Over the past few weeks, I’ve had the privilege of sitting in rooms with elected officials who genuinely want to build stronger relationships with the Jewish community. It may go without saying, but I’m grateful for every invitation. Relationships matter, showing up matters, and conversation matters.
But what isn’t as obvious about these meetings is what happens before anyone says a word. In those first few seconds of silence, there’s an unspoken tension in the room. Everyone knows that, sooner or later, the conversation may turn to Israel, to Jew hate, and to Jewish safety.
And as I have sat in those meetings, I have realized that my heart is asking a different question altogether: Do you see me? Not as “the Jewish voice.” Not as someone expected to explain or defend every headline. Not as a stand-in for a government thousands of miles away.
Do you see me? See a rabbi? See a mother?
See someone who worries every day about the safety of her congregation and the security of her children—not because of anything they have done, but because they are Jews and history tells us we must take this seriously.
See someone whose Judaism teaches that every human being is created b’tzelem Elohim, in the image of God.
See someone who cares deeply about humanity.
See someone whose compassion is not limited by borders, politics, or religion.
See me.
Because before we can have an honest conversation about Israel, or antisemitism, or anything else, we must begin with something even more fundamental. We must recognize one another’s humanity.
Parashat Re’eh opens with one simple command: Re’eh. See. Not agree. Not persuade. Not convince. Just see.
Rashi notices something remarkable. Moses begins in the singular “Re’eh,” meaning “you see,” but immediately shifts to the plural: “lifneichem,” – “before all of you.”
Why the shift? Because every community begins with an individual. Before there can be a “we,” there must first be an “I.” Before there can be covenant, every one of us bears responsibility for how we choose to see another human being.
I hear Rashi offering an even deeper truth: Every “we” begins when we have the courage to truly see an “I.”
There’s a difference between asking me about Israel and asking me to defend my own humanity. There’s a difference between debating the policies of a government and questioning whether Jews deserve to live in safety. There’s a difference between political disagreement and moral recognition. Those distinctions matter; when they disappear, something sacred is lost.
My connection to Israel didn’t begin with a modern government. It began with Torah, with God’s promise to Abraham and with David’s songs of Jerusalem. With generations of Jews who turned toward Zion in prayer, who ended every Passover with “Next year in Jerusalem,” and who carried that hope across continents and centuries.
The modern State of Israel, on the other hand, is a nation, like Iran, Mexico, China, or the United States of America, with leaders and policies that can and should be debated. That doesn’t change the fact that the Jewish connection to the Land of Israel is older than any government. It’s woven into our covenant, our liturgy, our memory, and our identity. To ask a Jew to sever Judaism from Zion is not simply to ask us to change a political opinion. It’s to ask us to rewrite Jewish memory itself.
Let me be equally clear about something else. My love for the Jewish people does not diminish my concern for innocent Palestinians. My commitment to Jewish safety does not require me to ignore the suffering of others. I refuse that false choice.
Torah has never demanded that we love our own by denying someone else’s humanity. It demands something much harder. It asks us to hold moral complexity without surrendering moral clarity.
And moral clarity begins here: I should not have to prove that I deserve safety because I am a Jew. I should not have to distance myself from my people before my fear is taken seriously. I should not have to apologize for loving the place toward which my people have prayed for thousands of years. Those are not conditions we place on other communities. They should not be placed on Jews.
Words matter, not because they solve every problem, but because they shape what we are willing to normalize. When violence against civilians is excused, when terrorism is softened into something understandable, when Jews are expected to explain why our fear deserves recognition…when those things happen, we are already losing something far more important than a political argument. We are losing our vision.
A society that stops seeing Jews as fully human is a society already in moral danger. Not because Jews are unique, but because the moment any people must first justify their humanity before they are granted dignity, we have abandoned one of the Torah’s most fundamental truths: every human being is created in the image of God.
Perhaps that is why Moses begins this week’s parshah with a single word. Re’eh. See. Every failure of justice begins with a failure of vision. The moment we stop seeing another person’s humanity, we become capable of asking them to defend things no one else is asked to defend.
So before you ask me to explain Israel, before you ask me to defend my attachment to the land that has shaped my people’s story, before you ask me to prove that my fear is legitimate, see me. See a rabbi. See a mother. See a Jew. See a human being. Then we can begin the conversation. That is where blessing begins. With one word: re’eh. See.
Rabbi Eve Posen 