“If there is one lesson to absorb from the Holocaust, it is that when someone proclaims an intention to exterminate the Jews, believe them,” says Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch, recalling a harrowing story from Auschwitz this Rosh Hashanah. “The ideology of antisemitism focuses not on the Jewish person, but on the Jewish people; this is why it is so dangerous.”
“There is a kind of myth that we can hold onto balance for even more than a short time, but to be alive is to be in motion,” says Rabbi Samantha Natov this Erev Rosh Hashanah. “In prayer, we call to something infinite that unifies us beyond time and space. Tonight, we get to start again.”
“The increasing tendency in 21st-century America to affirm one acceptable answer is profoundly illiberal, even if it comes from the Left,” says Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch on Yom Kippur. “For years we have allowed the foundations of liberal democracy to crumble. We must be willing to fight — and reject extremism on all sides.”
“On this Day of Atonement, we sense our human vulnerability as never before,” says Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch. “Remain steadfast. Even now, in the dimness of the cave — at this, the most isolated, dark and lonely time of our lives, keep the faith. You will see the sun again.”
“Justice was her first name,” said our Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch on Rosh Hashanah, mourning the death yesterday of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. “How fortunate to be able to devote one’s entire professional life to the pursuit of justice! Tzedek, tzedek tirdoff, the Torah commands.”
On Rosh Hashanah, Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch delivered a message of hope and moral clarity: “We will never surmount the racial breach in our country without a willingness to step into and repair it. Judaism commands us to take sides. Stand on the right side of history, on the side of freedom, fairness and dignity. For these reasons, I state proudly and without reservation that Black lives matter.”
