Words by Willa Umansky PZ ’27, Graphic by Ben Connolly PZ ’26

When I was little, my family would have Shabbat dinner every week — there is something inside of me that craves the Shabbos spirit. At camp, I would keep Shabbat weekly and that satisfied my innate desire for the sabbath, for the warmth of candle light and echoes of Shalom Aleichem. At college, I return to my natural state of Friday night observance, attending Chabad Shabbat dinner weekly. 

One Friday night this summer, after screaming my way down Fifth Avenue in a march demanding the siege on Gaza be lifted, I went to the synagogue that raised me. I wanted to feel held spiritually, I wanted to grieve with my brethren. I prayed alone for Gaza during the silent Amidah.

I feared they would not have listened to me if I expressed my pain — that I would have been the radical college kid who couldn’t read the room. But I wish I had tried. Instead, I grieved silently for the people of Gaza during the Mourner’s Kaddish. 

Days after my disappointing synagogue experience, at a rally for Jews demanding an end to the genocide, Simone Zimmerman, founder of If Not Now, implored supporters to take more risks, interrupt more silences, and demand more of our people. I thought about how I said nothing when the rabbi asked if anyone wanted to share who they were praying for during Kaddish.

These days, I often go to synagogue seeking something that isn’t there. Since the Jewish institutions of my youth insisted they were liberatory, I somehow still expect that catharsis of collective grief when I show up to shul during a genocide being committed by, and supposedly, for our people. I leave services upset and dissatisfied, bereft of the community mourning I’m in search of. I go home and I rant to my dad about how that institution is no longer the place for me, how I should stop trying. 

But after listening to Simone’s words, I changed my mind. 

I cannot forgo attempts to salvage the morality of the shul that raised me. No, that effort doesn’t take precedent over my taking to the streets, demanding an end to the genocide — but it is something that leftist Jews should keep in mind. It troubles me that my affiliation with organizations like Jewish Voices For Peace automatically push me to the fringes of American Jewry, discrediting any point that I could make about what many of my American Jewish peers refer to as “the conflict.” But I cannot allow my congregation to bear silent witness to a genocide taking place in our name and I cannot let the world understand Judaism to be synonymous with that genocide.

It’s comforting to sing Lo Yisa Goy with 1,500 other Jews at a rally demanding the end to the genocide, knowing that the tremor in our voices is born from the pain that we feel for Palestine. It’s comforting to recite the Mourner’s Kaddish with 1,500 other Jews and know we are all mourning those killed in Palestine. But we don’t deserve to be comfortable. 

We cannot allow ourselves to be pushed to the side and written off as radical. We should be in the mainstream spaces where many of us grew up, we should be repeating the numbers of the dead until those communities are forced to feel the magnitude of tragedy. My vision of Judaism revolves around song and warmth and fighting for justice and fighting for peace and welcoming strangers with open arms. My vision for Judaism demands me to ask my family and peers for more.

I was raised to seek liberation for all people. At Hebrew school we were taught about Black and Jewish alliances during the civil rights era and we celebrated when gay marriage was legalized in the United States. As these justice-oriented lessons were instilled in me, I was also being raised to love Israel without question. My American Jewish education taught that supporting Israel was inextricable from my religious identity — but that’s not true.

So I will stand for Gaza during the Mourner’s Kaddish next time I’m at the synagogue where it feels radical to care as deeply as I do. I will stand to honor the tens of thousands killed, for Awdah Hathaleen and Anas Al-Sharif who were murdered in cold blood and for all those slaughtered whose names we will never get to know. I will send the donation link for the Gaza Soup Kitchen to family members whom I doubt would donate without my encouragement. I will grieve openly for Palestine in places that feel risky, like Chabad or other ‘mainstream’ Jewish environments, because it is Judaism that fostered my staunch humanism. And I owe it to Judaism to not have its sanctity be desecrated.

I will force myself into spaces where it feels scary or uncomfortable to stand up for what I believe in, because how am I supposed to demand better of my community from the fringes?