In 2017, I spent several days in Gaza as a staff person for the American Friends Service Committee. Although I took away many powerful and vivid memories from that trip, some of the most indelible involved the delicious food that was continuously served to us by our Gazan hosts. Gazans are famously proud of their cuisine, and rightfully so, as it provides them with a palpable connection to Palestinian history and life outside that small 140 square-mile strip—to communities in Palestine where their ancestors used to live. As journalist Laila El-Haddad has observed, Gazan food is “a sort of treasure map to a largely invisible, or invisibilized, world of Palestinian history going back well before the 1948 Nakba.”

During the course of our visit, Ali, a member of the AFSC Gaza staff, mentioned more than once that Gazan knafeh (a traditional Arabic dessert) was by far the best in Palestine. When our staff group gathered at a restaurant in Gaza City for our final meal, Ali was chagrined to learn that there was no more knafeh left in the kitchen. Determined, he got up, ran down the street to another restaurant, and returned with a huge round plate of the sticky, golden pastry for our table. It was indeed more delicious than any knafeh I have eaten before or since.

I’ve recalled that sweet memory often over the past seven years. When I think of it now, however, I find its sweetness has curdled into horror. As far back as December, human rights agencies determined that Israel “was using starvation as a weapon of war.” According to the World Food Program, Gaza’s food system was on the brink of collapse and the population was facing a “high risk of famine.”

This past March, the mainstream media published shocking, heartbreaking pictures of Yazan Kafarneh, a 10-year-old Gazan boy reduced to skin and bones from starvation. To date, it has been estimated that 28 children have died of malnutrition and starvation in northern Gaza. By all accounts, starvation in the besieged Strip has now reached “catastrophic” proportions. Palestinians in Gaza are now forced to eat grass just to survive.

As a congregational rabbi, I spoke with many people who told me that they were not sure how—or even if—they would celebrate Passover this year. With the genocide and forced starvation of the people of Gaza deepening with no end in sight, they said it felt beyond challenging to celebrate a festival of Jewish liberation. To make the moral dissonance even more dissonant, many in the Jewish communal establishment framed the meaning of this year’s Passover exclusively around the plight of the Israeli hostages in Gaza and the call for their liberation from Hamas, with nary a mention of the 35,000 Gazans who have been killed by Israel’s genocidal vengeance.

More than once I was asked, “How can I partake of this festive meal while Israel has been starving Palestinians in the name of the Jewish people? How can I read about Pharaoh’s oppression of Israelite children when I’ve just read the latest death count of Palestinian children dying increasingly things from forced starvation?”

As a political-spiritual response to this unprecedented Passover moment, Rabbis for Ceasefire—a group of rabbis and rabbinical students who came together last October to demand an end to the violence—began to organize an action at the Gaza border. Motivated by Passover’s central imperative—“All who are hungry come and eat!”—our mission was to bring food supplies to the Erez Crossing and demand that Israel allow us to pass through. Our action included 10 American rabbis, writer Ayelet Waldman, and 30 Israeli activists—including Israeli rabbis—who have been tirelessly protesting both at the Gaza border and organizing protect presence for West Bank communities targeted by settler violence.

On April 26, we gathered at a preplanned meetup location, with a truck filled with half a ton of flour. We each shouldered bags of rice and, carrying banners and flags, marched in the direction of the Erez Crossing. The Israeli police quickly drove up to intercept us. During that initial stand-off, several of us offered statements.

I began with an opening prayer, an adaptation of the “Magid” section of the Passover Haggadah, when Jews retell the story of the Exodus: “This is the bread of affliction, the bread and food systemically, cruelly denied the people of Gaza. Let all who are hungry come and eat. Let all who are oppressed be liberated this Pesach. Now, we are here—tomorrow, let there be bread for Gaza. Now, we are here—next year, may there be liberation from the river to the sea!”

Other speakers included Israeli Rabbi Avi Dabush of Rabbis for Human Rights, a resident and survivor of a kibbutz that was attacked on October 7, and Noam Shuster-Eliassi, a well-known Israeli activist, writer, and comedian. When our program was over, we pushed forward toward the border. When the soldiers violently attempted to break us up, several of us sat down in the road. During the course of the protest seven of our group—four Americans and three Israelis—were arrested.

All of the arrested were fully prepared for this eventuality (the Israelis were veterans at protest arrests and had briefed us on protocol). They were taken to two detention centers and interrogated for eight to nine hours. The Americans were told, bluntly, that they were being held for “attempting to bring food into Gaza.” All the arrested were released that evening. Thankfully, the food we attempted to bring into Gaza was not confiscated, so we were able to donate it to Masafer Yatta—a community in the South Hebron Hills where almost 3,000 residents are resisting the daily threat of demolitions, evictions, and dispossession.