How has the role of rabbis in Israel changed since October 7?

The events of October 7 were godless. People were shot in their burning homes, raped, and brutalized in every way imaginable, and stolen from their loved ones for no reason. It’s impossible to look at what happened that day and find any speck of a benevolent divine source.

The year following the massacre has brought more confusion and pain, and it often feels like all this suffering is for naught. Efforts haven’t returned the remaining 101 hostages, only half of whom are alive. Families are still displaced from the North, which is now certain to become a fuller-scale battleground than it already is. Terrorist attacks have been happening at a frighteningly increasing pace across the country, and Israeli society seems like it’s ripping apart at the seams while trying to balance it all.

Our eyes have been straining toward the mountains for far too long. Where will our help come from?

Since October 7, Israelis have had a lot of overwhelming emotions and questions about the world we live in and our place in it. We need someone to hold our hand and listen empathetically. Someone to remind us that even if things aren’t okay now, we are not alone. Someone to lead us in walking that difficult line between celebration of life and processing difficult emotions.

Rabbis who are traditionally spiritual leaders in their communities have faced a whole new level of challenges from congregants and from the need to dig deep down to maintain their own spiritual balance during a year of upheaval.

“The role that rabbis were playing during the war is more important than ever,” said Rabbi David Stav, chairman and founder of the Tzohar Rabbinical Association and the chief rabbi of Shoham. “It’s not only the dimensions of the tragedy and the numbers of the victims, but it’s also the uncertainty about what happened to people. It was a big challenge.”

On October 7, Stav spent many long hours comforting grieving families, helping identify bodies, and saying kaddish for those who had no family members who were able to do so.

Tzohar, a collective of over 800 Religious-Zionist Modern Orthodox rabbis, aims to bridge the gap between secular and religious communities in Israel. The organization mobilized 400 shiva visits to grieving families, kashered restaurant kitchens around the country to support the war effort, and performed countless quick weddings for soldiers headed to the front lines of the Israel-Hamas war.

“I think that Tzohar’s main role has been to try and raise the voice of what I believe represents the vast majority of Israeli society that urges to unify forces and urges to deepen Jewish identity, without being perceived or judged as trying to make people frum, or trying to make people secular, or to try to change people’s identities, but to strengthen the Jewish common denominator between us,” he said.

In particular, Stav noticed that a majority of people he met reacted to the ongoing traumas of the past year in one of two ways.

“On one side, there is a deep thirst for understanding more [about] our Jewish identity,” Stav said. “Many people understand that the war that broke out on Oct. 7 was not just a conflict about territories or about something national, but it is something that is much deeper. And therefore, they look to understand what stands behind this, and therefore I believe that this wave of interest in Judaism and Jewish heritage will continue to grow.”

However, Stav says he sees the second phenomenon on occasion as well. “On the other hand, I believe and I see that there are some people who lost their faith. People who, even if they wouldn’t declare it publicly, and even if they would not take off their kippah, have a lot of questions.”

While he can’t say which movement is bigger, Stav says these two phenomena are parallel.

A resurgence of faith and a loss of faith

FOR THE first group, the interest in Judaism that Stav noticed doesn’t always mean going to shul every day. It could mean leaning on a Jewish community for comfort, like some congregants from Jerusalem Conservative Synagogue Moreshet Avraham have done.

“The role of the rabbi is divided between challenging people and comforting people,” said the  East Talpiot neighborhood’s kehilla’s co-religious leader, Rabbi David Goodman. “This year really brought us to the point which we need to work hard at comforting our people and to find a way to reach the heart, although it’s currently bleeding.”

“For some [congregants], we know that has kind of been a question of ‘Where was God?’ But I think for many it was actually the community and the tradition that was a deep anchor to them,” said his wife and co-religious leader, Rabba Amirit Rosen. 

The two opened the synagogue’s doors wide on October 7 to be in community with their congregation and neighbors, which ended up growing into something bigger.

For almost three weeks afterward, Moreshet Avraham became a de facto community center for people of all backgrounds after local infrastructure was shut down.

“We had hundreds of families coming because people were looking for some kind of anchor [as to] what to do with the kids,” said Rosen. “People [were] constantly looking at the news, but at the same time looking for some kind of relief for them, for their children.”

The two even facilitated a bar mitzvah only a week after October 7 for a young boy whose father was called up for army service.

“It was so amazing to see how people from the community just called and asked, ‘What can we bring? What can we cook?’” said Goodman. Even though there were initial concerns that no one would come, because of local advisories about leaving the house, nearly 250 people showed up to support the bar mitzvah boy. “We had an endless amount of food. People wanted to be there. It was such a tragic week, and this is the first time that they met other people not through screens.”

In fact, emotional communal highs and lows can feel more like a whiplash-inducing roller coaster when exacerbated by the current reality. “This is why one of the verses that I kept in my heart for the holidays was, ‘I turn my eyes to the mountains. Where will my help come from?’ Because there are so many mountains, and to look for them, it takes us up and down,” said Goodman.

“IN MY personal theology, God, in days like this, cries over her decision to give us freedom of choice,” said Rabbi Oded Mazor of Kehilat Kol Haneshama, a Reform synagogue in Jerusalem. “My crisis of faith is more with humanity, and that, all in all, we’re going to a better place. It’s harder to hold that, because we see that, time and time again, humans are choosing to go back to their ancient, bad ways.”

Mazor found himself having to find a mix of expressing pain and celebration right now. While Kol Haneshama’s Shabbat services used to be more joyful, he says that has shifted with the current context.

“The events of this past year have influenced our services, our awareness of the hostages and praying for their release, awareness of the many people who are away from their homes, and awareness of the war going on,” he said. “Praying for the safety, for the sake, for the redemption, of everyone here has become a major part in our service.”

He has also led a significantly higher number of bar mitzvahs in his community, and noted that there definitely were faces who started coming to shul more than they used to, if only to coordinate weekly volunteering efforts with other community members. However, he believes his role has shifted to more of a political one.

“Parents [of bar and bat mitzvah kids] said very clearly that in such difficult times, if there is an opportunity to celebrate, we need to take that opportunity and bring our family and friends together. They chose to do it with us because they wanted a place where how they understand the reality will be in sync with the community, in a place where concern for human lives is part of the identity of the community,” he said. “I find myself and many other Reform rabbis around Israel who’ve become much more political in that aspect because shouting for the sake of the hostages is a commandment for us these days.”

OCTOBER 7 shifted the magnitude of honoring life and death or good and bad for these rabbis; it shifted the way they view liturgy, too. Classic prayers and rituals for the High Holy Days, for example, look different.

“We cannot ignore the pain,” said Stav. “We cannot ignore what happened to us. So we added a few small prayers before blowing the shofar, mentioning the hostages and asking for the quick victory of our people over Hezbollah, over Hamas, over our enemies.

“Now, every Israeli song with the word ‘habayta’ [home] has a new meaning to it when you hear it on the radio,” Mazor said. “So it’s the same thing with the prayers, feeling that some of these prayers are now talking about our reality in a different way.”

“What is the Torah that should be given in such a time of crisis? Every week brings its own news, but really the parasha is the possibility to rise up from the specific news and to really think about it as something wider,” said Goodman; “what will give a sense of meaning, but also strengthen the community,” added Rabbi Amirit.

Rosen and Goodman also had to learn how to balance the bleak reality and hope for a brighter, safer tomorrow.

“When we are speaking to the community, we try to, on the one hand, be in touch with the harsh reality that everyone is going through,” said Rosen. “And at the same time, [we] try to hold on to that hope, the dream. To strengthen that sense of possibility for change and to support one another, even if we can’t change the whole situation.”

“Our biggest crisis today is the lack of trust between the people and the leadership,” said Stav. “We urge our leadership to tell us the truth and to be worthy of the amazing spirit of our youngsters who sacrifice their lives for the State of Israel. We should be worthy of the sacrifice.”

This can all be intimidating and incredibly disheartening. It may make people want to practice in a different way than they have before, or ask questions they never thought they’d ask themselves.

And for those who have questions, that doesn’t mean they’re fully walking away from Judaism.

“No one will come and publicly say ‘Well, I want to observe less,’ but you can analyze from the questions,” Stav said, touching on personal experience with his outreach. At the end of the day, he says, spiritual decisions with this level of emotion behind them won’t happen overnight. “It’s a journey. It’s not something you decide today, tomorrow, to do or to leave.”

“In most of these conversations, my reply was mainly that I have no answer, that we’re all struggling,” said Mazor.” “It’s hard, it’s painful, and the strength of the community is in going through this together. Sometimes we are the ones who are, for some reason, on that specific day, a bit more hopeful or a bit more courageous in facing the news, and we’re the ones to hug others.”

So we keep our eyes turned to the mountains, and let today be today and tomorrow be tomorrow. Some of us may not see God in all of this pain, but we know where our communities are. Maybe that is where our help will come from all along.