On Hannukah and Jewish Unity
The below is an expert of a speech written for a memorial service held in Kokomo, Indiana for the victims of the attack on the Tree Of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh. Congregation Yeshivat Tzion, a diverse synagogue with an African-American rabbi, hosted the event. Yeshivat Tzion invited the members of a local Reform congregation, and the entire community to their program that was held on November 24.
Greetings from Herut North America:
We must not be silent about the heartrending murder and martyrdom of the Jews at the Tree Of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh. Eleven Jewish lives were tragically cut short by a gunman motivated by hate for the Jewish People. That hate must not go unanswered.
You should be praised that you have made the decision to take time out from your hectic lives and mark the occasion of this attack on our fellow Jews with a memorial observance. We are remembering the fallen now at the end of their shloshim. The shloshim is the traditional Jewish thirty day mourning period. By being here now you are answering hate. You are not being silent. We should remember that Matityahu and his sons chose not to be silent. The Maccabees stood up to hate and they achieved the great things that we remember and celebrate to this day.
Jews from throughout the United States, and beyond it, should draw strength from what is happening in Kokomo today.
Jews from diverse backgrounds joining together in unity and love is a far too rare thing in the American Jewish community now.
Showing love of fellow Jews is one way to combat the haters.
Just as we love our fellow Jews we must hate evil and we must hate those who would seek to do harm to the Jewish People and the Nation of Israel. We must not be silent at this time.
After the recent news about the boycott of Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria by Airbnb, one of the best suggested responses is to boycott the boycotters.
Yes, we must boycott the boycotters. We also must hate evil. We must hate those that would seek to murder fellow Jews. We must hate the Pittsburgh murderer.
From Tanach, in Kohelet, we learn that there is "A time to love, and a time to hate; a time for war, and a time for peace."
Our 11 brothers and sisters in Pittsburgh who were slaughtered in Pittsburgh 2,400 weeks after our 11 brothers and sisters were murdered in the Olympic Village in Munich in September 1972 by hate-filled Palestinian Arab terrorists. 46 years and the Atlantic Ocean separated these two groups of martyrs and nothing else. They were all killed because they were Jews. 22 souls join the Six Million of the Holocaust and so many more.
The late Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. put it so well when he said: “When people criticize Zionists, they mean Jews. You’re talking anti-Semitism.”
Recently it has come to light that the Pittsburgh murderer was also a hater of the State of Israel. We should not be surprised.
A wise rabbi once remarked that by its very nature any hatred of the State of Israel is also hatred of the Jewish People and hatred of Judaism.
We must continue to speak out against the haters of Israel and the haters of the Jewish People. We in Herut have speaking out in our DNA.
The great Zionist leader, Zeev Jabotinsky is the spiritual father of the Herut movement. Jabotinsky proclaimed in “Shir Betar,” his epic Zionist anthem penned in 1932: “For silence is filth.”
We must never be silent.
Yours is a congregation that places a high priority on lifelong Jewish learning and studying classic Jewish texts as well as speaking out. You are following in the steps of the Maccabees, the Zionist rebels of their time who fought the dark forces of the Greek Empire at the time of the Hanukkah miracle.
A Chasidic proverb states: “A little light chases away a lot of darkness.” May the light of your Zionism, your unity, our Hanukkah menorahs, and your Torah do just that.