Rabbi's Week in Review Blog

A few thoughts this week:

Starting with the good and most important news. With Tilly’s Bat Mizvah this coming Saturday, we celebrate welcoming her into our Kol Ami adult Jewish community. (No, this does not mean she is free of parental guidance, getting her own apartment or the keys to the car.) Becoming B’nai Mitzvah-a child of the commandments means that we welcome another important voice into our Kol Ami family, and her perspective on a myriad of issues will strengthen our community. It is important that our Kol Ami family be present to welcome Tilly in an official way into our community.

The number of individual/congregant meetings continue at a significantly increased rate since January. People are definitely living with a greater sense of fear and uncertainty. With that fear and uncertainty, it has never been more crucial for people to connect to community, and for our Kol Ami community to come together and support each other. 

That said, if any of you want to grab a coffee and get together during this difficult time, please do not hesitate to email me (rabbidoug@kolamikc.org), and we will find a time to get together.

Finally, as promised (or as threatened, depending on how you look at it), I am continuing to speak out against Project Esther, a part of Project 2025 which purports to fight anti-Semitism, but will lead to an increase in anti-Semitism. The arrest and threatened deportation of Mahmoud Khalil, a graduate student and the lead negotiator at the Columbia University Palestinian protests, along with the canceling of $400 million in grants and contracts to Columbia University, are part and parcel of Project Esther. Neither of these actions makes us safer as Jews, nor diminishes anti-Semitism.

Khalil has not been charged with a crime. He was suspended for one day for his perceived role in the Palestinian encampment at Columbia but, after reviewing the evidence, was reinstated a day later with an apology from the university. Whether you disagree with Khalil’s actions is not the point. Attacking Khalil, who has said that Palestinian liberation and Jewish liberation are intertwined, and that there is no place for anti-Semitism, is dressed up as fighting anti-Semitism when it is really an attack on our basic, foundational democratic rights.  He is in our country legally as a permanent resident holding a green card.

The true, great existential threat to the Jewish people is embodied in the real goals of Project Esther and Project 2025. It seeks to divide and polarize our Jewish community, and will only serve to make us scapegoats to whatever ills we face as a country going forward. We have seen this play out too many times before in our history.  Supporting Khalil’s right to be here and remain in our country, to be reunited with his wife who is eight months pregnant, will not only be justice for Khalil, but justice for all who exercise their legal right to protest, and ultimately protect our Jewish community as we have always been safer as a minority community in our country when democratic values our upheld.