By Rabbi Will Berkovitz, Schocken Family CEO
I have a broken oar mounted on my wall at JFS. Beneath the oar, a small plaque reads: When Fear Turns to Focus. It was a gift from my family. I shattered it against a massive boulder while rowing through the Grand Canyon several years ago. I had missed a critical move in a complex rapid, slamming our raft into the wall. Luckily, nobody fell out of the raft, and I had a spare oar. The moment on the river reminded me: in times of crisis, fear can either paralyze us or sharpen our focus. As a community, we are facing an extremely turbulent environment, and we must meet this moment with clarity, courage, and resolve.
Our rabbis teach: “Who is strong? The person who conquers their emotions.” I was recently telling my youngest son that courage is not the opposite of fear. Courage is acknowledging fear and rising above it—facing it without allowing it to control us. True strength comes from finding a still point of inner calm, summoning the clarity to act decisively even amid uncertainty.
At JFS, we maintain our moral clarity every day to stay focused on supporting our clients and staff who are being targeted right now by executive orders and dangerous rhetoric. In recent weeks, the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program was suspended, preventing families JFS was set to welcome and resettle in the following days and weeks from traveling to the United States.
Our resettlement program—active for 133 years—was ordered to halt federally funded services for refugees who are already in the country, including those who served alongside coalition forces in Afghanistan. Some arrived barely two weeks ago and need support for housing, medical care, and enrolling their children in school. This isn’t just a contractual obligation; it is a moral one.
Refugees are at great risk, but many others in our community face similar uncertainty. Attacking the social safety net will impact Jewish adults with cognitive disabilities, older community members who rely on JFS services, and families who depend on our food bank.
Our LGBTQ+ community—clients and staff alike—is being scapegoated. The anxiety is not unfounded, and the hostility directed at them is growing. Our history has repeatedly taught us that when some of us are targeted, eventually all of us are targeted. All it takes is silence or indifference.
We can debate the need to recalibrate government spending, but our social safety net is already dangerously frayed. Now, a hatchet is being taken to it. It is easy to destroy things, but incredibly difficult to rebuild them. And it is never wise to demolish a building while people are still living in it. Targeting the social safety net without a serious plan to replace it will not lead to improvement—it leads to calamity and suffering. The claim of a public/private partnership was always dubious; now it is a farce.
It is easy to say, “It will be painful, but it must be done,” when you are not the one feeling the pain—or struggling to help those who are. That is not efficiency. That is irresponsibility. It is unnecessarily cruel. And it is fundamentally not Jewish.
JFS was founded to support immigrants and refugees. The Holocaust survivors we support are refugees themselves. It is our past, our present, and it will be part of our future. We will continue to do our best to serve all those who turn to us, but we cannot do it alone. The need is growing, while the safety net is vanishing with every slash of the pen.
Fear spreads quickly. Scapegoating follows. Together, they lead good people to act callously. Our calling—our obligation—as a Jewish organization and a Jewish community is to draw strength from our tradition and reject false narratives: to show up for people when they are suffering or being targeted—not turn away from them.
JFS has never turned away—not through world wars, the Holocaust, economic depression, a global pandemic, or political turmoil. And we will not turn away now. We always find the moral courage to continue staying focused on the people we exist to serve.
Jewish tradition teaches: One cannot withhold the wages of a laborer. And yet, that is precisely what is happening. Our rabbis speak of honoring contracts, pursuing justice, and caring for the vulnerable. We are not permitted to turn a blind eye when we have the power to help. Rationalizing injustice is the same as ignoring it.
I was speaking with a mentor recently about the importance of reassessing our views. We must not be so entrenched in our thinking that we drive straight off a cliff, justifying it with “I did my research” or “Everything was fine.” But as we reassess, we must also recognize the deep well of wisdom that has sustained us.
To quote my mentor: “People are often drawn to the newest shiny objects; they can be seduced by new and encouraging ideas. Are the new ideas necessarily wrong? No. Should one listen and consider? Absolutely. But if an idea is inconsistent with long-standing truisms, one must consider deeply before compromising existing standards.”
And that is what I see happening today. Some are being seduced by easy promises, unfounded claims, and outright lies. We are abandoning hard-won wisdom and compromising the very values that have sustained us for millennia.
In times of instability, it is tempting to chase the newest solutions or discard old truths. But our strength comes from something deeper. More enduring. It is not found in empty proclamations, but in our history and tradition, which have guided us through uncertainty for generations. They are my gravitational pull—my north star when I cannot see the horizon. I believe many of us are searching for that same place of strength and resolve.
None of us can respond to everything, but being overwhelmed is not an option. In these turbulent times, we each need the moral clarity and courage to act. It is not a suggestion; it is an ancient commandment—whether by volunteering, donating to support our clients, or advocating for policies to protect the vulnerable. We all have a role to play in repairing all that is broken. Lives depend on it.
Because when fear turns to focus, together we will find the resolve to keep rowing through the storm—until we reach a safe harbor.
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