We had tried to sign up for a Friday slot at Mt Carmel Cemetery to help with the restoration of the toppled tombstones, but all the slots on all three days were filled. So, with a few others from the Shore community, I was at the rally in Philadelphia on Thursday; “Stand against hate” was the motto. The rally was well attended and well organized; even the weather was good! Lots of Jewish faces (nice though brief reunions with Beth Hillelites and others) of all denominations, non-Jews (clergy and laity), and a dais full of politicians and other leaders.

All spoke to eradicating hate, some offering an action plan: love. Love your neighbor, do your best to show love to those who seek to hurt you. What a challenge! How do we show love to those who seek to do us harm, to those who seek to terrorize us by desecrating our cemeteries? Do we demand that they be brought to justice and then ask for leniency? Do we look for ways to show them that Jews are just people, that the ideas they embrace and the rhetoric that drives and nourishes them is poison? I wish I had an answer.

What I feel is that offering love is beyond me right now. Not even empathy or sympathy. This is all just plain wrong on every imaginable level, but that’s not much of an argument (if I thought that argument, debate, would have any effect). So I hit a point that, before entering rabbinical school and even more so after becoming a rabbi, always disappoints me: an impassioned speaker proclaims that “we cannot keep doing the same old; we must change the way we _________!” (pray, think, act, react, administer….) Then comes the deflation when the speaker doesn’t offer a concrete step or two (or three) that we can implement.

For today, then, I will close by suggesting that the first step toward a response to those who would deny us the right to exist is to learn more about who we are, whence we come, and how do we live assertively and Jewishly in the world? Read a book or two (or three), take a couple of classes, start reading biblical texts with a chevruta (study buddy), binge on some documentaries, subscribe to Moment, the Forward or other Jewish publications. Perhaps by learning more about who we Jews are, by learning to love ourselves, we will be more secure if/when we take the chance on being more forgiving.