Toward Summer

Dear BJ Community,

This past Sunday, I dropped my almost fourteen-year-old daughter, Sivan, at Camp Eisner for seven weeks. As we drove through the entrance—the same camp where I spent twelve summers—there was a large sign that read: Welcome to the Bubble.

Three days later, I dropped my sixteen-year-old son, Aiden, at JFK. He is spending five weeks with Eisner, beginning with a week in Poland before traveling to Israel for four more. A few hours after saying goodbye to him, I boarded my own flight to Jerusalem for three weeks of study at the Hartman Institute as part of my fellowship there.

As I have thought about where each member of my family will spend these weeks, I have realized that each journey embodies something different about this moment in Jewish life. Each one has been tugging at my heart in its own way.

The Bubble

We are living through harsh, tragic, and often frightening times. I am deeply grateful that my daughter—and so many of our children—will spend these weeks untethered from their phones, away from the relentless news cycle and the pressures they carry every day.

Summer camp is, in many ways, an alternate universe. It is built around care and covenant, around belonging, joy, friendship, and the hope that every child is seen for who they truly are. It is one of the finest expressions of joyful Jewish living that I know.

The bubble is not meant to deny reality. It is meant to protect, restore, and replenish.

As adults, we no longer get to go away to Jewish summer camp. Yet I think many of us long for something like it. Shabbat was always intended to be that sacred interruption—a sanctuary in time where we step away from the noise in order to remember who we are. 

My hope is that BJ can continue to offer something of that same refuge: a place of restoration, spiritual grounding, and genuine human connection amid a world that often feels consumed by outrage.

Poland

Though Aiden will encounter the vitality of Jewish life in Poland today, especially in Warsaw and Kraków, he will also spend a day at Auschwitz.

When I was not much older than he is now, I became almost obsessed with learning about the Shoah. I read everything I could find, trying to understand how such unimaginable evil could have emerged and why Jews became its target. 

I do not believe we are living in 1939. History should never be flattened into easy analogies. But I am deeply alarmed by the rise in antisemitism.

It pains me that Aiden lives in a world in which antisemitism— in his own lifetime—is so prominent and comes from both the political left and the political right. Conspiracy theories, hate speech, swastikas, attacks on synagogues, the loss of friends and allies, and threats against Jewish institutions have left many Jews feeling less secure than they have in decades.

That is why I have found so much of the rhetoric surrounding Mayor Mamdani so troubling. Whatever one’s politics or position on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, public leaders have a profound responsibility to lower the temperature, reject language that isolates or vilifies Jews (or anyone), and make unmistakably clear that Jewish New Yorkers belong fully and safely in this city. At a moment when many Jews are feeling vulnerable, he has not done enough to reassure our community that he understands our fears and is committed to addressing them. Leadership requires more.

I also believe that we as a Jewish community need to continue to engage Mayor Mamdani with both conviction and dignity, insisting on accountability without surrendering the possibility of relationship. We are all striving for a safe and thriving NYC and that is best done in partnership.

Israel

Israel has always felt like a homecoming for me. 

There is something extraordinary about living, even briefly, within the rhythms of Jewish time; hearing Hebrew all around you; encountering the astonishing diversity of Jewish life; and being surrounded by a landscape where our ancient story and modern reality meet.

And yet, today, Israel is also a place of profound heartbreak.

There is the enduring trauma of October 7 and the ongoing suffering that has followed in Israel and in Gaza. There are the daily realities of occupation and the devastating consequences for Palestinians, not to mention the unrestricted terror of settlers in the West Bank. There is violent and racist rhetoric from members of Israel’s government that has moved from words into action; and of course there is Hamas, Hezbollah, and other terror groups who still pursue their pernicious goals. There remains so little security, dignity, or hope—for Israelis and Palestinians alike—and no clear path toward a just and lasting peace.

This tiny country, smaller than New Jersey, has also become one of the deepest sources of division within the Jewish people—not only between generations, but within families, synagogues, and communities. Questions that once united American Jews now divide us.

There is—and should be—room for vigorous debate about Israel’s policies, its aspirations, what the most just, secure and viable solution for all who dwell on this land, and the role of the United States in all of it. At BJ, we will continue to wrestle with these questions together as part of our deep and ongoing relationship to our ancestral homeland and our commitment to the Jewish people. But our disagreements must never come at the expense of one another’s humanity. There can be no place for demonization or dehumanization—of Jews or Muslims, Israelis or Palestinians, elected officials or political candidates.

Jerusalem

I will spend these weeks studying at the Hartman Institute.

Hartman is not a bubble. But it is, for me, a place of renewal—a place where difficult questions are met not with slogans but with learning; where disagreement is expected, even cherished; where ancient texts continue to illuminate contemporary dilemmas; and where imagination is cultivated alongside conviction.

Perhaps what troubles me most today is how easily Jewish life can become reduced to politics, to antisemitism, or solely to conversations about the State of Israel.

Our tradition has always been so much larger than that.

From the very beginning, Avram hears God’s call: Lekh lekha—go forth. It is both a physical journey and an inward one, a search for covenant, purpose, and blessing.

That call has never ended.

As a rabbi, as a BJ community, and as a Jewish people, we are called to continue studying, questioning, imagining, building, and blessing. We are called to cultivate a Judaism expansive enough to hold complexity without surrendering hope, disagreement without abandoning one another, and love of our people without losing sight of the dignity of every human being.

May we continue to answer that call. And may we emerge from whatever “bubbles” sustain us this summer renewed—not to escape the world, but to help repair it.

Shabbat shalom,

Rabbi Felicia Sol