Rabbi Getzel Rosenberg Davis

Fasting together, even when we fast differently. ✨
This year brought a rare convergence: Ramadan, Lent, the Fast of Esther, and the Bahá’i Nineteen-Day Fast all overlapping at once. To mark the moment, we gathered for a "Lunchless Lunch" and an Interfaith Iftar to share our practices.
Thank you to The Harvard Crimson for highlighting these beautiful moments of connection today, and a huge thank you to Khalil Abdur-Rashid, Rabbi Elisha Gechter, Vassilios Bebis and Alecia Asiamigbe for your thoughtful wisdom.
My hope for our campus is simple:
“ I think it would be really wonderful if, by the time every Harvard College student graduated, they had attended an iftar. I think the same thing about Shabbat dinner... not to become Muslim or not to become Jewish, but should just have basic cultural competency. ”
When we learn from each other’s spiritual practices, we build a stronger, more resilient community.
Read the full story at the link in my bio!
BridgeBuilding CommunityResilience

In a world that often emphasizes our differences, we're building tables where common ground is found, one conversation at a time. ✨
​Thrilled to share highlights from our "Across This Table" dinner at Harvard, where nearly 200 students, faculty, and staff gathered to share stories, break bread, and truly see one another. It was a beautiful reminder that profound connection is possible when we come together.
​A special thank you to everyone who made this evening so special. Let's keep these vital conversations going!
​Read more about this initiative via the link in bio!
​ CampusLife MakingADifference SeeAndBeSeen HearAndBeHeard

Excited to share my love of weddings and about my couples practice on Judaism Unbound. Also, tune in for a big update on Unorthodox Celebrations. judaismunbound.com/podcast/episode-458-getzel-davis

My Yom Kippur sermon/blessing for tonight:
It probably won’t surprise you to hear that once again this week, I cried in public. This past Monday night, I stood shoulder to shoulder with hundreds of Harvard affiliates, to grieve the losses of October 7th. To recognize our ongoing anguish with song, prayer, and words of solace and dedication. Weeping together after a massacre unfortunately is a scene known all too well to Jews throughout the generations. We carry these moments in our bones – in our very DNA – in our literary works, liturgical dirges, and storytelling traditions.

Over the last year, the word “trauma” has arisen again and again. We are traumatized by the loss of precious life in Israel, Lebanon, and Gaza. For many, this grief is deeply personal as many have lost loved ones, friends, and acquaintances. We experience secondary trauma, at one remove but deep in our hearts, with constant notifications from news and whatsapp groups bringing video of the terror into our homes 24 hours a day. Traumatic images have even been weaponized by terrorist groups as a form of psychological torment for Jews around the world. All of this can feel overwhelming and disorienting.

There is a part of our brain, the amygdala, that becomes activated by fear and cannot appreciate time and space. It knows no logic or reason. It isn’t sure what time it is, it doesn’t even know what year it is, what era we and our communities are in.

Words matter. Following a call by an anti-Israel student group for “an escalation on campus,” our community awoke this past Tuesday, October 8th 2024 to see a video of someone pouring red paint over the John Harvard Statue in the Yard and the smashing of windows of University Hall. Both are mere feet from where we sit tonight. To that deep, secret, powerful part of our psyche, the amygdala, the sound and image of the breaking glass repeating over and over on Instagram conjured terrifying images from the past. One student told me that the video evoked in her imagination, Kristallnacht, “the night of the broken glass” on November 9, 1938 when N***s systematically vandalized Jewish-owned businesses, synagogues, and homes as a precursor to the horror that came next.
https://www.zivugtogether.org/blog/stewarding-our-jewish-trauma

Since mid-November, I have been meeting weekly for lunch with Imam Khalil Abdur-Rashid, the Muslim chaplain on our Harvard campus.

We started meeting because he wanted to gather Muslim and Jewish student leaders after a public statement from the undergraduate student association following the October 7 Hamas attacks caused great consternation and tension at Harvard and far beyond. Khalil hoped to create a space where students could acknowledge their pain and loss, prevent further division and animosity, and initiate broader campus efforts at dignified discussion and action.

It was a beautiful idea, but not one that has yet been able to come to fruition. Our students have felt too hurt, too angry, and too scared to be able to do anything together this academic year.

We have tried several experiments to bring them together: a communal mourning circle, an outdoor meditation experience, a joint trip, and an interfaith iftar. Each one fell apart because of the deep divisions on campus and external pressures. Everyone feels isolated and unable to sit with the isolation of the other.

Khalil and I have continued to sit, eat, mourn, and get to know each other. Over the year, our families have met, and we have trusted each other deeply as we negotiate a sharply divided campus....
www.interfaithamerica.org/article/fostering-unity-on-campus-isnt-easy/
Interfaith America Hebrew College Harvard Hillel

Celebrating the graduates