A conversation with Rabbi Jennifer Jaech of Temple Israel about October 7, Israel, Gaza, Hamas, and the chances for peace.

As the one-year anniversary nears of the terrible events of October 7, we sat down with the Senior Rabbi of Temple Israel of Northern Westchester for a wide-ranging discussion of the issues.

Photo by Michael Balter

Editor’s note: Rabbi Jennifer Jaech has been the Senior Rabbi at Temple Israel in Croton since 2006. Known for her interfaith work and involvement in social justice issues, she is a former Co-Chair of Reform Jewish Voice of New York State and served on the Union for Reform Judaism’s Commission on Social Action and the Central Conference of American Rabbis’ Committee on Justice, Peace and Civil Liberties. We agreed that our conversation was not only one between a journalist and a rabbi, but also between one Jew and another. The discussion was informed by these overlapping perspectives.

THE CHRONICLE:  I read a few of your sermons right before October 7. It was really interesting, you had a couple of sermons in September of 2023, that were about various philosophical and life issues. But then you had one that was about security, and security here at the Temple, and having a security guard.

RABBI JAECH: Yes.

THE CHRONICLE: And concerns about violent anti-Semitism and the obvious threat that’s always there. It was almost like a premonition, perhaps, of October 7. Where were you and what were you doing when you first heard about the horrible events of October 7?

RABBI JAECH: So I was here at the synagogue, because it was Shabbat and it was also a festival. I lead a Torah study group in the morning, and the news reports were just coming out. I glanced at the reports briefly, but also, unfortunately, in the past there have been so many flare-ups on the border, so I thought okay maybe this is just another flare-up that sometimes happens. It wasn’t clear how serious it was and I had a mission, I had to teach this class, which ended at 10:30 [am] and then there was a service at 11, a memorial service that was part of our festival calendar, Yizkor. People started coming, and one of them said something’s going on in Israel. We had our service, and it wasn’t until the early afternoon that I was able to turn on the television and find out what was really going on. So several hours afterwards I got the details.

THE CHRONICLE: I guess it slowly became obvious how bad it was?

RABBI JAECH: It slowly became obvious how bad it was. My first response, because I am clergy, was not to think about the politics but about the people who were affected. Because we have members of our congregation with family in Israel, we have a cousin of one of our families was at the Nova music festival…

THE CHRONICLE: Did they survive it?

RABBI JAECH:  They did, with a harrowing story to tell, how they survived it. We had a teenager who had just returned from a summer there, made friends with a lot of the soldiers there. So I reached out to everybody I knew that had a close personal connection. Just to see, are they okay. And I have friends in Israel too, so all I knew to do was just check in on my people. So that was my first response.

THE CHRONICLE:  Obviously that was your first job, to try to provide some comfort to people. The worst anti-Semitic attack that had taken place…

RABBI JAECH:  Since the Holocaust. Yes. And I remember having to preach, the timing was terrible, because I came down with a terrible virus shortly after October 7. We did a couple of things in the days following, it happened on a Saturday, and the first time we had a Center for Jewish Learning [session], we wanted to give parents who might be in the building an opportunity to gather together in the sanctuary just to be with each other, to express any feelings that they might be having, so we did that immediately too. I knew that I was going to have to say something from the bimah the next Friday night.

THE CHRONICLE: Was that difficult, to decide what to say?

RABBI JAECH: You know, all I could think of, what’s most important to express, was the pain that we are feeling.  I think it’s important to give voice to that. And also to give voice, and I did, to the fact that we cannot harden our hearts either. When we are under attack that’s when it’s very easy to get hardened. When I was a rabbinical student in Jerusalem, I learned two really important things. One thing I learned was the importance of the Land of Israel to Jews, our first narratives come from the land, our holidays, our connection to the cycles of the Land of Israel. We lived for one year in Israel [with her family.] So that really came home to me. 

Then I also learned, because I made contact with people who told me the Palestinian narrative too. There was a gentleman who had a shop, he sold Bedouin art, in the Old City of Jerusalem. And he had been really friendly with generations of students who went through the seminary that I attended, Hebrew Union College. So I met him through some of those students and we became friendly and had many conversations. His family had lived in the neighborhood where I lived in Jerusalem, they left during the [1948] conflict, now he was a Jordanian citizen but living in East Jerusalem. We talked about the fact that two peoples have claims to the same land, Until we come up with a way to accept that reality, how do we move forward? So I had that in my heart too, I thought it was important to say from the bimah how we can’t let this harden our hearts.

THE CHRONICLE: This congregation has a long and famous history for being pro social justice, and being active in civil rights movements, for example Lorraine Hansberry speaking at the civil rights rally in the 1960s. I know in 2018 you wrote an article for the Forward about going to the south, so clearly that is part of this congregation’s legacy and current practice. Did you expect at that point, so shortly after October 7, and/or did you fear that Israel was going to react in a way that would be troublesome for us as Jews?

RABBI JAECH: So one or two days after October 7 I listened to a Zoom interview with an Israeli journalist, Amir Tibon. He was on one of the kibbutzim near the [area] that was invaded by Hamas. And he told of having to hide in the safe room with his two young preschool daughters, who went the whole day without food or water and being really quiet as they listened to the violence that was unfolding. And his father, who was a retired military person, drove down from Tel Aviv as soon as he heard what was going on, you can read about this.

In this interview after he described what had happened to him, he talked about the things that would certainly happen next. And I’m sure Hamas knew that Israel would respond with full force, and that because of the way Hamas embeds itself in the population, many children, women, non-Hamas Palestinians would be killed. And that world opinion would turn against Israel as a result, and anti-Semitism would rise. He was absolutely right, the reality was even worse, because October 7 is still going on, the hostages are still there and the trauma is still very fresh.

So I could believe that would happen. It was great to see the outpouring for Israel in the immediate aftermath, and then you saw it start to wane.

THE CHRONICLE:  Let’s talk about that. There doesn’t seem to be any doubt that Hamas knew what Israel was going to do. Some people say that Hamas knows Israel better than it knows itself. I don’t know whether that’s true or not, but certainly the leaders of Hamas were not naive about what the reaction was going to be. And the assumption that many people make is that this was a conscious thing, that they are going to over-react, and the world is going to turn against Israel.

RABBI JAECH:  Yes.

THE CHRONICLE:  So the question is, and I’m not holding you responsible for what Israel does, but on the other hand we are Jews and we have to share that kind of responsibility, for what Jews do around the world, and for Judaic principles. Was there concern in your mind that Israel would fall into this trap of over-reacting or of reacting in a way that would give Hamas what it wanted?

RABBI JAECH:  So with the current government of Israel, I didn’t feel I was qualified, and still don’t feel I am qualified, to comment on the military response. I do think that going after your people who are held hostage is a legitimate response. And to try to take out the organization that really tried to slaughter, and did slaughter, many of your people. I know you want to talk about Gaza, but because of my own experience in Israel I have also been concerned about what is going on in the West Bank. And I think that there… in Gaza I can’t use the word that it was an intentional genocide, it was a military response to this. But some of these terrible settlers on the West Bank, I think they want to run the Palestinians out. And they appear to be doing that.

THE CHRONICLE:  I want to talk about the West Bank, I think that’s important especially in light of the ICJ [International Court of Justice] ruling, which was pretty definitive as you know…

RABBI JAECH:  Yes.

THE CHRONICLE:  Just before we get to that, to go back to Gaza, what we do know, I’m not asking you to make judgements of international law, but probably most or maybe all human rights organizations, human rights experts, organizations even within Israel itself, like B’Tselem or Gisha, and others, have concluded–we can leave the question of genocide aside for a moment–that Israel has violated international law, that it has committed war crimes.

RABBI JAECH:  Right. And Hamas too, right?

THE CHRONICLE:  Yes. And I’m not assuming that because Israel might have committed war crimes means that what Hamas did was less bad. But that seems to be a consensus among human rights experts, the International Court of Justice based on the South African case has considered it to be “plausible” that genocide has been committed. So the question there is, let’s assume that is true for the moment… and you can push back on any assumptions I am making, but what is your responsibility as a spiritual leader, and what more generally are our responsibilities as Jews vis-à-vis Israel if it is true that Israel is committing war crimes? These international laws were adopted after the Holocaust to try to prevent more Holocausts. Is there a red line, in which over it we would have to say, no, we can no longer support, we can no longer identify with what the leadership of that country is doing? Is there a red line?

RABBI JAECH:  So I’m not sure that is my role as a rabbi. I feel that my role as a rabbi is to, first of all, recognize the diversity of opinion that is in my own congregation, in any group you have a spectrum of beliefs. I’m sure that I have people who would not fully call themselves Zionists, in my congregation, and there are people that are closely tied with Israel. So you have that variation. What I tried to do this past year, in terms of those kinds of discussions, was to have different programs, I think we had six different programs offered by people who had something to say about this conflict. I wanted to create the environment here where we could have difficult conversations, respectful conversations, across differences.

[She names a few of the programs] I participated along with interfaith clergy in what we called a vigil of lament and grief for Gaza and Israel, that was important, to express grief at what was going on to all peoples there. We also had through one of our cantors a young Israeli person who had served in the army, talk about what his experiences were.

THE CHRONICLE:  So you had a mix of public and internal…?

RABBI JAECH:  A mix, internal discussions, and of course in sermons throughout the year, and even in this Torah study group that I run, this topic has come up and we have talked about it. As an institution the only person who can speak for Temple Israel is the president, I can only speak for myself as an individual, so that’s important to say. We haven’t adopted any statement about it. The Reform movement has made statements this year, about different things.

THE CHRONICLE:  Are there statements by the Reform movement you could point us to?

RABBI JAECH:  There are a few bodies in the Reform movement, the Religious Action Center for Reform Judaism, they have issued some statements, and then I am part of a rabbinical organization of reform rabbis, the Central Conference of American Rabbis, CCAR, they have issued statements. I feel like that’s enough for statements. We are going to foster discussions that we need to have. We don’t want to turn a blind eye, we want people to have access to information that they need, and find their own place on this difficult issue.

We did have a committee that formed after October 7 called the Israel Engagement Committee, and they are sponsoring a symposium we are having next week about anti-Semitism in the United States on college campuses.

THE CHRONICLE:  Speaking of anti-Semitism, which obviously has not gone away and maybe has gotten many times worse, in your discussions, have there been discussions–there’s no excusing anti-Semitism for any reason–but have there been discussions about the fact, or the likelihood, that the way the Israel has been conducting itself in Gaza would give ammunition to anti-Semities, an excuse to be anti-Semitic or to portray Jews in a very negative light? The conservative estimate is 15,000 children killed in Gaza, speaking personally as a Jew I don’t think that’s very good for our reputation. To what extent would either you personally or your congregation feel about that dynamic? And are we safer?

RABBI JAECH:  I don’t feel safer after October 7. I look at what happened not as a matter of judgment-–I feel terrible for the innocent lives that have been lost in Gaza, we can’t close our hearts to that. Looking at Israel’s reaction to the war I don’t look at it as a matter of judging what Israel is doing, because I don’t really know, I don’t live over there, I’m not a military advisor. But the fact is, I think, that what’s happening in Gaza has inflamed anti-Semitism that has been latent, or at least not so visible. Although certainly what happened in Pittsburgh [at the Tree of Life synagogue] was a reminder that violent anti-Semitism is still very much part of it. But what feels different about this is that in Pittsburgh [the shooter] was anti-immigrant, and [opposed to] our helping immigrants settle in this country. What is happening on many college campuses is that we are seeing anti-Semitism really rising on the left.

And so it has been hurtful that the people that we’ve shown up to march with for justice have been silent after October 7.

THE CHRONICLE:  Or in some cases even think it was okay?

RABBI JAECH:  Yes. You heard what was said at Harvard by some. So this is reality that has happened, and that we are seeing the results. Israel is the only Jewish state, so what Israel does reflects on us, even though that’s part of the anti-Semitic dynamic, to say we are going to hold Jews responsible for what this nation does.

THE CHRONICLE:  That’s a really good point, because Netanyahu claims at least that Israel speaks, and what Israel does, speaks for all Jews everywhere, and to be honest Joe Biden has basically said the same thing. Is that true, are we responsible for what Israel does, or is it not true, in which case we are not responsible for what Israel does, perhaps to oversimplify.

RABBI JAECH:  How can a nation say that it speaks for all of its citizens? Right? I don’t want to be held accountable for everything the United States has done.

THE CHRONICLE:  Me neither! 

RABBI JAECH:  Yes, but that’s part of the problem, in many people’s minds, you saw it with Donald Trump too, this is your country, not the United States, but [Israel] is your country.

THE CHRONICLE:  The international laws that Israel is accused of violating were adopted after World War II, because of the Holocaust, probably first and foremost, but also because of other atrocities, the firebombing of Tokyo, the atomic bomb, that history. In terms of trying not to inflame anti-Semitism, do you see any problem? The ICJ may or may not come down with a decision that Israel is committing genocide, but it already has decided that Israel is violating international law in the West Bank. So we can now segue to the West Bank. To ask the question in a naive way, should Israel be following international law? Is there any excuse, does Israel have a right to claim an exception in certain situations because we were attacked by Hamas, or because of the Holocaust? Israel is a signatory to all of these laws.

RABBI JAECH:  So I am going to keep it to the level of the human, and my friend in Jerusalem. The fact is that two people have claimed this same land. I really do believe that. This is partly part of being a rabbi, I think where is the world now and where do we want the world to be? I think until we recognize the basic fact that Israel is not going away, the Palestinians have a right to self-determination and to live in dignity. How are we going to come together and make this a reality, that is where my interest is.

Personally, what I have been doing, so as not to feel powerless at this time, I have been supporting those organizations in Israel that are trying to keep the embers alive for the hope for a peace process. There is an organization called Roots, we had speakers from Roots here a few years ago, it’s an organization that brings settlers and their Palestinian neighbors together just so they can get to know each other. The kids do activities together, so that they don’t fear each other, a grassroots laying the groundwork for peace. There’s another organization called Standing Together, that does similar work. That’s where my hope lies, and when I get discouraged, I think, well, it’s still a very young conflict, in the ways of the world. Right? How long did it take Northern Ireland, about 400 years or something like that to achieve peace between the Catholics and the Protestants. I just try to say we cannot give up the hope for peace. Let’s do what we can as individuals to try to have a full understanding of what’s going on, and try to see where we can make a difference. For me I think peace is the answer.

THE CHRONICLE:  Just to push a little bit on this, in terms of the West Bank and the ICJ decision, which is completely unambiguous, but reflects UN resolutions going back to shortly after the 1967 war. Israel is a signatory to that court, so is the United States. Do you think that if Israel obeyed that decision, got out of the West Bank and the occupied territories in one year, and withdrew, let the Palestinians have that territory and let them have self-determination, that if they really did it, then we might get closer to the kind of peaceful resolution you are talking about?

RABBI JAECH:  If they really did it, can they do it is another question. I can’t vote, I’m not a citizen of Israel. I can’t vote in their elections and make a difference.

THE CHRONICLE:  When you say “can they,” do you mean can they because of the way they look at the conflict, or can they literally disengage physically from the West Bank? 

RABBI JAECH:  I think we are talking about ideology. That’s Biblical Israel in the minds of the people. And that is likely where the Israelites emerged, in the West Bank.

THE CHRONICLE: In terms of ideology, Palestinians and their supporters get very sharply criticized for the expression “From the River to the Sea,” but the counter-argument to that is that the Israelis have pretty much the same slogan. If they can’t for ideological reasons get out of the West Bank, they are basically saying, from the river to the sea as well.

RABBI JAECH:  It’s complicated. And more complicated than I could even give you a coherent answer to. I recognize the complexity. There may be a way, I think I heard about this through Roots, I think it’s called the One Homeland, Two States initiative, that basically… if there was a way for the people who feel ideologically that that they need to be in Biblical Israel to live there peacefully, that would be the Palestinian state but it was recognized that was also a homeland for the Jewish people, and if there was a way to do that, then the Messiah would have arrived! But I’m not sure that the Palestinians would get on board with that. That’s why I asked, can it happen? Once you have ideology and you feel this is my home, it’s very hard to  move off of that, but there are people who are still dreaming, what would such a plan look like if it was recognized that there was one homeland for these two peoples, and two states that govern it.

THE CHRONICLE:  So Israelis could live on the West Bank and Palestinians…?

RABBI JAECH:  and Palestinians could live in Israel, yes.

THE CHRONICLE:  But then Palestinians would obviously raise the right of return issue.

RABBI JAECH:  Yes.

THE CHRONICLE:  And they don’t seem to be willing to agree that they can’t have the right of return as part of the settlement. Or at least some version of it.

RABBI JAECH:  Some version of it, yes. Have you read My Promised Land, beautifully written, by Ari Shavit, that’s a really good book, really fully understanding the seeds of a conflict that seems intractable now. It’s really hard. I encourage people to read a variety of things, we should not get our news from one source to really have a full understanding of what’s going on. There are so many changes you have seen in your lifetime, right, Israel means one thing to the older people in our congregation and quite another thing to the younger. But it makes sense, the older people remember the early days of the miracle state that was attacked on all sides and stood for ideals, and then the younger people have only known Israel after the 1967 war, when we were in territories that weren’t inside the Green Line.

It makes sense that there would be a divide about Israel. Just generally speaking. There’s a lot of work that needs to be done in terms of educating, right now my pressing concern is what’s happening with anti-Semitism here and now. It’s a fact that it is up.

THE CHRONICLE:  And of course we’re here in the United States, we’re not in Israel or in Gaza…

RABBI JAECH:  Yes, we’re not in Israel, we don’t…  the year I spent in Israel was pretty quiet, we had to know where all the bomb shelters were, I think only once was there a potential that we had to go into the bomb shelter, there was some kind of skirmish. But it was a pretty quiet year, 1998, 1999, it seemed peace was just around the corner.

THE CHRONICLE: I was there too, in 1999, and I had exactly the same impression. At the checkpoints you saw Palestinians laughing and joking with Israeli guards, probably a time that never existed before and has never existed since.

RABBI JAECH:  Yes. I think a key thing, leadership is so important, good leaders… not every leader can do that. We saw that happen. The feeling was, we are going to settle things with the Palestinians, it’s the only way we’re going to have a future.

THE CHRONICLE:  One last question, I hate to end on a not entirely hopeful note, but I think it’s necessary. As Jews, shouldn’t we be concerned now that we, or Israel in our name, have bought at least one if not more than one generation of revenge on the part of Palestinians who are still alive but have lost family members? Imagine a 14 year old boy in Gaza, his parents and younger sister are killed by an Israeli bomb and none of them are members of Hamas…

RABBI JAECH:  Yes.

THE CHRONICLE:  … and he grows up, what’s he going to do?

RABBI JAECH:  Right. Yes. It’s a tragedy. I recognize that and of course I’m concerned. I also have to say that the government of Israel doesn’t speak for me. That I very much believe that Israel should exist, that people should live in security in that land, it’s essential for us as Jews. And I would love to see Israel chart a path to a peaceful future. And have that be a priority.

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