For Such a Time As This: On Being Jewish Today by Elliot Cosgrove; 2024. Hardcover.

For Jews today, the attack by Hamas on Israel on October 7—a vicious assault that killed more Jews in one day than any time since the Holocaust—has drawn a clear and irreversible demarcation in time. The Jewish community woke up to an unrecognizable new reality on that day, witnessing first the sheer horror of the atrocities in Israel, followed immediately by the stark rise in antisemitism, the world’s oldest hatred, in its wake.

But even in this dark hour, the Jewish community is experiencing something profound and a deep, abiding connection to community, culture, and faith. Drawing on the rich trove of Jewish history and tradition, Rabbi Elliot Cosgrove helps readers make sense of this fraught time. Rabbi Cosgrove explores the challenging questions embedded in the soul of contemporary Jewry. Where did all this antisemitism come from, and was it always there? How have Israel and Zionism shaped American Judaism, and what ties us and divides us today? How do we practice Judaism and understand our place in a world that has, without fail, in every century, turned against us?