Melanie Nelkin's Rosh Hashanah Message for 2024

This past year I was inspired by having the distinct privilege of being in Jerusalem during the period of shloshim, after the Hamas terrorist massacre on 1007. It was a stark revelation to me that we could be reciting kaddish in a public square to commemorate the memory of hundreds of slaughtered people, while also still feeling clueless as to how many more were yet to be found or released from being hostages. The challenge remains, how to reconcile feelings of grief and the unfairness of human suffering with overwhelming anger?

Charles Dickens once said, “It was the best of times. It was the worst of times.” And I guess, so goes Jewish history, because as we head into 5785, I am reminded that we are not just in the aftermath of the worst massacre of the Jewish people since the Holocaust, we’re thousands of years from the beginning of Jewish history. We’ve been here before, and we’ll be here again. As an ardent Zionist and committed advocate for the Jewish people, it evokes a lot of self-reflection, rethinking and creativity.

Being free as a Jew is not just about exile or liberation, it comes weighted with responsibility, just like democracy. And so just as kaddish is meant to be a communal prayer, so are our obligations to each other because they are woven into our survival as Am Yisrael Chai.

Melanie Nelkin is the past president of American Jewish Committee-Atlanta, currently serving on the AJC National Executive Council.