This is an emergency. Gaza is starving and We Must Stop This.

I have been trying to think of the right way to begin such a letter, but I think the only way is to say it directly and clearly: We are living through a historic emergency. Children in Gaza are starving in a human created famine, and we must come together despite all our differences to stop it.

Next Sunday night is the beginning of the fast of Tisha B’Av, the saddest day of the Jewish year. On that day, we mourn the destruction of the Temples by the Babylonians and later the Romans and sing laments for the deaths and starvation of our people during the siege. As we will read in Lamentations that evening:

“My eyes are spent with tears…
As babes and sucklings languish
In the squares of the city.

They keep asking their mothers,
‘Where is bread and wine?’
As they languish like battle-wounded

In the squares of the town,
As their life runs out
In their mothers’ bosoms.”
(2:11-12)

Last year on Tisha B’Av, we also mourned October 7^th, and the atrocities committed on our people, slaughtered by Hamas in their beds, in front of their children, or in the fields at a music festival. We poured out our hearts, cried for our people’s pain, and prayed for a future of safety and healing.

This year, we must open our eyes to yet another tragedy. This one is committed not on our people but by the leadership of Israel. Gaza is starving. And yes, Hamas bears responsibility for starting this latest cycle of violence in such a brutal way on October 7th. They bear responsibility for murders, kidnappings, and sexual violence as a tool of war. They bear responsibility for being willing to sacrifice their people for extremist religious and political goals. But Israel also bears responsibility. It bears responsibility for cutting off food, electricity and medicines for almost three months, and responsibility for firing live ammunition on hungry Palestinians forced to cross military lines to get food. It bears responsibility for not doing everything in its power to prioritize the return of the hostages and to protect Palestinian civilian life in this war. And it bears responsibility for ignoring its own military leaders who warned that Gaza was on its way to starvation and that the government’s objective of eliminating Hamas was militarily untenable.

There is no context that relieves Hamas of its responsibility for this humanitarian disaster, and no context that relieves the Israeli government of its responsibility. Neither is there any context to relieve us as Americans and American Jews from our own moral responsibility to cry out that this must end.

During this unfolding humanitarian disaster, too often, we as American Jews have prioritized our arguments with each other over working together to stop this abomination. It is time to put aside these divisions and work together to save human life, first and foremost out of moral obligation, but also for the sake of the Israel we care about, and the Torah and Judaism we have inherited.

We Jews must challenge ourselves to work together. If you are an older person who thinks your adult children or grandchildren just don’t understand the reality of antisemitism, look at the reality they are seeing of starvation in Gaza, and understand that they are standing up for their Jewishness in a way that is critical for our future.

If you are young and are using the word “Zionist” with contempt, understand that for many Jews in modern history, Zionism was a last resort in a world of nation-states that freely exploited or killed Jews whenever it was convenient. And while untold numbers of Jews were either killed or kidnapped or where too scared to even let their children know their heritage, Zionists instead opted to build a society where Jews could live and be free as Jews.

Are these two perspectives really so incompatible? Don’t we all share the basic Torah value of the dignity of all human beings?

What can we do? We can say out loud and together that this starvation is an emergency and an atrocity. We can support joint Israeli-Palestinian organizations like Women Wage Peace, Combatants for Peace and Parents Circle Families Forum, along with Israeli organizations like the New Israel Fund who believe in democracy and human rights. We can raise our voices in our own Jewish organizations we belong to or lead to say that Jews must say no to starvation as a part of war. We can sign on to Jews for Food Aid for People of Gaza, as the MVHC has done. We can call our representatives to let them know that supporting Israel also means ending this war. We can direct our financial donations to food aid for Gaza.

We can do all of this, for now is the time to save lives. Now it is time to say that if we want freedom and security for ourselves as Jews, we need to work together so that Palestinians will be free as well. There are no shortcuts to doing the right thing. Now is the time we all need to say to each other across ethnic, religious, and national lines — your life matters to me.

As our tradition teaches, “If I am not for myself who will be for me. If I only for myself, what am I? And if not now when?”