Breaking the Silence Without Breaking Each Other - A Pre-Tisha B'av Message For Today

“Silence is complicity” is a phrase I’ve heard a lot lately — especially when it comes to Israel, Gaza, and our own Jewish community. But what if the real danger isn’t silence, but how we speak? This week we open a new book of Torah, Deuteronomy, or Devarim. In the very first words of the book, Moshe offers a model: he delivers hard truths, but he does it in a way that protects dignity and keeps the community together. In this episode, I talk about the mitzvah of tochecha/rebuke and what it means to criticize with both courage and compassion. We’ll wrestle with the tension between universal and particular values, the dangers of public shaming, and why love must come before judgment. This is about learning to speak so that even when we disagree, we stay family.