Rabbi Ariana Katz delivered the following remarks to a gathering of 500 people occupying the Cannon Building at the US Capitol on October 18, 2023.
We are here to call on the House of Representatives to NOT send military aid to Israel escalate war. We are facing genocide, the one point one million Palestinians in Gaza are displaced and a ground invasion threatens further loss of civilian life. We pray for the return of hostages and healing for the injured, honor for the memory of all dead, 2/3 of whom in Gaza were children.
We are gathering here as 500 people. But we represent so many places. We represent so many communities. We are here because of the hands at our back. You’ve put rabbis at the center to represent our tradition but it is you, it is you who represents all of us. A larger movement, crying out for our dead, crying out for what may be done in our name. You are part of a movement that craves peace, no matter what the media says, no matter what your families or Jewish communities say.
Now, I’ve come to understand that anger is an emotion that is the surface level cover of another emotion. Not to say rage isn’t real, but it doesn’t stop there.
I’ve come to understand that all this rage is covering grief. This despair at the profound loss of life in Palestine and in Israel, sudden all out war, fearing for family and friends, stories of such horror, fear of retaliation.
My hevrusa Rabbi Jessica Rosenberg teaches: “in Jewish tradition when someone has died we say, zichrono l'vracha, may their memory be for a blessing. As we grieve Israeli, Palestinian, and all sacred lives lost, we know that more war is a desecration of their memories.”
We are here because we are calling on the Senate to not use Jewish grief to escalate attacks on Gaza. We are staring down a genocide, our elected officials’ votes may decide to spend 100 billion of our tax dollars on military and intelligence support in Israel, and at the US Mexico border.
We will not let our grief be used for more death. We demand a ceasefire now.
So we will sit here in our grief at the loss of Palestinian and Israeli life. We sit here in our grief of 75 years of Nakba. We will call out these traditional Hebrew words of comfort to mourners, tenderize our hearts, refuse to let rage cover our sorrow.
Hamakom yenachem//May the Holy One comfort
Etchem//You
Btoch shaar//Within the gates
Avalei Tzion//The mourners of Zion
Al-Quds
Yerushalayim
Be’iri
Gaza