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My heart is in the East and I am at the end of the West.” These words of the 12th Century poet Rabbi Yehuda Halevi capture the feeling of distance and despair I feel in this moment of devastating violence in Israel this week.

Every week, I lead a women’s circle of Palestinian and Jewish students at Hebrew University, where we come together to explore the unique dimensions of our identities as women.

We are writing to you today as your Senior Rabbi, Executive Director, and congregational President from a place of communal sadness, anger, shame, and Teshuvah.

Following a challenging week of national news, which included the Boston Marathon Bombings, Cantor Angela Buchdahl and Cantor Julia Katz sang “Gesher Tzar M’od” at Shabbat, a song of comfort that inspires us to “not be afraid.”

Watch and listen as Cantor Buchdahl sings her d'rash for Tu BiSh'vat and the Song of the Sea for Shabbat Shirah.

Each year, we honor the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., during Shabbat worship, a fearless civil rights leader who understood and reminded us that, “The segregationists and racists make no fine distinction between the Negro and the Jew.”