🕊️ Staying Human: Witnessing, Learning, Acting
בִּמְקוֹם שֶׁאֵין אֲנָשִׁים הִשְׁתַּדֵּל לִהְיוֹת אִישׁ
"In a place where there is no humanity, strive to be a human."
In moments of fear, grief, and moral strain, our tradition does not ask for certainty or unanimity. It asks us to remain human.
Staying Human is a series of programs at Temple Hillel B'nai Torah that invites our community to move through this moment together. Through film, music, conversation, and learning, we create space to bear witness to real lives, deepen understanding, and discern how we respond to suffering without perpetuating more suffering.
These programs are not about reaching consensus. They are about presence, responsibility, and staying in relationship with one another — and with our Jewish values — during a painful and complicated time.
The Arc: Witnessing · Learning · Acting
👁️ Witnessing
We begin by seeing and hearing human stories up close through film, music, and testimony — allowing ourselves to be present with grief, loss, and moral complexity.
📖 Learning
We deepen context through speakers, guided conversations, and shared study — asking hard questions and listening across difference.
🤝 Acting
We explore ways of responding rooted in care, responsibility, and Jewish values. Action may look different for different people, and participation is always invitational.
Two Tracks
Like the Mishnah's masekhtot — distinct paths of learning that each go their own way while belonging to the larger whole — this series has two tracks. Engage one, both, or move between them as programs speak to you.
🔹 IPPC Track
Bringing our whole Jewish selves to the hardest questions of this moment: Israel, Palestine, identity, and responsibility.
🔸 Tikkun Olam Track
Standing with vulnerable people in our communities through immigration justice, healthcare advocacy, peaceful protest, and defending democratic norms.
Different terrain, but the same commitment —
to witness suffering, deepen understanding, and act with responsibility.
🕯️ Events to Commemorate the Third Anniversary of October 7, 2023
Several commemoration events are happening throughout the wider Boston Jewish community, and we hope our members and friends will attend those community events. At HBT, we will extend Moment for Ma'ariv on Tuesday, October 6th to commemorate and mourn the victims of October 7, 2023. On October 7th itself, we will join together with our friends at neighboring synagogues so that we can commemorate October 7th all together as a larger community.
- Tue, Oct 61:00 PM ET Online (Zoom)Three Years after October 7: Honoring our Shared Pain and Humanity. Hear directly from two bereaved family members, one Israeli and one Palestinian, both members of the Parents Circle - Families Forum, as they share their stories of loss and survival, as well as their hopes for the future. Co-presented by NIF and the Parents Circle - Families Forum, with members of the Progressive Israel Network. Introductory remarks by Idit Klein of NIF; moderated by Shiri Ourian of the American Friends of the Parents Circle. In English, with simultaneous translation to Arabic and Hebrew.Zoom link provided upon registration.Register for the NIF and Parents Circle webinar →
- Tue, Oct 67:00–8:30 PM Temple Hillel B'nai Torah At HBTExtended Moment for Ma'ariv: commemorating and mourning the victims of October 7, 2023, with Tehillim (Psalms), song, and sharing. In person only.
- Wed, Oct 77:00–9:00 PM Temple Beth Zion, 1566 Beacon St, Brookline HBT partnerMarking October 7: A Community Evening of Remembrance and Reflection. Join members of Congregation Dorshei Tzedek, Sinai Brookline, Hillel B'nai Torah, and TBZ for an evening of remembrance, reflection, and conversation. Rabbis Toba Spitzer, Andy Vogel, Aliza Schwartz, and Claudia Kreiman will begin with a brief ceremony honoring the lives lost, those taken hostage, and those whose lives have been forever changed by the events of that day and its aftermath. Then we will watch Holding Liat. In person.Event page for Marking October 7 at Temple Beth Zion →
- Wed, Oct 77:00 PM CJP · In person or virtualGather to Remember: Stories of Resilience from October 7: a meaningful evening of remembrance and reflection featuring Eliya Cohen, a former hostage, and Ziv Abud, a NOVA Festival survivor.$18 per person. Venue details will be shared shortly before the event for security reasons. Space is expected to fill quickly.Register for Gather to Remember (CJP), in person or virtual →
- Tue, Oct 137:30 PM Temple Emunah, Lexington HBT co-sponsorFriends of Givat Haviva with Mohammad Darawshe, Givat Haviva's Director of Strategy at the Center for Shared Society. Givat Haviva does "groundbreaking work in building a shared society among Jewish and Arab citizens in Israel." Our own Rabbi Emerita Barbara Penzner's leadership is a huge part of making this event happen.RSVP for the Givat Haviva event at Temple Emunah by October 5 →
👁️ Bearing Witness: The Burlington ICE Facility
For nearly a year, members of HBT's Tikkun Olam committee have been among the thousands who gather outside ICE's Boston Field Office at 1000 District Avenue in Burlington -- forming a human corridor along the sidewalk, bearing witness to what happens inside. On some days, more than 700 people show up. The action is called "Bearing Witness" -- and that is exactly what it is.
The stakes are real. On April 30, 2026, eleven people were arrested after attempting to deliver food and personal items to detainees inside, charged with trespassing and disturbing the peace.
The action is there every Wednesday, Thursday, and Saturday at 11:00 AM if you want to join. Not everyone can stand on District Avenue on a Wednesday morning -- and that's understood. Some people make it possible for others to be up front. All of it matters. The GBIO "Not With Our Money, Citizens" campaign is another way.
Witnessing can change us.
Here is one way HBT is acting on what we've seen.
💰 "Not With Our Money, Citizens"
Citizens Bank is one of the largest financiers of CoreCivic and GEO Group -- the two for-profit companies that together operate more than half of all ICE detention facilities in the country, including the one in Burlington. In 2019, eight major national banks ended their relationships with the private prison industry. Citizens stayed in -- and stepped up to fill the void. Bank of America walked away. Wells Fargo walked away. Citizens has not.
The Greater Boston Interfaith Organization is fighting back with organized money. The strategy: gather pledges from member congregations and individuals to move deposits out of Citizens Bank, then bring that total to Citizens Bank leadership and demand they stop financing the detention of our neighbors. Everyone with a Citizens Bank account can make their money speak.
Where things stand: The campaign has already withdrawn $1 million from Citizens Bank and has nearly $18 million pledged toward a $20 million goal. We are in Stage 2 of 4 -- escalating with public action, more institutions signing on, and expanding beyond Greater Boston. The next milestone is a Citizens Assembly on July 4th, at which point an additional $2 million will be withdrawn if demands have not been met.
This campaign is getting attention:
HBT has been part of this fight from the beginning -- in the streets and now in the bank. If you have a Citizens Bank account and want to add your pledge to HBT's voice in this effort, or if you'd simply like to learn more, reach out to Reuben Kantor.
🗓️ Coming Soon from IPPC
🎬 Children of Peace · Documentary Date TBA
A documentary about young people raised in Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam, the shared Jewish-Arab village, and the challenges they face when they enter separate schools and wider Israeli society. We're exploring a post-film conversation with filmmaker Maayan Schwartz and/or people connected to the village.
🗳️ Israeli Elections: A Community Discussion Date TBA
A look at Israeli political life and what upcoming Israeli elections could mean. Format, speakers, and date are still being worked out.
Past Programs
✊ Freedom Trainers: Strategic Noncooperation Workshop
Freedom Trainers is a decentralized network of educators and organizers -- including leaders from the Horizons Project, Beautiful Trouble, and Free DC -- working to counter democratic backsliding by teaching the skills of strategic noncooperation. This session covered the authoritarian playbook, the "pillars of support" that prop up authoritarian power, and concrete noncooperation tactics that can weaken them.
Key concepts from the training
Pillar Model: Authoritarian regimes depend on the cooperation of pillars like the military, bureaucracy, business, and religious/social groups. Noncooperation works by weakening these pillars through persuasion, economic pressure, and defection.
3.5% Rule: Research by Harvard's Erica Chenoweth found that no government has withstood sustained nonviolent participation by 3.5% of its population -- though this is a retrospective pattern, not a guarantee.
Forms of noncooperation: social (boycotts, withdrawal from institutions), economic (consumer boycotts, strikes, tax refusal), and political (civil disobedience, election boycotts, administrative slowdowns).
Democratic Backsliding: the gradual weakening of the rules, institutions, and norms that hold government accountable -- usually carried out slowly by legally elected leaders, not through a sudden coup.
Defensive vs. Offensive strategies: defensive strategies protect what we already have; offensive strategies proactively seize the initiative to force change before an opponent can act.
Resources for going deeper:
- Freedom Trainers Noncooperation Library -- open-source resources on strategic noncompliance
- International Center on Nonviolent Conflict (ICNC) -- academic curriculum & conflict case studies
- Beautiful Trouble -- a creative toolbox of tactics, principles & case studies
- The Commons Social Change Library -- guides on campaign planning & noncooperation tactics
- Nonviolent Action Lab (Harvard) -- Erica Chenoweth's latest research
- Waging Nonviolence -- real-time reporting on noncooperation movements worldwide
Watch: Bringing Down a Dictator (Peabody Award documentary on the nonviolent overthrow of Milošević) and Erica Chenoweth's TEDx talk on the success of nonviolent civil resistance.
🕊️ 30th Annual Mother's Day Walk for Peace
In 1996, Chaplain Clementina Chéry lost her son Louis to gun violence. Mother's Day was supposed to be a celebration — but she was grieving. So she walked, in the neighborhood where he was killed, as an act of remembrance and a refusal to be silent. Other mothers who had lost children came. Then their families. Then the whole community.
Thirty years later, the Mother's Day Walk for Peace is one of the largest organized walks in New England — and Temple Hillel B'nai Torah walks as part of the Interfaith contingent. Rodef shalom — pursuing peace — means showing up.
National Day of Action: Jews Demand ICE Out
HBT co-sponsored this national day of action, with members attending actions at Coolidge Corner and Jamaica Plain demanding ICE out of our schools, workplaces, parks, and communities.
2026 Joint Memorial Ceremony · Combatants for Peace & Parents Circle – Families Forum
Each year, Israelis and Palestinians who have lost family members to the conflict gather together to mourn, remember, and affirm their shared humanity. This year's ceremony was held live in Jerusalem on the eve of Israel's Memorial Day — and streamed to communities around the world.
A local in-person viewing was hosted the following evening by Boston Standing Together and the Boston Workers Circle Israel Palestine Committee, at the Boston Workers Circle, 6 Webster St., Brookline (Coolidge Corner).
▶ Watch the recording:
Yuval Noah Harari: Israel, Gaza, and the Future of Judaism · Guided Discussion
Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harari argues that the period from October 7, 2023 to the present may be a defining turning point for Jewish history and Jewish identity — perhaps the most consequential since the Roman conquest of 70 CE.
- Jewish Voices Rising: A Benefit Concert for the Children of Gaza · Gaza Children's Village March 8, 2026 Held at Eliot Church of Newton. Together this concert raised over $50,000 to support education, nutrition, healthcare, and psychosocial care for orphaned and vulnerable children across Gaza. Thank you to all who attended, participated, and donated.
- Susannah Sirkin: Human Rights and the War in Gaza February 22, 2026
- Holding Liat · Film Screening February 19, 2026
- Staying Human in a Time of War · Yoav Peck · Video Recording November 12, 2024
About the IPPC
The Israeli-Palestinian Program Committee helps bring programs to Temple Hillel B'nai Torah grounded in human dignity, learning, and staying in relationship across difference. Many of the programs in the Staying Human series grew out of IPPC's leadership.
📬 Stay Connected
This page will be updated as new programs are added. Questions or thoughts? Reach out to a member of the organizing team.