June 7, 2025
Author(s): Rav Hazzan Aliza Berger,
Parashat Nasso
Rib Eye
June 7, 2025 – 11 Sivan 5785
Temple Emanuel, Newton, MA
Last week, I went to the bank. The teller was quite friendly. He looked vaguely Middle Eastern and had an accent I couldn’t quite place. We were chatting about the weather and the start of summer as he looked up my account. And then, he asked as he was typing away, “so, what do you do for work?” I paused, looking at him. Should I tell him what I do? Is that safe? What if he hates me for being Jewish and sabotages my bank account… And then, I thought to myself, “what, are you crazy, Aliza?! There are how many thousands of Israelis literally fighting on the front lives, fighting for their lives and the safety and security of our beloved Eretz Yisrael and you’re going to shy away from simply disclosing your profession?!” I tried to put on a warm smile. “I’m a rabbi,” I said.
“Hmmm…” he said, as he typed away on his computer. Click, click, click. I heard the keyboard, but nothing else. My mind was racing, worrying, wondering what he thought of me. Suddenly he stopped and looked me in the eye. “Wait, that’s a steak!”
I burst out laughing. I could barely form my next sentence. “No,” I choked out, “that’s a rib eye. I’m a rabbi.” He furrowed his brow and handed me a piece of paper. “Write it down,” he said. I did. He took the paper thoughtfully and began typing away at his computer. “Oh,” he said after a while, “a spiritual leader for the Jewish people…”
What a crazy time. To think that I was nervous about sharing my work with a random teller at the bank. And yet, every week we are inundated with stories about people in similarly benign situations that quickly devolve into tragedy.
The attack on the Jewish community in Boulder this week hit me particularly hard. You must know that Boulder is the epicenter of hippie life in Colorado. It’s a crunchy granola college town at the base of the Rocky Mountains. It’s so progressive that you have to work hard to find dairy ice cream. You can get avocado ice cream, soy cream, hemp cream, rice cream, oat cream, but if you want ice cream with cow’s milk you practically have to go to a specialized store or milk your own cow. I grew up visiting the Pearl Street Mall every week. We would go to religious school and then have dinner on the grass right there, where the attack happened, in front of the courthouse. It always felt like the safest place.
How is it that in 2025, Jews are publicly torched in the middle of a hippie college town in broad daylight? How is that an 88-year-old Holocaust survivor finds the strength to go out with their community in solidarity with the hostages for the first time only to end up in the ER with severe burns over their body? How is it that caring members of our community in their 50s and 60s and 70s and 80s are now coping with life-altering injuries simply for the sin of being identifiably Jewish in public? How is this our new normal?
And that’s the most terrifying part. This happened less than two weeks after Sarah and Yaron were brutally murdered in Washington DC. Two bright young adults, just beginning their lives, working on behalf of our beloved Eretz Yisrael, committed to building bridges of peace, snuffed out by hate in the dark of night. And that, only weeks after the arson attack on Governor Josh Shapiro’s home on Passover.
As we feel the weight of generational trauma; as we process the grief and the fear and the anxiety and the pain, how should we respond to these brutal attacks?
Should we be changing what we do? Should we hide our mezuzot, tuck away our Jewish stars and hamsas? Should we change our names and fade away into the seeming safety of assimilation?
Or should we instead double down on what we do? Should we be out in force, wrapped in Israeli flags, showing the haters that their vile acts have no effect on us?
Bari Weiss has this fascinating anecdote in her book, How to Fight Anti-Semitism. She notes that Theodore Herzl was a wealthy, secular, assimilated Austro-Hungarian journalist and lawyer. He was not ostentatiously Jewish, on the contrary, he was someone who had tried to “pass” in exchange for safety. But he witnessed such intense Antisemitism in his own life, not to mention the horrific pogroms and attacks that were ubiquitous at the time, that he became convinced that trying to find safety in hiding was futile. Instead, he devoted his life to building a Jewish future.
He wrote, Der Judenstaat, “The Jewish State,” in which he argued that because Jews will always be persecuted wherever they are, they must build a homeland where they can be safe and where they can be a beacon to the world. He didn’t just theorize; he fought to make that dream a reality. Single-handedly, Herzl assembled 200 Jewish delegates from all over the world for the First Zionist Congress in Basel, Switzerland. Herzl mobilized Jews from all over the world who were weary from the anguish of Antisemitism; Jews who just wanted to build families and get by. Because of him, because of his vision and his determination, we have the State of Israel today.
Bari makes the point that one person can change history. In 1897, that was Theodore Herzl. Today? That could be any one of us. Our challenge is to meet the intensity of this moment with courage, and to trust that even though the world feels precarious and sometimes hopeless, at any moment someone could rise up with a dream and a vision that could change the trajectory of Jewish history.
Which brings me to some beautiful Torah. Rav Soloveitchik points out that every morning, we recite two blessings that are seemingly redundant. Baruch ata Adonai eloheinu Melech haolam hanotein la’ayef koach—blessed are you, sweet loving Lord, who gives strength to the weary—and baruch ata Adonai eloheinu Melech haolam ozer Yisrael bigvurah—blessed are you, sweet loving Lord, who girds Israel with strength. Rav Soloveitchik teaches that these blessings are distinct for a reason. Koach he says is the kind of physical strength that we need to wake up in the morning and to move through the tasks of our day. But gvurah is different. Gvurah is not about physical strength, it is the emotional and psycho-spiritual fortitude that enables us to move forward despite Antisemitism, despite the condemnation around the world, despite normalization of the intifada. Gvurah is the inner strength that helps us to be proudly Jewish no matter how others respond.
So here’s what we know. I’m a rib eye. No, in all seriousness, we know that we are gibbors. We are heroes for the Jewish people. Our ancestors have survived thousands of years, through persecutions beyond what we could ever imagine. Who knows which one of us will have the dream that unites and inspires the next generation. But all of us know that we have the strength not only to keep going, but to do so with the empowerment of our history and our destiny.
I want to leave you with one small story. This year, we have been working with all of our sixth graders to make their own tallitot from scratch. After all of these attacks, after all of the intense Antisemitism and grief of the past several years, I was surprised when one of my students proudly picked out the morning blessing Baruch atah Adonai eloheinu Melech haolam she’asani Israel –blessed are you, sweet loving Lord, sovereign of the universe, who has made me a Jew—for her tallis. I asked her how she chose this prayer. She looked at me like I was asking the stupidest question. She said simply, “because being a Jew is the best.”
Being a Jew is the best. We rise.