“Report from Israel,” Rabbi Elaine Zecher’s Shabbat Awakenings

August 22, 2025 | 28 Av 5785

Welcome to Shabbat Awakenings, a weekly reflection, as we make our way toward Shabbat. You can also listen to it as a podcast.

I am not in Israel but hope to be this February on a CJP/Rabbi trip. Until then (besides being in conversation with my brother at the various family weddings this summer and on the phone) I am paying close attention, reading what I can and following a What’s App group of Reform rabbis who care deeply about Israel, her vitality, safety, and peace.

In Israel this week, there was a larger than usual nationally organized protest. The desire to end the war is strong and to bring back the hostages. The demand for Hamas to end the fighting is strong.

This week I share a post by the Executive Director of the Israel Religious Action Center, Orly Erez-Likhovski. Her predecessor, Anat Hoffman, visited and spoke with us at Temple Israel often. She shares her experience of the protest. She speaks of wanting the Israeli government’s attention. It is going to take many groups and countries to coalesce around what it will take to transform the brutality of this war into a chance for peace.

From Orli at IRAC:

Yesterday was not just another day of protest. We have been in the streets for months now, but this time felt different, more urgent, more raw. The anger was palpable, the determination fierce. The cry was simple and powerful: Enough!

Enough abandoning the hostages!
Enough violence!
Enough killing and starvation!
Enough of a government concerned more with its own political survival than with its duty to its citizens: to bring home the hostages, to seek a ceasefire, to work toward a political solution that will build a better future for all who live here.

Yesterday, in addition to the protests, there was a national strike. Dozens of High Tech companies, NGOs, restaurants, municipalities, universities and other businesses participated in the strike. Hundreds of thousands of Israelis went on strike — they didn’t go to work, they didn’t shop — according to Israeli reports, yesterday they spent tens of millions of shekels less than on a regular day — and instead they took to the streets to make their voices heard. We did the same — the Reform Movement went on strike, and all day we took part in protests across the country. I began the day at 7 AM at the entrance to my community, the Jerusalem suburb of

Mevasseret Zion, where about a hundred of us gathered with yellow ribbons and signs. Standing passively on the sidewalk didn’t feel like enough, so I called on people to step out onto the road, partially blocking traffic. It was not a regular day. We had to make sure people were not going on with their lives as usual.

Taking the megaphone, I helped to lead the demonstrators in chanting slogans calling for the release of the hostages, and for an end to the war. For two hours, we chanted, we called out, we read the names of the hostages over and over again. Many people told me later they saw us and that it had an impact.

From there, I joined throngs of protesters in Jerusalem, where we climbed down the embankments from the Hebrew University Givat Ram campus and sat down right in the middle of Jerusalem’s major cross-city highway, disrupting traffic and calling on the government to stop abandoning the hostages, to end the war and the death and starvation in Gaza. Then we marched between the cars, making sure all the drivers saw us and that they did not turn away from the plight of the hostages, our soldiers, and innocent Palestinians in Gaza.

Our message was clear. Silence is no longer an option, we must raise a voice, we must scream, because this situation cannot continue.

Later, after resting a little at home, interrupted by a siren during which we sought shelter from another missile launched from Yemen, I boarded a packed train to Tel Aviv.

Thousands filled the train cars, heading from all over the country to the demonstration that would close out this monumental day. Together, we marched from the station toward Hostages Square. The crowd of hundreds of thousands was so numerous that I couldn’t even reach the square itself. It was, without question, the largest demonstration since October 7.

I returned home near midnight, exhausted but uplifted. One million Israelis had protested at dozens of places all over the country. Despite the heat, fatigue, and increasing despair, they left their homes, and went out onto the streets to demand change.

Imagine 34 million US citizens protesting on the same day from Alaska to Puerto Rico. I do not know if our government will listen. But I know this: yesterday we showed the hostages and their families that they are not alone. It reminded us that we, who have been protesting this government for years, are not alone. And it reminded us that countless Israelis still believe in, and fight for, the Israel we dream of.

Standing with us in Mevasseret Zion that morning was the writer David Grossman, who lives in my community. Words he penned a year ago resonated with me throughout the day:

Now is the time to fight, people.
Now is the time to go out into the streets and onto the roads…
There is a reason to fight.
It all depends on you.
Now is the time to rise, to live,
to be a people or not to be,
to be human or not to be.
There is a reason,
and it all hangs
by a thread.
We will continue to fight.
For the hostages, for peace, and for a different reality.
With hope, resilience, and persistence,

Orly Erez-Likhovski
Executive Director, IRAC

Shabbat Shalom

שבת שלום

I look forward to hearing your thoughts and impressions. Share with me what you think. Your email goes directly to me!

Rabbi Elaine Zecher