Reflections on the Rally for Israel in DC

Aerial photo of the Rally for Israel in Washington DC, with an estimated crowd of 290,000 people. Image: Washington Post

A few days ago, I wrote about how this week’s Rally for Israel in Washington, DC, was arousing old and important memories for me. Namely, I’ve been thinking of Freedom Sunday, the national march for Soviet Jewry in this very same spot back in 1987—and what a pivotal moment that was in my life, the awakening of my own political consciousness.

So how profound that this afternoon, as my son Avi and I entered the National Mall, I turned and bumped into—Natan Sharansky.

Natan Sharansky speaking at the rally, November 15, 2023

Sharansky, of course, was the “face” of the Soviet refusenik movement. When I was a kid, his face peered down from posters in the Temple Shalom Hebrew school, with the slogan PRISONER OF ZION or LET MY PEOPLE GO! (He was called Anatoly back then; only when he was freed and reached Israel did he start going by his Hebrew name, Natan.) Of course, he became a prominent public figure in Israel—but he was also there that day on the Mall back when I was in high school, a searing voice of conscience from the stage.

This time, Sharansky was the first invited guest to speak, and he reminded everyone of the rally for Jewish freedom thirty-six years ago. His presence this week made clear: this, too, is a moment for Jewish people to stand in support of one another in the face of another tyrannical, violent regime.

Looking around, the numbers were astounding. We’ll see what the news reports say in the days ahead; the Times of Israel is putting attendance at 290,000. (That seems right – I’ve been in football stadiums with 80-90,000 people before, and this felt much bigger.)

There were some inspiring speakers from the podium. I was particularly moved by the passion of Ambassador Deborah Lipstadt, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, and—most especially—by the families of Israelis who are currently being held hostage in Gaza. The politicians were from the left and right, and most everyone stayed on-message: Israel is fighting a just war; bring the hostages home now; and we are all united in the fight against the antisemitism that has emerged aboveground in the past 37 days.

But speakers were besides the point. The point was presence, showing up in the face of all that’s happened in such a short time: the massacred Jews and towns and kibbutzim that have been decimated; the 240 hostages held in Gaza’s dungeons; the insane apologetics for terrorism against Jews; the silence of so many who, ahem, see “very fine people on both sides.”

Lest we forget precisely what this fight is all about.

This wasn’t a warmongering crowd. (Sure, in any crowd of nearly 300,000, there will be some who are off-message.) This was a gathering in support of a people ravaged by terrorism, who are responding with justice. As I’ve written before, anyone who doesn’t grieve for all innocent victims of war has lost their moral bearings. But yes, we believe that the sadism of Hamas must be uprooted—for the well-being of Israelis and Palestinians alike; and, for that matter, for the good of America, Europe, and the Arab world that fears the rise of Iranian-backed terror groups.

Did we accomplish anything? I hope so.

First, it was invigorating to hear the Congressional leadership declare that standing by Israel is a bipartisan American ideal. Here’s an idea: let’s hold one another to that as the presidential campaign unfolds!

Second, there was a feeling of klal yisrael / Jewish unity in the air: while it is sad that such a tragic crisis has brought a fragmented Jewish community together, the truth is it has brought us together. 

And third, I hope that our Israeli friends and family see such a massive demonstration and find some sense of comfort and strength in this testimony that they are not forgotten. Indeed, they are in our thoughts perpetually.

I do know this: attending the rally was personally important to me. Living as a Jew in the Diaspora is difficult when Israel is under siege; there is a heartsickness that comes with being far away. (And Moses’s words in Numbers 32 continue to haunt me:  הַאַֽחֵיכֶ֗ם יָבֹ֙אוּ֙ לַמִּלְחָמָ֔ה וְאַתֶּ֖ם תֵּ֥שְׁבוּ פֹֽה / “Are your brothers and sisters going to go to war—while you stay here?”) There is a desire to be there, to want to do something more. (Surely that’s why I can’t stop clicking on each of those Tzedakah opportunities—to support the families of the hostages, to send necessary supplies to the reservists, to care for the victims and the communities that have been devastated…)

More than anything, this rally restored in me—and perhaps in you—a much-needed sense of hope. I admit that, even at the beginning of this week, I was feeling very low on hope. The brutality of Hamas is clear. Even worse, their knee-jerk, juvenile supporters in the streets and on campus were making me feel terribly disheartened and alone. Surveying the scene on university after university, never before I have been so acutely aware that there is no correlation whatsoever between being educated and being moral. And that was making me terribly sad.

And then… this. Hundreds of thousands of us, insisting by our very presence that the abandonment of the Jews is not moral and it won’t happen on our watch. This war against Hamas will be won—but today I’m a bit more hopeful about what comes afterward as well.

And on a very personal note, I must say: It was also wonderful to be there alongside my son Avi, who works at the Israeli Embassy in DC. I hope it’s not maudlin to observe: in 1987 I stood for Jewish peoplehood on this historic patch of land with my father. On Tuesday, I stood here with one of my sons.

Am Yisrael Chai! 

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Time to Show Up Against the Insanity

Next Tuesday’s MARCH FOR ISRAEL—and Rally against Antisemitism—is bringing back memories from my adolescence, when my own political awakening first began.

December 6, 1987, was “Freedom Sunday,” a similar rally on the National Mall in Washington, DC, opposite the site where in a previous generation the civil rights movement gathered to hear Martin Luther King, Jr., describe his Dream. A junior in high school, I was just figuring out about political action. Alongside posters of Led Zeppelin, the Grateful Dead, and the New York Giants, my teenage bedroom had a large poster that read: GLASNOST FOR SOVIET JEWS!

“This is a political movement but not a partisan one; people of all persuasions will prove they can (still, in 2023) come together as one in the face of unmitigated evil.”

The movement to free Soviet Jews from their relentless persecution, imprisonments and exiles, and inability to emigrate had been around for twenty years. My classmates and I all “twinned” with Soviet Jews for our bar/bat mitzvahs: We included the names of Soviet Jewish 13 year-olds on our invitations, and reserved a seat on the bimah, saying, “This is for my Soviet Jewish twin who is prohibited by law from practicing Judaism.” At our suburban shul, we gathered together on Sunday mornings to make public phone calls to the Mendeleev boys—Karen Schwartz’s bat mitzvah twins—and to insist to the apparatchik on the other end that we would not forget them.

But the culmination was that rally in DC. Our synagogue chartered buses and headed for the capital, where we joined 250,000 others, carrying signs and chanting slogans and singing “Am Yisrael Chai” and “We are Leaving Mother Russia.”

The amazing thing about “Freedom Sunday” is that we won. Not long afterwards, Gorbachev began to thaw the totalitarianism of the Soviet Union—and Jews began to abandon Russia in massive numbers. Over 1 million left for Israel; over 300,000 came to America, and a quarter of a million went to Germany. And those who stayed were permitted to rediscover and renew Jewish life in Russia, which a century earlier had by far the largest Jewish population in the world.

It's for these reasons that the Soviet Jewry movement has been called “the most successful human rights movement in history.”

These things leave a mark on an impressionable teenager. That was the beginning of my political consciousness—of the power of a group of like-minded people in a democratic society to bring about change, and to support one another when the forces of evil seem to have the upper hand.

Now, this generation is being called to show up. Next Tuesday’s rally will take place on that same patch of land, steeped as it is in the history of justice and protest. And once again, we’ll be called upon to raise our voices against hatred, fascism, and antisemitism.

The stakes are higher than ever. Not just in Israel, where war is being waged against a satanic sort of evil—the perpetrators of murder, rape, and social media-enhanced beheadings; the kidnappers of 240 innocents between the ages of 5 and 85—but also against the closer-to-home evil that considers Hamas to be some sort of social justice movement, the hideous apologists for terrorism on social media and on the disgraced campuses of America’s colleges.

We will be the voices of decency, truth, and freedom. On November 14, we will demand in a single voice to bring the hostages home. We will let our Israeli friends and family know that they are not alone: that despite the echo chambers of hate online and on campus, the overwhelming majority of us stand with them against terrorism.

The assembly will include people from across the political spectrum, left and right; and will it cross the religious spectrum: orthodox, liberal, and secular. This is a political movement but not a partisan one; people of all persuasions will prove they can (still, in 2023) come together as one in the face of unmitigated evil.

There are moments when we are called to show up to lift our voices, to say no to hate, to call for moral clarity and truth—even at a time when truth seems to be a trampled-upon and degraded idea.

קְרָ֤א בְגָרוֹן֙ אַל־תַּחְשֹׂ֔ךְ כַּשּׁוֹפָ֖ר הָרֵ֣ם קוֹלֶ֑ךָ
Cry with a full throat without restraint!
Raise your voice like a shofar! (Isaiah 58:1)

Will I see you there? I hope so! (Now, I wonder if I can still find those old posters from my childhood…)