There is an old saying. We must remember that we have two truths in our pockets. In the one pocket a note reads: “The world was created for me,” in the other pocket there is a note that reads, “I am but dust and ashes.” (Rabbi Simcha Bunim of Parshischo, Poland, (1765–1827))
Both are true. At the same time.
There is much written about what is truth these days and the role of the media. We’ll save that for another time. Maybe not.
A picture is worth a thousand words, we are told. This week has been an impossible week of pictures.
50 Jewish campers returning from Spain on a plane to France, kicked off the plane for making a disturbance and their leader handcuffed and beaten. Their “crime?” Singing Hebrew songs and being “Zionists.” I have been that counselor leading kids singing songs like that, on buses, on trains, and yes, planes.
Starving children in Gaza. It is unconscionable. The photos are horrific. And they may not tell the whole story. I am not even sure that sitting in Elgin can discern the whole story. The whole truth.
This I know. Our sacred texts give us rules, laws, commandments to handle this moment.
Our sacred texts tell us how to siege a city. Deuteronomy 20 gives us the rules of war and tells us we cannot cut down fruit trees.
Jeremiah tells us
Thus said GOD:
A cry is heard in Ramah—
Wailing, bitter weeping—
Rachel weeping for her children.
She refuses to be comforted
For her children, who are gone.
Jeremiah 31:15
The text that we will read next Saturday night for Tisha B’av to mourn the destruction of the Temple and the expulsion of the Jews, from the land of Israel, and later from Spain, from England, from Warsaw, from the Book of Lamentations, Eicha says,
From Chapter 4: “They let their babies die of hunger and thirst; children are begging for food that no one will give them. People who once ate the finest foods die starving in the streets; those raised in luxury are pawing through garbage for food.”
As Rabbi Elyse Wechterman said on her birthday yesterday, “Today, children are being starved, intentionally, in Gaza. Intentional starvation is a form of genocide. (her word, not mine) It must be called out. I’m calling it what it is.”
I join her in that wailing, like Rachel, and in her name I gave a donation to JewsforFoodAid ForPeopleInGaza. I also donated to Hadassah, JUF, and Standing Together. I also signed a letter as a rabbi, written by Rabbi Art Green of Hebrew College, None of this feels like enough, but what can I do from here except support my friends and family on the front lines.
But do we know who is doing the intentional starving? You will read that it is Israel. Don’t believe everything you read. That’s where the two truths come in. For sure, there is a role that Israel is playing. And you will read that it is Hamas.
Rabbi Asher Lopatin in the Times of Israel wrote: “Hamas does not want anyone but them to distribute food to hungry Gazans, and they are tragically thrilled to show starvation to help their negotiations. However, bravely, some organizations like World Central Kitchen and The GHF, under the leadership of Rev Johnnie Moore, are distributing food that is already within Gaza’s borders. Please demand that the UN meet with the GHF and help distribute aid – through any organization- to the innocent Gazan civilians who need this food.” That too makes good sense.
Peter Himmelman wrote a longer piece, Difficult Answers, Easy Targets: Gaza’s Humanitarian Crisis, citing amongst others Bret Stephens of the New York Times, which may be the best piece I have read on this crisis. (https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/24/opinion/israel-genocide-bret-stephens.html ) Make no mistake, it is a crisis.
Yet the back and forth reminds me of the book I just finished, Beyond Dispute. Daniel Taub, an Israeli diplomat and negotiator, goes back to the Talmud to teach us that arguing isn’t bad and that there are certain skills that are helpful, including active listening, curiosity and humor,
And still, while we argue who is causing the hunger, the bottom line is that children are dying. That is wrong. Full stop. In Gaza. In Israel. In Sudan. In Ukraine. And here in the United States. Did you know that every night 25% of America’s children go to bed hungry? That is unconscionable too.
I never trust the numbers coming out of the Gazan Ministry of Health or UNRWA who absolutely can be documented to have helped Hamas with the unconscionable attacks of October 7th. Nonetheless, MSN is reporting some interesting statistics that “One in every five children in Gaza suffers from malnutrition.”
The words that resonate with me are those of Sarah Tuttle-Singer, also too long to quote fully here:
I am a mother in Israel.
I am not a mother in Gaza.
I know the kind of mother I am here:
A fierce one.
A mother who demands the best for her children, who pushes them to explore, to question, to carve new paths in an ancient land.
A mother who lies awake at night, haunted, eyes tracing the cracks on the ceiling, listening for sirens, wondering how to make the world soft enough for her children to grow up inside it. (the full poem will be at the end)
Wendy McFadden, the head of publications at the Church of the Brethren, in her collection of stories, points out something in the Hebrew. “The words ‘Bread,’ ‘fight,’ and ‘war’ have the same root in Hebrew. The vowel sounds change and one has a prefix and a suffix, but you can hear the same three consonants in each of these words. Bread: lechem, Fight: lachem. War: Milchama.” (Notes to the Church by Wendy McFadden, page 134)
Too many wars have been fought over bread. The sad trend continues.
How does any of this relate to this week’s Torah portion.
This week we have a double portion, Matot-Masei, so there is a lot of material this week.
At the very end of the portion, the end of the Book of Numbers, we say, Chazak chazak v’nitchazak. Be Strong, Be Strong and We will be strong.” Last night we talked about what it means to be strong. There are three Hebrew words, chazak, oz and koach. We need strength in these times. And we need strength together. We draw strength from being in community. It is what gets us through the hard times. Strength and community.
Our portion talks about strength. When we were to enter the land, G-d told us to dispossess all the people there. “You shall destroy all their figured objects; you shall destroy all their molten images, and you shall demolish all their cult places.”
It seems that the Reubenites and the Gadites owned cattle in very great numbers. Noting that the lands of Jazer and Gilead were a region suitable for cattle, with lots of grazing land, they wanted to stay on the other side of the Jordan. Moses replied to the Gadites and the Reubenites, “Are your brothers to go to war while you stay here? They promise to be shock-troops, the advance guard. Then they stepped up to him and said, “We will build here sheepfolds for our flocks and towns for our children. And we will hasten as shock-troops in the van of the Israelites until we have established them in their home, while our children stay in the fortified towns because of the inhabitants of the land.
That seemed to be acceptable to Moses.
They would be the vanguard and they would protect their children. Isn’t that what we all want? To protect our children? I remember the early kibbutzim that had children’s houses so that no one could infiltrate and murder the children.
Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if I had made aliyah. There certainly was enough pressure on me to do so as a young college student. Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if I had married that Israeli soldier and had split our time between Boston and Chaifa to educate Jewish children as was the plan. Would we have built fortified cities for our children. Would we have had children go off to war? To serve in the IDF Currently Simon’s grandnephew is serving in the IDF. He is 19. Will he survive? 895 have not. For the most part they are children too.
What is our role here in the Diaspora, as we watch events unfold in Israel. Do we have a role when the government votes that the haredi don’t have to serve? What if the minister of heritage says, “Thursday that Israel is advancing the destruction of Gaza, and that the Strip will be made totally Jewish, drawing outcry among opposition politicians and eventually from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu himself.” https://www.timesofisrael.com/far-right-minister-says-israel-pushing-to-wipe-out-gaza-will-make-it-jewish/
We can give money, as I did. Carefully and targeted. And we can speak out when we can discern the truth and Israel defies Jewish values.
I saw a meme this week from a colleague, Tehilah Eisenstadt, “Hamas. Get Out. Everyone, let the food in. Everywhere. Let the hostages go. All of them. Now.” That would be my prayer this Shabbat.
Sarah Tuttle-Singer’s full poem:
I am a mother in Israel.
I am not a mother in Gaza.
I know the kind of mother I am here:
A fierce one.
A mother who demands the best for her children, who pushes them to explore, to question, to carve new paths in an ancient land.
A mother who lies awake at night, haunted, eyes tracing the cracks on the ceiling, listening for sirens, wondering how to make the world soft enough for her children to grow up inside it. I know the kind of woman I am here, too:
The kind who suffers no fools.
The kind who speaks her mind.
Who dances barefoot at midnight.
Who laughs loud and loves hard.
Who walks through Jerusalem with fire in her eyes and salt on her skin.
It is easy for me to say, “I would never put my child on the front line.”
And yet, I am.
Every Israeli parent is, by raising our sons and daughters with the knowledge that when they turn 18 – only 18, barely more than children themselves – they will put on a uniform, lace up their boots, and carry a weapon.
It isn’t a choice.
It’s the weather here.
Eighteen.
Still young enough to text me for help with laundry.
Still young enough to cry in frustration when love doesn’t work out.
Still young enough to call me “ima” with a baby voice when they want something.
But old enough to guard a checkpoint.
Old enough to fight.
Old enough to die.
And yet, they will always be my babies.
It is easy for me to say I would never support Hamas.
And yes – I wouldn’t.
But I’ve also never been hungry.
I’ve also never stood in line for flour that never came.
I’ve also never watched the ceiling of my home buckle from the force of an airstrike.
I’ve also never had to choose between silence and survival in a regime that devours dissent.
I don’t know what kind of mother I would be if I were born behind a blockade, if I had electricity only four hours a day. If I had to warm soup over a candle while the sea-wind howled through cinderblock walls.
I don’t know what kind of woman I would be if I watched my leaders drag so-called collaborators through the streets, bodies mangled and leaking blood like red ink on a scorching road, while my child watched from the window and asked, “Why, Mama?”
I don’t know what I would do if my daughter – my wild, laughing daughter – lost a leg, an arm, half her face, to a retaliatory missile meant for the men who fire rockets from schoolyards.
I don’t know if I would have room in my heart to grieve the Israeli child killed on the other side of the border.
Or if my heart would be too swollen with rage.
I don’t know if I’d plant flowers in tires or throw Molotov cocktails over the fence.
I don’t know.
God help me, I don’t know.
But I do know that I am the kind of mother who would throw her body over her children—
I have.
Even now, with teenagers taller than I am, I will still shield them with my body, my bones, my skin.
Because I know the wild stink of fear.
I know the way it floods the throat.
And I know that I don’t run.
I fight.
I come from a line of Jewish women who did whatever it took- who lit fires, who smuggled guns, who clawed freedom into being with their bare hands.
And I know I would have stood beside them.
Now, in this moment -this war – I carry their fire.
I see the videos.
The children burned.
The women defiled.
The hostages still somewhere underground – our children.
I see the silence, the excuses, the masked celebrations of our grief.
And I feel the rage rise like floodwater.
Like an earthquake beneath my ribs.
And yes, I want to fight.
Because it feels like a fight for our very existence.
Because too many in the world seem to believe that fewer Jews would have been the better outcome.
But.
And.
Also.
Also – I know that in Gaza, there are mothers holding the lifeless bodies of their babies.
Babies who were alive on October 6th.
Who giggled.
Who learned new words.
Who took shaky steps and had favorite toys.
I know there are children starving now, their bellies bloated, their lips cracked, their mothers digging through rubble for grains of rice.
I won’t look away.
I know that somewhere a baby is crying over a mother who will never wake up – her body grey, her milk gone, her arms too still. Her skin putrefying into soup while flies swarm in the heat.
I know that famine is a slow death and shameful one.
And I know shame.
We are all made of the same flesh.
All of us.
Dust and blood and breath.
We forget this at our peril.
So while I pray for our soldiers – these precious, beloved sons and daughters and brothers and sisters and partners of my friends and neighbors –
And while I pray for the safe return of every last hostage –
And while I beg God to protect my own children from the call to battle –
I also pray for the mothers in Gaza.
For the ones who still live.
For the ones who don’t.
For the children caught between terror and siege, between monsters below ground and bombs above.
I grieve all of it.
And I rage at all of it.
And I refuse to flatten any of it.
Because to be human is to hold contradiction.
To love your own fiercely, and to weep for the other.
To fight when you must, and to see clearly even through your tears.
I am a mother in Israel.
And I am trying – desperately – to stay whole.
To keep my heart from cracking entirely open.
To believe that somehow, from this horror, something better might still grow.
That maybe one day, our children’s children will not need to be brave.
They will just get to be children.