This Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, as in years past, millions of Jews around the world will enter synagogues to pray, to schmooze and to hear the rabbi’s most important sermon of the year. But with the genocide in Gaza raging on and ethnic cleansing in full swing in the West Bank, what rabbis choose to say has never mattered more.

So to pulpit rabbis, I have one clear ask: Talk about Gaza, about the West Bank, about Israel’s actions against Palestinians. Talk about the starvation, the bombings, the targeting of journalists, the displacement from refugee camps, the ethnic cleansing of farming communities, the murders of Palestinians by settlers, the forced supplanting of families from tent to tent and the use of torture in Israeli prisons.

These are not abstractions. They are the realities on the ground.

Pick one or some of these topics, and talk about it. Describe the reality — and ask your congregation to join you in asking questions and in asking how to repent for the long-term material support our institutions have contributed to Israel.

Let me be clear: Diaspora Jews are not, as individuals or as a collective, responsible for Israel’s actions simply because they are Jewish. Yet decades of material and rhetorical backing for Israel from Jewish communities and institutions has allowed Israel to become what it is today: a country acting with impunity while it destroys thousands of lives in Gaza, the West Bank and across the Middle East.

Still, the vast majority of diaspora Jewish institutions remain practically unconditional in their support for Israel. Even if rabbis or other leading organizations don’t support Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, his government or Israel’s actions, mere disagreement with the country’s current leadership is insufficient in the face of overwhelming state-sanctioned violence.

This year, avoiding politics is an inherently political act, as it perpetuates Jewish institutional complicity from abroad.

I myself am a product of unwavering support for Israel. Growing up in suburban Philadelphia, deeply involved in my Reform community at synagogue and at summer camp, I absorbed a simple message: Israel was the home of the Jewish people, a place of justice, central to Jewish identity. In this way, Jewish life in the diaspora becomes intrinsically involved in Israel.

When we are taught that a state is inherently just, a part of us, regardless of its actual policies and actions, we set ourselves up to blur the boundaries between right and wrong, just and unjust.

People are being killed right now. As I write these words, Israel is engaging in a large military offensive on Gaza city and the people within it.

This Rosh Hashanah and the days that follow — during tashlich, the ritual disposal of our sins, and as we beat our chests in recognition of our wrongdoings on Yom Kippur, we must internalize that prayers alone do not solve transgressions between people. We must clearly stand up, and do everything in our power to end these atrocities.

Now is the time to grapple honestly with what the state of Israel actually does. We are beginning to see a tide turn. Rabbis have been arrested in New York for protesting Israel’s actions. Coalitions of Jewish leaders, including many from the mainstream, are growing in strength and courage.

This is not a call-out. It is a call to join them. Lead your congregations into the streets. Speak plainly: Israel is destroying the Palestinian people. Shift your institutions away from complicity and toward justice. Your congregants are watching. The next generation is listening. Palestinians are being killed as you read these words, right now.

Rabbis need not become foreign policy experts. But they also must not continue institutional support for a state that kills dozens of people a day, engineers mass displacement and perpetuates starvation.

This season of cheshbon nefesh — soul-accounting — calls us to face truths we would rather avoid. Rabbis and institutional leaders, I ask you: do your own accounting.

Speak clearly about Israel’s actions against Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. Commit your communities to do all they can as Jews and as citizens of strong, influential Western countries to end this bloodshed. Model the moral courage our tradition demands: the courage to see clearly and to speak truthfully.

Yes, some congregants will leave. Yes, some donors will walk away. Yes, you will have to wrestle with Jewish identity outside of the framework of the state of Israel. You will have to create new lesson plans, write a new sermon. But as a leader, all of this is necessary if we are to do tashlich, to cast away our sin of backing Israel while it commits atrocities. There is no better time to start anew.

The season of judgment is here. And our leaders and institutions will not be measured by intentions, but by whether they spoke truth in a time of destruction — and whether they led our communities toward justice.