Affirming We are “My Brother’s Keeper”
When we hear a candidate for public office deny the Jewish People their eternal right to the land of Israel and the Zionist dream of building and maintaining a Jewish State among the comity of nations, it is time to speak out. This is what God and the Jewish People did when they introduced the Torah to the world according to Rashi’s understanding of Genesis. The leaders of cities around the fertile crescent denied Jews’ their claims to the promised land of our ancestors, and the Torah came to explain how God mindfully created lands for them and a land for Abraham, Sarah and all their descendants for all time.
The creation story is starting point of a map that charts world history and makes Eden the moral meridian of humanity. Jews would ultimately be centered in Jerusalem, physically, and all families of the earth would be blessed by the moral teachings that flow from the rivers all connected to the proverbial Garden of Eden – the shared planet of possibility and goodness that God created.
The moral message of Genesis is clear: when hate and murderous violence are used to achieve ends and take what is not yours it must be stopped. No one is allowed to sit idly by the blood of our brothers and sisters when it is spilled in massacres. While the moral ark is towards designing nation-states and cities who respect each others’ boundaries and wherein humans choose blessings over evil, battles will be fought and people will pay the highest prices to reach the promised land – literally and spiritually.
What about now in our lands of our time? When we see the statistics, when we hear the stories of our Jewish brothers and sisters around the world facing unprecedented levels of hatred and violence, we might find ourselves asking the ages old question: Where is God in all of this? Are you not a keeper as well? Will not the Doer of Justice do justice? How do we maintain faith when the light does not break through the darkness?
While the first Torah portion is about the “universal brotherhood of man” it represents a Jewish conscience and the marking of a new moral meridian. It is about the struggle between light and darkness that defines the human condition. As we explore these sacred teachings this coming year of 5786,, we must also confront the painful reality of our contemporary world—a reality that makes the Torah’s call for brotherhood not just relevant, but urgent.
The numbers tell a story that should shake us to our core. In the United States, the FBI reports that anti-Semitic incidents have reached levels not seen in generations. New York City crime statistics tell us that the times call for virulent and determined protection of Jews and Jewish places of worship and learning. Reattaching citizens of our City to the promise of America as a revolutionary project is essential. Citizenship means speaking a language of mutual assistance and encouragement to become contributing members of a moral society. The Tanakh’s values must be amplified and electrified brighter than a clear night in Times Square.
In 2021, the Anti-Defamation League documented over 2,700 incidents of anti-Semitism—the highest level since they began tracking in 1979. This isn’t just a statistic; this represents real people, real families, real communities living in fear.
Across the Atlantic, our Jewish brothers and sisters in the United Kingdom experienced a record 2,255 anti-Semitic incidents in 2021. Jews are being segregated and kept out of soccer matches. In Europe, nearly 90% of Jews report feeling unsafe because of anti-Semitism. From Paris to Berlin, from London to Rome, the ancient hatred that we thought civilization had overcome continues to rear its ugly head.
Even in Australia, far from the historical centers of European anti-Semitism, 464 cases were reported in 2021—assaults, harassment, vandalism—each incident a reminder that geography offers no sanctuary from hatred.
The violence that is a necessary answer both affirms Jewish power in our time and breaks our hearts. We cannot speak in abstractions when real blood has been shed. So many were lives lost in defending our Homeland after a modern pogrom that brought into focus the horrors of our grandparents’ parents. The images from the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018 were already seared into our collective memory—eleven souls taken while at prayer, murdered simply for being Jewish. We need leaders who condemn antisemites, terrorists and their proxies. We need calls from allies and neighbors for educational reform and normalization with the Jewish State. We need more investment in the Israel-America and Israel-New York City relationship.
The ancient voice of Torah speaks with startling relevance. In Genesis 4:9, we encounter one of the most haunting questions in all of scripture. When God asks Cain, “Where is your brother Abel?” Cain responds with a question that echoes through history: “הֲשֹׁמֵר אָחִי אָנֹכִי” – “Am I my brother’s keeper?” This is not easy to ask in dark times.
This question, born from the world’s first murder, reverberates through every act of violence against the Jewish people. It echoes in every turned back, every closed door, every moment when good people choose silence in the face of evil.
The Torah’s answer is unambiguous: Yes, we are our brother’s keepers. Every human being bears responsibility for the welfare of every other human being. When violence erupts against any community, when hatred targets any group, the question is not whether we are affected—the question is how quickly we will act.
The tragedy is that what we witness today is indeed brothers rising against brothers, children of Abraham turning against children of Abraham, human beings created in the divine image destroying others who bear that same sacred imprint.
The Moral Meridian of Faith
Yet it is precisely in these dark moments that the Torah’s teachings become our guiding star. The Hebrew scriptures don’t promise us a world without struggle—they promise us a framework for struggle, a moral meridian by which we can navigate even the darkest nights.
The Torah teaches us that boundaries matter—not as walls of exclusion, but as sacred spaces where identity can flourish. Just as Genesis tells us that God separated light from darkness, so too must we understand that the Jewish people’s connection to their ancient homeland, their right to exist as a nation among nations, is part of the divine architecture of creation itself.
To affirm that in our darkest hours, we witnessed something that can only be described as miraculous. There was “light and joy” at the end of Sukkot like we read about after the Jews survived Haman’s evil plan. During Hoshana Rabbah, the Day of Great Deliverance, God turned our “tears at night to joyous dancing in the morning” (Psalm 30). The redemption of the living captives, the light of their eyes broke through the ink-black nightmare.
Ultimate redemption may or may not be ours, but we pray that a new dawn will pierce the horizon. We must be strong in our defense, seek light for our world as it relearns the lessons of the Garden of Eden.
In this post-October 7th world let us pray that bright new ideas rise like life-giving rivers. Let us witness demonic and dark plans thwarted. Let us work to help more light shine from Zion and vote to keep our lighthouses, New York City and Or Zarua, the beacons of culture, democracy, and freedom that they are and are meant to be.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Bolton