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Amid ICE raids, Minneapolis rabbi and pastor show solidarity in action

(RNS) — Amid a massive immigration crackdown in Minneapolis these past two months, hundreds of clergy joined crowds of demonstrators to protest the violent arrests and detentions of thousands of the city’s immigrants as well as the killing of two U.S. citizens.

But apart from the demonstrations — often met with smoke grenades, tear gas and bullets lobbed by federal immigration agents in military gear — a Reform rabbi and a Lutheran pastor of a mostly Latino church found another way to resist federal immigration officers — by deepening their partnership, building relationships and extending solidarity.

Rabbi Arielle Lekach-Rosenberg and Pastor Hierald Osorto were out on the streets demonstrating too. But in the wake of the deployment of as many 3,000 immigration enforcement agents in their city, they moved beyond public declarations. Over the past few weeks, they’ve held two joint prayer services — one at her synagogue, the other at his church. They are writing a play together.

Last week, the two congregations announced they are jointly raising $1 million by Sunday (Feb. 22) to aid people in Minneapolis who have been unable to pay rent or meet other needs as a result of the two-month siege.

“What has emerged, and that now exists between our communities, is a deepening commitment to each other’s survival through this time,” said Lekach-Rosenberg, 42, the lead rabbi of Shir Tikvah, a congregation of 600 families.

Osorto called the coming together of the two communities by the Yiddish and Hebrew term “chutzpah,” meaning audacity.

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“We need more chutzpah, creativity, trust and connection,” said Osorto, 41, the pastor of San Pablo/St. Paul Lutheran Church. “I think our collective work has been powerful and grounding for our communities to hear, because they could then imagine what it might be.”

Border czar Tom Homan announced Thursday that the Minneapolis immigration operation was ending and that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security would begin drawing down paramilitary-style agents that have terrorized locals. But residents of the city have yet to relax.

The weight of the siege of Minneapolis has fallen heavily on members of San Pablo. The congregation, founded by Swedish immigrants, is now majority Latino, made up of immigrants from Mexico and Ecuador, as well as U.S.-born Spanish speakers. Services are a mix of Spanish and English.

Ever since immigration agents swooped down on Minneapolis for Operation Metro Surge late last year, many immigrant families, no matter their legal status, have stayed away from church, work and school. They’ve been reluctant to leave their homes. One man related to a San Pablo church member was arrested, sent to an out-of-state detention facility and has since been released. Though initially focused on Minneapolis’ large Somali immigrant community amid a federal fraud probe, the operation soon expanded into what was widely viewed as an immigration enforcement indiscriminately targeting brown-skinned Latinos. Overall, an estimated 4,000 residents were arrested.

Amid the dragnet, community members have pitched in to help, picking up prescriptions and driving fearful residents to doctor’s appointments. Osorto said he never thought his pastoral duties would include buying blackout curtains for members of his congregation, but that’s what he did recently to help a family whose windows were too exposed to a back alley.

For Shir Tikvah members, fear of targeting by government agents in balaclavas is something many Jews, children or grandchildren of immigrants who escaped Europe to the U.S. for safety instinctively understand. Lekach-Rosenberg was one of the organizers of a recent two-day multifaith gathering that brought hundreds of clergy to Minneapolis to learn how to organize against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

A fluent Spanish speaker, having spent time with an Indigenous rights organization in Honduras earlier in her life, Lekach-Rosenberg began a friendship with Osorto soon after President Donald Trump’s inauguration last year. Both had been interviewed by a local reporter about Trump’s executive action to void a decades-old policy exempting houses of worship from ICE actions. They started meeting for coffee at May Day, a worker-owned cafe in the city.

The two were together on the streets nearby when an ICE agent shot and killed Renee Good on Jan. 7. Afterward, they decided to plan a series of joint rituals as a way of bringing people together and showing solidarity. They envisioned a choir performance of “Todo Cambia” (Everything Changes), a famous song performed by Argentine singer Mercedes Sosa that speaks to the immigrant experience.

Nils Dybvig, a member of San Pablo who is fluent in Spanish, volunteered in the choir but soon realized one additional way he might contribute to the joint services would be to drive some members of his church to rehearsals, knowing that ICE was scanning license plate numbers and stopping those cars with plates owned by people with Latino-sounding names. “I don’t feel like I have to worry about getting pulled over,” said Dybvig, who is of Norwegian heritage.

Dybvig said he wanted to live into what has become his church’s mantra over the past few months: “I am brave, because we are brave” — “soy valiante, porque somos vallientes.”

At a Friday night “Shabbat Shira” or “Shabbat of Song” service on Jan. 30, Lekach-Rosenberg and Osorto sat next to each other, facing the combined congregation.

“Here’s the rule about Shir Tikvah,” said Lekach-Rosenberg as she translated into Spanish. “We sing loudly before we know the song.”

The Torah portion for that weekend read in synagogues across the world included Miriam’s song, celebrating the Israelites’ safe passage through the Red Sea on their way to the Promised Land.

Osorto took a moment to reflect on its parallels to the people of Minneapolis.

“We also need Miriam to teach us how to dance, how to claim joy in the midst of danger, how to imagine a different world,” he said.

Two days later on Sunday, members of Shir Tikvah joined San Pablo for Candelaria, a Christian feast day marking Mary’s presentation of baby Jesus at the Temple.

The service opened with a queer Aztec dance group and a reading from the Gospel of Luke. Because Candelaria coincided this year with Tu B’Shvat, the Jewish birthday for the trees, the joint service incorporated a Tu B’Shvat seder (with a tasting of various fruits and nuts). It ended with a feast of tamales and a piñata for the children.

Neither Lekach-Rosenberg nor Osorto favors interfaith services that dilute tradition. Both opened the service acknowledging their hesitation but later said they realized the service offered their congregations a way to imagine a future beyond the crisis.

“I think our collective work was powerful and grounding for our communities to hear and imagine what might be, versus focusing on whether or not the ritual that we’re doing was our traditional way of doing it,” said Lekach-Rosenberg.

The success of the two services has led the two clergy to consider what’s next. Although immigration forces will soon be leaving Minneapolis, the needs arising from the nearly two-month siege are immense.

A few months ago, Shir Tikvah launched a mutual aid fund called Yesod, from the Hebrew word meaning “foundation,” to help residents who needed cash for rent, utilities or other necessities. Last week, when the synagogue announced it was giving out a third allocation of $50,000, it took only seven minutes to disperse all of the funding.

That’s when Lekach-Rosenberg approached Osorto about thinking big. What if the two congregations could raise $1 million in mutual aid for the people of Minneapolis? They gave themselves a Feb. 22 deadline. So far, they have raised $250,000. (Shir Tikvah distributed $200,000 before the two joint fundraiser.) The two congregations are not equal. San Pablo is only a third the size of Shir Tikvah. But it, too, is committed to doing all it can to raise the money.

As Osorto said in a fundraising video the two clergy taped: “We don’t have to let others define what is possible, even as we face the impact of the federal invasion of our community. We are creating an ecosystem of dignity and care here in Minnesota.”

Catholic priest who was abducted in Cameroon appointed auxiliary bishop

Father John Berinyuy Tatah was among six Catholic priests abducted in Cameroon’s Bamenda Archdiocese last year and later released.

This Ramadan, I’m choosing emptiness over exhaustion

(RNS) — The past few weeks, I’ve received many digital reminders of the arrival of the most blessed of months in the Islamic calendar, asking: “Are you ready for Ramadan?” From my Instagram feed to WhatsApp group messages to unopened emails, with each reminder I receive, I can tangibly feel my cortisol levels rising ever so slightly as the days creep up to Tuesday (Feb. 17), the first evening of Ramadan.

Wait, am I ready? What do I need to do to prepare? What is everyone else doing? Enter comparison mode.

Aicha Sebaa, a California-based Eastern medicine practitioner, notes in one post: “Ramadan … is a prolonged physiological fast, and what the body does in that space, given enough time and momentum, is autophagy, the cellular housecleaning that only begins when you stop feeding what no longer needs to be fed.”

Autophagy refers to a quality control mechanism meant to rid our bodies of waste. But why does it feel like the more we prepare ourselves to temporarily deprive our bodies of food and water during this blessed month, as a way of drawing nearer to our essence, our Creator, and to physically healthier lives, the more we counterintuitively resort to feeding our nafs, or souls, with all of the countless other things it craves?

From Ramadan markets to iftar dinner parties and pre-dawn suhoor gatherings, from religious competitions to sports nights, from nutritional cooking classes to communal prayer and reflection nights, so much buildup and pressure come with the arrival of this month. The Ramadan calendar is eaten up (pun intended) before the month even begins, and before we know it, we find ourselves seamlessly (frantically) flowing into the pre-Eid frenzy.

And while all these specialized events curated for this month have a well-intentioned place and value, it seems that year after year, they are only amplifying. With this urgency to occupy as many spaces as we can, there seems to be a persisting fear of being left out or deprived of holy merriment.

But wasn’t this month meant to serve as a divine mercy for us all —a momentary breather, not an added burden?

As we prepare earlier and work harder at maximizing the benefits to reap in Ramadan, there’s something critical that seems to be missing: the ability to create emptiness. The void that’s left in our stomachs while fasting from food and water is perhaps meant to serve as a physical parallel to the mental and spiritual space that we are meant to create in our lives. That space may be to sit in idleness with our own selves, an act that is particularly important in a world so inundated with noise.

In an era long before digital, informational and social noise occupied so much of our minds (and fingers), Prophet Muhammad took to sitting by himself in the Cave of Hira to meditate and contemplate. It was a different era with different challenges, but the same core need.

As we approach Ramadan, I’ve been thinking a lot about the many addictions that hinder me in various aspects of my life. Dr. Gabor Maté, a Canadian physician and author, speaks and writes about addiction as a coping mechanism for underlying emotional issues, a way to mask what lies beneath. He notes that an addiction can be anything that gives us temporary relief or pleasure but can cause long-term negative consequences. The more I take the time to notice, the more I realize how many addictions we all have. Some are subtle and have become more socially acceptable in society today than, say, a drug or gambling addiction, but perhaps equally damaging.

How addicted are we to performance and activity? To our phones? To shopping? To work and the notion of success? To the perceptions of others? How much do we value being productive and accomplishing micro-milestones as a means to feel worthy or relevant — to others, or to God? How much of these addictive traits are our children passively absorbing? And most importantly, how can I use this Ramadan to break these addictions?

In one hadith, or tradition, attributed to Prophet Muhammad, it is said to beware of those sins that we think are small or minor because they, in fact, become major. The small habits are the ones that become really problematic because they stick and become ingrained. That’s the nature of an addiction.

In all the excitement in anticipating this month, while we are constantly performing to achieve the “feel” of Ramadan, in our homes and mosques and calendars, and dare I say in our social media feeds, have we taken a moment to realize that we’re indulging in addictive behavior that distracts our souls? Perhaps we are so addicted to satisfying our egos — in the name of worship, in this case — that we have not quite grasped the wisdom of embracing the emptiness and slowness that the month is inherently all about.

I once enjoyed — and to some extent still do — attending Ramadan markets and witnessing all the beautifully curated faith-based products for our homes, children and loved ones, planning gifts for loved ones, attending social and spiritual events, and taking opportunities to absorb all the Ramadan feels. I have young children and am always contemplating ways to make this month feel that much more special and memorable.

But year after year, as my kids grow, and as I grow, I have come to realize that what I want — and what my nervous system needs — is not more activity to keep us engaged, not more intentionally crafted products and possibly not even more social outings. I know these are all readily available on my screens, at my mosques and in my circles, and I am thankful for those. But what I think I truly want is more returning to the essence — more simplicity, more bang for my buck, or if you will, more barakah (blessing) for my bismillah.

This year, the term that has been buzzing is integration. It’s time for us to integrate all the things we already know and have experienced, and to create small but significant change by putting them into practice. That change can only occur if we give ourselves enough space to sit with ourselves and perform an internal audit. We must really evaluate where we are and where we want to be. And by embracing that emptiness — of our stomachs, of our calendars and of our commitments — we are taking part in an autophagy of the waste that we’ve unknowingly allowed to attach onto our very busy, overwhelmed lives.

I guess I’m not quite ready for Ramadan in the traditional ways. But maybe precisely that will help to make this Ramadan the one that I need, at least for this year. And what a blessing it is to be able to witness the evolution of the experience of this month in my home and heart.

(Zehra Kamani is a Toronto-based freelance writer with a background in research. Her website is zehrakamani.com. The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of Religion News Service.)

When Trauma Becomes Identity: Rabbi Steven Burg on Changing the Script for Young Jews

(RNS) — When Rabbi Steven Burg asks young Jews how they see themselves, the answer he hears most often is, “We’re the people everyone hates.”

The response to the attacks on Israel on Oct. 7 accelerated this feeling for many Jews on campus and other environments where lines were drawn between support for an occupied Gaza and the security of the Jewish state and people. Progressive coalitions found themselves fracturing. Interfaith partnerships strained to stay together. Students found themselves abandoned by people they thought were allies. But Burg says the problem runs deeper than politics.

In this episode, host Amanda Henderson talks with Burg, CEO of the Jewish educational organization Aish, about what happens to religious identity when an entire generation can only define themselves by who hates them — and what it takes to move from trauma to something they’re actually for.

This transcript was generated using AI tools and may contain minor transcription errors.

From RNS and the Institute for Religion, Politics and Culture, this is Complexified, a podcast for the religiously curious and politically frustrated. I’m Amanda Henderson.

Rabbi Steven Burg has been asking young Jews a question — What does it mean to be Jewish? — and he keeps getting the same answer: We’re the people everyone hates. Not, “We’re here to repair the world,” not, “We’re a light unto the nations,” just “We’re the people everyone hates.” That’s the problem he’s trying to solve, because the attack on Jews by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023, didn’t just kill 1,200 people. It killed friendships. Progressive coalitions fractured overnight. And young Jews are sitting in the wreckage.

Burg wrestles with this question: How do you build an identity that isn’t just about who hates you when people keep proving they might? Last week, Rabbi Burg wrote an op-ed for Religion News Service arguing that Jewish identity can’t be built on trauma. It has to be about something positive.

Rabbi Steven Burg, welcome to Complexified.

Thank you so much, Amanda. Thank you for having me.

Grateful to have you. It’s been two and a half years since the horrific attack on Oct. 7. You have stated that it wasn’t the attack alone that caused the trauma, but the abandonment or betrayal that Jewish people experienced from their allies in the aftermath. How do you heal from that betrayal?

It was pretty amazing, I think, across the board to the Jewish community that those who we were friends with on Oct. 6, by Oct. 8 were gone, out the door, abandoned us. Things that were literally videotaped by Hamas that were shown on Facebook by Hamas were being denied. And so in some ways it was so much different this time than it was so many other times. And so there’s, I call this a kind of communal trauma. Just like, people that you had thought you were as thick as thieves, we’re buddies, I’m there for you when you need it. And you talk to young people on college campus, they’ll tell you this was roommates. These were people they did work for classes with. These were people that they saw as real friends, and they were absolutely abandoned overnight. So I think collectively it was really difficult. And so for us now, there’s this period, it’s two and a half years of trying to get hostages back. So it was very hard for the community to focus on anything else. Now we’re into, we’re kind of like in the post-show, and how does this all wrap up? Where do we focus? And so, there’s a lot of that going on amongst the Jewish people.

You said this isn’t the first time that people from our Jewish community here in the United States have been struck by attacks and hardship and antisemitism. That is a theme and a story that is as old as the people of Israel. How did this experience tap into that historic memory and trauma, especially for young people who might not have directly experienced that in their lifetime?

Sure. For a lot of people, I would say the modern era has been defined by the Holocaust. That was when everything went way further than it ever had been historically. And I think also worldwide there had been nothing like it. And I think if you look back to that trauma, and we were very blessed to have many survivors who could speak to us over the years and unfortunately now you have less and less, which is something we have to deal with. But if you talk to them, people understood first good versus evil. The United States of America went to fight the evil of the Nazis. And afterwards, thankfully the U.S. Army had all kinds of video, well, I call them videos, but then it was film taken of the camps and really had made so many of their soldiers go by and see them to see this evil up front. So even right away, there was this understanding that the Jews had gone through something really serious and it kind of formed who we were as a result coming out of it.

First, probably most famously, the Holocaust ends in 1945. The U.N. mandate for Israel to be created is 1948. That’s three years later. And the Jews basically say, okay, if someone says they’re going to destroy us, we’re going to take them at their word. But I think it’s more than that. Like if you look at the United States of America, which is one of the greatest countries, probably the greatest I think ever created in the history of the world, where they just rejected a monarchy and came here and said we’re going to have freedom of religion, freedom of speech, all these amazing things. You see a lot of what came out of that. Like for example, in the push for civil rights and joining with the African American Black community. Jews were at the forefront of that. And why was that? That was because a few short years before we had gone through the Holocaust and we understood what it meant to be oppressed. And therefore you see really in many decades post that, Jews always defending the oppressed and joining these organizations and making sure that we’re building hospitals and making sure we’re building universities and we played this major, major role.

And then here we kind of roll up to October 7th, and it’s been going on really, we’ve been getting demonized over this for the last two or three decades and all of a sudden we become the oppressors and claim that we’re oppressors even though we’re the ones being murdered and raped. That’s really, I think, hard for these young Jews to put into context and they can know all that history, but all I know is that my professor is getting up and saying that they hate me. And what we’re telling them is big deal, man. We’re going to get past it. We’re leaders, we do great things to the world. You’ve got to compartmentalize that and just know that your wonderful professor, although he’s a big shot on campus, morally and ethically is a tiny person.

How has that pain of the history shaped you personally as a rabbi?

Look, I think exactly what I’m saying to young people is exactly the way I feel. I feel that the Jewish people have a role in this world. Our role is to be a light unto the nations. Our role is to make sure that the world operates in ways that are appropriate. It’s to build caring and empathy for others. And so I don’t let what other people, I don’t let the haters define me. I could literally sit on X every single day and go down rabbit hole after rabbit hole of people that hate us and frankly it used to be fringe.

It’s not as much fringe.

And right now we’re seeing it on the radical left and we’re seeing it kind of like on the radical right. And a lot of us are saying, you guys have got to make decisions. You can’t have people that hate us in the midst of your movements. And so we’re very confident. I guess that’s the best word I can say in that what we want to give the world. And they’ve always been detractors for whatever reasons, they don’t want to accept that. And but it’s not, it can’t stop our mission of bringing good to the world.

One of the things I think about with young people specifically is that they have long had this posture of challenging institutions, right? And I’ve got kids in their 20s and that is their job, challenging institutions. How are young people navigating this tension that can happen between critiquing, for say, the Israeli government, while also holding on to that Jewish identity and commitment to the people of Israel?

You know, the whole point of democracy is you have elections and if you don’t like what’s going on, you go out and you run candidates and you operate within. And I think it’s just so interesting, I think, to all of us, fascinating. Interesting is a crazy word to use, but Israel is literally in a part of the world where there are no democracies. It’s all monarchies and it’s all, you saw with Iran, they rose up to try and protest and they just kind of secretly killed a couple, tens of thousands of people and everyone just yawns, right? And Israel is literally under this microscope and, so I tell him, I don’t have a problem.

I mean look, I run an institution based in Israel, believe me, I have many politicians that I have issues with and they know it. I’m friendly with them. I know people on the left, on the right, and it’s democracy. You’re doing your thing. But the fact that a voice is given to the people, I have Arabs that work for us who are great, and they can vote in Israeli elections. And it’s understanding. I figure what we’ve been up against is propaganda that’s just not true. It’s just not true. This demonization of Israel and this total double standard. And that’s what you have to tell them. You say look, this is what was going on there, it’s just that the world is not made up of oppressors and oppressed. You can’t just define the whole world like that and especially if your oppressor is not really an oppressor.

So I think we’re complicated in that regard. Yeah, and I think we’re seeing from our community you’re seeing two different things. Some of our young people are really rising up. One of our alumni is someone by the name of Shabbos Kestenbaum, who sued Harvard. And my organization got a 999-page subpoena from Harvard asking us for footage when they were fighting it. And I think there are a lot of young Jews who have fought back against universities saying, “You’re insane. The fact that you’re not protecting students who pay a lot of money to be there to just have the ability to walk across campus is crazy.”

And this administration I think has been has been fabulous in trying to help us with that. But then unfortunately you have a lot of Jews, over 70% of Jews in America are not particularly connected to their religion. And so you have Jews that, even if they had a Jewish star would kind of just tuck it in or kind of like put it in the background and stuff. And it’s a shame because later on in life they’re going to be thirsting for that connection.

Rabbi Burg, you said that America was crushing in a way that Europe wasn’t. What did you think America was and do you still believe in that?

Yeah, I travel the world and Jewish communities are very, very close. There’s not a lot of us in the world. There’s about 15 million Jews in the entire world. So anytime you go to any country, you go to the Jewish community, you stay there. And Europe, we’ve been used to this for decades now, that if you go to a synagogue in Europe, there is heavy police presence, there’s heavy security. But America wasn’t like that. America, you just walked into a synagogue. This is the largest, America contains the largest group of Jews outside of Israel. And especially, I grew up in New York, being in New York and you didn’t really have that need for security. I tell you the last five, ten years it’s all changed.

And now we do have heavy security at all of our synagogues and temples.

And it’s very crushing and you go on social media and you find all these people talking about the harm they want to do Jews and then it actually plays out as it’s happened in certain cities around the United States where we’ve had violence against us. And so it’s just very hard because like I said, we’ve had a love affair with this country for so long, going all the way back to the Revolutionary War where there were Jews like Haym Salomon, who was one of the people that helped to really finance the Revolutionary War and was very close to George Washington. And there’s even a beautiful letter from George Washington to the Jewish community to say, “We’ve got your back.”

So it’s just very hard for us because we love this country so much and just to see that we’re not getting the same religious protections we once did. And there’s so many more of these people out there is really difficult.

One of thing you talked about earlier that is lingering for me is that you’re moving into a new phase of kind of grief and healing in the two and a half years since October 7th. Can you talk to me a little bit about that history of rebuilding that Jewish people have been doing for centuries over time and how that informs how you’re thinking about healing now?

It’s such a great question because we have been through these cycles so many times and I think, and I’ve read a lot of op-eds about this and I’ve tried to explain this to the world that traditionally, every time we walked into a country, we were looking for the exit, right? Meaning if we went to Spain, we’re looking at North Africa. We went to England, we’re looking at France in the Middle Ages. We were constantly getting bounced around different countries, different circumstances. And we would move, obviously. Post the Holocaust many Jews came over to America or Latin America, other places.

The difference is we’re not looking at Israel like that anymore. We’re not looking, and famously Golda Meir said, our secret is we have nowhere else to go. And we feel like we’re back in our homeland after 2,000 years. And so we’re going to defend our homeland. And so I think that attitude has changed. And that’s why Jews feel so strongly about Israel, is that it is the only Jewish country in the world and it’s a country that if God forbid anything happens to us as has happened over the years, it’s a place that will defend us.

And so what happened two-and-a-half years ago in that country that is there to defend the Jewish people and be a Jewish state, to have so many people raped and murdered, the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust was very difficult to see. For two-and-a-half years we all had yellow ribbons and we were waiting to see the hostages returned. And I don’t know that anyone had thought we would get to the moment, and it really thanks to this incredible administration that they help us get there where every single hostage was brought home and even to the point we feel very strongly about even after someone’s passed away, even the bodies came back to the families, which was very important to us.

So now it’s kind of like, okay, we had this go on, we’re seeing this stuff around the world, how do we get back to that positive mentality? How do we get back out there? And it’s well documented that when there is a hurricane somewhere, Israel sends a medical tent. That’s who we are. That’s who we want to be. We don’t want to be fighting and defending ourselves like this. We want to build the world. So to me, we’ve got to tell young people, “Okay, we’re post two-and-a-half years. We’re going to remember the people there.” I’ve been down to the Nova Festival many times. It’s still moving to see the memorial there. But let’s use that, because all those young Jews would want us moving forward and just creating a better place for all of us.

Yeah, can you share some more specific examples of what Jews are doing right now that embodies that healing?

So the biggest thing for me I think is the internet and social media and the stuff we’re watching today, a lot of the hate flowing around. So I’ll just say for our organization, Aish in Israel, we’re doing a tremendous amount of education online. We’re like turning it around. So we can reach every Jew and many non-Jews come to our site, aish.com, to ask questions about Judaism. Ask us who we are, understand who we are, and not to tell you that technologically with AI it has been a total game changer for us because we can do every single language in the world now.

You go to aish.com. An AI rabbi is there to answer questions. And then if they’re deeper questions, you can be transferred to a live rabbi. But a lot of questions are very basic. And so we’re trying to create these places so you can understand this better, you can grow more. So it’s like anything in the world. The internet could be a place of hate or it could be a place of love. And so we need to make these spaces places of love for everyone.

What are you hearing from young people about their vision for what they hope for for their next stage of Jewish identity?

Look, I think young Jewish people are like all young people. You’re kind of getting your education, you’re thinking about your life, who you’re going to meet and marry, building a family, all those different pieces. I do think that I have seen a community in the last two-and-a-half years, there are more young Jews from North America serving in the IDF, going to Israel, going to school in Israel.

There is exactly the opposite of what was trying to be achieved is more of an in-depth love and support of Israel for those that are connected and committed. Right. We have many Jews. It’s very interesting. I would just say that Jews have won a tremendous amount of Nobel Prizes. It’s a well documented fact and we’re out there in so many places. Jews’ DNA is to do great things in the world. And either they can do it for really good things or they may get involved with like the other side.

So our young Jews, it’s about telling our story to them and welcoming them in and being able to do what they do. The amount of startups in Tel Aviv today is off the charts. And I would recommend for Jews and non-Jews if you want to go to a place, the place that created Waze and so many other incredible investments. And so I think there are a lot of young Jews saying, hey, I could do that now in Israel. Ironically here, after two-and-a-half years of war, the shekel, right, which is the currency of Israel, is stronger than it’s ever been literally in 20 to 30 years. And the Israel stock exchange is through the roof, right? Which doesn’t make any sense after two-and-a-half years of war, right?

So I think it’s just showing these opportunities on a spiritual level, on a physical level, on a materialistic level, to get involved. But I think there is for the young Jews that have experienced the trauma on campus, there’s a renewed kind of pride and passion for themselves.

Rabbi Burg, I really appreciated your op-ed on RNS, and I’m so grateful for you taking your time here on Complexified today. Thank you so much.

Thank you, Amanda. It was an honor for me to be here. We all have so much in common. The ability to be here with you, have an intelligent, credible, spiritual conversation is very meaningful to me. Thank you.

Complexified comes to you from the Institute for Religion, Politics and Culture at Iliff School of Theology in partnership with Religion News Service.

When Trauma Becomes Identity: What Young Jews Are Learning After Oct. 7