The List

It’s hard to keep them all straight in my head. It’s a gruesome list.

Terrorist attacks.
Suicide bombings.
Military operations and wars.

It’s a list that I imagine every Jew keeps somewhere in their consciousness.

Some of the dates and events happened long before we were born, but we still recall them each year on Tisha b’Av or Yom HaShoah.

Expulsions.
Inquisitions.
Pogroms.
Shoah.

There’s also the personal list, the ones we witnessed firsthand or read about as they unfolded over the course of our own lifetimes.

I don’t remember the Yom Kippur War but I was alive then and my first visit to Israel was just a few years away. I moved there to live and study in 1992 and had the opportunity to add what was at the time a hopeful memory to the list: The beginning of the Oslo accords. I remember watching the infamous handshake on the White House lawn on television, imagining a very different future than the one we are experiencing right now.

I visited Israel in the bloody month of March 2002, during the second intifada. I recall sitting outside with friends in the courtyard of the Inbal hotel when we heard an explosion. We would later learn that the Cafe Moment, a place I had visited many times when I was a graduate student, had just been blown up by a suicide bomber.

I was there leading a congregational trip just a few days before war in Lebanon broke out in 2006. Immediately after, I composed a song with my friend, Rabbi Ken Chasen, about our shared responsibility, the way all Jews are connected, our obligation to worry about, support and care for each other.

When we made Aliyah in 2009, we lived through occasional terrorist attacks and military operations. I remember one day taking my middle daughter, Ariela, for a bike ride just a mile or so from our home in Jerusalem. We stopped at a little restaurant for a cold drink and a snack. There was a television inside that was tuned to breaking news about a bus stop that had just been blown up by a terrorist. She saw the images and asked what had happened. I said a person filled with hatred tried to hurt other people, but that she shouldn’t worry because it was far, far away. I had momentarily forgotten that my eight-year-old was fluent in Hebrew. She saw the scroll at the bottom of the screen and said, “But it says it happened in Yerushalayim — that’s not very far away.”

I was there in the summer of 2014 when three teenage boys were kidnapped and murdered by Hamas terrorists, which led to a seven-week war in Gaza.

And I remember precisely where I was five years ago when I heard about the attack on the Tree of Life synagogue, October 27, 2018. Today we recall the 11 souls who were murdered for the simple fact that they were Jews, gathered together in prayer in their synagogue, a place that is supposed to be a sanctuary of peace.

I’m sure we all know exactly where we were when we first became aware of the horror on October 7, 2023. In the subsequent days, we learned more and more of the painful details of the barbarism and inhumanity of the terrorists. And since then we’ve seen both the compassion and, more painfully, the apathy and even condemnation of the world in our moment of greatest need.

It hurts my soul to acknowledge that the above is but a partial list of the violence that has been perpetrated against the Jewish people just in my own lifetime. 

It hurts my soul to acknowledge that the above is but a partial list of the violence that has been perpetrated against the Jewish People just in my own lifetime. I didn’t mention Buenos Aires in 1994 or Jersey City and Poway in 2019.

And now we are witnessing — certainly not for the first time but, arguably, most insidiously and pervasively—is the utter hatred for Israel and, yes, for Jews, on display on so many college campuses here in America.

But lest we sink into despair, we must remember that, despite it all, Am Yisrael Chai: the Jewish people — miraculously and perhaps improbably — lives, endures, and even thrives.

If there is a silver lining in a moment like this it is the deep appreciation I feel right now for the gift of being part of a people, a family — Am Yisrael. Here’s just two artifacts of that miracle.

On my way to Israel where I’ll be, God willing, by the time you read this, a friend reached out and asked if I could bring some materials for reservists who lacked basic supplies (how that’s even possible is important to explore, but for another time). I said that of course I’d help — happy to bring as much as the airline would permit. Within a few hours I was on a text chain with Yonatan, a fellow Jew who had sprung into action to help source backpacks, knee pads, whatever was needed. He personally delivered four bags of supplies to me in New York as I was en route to Israel. We met outside my mother-in-law’s apartment building when he came to drop off the bags. Inside each bag was a note in Hebrew to the customs officials in Israel explaining what the supplies are for, along with a stack of beautiful cards written by Jewish day school students here in New York.

And then on Wednesday, I received a text from my niece, Emma, who has been studying in Israel for the last few months. A friend of hers asked if she knew anyone coming soon who could bring materials for her future brother-in-law and his friends who had just been called up for reserve duty. She put me in touch with her friend’s cousin, Naomi, who explained the situation. Naomi’s brother was supposed to get married just a few days after October 7th. The wedding was, of course, postponed. Her brother was called up to the reserves. Same story — basic gear is in short supply. She and her friends sprang into action and have already managed to send 190 tactical vests, 124 sets of ceramic plates (for the body armor) and 112 Kevlar helmets to Israel.

It hurts my soul to picture the headlamps, knee pads, hydration back-packs, and — yes — bulletproof vests that I’m bringing to Israel on the bodies of my fellow Jews, members of my family, Am Yisrael, as they embark upon the most dangerous and frightening mission one could imagine: Infiltrating that spider web of tunnels built by the terrorists for the sole purpose of abducting, torturing, and murdering our people. These strangers who aren’t really strangers — they’re my mishpacha, after all — will risk their lives to save those who were abducted, including, God willing, Hersh, the son of my friends Jon and Rachel. They will risk their lives to ensure that all those who perpetrated this evil, all those who planned it, executed it, and supported it, are brought to justice.

May they be spared injury or harm. May they be successful in their mission. May those who are in captivity come home safely and speedily. May our students on college campuses here in America know compassion, support, and love instead of apathy, indifference, and hatred. And may we, in the days, months and years to come, find many more reasons for hope, many more episodes that we will look back upon decades from now and say: “I remember precisely where I was when I heard that peace had finally been achieved in the Middle East! I remember the exact moment when the world declared in one voice that Jewish lives matter just as much as everybody else’s.”

Rabbi Yoshi Zweiback is the Senior Rabbi of Stephen Wise Temple in Los Angeles, California.