Noa’s Words for Rosh Hashana

Dear TINAU community,

As the new year begins, we want first to say: Shana Tova - may this year bring, against all odds, life, safety, and dignity. Saying those words today is heavy with pain; we know they are not a simple blessing but a pledge - a pledge to keep calling for a world where such wishes can be real for everyone who lives here.

Two years have passed since the beginning of this nightmare, and the horrors have only deepened. Every day brings new devastation: Gaza bombed into rubble, entire families erased, people starved under an unbearable siege, communities in the West Bank expelled from their land, Palestinian citizens inside ʼ48 abandoned to violence, activists hunted down for daring to speak against genocide - and hostages, along with their desperate families, cruelly abandoned by a government that has chosen war over life. The government wages war not only on people, but on hope itself - trying to destroy every possibility of a shared, just, and free future.

It is unbearably hard to hold on to hope right now. The weight of grief, the images, the hunger, the loss - they press on us in every moment. And yet precisely because the world has been so violently unmade for so many, we do not have the privilege of surrender. We refuse to let despair determine the limits of our imagination. We insist - with every class we teach, with every conversation we hold, with every ounce of care we muster - that hope must be practiced, built, and protected.

At This Is Not An Ulpan, we continue to believe that language is resistance. To learn Hebrew and Arabic in these times is not an act of neutrality - it is a declaration: that we will not let this land be broken into fragments of fear and hatred. That we will reach for one another across borders, walls, and silences. That we will speak the truth in every tongue available to us. Language connects, exposes, heals, and resists. It is a weapon of hope.

Our classrooms have become sanctuaries where grief meets determination, where we imagine futures even as the present feels unbearable. Every word we learn together is a refusal to give up on justice. Every conversation is a reminder that even in times of erasure, we can insist on existence, connection, and solidarity.

But sustaining these spaces takes collective strength. Many of those most committed to justice cannot afford to pay for courses right now. We are determined to keep our doors open, to offer scholarships, and to hold space for anyone who needs it - but we cannot do it alone.

As we wish one another a year of health and safety, we also ask you to stand with us in concrete solidarity: join a course, donate if you can, share our message with your networks. Every gesture - financial, political, or simply showing up - helps keep these small but vital spaces alive.

Two years into this catastrophe, we still believe another future is possible. A future where justice and safety belong to all who live here. A future where language becomes not a weapon of domination but a bridge of liberation.

Together, we will keep fighting for that future - step by step, word by word.

Shana Tova - שנה טובה, ובתקווה שאפשר לבנות אותה יחד.

In solidarity, always,

Noa Friemann