Congregants at Adas Shalom Congregation in Havre de Grace learned about the atrocities in Israel from a firsthand account for the past several weeks as Rabbi Meeka Simerly, the congregation’s lead rabbi, joined the second cohort of the Amplify Israel Rabbinic Fellowship and returned from a weeklong trip to Israel in late January.
Simerly joined 23 other rabbis on the trip, one of the highlights of the yearlong learning and professional development experience for early-career Reform rabbis to “give them the tools and resources to incorporate Israel and Jewish peoplehood more fully into their practice,” according to the fellowship web page.
Simerly said the mission of the program is for the rabbis to amplify Israel throughout the year in whatever way they’re comfortable doing.
“I was contacted [to apply for the fellowship] because of a piece that I wrote at the Central Conference of American Rabbis. I was approached by Rabbi Tracy Kaplowitz. She said, ‘Look, we really think that [the fellowship] is something that you would be interested in. Especially where you live in Harford County, where there aren’t any Reform congregations around.’ And given all of that, she said, ‘The way that you articulated your thoughts caught my attention. Please apply,’” Simerly said.
Simerly decided to apply and got in the cohort. She explained that the fellowship consists of monthly virtual meetings and three in-person gatherings that will take place throughout the year, along with the trip to Israel.
She said that so far through the program the rabbis are getting to learn a lot about Israel from speakers that come from a variety of backgrounds, although she emphasized that the speakers were all strong Zionists.
So far, the most impactful experience for Simerly was the trip to Israel with the other rabbis, where she said they got to see the devastation from the Oct. 7 attacks and feel both the pain behind the scenes and the signs of hope and rebuilding.
“Every wall, every public space, carries a story of the atrocities that took place during the infiltration on Oct. 7. And this is incredibly painful to witness,” Simerly said. “And there is a mural on one of the walls that began and ended just before Oct. 7, and the person who drew this beautiful mural with cows and flowers in springtime and just depicting a peaceful life was killed.”
But beyond burned buildings the cohort also saw signs of life coming back to the area and the promise of returning stronger than ever, a sentiment that Simerly said was powerful to behold.
Since coming back, she has been sharing with her congregants the accounts of what happened during the attacks and in the aftermath. That part of her role on the trip was to bear witness to relay to others.
“The goal [of the program] is to teach us what really went on, and not to allow us to base our opinions on what we read in the newspaper. It’s for us to witness, document and share with our communities. This is what really happened. This is the devastation. It’s not what you see in the media. The goal is to educate as many people as we possibly can that Israel sustained one of the worst blows it has ever known since it was established in 1948, and with that, Israelis are determined to rebuild and to continue living,” Simerly said.
Simerly added that people in the congregation have been supportive of Israel throughout the war and that these experiences have energized her to do more programming back home for Israel.
Simerly said that the fellowship has had an additional impact on her outside of the education and firsthand experience in Israel, which is a connection to a strong group of Zionists in the Reform movement.
“Before I got to meet my fellows, I felt incredibly isolated. I felt incredibly isolated in the face of all the traumas and all the antisemitic slurs and anti-Zionist slurs that I witnessed at colleges and on social media,” Simerly said.
Simerly said that while she’s been incredibly thankful for the support from the local community around Israel and that they haven’t had any notable issues since the attacks, she felt there wasn’t a massive amount of Zionist support in the Reform movement.
“I didn’t really feel that I have a group of people that I could lean on and draw strength from, other than my own immediate environment. And that was very painful. I need to reiterate that the love that we received in Harford County from surrounding establishments was just heartwarming. And yet, the feeling of being alone that I started to have was because I didn’t feel enough Jewish support from my own colleagues,” Simerly said.
But she said that changed when she got to know the other 23 fellows from the Reform movement. It gave her new hope and a foundation to keep on advocating for Israel, something she has focused on doing at Adas Shalom.
