HOLLYWOOD, FLORIDA (VINnews) — When the first day of Rosh Hashanah 5787 fell on Shabbat, Jewish law prohibited sounding the shofar. South Florida writer and activist Rachel Sapoznik said the unexpected quiet in synagogue felt louder than the ram’s horn itself.
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Sapoznik, founder of the Jewish Shield Action Alliance, wrote that the missing blasts prompted her to think of an inner shofar — a personal alarm that demands Jews ask who they are, what they believe and what they will do about it.
She connected three post-tragedy slogans across generations: “Never Again” after the Holocaust, “We Will Remember” after the Sept. 11 attacks, and “We Will Dance Again” after Hamas’s massacre of young people at the Nova music festival on Oct. 7, 2023.
The phrases have become familiar, she said, but their meaning is tested by rising antisemitism on streets, campuses and in institutions, by fading memory of the extremism behind 9/11, and by young Jews who hesitate to wear a Star of David or speak openly about Israel.
Memory without action is only history, Sapoznik argued. Memory joined to responsibility can still shape the future.
She cautioned against equating America in 2026 with Germany in 1933, saying that comparison diminishes the unique horror of the Holocaust. The relevant lesson, she wrote, is how “again” begins: with words, propaganda, humiliation and the gradual acceptance of what should never have been tolerated.
Sapoznik said parents cannot outsource their children’s values to algorithms or social-media platforms that may introduce ideas about Jews, Israel and America before families realize the conversation has started. History, she wrote, must be taught as human choices with human consequences, not merely dates.
Courage, she added, is often small: sitting with a rejected child, refusing an antisemitic joke, declining to repeat a lie that feels convenient.
At the same time she rejected fear as a Jewish inheritance. Judaism, she said, cannot be defined only by Auschwitz, pogroms and Oct. 7. Children need the warmth of a Shabbat table, apples dipped in honey, Torah study, connection to Israel, family celebrations, song and dance.
“We Will Dance Again,” in her telling, is not a promise postponed until hatred disappears. It is a decision to build families, celebrate and stand proudly now. Terrorists and antisemites, she wrote, do not get to decide whether Jews experience joy or what America becomes.
Her Rosh Hashanah prayer, she said, is for a courageous year in which children know their history without being imprisoned by it, remain unapologetically Jewish and love America enough to defend its freedoms.
The silent shofar, Sapoznik concluded, was a reminder that Jews cannot always wait for someone else to sound the alarm. Sometimes they must become the shofar themselves.
Rachel Sapoznik is a Miami-area writer, insurance executive and founder of the Jewish Shield Action Alliance. She is a frequent contributor of opinion pieces on Jewish identity and antisemitism.