Reflecting on Jewish American Heritage Month

This post originally appeared on LinkedIn at the end of May, 2025.

Me and my fellow panelists talking about Jewish experience, culture, and antisemitism at a Rocket event highlighting Jewish American & Jewish Canadian Heritage Month, May 13, 2025.

In many ways, Jewish American Heritage Month was both more meaningful and more difficult than ever before. 

I'm not as open as I once was about my identity. I don't feel as safe. I watch as antisemitism around the world continues to skyrocket - a topic I discussed as a panelist for my company's Jewish American Heritage Month celebration. Me and my fellow panelists also talked about Jewish values, one of which is “Tikkun Olam” (“repair the world.”)

But how can one person help repair the world, when our world often seems irrevocably broken?

Yuval Raphael, a Nova massacre survivor, competed in Eurovision where she sang a song about hope for a better future. She received death threats. And when Israel won second place by popular vote, countries exploded in outrage, claiming the votes were manipulated.

Earlier this week, we wrapped up a year of "troubled committed" discussions as part of the Shalom Hartman Institute's liberal zionism cohorts. Me and several other Jewish participants listened to Tal Becker, an international law expert and diplomatic advisor to Israel who has spent hundreds of hours negotiating peace in the Middle East, and who was instrumental in drafting the Abraham Accords. 

I would like to say I was filled with hope afterwards. But if anything, I felt even more "troubled-committed" than before we began these discussions in the fall.

Then on Wednesday evening, two Israeli embassy workers were murdered by an antisemitic man who screamed that he did it "for Palestine." The victims – Sarah Milgrim and Yaron Lichinsky - who were soon to be engaged – had just come from a peace event focused on building bridges between Israelis and Palestinians.

How can we build bridges when there are those determined to burn them all?

It has become increasingly difficult not to fall into despair. It has become a daily struggle to maintain both empathy and hope in this tidal wave of never-ending hatred. 

And then I remember the Hebrew portion of Yuval's Eurovision song, taken from the Old Testament's Song of Songs: "Vast waters cannot quench love, nor can the rivers drown it." Trite as it may sound, there is the hope that love will win out, and a new day will rise. One in which we stop screaming at each other "my pain is greater!" from across this void of ceaseless violence and revenge. 

We have had enough bloodshed.

We have had enough division. 

The world is broken enough. 

So as Jewish American Heritage Month comes to a close, I feel very sad, and scared, and conflicted. But I am also grateful for the resilience of my community, for the compassion I've experienced, and for those who are equally committed to listening with empathy.

Together, we will rise above this.

At our last meeting for the Shalom Hartman Institute's "Troubled-Committed" Liberal Zionism cohort, we heard from Tal Becker on the complexities and moral issues of the Gaza-Israel war - as well as the impact on global perceptions of Jews, Zionism, Israel and antisemitism.