AILSA CHANG, HOST:
The war between Israel and Hamas isn't just a conflict overseas. It's also causing divisions here in the U.S. among some people who are usually aligned. Many American Jews say the war has heightened internal debates within their communities. NPR religion correspondent Jason DeRose has the story of some synagogues that are working to be compassionate towards everyone suffering as a result of the conflict.
ALEX KRESS: Shabbat shalom.
JASON DEROSE, BYLINE: At Congregation Beth Shir Shalom in Santa Monica, Calif., Rabbi Alex Kress welcomes people on a recent Friday night.
KRESS: We are going to start our service with candles.
UNIDENTIFIED GROUP #1: (Singing in Hebrew).
DEROSE: The cantor and congregation sing in the Sabbath as children squirm in pews and wander the aisles. Outside, construction on a new security fence is mostly done. Kress says these past months have been especially difficult.
KRESS: As I think about how to keep the tent up for everyone to find shelter under, I've leaned much more towards pastoring than towards preaching any positions, any politics.
DEROSE: Politics aren't, Kress says, what his people need.
KRESS: Many Jews in my community don't feel safe, and that is a new experience for many of them that often arrests their ability to be compassionate or show empathy for the other side in this moment.
DEROSE: A moment when family and friends have been killed and displaced.
KRESS: I feel, as a rabbi, a huge pastoral job to hold their hand through that moment and also guide them towards that compassionate light that we know we can achieve again even though we've had this horrible thing happen that has hurt us and stopped us from being our truest, best selves.
DEROSE: Best selves that Kress says his congregants long to be.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: Are these clean plates there?
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: Yes. Yes. Those are all clean. Yes. I don't think...
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: No, we're not putting them...
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: Oh, we're not putting them out? Oh.
DEROSE: Upstairs from Kress's office, Beth Shir Shalom board president Deb Novak is setting up for the congregation's annual fundraising gala. She's seen a broadening of concern here in the months since the Hamas attack.
DEB NOVAK: Everyone in our congregation feels very strongly about the safety of the people in Israel - getting the hostages out but also the safety of the innocent people in Gaza.
DEROSE: Novak says at her synagogue these days, there's a lively conversation about the war that often starts like this.
NOVAK: There has to be a better way than the severity of the destruction and the harm that is happening to the people in Gaza.
AL COUREY: You can't really talk about October 7 without talking about the suffering of the Palestinians, not just the current suffering but the suffering since the founding of the state of Israel.
DEROSE: Al Courey also serves on the congregation's board.
COUREY: I'm actually an Arab American, and so that certainly heightens the compassion I feel for the suffering of the Arabs in Gaza right now.
DEROSE: It's a compassion that grew for him earlier this spring, as his family observed Passover.
COUREY: When you talk about the 10 plagues, you dip your finger into the wine and put a drop of wine on your plate for each plague to remind you of the suffering of the Egyptians. Well, somebody suggested we should put an 11th drop of wine on our plate to remember the suffering of the Palestinians in Gaza.
DEROSE: And did you do that?
COUREY: Yes.
DEROSE: Across the country, at Temple Ner Tamid in Bloomfield, N.J., the Sabbath service is underway.
MARC KATZ: As we do each week, we add a special prayer for the State of Israel, a prayer that speaks to all of the many complexities of this conflict.
DEROSE: Marc Katz is the rabbi here.
KATZ: (Speaking Hebrew). Master of compassion, help us to hold the humanity and the heartache of the Jewish people, of all the residents of the State of Israel, while also holding the humanity and dignity of the Palestinian people. As we are...
DEROSE: Praying for the humanity and dignity of Gazans during the prayer for Israel, says Katz, has transformed the way some in his congregation regard the war.
KATZ: We had a fundraiser for a medevac unit in the Air Force, and by this time, Israel had already started dropping bombs on Gaza. And although we purposely picked a medevac unit, the fact that we were giving money to the Air Force caused some congregants to push back.
DEROSE: A pushback, Katz says, he welcomes, as it shows his congregation is engaging deeply with the Israel-Hamas war at an ethical level.
KATZ: It is possible - and I do believe the majority of rabbis feel this way - to criticize Israel's actions through love and to be proud Zionists and to care about Israel and to love Israel and, at the same time, to be able to see Israel truly for what it is in the same way that we see family members truly for what they are.
UNIDENTIFIED GROUP #2: (Singing in Hebrew).
DEROSE: In West Los Angeles, congregants at IKAR sing in the Sabbath. It's a community of more than 1,200 families. Recently, Rabbi Sharon Brous has been preaching about campus protests.
SHARON BROUS: Last week I argued here that antisemitism has been normalized in parts of the solidarity movement and that it threatened not only our Jewish students but also the righteous call for justice for Palestinians.
DEROSE: Longtime IKAR member Shawn Landres says the news over the last several months has sparked lots of discussion within the congregation.
SHAWN LANDRES: I've talked to so many people who really are leaning into Jewish safety or peaceful protest, but the most thoughtful voices are the ones that are holding two thoughts.
KATZ: Two thoughts, Landres says, about the very same thing.
LANDRES: For me, one of the Rorschach tests is free Palestine. I'm for a free Palestine. I'm also for a free Israel. The two are not mutually exclusive. In fact, you're not going to have the one without the other.
DEROSE: Two realities, Landres says, both irreducibly true, which focuses her task, Rabbi Brouse says, as a religious leader.
BROUS: How do you hold both your commitment to stand with those people whose loved ones have been in Gaza now for an unthinkable amount of time, suffering in all kinds of ways, and also know that any child that is killed in our effort to retrieve those hostages or any innocent who is killed - that itself is a moral catastrophe? And that is the challenge of our time.
DEROSE: A challenge Brous navigates with the help of a story found in the collection of ancient rabbinic teachings known as the Mishnah.
BROUS: Jews used to come from all across the land. They would ascend to Jerusalem and ascend the Temple Mount, and they would circle around the perimeter of the courtyard counterclockwise, except for someone with a broken heart.
DEROSE: They would enter the same way but circle in the opposite direction.
BROUS: And this sacred encounter would occur between the brokenhearted and the people who had a little bit of strength in them, in which they would look into each other's eyes and ask, tell me what happened to your heart.
DEROSE: A question, Rabbi Brous says, that cultivates compassion, which grows into empathy, an empathy that can lead to peace. Jason DeRose, NPR News, Los Angeles.
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