffering — in conflict and in loss. We are being called upon to open our hearts so that we may reinforce the value of our humanity: old and young, strong and vulnerable.
Moral Courage may be in short supply, but together, in seeing the other, I know we can find more.
Jason Nevarez is the senior rabbi and spiritual leader of Congregation Beth Israel, the largest Jewish congregation in San Diego and the oldest in Southern California.
