As a Conservative rabbi in one of the most progressive cities in America, it's been an incredibly painful year of feeling unable to ask for empathy from my own fellow Jews, as I see this year's events as Good vs Evil, and so many of my congregants want me to be condemning Israel while declaring moral equivalencies. And I know they, too, need from me what I cannot give them: validation for their perspective. This sermon is my way of coming to terms with all of it.

This dvar Torah uses the amazing article by Rabbi David Golinkin on the history of the halakhah and the practice. It can be found at: https://schechter.edu/must-gods-name-be-written-in-english-as-g-d/

It is commonplace to hear today's Israel-Arab Conflict portrayed as an example of Settler-Colonial European Jews settling in the nation-state of indigenous-dwelling Palestinians. This is a modern invention and is not how the conflict was understood by local Arabs a hundred years ago, who did so in rational terms that match the Biblical arguments between the Israelites (Gideonites) and local Ammonites in Judges chapters 10 and 11. Using the recent scholarly work of Jonathan Marc Gribetz as well as Alex Stein's Love of the Land substack, I show how the ancient outlaw leader Yiftach understood today's situation better than student demonstrators, colonial marxist professors, and Western Hamas apologists.