Shabbat Sermon: Both/And: Being a Proud Queer Zionist Jew in a Post-October 7 World with AJ Helman

AJ Helman (they/them/theirs) is an educator and artist with a focus on Jewish and LGBTQ+ theater and education. After graduating from Emerson College with a BFA in Theater Education and Performance, AJ remained in Boston, working in the local theater and film industries as both an artist and a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion liaison. As part of their activism and educator work, they facilitated workshops on gender diversity in theater and spearheaded better inclusion practices for transgender employees in the film industry thanks to the support of Ryan Reynolds’ and Blake Lively’s Group Effort Initiative. AJ proudly marched with Keshet at San Francisco Pride directly following the Supreme Court’s overturning of the Defense of Marriage Act, effectively making LGBTQ+ marriage in the United States legal. In addition to their activism and artistry, AJ is thrilled to be a part of the Temple Emanuel staff as the Ritual Coordinator.

How did you sleep on Thursday night? When I first learned that Israel’s war with Iran had begun in earnest, I, like so many of you, did not sleep much at all. Because of the 7-hour time difference between Boston and Israel, in the early hours of Friday morning I was able to reach Micah Goodman, our beloved teacher and friend who lives in Kfar Adumim, twenty minutes outside of Jerusalem. What Micah had to say was both inspiring and concerning at the same time.First the inspiring part. Micah shared that Israel’s attack on June 13 exceeded its wildest dreams. As Micah put it, the start of the war was all of Israel’s best military victories—the Six Day War, Entebbe, the destruction of Iraq’s nuclear reactor in Osirak in 1981, the exploding pagers that crippled Hezbollah—all at once. Using intelligence, covert operations, Mossad agents on the ground in Iran and drone technology, Israel was able to eliminate Iran’s leading generals and nuclear scientists in their homes, in their beds, in targeted attacks, in which Israel did not also kill their families. Why were Iran’s leading generals and nuclear scientists at home, in the first place? Why weren’t they in a bunker? Micah answers his own question by observing that we cannot prepare for something that has never before happened in history. What Israel accomplished on June 13 had never before been accomplished in the history of war, the kind of chutzpah, planning, skill and savvy that allowed these targeted assassinations. Add to that Israeli fighter jets that evaded Iranian air defenses, allowing Israel to attack more than 100 sites. Micah observed that Israel’s morale is very high.But there is a but. Micah and his wife and their teen-age daughters, like so many Israeli families, spent their night in a bunker. Shul throughout Israel has been cancelled. Micah’s public lectures for next week have been cancelled. All public events have been cancelled. Since the airport is closed, Israelis are worrying about food. Where will their food come from? Israel imports much of its food supply. He went to the grocery store on Friday morning, worried about whether his family will have enough food, and the store was jam-packed with nervous grocery shoppers, and the shelves were largely empty.So there is edge in Israel. Iran remains formidable. The Houthis remain formidable. There still is Hamas. There still is Hezbollah. While the beginning of the war could not have gone any better, where it will go next, nobody knows. There is what Micah calls “radical uncertainty” about what this war will mean for Israel’s future and for the region.What do we do with this complex picture? How do we understand and respond to it? What does it mean to us? What does it ask from us?

I called my brother-in-law Ari this morning in Jerusalem. He and his family spent the night in their bunker. Two of their sons have been mobilized yet again. He shared one story that speaks to this moment.This morning (Friday is typically a day off for many Israelis, kind of like our Sunday, though it is spent getting ready for Shabbat) a friend of theirs has a daughter who was go get married. She had a dress. She had a groom. She had a venue. She had a guest list. She had a caterer. She had a mazel-dick day, 6/13, June 13, which corresponds to the number of mitzvot in our tradition. 613 embodies a fullness of hope and experience.The wedding was cancelled. For now. How do we process Israel’s existential war with Iran? What texts from our canon speak to this moment? What can we do to support Israel now?

Last week, I went to the bank. The teller was quite friendly. He looked vaguely Middle Eastern and had an accent I couldn’t quite place. We were chatting about the weather and the start of summer as he looked up my account. And then, he asked as he was typing away, “so, what do you do for work?” I paused, looking at him.Should I tell him what I do? Is that safe? What if he hates me for being Jewish and sabotages my bank account… And then, I thought to myself, “what, are you crazy, Aliza?! There are how many thousands of Israelis literally fighting on the front lives, fighting for their lives and the safety and security of our beloved Eretz Yisrael and you’re going to shy away from simply disclosing your profession?!” I tried to put on a warm smile. “I’m a rabbi,” I said.“Hmmm…” he said, as he typed away on his computer. Click, click, click. I heard the keyboard, but nothing else. My mind was racing, worrying, wondering what he thought of me. Suddenly he stopped and looked me in the eye. “Wait, that’s a steak!”I burst out laughing. I could barely form my next sentence. “No,” I choked out, “that’s a rib eye. I’m a rabbi.” He furrowed his brow and handed me a piece of paper. “Write it down,” he said. I did. He took the paper thoughtfully and began typing away at his computer. “Oh,” he said after a while, “a spiritualleader for the Jewish people…”What a crazy time. To think that I was nervous about sharing my work with a random teller at the bank. And yet, every week we are inundated with stories about people in similarly benign situations that quickly devolve into tragedy.The attack on the Jewish community in Boulder this week hit me particularly hard. You must know that Boulder is the epicenter of hippie life in Colorado. It’s a crunchy granola college town at the base of the Rocky Mountains. It’s so progressive that you have to work hard to find dairy ice cream. You can get avocado ice cream, soy cream, hemp cream, rice cream, oat cream, but if you want ice cream with cow’s milk you practically have to go to a specialized store or milk your own cow. I grew up visiting the Pearl Street Mall every week. We would go to religious school and then have dinner on the grass right there, where the attack happened, in front of the courthouse. It always felt like the safest place.How is it that in 2025, Jews are publicly torched in the middle of a hippie college town in broad daylight? How is that an 88-year-old Holocaust survivor finds the strength to go out with their community in solidarity with the hostages for the first time only to end up in the ER with severe burns over their body? How is it that caring members of our community in their 50s and 60s and 70s and 80s are now coping with life-altering injuries simply for the sin of being identifiably Jewish in public? How is this our new normal?

How do we know when an old era ends? How do we know when a new era begins? Is that happening to us now? Do we now live in an era where we might be going about an ordinary day and be attacked becausewe are Jewish, the attacker shouting “Free Palestine.” It happened in Pennsylvania to the Governor of the State. While Governor Josh Shapiro, his wife Lori, their four children, two dogs, and another family were inside their home, their home was firebombed on April 13, hours after the family had hosted a Passover seder. The suspect set the fire using Molotov cocktails and did so, in his own words, because Governor Shapiro needed to “stop having my friends killed,” and that he, the suspect, “will not take part in his (Governor Shapiro’s) plans for what he wants to do to the Palestinian people.” It happened in Washington D.C. to a young couple about to be engaged. Yaron Lischinsky, age 30, had planned to propose to Sarah Milgrim, age 26, in Jerusalem, but they were gunned down outside the Capital Jewish Museum on May 21. The suspect shouted: “Free, free Palestine” upon his arrest. It happened in Boulder Colorado. On June 1, a man shouting “Free Palestine” threw Molotov cocktails at a group of Jews who were rallying for Israeli hostages held in Gaza. Among the 15 people injured was an 88-year old Holocaust survivor. The suspect stated that he wanted to “kill all Zionist people.” How do we process this? What does it mean to us and to the American Jewish community? Since October 7, every Hartman podcast of Israel at War has been about Israel at war. But the most recent podcast, for the first time, is not about Israel. It is about the Jewish people. It is entitled the War Against the Jews. Donniel and Yossi do a De Tocqueville for the American Jewish community. Their point: American Jewry is entering a new era, what they call the “normalization” of Jew hatred, and the “Europeanization" of American Jewry. It is not about the absolute number of haters. It is about the fear that, at any moment, a deranged hater might shout “Free Palestine” while attacking us. That fear fuels terrorism. Which means that terrorism has come home to us, where we live and breathe. If it has happened in Pennsylvania to the Governor, in Washington, and in hip, cool Boulder to Jews asking that hostages get released, why not us? Is this a scary new era? If so, how do we respond? Can we imagine a different and better future, and if so, what do we do to bring about that better future?

June 3, 2025

Beyond all Consolation: A Jewish Philosophy of Redemption and TragedyRabbi Jason Rubenstein joined Harvard Hillel as Executive Director on June 1, 2024 after six years as the Howard M. Holtzman Jewish Chaplain at Yale. Jason’s background is as diverse as Harvard’s Jewish community: a childhood at Temple Micah in Washington DC, formative years studying at Yeshivat Ma’ale Gilboa in northern Israel, and rabbinic ordination from the Jewish Theological Seminary. From 2010-2018, Jason taught on the faculty of the Hadar Institute, where he created classrooms, conversations, and communities that bring Torah into an open-ended dialogue with the fullness of students’ lives.From his own formative undergraduate years at Harvard Hillel, where he met his wife, Arielle Rubenstein ‘07, Jason knows how Hillel can and should transform students’ lives – and through them, American Jewish life. For a fuller view of Jason’s plan for Harvard Hillel’s future, you can listen to his interview with Yehuda Kurtzer (PhD ‘08).View his full bio here

I am not a huge fan of rom coms. But there was one rom com I just had to see the minute I heard about it. I was drawn to its title. Its title was irresistible. Its title conveyed the central problem in the Book of Numbers. Its title conveyed one of the central challenges in our own lives. The title of this rom com is Jane Austen Wrecked My Life.Jane Austen wrecked my life. Let’s dwell on that. Some other person wrecked my life. Some external person or event or disappointment wrecked my life. If my life is not what I want it to be, there is somebody or something else to blame. How often are we tempted to say our own version of Jane Austen wrecked my life? We’ve all heard, or said, different versions of this.My parents wrecked my life. I still remember the time I came home with an examination where I got a 98. And they said: what happened to the other two points? I still remember the time I came home with my report card. All As and one A-minus. And they said: A-minus?Or: My parents wrecked my life. I was always a creative type. I dreamed of becoming a singer. A writer. An actor. But my parents threw cold water on my dreams: “How are you going to make ends meet,” they would say. “Do you have any idea how many unemployed singers, writers and actors there are,” they would say. They pressured me to become an accountant. I work at Price Waterhouse as an auditor. I am not living my dream. Parents are frequently the target of Jane Austen wrecked my life energy, but there are plenty of other targets.My boss who had it in for me wrecked my life. My co-worker who betrayed me wrecked my life.My business partner who cheated me wrecked my life. My teacher who gave me an unfair grade wrecked my life.My doctor who failed to diagnose and treat my condition properly wrecked my life.In each case, the narrative could well be accurate. The feelings could well be valid. Parents did say: where are the other two points? The boss did have it in for you. Your business partner did cheat you. The doctor did not treat your medical condition properly. But here’s the problem: Even if the claim that Jane Austen wrecked my life has some basis, does this energy serve us? Does this energy help us? Or does this energy consign us to a doom loop of reliving past frustration?

The Talmud has a famous story from Menachot 29B that invites us to confront three hard truths that we would rather not think about. Our mortality. The limited reach of our legacy. And the unredeemed nature of our world—we will live, and we will pass, with the world’s big problems unsolved. Why this story now? It is Erev Shavuot, the eve of our receiving the Torah. This story is about the nature of Torah; our life and legacy; and the relationship between our Torah, our life, our legacy and the world. If this story is true, how do we make peace with it? Is it possible to make peace with it? We will examine this unsettling story through the lens of two great thinkers, Harold Kushner and Jim Collins. How does the Torah we will receive on this Shavuot affect how we think about our life, legacy, and relationship to an unredeemed world?

Following the March of the Living trip, Cantor Rosemberg remained in Israel to volunteer and perform with 25 Latin American cantors. Listen to learn about Cantor Rosemberg's incredibly meaningful and moving experience!