May 23, 2025

When I see the Israeli flag, I feel a sense of pride. For me, it reflects the light of hope that emerged from the darkness of the Holocaust. When I encounter Jews around the world, whether they are Israeli or another nationality, I feel as if I am seeing my family. I want them to know I am part of the tribe too. Sadly, too many people in the world do not share these sentiments. For the last 19 months we have heard phrases like “Free Palestine,” “From the River to the Sea Palestine will be Free,” “Globalize the Intifada,” and “There is no resolution but Intifada Revolution.” These phrases often leave us feeling afraid.

The repetition of such phrases has consequences, and those consequences played out Wednesday night in Washington D.C. when Sarah Milgrom and Yaron Lischinsky were murdered because they were Jews. As staff of the Israeli embassy, they attended an American Jewish Committee event at the Washington Jewish Museum. Upon leaving, they were assassinated in cold blood by Elias Rodriques, who was seen pacing outside the museum before the shooting. When he was arrested, he yelled, “Free, free Palestine.” The murder of young Israelis will not bring a resolution to this war; it will not result in whatever vision this perpetrator has to resolve the conflict.

Just last week, Yaron had purchased an engagement ring for Sarah. He was planning to propose next week in Jerusalem. The two of them believed in peace, and they worked to bring about mutual understanding. The event they attended was focused on bringing the interfaith community together and increasing humanitarian aid.

Reflecting on this heinous act of terror, I feel a mix of sadness and anger—and many of us also feel afraid. Some have expressed surprise in the aftermath, but I cannot. The ADL’s Pyramid of Hate reminds us that bias fuels insensitive remarks, which can ultimately escalate to violence.

But the question remains as to how we move forward. In our sadness, we remember this loving couple as agents of peace. With our fear, we remember that we work closely with our law enforcement partners to ensure our safety. And with our anger, we need to call on every person to recognize that such acts of violence only bring about further pain and will never bring peace.

In this moment, we need something else. We need resolve. Resolve is a firm determination to do something, to plan a course of action, or to find a solution to a problem. We know that antisemitism is at the highest levels ever recorded. There is antisemitism in our community stemming from the right and the left. To combat hate, we strive to humanize one another – which means we work on telling our story. To that end, we have planned to screen the film October 8 at Congregation Beth Tikvah on June 11 at 7 PM. It chronicles the rising antisemitism in the United States since the Hamas attacks. We will be doing this in partnership with several Worthington area churches. The program will be followed by a guided conversation.

Next, our resolve must include a commitment to understanding who we are as a Jewish people. We immerse in our rituals and holidays. We find meaning in the moments we come together to celebrate, and we enrich our journeys when we immerse in Torah in the broadest sense. This Torah includes reflecting on our story and our history from biblical times through modern times, from darkness to light. When we know who we are, our identity becomes stronger. Shabbat arrives tonight with profound sadness as we remember Sarah Milgrom and Yaron Lischinsky. May their memories be a blessing.

Shabbat Shalom,

Rabbi Rick Kellner

May 15, 2025

Basel, Switzerland is an important place in Jewish history. In 1897, Theodore Herzl gathered leaders from the European Jewish Community there for the world’s first World Zionist Congress. (Yes, it is the original iteration of the World Zionist Congress you just voted in!) The situation for the Jewish community in Europe was dire. Herzl, a journalist, had just covered the infamous Dreyfus affair in France, where French military leader, Alfred Dreyfus was wrongly accused and convicted of treason. The claims were false and solely based on antisemitism. He was later exonerated. Herzl, though not necessarily religious, was a proud Jew and he knew at the time, that something had to change. When he welcomed Jewish leaders to Basel, he said the following:

“We shall hear news of the situation of the Jews in different countries. All of you know, if only vaguely, that this situation, except for a few exceptional cases, is not a cause for joy. It is doubtful if we would be assembled here if the situation was otherwise. The uniformity of our destiny was interrupted by a long hiatus, though the scattered parts of the Jewish nation were condemned to share similar suffering in different places. Only in our times do we have the possibility, thanks to the modern miracle of transportation, to exchange information and create contact between the separated [communities]. And in this period, which is generally so uplifting, we see and sense ourselves everywhere surrounded by the ancient enmity. Anti-Semitism is the modern name, known to you so well, of this movement….

“Information about us in the world has always been defective due to distortion and obscuration. The feeling of [Jewish] belonging and cooperation, with which were accused so often and so stormily, was in the process of complete disintegration when we were assaulted by anti-Semitism, which awakened and amplified it once again. It can be said that we have returned home. Zionism is the return to Judaism even before the return to the land of the Jews.”

Herzl saw the moment, held a vision in his heart, and laid the foundation for the establishment of the modern State of Israel which would be born 51 years later. If you will it, it is no dream!

Fast forward 128 years and the eyes of Israelis and Jews are directed towards Basel, this time the host city for Eurovision. Each year there is a song contest in which each nation in Europe is able to submit one song. Last year, Eden Golan’s Hurricane spoke to the hearts of the Jewish people. Golan finished fifth thanks to an online vote but was probably penalized by the in-person judges because she was Israeli.

This year, Yuval Raphael’s entry speaks so powerfully to the soul of the Jewish people. I mentioned this song last week, but her story needs to be told. Raphael survived the Nova festival massacre by hiding in a shelter with 50 other people. While in the shelter, she recalled holding the hand of another girl and then a Hamas terrorist came in and started shooting. That girl had died. She was on the phone with her father who told her to, “hang up the phone and play dead.” Wounded with shrapnel, she survived by hiding under dead bodies for eight hours. Raphael was one of 11 in that shelter to survive. In November of 2024, she auditioned for HaKokhav HaBa, Israel’s version of Rising Star and was selected to represent Israel in Eurovision 2025. Her song for Eurovision is entitled New Day Will Rise and was written by Keren Peles.

Its lyrics are a blend of English, French, and Hebrew and reflect the true essence of Jewish history. We long for a time of comfort but our history has been filled with discomfort and uncertainty. The song speaks of the pain experienced on October 7^th but also reminds us that a new day will rise and even if we are crying, we should not cry alone. “But we will stay, even if you say goodbye.” It is a reminder that survivors live on and that they must build a tomorrow, even with the sadness of grief. 

Yuval Raphael enters this contest amid rising antisemitism. Some countries called upon the organizers to ban Israel; nothing new for Israel in this competition. She practiced being booed and even walked out in the introductions earlier this week to a man who made as throat slitting motion towards her. Semi-finals were held Tuesday and Thursday and Yuval Raphael performed yesterday. Tune in on Saturday for the finale! Click here to find out how you can watch the Eurovision Song Contest!

Shabbat Shalom

Rabbi Rick Kellner

May 9, 2025

Before I begin my Shabbat email message, I want to let you know that I have been notified several times this week that our members have received emails using my name, connected to a strange email address, asking for help with special projects. If someone responded to those initial emails, the follow-up was a request for gift cards in very high amounts. Please know that I would never ask for something like that via email. If the email seems weird, it probably is!

As first-year students at Hebrew Union College in Jerusalem, Debra and I worked together with our beloved teacher, Paul Liptz, to plan a trip to Poland for our classmates. While I do not quite recall how the idea came up, we convinced Paul to lead us on this journey through Jewish history during Passover. We walked the streets of the Warsaw Ghetto, visited the platform where the Kindertransport left the city, and learned about Janusz Korczak (pronounced Ya-nis Kor-jack) and Mordecai Anielewicz. We met the modern-day Reform Jewish community called Beit Warszawa. We also visited the Treblinka Death Camp, Auschwitz-Birkenau, and the city of Krakow.

Thinking back to that trip in April of 2002, two moments stand out. First, we visited a town called Jedwabne, whose story is told in the book Neighbors. The town was divided relatively evenly between its Jewish and non-Jewish population. They lived together; the children prayed together. Prior to 1941, it was a beautiful place to coexist. However, in July of 1941, the non-Jewish neighbors turned on their friends. They gathered them in a barn and burned it. There were 1,600 Jews and 1,600 non-Jews living in the town. Only seven of the Jews survived. I will never forget the spot where the barn stood, which now bears a plaque. As you read the story, you learn that the descendants of the non-Jews live in denial of their ancestors’ actions. The story teaches us that it was not the Nazis who perpetrated this evil, but people who were friends and neighbors. It is a painfully dark story in Holocaust history that helps us understand how ordinary people were caught up in evil.

I also remember walking through Birkenau, beholding the barracks, entering the gas chamber, and then reaching the crematorium at the back of the camp. It is impossible to describe what it is like to walk through a gas chamber where more than a million of our Jewish family members were murdered. I recall feeling a hollowness whose depth reached the center of the earth. It was as if my soul became disjoined from my body. I felt so empty, unable to connect to anything. I remember sitting by the crematoria, and our teacher, Paul Liptz, picked up a small piece of human bone to show us. I asked to hold it; to this day, I cannot explain why. Perhaps I was hoping I’d cry. With the bone in my hand, I still felt empty. But I wondered who that person was, and how I would never know their story. For years I thought something was wrong with me—why wasn’t I in tears? Why couldn’t I feel anything? Years later I realized nothing was wrong with me. Sadness is not the only emotion one can feel in a place of unimaginable death. One can feel numb, hollow, empty.

Fast forward to May of 2024—I arrived in post-October 7th Israel with our group from Beth Tikvah. We had traveled to the Nova site—another place of death and evil. It is a park, a field, that was set up for a music festival. I felt hollow inside, but I recognized the feeling. I had only felt it once before. It was the same one I had felt 22 years earlier inside the gates of Auschwitz.

History echoes within our minds, stirring emotions that echo within our souls.

As a people, we return to the places of death and destruction because we are storytellers. We stand in those fields, and in the barracks, to bear witness and to emphatically say: we are still here.

Tonight, at Shabbat services, you will hear from Michelle Lee and Ben Reinicke, who recently returned from the March of the Living. Together with Jews from around the world, Holocaust survivors, and October 7th survivors, they marched on Yom HaShoah from Auschwitz. They visited many of the same places I did. Michelle and Ben will graduate high school in only a few short weeks, and they will carry this experience with them as they go off to college. Join us this evening to hear their insights.

In many ways, the March of the Living captures the essence of Jewish tradition. In each generation, we tell the story of our people. Whether we journey to Spain to learn about pre-expulsion Jewish life, or we visit Eastern Europe and immerse ourselves in a history that emerges through the ashes—wherever our people have traveled, the stories of sadness and reemergence follow us.

Another story is emerging this week. The Eurovision Song Contest is once again upon us. If you have not yet listened to Israel’s submission by Yuval Raphael, called New Day Will Rise, it is a must. Yuval Raphael is a Nova survivor. It is a powerful song that blends English, French, and Hebrew and is built on the story of the aftermath of October 7th, which echoes the story of our people.

Whether we listen to Michelle and Ben’s reflections tonight or Raphael’s beautiful song, we will rise, we will dance again, we will continue to tell the stories—because that is what we do as Jewish people!

Shabbat Shalom,

Rabbi Rick Kellner