Leap of faith: Why we must speak out

The same day our Progressive Judaism open letter on Israel and Gaza was published – written to speak with compassion and moral clarity into a moment of heartbreak – I sat in the theatre watching Giant.

It is a bold, uncomfortable play. Set in 1983, it imagines Roald Dahl being confronted over his antisemitism by two Jewish colleagues, publisher Tom Maschler and sales executive Jessie Stone. Neither wants the conversation. Both try to separate their Jewishness from the argument. But Dahl refuses to let them. He drags their identity into the centre, forcing them to answer for it. Watching this unfold, many of us saw how little has changed.

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This is what happens when Jewish presence is made contingent on being unthreatening, uncomplicated, detached. When we are expected to be non-political, as if being visibly, communally Jewish is not already made political by the world around us. We are told not to be “too Jewish”. But our presence is politicised before we even speak.

Later that day, we learnt that two Jewish comedians, Rachel Creeger and Philip Simon, had their shows pulled from the Edinburgh Fringe. Not because of anything they said. Because they are Jewish. The venue cited “staff discomfort”.

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This discomfort is rarely loud. It arrives as pressure, to disavow, disclaim, to explain ourselves before we are allowed to speak. The silence we are talking about is not just censorship. It is exhaustion. The weight of constantly proving we belong.

The play offers no resolution. Dahl does not apologise. The Jewish characters receive no justice or understanding. Their words hang unanswered. The audience is left in the discomfort. This is not a play about the past. It is a play about now.

Because the most uncomfortable truth is how timeless it all feels. Jewish identity made suspect. Jewish grief selectively acknowledged. Jewish voice pushed to the edge.

There are moments that echo recognisable pain, stories of trauma that feel uncomfortably familiar, even across time and place. What is most striking is not just what is said, but what is left out. And in that silence many of us feel a grief that does not fit the narratives around us. Pain too complex to share easily. Fear that lives in our names, in our memories, in our bodies.

Our letter tried to hold all of this. The unbearable loss of October 7. The unbearable suffering in Gaza. The urgency of releasing hostages. The horror of starvation. The pain of rising antisemitism. We said clearly, Zionism must be rooted in justice. Compassion must extend beyond borders. Silence is not a moral option.

And yet more and more we are told to be silent, not always by force, but by fatigue. Fear. The sense that no one wants to hear us unless we flatten our pain and beliefs.

But we speak. Because something has shifted. Because red lines are being crossed. Because to speak is not to betray our people. It is to honour them. Jewish voice is being tested. Again. But we are still here. And we are still speaking. Because another path is not only possible. It is essential. And it begins with the courage to be heard.

Rabbi Charley Baginsky is Co-Lead of Progressive Judaism