A letter from the UUMA Board of Trustees

February 19, 2024

Dear Colleagues,

The conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians is one of the most pressing moral and spiritual issues of our times. The religious, cultural, ethnic and racial power dynamics have been so devastating for so many; the complexity, grief, fear and challenge of this crisis has led some of us in the Unitarian Universalist ministry to turn away from engagement. As your UUMA Board, we encourage you to be as informed as possible and urge you to engage in action, including holding our elected leaders accountable.

Most recently, the attacks by Hamas on Israel on October 7 have wrought a heaviness on many of us who long for peace and plurality in the world.  Oxfam International estimates that 1,200 people were killed and over 250 people, including children and elders, were taken hostage that day. These atrocities, including the terror of sexual violence and killings witnessed by family members, were shocking and particularly traumatizing to those among us who are Jewish or who have Jewish roots or other connections to Israel and Judaism. The attacks were heart-rending. The continued uncertainty about the lives of many hostages adds to this despair.

And then, the Israeli response in Gaza began and wrenched our hearts anew. Israel’s actions have brought massive dislocation, destruction, suffering and death to innocent Palestinians, which many believe amounts to the annihilation of a people. Our hearts and minds are also grieving the now more than 28,000 people killed, as well as the devastation to homes and infrastructures, including very many hospitals, schools and sacred sites.  Oxfam notes that the number of Palestinian deaths per day in the first 100 days of conflict was 250 per day and “exceeds the daily death toll of any other major conflict of recent years.”  

As Unitarian Universalist ministers, addressing a conflict of such huge moral and spiritual import has become critical for many of us and for this reason, we write to you to offer perspective and resources. 

As your UUMA Board, including the Executive Team, we have met, at their request, with a group of Jewish colleagues who were concerned with the widespread and intensifying Antisemitism they were experiencing from colleagues and in the broader society, which has caused them to live in personal fear and to revisit the trauma of their inheritance.  We also hosted a conversation with a group of colleagues who identify as Arab, Southwest Asian and North African, or Muslim who shared their experiences among colleagues of increased and intensifying Islamophobia and racism along with the compounding trauma of their own ancestral and personal experiences of oppression and marginalization. Both groups shared at personal cost with us, and to be sure this emotional labor yields results, we wish to issue this statement to our members and to offer some resources as you negotiate these issues within your congregations and communities.

As your Board of Trustees, we have sought to listen with care and deliberateness to the positions offered by our Jewish, Muslim, Arab, Southwest Asian and North African colleagues. We mourn the violence and the tremendous death and destruction this crisis has wrought, while also acknowledging the role that the history of western colonialism has played in creating this generations-old conflict.  We speak out against expressions of Islamophobia, Antisemitism, and general ignorance about the history of the Middle East, especially within Unitarian Universalist spaces.  We decry the increased violence being directed at Palestinians, Arabs, Muslims and Jews as a consequence of Islamophobia and Antisemitism. We condemn the rise of extremism and affirm the vital roles of peace-making and diplomacy. We amplify the call for a ceasefire in Gaza, humanitarian aid for the suffering, release of the hostages and political prisoners, and political solutions that enable Jews, Muslims and Christians to live in peace in the Holy Land. If you have not yet read it, we commend to you the statement issued by our Unitarian Universalist Association leaders on February 14 and urge you to keep yourselves informed of any future statements from our UUA on this crisis.

As you proceed to minister in these complicated times, we would offer you some cautions based on our experience.  Please remember: 

• We cannot be silent now.  Silence on these issues has caused your colleagues most directly affected to feel unwitnessed and abandoned at a time of extreme anguish. 
• We must be accountable for our speech and our actions. 
• Some of us have tried to speak and have learned that our words have had impacts we did not intend but nonetheless have hurt colleagues.  If that happens, find the courage to learn and grow and begin again in love.
• Some whom you address are more directly affected than others.  When you speak and act, please be sure to offer pastoral and listening resources.  Note also that many groups are providing humanitarian relief, educational events and organizing protests and other events to raise awareness which can offer your members direct channels for action. 
• Take action yourselves. Preach on this moral and spiritual crisis.  Offer teach-ins.  If you have the capacity and the opportunity to take other constructive actions in your sphere of influence, please remember that your efforts matter and are a blessing to the world.  

We want to reiterate that the UUMA Executive Team has been and will continue to care for and resource all of our members with a focus on the needs of those most directly affected.   In addition to offering caucus spaces and lifting up educational resources on peacemaking, we direct you to the UUA generated resource list for engaging on Israel and Palestine, including resources for learning how to counter Islamophobia and Antisemitism.  We will continue to care for and resource you to the best of our ability and hope to provide pathways so that our collective learning will generate more constructive action in the future.  We want to close by acknowledging the pain of our Jewish, Muslim, Arab, Southwest Asian, and North African colleagues.  We affirm the need for an on-going dialogue among us on these complicated and tragic events and the larger context from which they arise. As always, we are ready to receive your comments and questions about this letter and the UUMA’s role in supporting you as you address this pressing moral and spiritual crisis of our times.

Yours in faith,
The UUMA Board of Trustees