June 20, 2025

It continues to be a challenging moment for the Jewish people. In addition to being on faculty at camp, tending to work emails and commitments from afar, I have been called to continually check in on family and friends in Israel. To quote the 12^th century poet Yehuda HaLevi: “My heart is in the East, and I am at the edge of the West.” I am not sure if there has ever been a time in my life when I have thought as much about Israel as I have during these last twenty months—except for when I was living in Jerusalem, walking the streets and alleyways, surrounded by buildings of Jerusalem stone that shine in the hot sun.

When I arrived at Beth Tikvah, I started a discussion group about Israel. Over several years, we met monthly at Panera; I sent out articles and we discussed our opinions. Rarely did we speak about Zionism or its origins. Though I had traveled to Israel before entering high school and felt an immediate connection to the land and the people, I am not sure I truly understood the concept of Zionism. I had an incredible 10^th grade social studies teacher who, for extra credit, encouraged us to watch historical films and write reflections on them. I remember watching “The Life of Emile Zola”, a film about the infamous Dreyfus Affair when French military officer Alfred Dreyfus was wrongfully convicted of treason. A young journalist, Theodor Herzl, covered this case and because of the antisemitism he witnessed, he knew that Jews needed to have a Jewish State of their own.

When I teach young people about Zionism, I tell them that “Zionism is the national movement of the Jewish people to establish a Jewish home and to have sovereignty in the land of Israel – the ancestral home of the Jewish people from the time of Abraham.” The concept of Zionism emerged because Herzl knew in the late 1800s that Jews would never be fully accepted living in another land. We needed a home of our own. I also now must teach people that any definition of Zionism outside of this definition has been created by others to delegitimize the Jewish community and the Jewish state. Much of what our young people learn today on TikTok reflects such a distortion.

This week, I learned of a quote from Walter Russell Mead, an American academic, who said, “Zionism was not the triumphant battle cry of a victorious ethnic group, but a weird, desperate stab at survival.” Teaching about this quote, Noam Weissman (Jewish educator and CEO of Unpacked for Educators, an incredible resource for Jewish learning) reflected that now, more than 77 years after the founding of the State of Israel, the fact that we still have to make these desperate stabs is both heartbreaking and awe-inspiring. In the immediate aftermath of the attack on Iran, Rabbi Donniel Hartman and Yossi Klein HaLevi reflected that these attacks are the ultimate expression of Zionism. Why? Because when facing an existential threat—as derived from Iran’s many decades of rhetoric against Israel and the Jewish community, Israel acted to preserve the existence of the Jewish people.

Perhaps these scholars have uncovered the true essence of Zionism. It is not about power; it is not a means to denigrate or be superior over another group of people. Zionism is an attempt at Jewish survival. And for 77 years after we established a state of our own, we have been fighting for our survival. For decades, we have faced external threats from foreign militaries, terrorist organizations, and dangerous ideologies. That continues to be the story of the Jewish people. Even with our own homeland, we must continue to fight for our survival.

This is the third installment of my reflection on our values. Please visit my Rabbi’s Blog to read about the values of B’tzelem Elohim, loving the neighbor, and loving the stranger. In some ways, Zionism is also an expression of love—love of our own community and the Jewish people. In these fragile moments, we pray for the safety of our people, the courage of our IDF soldiers, the return of the hostages, and a hope that peace will come speedily in our day to all the inhabitants of Israel.

Shabbat Shalom,

Rabbi Rick Kellner

June 13, 2025

Rabbi Rick Kellner’s Sermon starts at 9:58

June 13, 2025

Last evening, we learned that the Israeli Air Force, launched a preemptive defensive military strike on Iranian nuclear sites along with Mossad efforts to disable Iran’s ballistic missiles. Israelis spent the night in their bomb shelters preparing for a response from Iran. Iran has called for the destruction of the State of Israel numerous times. We pray that this will limit their nuclear capabilities so that will never happen. With the words of Psalm 122 on our hearts, “we pray for the peace of Jerusalem.” Our thoughts and prayers are with all those in Israel, especially our Beth Tikvah members, family, and friends, who have spent the night with fear on their souls. We pray for the brave IDF soldiers who are defending Israel and our people. We send them our love and strength.

L’shalom,

Rabbi Rick Kellner

The message below was the original message for this week.

How can we be commanded to love? This question is one we ask if we believe that the Torah is commanding us to hold an emotion. Love, however, is a verb, it calls us to act. There are moments when we gather to pray and sing, olam chesed yibaneh, the world was built from love. If the building blocks of the world come from love, we need to take those building blocks to build a sukkah of shalom to embrace the vulnerable and send hope to those in pain.

Jewish tradition commands us to love our neighbor – Rabbi Akiva and Rabbi Hillel, both teach us that this commandment is the most important commandment in the entire Torah. In order to understand its lesson, we need to look at the Hebrew – ואהבת לרעך כמוך – v’ahavta l’reiacha kamocha. Hebrew grammar would come to teach us that the word that would typically follow the command to love would be את – et, indicating the object of the verb. However, here, the preposition “ל-l’” indicates moving towards something, towards a vision for the future. That vision is one that includes loving our neighbors. We do this through actions, including tzedakah or other acts of loving kindness. Jewish tradition defines neighbor in a multitude of ways. We might begin thinking about those most like us, our family, the greater Jewish community, or Jews living around the world. However, the Talmud offers an alternate opinion. It teaches us that we can help those living close to us whether they are Jewish or not. The notion to love a neighbor ties directly to the notion that we are created b’tzelem Elohim – in God’s image. To behold another’s face places a demand on us that calls upon us to recognize that person as sacred.

Our love does not only extend to our neighbor, but a core command of the Torah is to love the stranger. The rabbis of the Talmud remind us that the command to care for the stranger appears 36 times in the entire Torah including in Deuteronomy 10:18-19 where God is extolled for being might and awesome, upholding the cause of the orphan and the widow, loving the stranger by providing food and clothing, and concluding with the command to love the stranger. It is not limited to Deuteronomy, but the purpose is to sensitize us to the plight of the foreigner and refugee who lives among us. We were strangers in Egypt and our ancestors were once strangers seeking refuge from antisemitism and turmoil in their homeland. In every generation, we live and relive the Exodus. We see ourselves as if we came forth out of Egypt. Rabbi Shmuly Yanklowitz reminds us, “To be faithful is to orient our lives around the needs of the most vulnerable. The stranger, widow, and orphan can be understood conceptually. The mitzvot that are articulated with reference to widows, orphans, and strangers apply to all those who are marginalized, alienated, oppressed, and suffering.”

As I sit this week and see those who are strangers and immigrants suffering, I am heartbroken by their pain. In my communications with a Los Angeles colleague this week, he reminded me that there are Latino members of the Jewish community who are impacted by this. Why did he feel the need to do that? Sometimes we tend to think such moments affect other people, but they affect Jews as well. We should not need that reminder, however. Shouldn’t the fear of being separated from one’s family and being swept off the street be enough to tug on our heart strings and make us want to support those in need? Such a moment transcends policy; it causes us to think about how policy impacts human beings. When human beings need our help, Torah is revealed to us calling on us to act. Click here to see the CCAR’s most recent statement.

While we have a core responsibility as Jews to tell our stories and immerse in Jewish ritual and Jewish learning, the ideals of Torah remind us, repeatedly, to reflect on our core Jewish responsibility to think about how we might act to make the world around us better. We begin as individuals within our own community and extend outwards. The Torah reminds us again and again that human dignity matters. As Jews, we are called on to be a light to the nations. Thinking about our vision moving forward: upholding human dignity, loving our neighbor, and caring for those who are marginalized are key components of building our world from love.

Shabbat Shalom,

Rabbi Rick Kellner

Read Rabbi Rick Kellner’s previous post on being created in God’s Image.

Watch Rabbi Rick’s Annual Meeting Update: A Vision for the Future.