B’Siata Dishamaya
Shalom everyone. I’m Rabbi Greg Hersh, a member of Rabbis4Ceasefire and Jewish Voice For Peace Rabbinical Council. This September, I’m launching a new community in Cambridge called V’ahavtah: A Judaism beyond Zionism Synagogue.
We gather on this solemn 80th anniversary of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to remember: To remember the unimaginable suffering unleashed in those cities. To remember the more than 200,000 lives lost, many in an instant, others slowly, painfully, from radiation and disease. But we’re also here to recommit ourselves to a future where such violence is never repeated.
In Jewish tradition, we are commanded: Lo ta’amod al dam rei’echa – “Do not stand idly by while your neighbor’s blood is shed.” This moral imperative spans continents, borders, and generations. It calls us to refuse the normalization of mass death. It calls us to reject doctrines of deterrence that rely on the threat of annihilation. It calls us to confront the systems – military, economic, and political – that still today put nuclear war on the table.
Our sacred texts also teach: Uvacharta bachayim – “Choose life.” On this day, we choose life by telling the truth: that the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not only tragedies, but moral failures. We choose life by listening to the hibakusha, the survivors, who continue to bear witness. We choose life by organizing, protesting, voting, and praying for a world where no nation holds the power to destroy all others.
And let me say clearly: choosing life does not mean choosing silence. It means speaking out against every system that links our security to someone else’s suffering – whether through nuclear arms, militarism, racism, or empire.
As a Jew, I cannot forget that my people know what it is to be targeted, to be dehumanized, to be burned. And I cannot ignore that some of those who survived the Holocaust went on to support policies of mass violence in the name of safety. We are all vulnerable to that temptation – to confuse survival with domination, to trade moral clarity for power. But our tradition reminds us: safety that is built on someone else’s ashes is no safety at all. Real peace is not the absence of war – it is the presence of justice.
Eighty years after the bombs fell, children still play on this Earth under the shadow of arsenals that could end all life. That is not G-d’s will. That is the failure of human will. And yet, we are not powerless. Our hands built this world, and our hands can remake it.
May the memory of those lost in Hiroshima and Nagasaki be a blessing and a revolution in our conscience. May we honor them not only with words, but with action. And may we live to see the day when swords are beaten into plowshares, war is studied no more, and peace is more than a dream – it’s our shared reality.
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Rabbi Greg Hersh is a member of the Jewish Voice for Peace Rabbinical Council and Rabbis for Ceasefire. He is launching a new synagogue in Cambridge, Vahavtah. Learn more at https://vahavtah.wordpress.com/