What a strange juxtaposition. What a challenging reality! Erev Shavuot and I, along with family, were in synagogue to celebrate the holiday and granddaughter’s Confirmation. As the service ended, we became aware of the horror that had just taken place in Boulder. So here was the picture, on the one hand a group of Jewish teens celebrating their youth and affirming their commitment to Judaism while a few thousand miles away, Jews from another generation were being burned and attacked. This is Jewish life in the United States in 2025. From the streets of Boulder to the streets of Washington, DC on the one hand, to the reverential ambiance of a synagogue sanctuary. Both are true. What can we do? Which world will these Confirmands inherit?
This is not a piece to assign blame. Everyone who reads this knows what is going on. It is now Ok to express hate for “the other” in this country. The deaths of innocent people in every corner of the world are, sadly, an accepted fact. Yes, it has been going on since the dawn of time, we just get to see it live and in living color every night that, night after night, allows us to become immune to its reality. Too many find a solution in quick answers unaware of historical contexts. I have no “answer”, just more and more questions. Where are the states people, the calm voices of reason who will sit and work for the greater good? Where have they gone? They have been replaced, in every situation, with people whose goal is power and control, who see the world in transactional terms, whose political goals transcend morality. This is true from this country to Israel to Europe, Africa and more. In the meantime, people suffer, people die, and for what? Power? Influence? Control? All these people forget a simple fact, they, we, are all going to die and the power and control dies with them.
Are there really significant human differences between these 16-year-olds who stood on a bima erev Shavuot and their counterparts across the world? Do we really need to teach them, by our actions, to hate? Maybe it is time for a real human revolution, an uprising of generations who could open the windows of the world and shout out, as Howard Beale did in Network, that we are fed up with the hypocrisy and we’re not going to take it anymore. Yes, I know this may sound foolish, but look around now at what is going on and ask yourself if this is the world we wish to leave behind to the children of the world. We have allowed religion to be corrupted, government to be sold to the highest bidder and civility and respect to be subsumed under political slogans or social media manipulation. There is a lyric from a Sondheim song which I think says that “children are listening”. Well, they are and in listening they are learning. What are we, by out actions, or non-actions, teaching?
Shalom
Rabbi Richard F Address
Rabbi Richard F. Address, D.Min, is the Founder and Director of www.jewishsacredaging.com. Rabbi Address served for over three decades on staff of the Union for Reform Judaism; first as a Regional Director and then, beginning in 1997, as Founder and Director of the URJ’s Department of Jewish Family Concerns and served as a specialist and consultant for the North American Reform Movement in the areas of family related programming. Rabbi Address was ordained from Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in 1972 and began his rabbinic career in Los Angeles congregations. He also served as a part time rabbi for Beth Hillel in Carmel, NJ while regional director and, after his URJ tenure, served as senior rabbi of Congregation M’kor Shalom in Cherry Hill, NJ from 2011-2014.
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