I attended a moving and somber remembrance yesterday for the victims of the AMIA bombing in Bueno Aires, exactly thirty years ago. It was sponsored by my favorite Jewish organization, the AJC, and held at my synagogue under even tighter-than-usual security, which is saying something. Members of the Argentine Jewish community in Boston were there to read out the names of all eighty-five victims, to light yahrzeit candles and to say prayers for the dead with the whole community. And no one could ignore the elephant in the room. The AMIA attack was carried out by Hezbollah at the behest of Iran. In other words, thirty years ago, the same gangsters who have fired thousands of rockets across Israel’s northern border in the past few months, driving tens of thousands from their homes, after years in which the UN “peacekeepers” have done nothing to keep Hezbollah away from the border, were killing innocent civilians at a community center by the dozens. The event was filled with calls for justice, and it seems as though there may now be more of a chance for justice than before, as President Milei has vowed to bring the guilty to justice.

In bleak times like these, events like the AMIA commemoration give me hope. First, Jewish people have a very long memory. We have fast days commemorating the day the Romans entered Jerusalem nearly two thousand years ago, and the day the Babylonians laid siege to Jerusalem twenty-five hundred years ago. We have one especially important fast day that marks the date, the ninth of the Hebrew month of Av, when both of the ancient Temples in Jerusalem were destroyed. We have made it through catastrophe after catastrophe and will make it through the catastrophe of 2023 and 2024. And we excel at making meaning out of these trials.

Second, maybe despite appearances, we have many friends and allies in the world. I’ll give you one example. Senator John Velis represents the Hampden and Hampshire district in the Massachusetts Senate. It’s a little less than 100 miles west of Boston and includes cities and towns like Holyoke, West Springfield, and part of Chicopee. The Jewish population is small, and Senator Velis is not Jewish. But he has spoken out against the alarming increase in antisemitism here in Massachusetts. He’s also sponsored an amendment to the budget bill in the Senate to instruct our Department of Elementary and Secondary Education to provide resources to schools to teach about antisemitism in age-appropriate ways and to organize a commission to make recommendations about how Massachusetts can implement the new National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism. The amendment passed the Senate unanimously. Sadly but maybe not surprisingly, there was some opposition to the bill after it passed the Senate, but the good news is that through the efforts of Senator Velis and the leaders of both houses of the legislature, Senator Velis’s amendment has made it into the text of the bill that emerged from the House-Senate conference committee. Here is Senator Velis speaking about his proposal in the Senate.

So despite all the bad news in the world, I think there are reasons for hope that tomorrow will be better.

Image credit: James E. Foehl (Public Domain)