We are in mourning.
We are scared.
We are angry.

On Wednesday night, outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C., two Israeli embassy employees—Sarah Milgrim and Yaron Lischinsky—were murdered in cold blood. They were attending an event focused on something deeply human and deeply Jewish: a gathering organized by the American Jewish Committee, whose theme was “Turning Pain Into Purpose,” and which included conversations about providing humanitarian aid to civilians in Gaza.

And still—they were targeted.
Because the murderer was looking for Jews to kill.

The rhetoric, the lies, the distortions of the past 595 days—which began while the massacre of October 7 was still unfolding—have led us directly to this point.
Cries to “globalize the intifada.”
Accusations of genocide.
Slanders that erase Jewish suffering and invert moral truth.
It has all created fertile ground for hatred—and now, for murder.

How do we respond?
We mourn.
We rage.
We tremble.

And we turn to Torah, to our sacred tradition, to the wisdom that has sustained our people through exile, trauma, and every attempt to silence or destroy us.

Near the end of the Bible, in the Book of Nehemiah, we read of the time in the 5th century B.C.E. when our ancestors returned from exile in Babylonia to their ancestral home—the land of Israel—to rebuild Jerusalem. As they began that holy work, they were met with hostility, with violent efforts to stop them.

What were they to do in the face of such threats?
Nehemiah tells us:

“They worked with one hand while the other held a weapon.”

In one hand: a trowel—to build.
In the other: a sword—to protect.

Let me be clear from the start: this is not a call to arms. It is a call to courage, to vigilance, and to responsibility. It is a call to embrace the sacred balance our tradition demands of us as Jews:

To be builders and defenders,

To be creators and guardians.

As David Suissa put it in a conversation I had with him just hours after the murders, we must balance our need to protect—physically and emotionally—with the equally urgent need to connect: joyfully to our tradition, and open-heartedly to others.

We do not stand alone. We have allies—people of conscience and conviction who have stood with us, who stand with us now, and who will continue to stand with us in the future. In moments of heartbreak and fear, we must not lose sight of that truth. We must embrace those who reach out in solidarity, who remind us—through their presence—that our cause is not ours alone, but shared by all who seek justice, dignity, and peace.
We’ve faced moments like this before. From the destruction of Jerusalem to Inquisitions, pogroms, and Shoah, again and again, there have been those who sought to destroy us—and again and again, we have found the strength not only to survive, but to thrive, to build, and to rebuild.
Today, we have no choice but to do so again—drawing from that same well of faith and resolve—and we say:
We are still here. And we are not going anywhere.

We must protect ourselves—in our synagogues and day schools, our places of work, and our homes; here in America, and in the place of our indigeneity: Israel.
We will do so with a sword in one hand and a trowel in the other.

Each of us has a tool—an offering that we will use to build, to teach, to heal, to advocate, to lift up, to bring our highest values into our sacred quest to make meaning and change the world.
Our trowel might be a pen or a keyboard; a stethoscope or a camera; a violin or a guitar; a business plan or a lesson plan.

And with the other hand, we will not hesitate to defend ourselves, our loved ones, and our people.

That is what it means to be a Jew.
To protect and to connect.

This is how we respond:
We mourn.
We rage.
We tremble.
And still—we do not turn away.

And so, we enter Shabbat, our sacred pause.
We take a deep breath—then pick up our tools, and build, and guard, and build again.

Shabbat shalom,
Rabbi Yoshi