As I get ready for Middlebury College’s summer Hebrew immersion course in preparation for beginning rabbinical
school in fall 2019, I am reflecting on my APN story.
For pretty much everyone I grew up with, my Presbyterian parents in particular, my decision to become a rabbi comes
as a surprise. A few years ago, before I came to work at APN, I wouldn’t have been able to imagine it myself.
I began attending Hillel events in college at the same time that I started studying Arabic and the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Initially, I found it difficult to embrace conversion wholeheartedly because of the
conflict between my spiritual and cultural attraction to Judaism and my strong criticism of Israel’s occupation of
the West Bank and Gaza.
While I was living in the West Bank in the summer of 2014, the IDF set off sound bombs and tear gas outside my
window as it raided Ramallah at 3 am every night for a week. That first night, I was more afraid than I had ever
been, but the next day at work I realized this was normal for my Palestinian colleagues. While strongly committed
to Jewish values, I was deeply conflicted about embracing Judaism when I saw, up close, such abuses committed by
the Jewish state. And as a person committed to ending the occupation, would I be accepted by the Jewish community?
Working with Americans for Peace Now (APN) and its Israeli sister organization, Shalom Achshav, for the past two
years has helped me reconcile my feelings about Israel’s political realities with my Jewish values and my belief in
what Israel can be. The work of APN and Shalom Achshav embodies what it means to live one’s Jewish values, to use
them to guide collective action and policy. These organizations have taught me that Israel can and must be true to
the Jewish and democratic principles on which it was founded by reaching a negotiated peace accord with the
Palestinians, resulting in an independent Palestinian state living side-by-side with Israel in peace and security.
Perhaps most important, APN and Shalom Achshav have taught me that it is neither weak nor naïve to talk about hope,
even as extremists are gaining power in Israel, among the Palestinians, and here in the United States.
APN has been an important part of my Jewish journey. It showed me that there is a Jewish community that is also
deeply troubled by the occupation and motivated to end it because of its Jewish values. This community has become
my home and celebrated with me as I converted to Judaism, became a bat mitzvah, and was admitted to the
Reconstructionist Rabbinical College.
APN is a bridge between the Israel that was and the Israel that can and must be as it navigates the troubled waters
of zealotry and xenophobia that so characterize the Netanyahu government.
Please chip in what you can to help APN and Shalom Achshav preserve the
two-state solution and ensure a future for Israel of which we, the Jewish people, can be proud.
