‘Everybody needs to be uncomfortable’

Part of my office routine is scanning Jewish media when I first get to the office and maybe a couple of times during the workday. While mainstream media may report on rising antisemitism when an annual or semi-annual report is released, they don’t always publish the vandalizing of a synagogue or the antisemitic flyers left on the doors of a Jewish neighborhood. However, Jewish media – like The Forward and The Jewish Chronicle – pay attention to those incidents.

They also give us a window into what our Jewish neighbors are thinking regarding a wide variety of topics – important at the current moment is the Israel-Hamas War and rising antisemitism.

For this reason, we are starting a regular feature in Heart’s Cry we’ll call Jewish Media Review. Every month, I hope to share some articles and essays that I have found valuable as we work to build bridges with our Jewish neighbors. CMJ USA will not necessarily agree with the opinions shared in these pieces.

We start with the source of our headline, a quote by Rachel Goldberg-Polin, the mother of Israeli hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin, 23.

• 😢‘Everybody needs to be uncomfortable’: Rachel Goldberg-Polin’s tireless campaign to bring her son home
  
  Rachel has become “the international face, voice and conscious” of the Israel-Hamas War, writes The Forward. She wears a piece of tape marking how many days her son has been a captive.
  
  “It makes people very uncomfortable — it’s uncomfortable to look at a mother wearing a number of the days since her son was stolen from her,” Goldberg-Polin told [the reporter] when [they] met at her home on Day 58. “It’s masking tape and a Sharpie. I would be fine with everybody doing it. Meaning, not hostage families — if everybody in America wanted to do it, everybody on planet Earth. Everybody needs to be uncomfortable.”
   
  I hear in this the call for Christians to sit in the awkward silences and the discomfort of discussing the war, of praying for justice, of calling for the hostages’ release. We say Jesus Messiah came to free the captives and to heal the brokenhearted. Do we believe Jesus is big enough to free Israeli hostages and to heal the broken hearts of Israelis and Gazans alike?
  
  
• 💔 ‘Ashamed at how my heart has shrunk’: Takeaways from 10 days of reporting in Israel
   
      The quote in this headline comes from a left-leaning, activist rabbi named Levi Weiman-Kelman. He captures the struggle some of us feel to a lesser degree as we grapple with the atrocities of October 7 and the suffering of Gazan civilians.
   
  “'I think on October 7 all of our hearts were broken, and since then everyone is just trying to cope with so much, and we’re limited human beings,' explained Weiman-Kelman, who made aliyah in the 1970s and has been active in Rabbis for Human Rights and voted for the leftist Meretz Party ever since. 'The suffering in Gaza is real. I definitely don’t wish anyone in Gaza harm, but I just don’t feel I have the emotional capacity to contain all this,' he continued. 'This is the ultimate Hamas victory. They made me a worse person, they made me a less compassionate person. I’m just so angry about that.'”
   
  Those of us who are followers of Jesus, we need to pray for his strength through the Holy Spirit to grow in compassion, especially for the side we may not naturally lean toward. Yes, we pray for justice. But we’re also supposed to love mercy as we walk humbly with our God.
  
  
• 😔I didn’t understand Holocaust denial until Oct. 7
   
      A Jewish young man thought his grandmother was overly anxious that no one really believed her Holocaust experiences. “Her fears of denial seemed unfounded. Yes, there were Holocaust deniers, but they were outliers. Besides, a logical solution to denial seemed to be more education. With enough proof, I thought, the skeptics my grandmother feared so deeply would have to acknowledge the truth. Amid so much evidence, how could anyone have the gall to deny?”
  Yet, here were are months from the unspeakable atrocities Hamas perpetrated on October 7, and we hear voices sowing doubt about what happened, how it happened, who the actors were.
   
  “Now, in the aftermath of Oct. 7, I finally get it. My grandmother was not paranoid; her cynicism was exactly right. No proof of Jewish suffering will ever be enough to quash denial — so perhaps, it’s time we stop trying to explain ourselves.”
   
  The Holocaust generation is dying and will no longer be able to tell their lived experiences. It is up to us to pick up their stories and educate future generations. Likewise, we must speak honestly about what happened on October 7 and not allow the deniers to minimize Hamas’ crimes against civilians – men, women, children, the elderly.
  
  
• ✝️Christians reacted to October 7 with muddled thinking
   
  This opinion piece from The Jewish Chronicle will make many of us uncomfortable. We will have rebuttals and critiques. But first, just sit with it. In order to love our Jewish neighbors well, we need to listen to them. We need to hear their hearts and thoughts, especially when they have something to say to us Christians. Oliver Kamm is a British writer with Jewish background.