 Shabbat shalom everybody it's good to see you here I would like to ask if you don't mind to gather around the table particularly on that side on both sides but on that side there are song sheets going around you might need to share but you might not so get settled so we are gathered here today to bring attention to the hostages that are still being held in Gaza we might disagree about various aspects of the war about various aspects of what's happening there but surely decent people can agree that holding babies and elderly and civilians costage needs to stop for there to be any other substantial change so I'm so appreciative that you're all here we're going to sing some Shabbat songs and because the people that are represented here they can't go home for Shabbat and in Israel Friday night is a time where everybody goes home for Shabbat dinner and so there's many many houses in Israel right now where there's an empty chair or two empty chairs or four empty chairs and so we want to draw attention to the plight of the hostages this Arab Shabbat so thank you for being here I'm gonna see if my guitar is working David can you turn me up we're gonna start with Shalom alechem which asks for guardian angels to protect us and of course we sing it also that those same guardian angels protect the hostages shalom alechem marhouni le shalom alechem shalom alechem el yohi hamlachin hakadot marhuhu etchem le shalom alechem shalom alechem and we're going to sing Yedid Nefesh we'll sing the one a lot there's lots of tunes to Yedid Nefesh I think many of you know this one but at the end we'll jump into the nighun so Yedid Nefesh beloved of my heart we pray that you save these hostages here we go Yedid Nefesh Yedid Nefesh ab harachaman Yedid Nefesh ab harachaman Erid sonnecha ishokavdecha la da da da da da la da da Erid sonnecha ya roots ya hootsavdecha Kesh tachavve ya da da da da let's hear you mishokavdecha Ya da-Dai nae nae nae Would you like to say something there on me? No? Eliaho? I just want to check. You want to say? Okay, after. So we're going to continue. One more, and then we'll do some of the prayers. So S-I-A-N-I. Where does our help come from? We're Vermonters. Our help comes from the mountains. So we look to the mountains for strength, especially for the Jewish community right now. We need strength. We need unity. So we look to the mountains so that we feel our feet solidly on the ground, even if the world is spinning around us. We know who we are, and we know what matters. So S-I-A-N-I. That's too low. I want to make it a little higher. We're going to live large. We're going to capo three. Okay. Okay. S-I-A-N-I-L-H-H-H-R-I-M. May I in, may I in Yavoesri. S-I-A-N-I-L-H-H-H-R-I-M. May I in, may I in Yavoesri. Let's hear you. S-I-A-N-I-L-H-H-R-I-M. S-I-A-N-I-L-H-H-R-I-M. It's my pleasure to ask Naomi to speak for herself, but also as a representative of Ahavitzetik. Thank you, Rabbi David. First of all, I just want to thank everybody for coming today and showing your support. Sorry, that's my phone. I, wait, sorry. Oh, great. It's my son calling from Israel. Take it. No, it's all right. I call him back if I can. Again, I just, I think it's really important for us to take the time to look at this, this table. Sometimes large numbers can be overwhelming, so take the time to read about an individual because numbers are big and humans are even bigger, right? So we want to make sure and realize who we're talking about here and really think about them and thoughts and prayers, right? That's all we got, but it's something. So please take the time to read about the people that we are here to support. And again, thank you for being here. And I'm going to call back my son. Bring them home now. Bring them home now. Bring them home now. Bring them home now. Bring them home now. Bring them home now. Now, we know as Jews that Shabbat, we have to be joyful. Yesmuchu, we have to rejoice on Shabbat. And that's been hard to do this past month. But our people have rejoiced on Shabbat in situations even worse than this. Shalom! Shabbat shalom! So, we know what it is like to be afraid and still rejoice. So we're going to sing Gesher Tzar Me'od. All the world is a narrow bridge. The key is not to be afraid. Or as Rebnachman of Bratslav actually said, in everybody's life you come to a narrow bridge. The key, the essential thing is not to make yourself afraid. So, Kol Ha'olam, here we go. It says, no capo, I'm going to trust that. We'll see. Kol Ha'olam Kullo. Gesher Tzar Me'od. Gesher Tzar Me'od. Gesher Tzar Me'od. Kol Ha'olam Kullo. Gesher Tzar Me'od. Gesher Tzar Me'od. Ve Ha'ikar! Ve Ha'ikar! Ve Ha'ikar! Ve Ha'ikar! Ve Ha'olam Kullo. Gesher Tzar Me'od. Gesher Tzar Me'od. Gesher Tzar Me'od. Gesher Tzar Me'od. Sing so they can hear you over there. Yai-dai-dai-dai. Yai-dai-dai-dai. Yai-dai-dai-dai-dai. Yai-dai-dai-dai. Yai-dai-dai-dai. Yai! It is so good to hear each other's voices. As you know, a lot of us went down to the march in Washington and probably the most powerful thing was everybody singing together, 290,000 people singing together is a mighty, mighty noise. I want to now ask people as Naomi did to take a moment. We're going to have a minute of silence. I want you to take a moment and just take in a couple of these. and after our minute of silence we will sing the Hebrew prayer for Jewish people when they are missing or hostages for all people. So with that let us take a moment of silence. We will sing the Hebrew prayer for Jewish people. We will sing the Hebrew prayer for Jewish people. As I've shared many times in Israel when there are people missing from flash floods or other reasons people just spontaneously gather like squares all over the place and sing that song so it's good to sing it here and be part of that. We're now going to sing Hatikvah, a song of hope, a song of hope that goes back to the pogroms of the 1800s which is eerily similar to the pogroms we have witnessed in Israel which resulted in both 1200 murdered Israelis and over 200 hostages so let us sing in solidarity. It's my pleasure to introduce my good friend and colleague Eliahou Yunrabi Eliahou Yunik from the Burlington Chabad Eliahou. What a beautiful and inspiring event. So many gathered for this pre-Shabbat gathering singing Shabbat songs around the table where many are missing. Since October 7th over 200 people were violently taken from their homes and thrust into captivity. They have not been at their own Shabbat table for over a month. Also in America we've witnessed an awaking of anti-Semitism which shows its face in every generation with a different guise, a different excuse but fundamentally it's all the same. Besides the physical danger of anti-Semitism there's another aspect that concerns me a bit more deeply, the effect that anti-Semitism has on us. Unfortunately anti-Semitism can make people go into hiding, take off their mizuzo, tie their star of David. If anti-Semitism does not kill us physically, spiritually it can have a significant impact. In the 1980s there was a campaign to bring attention to the plight of Russian Jewry. It was suggested to leave an empty cheer at the Seder table as a reminder of the Jews in Russia who are unable to celebrate Passover on their own. The Lubabachareba of blessed memory encouraged everyone not to leave that extra cheer empty but to fill it with a fifth child, a Jew who would otherwise not be at the Seder. My friends, the way to combat hatred towards the Jewish people is by being what they don't want us to be, Jewish. Let's not hide. Let's not leave our synagogue chairs empty. Let's not leave our Shabbat table empty. Let's not leave our doorpost empty. Let's all do more together. When we see an empty chair, let's invite a friend to fill it. When we see an empty seat in the synagogue, let's invite someone to sit in it. When we see a friend who hasn't been to Torah study recently offered to pick them up on your way there. Where we see emptiness, we fill it. In a time like this, because of these empty chairs, the hearts of the Jewish people are open. Let's fill them with Torah, mitzvahs, and good deeds. Let's show our children that we are not scared that we are not alone for God is with us. Ezri meim Hashem, our help comes from God alone. That's our strength. We are proud, happy, and joyful Jews. Look at these empty chairs as a call to fill them. Thank you Eliyahu. We want to do one more song and what I thought we would do is Ozi Vizem Ratia. Many of you know that, which is God is my strength and will be my deliverance. So that seems like with what you just said, that seems like the right thing to do. So please join me. We'll do it acapella. Ozi Vizem Ratia. Lishu Ratia. Lishu Vizem Ratia. Lishu Ratia. Lishu. We'll throw in an extra negu. The one we did. Good Shabbat Shalom. Thank you all. We're so grateful. Let us keep our attention on these hostages that they may be released. All of you who are willing to help us break this pop-up flash installation down, we would love to have your help. Feel free to take a balloon. We don't want to release them. That's not good environmentalism. So thank you. Thanks to Chabad, Chabad of Burlington, UVM Chabad, Jewish Communities of Vermont, Ruach HaMakom, Ohavitzetik, Temple Sinai, and if I'm forgetting somebody, I apologize. We all are in this together. Shabbat Shalom. My friend Ruth Schreiber, who's Jewish, told me about this event and I'm very supportive of the Jewish people. I feel what's going on in the world right now is tragic. Ukraine, Israel, Palestine. My heart goes out to all of those hostages and people being innocent people being killed. So all we can do is try to spread kindness. It was a beautiful event and very heartwarming to see all of the Jewish community get together singing Shabbat songs and really feeling and expressing the pain from the hostages that are being held by Hamas. And we really implore anyone that has the ability to do anything about it, Congresswoman or senators, to really raise their voice for the plea of these innocent people that are still being held in captivity. My name is Matthew and this is an event for hostages that were taken from the October 7th massacre from Hamas. Yeah, I'm glad that a lot of communities here in Vermont are standing in solidarity with each other. That's a really important thing, especially because a lot of context is missed, given the enormously complex relationships that a lot of people have in that region and this sort of lead up to this particular moment. Anti-Semitism is a very real thing and there are a lot of people in the world that may harbor feelings like that and so it's good to sort of recognize and try to stand in solidarity with people that feel that way. I also recognize and totally understand the sort of implications of the other side, the tragedy and the horrors of the other side, Jews are 0.2% of the population and they receive an unmatched, unparalleled amount of hate and there are a lot of other majorities throughout the world that have lots of geopolitical land, lots of control and we miss that, we forget about that a lot of the time and so these people are terrible collateral damage that resulted from this particularly Hamas Act but the slogans that people say and hate, the things that people say, leave out the people that get caught in this really difficult situation. So I'm here to support these particular individuals, I definitely support a humane and peaceful solution and for anybody that doesn't recognize the humanity of this particular moment, I'm sorry for you. I hope you start to look at the ways in which the Israelites and the Jews have been suing for peace. One of the things that I think about is before this attack, the week after this attack there was a peace deal on the table with Saudi Arabia and there have been many peace deals on the table. Israelites and Jews have been trying for peace and Hamas is not. There's a very strong distinction and I'm sorry that a lot of that gets lost in social media and in small clips and slogans. Well, I'd just like to say I am fully in support of Israel. I'm also concerned about the damage being done to the innocent Palestinians but I also feel that Israel needs to do what it must do. I also feel that there's so much misinformation concerning what's going on that and I believe most of it is coming from Hamas and the ministries from within Hamas and I'm also very concerned about the anti-Semitism that, as was mentioned before, rears its ugly head periodically and it's almost like an excuse for anti-Semitism and the misinformation is just, it's astounding to me that we can believe terrorists before we believe a legal nation, a democratic legal nation and I just ask that people look at the facts, look at, not only has Hamas started this but they're holding their own people hostage in Gaza. Hamas has stores of fuel, food, medicine that they keep for themselves will not provide to their own people and yet the world blames Israel for everything and it generally blames the Jews for everything. I really nothing more to say other than I wish peace for all of us. Thank you. Okay, there's 250 people in tunnels underground in Gaza and there's not enough attention paid to them and we set this up to honor that in what I think is an elegant heartfelt way and the other thing I like to say is we really feel like people don't understand this situation. You know they shout things like genocide. They don't even know the definition of genocide. The definition of genocide is the intentional disposal of a people. That's what Hamas did. That's what from the river to the sea means from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea kill all the Jews and the people who obfuscate that and say it means something else are either ignorant or they're being disingenuous. I'd say the latter is pretty much because whatever the sources of that term were anybody who's been familiar with this region knows that from the river to the sea is in a call for extermination and it does bother me to see that on the streets of my town. So yeah remember the hostages. War reduces all humanity. There's no pretty war. Retreating when you're winning is not something anybody does in a war. Anyway that's what I have to say. Thank you.