Taking stock of Rosh Hashanah for the next generation

I love being in synagogue for the High Holidays to take stock of where we have been and where we are going, seek forgiveness, look toward renewal and welcome the new year with optimism.

The High Holidays are filled with sacred memories. As a child, I played with the fringes of my grandfather Abraham’s tallit until he was called to the Torah. I sat next to Grandma Rose as she prayed, cried and beat her chest. I never understood why she wept so deeply or felt such a need to atone; to me, she was the kindest and best person I knew.

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Those memories—the long walks to synagogue, the honey cake, even the creamed herring I never quite developed a taste for—shaped my understanding of the holidays: family, faith, humility and belonging.

Today, I am the grandmother sitting in shul. I hope my toddler grandson will come to love the High Holidays and Judaism as deeply as I do. But because of the terrorist attacks in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, coupled with a rising tide of antisemitism and anti-Zionism, his generation will carry burdens I never imagined.

I want my grandson to feel that same joy and connection that helped define me. But we also live in a time when metal detectors, armed guards and bulletproof glass have become an unfortunate but necessary feature of many synagogues in the Jewish Diaspora, including more recently in the United States.

It is why I also carry a grandmother’s vigilance, scanning exits and measuring risk in a place that should be defined only by prayer, memory and community.

Despite that, I pray that he will never know the terror of an active shooter, a bomb threat or a hate crime.

I pray that Israel will remain strong and that he will have many opportunities to visit his relatives there—and know why his father proudly served in the Israel Defense Forces.

I pray that he will be able to express his Judaism openly in America—the country where his great-grandparents found refuge from pogroms in Europe and proudly built a home.

But prayer alone is not a plan, and hope is not a strategy.

The reality before us is sobering. According to the American Jewish Committee’s State of Antisemitism in America 2025 Report, 78% of American Jews say they feel less safe as a Jewish person in the United States because of the Oct. 7 attacks; almost one in three American Jews say they were personally targeted by antisemitism in the past year; and more than half changed their behavior out of fear of antisemitism.

The trauma of Oct. 7 lingers not only in Israel, but in every Jewish space where memory, fear, resilience and responsibility now sit side by side. Even family traditions during the High Holidays are impacted. One is to wear something new—a dress, a suit, a crisp shirt and khakis for the children—as a symbol of renewal and possibility.

This year, I bought something unusual for my grandson: a Batman shirt and sneakers, in memory of Ariel Bibas, a 4-year-old Israeli boy with bright red hair who loved the Caped Crusader. He was kidnapped by Hamas from Kibbutz Nir Oz on Oct. 7, along with his mother, Shiri, and baby brother, Kfir.

Israeli authorities later confirmed that all three were murdered in Gaza by their captors, after months during which Hamas had falsely claimed that they were killed in an Israeli airstrike.

Batman is a superhero not because tragedy left him untouched, but because he transformed his grief into purpose. After witnessing the murder of his parents, he chose to pursue justice, protect the vulnerable and ensure that others would not face darkness alone.

When my grandson wears his Batman shirt during the holidays, I will see Ariel’s memory carried forward and images of a smiling boy that the savagery of Hamas can never erase. I will see grief answered with courage and the next generation learning that Jewish life is not defined by fear, but by resilience and hope.

We enter this New Year with eyes wide open to the dangers before us, but also with hearts full of determination.

We will remember the children stolen from us, but we will also protect and cherish the children entrusted to us.

We will teach our children and grandchildren to stand proudly as Jews, to love Israel, to pursue justice and to choose compassion even in a broken world.

As we begin a new year, that is a lesson we all need to learn.

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