I spent the first days after the Hamas pogrom against Israel in a state of shock. While Israelis rushed to the aid of survivors, my Jewish Community Relations Council Bay Area colleagues and I leapt into action.

In my role as director of Jewish community engagement, I represented JCRC at three community gatherings, and promoted and helped organize dozens more across our nine counties, in the first week alone.

These ranged from intimate, congregation-based gatherings to community-wide events, such as the “Bring Them Home” rally in Civic Center Plaza.

 I’m proud to say that the Bay Area Jewish community — secular and religious, American and Israeli — joined together in solidarity in a way I’ve never seen before. Seeing our community united has been a bright juxtaposition to the darkness of events.

On Friday, Oct. 13, as Shabbat began, I was finally able to take a breath and begin to process the atrocities.

I asked myself: What just happened? What happens next? Where do we, collectively, go from here?

I have been flooded by messages from Jewish community members who are concerned by the neglect of civic and school leadership, or worse, have received messages suggesting a moral equivalency between a U.S.-designated terror organization and the Jewish state. 

The Oct. 7 invasion marked the deadliest massacre of Jewish people since the Holocaust. As President Joe Biden said in Israel this week: “We have seen it described as Israel’s 9/11. But for a nation the size of Israel, it was like fifteen 9/11s.”

Let that sink in. How does one respond emotionally to fifteen 9/11s?

Jews and Israelis in the Bay Area feel angry, unseen and isolated. Leaders need to respond, and respond with compassion; they need to stand against hate and extremism.

We also need to hear from friends, neighbors, classmates, co-workers and acquaintances. The Jewish community is hurting and we fear that things will get worse before they get better.

I am ready to take action and looking for new ways to support the community and my friends in Israel.

Israel, the country to which so many of us are deeply connected, has entered a protracted armed conflict. Our friends and family are in harm’s way, and many more innocent people may lose their lives.

I am terrified of what may come.

Nor can we turn our back on Gazans. Pikuach nefesh, saving a life, is a core Jewish value. The people of Gaza are suffering because Islamist terrorists, who believe in the annihilation of Jews, have flourished amid poverty and desperation.

JCRC Bay Area believes in and has long and publicly supported Palestinian self-determination and a two-state solution. We support on-the-ground coexistence organizations through our Invest in Peace initiative, and my colleagues are constantly in touch with elected officials and leaders at all levels of government, trying to shift the balance toward peace and a future that benefits both societies.

However, sympathy, empathy, and humanitarian support is very different from the celebration of Hamas atrocities that we have seen at some of the pro-Palestinian rallies in the Bay Area.

We cannot ignore the possibility that malicious rhetoric, such as chants of “intifada” and graffiti calling “Death to Zionism / Kill a Settler,” may turn to violence.

So we, as well as our elected officials, must be in near-constant contact with law enforcement and community security representatives, who tell us things like “stay aware of your surroundings” and “if a situation makes you uncomfortable, trust your instincts” and remove yourself.

Now, like so many of you, I am ready to take action and looking for new ways to support the community and my friends in Israel.

We can speak out on social media to support Israeli and Jewish Americans: Like, repost, share and uplift messages of support from schools, politicians and community members.

If you’re not Jewish, reach out to your Jewish friends, co-workers and acquaintances. Tell them you’re thinking about them.

Share our JCRC Bay Area United with Israel resources to support Jewish employees, students and others.

And consider donating in support of our JCRC crisis response so that we can continue representing the Bay Area Jewish community as its largest collective in this critical time.

The locus of events is far away, but we are not powerless. We must not give up hope.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of J.