’Twas the day before Christmas, the rabbi was vexed. His wishes for peace felt trapped in his chest.
While scrolling his socials for goodwill and cheer, the hatred against him, was awfully near.
He said, through his tears, at the silence surrounding, “I can’t make much sense of what used to feel grounding.
“I haven’t abandoned my love for my neighbors, but these last dreadful months, make me feel like we’re strangers. My family’s grief feels in moments forgotten, as if bonds we’ve created were but wisps misbegotten.”
With children on campus, and family in shelters, with cousins held captive, counting babies and elders, the war we are fighting is for our survival, and not, as accused, to cause harm to a rival.
So sisters and brothers, who wish life to be merry, this rabbi implores you to see what is scary:
We aren’t invaders, we tilled the same ground and our children (and theirs) deserve lives, safe and sound.
The teacher whose love held the world in his hands, would have testified that Jews were there walking the land.
So while Ceasefire marches feel like prayers for peace, they aren’t, (nor are chants from the river to sea). They’re calls for my death for my family and friends, they’re claims that sheer violence is fine means toward our end.
The rabbi sat shaking, a pen in his palm, wishing civilians and worshipers nothing but calm.
The glow all around him he only wished brighter. It could help lift the world and make every heart lighter. But one thing he wished for, in the light that was hallowed, was for Jews to be no longer consigned to the shadows.
There’s hope that endures in the darkest of times, through danger, in mangers, when hearts are aligned.
Long ago there wasn’t room for a mother and child, but to say so today our own souls we’d beguile.
We can choose to see God in the eyes of our brothers, but to get to that step we must first take another:
I cannot erase my own self to make peace. We must fight for the right, ‘till hatred’s fire does cease.
When no creature is stirring, not even a mouse, when we Bring Them Home Now to our arms, as we vow.
Then we’ll know to our core that our world can be right. Only then can we wish the world and ourselves a good night.
