April 9, 2025

Dear Seattle Community,

This weekend, as we begin Passover, we will retell the story of our people’s Exodus from Egypt. There is a well-known moment in the story where the Israelites are standing on the shores of the Sea, on the brink of freedom from Egypt. The people are looking out at the vast water ahead of them and behind them the Egyptian army is barreling down upon them after Pharaoh’s change of heart. The people are, quite literally, trapped. 

That feeling of being trapped that our ancestors experienced during the Exodus feels similar to the experience of North American Jews right now. I’ve heard from many people in our community who are asking how we, as Jews, can navigate the moment we find ourselves living in.

On one side of us is the indisputable surge of antisemitism. Nowhere is this more evident than on college campuses, including close to home at the University of Washington. The ADL documented over 1,200 antisemitic incidents on college campuses across the country in 2023, and in a recent ADL/Hillel survey a frightening 83% of Jewish college students indicated that they have personally experienced or witnessed antisemitism. These are deeply alarming statistics and trends that are made worse when leadership on college campuses, be it administrators or faculty, choose to write off entirely or obfuscate the experience of 4 out of every 5 Jewish students. While many universities took steps prior to this school year to put in place policies  — or made it clear they intended to enforce their existing policies  — there continue to be historically high levels of antisemitism. Furthermore, the way that antisemitism has been normalized so rapidly in American society should be cause for grave concern for us all. 

On the other side, we see antisemitism being used to justify the curtailment of due process and civil liberties. To see plainclothes officers grabbing people off the streets and the chilling of free speech feels like Orwellian scenes from a distant place, but they are much closer to home. To be clear: the government has the right, and obligation, to enforce the laws of this country, but as Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the ADL, put it in a recent op-ed: “Enforcement actions must adhere not just to constitutional principles but to basic norms of established procedure. Indeed, it’s not just about the letter of the law, but the spirit of our country.”

When due process and other core American democratic values, not to mention Federal funding, are suspended in the name of combating antisemitism it has the potential to further fuel antisemitism by exacerbating classic tropes about Jewish power. Advocating for legal consequences for illegal actions alongside the protection of civil liberties and due process — even for those whom we vehemently disagree with — does not weaken our commitment to combating antisemitism, rather it strengthens our credibility as we advocate for the protection of civil liberties for the Jewish community as well. To quote Greenblatt again: “We can recognize the severity of the threat of those who drum up support for foreign terrorist organizations without abandoning the values that underpin our democracy. We can hold responsible those who engage in violative conduct without violating our own values.”

As our ancestors stood at the shore of the sea they looked out at the sea obstructing their future and felt their past, in the form of the Egyptian army, squeezing them. And then something miraculous happened; God tells Moses to lift his staff and hold out his arms and the sea splits creating a space for the Israelites to march forward on dry ground. The midrash about this moment tells us a different part of the story; while Moses is praying to God, and the people are frozen in place, one man, Nachshon ben Aminadav, walks into the water believing that he could change the status quo of the moment. While everyone else waited for the waters to split, Nachshon had the courage and faith to take action.

As we sit around our Passover seder tables, I know many of us will be having conversations about the tensions in our world and in Jewish life right now. While none of us can solve everything in our world, each of us can do something. I encourage you to think about Nachshon and ask yourself where are you prepared to walk into the water before the sea splits? Maybe it is related to free speech and democratic principles, or about immigration, or the ongoing fight in response to the rise in antisemitism, or it might be the unfinished work we are engaged in to protect our Jewish students on college campuses.

When the Israelites felt trapped between two options they called out to Moses asking to go back to Egypt as slaves, “for it is better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the wilderness” (Ex. 14:12). What Nachshon teaches us is that when it seems there are only two options and we are proverbially, or literally, trapped, there can be a third option. As a Jewish community we may feel trapped today between two forces, but we are well served to remember that like Nachshon taught us, it takes our own action to create the third path forward and there is always a different option than returning to Egypt.

We each have to make choices about how and what to be engaged in, but I hope as you retell the story of the Exodus this weekend, you think about what that looks like for you. 

I know that our world would be a better place with more Nachshons in it.

Chag Sameach,