Sep 30, 2025
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Sep 19, 2025
Standing Together: A Reflection on Parashat Nitzavim
Standing Together: A Reflection on Parashat Nitzavim
Rabbi Menachem Creditor & Rabba Daphne Lazar Price
The Torah names not just leaders but also children, women, and even the stranger, from “woodchopper to water drawer. (v.10)” It could have said simply “everyone,” but by enumerating groups, the text ensures that no one can be overlooked. Children may not fully understand but will carry memory. Women, often excluded from ancient (and, all too often, modern) political structures, are named as part of God’s covenant. Even strangers are included - not Israelites, yet embraced by the Torah’s care. The Torah’s language of “all of you” followed by each group challenges us to be vigilant about who is included - and who might feel excluded - when we say “everyone.” Naming in this way is an act of dignity and inclusivity.
Moshe is speaking urgently in these verses, as he knows his time is short. He warns of a spiritual danger, imagining that once we “arrive” in the Promised Land, we might think ourselves safe from the harshness of the world, immune to the consequences of actions, finished in our moral development. “I shall be safe, though I follow my own willful heart, (v. 18)” says the verse. This is a false security.
Our own lives echo this danger. Moments of progress can lead to self-satisfaction, as if justice or equality is accomplished once and for all. Yet Torah reminds us that covenant is ongoing. We are never done. We cannot say “we’ve arrived” while inequality persists, or while suffering remains in our midst, or when Jewish safety is threatened, as it so frequently is these days.
In recent years, many of us have felt knocked down, struggling to find footing in a broken and frightening world. War, displacement, hatred, loss, and uncertainty weigh heavily. We feel the urgency to “get it right,” to act faithfully even when the world feels unstable. And yet, voices of resilience remind us that there can still be a good ending, even if we cannot yet see it. Jewish wisdom teaches, “It is not upon you to finish the work, but neither are you free to desist from it. (Pirkei Avot 2:16)” Every act matters, even when we cannot control the outcome.
We may never feel that we have truly “arrived.” Even on our best days, there is more work to do, more perspectives to hear, more compassion to extend. That awareness, rather than diminishing us, calls us to humility, perseverance, and hope.
A puzzling verse in Nitzavim offers a way to bring these thoughts together:
“The hidden things belong to God, but the revealed things are for us and our children forever, to do all the words of this Torah. (Deut. 29:28)” Some versions even mark words with dots, suggesting uncertainty about what belongs to us at all.
Perhaps the message is this: we will never know everything. Control is not ours. What is ours is responsibility - to act with integrity, to live Torah in real time, even in confusion. As the ancient sage Hillel taught a student who doubted his shifting lessons (and likely his own feeling of uncertainty), “You trusted me yesterday, trust me today. (Shabbat 31a, paraphrased)” Faith does not erase uncertainty but empowers us to act despite it.
As we prepare to close one year and enter another, we hold two truths: we are ready for this year’s pain and heaviness to end, and yet, we must not rush through time. This year has included great meaning and joy too. These final days of the year are also part of the gift of life, to be savored before the new year begins.
Standing together - all of us - we are called into covenant again, hayom, today. We may not know what tomorrow brings, but we know this: our task is to show up, to stand present, and to do the work of Torah with whatever strength and wisdom we are blessed to share.
How blessed we are to stand together.
Sep 18, 2025
"Gratitude as a Force for Good" Rabbi Menachem Creditor's Keynote Speech at the Jewish Federation of Western Connecticut Annual Meeting/Campaign Launch (September 14, 2025)
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The Power of Intention | Ki Tavo | #Day704 #Broadcast1385 #KiTavo #BringThemHomeNow #untilthelasthostage
Sep 8, 2025
Sep 7, 2025
From JWI: September 9 is Firearm Suicide Prevention Day
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Sep 5, 2025
Introduction to "Anti-Zionists, Unwitting Zionists (When Obsession Becomes Proof of Attachment)"
INTRODUCTION
The fiercest hatreds often mask a form of love. Hatred is not the opposite of attachment; it is its distortion. When a person cannot stop looking at, talking about, and defining themselves against an object, a people, or an idea, they reveal a bond they would rather deny. This book argues that a great deal of contemporary anti-Zionism belongs to that category. By building an entire moral universe around opposition to Israel, many anti-Zionists unwittingly affirm the centrality of Jewish self-determination in their own lives. Their obsession becomes proof of attachment.
To say this is not to score a glib psychological point. It is to invite a more honest conversation. Zionism is not a monolith, and Jews are not of one mind. We argue - heaven knows we argue! - and that is a feature, not a bug, of our tradition. I affirm the Jewish value of diversity, of principled pluralism. A Zionism worthy of our ancestors and our children must make room for dissent, dispute, and change. Zionism at its best is anti-fundamentalist: an evolving project of peoplehood that thrives on moral self-critique, the courage to revise, and the humility to listen.
I write as a rabbi who believes Zionism is not merely a political program but a moral obligation. The Jewish people’s right to self-determination in our ancestral homeland is not a privilege begged from history; it is the restoration of dignity after history’s theft. But that restoration is never only for us. From Torah’s command - tzedek, tzedek tirdof, justice pursued justly - to Israel’s founding vision of equality and freedom, the Jewish return to sovereignty is inseparable from the responsibility to build a society that reflects the image of God in every human being.
How, then, do we understand those who oppose this project with near-religious intensity? Some oppose particular policies; these are our partners in debate. Critique is a blessing in any democracy, and Israel, like all states, must be answerable to moral judgment. But something else has emerged in recent years: a fixation that organizes identity around the negation of the Jewish collective. When “Israel” becomes the single lens through which the world is read, when the Jewish state is singled out as the world’s only inadmissible “mistake,” when the language of human rights expands everywhere except to include the Jewish people’s right to a home - then we have crossed from critique into a consuming counternarrative.
That counternarrative, I submit, cannot let Israel go because, deep down, it cannot imagine a world without us. If Israel is the axis of your righteousness, if the Jew among the nations must always be on your mind, then the Jew among the nations is central to your moral self. You are in relationship - albeit a broken one - with Zion. The more breathless the denunciation, the more it testifies to Israel’s gravitational pull.
This is not a taunt; it is an invitation. If you care this much, then admit that you care - and let us turn that distorted attachment into a shared responsibility for life, dignity, and justice.
For our part, we Zionists must refuse the seduction of certainty. Power can numb empathy; fear can shrink moral horizons. Jewish sovereignty requires the grown-up work of holding two commitments at once: defending the lives of our people and honoring the full humanity of our neighbors. We must be brave enough to say when we fail, and steadfast enough to keep trying. Our tradition demands nothing less.
“Who is mighty?” asks Ben Zoma. “One who masters their impulse.” Strength, in Jewish terms, is disciplined power, ethically constrained.
Pluralism is thus not a public-relations tactic; it is theologically Jewish and politically Zionist. We argue for the sake of Heaven, recognizing that truth is found in the friction of principled disagreement. The doubling of tzedek in the biblical verse teaches that ends and means are inseparable. We cannot reach a just future through unjust paths. The boats on the narrow river of our sources pass in turn so that all may pass; the same wisdom must govern a crowded land and an intensely anxious century. Compromise is not cowardice when it serves life.
This book will name the obsessive forms of anti-Zionism for what they are, not to shame their adherents but to unmask the relationship they deny. And it will argue for a confident, self-critical Zionism that welcomes disagreement and expects accountability - from others and from ourselves.
If you have been told that Zionism demands silence, know that our sages canonized argument. If you have been told that loving Israel means hating someone else, know that our covenant commands love of the stranger. If you have been told that Jewish self-determination is a betrayal of universal justice, know that our return to sovereignty is precisely how we bring our particular gifts to the universal human table.
To my fellow Jews who are weary, who feel abandoned by allies who seem to champion every people’s dignity but recoil at ours: do not surrender your moral voice. Our story is neither simple nor spotless, but it is righteous in its essence.
To critics who care enough to read this far: I am listening. Come argue with me. Bring your passion, and I will bring mine. Bring your fears, and I will bring my people’s memory of statelessness and massacre alongside our stubborn, generative hope. Let us test one another not with slogans but with lives - Israeli and Palestinian, Jewish and not - in view.
And to the uncompromising anti-Zionist whose days and nights circle Israel like a moth around a lamp: your heat tells the truth your words conceal. You are already in relation to the reality you deny. What if that energy were recast as responsibility? What if the passion that fuels negation were converted into the hard, sacred labor of building a future where two peoples live with dignity? Obsession can destroy; it can also be transformed.
“Anti-Zionists, Unwitting Zionists” is a provocation, yes - but also a prayer. May our attachments be healed. May our love be less distorted and more courageous. May we learn again that justice is a path we walk together, and that argument - honest, plural, rigorous - is a form of love. May our people’s return to history be a blessing to all who share the land and all who share this fragile world.
Am Yisrael Chai.
Rabbi Menachem CreditorElul 5785September 2025
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Toward a Loving World (Shoftim) - #Day693 #Broadcast1378
Aug 28, 2025
Suicide Prevention Through a Torah Lens
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Torah in memory of Hersh Goldberg-Polin z"l, Ori Danino z"l, Carmel Gat z"l, Alexander Lubanov z"l, Almog Sarsui z"l, and Eden Yerushalmi z"l. - #Day684 #Broadcast1371 #Reeh #BringThemHomeNow #UntilTheLastHostage
Aug 19, 2025
Aug 14, 2025
Engraved for Freedom (Ekev)
Engraved for Freedom (Ekev)
Rabbi Menachem Creditor
Today is day 678 since October 7. We have been counting - one day at a time - since that horrific morning. We have been responding, tirelessly, to the threats that have not relented. Faithfulness to that daily discipline matters: faithful to memory, faithful to our people, and faithful to who we are on the inside.
Dr. Edith Eger, psychologist, author, and Auschwitz survivor, once said that she wakes up each morning and asks herself: “Do you want to be soft and warm or cold and stiff?” It isn’t easy—how could it be?—but it is our calling. Even when reactivity feels warranted, tradition invites us to keep our inner core supple and resilient. That inner warmth isn’t weakness; it’s part of the treasured legacy that empowers us to defend our people without surrendering our souls.
My dear mentor and friend, Yossi Klein Halevi, wrote recently about what he termed “the end of the post-Holocaust era,” the shattering realization that what we thought was unimaginable could again be spoken aloud and acted upon (Times of Israel, October 7, 2024). We see it in the public square, even in cultural spaces that ought to celebrate human courage—stories of family rescue and moral clarity sometimes meet resistance. Too often, only a passionate, principled response nudges the world back toward decency. It’s complicated. And it’s why our inner work must be as strong as our outer work.
Just as the entire book of Deuteronomy is not bare history but rather a heart telling its story, Ekev is Moshe remembering. He worries about us (for good reason), warns us not to harden into arrogance, and pleads that we “circumcise the foreskin of our heart” (Deut. 10:16) - to remain tender, responsive, human.
Amid his memories, one quiet verse shimmers: “I turned and came down from the mountain… and I placed the tablets in the ark that I had made; there they are, as Adonai commanded me” (Deut. 10:5). Our sages teach that the whole tablets and the shattered ones both rested in the Ark (Menachot 99a). Both. Our wholeness and our brokenness travel together at the center of the sacred.
Another teaching (Shemot Rabbah 41:7) lingers on the word “charut - engraved” on the tablets and reads it as “cherut - freedom.” When Torah becomes truly ours, it is engraved not only on stone but on the human heart. After the Temples fell, the Holy of Holies moved inward; the Ark’s address is now our own interior life (Zohar). Which means the tablets are still here - right here - summoning us to live the covenant in two directions at once: between us and God, and between one human being and another.
Ekev also means “heel,” which Rashi sees as a cue to remind us to never trample what we consider lighter mitzvot under our heels. In a season of great alarms, Ekev insists that freedom is engraved in the small daily choices: how we speak, whom we notice, what we refuse to excuse, when we soften rather than harden.
If the tablets are still in the heart, then so is the reminder of what it means to be human. The rabbis said long ago: “In a place where there are no human beings, strive to be human. (Pirkei Avot 2:5)” Today, when interpersonal cruelty and idolatry (of power, tribe, and self) abound, we are called to activate what is already engraved within us until everyone has what they need.
All of this remains true.
All of this defines the extent of our freedom.
Aug 13, 2025
An Open Letter to the Leadership of the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF)
Your decision to cancel the screening of a documentary on the Hamas atrocities of October 7, 2023, citing “copyright concerns” because the filmmakers did not obtain permission from the terrorists themselves whose GoPro footage documented the massacres, is a moral collapse.
Let’s be perfectly clear: Hamas filmed its own war crimes. These were not staged “productions” deserving of artistic royalties. They were gleeful, self-incriminating records of the slaughter of innocent human beings — Israeli men, women, children, elderly, even infants — butchered, burned, abducted. That footage is not “property” in the moral sense; it is evidence. Evidence of war crimes was verified by Human Rights Watch on October 18, 2023 (link here: https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/10/18/israel/palestine-videos-hamas-led-attacks-verified).
By framing your decision as a matter of intellectual property law, you have crossed from neutrality into complicity. You have effectively placed the “ownership rights” of murderers above the world’s right — the world’s obligation — to bear witness to truth.
You are the Toronto International Film Festival. You are meant to be a stage for the human story, especially when it is searing, urgent, and inconvenient. What is film for, if not to confront reality and demand moral reckoning? What have you become if the killers’ claims to “copyright” can silence the victims’ testimonies?
October 7 survivors have already shared their experiences through the USC Shoah Foundation’s October 7 Testimonies (https://sfi.usc.edu/october7testimonies). These are not simply “stories” — they are cries for justice, preserved so no one can say “we didn’t know.” Yet your decision tells survivors their pain is less important than the imagined “rights” of those who tried to erase them.
TIFF, the world is watching. This is not about copyright. This is about courage. Do you stand for art as a force for truth and human dignity — or for bureaucracy as a shield for cowardice?
You have a chance to reverse this decision. You have a chance to be remembered for defending the moral conscience of art, not for bowing to the perpetrators of mass slaughter.
Restore the screening. Stand with survivors. Show the truth.
Aug 12, 2025
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A Double Measure of Comfort (Shabbat Nachamu)
A Double Measure of Comfort
(Shabbat Nachamu)
Rabbi Menachem CreditorShabbat Nachamu is the Shabbat after Tisha B’Av, the day we mourn collective loss. It’s the Shabbat where we begin to breathe again, even if that breath still catches in the throat. It’s the Shabbat of Comfort. But not just comfort. Double comfort. "Nachamu, nachamu ami—Comfort, comfort My people. (Is. 40:10)”
Why twice?
When a person’s name is called twice in succession in the Torah—Abraham, Abraham (Gen. 22:11)… Moses, Moses (ex. 3:4)—it’s never just about summoning. It’s about connection, intimacy, urgency, reassurance. And here, too, the prophet Isaiah doesn’t say “comfort” once. He says it twice. Perhaps once is not enough. Maybe we need comfort for the past—and comfort for the present.
We are still counting the days since October 7th. Day 672. We are still seeking clarity in chaos, still yearning for stability in an unstable world. We have been asked to bear so much, to hold so much. And somehow, we do.
And so, on this Shabbat, we turn to the Torah portion, Va’etchanan. Moses begs to enter the Land and is denied. He is disappointed. He is human. And yet, he doesn’t fall apart. Instead, he blesses the people. He strengthens Joshua. He prioritizes continuity over ego. He teaches us that even with a broken heart, we can lead forward. We must.
And then, after the Torah reading this Shabbat, we will hear in the Haftarah Isaiah speaking comfort to a people devastated, disoriented, trying to remember who they are. And it says—you’ve already paid double for your suffering (Is. 40:2). You’ve been through enough. It is time for comfort.
Friends, maybe that's why Nachamu is doubled. One for the sorrow that has already come. And one for the sorrow we still carry as we move forward. One for those who have been taken. And one for those who remain.
We are called this week to pause. That’s not easy. To be still in a world of such noise. To breathe amid trauma. But maybe that’s the commandment of this Shabbat: Let the comfort in.
And then… let it move outward.
I think of all the people who will read this Haftarah tomorrow. I think of the whole aching, beautiful, fractured world, calling out in and for comfort. Nachamu. Nachamu.
Nachamu. Comfort.
Nachamu. Again.
Because once just isn’t enough.
Aug 7, 2025
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A Prayer for New York City After a Mass Shooting
A Prayer for New York City After a Mass Shooting
Rabbi Menachem Creditor
Eil Maleh Rachamim,
God of Compassion,
God of broken hearts,
God of weary souls,
We gather in grief, in rage, in trembling hope.
Last night, five precious lives were taken in an act of senseless violence
—each of them was a world complete.
A guardian of peace among them, slain in service.
We name their memories sacred.
We cry out together, across all faiths, refusing numbness.
Let our tears become prayers,
our prayers become action,
our action become healing.
Shelter the grieving.
Strengthen the healers.
Protect our protectors.
Be with those whose families are shattered.
Disrupt the violence in us and around us.
In the city that never sleeps, now shaken awake by sorrow,
We dare to say: this is not the end.
Those who sow in tears shall reap in joy.
We ask that You comfort our city and each of us now, Holy One.
Amen.
Jul 28, 2025
Jul 24, 2025
This week’s Torah portion commands vengeance—and I can’t ignore it. In a world where Jewish children are attacked for singing Hebrew songs, we must face our pain, tell our truth, and protect our dignity. Zionism isn’t supremacy—it’s the sacred right to exist, to sing, to hope.
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🟦✡️🏳️🌈🇮🇱
Rabbi Menachem Creditor
Not a rhetorical question. A broken-hearted, passionate cry.
Jewish people have always been part of the LGBTQ+ movement.
We’ve marched. Led. Fought. Died. Loved.
Think Harvey Milk. Edie Windsor. Idit Klein. So many more.
Proud Jews. Proud Queer. Proud Allies.
But this year, something’s broken.
Zionism—our commitment to our ancestral home—is being twisted.
We’re told:
“You can come—but not as Jews.”
“Your pride is okay, but your people are not.”
Let’s get real:
📍Zionism is not colonialism.
🇮🇱 Israel is not a metaphor.
🕊️ Jewish people are not occupiers of our own story.
Our return to our land is the only successful anti-colonial project in human history.
That doesn’t make us perfect. It makes us responsible.
For justice. For dignity. For peace.
To exile Jews from PRIDE is to betray the very meaning of PRIDE.
PRIDE means visibility.
PRIDE means no shame.
PRIDE means love—for everyone.
If your liberation requires our erasure, it’s not liberation.
✡️🏳️🌈 We’re still here. We’re still loud. We’re still proud. We’re not leaving.
#AmYisraelChai #JewishAndProud #Pride2025 #QueerJewishPride #LoveIsLove #ZionismIsJustice #NoPrideInErasure
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An Open Letter to the Leadership of the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) Rabbi Menachem Creditor Your decision to cancel the scre...
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