A searing clarity comes when an artist refuses to look away from terror. In Naza, the documentary capturing the harrowing reality of the Oct, 7 massacre, there is no cinematic gloss and no aesthetic filter. It presents an unvarnished encounter with the primeval face of hatred: human beings hunted in ditches, ambushed behind scorched cars, and incinerated in shelters while frantically whispering their final prayers into cell phones.
Yet the deepest horror Naza exposes is not confined to the blood-soaked fields of that terrible morning. The deeper spiritual terror is the moral landscape of the world that woke up the day after.
We witnessed not only the predictable barbarism of our avowed enemies, but the staggering collapse of Western cultural and academic institutions. Most agonizingly of all, we watched members of our own household—American Jews, highly educated, ensconced in elite universities—marching alongside, rationalizing, or providing ideological cover for the very murderers who burned their brethren alive.
On this sacred night of Kol Nidrei, as we stand stripped of all polite pretenses, we must confront the brutal choice Naza forces upon us—a choice far too many in our community still desperately refuse to make.
I. The Brutal Choice
That choice is ancient and uncompromising: will you stand within the covenant of your people, or worship at the altar of ideological acceptance?
For decades, American Jewry succumbed to a seductive illusion: that we could champion universalism while abandoning particularism; that if we only aligned ourselves with every fashionable political dogma, the world would grant us a permanent pass. We imagined our progressive credentials and refined assimilation would serve as an impenetrable shield.
Naza shatters that illusion. The footage reveals what our enemies see when they look across the border. They did not ask those dancing youths about their politics or whether they favored concessions and peace treaties. They saw Jews, and therefore targeted them for slaughter.
Yet in the aftermath, we saw Jewish voices joining coalitions celebrating their destruction. We saw Jewish academics crafting tortured essays contextualizing mass murder as “understandable resistance.”
They harbored the fantasy that by throwing their brothers and sisters under the ideological bus, they could secure their own immunity. They forgot the warning Mordecai gave to Queen Esther:
אַל־תְּדַמִּ֣י בְנַפְשֵׁ֔ךְ לְהִמָּלֵ֥ט בֵּית־הַמֶּ֖לֶךְ מִכָּל־הַיְּהוּדִֽים׃
“Do not imagine in your heart that you will escape in the palace of the king any more than all the other Jews.” (Esther 4:13)
When innocent people are pulled from hiding and murdered, ideological neutrality dies. You are either with the victims of the pyre, or you are offering comfort to the arsonists.
II. The Ghost of 1943: Deference Over Brotherhood
This moral paralysis—craving social respectability at the expense of our imperiled kin—is the resurrection of an old, devastating historical ghost.
During the darkest hours of the twentieth century, as European Jewry was being swallowed whole by the crematoria of Treblinka and Auschwitz, mainstream American Jewish leaders failed an identical test of solidarity out of subservient deference to political power.
They were so enamored with Franklin Delano Roosevelt, so anxious to safeguard their access in Washington, and so paralyzed by the fear of being accused of “dual loyalty,” that they downplayed, delayed, and suppressed reports of the extermination. When activists like Peter Bergson demanded public mobilization and full-page advertisements to force rescue, mainstream Jewish organizations fought Bergson harder than they fought the State Department, pleading with the White House not to make rescue a “Jewish issue.”
When over 400 Orthodox rabbis marched in Washington days before Yom Kippur in 1943, Roosevelt slipped out the back door to avoid them, counseled by assimilated Jewish advisors that these traditional rabbis did not represent “respectable” American Jewry.
Six million were murdered while American Jewish leaders preserved their political manners. Today, the idol is not FDR; it is social standing, faculty lounges, and the applause of ideological cliques. The slogans have changed, but the moral cowardice remains identical: sacrificing Jewish brotherhood on the altar of secular approval.
III. The Sin of Detachment
In Hilkhot Teshuvah (3:11), Maimonides codifies a legal principle that cuts straight to the bone of this crisis:
“One who separates himself from the ways of the community… even if he has not committed explicit transgressions, but remains detached from the congregation of Israel, not sharing in their distress nor mourning in their afflictions… has no share in the World to Come.”
Rambam does not say this individual desecrated the Sabbath or ate forbidden foods. He identifies an offense far more severe: when his people were bleeding, he chose detachment. He declared his ideological reputation more precious than the survival of his brethren.
How does a Jew look upon hostages held in subterranean cages and align with the perpetrators? It happens when tradition is hollowed out into generic activism wrapped in a tallit. Severed from the land and from covenantal peoplehood, Judaism becomes an empty vessel easily commandeered by toxic dogmas. Supporting terror—actively, through apologetics, or through cowardly silence—is perishah min ha-tzibbur: the catastrophic severing of oneself from the living tree of Jewish existence.
IV. The Call of This Hour
The film Naza is an echo of the primordial Ayekah—God’s call to humanity: Where are you?
Where are you when your brothers and sisters are under siege? Where are you when Jewish students on American campuses are cornered behind locked doors? Will we continue to hide behind the fig leaf of political convenience, trying to placate those who despise our survival?
The time has come to discard the masquerade. History will not judge our generation by how politely we blended into circles of cultural prestige. It will ask a single question: Did you stand with your family when the fire consumed them?
To be a Jew is to know that our fates are inextricably bound—Kol Yisrael arevim zeh ba-zeh. When a Jew is targeted in the Middle East, our souls must ache in America. We do not apologize for our existence, and we do not apologize for defending our children.
Tonight, as the melodies of Yom Kippur surround us, Teshuvah demands an unconditional return to reality, to truth, and to our people. Let the detractors shout. Let the ideological fashions come and go. As for us and our house, we choose our family. We choose the eternal covenant.
Am Yisrael Chai. May we all be inscribed and sealed for a year of life, courage, and unbroken solidarity.