Hello friends and Happy New Year!
I must admit, I struggled figuring out what to write today. As we celebrated Rosh Hashanah and get ready for Yom Kippur and the other holidays this month, Jews reflect on the last year, 5784 in the Jewish calendar, and look forward to our new year, 5785. This last year was a historically tragic and difficult one for our people. It started with a vicious terrorist attack against us, marking our deadliest day since the Shoah. Since then, antisemitic incidents in America have increased somewhere on the order of 400%.
Over the last year, we have experienced feelings of angst, sorrow, and anger as we have lost relationships with friends and others to this historic plague of antisemitism, fueled by vile conspiracy theories rooted in millennia of bigotry. Let this year be a good year, better than the last. Let this be the year that the hostages of the War are returned home and suffering around the world ends.
It is impossible for us to reflect on the last year and not recognize the tragedy and communal anguish that we have experienced. In contrast, Rosh Hashanah is, well, a happy holiday! We wish each other Shana Tova – “good year.” Our traditions teach us that the new year is truly new. As we go into the highest of the High Holidays, solemn Yom Kippur, we release our ties to the past year. Everything that happened then is done. And following Yom Kippur, we will continue our joyful celebrations of the new year. We’ll have good meals and keep good company in our Sukkot. We’ll sing, dance, and be merry for Shemini Atzeret and Simchat Torah.
Let this year be a year in which we elect leaders who care about making our world a better place. The Biden-Harris Administration has been strong and unequivocal in speaking out against antisemitism and releasing the first-ever National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism. As part of that strategy, the Administration stated clearly in writing that Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits antisemitic and Islamophobic discrimination, and the Administration continues to combat the harrowing rise of antisemitism on college campuses.
Let us elect Kamala Harris and Tim Walz to keep fighting this fight against antisemitism and support their broader mission to defend our country’s most vulnerable.
This won’t happen without our work, though. During a Rosh Hashanah service, my rabbi told a story about knowing the difference between not being able to and not wanting to – and the importance of always knowing the difference. The things we want to come about in this new year can only happen if we work for them. It’s not a matter of whether we can or cannot achieve the outcome we want, but a matter of whether or not we want to do the work necessary to win. It is 25 days until the biggest culmination of our work and 5 days until ballots start arriving in mailboxes.
Let’s start the new year off right by electing champions for our community at all levels on our ballot. And if you want to join us in that work, I hope you’ll join our newly-formed Jewish Caucus. Jews and allies are all welcome.
We can only do this together.
שׁלום Shalom,
Nathan Soltz
Chair, DPO Jewish Caucus
