Rabbi Josh Broide

People say Chabad is everywhere. And now they are!

Don’t be confused.

This brings me comfort. With heroes like this in our corner, we got this.

I want to share a personal struggle/dilemma that I’m having. In addition to my work trying to share real time updates along with the goal of sharing positivity wherever and whenever I can, I have another really important mission, and that is, to protect my soul. I have to work really hard not to view the videos or hear the details of the Hamas atrocities. That might sound easy (“just don’t look!”) but when it’s everywhere I look, it’s not that easy. But it goes deeper. The question of whether to share the details is something I’m also going back on forth on. On the one hand, I don’t want to scar my soul or yours, but on the other hand, it’s so important that the world knows what Israel is dealing with, just how barbaric Hamas is. I keep hearing about notes and USB drives that the IDF is finding on the Hamas terrorists that explicitly lay out their orders to do the most grotesque things you can imagine. I really can’t even bring myself to write them. At the end of the day, what prevents me from sharing the details is the fact that the moral people who stand by Israel already know and don’t need to know the horrible details, and the immoral people who don’t stand with Israel really don’t care what Hamas did, they will call Israel the aggressor no matter what. For them, murder, rape, kidnapping, even women, children, and the elderly, it’s all legit when it’s being perpetrated against Jews. These people have no soul or hope. So sharing it with them is pointless. And for me, this is a huge emotional challenge. As someone who considers himself a good person, I have such a hard time with all of this. People, smart people, otherwise moral people are literally declaring their support for Hamas. How?!!! I can’t wrap my head around it. My soul and conscience can’t fathom how that’s possible. Normal citizens marching in the streets of the United States and Europe chanting “From the river to the sea…” Do they know what they’re saying? What they’re supporting? They are literally proudly proclaiming that they want Israel wiped off the map and all Israelis thrown into the sea. It’s so easy for me to just label these people monsters but I keep asking myself how this is possible that there are millions of people out there supporting an organization that beheads babies. I know, I know. Antisemites. They are. It’s true. They are blinded by their hatred of Jews. But that doesn’t satisfy me. I need to understand this better. I feel like dismissing those millions of people as haters is a cop out. It leaves me feeling very hopeless and deeply sad. Like what has happened to our world? I literally cannot imagine a scenario, any scenario in which I would ever justify doing even a fraction of the things Hamas did. And yet, academics, investors, environmentalists, entrepreneurs, doctors, lawyers, and on and on. Otherwise normal people are here publicly and proudly siding with Hamas. How do you deal with this? How do I continue having faith in humanity when so many people have lost their humanity? What do you tell yourself when you feel hopeless? I need some advice here because this feeling of sadness and despair is something that’s hitting me several times a day and I don’t know how to kick it. Why are there so many millions of people out there who hate the Jewish people so deeply that they throw their morality out the window when it comes to harming Jews? Even before this war, I had a hard time grasping antisemitism. What has the Jewish people done besides good in this world? Nobel peace prizes, drip irrigation, cherry tomatoes, USB, Waze, autonomous cars, and on and on. Why do people hate Jews so much that it makes them behave in a way they would otherwise be deeply ashamed of? I know antisemitism isn’t logical. Trust me. I get it. I’m just the kind of person who tries to rationalize everything and I just can’t wrap my head around this. It’s such an illogical phenomenon. I don’t think I’ll ever get it. 🥺