Rabbi Rachel Weiss’s email to the community on January 26, 2026
As I chanted the Aleinu on Friday evening and Saturday morning this week, this quote jumped off the page and spoke to my heart:
“When senseless hatred rules on earth, and people hide their faces from one another, then heaven is forced to hide its face. But when love comes to rule the earth, and people reveal their faces to one another, then the splendor of God will be revealed.” (Martin Buber (adapted) Kol Haneshamah: Shabbat Vehagim, p. 125)
Right now in America, senseless hatred is everywhere. It is in Minneapolis with the murders of Keith Porter Jr., Renee Nicole Good, and Alex Pretti. It is in Mississippi with the arson attack on Beth Israel Synagogue last week. It is here in Evanston and Chicago and across our country as armed ICE agents invade our cities with violence, lawlessness, and masked faces. This is the face of terror.
It might feel easier or safer to stay inside with our frigid temperatures and turn off the reports of this terror. But as Elie Wiesel reminds us, “The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it’s indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it’s indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it’s indifference.” We cannot remain indifferent. We must – as the quote in our prayerbook urges us – reveal our faces to one another.
We must stand on the side of Love.
Heather Cox Richardson shares that “Reports out of Minnesota say that in the face of the terror inflicted on it by federal agents, the people there are even more closely linked together in community solidarity. They are patrolling the streets, donating food, delivering groceries, helping with legal services, organizing to look out for each other in a demonstration of community solidarity so foreign to administration figures that Attorney General Pam Bondi yesterday suggested that there was something nefarious about how well organized they are as they protect their neighbors.”
This is the face of Love.
Cox Richardson continues, “Yesterday, after Alex Pretti’s death, the son of a man Pretti had cared for at the VA hospital published a video of Pretti speaking at his father’s deathbed. ‘Today we remember that freedom is not free,’ Pretti said. ‘We have to work at it, nurture it, protect it, and even sacrifice for it. May we never forget and always remember our brothers and sisters who have served so that we may enjoy the gift of freedom. So in this moment, we remember and give thanks for their dedication and selfless service to our nation in the cause of our freedom. In this solemn hour, we [give] them our honor, and our gratitude.’”
This is the voice of Love.
My colleague Rabbi Emma Kipley Ogden, Jewish and interfaith chaplain at Macalester College in St. Paul who was arrested protesting at the Minneapolis airport wrote in The Forward, “Standing there among them, on erev shabbes in the cold, I thought about the Torah portion we would read the next morning in shul: parashat Bo, from the Book of Exodus. In it, the darkness of the ninth plague that befell the Egyptians is described as something that the oppressors — the mitzrim, which I’ll translate as “the ones of narrowed sight” — could actually touch. It was so thick that it kept them isolated from each other, unable to move. In contrast, the dwellings of those seeking liberation were full of light. I imagined that palpable darkness not as a punishment, but as a reflection of reality. The oppressors were unwilling to see the humanity of their neighbors. But if they had been, they too could have found themselves in dwellings full of light, able to clearly perceive the richness and possibility of living in a multiethnic community.”
This is the action of Love.
The signs from over 1,000 interfaith clergy protesting in Minneapolis this past week said “Do Justice. Love Kindness. Abolish ICE.”
This is the spirit of Love.
We can do all of this together.
We can march with protest signs – even in -20° weather.
We can pray for healing in our Shabbat services, in the sanctuary and on zoom.
We can call our Senators and Representatives to refuse additional funding for ICE and Border Patrol in the new Department of Homeland Security bill unless they are held accountable and end their siege on our communities. Read more from Indivisible.org.
We can join with T’ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights to tell congress NO to troops in our streets.
We can donate our resources, to those acutely experiencing ICE’s presence in Minnesota with MARCH (Multifaith Antiracism, Change & Healing).
We can donate money, time, food, and goods to help and sustain our local community with Evanston Community Cares, supporting the Evanston Community Fridges, Evanston Latinos, Sanctuary Evanston, and families in School Districts 65 and 202.
We can reach out to each other and check in on our neighbors, friends, and colleagues. The mental health effects of this moment are very real, and some of us experiencing vicarious trauma and despair cannot do anything right now, and that is okay too. It is helpful to remind folks that they are not alone right now.
We are a community of Love.
As Beth Israel Synagogue of Jackson Mississippi gathered in a neighboring Baptist church for their first shabbat after the arson attack, their student rabbi, wearing the only synagogue tallit to survive the fire, preached, “A few days ago, someone tried to wound us, someone tried to destroy what we love, someone tried to tell us that we do not belong in our own city, that being visibly Jewish is dangerous, that being proudly Jewish is a risk, that being a synagogue is an invitation for hatred,” Student Rabbi Benjamin Russell said. “What they failed to understand is that we are not made of wood and paper and shelves. We are made of Torah, memory, community, stubborn love and 3,000 years of defiance.”
We survive with Love.
Tomorrow is International Holocaust Remembrance Day. Trauma – inherited, experienced, and collective, is a very real part of our Jewish communities. It is not hard to draw parallels between 1930s Nazi Germany and this moment of attacks on Democracy and rising authoritarianism in America. At this moment, all of this trauma is stirred and rises to the surface. As that happens, we have to feel, to grieve, and to lean into both our neighbors and our Jewish community to receive and to give support and strength. The most impactful way to do that is the mitzvah of showing up.
Show up. It feels better to be together. One member told me at Shabbat services that this was her weekly therapy – a chance to grieve, let the tears flow, and connect. Be part of the JRC community aliyah at a b’nai mitzvah service. Come together for a class, a shiva minyan, a mah jongg game, music jam session, Torah study, chair yoga, or meditation. All of these are happening regularly at JRC.
With the voices of Elie Wiesel, Martin Buber, Heather Cox Richardson, Rabbi Emma Kipley Ogden, Student Rabbi Benjamin Russell, I am here with you all, ready to act, pray, gather, grieve, and show up with Love. Together, as we sing in our liturgy, “Ahavah Rabbah, with an abounding love, we must lift each other up.”
~Rabbi Rachel Weiss