This Yom Kippur, Hold Everyone Accountable

Last week, we entered the Jewish New Year, and the month of Tishrei. In Jewish tradition, the beginning of Tishrei marks a period of reflection and repentance, with the 10 days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur offering a crucial time for introspection and future resolutions. These 10 days are a time to cleanse ourselves spiritually, which very often means asking forgiveness for the mistakes we made in the past year, and recommit ourselves to better moral standards in the future. This year especially, holding ourselves accountable feels more pressing than ever — not just for Jews, but for the broader global community, especially as we reach one year since Oct. 7, a day when so many of the world’s moral failings were thrown into stark relief.

Something I’ve always appreciated about this Jewish tradition of repentance is that it offers a meaningful opportunity for change. Judaism teaches that during Rosh Hashanah, God opens three celestial accounting books: One to write the names of the righteous, one for the wicked, and one for the people whose fates lie in the balance. That third book is the fullest, and those people have the 10 days until Yom Kippur to atone for their sins and change God’s judgment. In other words, through sincere repentance and seeking forgiveness from those we’ve wronged, God gives us a true opportunity to change our destinies. 

The Jewish community has plenty of our own collective soul-searching to do this year. But this Rosh Hashanah, I can’t help but think about the broader world too. For the past 12 months, we’ve watched as the world subjected Jews to double standards, hypocrisy, bigotry and outright violence. Where is the repentance from the global community? Where are the apologies we are owed for the pain and disrespect we’ve endured at their hands? When is their moment to atone for their sins? 

A year after Oct. 7, the double standards toward Jews and Israel remain glaringly apparent. The world holds Israel to blatantly unrealistic and unattainable expectations, demanding zero civilian casualties in a war that they did not initiate against an inhuman enemy that hides beneath a civilian population they are all too willing to sacrifice as human shields. When hundreds of Israeli civilians were murdered at a music festival or dragged from their beds as prisoners, the world immediately began justifying their deaths before it offered one word of compassion. Instead, any act of violence against Jews or Israelis becomes an excuse for virulent antisemitism, with hateful mobs baying for Jewish blood on Oct. 7, before Israel had made a single move in retaliation. 

This hypocritical, morally sanctimonious Jew-hatred doesn’t only extend to Israel or geopolitics; it extends to the countless insidious ways that antisemitic double standards have crept into American life. Media, elite universities, and high-profile social justice movements practice a zero-tolerance policy for the slightest hint of bigotry against “marginalized groups” — except, of course, for Jews, who no longer qualify as an oppressed group despite being the number-one target for hate crimes in America. Instead, these so-called intellectuals and human rights activists are more than happy to dismiss, justify, and sometimes openly celebrate naked acts of antisemitism.  Just look at the antisemitic Black Lives Matter charter, or the Jew-haters who led the Women’s March, or the college professors who ban microaggressions in their classrooms yet cheered on the “resistance” of Palestine on Oct. 8. Antisemitism has become entrenched as the one acceptable form of bigotry in America and in leading institutions across the globe, and nobody beyond the Jewish community seems interested in repenting for the myriad ways they have allowed this hate to fester.

Instead, Jews are stuck playing catch-up for our silence. For too long, we — myself included — have let these smaller acts of antisemitism pass mostly unchallenged, dismissing them as isolated incidents unworthy of meaningful attention. And now our complacent silence has come back to haunt us, as the Jewish world closes the book on one of the hardest and most painful years in our recent memory. I regret this. I wish I had pushed back harder, raised my voice louder, called out bitter injustice at more times and in more places. This year, I repent for the sin of silence, and I recommit myself to standing with the morals I know to be right, even when it feels especially daunting.

But I call on others beyond the Jewish community to look inward as well. We should not be the only ones constantly examining ourselves and apologizing for our sins. We should not be the only ones facing accountability for our actions and promising to atone. We will continue to do this, because our morals and values leave us with no other choice, but we should not be doing this work in vain. Jews have long been champions of social justice, standing alongside other marginalized groups in their struggles for justice and advancement. Now, we should be treated with respect and reciprocity, not tossed carelessly aside by the same spaces and institutions we helped build brick-by-brick, who are more interested in defending terrorist rapists than standing with the Jewish people. The world’s insistent failure to give us the empathy and support we’ve so often extended to others is a moral disgrace for which it owes us an apology, and a meaningful commitment to change. 

The 10 days of repentance are seen as a divine gift — an opportunity to cleanse ourselves and begin a new year with a renewed and purified heart. Now, it’s also time to share this gift, as the Jews have shared so many of our gifts, by holding a mirror to the world. Let them see the pain they have caused. Let them see the hateful hypocrites they have become. Let them beg our forgiveness and promise to finally purify their own rotten souls. The stakes are too high for the world to keep turning a blind eye to its sins.

The 10 days of repentance are seen as a divine gift — an opportunity to cleanse ourselves and begin a new year with a renewed and purified heart. Now, it’s also time to share this gift, as the Jews have shared so many of our gifts, by holding a mirror to the world. Let them see the pain they have caused.

May we all be inscribed in the Book of Life as we continue reflecting upon this year. Am Israel Chai.

Dr. Sheila Nazarian is a Los Angeles physician whose family escaped to America from Iran. She stars in the Emmy-nominated Netflix series “Skin Decision: Before and After.“