There is a silence spreading through American Jewish life, and it is loudest from the bimah. In a time of moral confusion, rising antisemitism, ideological extremism, and open threats to Jewish sovereignty, too many rabbis have chosen comfort over confrontation, nuance over clarity, and institutional safety over prophetic responsibility. The result is a spiritual leadership crisis—and a Jewish public increasingly unable to distinguish between moral complexity and moral collapse.
In the wake of October 7, as Israeli civilians were slaughtered and Jewish students harassed in American universities, many rabbis issued carefully hedged statements. They called for peace, for understanding, for mutual empathy. They quoted Heschel and Buber and invoked the image of God in every human being. But what many did not say—what too many refused to say—was the truth: that Hamas is evil. That Israel has a right and obligation to fight. That the Jewish people are under attack.
This is not merely a political failing. It is a theological one. The prophets of Israel did not avoid difficult truths. They thundered. They exposed. They challenged power. And sometimes they were killed for it. When Amos rebukes the people for injustice, or Jeremiah weeps over moral rot, they are not engaging in spiritual diplomacy. They are enacting covenantal truth-telling. Halakhically, the category for such moral responsibility is tochachah, rebuke rooted in love and fidelity. A rabbi who cannot name evil cannot fulfill this obligation.
So why are so many rabbis silent or evasive? Part of it is structural. Many work in institutions dependent on donors, boards, or politically divided communities. Speaking plainly risks alienating members. It threatens jobs. It disrupts the illusion of communal harmony. But fear of discomfort is not a valid excuse for spiritual abdication. As Rav Soloveitchik warned, a rabbi is not a communal technician but a covenantal guardian. The role is not to please but to lead.
There is also a deeper ideological fear: that taking a strong stand might compromise the rabbi’s self-perception as a moral universalist. In many liberal rabbinic circles, the fear of being “parochial” or “ethnocentric” outweighs the duty to protect the Jewish people. In the name of pluralism, some rabbis have blurred every moral boundary. In the name of peace, they have erased the difference between attacker and defender. This is not moral courage. It is cowardice disguised as nuance.
Moral clarity does not preclude compassion. We can mourn civilian suffering in Gaza while still affirming that Israel has the right to destroy Hamas. We can grieve for all human loss while refusing to equivocate about who started the war and who seeks genocide. Jewish law and ethics are not allergic to power; they are meant to shape its use. But shaping it begins with naming reality.
The Torah commands us, tzedek tzedek tirdof—justice, justice you shall pursue. But it does not say “comfort, comfort you shall preserve.” Justice requires speech. It requires moral boundaries. It requires standing up and saying, without euphemism: this is right and this is wrong.
The consequence of rabbinic silence is a confused and alienated Jewish public. Young Jews, especially, are desperate for moral direction. They are bombarded with anti-Israel propaganda, shamed by their peers, and overwhelmed by moral relativism. When rabbis refuse to speak clearly, they leave a vacuum. And into that vacuum rush voices that are louder, angrier, and unmoored from Jewish covenant.
In his essay “Kol Dodi Dofek,” Rav Soloveitchik described the State of Israel as a theological challenge to the Diaspora rabbi. It was no longer enough to spiritualize Judaism. History had returned. Power had returned. And with it, responsibility. Today, that challenge is even more urgent. If rabbis cannot respond to Jewish crisis with Jewish strength, then what exactly are we leading?
Heschel once said that the task of the prophet is not to comfort the afflicted but to afflict the comfortable. That includes rabbis. We must afflict our own comfort. We must risk offense. We must speak. Not for politics, but for Torah. Not to defend policy, but to defend peoplehood. If we believe in a covenant, then we must act like guardians of that covenant.
A rabbi who cannot say that the Jewish people are right to defend themselves, that Jewish sovereignty is sacred, that Jewish history matters—such a rabbi may be a fine counselor or teacher, but they are not a leader.
This is a time for moral courage. A time for emet—truth. The kind of truth that cuts, and heals. The kind of truth that risks conflict to preserve integrity. The kind of truth that does not wait for permission.
Rabbis must lead. Not from fear. Not from behind. But from the front—with Torah in our hands and truth in our mouths. Because if we are afraid to say the truth, someone else will say a lie louder. And our people—our sacred, embattled, eternal people—will pay the price.
Judaism deserves leaders who are not afraid to speak. Now, more than ever.
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