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Introduction

In his book, The Lilac Tree: A Rabbi’s Reflections on Love, Courage, and History, Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch, the spiritual leader of Stephen Wise Free Synagogue on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, aims to “make sense of what I have seen and what I have learned: to understand better the fundamental values at play in every human interaction, and to apply Jewish wisdom to our individual and communal lives.”[1]  The rabbi—named by The Jerusalem Post in 2018 as among “The 50 Most Influential Jews of the Year” and by The New York Observer as among “New York’s Most Influential Religious Leaders” as well as praised by City & State as “the borough’s most influential voice” for Manhattan’s more than 300,000 Jews—began writing the book during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic when lockdowns were in place, which enabled him to reflect deeply for months on “what I had seen and learned in my thirty-four-year rabbinic career.”[2]

A passionate Zionist, Rabbi Hirsch moved to the Jewish state during his high school years, serving as a tank commander in the Israel Defense Forces from 1977 to 1980.  He has also held leadership positions on boards of national and international organizations, including the Jewish Agency for Israel, the World Zionist Organization, the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, and the Central Conference of American Rabbis.  As a rabbi who deeply values the importance of education, Rabbi Hirsch began the Amplify Israel Fellowship, which is an initiative focused on preparing the next generation of Reform rabbinic leaders as they address Zionist and Israel-related issues in their rabbinates.  As part of this fellowship, Rabbi Hirsch and Stephen Wise Free Synagogue’s Israel Fellow, Rabbi Dr. Tracy Kaplowitz, have brought Reform rabbis from the United States to visit Israel not only to express solidarity with and volunteer in Israel, but also to learn from Israelis.  Rabbi Hirsch’s “Dispatches from Israel” video recordings of his meetings with various Israelis during a visit to Israel are available on the Stephen Wise Free Synagogue website.

Book Structure

The book is divided into six sections with the chapters within each section dealing with subjects relating to the themes of the sections where they appear:

1. Faith

2. The Jews

3. Israel

4. America

5. G[-]d Has Sent You

6. The Art of Living

Israel

This review will focus on Rabbi Hirsch’s treatment of the subject of Israel in the section of the book dealing with that topic.  He divides the section on Israel into the following chapters:

• The Promised Land

• Suite 117

• Mount Nebo

• Bombs and Bombshells

• Peace

• Israel and Anti-Semitism

• Israel and American Jews

The Promised Land

In this chapter, Rabbi Hirsch argues that the Jewish return to Zion constitutes “a miracle of biblical proportions” as the survival of the Jewish people bucks the historical trend of the dissolution of the great empires and superpowers of antiquity.  In Hirsch’s alliterative formulation,

It is a miracle that there are even Jews in the world.  There are no Babylonians in Brooklyn, Philistines in Phoenix, Moabites in Montana, Midianites in Mississippi, or Canaanites in Colorado.  I have never met an Amalekite, a Hittite, an Akkadian, a Sumerian, a Chaldean, a Hyksos, or a Nabatean.  None of the nations of antiquity mentioned in the Bible, often cited as seeking our destruction, survived.  The passing centuries consumed even the superpowers of the ancient world, their crumbling ruins displaying scant reminders that they once dominated their times.[3]

In a time when some have expressed discomfort with the idea of Jewish particularism, Rabbi Hirsch seems to argue that the particular experience of the national revival of the Jewish people in its ancestral homeland can serve as a model for others:

[T]he Jewish state has universal significance.  Israel represents hope, testifying to the resilience and the grandeur of the human creature.  The very existence of a Jewish state says to the world: if the Jews can do it, after all that the Jews have endured, then others can lift up the banner of freedom and restore themselves.[4]

The rabbi argues that Theodor Herzl’s statement that “Zionism is a return to Judaism even before there is a return to the Jewish Land” is one that we now know to be true.  Although he does not state it explicitly in the chapter, perhaps the rabbi is alluding to the fact that Jewish religious observance and textual study have flourished in the Jewish state, with the public and private lives of Israeli Jews ordered around Jewish religious holidays, a majority of Israeli Jews no longer identifying as “secular,”[5] and even those Jews identifying as “secular” frequently expressing interest in studying rabbinic texts, Jewish mysticism, and the Hasidic movement.

While the rabbi does an excellent job at interspersing throughout the chapter various biblical and rabbinic texts expressing a hope for the restoration of the people of Israel to the Land of Israel, he does not address in this chapter those who argue that such passages should be understood as expressing messianic hopes to be fulfilled by G-d in the eschatological future.  In this regard, it might have been helpful for the rabbi to also reference biblical and rabbinic texts justifying Jews exercising initiative in reestablishing Jewish sovereignty in the Land of Israel in advance of the arrival of the eschaton or as participants in a messianic process leading to redemption.

Suite 117

In this chapter, Rabbi Hirsch offers his reflections on traveling with his wife in Europe, where they found themselves in the same Swiss hotel, Les Trois Rois, in which Herzl stayed in the famous picture of him looking out over the river.  Rabbi Hirsch’s passion for Zionism, Jewish life, and the Land of Israel comes through in his poetic articulation of what he thinks Herzl might have thought as Herzl was looking out over the water:

Looking at the mighty river from the balcony of Suite 117, as Herzl did at the close of the 19^th century, I thought what he might have thought on the eve of the First Zionist Congress: the Rhine symbolized the mysterious and ineluctable flow of time.  Herzl hoped that those three days would relaunch our listless, demoralized, and persecuted people onto the mighty current of history, connecting us to the source, the very headwaters of Jewish life—the Land of Israel.[6]

Continuing with his use of the water metaphor, Rabbi Hirsch goes on to state, “Deep within the mighty currents of Jewish life lay the age-old dream of return.  Herzl did not invent this dream, nor was he the first to give it voice.  He was the first to organize the dream politically.”[7]  Hirsch suggests the Divine has played a role in the development of the Zionist movement, stating, “A kind of palm from above dropped the keys into the hands of that remarkable soul [Herzl] who unlocked Suite 117.”[8]  This belief of Rabbi Hirsch also seems to be reflected in how he describes Herzl and the Zionist movement elsewhere in the chapter, with the former identified as “the secular prophet summoned to a kind of religious calling”[9] and the latter described with reference to a passage from the Hebrew Bible (Psalm 118:22) that the New Testament (Matthew 21:42) applies to Jesus: “The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone[; this was the L[-]rd’s doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes.]”[10]

Mount Nebo

In this chapter, Rabbi Hirsch recounts his experience leading a group of 80 Reform rabbis from North America on a mission to Egypt, Jordan, and Israel as the newly installed director of the Association of Reform Zionists of America (ARZA).  One of the goals of the trip was to help “build public support” and “give publicity” to peace-making efforts between the Jewish state and the countries surrounding it.[11]  A formal peace between Israel and Jordan would occur in October 1994, several months after Rabbi Hirsch’s trip to the region in January 1994.  After facing opposition from the ARZA national board for the trip’s itinerary including a visit to a country, Jordan, that was still not technically at peace with Israel, the board relented after being informed that the Prime Minister of Israel Yitzhak Rabin himself “consider[ed] [the rabbinic] mission vital to advancing the negotiations with Jordan.”[12]  Rabbi Hirsch makes a point of stating that he would have declined to lead a trip such as this if “the Israeli government […] felt it to be counterproductive,” a notable point given that some diaspora leaders in voicing their views have not exercised similar deference to the wishes of the government of the State of Israel.  After his identity was revealed to media, Rabbi Hirsch relates that he felt “a growing sense of dread that those who wanted to do us harm now knew who I was and where to find me.”[13]  As part of the trip, Rabbi Hirsch and his rabbinic colleagues stood on Mount Nebo from which Moses is believed to have viewed the Promised Land before his death.  This experience of standing where Moses is believed to have stood prompts Rabbi Hirsch to reflect as he had when standing in the same place as Herzl: “From the top of the mountain, the Promised Land at my feet, I could sense the cycle of Jewish history—all the trials and tribulations, the triumphs, torments, and the tragedies of our past.”[14]

Bombs and Bombshells

In this chapter, Rabbi Hirsch alliteratively reflects on the contrasting experiences one witnesses in Israel: on the one hand, experiencing periods of rocketing from terrorist groups, like Islamic Jihad and Hamas, but also the resilience and flourishing of the people of Israel in the land:

It struck me that here was a metaphor for modern Israel: beauties and the beasts; bombs and bombshells; yearning to be normal in an abnormal region; a fierce desire to carry on, no matter what.  And not simply to carry on, but life in living color: ingenuity, vitality, beauty, the drive to compete with the best in the world and to live unapologetically and unreservedly—proud and free.[15]

Articulating a similar point later in the chapter, Rabbi Hirsch highlights the significant literary, musical, academic, scientific, medical, and high-tech entrepreneurial contributions made by Israelis.[16]

Peace

In this chapter, Rabbi Hirsch speaks of the centrality of peace to Judaism and honestly reckons with the fact that he once “naïve[ly] assume[d] that the enormous emotional and historical gaps [between Israelis and Palestinians] could be bridged, if only the two sides sat down and reasoned it all out.”[17]  His experience over the last twenty-five years led him to reevaluate the imminent feasibility of that vision being realized.  The author notes that the Palestinian bombings against Israelis supported by Yasser Arafat during the Second Intifada “still traumatize [him].”[18]  Nevertheless, he hopes that peace can be achieved over time.  Rabbi Hirsch devotes much of the chapter to calling out the hypocrisy of self-described liberals, confessing Christians, and supposed advocates of LGBTQ rights who express support for illiberal forces, like Hamas and Hezbollah, “who persecute, oppress, and kill” liberals, Christians, and LGBTQ individuals.[19]  The fact that liberals and supposedly educated students and scholars at university have all too frequently demonstrated an unwillingness to forthrightly condemn such illiberal forces has also surprised and bothered Rabbi Hirsch:

I assumed that liberals would be the first to condemn such horrors.  It was, therefore, distressing to me that no matter what outrages Palestinian terrorists committed, it was liberals, more than conservatives, who hemmed and hawed, some even justifying terrorism as a legitimate response to whatever crimes they ascribed to Israel.  I was flabbergasted that learned students and scholars, trained in the most prestigious Western universities, justified suicide bombings as legitimate resistance.[20]

Surely, the description Rabbi Hirsch provides here would resonate with many Jews and Zionists today who have experienced a sense of betrayal at the refusal of those previously regarded as allies to condemn antisemitic and illiberal forces with the global rise of antisemitism and expressions of hostility to Israel on multiple college campuses in a post-October 7 environment.

Israel and Anti-Semitism

In this chapter, Rabbi Hirsch affirms the importance for Jews of not only caring about social justice generally, but also caring for their fellow Jews.  Rabbi Hirsch believes that “the central Jewish principle” that “[a]ll Jews are responsible one for the other” has not been “emphasized enough” by liberal Jews.[21]  Underscoring the importance of Jews caring for fellow Jews, Rabbi Hirsch notes the rise of antisemitism and how it is a problem on both the right and the left of the political spectrum.  In this regard, Rabbi Hirsch observes several commonalities shared by right-wing and left-wing antisemites:

Both think that for Jews, it is all about money and exploitation.  Both right[-]wing and left[-]wing anti-Semites are convinced that Jews control the media.  Both think that Jews have too much influence over Hollywood, television, and general culture.  Both accuse Jews of disloyalty.  Both boycott Jews and Jewish business.  Both think that Jews have mystical powers to manipulate society; that there is some kind of international plot to pull the strings of the world for the enrichment of the Jews […] Both right- and left-wing anti-Semites despised us for being a nationless nation, a wandering people with no home […] Both right-wing and left-wing anti-Semites reject Jewish distinctiveness.[22]

In describing differences between right-wing and left-wing antisemitism, Rabbi Hirsch states, “The anti-Semitism of the extreme right is lethal.”[23]  Although he acknowledges that “anti-Israel activism on the campuses and streets of America and Europe has led to verbal and physical assaults against Jews,”[24] he does not say that left-wing antisemitism and anti-Israel activism can be similarly lethal.  However, left-wing antisemitism and anti-Israel activism can also be lethal, as evidenced by the murder of Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim outside an American Jewish Committee-sponsored event at the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, DC on May 21, 2025 and the murder of an 82-year-old woman who had been demonstrating in Boulder, Colorado in support of Israeli hostages in Gaza on June 1, 2025.

Israel and American Jews

In this chapter, Rabbi Hirsch expresses concern about the phenomenon of self-described “liberal” Jews who join organizations seeking to “boycott, divest, and sanction Israel.”[25]  Rabbi Hirsch argues that this phenomenon is due to Jewish illiteracy and alienation from Judaism.  To effectively address this phenomenon, Rabbi Hirsch argues for increasing funding to “Jewish schools, summer camps, and synagogues” to boost Jewish literacy, promote Jewish identity, and strengthen identification with Judaism.[26]  Rabbi Hirsch places the onus on doing so not on the State of Israel, but on the American Jewish community.[27]

Conclusion

Rabbi Hirsch’s book, The Lilac Tree: A Rabbi’s Reflections on Love, Courage, and History, offers insightful, inspiring, honest, and timely reflections on a variety of experiences from which readers can learn.  In this accessible book, readers trying to navigate a post-October 7 landscape will find guidance and wisdom to help them do so from a humble and intelligent Jewish religious leader who has devoted his life to the Jewish state, Jewish life, and general society.

–Reviewed by David Orenstein/July 23, 2025

[1] Ammiel Hirsch, The Lilac Tree: A Rabbi’s Reflections on Love, Courage, and History (Wicked Son, 2023), p.15.

[2] Ibid. p.12.

[3] Ibid. p.130.

[4] Ibid.

[5] For example, see Pew Research Center, “Israel’s Religiously Divided Society,” 8 March 2016.

[6] Hirsch, The Lilac Tree, p. 135.

[7] Ibid. p. 136.

[8] Ibid. p. 137.

[9] Ibid. p. 135.

[10] Ibid. p. 136.

[11] Ibid. p. 140.

[12] Ibid. p. 141.

[13] Ibid. p. 142.

[14] Ibid. p. 143.

[15] Ibid. p. 147.

[16] Ibid. p. 148.

[17] Ibid. pp. 151-152.

[18] Ibid. p. 152.

[19] Ibid. p. 154.

[20] Ibid. p. 152.

[21] Ibid. p. 160.

[22] Ibid. p. 162.

[23] Ibid. p. 163.

[24] Ibid. p. 166.

[25] Ibid. p. 168.

[26] Ibid. p. 172.

[27] Ibid.