Pedaling Through the Pain: Finding Our Resilience in Tel Aviv’s Empty Streets
by Cantor Evan Kent
For the past year, since October 7th, life here in Tel Aviv has been what I have called “abnormally normal.” In the early days of the war, we hunkered down at home, many businesses were shuttered, streets were deserted, and restaurants and cafes pivoted from serving hungry lunch-time Tel Avivians to preparing meals for our soldiers in Gaza.
In spite of the daily sirens demanding I seek shelter from incoming missiles from Gaza, I refused to stay inside. Instead, I got on my bicycle and rode through the near empty streets. Rothschild Boulevard was abandoned; the bike path in HaYarkon Park was mostly deserted; the seaside promenade was practically vacant.
Riding my bicycle was, and is not by itself, a courageous act. But putting on my helmet and pedaling down Tel Aviv’s avenues was a way for me to assert both personal and collective resilience.
Aimless bike riding, without a pre-planned destination, has become a sort of spiritual practice. It is its own version of walking-in-the-woods or roaming through a medieval labyrinth. I leave the bicycle room of my building in the north of Tel Aviv and just ride. More often than not, I really have no destination in mind.
Every bike ride reaffirms that I am alive, I am breathing, and so are millions of Israelis. From the seat of my bicycle, I see that the Israeli spirit cannot be vanquished, that we are a nation constantly being reborn.
We were viciously attacked, many slaughtered, and our hostages are still languishing in the terror warrens in Gaza. The year anniversary of that fateful morning looms on the calendar and I cannot imagine what this October 7, 2024 will be like. Probably, we will mourn by reciting ancient prayers and modern poems attempting to come to terms with the gravity of our situation. We will sing- old melodies and newly written compositions.
And then, I’ll get on my bicycle and ride someplace: to the beach, to a café, to a park and I’ll rejoice in the hum of the city, the resonance of the voices, and the eternal spirit of Israel.
Dancing Through Despair: Embracing Resilience and Renewal
by Rabbi Les Bronstein, White Plains NY
By the time we had to decide whether to go ahead with the Torah dancing on the evening of October 7, 2023, all of us knew what had happened in the Gaza Envelope, more or less. Would a full-throated Simchat Torah celebration be seen and felt as a gross insult, or as an act of defiant affirmation? Or both at once?
My thirty-year-old son clarified the question for me immediately. “Cancel Simchat Torah? That’s just what they want us to do, Dad. You’ve got to go ahead with the hakafot” (referring to the circuits of dance that epitomize the Simchat Torah ritual).
And so we did. A few people criticized me bitterly over that decision, but huge throngs affirmed it by showing up and dancing their hearts out, and of course by bringing their children in order to imprint the hopeful message in their memories.
Throughout the year of unfolding war, we turned to the tools of our great tradition to keep us buoyed in spirit: Chanukah lights, Purim masks, the Pesach seder, the counting of days and weeks, and the standing at Sinai. And along the way, our public marking of the Shoah and Israel’s independence. We didn’t hold back. We merely re-tooled the message to make it speak honestly in this ghastly time.
This is the approach I urge us to take as the new year arrives. We begin Elul with shofars in hand, just as Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai did when he took the precious implements of Jewish spiritual expression and led his disciples away from the seemingly hopeless peril of Jerusalem and toward the hopefulness of Yavneh. Ben Zakkai knew that the correct response to despair was resilience and renewal, and that the living tradition – when embraced creatively and imaginatively – contained all the messaging we would need to keep each other going.
The Jewish people are not lost, neither in Israel or Diaspora, though we are understandably fearful. Our moral and spiritual message can stay intact and lift us up, but only as long as we insist on sounding it like a great shofar to greet the new year with honesty, integrity, and fearless reflection.
Can Introspection Lead to Action?
by Rabbi David Teutsch, Philadelphia, PA
The month of Elul reminds us to both look backward and consider our roles in the future. The Jewish people has lived through its most upsetting and challenging year since the end of World War II. We have witnessed the Hamas violence on October 7, the hostage situation, the destructive actions of the Israeli settler movement, and the rapid growth of antisemitism, with the concomitant fraying of longtime allyship that has come as its own shock.
How have we responded? Some Jews have pulled back from political engagement and from the media, attempting to distract themselves and avoid thinking about this painful situation. Some have swerved to the political far left or far right in the Jewish community, seeking simple answers and blocking out the complexity of our reality. Others have recognized this as a time that demands deeper education and more engagement than ever.
I deeply believe that we can hold onto the complexity of our situation. Some examples: Netanyahu is a corrupt and self-serving leader, but many in Israel are dedicated to peace-making. Israel has a right and obligation to defend itself, and some of its actions in Gaza were insufficiently careful to avoid civilian casualties. Hamas is absolutely wrong in its actions, and part of the cause of its power is Israeli seizing of Palestinian lands, settlement building and refusal to move toward the creation of a Palestinian state. The knee jerk reaction of many American liberals who have jumped on the pro-Hamas bandwagon is offensive, and we can win them over by careful dialogue and education.
The worst thing we can do going forward is nothing. We need to campaign hard for candidates who support our understanding of this complexity. We should seek out opportunities for dialogue with those with whom we disagree—both inside the Jewish community and far beyond it. We need to educate ourselves about important alternative solutions, such as Israel-Palestine confederation. And we need to hold onto the Jewish value of hope. Together, we can make things better.
Grounded in Hope: Finding Peace Amidst the Pain
by Rabbi Amy Eilberg, Los Altos, CA
Throughout this year of deep pain, grief and anxiety, there was a place to which I consistently turned for comfort. When I read an inspiring piece by Israeli organizations like Parents Circle/Families Forum, Combatants for Peace, Standing Together, or the like (all of whom have partnered with J Street in this past year), I felt grounded and reassured. These people were in the region, suffering directly from the daily losses and fears and engaging with one another, against all odds and expectations, across lines of difference. On each of their webinars, Israelis and Palestinian activists, in turn, told their stories and described how they had turned from the predictable and common stance of hate to the remarkable belief in collaboration and reconciliation.
This perspective, as familiar as it was to me (having followed these organizations devotedly for many years), seemed particularly unlikely now, in the wake of the October 7 th attack, and in the midst of the ongoing death and destruction. I sometimes wondered whether, in their place, I would have the strength of character to make the choices they did. But I always knew that what they said and what they believed was profoundly true. Encountering them, even through a screen, grounded me in my own deepest truth, my passion for peace.
Their eloquent words, “There is no military solution to this conflict,” “Neither of our communities is going anywhere, “There are, in fact, partners on the other side,” “The only alternative to never-ending war is collaboration,” continue to be mantras for my aching heart, and the place to which I turn when I need truth.
And I turn to prayer. Every night, my husband and I pray for the negotiators, pray for breakthroughs of sanity for the leaders of all sides, and pray for the countless people whose lives have been destroyed by this terrible war.
As I write this week, the news has been particularly terrible. Nonetheless – or because things look so bleak – I pray for peace, reconciliation, and love to prevail in our most beloved land. May the new year bring this vision of peace to reality.