Bearing the Mark of Cain for Naming the Gaza Genocide

I began publicly invoking the word “genocide” in July 2025 to describe the actions of the Israeli government in Gaza in response to the horrific Hamas terrorist attacks of October 7, 2023, and the incomprehensible ongoing hostage crisis. Since that time, despite increasing agreement among liberal Jewish organizations over the use of this term, I cannot help but feel like I wear the mark of Cain in the Jewish community. Many colleagues, friends, and loved ones have gone from praising my recent award as a “Rabbinic Human Rights Hero” for my efforts to mobilize the Jewish community against the death penalty, to vilifying me for what they claim is parroting anti-Semitic canards. Others have dismissed me as “insane,” a “psychopath,” or attempted to shame me for what they feel is my abandonment of my fellow descendants of Holocaust survivors, and the Jewish people as a whole.

I thought I knew of vitriol and recrimination; I was wrong. For years, proponents of the death penalty have lodged heinous verbal attacks against me for my public activism as the co-founder of “L’chaim! Jews Against the Death Penalty.” Even that could not have prepared me, however, for the deluge of hate and ridicule I have received throughout the Jewish world this past month. Now, I feel like a persona non grata when I enter many congregations and communities that previously embraced me as an ordained cantor. Decades-long friends and colleagues have started to treat me like a social pariah. Acquaintances who know me less well are more direct. “Kapo,” some of them have called me, adding: “You’d sell us out to the Nazis any day just to keep yourself lookin’ good to your antisemite friends.”

Critics may ask why I subject myself to the kangaroo court of public opinion. The truth is that it is not for my sake, but rather for the children of our shared world. First and foremost, for Gazan children, who remain in the line of fire and starvation as I write these words. Also, for my own children. In their faces, I see the emaciated images of their young cousins scattered among the rubble in Gaza, alongside Israeli children like Kfir and Ariel Bibas, of blessed memories, slaughtered in captivity after the ruthless October 7th massacre of over a thousand more innocent souls. They, like Jewish children everywhere, one day will read about this fraught moment in time and wonder where their ancestors stood in the public arena while a veritable genocide unfolded before their eyes. They will consider individuals like Israeli lawmaker Ofer Cassif, whose colleagues ejected him from the Knesset this week for calling the government’s campaign in Gaza a genocide. They will remember, as well, Israeli author David Grossman, whose use of that same term Cassif had quoted before his removal from Israel’s parliamentary chamber.

Some argue that terminology does not matter when reckoning with the atrocities that the IDF has committed in response to the heinous Hamas terrorist attacks. I firmly disagree. Words matter – they can wage wars and herald peace; inspire killing, and save lives. As the government of Israel’s military response to the October 7th, 2023 attacks became more extreme, I carefully chose my words. I first spoke of vengeance, then of ethnic cleansing. Now, albeit far too late and with a weighty heart, I am quite intentionally – and far from lightly – employing the word “genocide,” as per a growing consensus of genocide scholars and humanitarian organizations, in describing the actions in Gaza of the government of Israel, whose land and people I dearly love as a progressive Zionist. Others have indicated that employing the term genocide might empower those eager to engage in antisemitic rhetoric and violence, which is indeed a very legitimate concern. Rabbi Jill Jacobs, the director of T’ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights, helped to remind me, though, that one can and should be able to criticize the Israeli government without fomenting antisemitism.

The metaphor of the infamous “Ot Kayin” (Hebrew: “Mark of Cain”) that I feel I bear – and its related Biblical narrative – is most telling. After Cain kills his brother Abel in a fit of rage and jealousy, the Divine exclaims to him: “Hark, your brother’s blood cries out to Me from the ground!” (Genesis 4: 10). Many progressive Jewish groups have quoted this exact verse in drawing a parallel between Cain and Abel’s archetypal sibling rivalry and what HaShechinah – the Divine Presence – might say in response to the government of Israel’s killings of their Gazan cousins.

It merits reminding that in the Biblical text, the Creator did not intend for the sign on Cain’s forehead to be a symbol of shame, despite its evolution as such in the prevalent mindset over the millennia. Instead, God meant for it to protect Cain from others bent on putting him to death for having killed his brother. It is fitting that a death penalty abolitionist like myself would wear this misunderstood mark in the eyes of so many of my fellow Jews. Many of them seem to view my argument as tantamount to fratricide, a treasonous action that would appear, for some, to be worthy of execution.

I pen these reflections on Tisha B’Av, the Jewish calendar’s major day of communal mourning and fasting over the destruction of the ancient Temples and countless other calamities in Jewish history. Many colleagues have written powerful prose and poetry about the cruel irony this year of fasting on this solemn day, which recalls in grim detail the starvation of the Jewish people in ancient times. They have rightfully juxtaposed this ritual with the fact that, while Hamas continues to torture and starve Israeli hostages to death, the government of Israel enables a famine that kills countless innocent Palestinian children and civilians, and plans now to expand the military occupation and destruction of Gaza. I, too, mourn these detestable synchronicities.

At the same time, I lament how future generations will perceive those who are unable or unwilling to open their eyes to the reality of the genocide. I profoundly regret that I waited far too long before using this word to describe what is occurring in Gaza. I will have to live with that realization for the rest of my life. Just as with my shifting view of the death penalty over time, I hope that my progeny will forgive me for not reading the signs sooner of clear human rights violations in Gaza. May my journey be a lesson to them that no one is immune to blind spots. May it also demonstrate that it is possible to summon the courage necessary to live by one’s values, even in the face of prodigious criticism and public and private condemnation. Finally, I pray that these sincere sentiments will give renewed hope to readers, reminding them that people can change their attitudes. I encourage others to do so – despite the costs – as soon as possible, for the sake of Palestinians in Gaza, the global Jewish community, and all humanity.

A version of this essay first appeared on The Jurist.

The post Bearing the Mark of Cain for Naming the Gaza Genocide appeared first on CounterPunch.org.