© 2025 MICHIGAN PUBLIC
91.7 Ann Arbor/Detroit 104.1 Grand Rapids 91.3 Port Huron 89.7 Lansing 91.1 Flint
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

This Detroit-area synagogue has been “reckoning” with Israel and Palestine conflict

Congregation T'chiyah members listen to a sermon from Rabbi Alana Alpert during Rosh Hashanah services. People sit in rows of wooden pews.
Beenish Ahmed
/
Michigan Public
Congregation T'chiyah members listen to a sermon from Rabbi Alana Alpert during Rosh Hashanah services.

The first time members of the Ferndale synagogue Congregation T’chiyah met after Israel and Hamas agreed to a ceasefire was for Shabbat services the following evening.

Over the last two years, Congregation T’chiyah members have prayed for peace during each of their Friday gatherings. The ceasefire finally gave them an answer to that prayer.

It came during Sukkot – the last in the Jewish holiday season, and a celebration after the end of the period of atonement that begins with Rosh Hashanah.

On that day, T’chiyah’s rabbi Alana Alpert was draped in a white scarf that matched her oversized, cat-eye glasses. Many of the 200 or so gathered for the morning’s services also wore white, which is symbolic of the purification sought from Rosh Hashanah to Yom Kippur.

But some of her congregants were draped in the checkered keffiyehs that stand for Palestinian resistance.

‘Reckoning’ with the Israel-Palestine conflict

Across the country, Americans have increasingly disapproved of the air strikes, ground incursions, and food blockades Israel has taken in response to the Hamas-led attack on Oct. 7, 2023. A recent Washington Post poll found that’s true even for Jewish Americans, with 39% of those polled considering Israel’s actions in Gaza a “genocide.”

That’s how Alpert sees the situation. The question for her wasn’t if she would mention Gaza in her Rosh Hashanah sermon this year, but how much she would focus on it.

“It is not enough to be a Jew against genocide,” she told her congregation. “You must be a part of a Jewish community against genocide and for human rights.”

Last month, an independent United Nations Commission determined that Israel’s actions in Gaza met international standards for “genocide.” Israel categorically disputed the finding.

But, as Israel’s war on Gaza stretched on and claimed the lives of tens of thousands, an increasing concern for Palestinians and disavowal of Zionism became front and center at Congregation T’chiyah.

Those who founded the congregation in Detroit in 1977 did so to build a Jewish community deeply connected to progressive values and inclusivity for queer people and interfaith families. When Alpert became its rabbi about a decade ago, she launched the Detroit Jews for Justice, inculcating community service and local activism into the heart of T’chiyah.

But after “letting (DJJ) fly the nest,” Alpert felt compelled to take a step back and ask: “What does it mean to be a social justice synagogue?”

Part of what it means, she decided, is “reckoning” with the Israel-Palestine conflict.

In 2023, she led a group of T’chiyah members on a tour of the West Bank. When they returned to Ferndale, she helped organize a “listening tour” so fellow members could discuss their experiences. She shared her own reflections in her Yom Kippur sermon that year.

Just a few weeks after that, Hamas attacked Israel.

Reckoning with October 7th

“That was a heartbreak to me,” Victoria Kohl said of the Hamas-led attack on a music festival and kibbutzim along the border with Gaza. Militants killed about 1,200 and took more than 250 hostage.

At first, the longtime T’chiyah member saw Israel’s military action in Gaza as a “justified” response to Hamas’s attack. Over time that changed to unjustified and unsustainable.

“Now, if I may use the word, [it’s] unforgivable,” she said.

Kohl hadn’t previously engaged all that much with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Once the war began, she found it challenging to reconcile the Jewish state’s war on Gaza with her Jewish faith, she said, noting a verse from the Torah that holds great meaning to her: “justice, justice you shall pursue.”

In workshops and discussions at T’chiyah, Kohl found she had a safe space to work through her feelings, facilitated by Alpert.

“She allowed me to voice disagreements,” Kohl recalled. “It was very enlightening to know that my congregation was able to talk to each other and come to a fairly common place.”

Syma Echeandia has had deep ties to Israel for most of her life. She began to shift her stance Zionism through discussions and workshops offered through her synogogue, Congregation T'chiyah in Ferndale.
Beenish Ahmed
/
Michigan Public
Syma Echeandia has had deep ties to Israel for most of her life. She began to shift her stance on Zionism through discussions and workshops offered through her synogogue, Congregation T'chiyah in Ferndale.

Shifting views on Israel

Syma Echeandia has a deep personal connection to Israel that spans most of her 82 year life. She was born during World War II and her grandparents lost most of their families during the Holocaust. So, she always believed in Israel as a safe haven for Jewish people.

“Honestly, we never thought about the other people who were already living there,” Echeandia said. “That's what we said: it was a desert. Nothing was happening there. So it didn't matter if the European Jews moved in, they would just elevate the place and bring all kinds of wonderful things.”

Echeandia first visited Israel after graduating from Jewish Day School.

Israel as a country was younger than she was. Echeandia became enamored by the possibility she saw around her. When she went back two years later, she fell in love with an Israeli man who worked as an engineer of the ship she took to get there – the S.S. Israel.

“It was a shipboard romance,” she said with a giggle.

After they had been married for more than a decade and had children of their own, Echeandia insisted that the family move to Israel.

“I liked raising my kids there. I felt really – at the time – I felt safe and comfortable,” she recalled. She felt comfortable speaking Hebrew and enjoyed meeting Jewish people who had moved there from all over the world.

The family lived in Ashkelon, a city on the border with Gaza, for nearly 10 years. She had interactions with Palestinians; people from Gaza built their house, and they would send food back and forth to each other’s families, she said.

Israel was building settlements in Gaza at the time, and Echeandia said those developments, along with restrictions for Palestinians to work in Israel, created difficult conditions, including high rates of unemployment and poverty.

“We were hearing more and more stories about how the settlements were ruining life for the people who were already living there,” she said.

Echeandia said she began seriously considering the experiences of Palestinians only through programs at T’chiyah; including a course called “Occupation 101,” offered by Breaking the Silence, an organization created by former Israeli soldiers.

Echeandia trained as a social worker and built a career as a mental health administrator. She had been involved in community activism. What she came to understand as a separate set of rights for Israelis and Palestinians didn’t fit in with her belief in equality.

Echeandia’s late in life shift away from support for Israel has alienated her from most of her family.

“It's very upsetting,” she said. “But there's no opportunity to talk about it. I mean, I can get upset. I cried one day to the rabbi. I said, ‘No one will be at my funeral,’ And she said, ‘What are you talking about? We'll all be there.’”

Banding together for hope

A hard look Palestinian experiences and a critical approach to Zionism has also caused several members to leave T’chiyah.

“Each one, like, pains me really deeply,” said Rabbi Alpert. “In the Jewish tradition we talk about each person being an olam malay, like a complete world, and I feel that.”

This year, Alpert used her Rosh Hashanah sermon to call on members to show up for each other and to show up to services.

“Come when it's convenient. Come when it's not,” she said. “Come when you're inspired. Come when you're exhausted. Come when the Torah speaks to you. And come when it feels like ancient gibberish.”

Alpert closes her appeal with a prayer: “La shana Tova, may this be a year of deepening commitment to each other and to the liberation of all beings.”

Beenish Ahmed is Michigan Public's Criminal Justice reporter. Since 2016, she has been a reporter for WNYC Public Radio in New York and also a freelance journalist. Her stories have appeared on NPR, as well as in The New Yorker, Harper’s, The Atlantic, VICE and The Daily Beast.