At the beginning of the 1900s, Reverend Charles Albert Tindley, a minister in the Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia, composed a hymn inspired by a line from the New Testament. He titled it “I Shall Overcome Some Day.” The first stanza opened with:

The world is one great battlefield,
With forces all arrayed;
If in my heart I do not yield,
I’ll overcome some day.

Our world today feels like that battlefield—and we are stuck in it. Just this week, we continue to mourn the murder of Renee Good by ICE agents in Minneapolis, fearing for our friends there and for the future of our democracy. We watched in horror as a historic synagogue in Mississippi was set ablaze in yet another violent act of Jewish hate. And across the globe, we hold our breath as protests rage in Iran—another fight for dignity, another moment of deep uncertainty and unrest in the Middle East. Like many of us, I find myself asking: how do I keep my heart from yielding? How can I overcome any of this?

As you may already know, or figured out, this 125-year-old hymn became the foundation for the protest song “We Shall Overcome.” Early versions kept the song in the singular but that changed in the mid-1940s, when African American women went on strike against American Tobacco in Charleston, South Carolina. Fighting for a raise to 30 cents an hour, they sang as they protested. The story goes that one striker, Lucille Simmons, was especially fond of “I Will Overcome” but to unite the protesters and give it strength she changed the lyric to “We Will Overcome.”

That small shift—from I to we—offers an answer to how we get through it all. We can’t face this battlefield alone. We must face it together.

This is something Judaism understands deeply, and it is one of the foundations I love most about it. Judaism is not a me religion; it is a we religion. We depend on community—from the need for a minyan to pray, to Shabbat and holidays, to the very structure of our liturgy. On the High Holy Days, as we beat our chests and confess our sins, the language is entirely plural: Ashamnu, Bagadnu, Gazalnu—“We have sinned, we have betrayed, we have stolen.” Even in daily prayer like the Amidah, a moment of private reflection, we pray in the plural: Selach lanu-forgive us; Refa’einu-heal us; Barech aleinu-bless us. Over and over again, we are reminded that alone we can hold very little. Community exists so we can bear the burdens of life together.

Earlier this week, my dear friend and havruta (study partner), who grew up in Minneapolis, forwarded me a heartbreaking email from a friend of hers—a Jewish immigration attorney who lives just six blocks from where Renee Good was killed. He happened upon the scene moments after she was shot. He wrote about watching paramedics try to revive her, about ICE agents terrorizing his queer friend, about the fear-mongering and threats of who might be next. He reflected that he has cried more this week than in his entire adult life, wondering how this nightmare is possible and whether there is any way out. And in all that darkness, he offers a glimmer of hope—and a powerful call to action, which we’ve included in full below.

“My one hope—my shred of hope—is community. On Saturday, thousands peacefully gathered in the park behind my house to demand that ICE leave… I watched people help each other over the actual ice… I saw a glimmer of how we might prevail: with connection, love, mutual aid, clarity of purpose, and resistance of every kind. But to have any chance, it is going to take all of us—every single one.”

The images and words of his email have been echoing through my soul this week. I don’t have the secrets for how to endure the pain of the battlefield we live in today—the profound loss, grief, rage, fear, and uncertainty that have become our norm. But I do know this: we have each other. We need each other. Our hope lies in community. And I believe—deep in my core—that the only way we have a chance to overcome any of  this violence, this hate, this absurdity, is if we do it together. 

As we head toward this Shabbat of MLK weekend, I continue to pray, just as our nation has prayed and protested for over a century, that, together, we shall overcome someday.

Shabbat shalom,

Rabbi Rebecca Weintraub