Leaving SOMA after 34 Years- A Love Letter- and a Challenge

On Tuesday, after 34 years serving as a community leader in South Orange–Maplewood, and the last 10 years living here, my wife Raina and I will be moving.

I leave with a full heart.

I love this community. It has been an extraordinary privilege to serve a congregation here, to build friendships here, and to call this place home.

When I arrived in South Orange in 1992, I was struck by its inclusiveness. I was inspired by its social conscience and by the remarkable number of people who rolled up their sleeves to make this community a better place. Those qualities were real then, and they remain real today. They continue to define the overwhelming majority of the people who call this community home.

But over the past several years, some of what first drew me here has also become one of the greatest challenges of living here.

I am not talking about the majority of our neighbors. I am talking about a relatively small group of people whose voices have been amplified by social media and who too often use those platforms not to foster dialogue, but to police opinion… to shame, attack, and ostracize anyone who dares to hold a different perspective.

One example.

Several years ago, a congregational leader asked whether our synagogue could host a meeting of SOMA Justice. It seemed like an easy “yes.” We have long believed that our building should be a place where the community can gather.

I was stunned by what happened next.

A heated debate erupted on the SOMA Justice Facebook page. The objection was not about our facilities or our willingness to host. It was simply this:

“How can SOMA Justice hold a meeting at a synagogue whose rabbi is a Zionist?”

That was it.

The people making those comments had never spoken with me. They did not know me. They had never asked what I believed, what I had said publicly, or how I understood Zionism. Yet they felt entirely comfortable judging me, dismissing me, and, by extension, declaring the congregation I served to be unacceptable because of assumptions they had made about me.

For a group whose very name includes the word Justice, I found that deeply disappointing.

Sadly, it would not be the last time I encountered this mindset.

In the aftermath of the horrific attacks of October 7, 2023, I watched with sadness as SOMA Justice revealed they held a deeply troubling understanding of justice.

As the massacres were still unfolding, there was silence about the atrocities committed by Hamas and by the Palestinian civilians who crossed into Israel and murdered, raped, kidnapped, and brutalized innocent people. But it did not take long before there was a great deal of conversation on their page. It was almost exclusively about Israel’s actions and barely, if ever, mentioned Hamas’ atrocities and stated goal to “repeat October 7 as many times as possible.”

Very quickly, words like genocide and apartheid became slogans, employed not to encourage discussion but to demonize Israel and, increasingly, anyone who supported Israel.

What shocked me was not simply the hostility toward Israel. It was the hostility toward anyone who dared offer a different perspective.

Those who disagreed were belittled. They were told to “check their privilege.” Their motives were questioned. They were dismissed. And, time and again, they were removed from the group. Apparently, justice, at least as defined by this organization, permits only one acceptable viewpoint. Stray from that orthodoxy and you become part of the problem.

For many months I simply read the discussions without participating. Eventually, after one particularly inflammatory post by the group’s founder, I decided to respond. My comments were no more pointed than many of those directed at me, yet I was repeatedly told that my tone was aggressive and disrespectful- even while I was being insulted and called names.

More disturbing still, this organizer, someone who regularly accuses others of racism, repeatedly dismissed me as “just a white guy” and “some white dude” whose opinion supposedly carried little value. I had never introduced race or gender into my comments. They were about ideas, history, and facts. Yet she chose to reduce me to my race and gender while claiming to oppose precisely that kind of prejudice.

Eventually, I too was removed from the group.

Sadly, this mindset has not remained confined to social media.

It recently consumed nearly forty-five minutes of a Board of Education meeting, where speaker after speaker attacked a proposed educational mission to Israel sponsored by our Jewish Federation.

The trip never even happened.

It was to have been funded entirely through private Federation donations and was modeled after educational missions that Jewish Federations around the country have sponsored for years, giving educators the opportunity to see Israel firsthand and engage with its complexity. Yet opponents condemned it as propaganda, once again relying on familiar accusations of genocide and apartheid while attacking district leaders who had simply been willing to consider the opportunity.

My tradition teaches something profoundly different.

The Torah commands, “Justice, justice shall you pursue.” The rabbis long ago wondered why the word justice appears twice. One beautiful explanation is that justice must itself be pursued justly. The ends never justify abandoning fairness, humility, or respect for those with whom we disagree.

There is nothing just about silencing dissent.

There is nothing just about reducing complicated human beings to caricatures.

And there is nothing just about creating communities where ideological conformity becomes the price of belonging.

Let me offer a very different model.

Last week I officiated at a wedding several hours from home. The family arranged transportation, and during the drive I struck up a conversation with my driver. He was originally from Syria, a devout Muslim, and, as we spoke, he shared that he had served in Assad’s military in Lebanon, where Syrian forces fought against Israel.

I told him that I would be making aliyah this week.

On paper, we were about as far apart as two people could be.

Yet neither of us shut down the conversation.

We talked for hours. We disagreed about almost everything related to the Middle East. But we listened. We asked questions. We treated one another with dignity.

When he dropped me off after the wedding, he got out of the car, embraced me, and said, “I wish you well with your move to Israel. Be safe.”

That is the kind of community I want to live in.

Not one where agreement is required, but one where humanity is.

The tragedy facing our community today is not that people disagree. Communities should disagree. Democracies depend upon disagreement.

The tragedy is that a relatively small but very vocal group has come to believe that disagreement itself is offensive and that those who hold different views should be shamed rather than heard, ostracized rather than engaged. They do not seek conversation; they seek conformity. They do not persuade; they condemn.

But I remain convinced they do not represent the best of South Orange and Maplewood.

For thirty-four years I have known another SOMA, a community of generous people who volunteer, who care deeply about one another, who show up in moments of crisis, who build friendships across differences, and who understand that living in a diverse community means learning to listen as well as to speak.

That is the SOMA I will remember.

As Raina and I begin this new chapter in Israel, we leave with enormous gratitude for the countless friendships we have been blessed to build here. My hope is that this remarkable community will continue to embrace diversity- not only of race, ethnicity, religion, and orientation, but diversity of thought as well.

Because justice is not measured by how we treat those who agree with us.

It is measured by how we treat those who don’t.