Against the Jewish World and Israel:

• For the sin of allowing the word “genocide” to become so casually attached to Israel that actual genocidal intentions against Jews became background noise;
• For the sin of allowing people who celebrated, excused or contextualized October 7 to reinvent themselves as authorities on Jewish morality;
• For the sin of allowing “Zionist” to become a socially acceptable substitute for things people would be embarrassed to say using the word “Jew”;
• For the sin of advocating Jewish-Arab coexistence while objecting when Jews actually move next to Arabs in the Galilee;
• For the sin of allowing the world to mark the 25th anniversary of Durban without forcing a reckoning with what Durban became for Jews;
• For the sin of allowing the descendants of people who once lived in Israel to claim an unlimited right to enter it while treating Jewish return to the same land as colonialism;
• For the sin of confusing being worried about the Jewish people with doing something for the Jewish people.

Terrorism, Jihadism and Language

• For the sin of allowing September 11 to be taught without clearly teaching the jihadi ideology of the people who committed September 11;
• For the sin of treating white supremacy as an ideology that must be named while treating jihadism as a subject requiring euphemisms;
• For the sin of allowing “terrorist” to become a complicated word precisely when the terrorist is trying very hard to make his intentions uncomplicated.

United Nations / International Institutions

• For the sin of accepting international descriptions of the Temple Mount that progressively erase the Jewish Temple from the Mount;
• For the sin of reaching the United Nations’ 80th General Assembly without insisting on the basic distinction between a member state attacked on October 7 and the non-member entity whose governing terrorist organization launched the attack;
• For the sin of watching countries recognize a state of “Palestine” without stating clearly that there is no “Right of Return” for Arabs into Israel.

America

• For the sin of confusing an apology with repentance;
• For the sin of believing that another statement, conference or task force constitutes a strategy against antisemitism;
• For the sin of asking politicians to affirm our connection to Israel more loudly than we affirm it ourselves;
• For the sin of performative protests rather then developing coherent strategies;
• For the sin of assuming that because American Jewry has lived through a Golden Age, the wheel could never turn.

Media / Culture

• For the sin of treating calls for violence against Jews as a debate over free speech rather than first acknowledging what was actually being said;
• For the sin of watching the meaning of “terrorist” narrow while the meaning of “genocide” expanded;
• For the sin of continuing to confuse greater sophistication of vocabulary with greater clarity of thought;
• For the sin of listening to music of obvious antisemites.

Ourselves

• For the sin of expecting others to understand Jewish history that we have not bothered to learn;
• For the sin of spending more time reading about antisemitism than studying Judaism;
• For the sin of arriving late to shul and being annoyed that someone is sitting in my seat;
• For the sin of pretending to say any of the prayers in the morning right before Rabbi Yishamel says;
• For the sin of praying at home at a speed that beats boiling a soft-boiled egg;
• For the sin of assuming that the person davening too quickly is less sincere than I am;
• For the sin of assuming that the person davening too slowly is showing off;
• For the sin of taking another bencher from a simcha when I already have 250 sitting in a drawer;
• For the sin of expecting my rabbi to speak like Lord Jonathan Sachs;
• For the sin of opening the Chumash when the rabbi starts speaking and pretending I am looking up a source;
• For the sin of looking around during the rabbi’s sermon to see who else thinks it is going too long;
• For the sin of saying Shabbat Shalom to someone whose name I should know after twenty years;
• For the sin of deciding whether I like a shul based on the kiddush;
• For the sin of drinking scotch at 9:15 in the morning because apparently that is something Jews who go to early minyan do;
• For the sin of believing calories consumed on Shabbat are somehow accounted for differently;
• For the sin of dropping off fifty Jewish books at the door of the synagogue and running away like a cartoon of someone leaving a baby at a fire house;
• For the sin of complaining there is too much food at a simcha and then asking if there is dessert;
• For the sin of putting a bottle of wine aside because it is too good to open and then keeping it for eleven years;
• For the sin of not knowing how to engage with friends who are going through difficult times;
• For the sin of joining a Tehillim WhatsApp group and considering the work done even when never saying a single chapter;
• For the sin of composing a response to a family WhatsApp, deleting it, and then sending it anyway;
• For the sin of checking how many people read something I wrote while pretending I do not care;
• For the sin of believing that because I did not post my good deed, I deserve additional credit for humility;
• For the sin of apologizing for “anything I may have done” rather than remembering what I actually did;
• For the sin of spending Al Chet thinking about everyone who should be saying Al Chet;
• For the sin of reaching the end of Al Chet feeling considerably better about everyone else’s sins.

For all these things, please pardon us