Dear friends,

One week from today will be a full year since October 7th, 2023. And later this week, we will begin the High Holiday season with Rosh Hashanah and enter a new Jewish year. There is so much one could say about the year that has passed, the year to come, and the prospect of trying to celebrate the holidays in the long shadow of such horrors.

I want to call your attention to a simple fact: Life can encounter us alone and can encounter us together. We are each individuals, and we are all a collective.

In the shadow of Oct 7th, we are a collective. In the post-October 7th world, the global Jewish community has pulled together in a way we haven’t seen in decades. There has been an enormous sense of collective mourning, of a collective fate and future, not to mention a collective experience of rising antisemitism. There has been new interest in Jewish connections and Jewish learning. 

To some degree, there has also been a sense of collective action — but on the level of action, there have also been painful divisions. And that brings us to the other side of the scale: 

In the shadow of Oct 7th, we are individuals. In the weeks and months following October 7th, I spoke with countless Jewish communal leaders about how their teams and organizations were faring as the crisis unfolded. One theme arose again and again: Different people in the field were having very different experiences. Some people were intensely connected to Israel and emotionally involved. Others were less connected both socially and emotionally. Some organizations had work that was directly connected to responding to needs that came from the attacks, while others were trying to meet their team’s emotional needs while continuing their work not directly connected to Israel or antisemitism. 

Meanwhile, painful divisions arose across ideologies and (to some extent) generations, around views of Zionism and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. These divisions inflamed preexisting polarization that has worsened in North America over the past half decade, from which the Jewish nonprofit sector has not been exempt.

It is tempting to ignore, or even to decry, one side or the other of this truth — to put down our individuality for the sake of the collective, or shun the collective because of our individual differences. But either one would be a mistake. We have to hold both sides of the tension — we have to be individuals in a collective, e pluribus unum.

How do we hold both sides? How do we honor our individuality and our collectivity at once?

The answer is relationships. At a time of “personal brands” and the gig economy, of rising reliance on robots for human thinking and human work, of a literal epidemic of loneliness and isolation, of division, of hatred and war, we need to double down on human relationships. Relationships are how we build culture, how we bridge differences, and how we reconcile our individual and collective natures. Relationships are the work.

Interestingly, Judaism is full of “relationship technologies,” from traditional transportation restrictions on Shabbat causing some communities to be physically close-knit to the idea of a minyan (prayer quorum) bringing people together, and more. Recently, at a Leading Edge alumni forum focused on shared leadership, Joshua Foer noted how powerful the traditional Jewish practice of ḥavruta can be. Ḥavruta is paired learning in traditional Jewish text study, based on the idea that two will learn far more deeply than one, because “iron sharpens iron.” Ḥavruta teaches us to challenge each other supportively, to oppose each other collaboratively, to argue with each other in good faith and while extending each other the benefit of the doubt. It is a remarkable technology for creating fruitful intellectual partnerships. (I met my wife at Pardes, when we were assigned to one another as ḥavruta partners. Ḥavruta technology is powerful indeed.) 

The Jewish Fall Holidays are another “relationship technology,” a powerful bridge of these two sides of human nature.

On the Fall Holidays, we are individuals. The High Holiday liturgy is full of personal development, personal repentance, personal relationships with God, and the divine judgment of individuals. There is an individual obligation to eat in the sukkah, and to wave a set of four species that we individually own. During the Hallel recitation of Psalms, we sing, “ki ani avdekha,” “for I am [singular] Your servant”. As we celebrate Simḥat Torah and restart the cycle of annual Torah reading, we remember that there is an individual obligation to study Torah. 

But on the Fall Holidays, we are also a collective. On Rosh Hashanah we celebrate the “birthday of the world” and the creation of all humanity. In Yom Kippur’s “vidui” confession, we sing “ashamnu, bagadnu” (“we have trespassed, we have betrayed”) in the plural, not the singular. We sing “ki anu amekha,” “for we are [plural] your nation”. In synagogue and in the Sukkah we come together physically with others. When we shake the four species, in part that symbolizes bringing together different kinds of people. We may have an individual obligation to study Torah, but Simḥat Torah and the annual cycle gives us a communal calendar to make it a shared enterprise.

As we come together to commemorate a year since October 7th and to take the High Holiday journey together, let’s do so in the spirit of relationship — the spirit of holding fast to our individuality and to our shared community. Let’s hold the hostages, the injured, the mourners, the displaced, the IDF soldiers, and those still in harm’s way centrally in our hearts, minds, and prayers. Let’s hold also the innocent people in Gaza, Lebanon, and elsewhere who are tragically being killed, injured, and displaced by a war they never asked Hamas and Hezbollah to start. Let’s think of those throughout the world who are suffering, whether in Sudan, Armenia, Ukraine, or anywhere else. 

And when we differ, as we must, in how we think and feel about all these terrible things, let’s think of the shared heartbeat of compassion that animates us all across our differences. Let’s not give up on each other — as individuals, or as members of a shared community. Let’s work on not just giving each other the benefit of the doubt but also giving each other partnership, respect, and trust.

May the hostages return immediately home. May safety, peace, and healing come to Israel and the whole Middle East more swiftly than now seems possible. 

May all of us together, and may each of us uniquely, be written and sealed in the book of life. And may we never again know a year like this one has been.

Gali Cooks
President & CEO
Leading Edge