In the year since Oct. 7, 2023, when the attacks and armed violence in Israel and the Middle East threw the region into moral, as well as military, crisis, we asked local faith leaders in the northern suburbs to weigh in.
The area is home to many Jewish synagogues in Northbrook, Skokie, Evanston, Glenview, Wilmette and elsewhere, as well as a growing Arab and Muslim population centered around Skokie, with a mosque in Morton Grove and a Muslim school with campuses in Morton Grove and Skokie. As the faith leaders noted, this brings the emotional impact of the conflict close to home for many residents.
‘I want there to be peace for everyone:’ Helbraun
Rabbi Sydney Helbraun, of Temple Beth El in Northbrook, described his community as feeling a sense of brokenness and being lost.
“When something happens to Israel, in Israel, if you don’t know somebody directly, you know somebody indirectly,” Helbraun said. “It’s that personal connection that so many of us have that makes the loss more personal.”
Helbraun said he was unsure if a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas would be an effective way to bring peace to the region if Hamas were to still harbor intentions to come into Israel and continue to kill people. “I want there to be peace for everyone, and part of me thinks that the only way for that to happen is for everybody to want the same thing,” he said.
In response to innocent civilians killed in Gaza, Helbraun said, “part of a country’s obligation to defend itself extends to making sure that if you’re going to take violent actions against another country because you think they’re wrong, that before you do, you’d better prepare a way for your own citizens to be able to be safe.
“I would say, in Gaza, Hamas did not prepare ways for its people to be safe. In fact, they put them in danger,” Helbraun said.
‘We spoke about the reverence of protecting life’: Quadri
While teaching his students on Oct. 7, Sa’ad Quadri saw opportunities to deepen their understanding of world events beyond what they see on random Tik Tok videos.
Quadri is a scholar in residence, or imam, at the Muslim Education Center, which has a school campus for younger children in Skokie and a campus for grades 6-12 in Morton Grove.
“One of the concerns is that students begin to only look at one side of the story, and that’s a concern from any side. Depending on which news sources one looks at there can be a leaning toward one community or the other. So we have to be vigilant to see if a story is being spun, because we don’t want to let that mislead our thoughts,” he said.
“We spoke about the reverence of protecting human life.”
Quadri said he also told students about the Holocaust, and the suffering of Jewish people.
“Our reaction can’t just be because there’s Muslims being affected that that can be our only concern. We should identify with anyone who’s going through difficulty and there should be a level of sympathy and empathy,” he told his students.
“Our topics and prayer have covered situations ranging from what’s happening from Sudan to Ukraine, what’s happening in Burma with the Rohingya crisis and then touching on some messages I received privately as the imam here from people (in this area) who are facing severe hunger who haven’t had a full meal in a week.”
“We go over many of the verses of the Koran, mainly the one that says, ‘Whoever takes a life, it is as if they have killed all of humanity; whoever saves a life, it is as if they have saved all of humanity.”
“It’s a difficult topic to speak about, because we do have Palestinian students here, and for them there’s a lot of personal heartbreak.
“I felt it was important to let them see the humanity on both sides.”
Quadri said many people consider Palestinians who have been unjustly arrested by Israeli authorities and held indefinitely in prison to also be hostages.
“A lot of students are just seeing Tik Tok, but they’re not seeing mothers and fathers at night sitting by an empty bed because a child or a spouse is missing,” he said.
“We spoke at length about the idea that though things are difficult now, we always have full faith that God will bring peace to people who are suffering.”
‘The innocent, young and poor get killed:’ Barrett
Rev. Jim Barrett, a Catholic priest at Our Lady of Perpetual Help Church in Glenview, said any war is not good.
“The innocent and the young and the poor get killed, and people make money off it by selling bombs and armaments and things like that. It’s evil, not only this war but any war,” he said. He advocated for peace between Israel and Palestine, but acknowledged that it would be hard to achieve.
Addressing the arguments many Israelis have made that Israel has a right to defend itself, Barrett said, “You have a right to defend yourself, but where does that right end to your right of dignity and life? If you slap me in the face, I can’t hit you with a bat.”
“Sometimes I think we can go too far, especially when older people and innocent people are killed.”
’10/7 did not end yet:’ Engel
In the perspective of Rabbi Zvi Engel of the Congregation Or Torah in Skokie, he said he doesn’t view this year’s Oct. 7 date as an isolated anniversary of the armed conflict between Israel and Hamas. “10/7 did not end yet,” he said.
“10/7 is the tenfold 9/11 of Israel. Unlike 9/11, this time the mass murders did not come from overseas but from next door. Yet, just like 9/11, those who openly call for the death of Israel — a warrant to genocide of the Jewish people — then call for the death of America in the next sentence,” Engel said.
When asked what the next steps should be, Engel said it was up to Hamas to free its hostages and for Hezbollah to stop its attack on Israel for the war to come to an end. Short of that, a ceasefire would not be an effective way to bring peace to the region, he said.
“For Israel, the death of civilians is a tragedy; for Hamas, the death of civilians is a declared strategy,” Engel said in response to the concern of many Chicagoans about the high death toll in Gaza.
“Israel claims that the vast majority of those killed were active combatants,” Engel said. “The death of innocent civilians in wartime is always tragic — just as it was during World War II — but this does not speak to the morality of a war effort whose aims are to rescue hostages and safeguard Israel’s borders again.”
Editor’s note: Pioneer Press reached out to several additional faith leaders but did not get responses before deadline.
