Since the start of the Israel-Hamas war, grief and rage have brought thousands of people to the streets to demand a ceasefire. One of the many groups that have mobilized in the U.S. is Rabbis for Ceasefire. One of these rabbis is Miriam Grossman, who led until recently the congregation Kolot Chayeinu in Brooklyn, New York.
Unsettled producer Ilana Levinson recently sat down with Rabbi Miriam to ask her what it means to be a rabbi for ceasefire, especially when so many rabbis and other Jewish leaders are standing in lockstep with the state of Israel. Where in Jewish texts and traditions does she find the call to oppose the war? How does she keep going?
Unsettled is produced by Emily Bell, Max Freedman, and Ilana Levinson. Music in this episode from Blue Dot Sessions and Aly Halpert.
TRANSCRIPT
This past December, Rabbi Miriam Grossman stood in front of a crowd of people gathered in Columbus Circle in Manhattan during Chanukah.
MIRIAM @ COLUMBUS CIRCLE: Together, we mourn the brutal murders of 1,200 Israelis and the kidnapping of 240 hostages. And we grieve the horrifying mass murder of over 17,000 Palestinians in Gaza, which includes, unspeakably, over 7,000 children.
Today, the Palestinian casualties are much higher. At the time of recording, over 28,000 in Gaza have been killed, at least 12,000 of them are children.
MUSIC: “Flaked Paint”
Today is the 130th day of the Israel-Hamas war. 130 days of horrific violence, of devastation and atrocities, broadcast to our social media and television screens. Rage and grief have brought thousands of people to the streets en masse to demand a ceasefire. One of the many groups that’s mobilized in the U.S. around that call is Rabbis for Ceasefire. The group formed in October of 2023 in Today, and today 275 Rabbis have joined in opposition to the war. Miriam Grossman is one rabbi for ceasefire.
MIRIAM @ COLUMBUS CIRCLE: How do we keep going? How do we keep going for Gaza? How do we keep going for mutual safety for all Palestinians and Israelis? How do we keep going for all of us here? How do we keep the flame of our shared humanity alive? We act. We act and we do not wait for hope. We act and our actions draw hope closer back to us. Together…
MUSIC: “Grimmail”
Rabbi Miriam Grossman is no stranger to the team that makes Unsettled. In the fall, she married Max and his wife, Morgan. A few years ago she led a shiva for my dad, zichrono livracha. And I, Max, and our co-producer, Emily have all attended high holiday services at Kolot Chayeinu, where Miriam was the rabbi until recently.
Miriam has ushered us, along with many others, through life cycle moments of all kinds, highs and lows. That's what many people rely on faith leaders for. But not only is this moment one of the more horrifying times, at least that I've seen, but it's also a collective wound that so many are feeling. What does it mean to be a Rabbi for Ceasefire, and what does that mean while so many other Rabbis are standing in lockstep with the state of Israel? Where in Torah does Miriam find the call to participate in Rabbis for Ceasefire?
In December of 2023 I sat down with Miriam to ask her some of those questions:
ILANA: So I've always known you as a rabbi who is involved in, in Palestine liberation work. Can you tell me how you came to it?
MIRIAM: I came to it, um, a little bit of a windy road. I grew up, with a very, I would say right wing, Israel education. I grew up in a Jewish day school. My father was a rabbi. I was very close with my grandmother, who, as a small child had survived a pogrom. And that's how my family wound up here. So I think for me, the seeds of my Jewishness, but also the seeds of a commitment to, to facing oppressive violence and conditions, the conditions that produce and allow it, felt very interwoven with my Jewishness.
And there were a bunch of different moments that were sort of seedling moments to my looking back and facing what I had believed and what I had been taught as a child. One of them was eventually a relationship that I had, um, with a, with a friend from college who's Palestinian. And I just began to see, in some of her stories and experiences of, um, not being safe and not feeling safe, I could see my grandmother and I couldn't see myself. And I think it's a very dangerous game once we start comparing and, and saying this is equal to that and da, da, da, da. So not, not saying it that way, that what my grandmother experienced was like what this friend experienced or vice versa. But I think it was a bridge to beginning to, to looking at the course of history in a way that's total, in a way that doesn't deny my grandmother's experience, and then doesn't deny my friend's experience, as I had really been taught to deny her experience.
ILANA: Up until October 14th, you were the rabbi at Kolot Chayeinu. October 14th was the week after October 7th, the Hamas attacks, um, and that was, that was your last day at Kolot, and you gave a sermon that made me cry. And, uh, I'd love for you to read some of that.
MIRIAM: Today I need to keep my humanity. Today I need to keep going even without hope because hope will come one day. I make a space for hope to come. I'm going to prepare her a beautiful room. I'm going to lure her towards me. I set a table for her arrival through action, through not turning away, through joining with others in mass to make change, by taking care of myself and others, by grieving and witnessing others’ grief. I set a table for hope to come and sit by living with radical compassion. I make her a place at my table, and she will come and sit there with me again one day. Maybe it's just not her time right now.
ILANA: Yeah, I still can't listen to it without tearing up. Oh, thank you for those words. Um, well, before I ask you how those words feel today, um, I want to go back to October 7th and how you experienced it and how the experience of that day led you to those words and to focusing on hope and its elusiveness.
MIRIAM: I mean it's hard to answer. It feels like it was, um, such a blur. Like a lot of Jewish people who have relationships with a broad range of Jewish community, and who also are passionate about Palestinian freedom, um, it meant that that time, that whole week was, it was a different thing to suddenly know people who were in mourning, who were Israelis in mourning, and to also suddenly, um, see people who I knew, if not people I knew closely, but who were, who were making genocidal statements. I, I think, I'm saying that's what I felt maybe somewhat naive about, that I hadn't really grappled with the extent of what would be unleashed and what was already there. And at the same time to begin to understand, uh, what, what was already happening to the people of Gaza, what was already dire and extreme condition of siege, um, that the bombing had already begun in those days, that children were already dying, that people of all ages were being murdered and were, were sort of struggling to survive under rubble already, that all those things were true. And it felt like looking down a well, like it was unclear what the bottom would be, and it was clear that it was just death all the way down.
Holding all of those things at once, um, that's what was sort of the backdrop of that sermon. And I think I focused on hope because I didn't have it. You know, this question of what is gonna be the fire that fuels that engine of sustained strategic collective action because it can't just be a sort of spur of the moment feeling. And I think I felt afraid of what I would do or not do or what others would do or not do without hope. And I just started thinking Jewishly that, it's always meant a lot to me that Jewishly, ritually, you don't have to feel necessarily a certain thing in order to do the ritual that's required of you even in a high stakes emotional moment, and how often that action is the gateway to feeling and then and then it, the sort of machine starts rolling.
MUSIC: “Grimmail”
ILANA: I wonder if you experience this. There's something that's been happening for me since October 7th that makes me uneasy. What I see from people who love Judaism like I love Judaism is that one can interpret it and see it and see it, use it for any world view or agenda and I want it so badly to be something that points us towards shared humanity and justice and love and, and I, I can see it being used for something that I see as totally different than that. Yes. Do you experience that?
MIRIAM: And it is. It is being used for that. It is being used for that. It is fully both of these things at once. You know? It's hard, I think, also to talk about what's happening Jewishly because, step one, stage one, square one, is just we are witnessing an atrocity funded by the United States that the international community, with some exceptions, is largely like allowing to go on. Which is to say that, um, the bigger conversation is about the whole world and the West, and specifically about a sort of bigger right wing, political lobbying project agenda that is bigger than the Jewish right and the Jewish left put all together, you know? Just because sometimes I think Jewishly, um, I don't wanna get trapped in just having like the one conversation in the room I'm in, about us.
That being said, I am a Rabbi, and am obviously interested about what is happening Jewishly and, um, I, I really struggled, um, when Netanyahu made his statements about Amalek, this idea of this sort of like. Biblical, tribal enemy of the Jewish people that attacks from behind and that then, the Jewish people have to annihilate. He was talking about Hamas and his words were slippery and I think the implication was obviously, the people of Gaza and the Palestinian people, period. And that was a terrifying, genocidal implication to make like plainly for the world and I think I just as a rabbi heard it so much more loudly. I felt like my ears were ringing with this horrible use of Torah and I just kept thinking, I don't learn Torah from a corrupt racist supremacist warmonger. That's not where I learn Torah.
But it is happening. I can't say that that's not Torah that's being put on the world stage by someone and that people are agreeing with. Meaning I can't just say um, that's not Judaism. Because that is his use of it right now. Judaism is nothing if not a changing tradition. It is an evolving lifeline and there has always been living tension as ancestors before us have like wrestled through what this tradition, what it would be and become and what would survive. And so for those of us who want to pass forward a Judaism that is life-affirming and that is liberatory, it's just on us to keep doing that. It's just on us to keep reclaiming it.
MUSIC: “Grimmail”
But it's not only people in power, like Netanyahu, who are using the Torah to justify continuing the war. In November, hundreds of people gathered at the National Mall in Washington D.C., where many chanted:
MARCH FOR ISRAEL: No ceasefire, no ceasefire…
No ceasefire.
And in December, over 700 Rabbis signed an open letter opposing a ceasefire. For a lot of Jewish people, the idea that we've had this centuries-long connection to the Holy Land is one that now looks like support for the modern state of Israel. I put that to Miriam.
MIRIAM: I think the very, very, very first thing is, um, we can have a real, and, and hard and important conversation about Torah and about Jewish history and about diaspora and diasporas, and we can have all these conversations. The first conversation before all that is, what are the human rights violations that are happening on the ground? Torah is many things. It is a tree of life that animates my Jewish life, my spiritual life. It is not a modern legal document that we are all looking to for our human rights specificities. To talk about what is in Torah over talking about, clear, stated, observed human rights violations, is a misdirection so that's the first thing I would say to that is, um. Sort of let's look at international law, you know. I think the second thing I would say is: I think to look to Zion and pray is Zion theology. That is, to have your heart animated by a relationship to a spiritual past and by centuries and centuries of people holding that same relationship, that is not the same thing as a modern political ideology. And you can say that that ideology is in relationship to that theology. And yes, of course, to say that Jewish people for centuries and for generations and generations have had a relationship of love and sanctity and looking with awe towards Jerusalem is not the same thing as a state where Jewish people have rights that other people do not have.
ILANA: That one's not in the Torah.
MIRIAM: Yeah. Yes.
ILANA: Yeah. Okay, well so, so, but you, you have been working together with a group of rabbis called Rabbis for Ceasefire, and I would love to hear how that came to be and what that work looks like, and how you're feeling in it.
MIRIAM: Yeah, so Rabbis for Ceasefire is a sort of ad hoc group of rabbis organizing together really across movement denominations. I think one of the things that's really beautiful about it is that it's both rabbis who've been involved in this work for all of their rabbinic lives, their whole rabbinate, and then rabbis who this is the sort of first time they're taking action in this way. And I just think that's really powerful. And I think now is a moment that needs everyone, and that calls for everyone, and how can we organize ourselves in ways that, um, open up the maximum call, really, um, and not sort of hewing ourselves into really tight categories and, and then wonder why we're not in even more mass movement, so I’ve been really inspired by these rabbis, many have been taking action you know long before I was, and many who are taking action now for the very first time.
I think the real core of Rabbis for Ceasefire is two things, politically. First, is that there is no military solution. There's only a political solution. And so ceasefire, to us, as for many people, is a sort of shorthand that means de-escalation. That means intervention by the international community in Israel-Palestine to address these broader conditions – what I, speaking as myself here, not as Rabbis for Ceasefire, but conditions that I would call apartheid, in addition to occupation and siege. But to sort of see that as part of the call of the moment to address the instability and the crisis, period. And that ceasefire also means a full negotiated hostage exchange, prisoner exchange of everyone for everyone.
Really, I think, the call of Rabbis for Ceasefire is, um, number two, also rooted in a Torah of life. We were talking before about, sort of, uses of Torah that are violent. I think our primary, um, core anchoring Torah itself is the idea that pikuach nefesh, this rabbinic obligation to save a life above all else, is the call of the moment. And so the call of the moment is that ceasefire is immediately, urgently necessary, right now, today, every hour, to save as many lives as possible, right now. And that it is also urgently necessary for the future, because every day without a ceasefire pushes us further and further and further into an even more entrenched and impossible future. So pikuach nefesh is for now and for the future. And as part of that sort of call to life is also the idea that every human being is created in God's image, and that what we are witnessing, that is a desecration of God's image. And that October 7th was a desecration of God's image, and then we have seen an unthinkable, an unthinkable number of human beings have been murdered since then. And it's not just that they have been killed, it's that they have been killed in ways also that are desecrations, and that people dying under rubble is not death with dignity. And many of the Israelis who were murdered also did not die with dignity. And it's just all true at once. It's just all true at once. And I think the call of the moment is to say, we will fight for life in the biggest sense, which means we will mourn all of these deaths. We will mourn the Israeli deaths. We will mourn these Palestinian deaths. And beyond that, we will say that this system of occupation, apartheid, and siege is a system that yields death. And that the call to life and that to see it as a Torah of life, a life giving Torah, a tree of life, is to fight for life, is to find a political solution that centers life and centers life with dignity above all.
MUSIC: “Ashrei”
On November 13th, the day before the March for Israel, I watched the first Rabbis for Ceasefire public gathering via livestream. It was for shacharit, the jewish daily morning service – that's morning like, AM, not mourning like, grieving. But at this particular shacharit service, there was a lot of room for that too – in addition to prayers and song and sermons and reading Torah.
MUSIC: “Romemu”
The service was outside, in front of Congress in Washington, DC. Attendees were surrounded by banners made to look like Torah scrolls, with the Hebrew words "B'Tselem Elohim," and in English, "All life is sacred and precious."
ILANA: I remember seeing rabbis outside of Congress. You know, I am a person who's deeply involved in Jewish life, and I have been called directly an antisemite. And so for me, seeing rabbis wrapped in talitot and holding Torah and calling for a humane solution and end to violence. For me, it was just, it was just so powerful to be able to feel like my Judaism is my own.
MIRIAM: Amen. Amen. I mean, and the truth is it's emotional, but it's like it was, um, that's why we did it. You know? And I think, um, I just, we were, we were praying outside and it was a full shacharit service, full Torah reading, full all of it, and I think, um, I just remember looking around at one moment and thinking, you know, it was beyond denominations, beyond even exact political affiliations, even beyond exact political affiliations on this issue. And that, um, I remember looking around and thinking, my God, these are some of the greatest rabbinic minds that I've ever had the privilege to learn with and to pray with, and some of the people who most moved me to tears in their davening, period. And I just kept thinking, I can't believe all these people are alive at the same time. And then thinking that they're all alive at the same time and they're all called to stop this right now.
I have, um, a colleague, Rabbi Salem Pierce, she reminded us that Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel went to DC during the Vietnam War because he said, I can't open my siddur, I can't open my prayer book to pray without seeing napalm bombs on children. When I open the siddur, I see napalm bombs dropped on children. And she said, that's why I've come to DC. Because I can't open my siddur and not see bombs falling on Gaza. And we did pray. We did open our siddurs. But to say, we're gonna open our siddurs and we're gonna not deny what's happening, we're gonna publicly with all our might and all our force, in our davening name what is happening and demand that it stop. And demand that it stop happening in our name and with our tax dollars as American Jews, in addition to as rabbis.
MUSIC: “Grimmail”
I hope that it only continues to all get bigger and bigger, and that there are more and more rabbis, more and more Jewish professionals, more and more Jewish people, in addition to more and more Americans and more and more people all around the world, who can really understand that safety is, um, it's not one people's safety over another, it’s all of our safety together collectively, in every single place that we live. And that's just the truth. And that's just the only lasting enduring safety, is mutual and total safety.
ILANA: Do you have a stated target for, in Rabbis for Ceasefire? Is the target policy makers? Is it other Jews?
MIRIAM: I think the target is all of these things, um, spoken differently. I think for policy makers, it is to say that the Jewish community is not a monolith. That there are not just, um, Jewish people, but rabbis who represent, um, each of us, so many Jewish people and Jewish communities that stand against what's happening. Two, I think there has been this desire to, um, energize and catalyze and speak to American Jews who feel like they don't have rabbis right now, or they don't have a Judaism that speaks to them right now. To say, this can be a source of grounding and inspiration in your life, and that it doesn't have to be, but that it's here. And so, for instance, we've, we've had gatherings, um, shloshim is when you mark 30 days after the death of a loved one, and so we had, a month of daily shloshim gatherings after, uh, 30 days after October 7th, that was sort of a rolling gathering to learn Jewish values about ceasefire that various rabbis led every day. And we're offering pastoral counseling and care for people who feel like they need a rabbi right now. All of this is tending to our collective Jewish present and future. And at the same time, we're just, we're very rooted in action.
MUSIC: “Grimmail”
ILANA: You haven't been a rabbi, you can correct me if I'm wrong, in, in a mainstream, in like a mainstream establishment Jewish world. Um, but I'm wondering if, if you do ever feel some opposition or if you feel, um, if, if it's challenging to be a rabbi.
MIRIAM: Oh, sure. Sure. I think I have tried to build and keep a lot of relationships, frankly, with the mainstream Jewish world. Um, and I'm hanging on. I’m hanging on, I'm hanging in, you know? Um, it doesn't mean I've not heard things that are really painful, or sometimes in bad faith, or sometimes ugly. But the truth is, that's not all I hear. And I do have these relationships that feel like people, um, can hear that I'm coming from love and stay in it with me. I don't think everyone is obligated to try to figure out how to hold those kinds of relationships together, but for me as a rabbi, I do think I have taken on some degree of relational commitment to both love and serve the Jewish people, including people who disagree with me. And so just, I, I think probably there are a lot of Jewish professionals that are struggling with what does it mean to sort of publicly say, I love you, and I care about you, and I disagree with you, and I'm not going to stop, and I'm not going to stop my obligation and commitment to, to lead, to serve, to love, but that that's going to include a call to, for us all to collectively change.
ILANA: What would you say to a young rabbinical student or an early rabbi who would like to say something but maybe they're in an institutional Jewish space or, um, or they're scared for their position in the Jewish community?
MIRIAM: Yeah. Yeah. I would say, first of all, I'm sorry. And I don't know if it'll be okay. I don't know if you will lose something and how much that will cost you, and I'm sorry for that. I would say that the more you do it, the easier it is, because the less you have to think about it. And then when something is lost, there is also community and possibility that surrounds you, to sort of hold you in the wake of that. That doesn't mean it's easy, but I do think that the more of us do it, the safer we all are together. I would say also for rabbinical students you know, now is the time in a different way. There's certain risks you can take, that you can gauge step by step as you go. And I would say to longer-term rabbis, if you were saving relationships, to push on people in hard times – I'll say this one day, I'm going to have these relationships here for one day, I'm going to be in the room to change things from the inside one day, I would say one day is now. One day is right now.
If you've been waiting, then have a little faith, the hardest step and the hardest time is the first, so let’s do it that first time, and then keep going.
MUSIC: “Grimmail”
MIRIAM @ COLUMBUS CIRCLE: I don't always feel hope. I don't feel hope every day. What I feel is love and obligation to my own Jewish child. And love and obligation to the children of my Palestinian friends who live in Abu Dis and Azaria. And from that place, the only choice is to fight for mutual lasting safety and to never, ever give up.
MUSIC: “Ashrei”
Starting tomorrow, February 14th, Rabbis for Ceasefire, together with other faith leaders, activists, and artists, will embark on a week-long ‘Pilgrimage for Peace.’ They’ll march from Independence Hall in Philadelphia to the White House to urge President Biden to call for an end to the war.
The music you’re hearing now is from the musician Aly Halpert. You also heard this Ashrei tune that Aly composed in the clip from Rabbis for Ceasefire Shacharit service. In the next episode of Unsettled, we’ll talk to Aly, and premiere her new song that speaks to the present violence in Israel-Palestine.
Unsettled is produced by Max Freedman, Emily Bell, and me, Ilana Levinson, with support from Asaf Calderon. Additional music from Blue Dot Sessions. For more from Unsettled, follow us on Instagram at unsettled_pod, and make sure you subscribe, so you don’t miss the next episode.