Georgia Cassidy Payne

On a damp morning in Hamilton, Ontario, Rabbi David Mivasair leans over a laptop in his home office, toggling between WhatsApp threads filled with names he now knows by heart — families in Gaza he has been speaking with for nearly two years. A father searching for insulin for his daughter. A grandmother whose house was turned to dust. A young man, newly displaced, who still dreams of teaching.

“We know the people we are giving to,” Mivasair says quietly. “We know how they are using it. We’ve been in touch with them for over a year and a half.”

For more than two decades, Mivasair served as a congregational rabbi in Pennsylvania and British Columbia, ministering to communities on questions of faith, grief, and meaning. Today, his rabbinate has no synagogue walls. It is a digital network of compassion called Connecting Gaza, a grassroots lifeline linking hundreds of donors and volunteers directly to Palestinian families facing genocide.

“I want to give people a good, clear understanding of how they can help,” he explains. “People want to help. People do a lot of action — letters to the editor, calling their politicians, some go to protests and rallies-but see nearly no results. My job is to let people know about this one program, which creates direct, immediate, tangible outcomes for families in Gaza”

That “one program” is deceptively simple: people helping people, without bureaucracy or delay. “There are many ways to help,” he says, “but this is one where we can assure it gets to the families.”

Over the past two years, hundreds have donated through Connecting Gaza. The group’s structure mirrors the intimacy of its mission: a few dozen WhatsApp groups, each supporting a specific family in Gaza. “Each group has about a dozen people,” Mivasair says. “All together we have 77 volunteers, directly connected to 25 families.” A small team — what he calls the “admins” — handles the logistics: money transfers, website management, and coordination.

But for Mivasair, the work goes deeper than aid. It is what Dr. Gabor Mate calls empathetic witnessing, a spiritual act of attention. “They are telling us what they are going through, and people are responding to them,” he says. “By giving them our attention, we remind them they’re not forgotten.”

In the beginning, it was just him. “And it grew and grew,” Mivasair says. “I asked others if they could help run it, people who could do graphics, visuals, spreadsheets.” What started as one rabbi’s response to unbearable suffering has become a network of ordinary people, students, retirees, artists, doctors, each finding a way to help sustain life in Gaza.

He speaks about this growth not with pride, but with a kind of holy pragmatism. “In fact,” he says, “I just got back from a meeting with a pharmacist here in Hamilton. I approached her and asked if she would help three pharmacists in Gaza that we are working with. She can become another center.”

This is how Connecting Gaza expands, through conversation, through conscience, through the slow multiplication of compassion.

And yet, Mivasair is not naïve about power. “I do write to my MP,” he says. “I’ve met people in government. I’ve been arrested — once in Washington, and once in Ottawa. I do the petitions.” He believes in political engagement, but he also knows its limits. “Those things matter, but what we’re doing through Connecting Gaza is immediate. It’s human to human.”

I ask, have you ever felt spiritually burned out, not from cynicism, but from too much caring? He leans back and considers.

“No, I don’t think so,” he replies. “I know that what I am doing contributes to the overall good. I never feel like what I am doing is pointless. I don’t expect we’ll ever completely solve the problems, but we can definitely make a difference in how people experience them. How much can I do, what are the best things to be doing, who can I do it with, these are the questions that occupy me.”

Justice, for Mivasair, is a lifelong practice rather than a fixed state. “When I first started thinking about justice, I was a teenager in Baltimore in the ’60s. At that time, I really thought it could be achieved systemically. If enough of us worked on it, we could bring it about. But now I see it very differently. It’s ongoing. We will never reach it as an end state. The religious language of a Messianic age-the idea that humans, in this multi-millennial journey on this earth, are moving toward a time of peace and justice-is appealing. But as long as we live on earth, we will struggle. I do not believe we will get there. I do not believe we will ever find total peace. That does not mean we should stop trying.”

Judaism, he explains, situates us in a relationship with the Creator of the Universe. “We talk about commandments. The rabbis enumerated 613 commandments. But there are only two for which the Scripture uses the word pursue: justice, justice, you shall pursue. And seek peace and justice. All the others, you do when the opportunity arises. But peace and justice, you have to arise from your place of comfort and pursue it.” He recalls the moment this teaching became urgent for him: as a teenager witnessing the civil rights movement, the Vietnam War, and the proliferation of nuclear weapons. “Judaism taught me that I could not just sit back. I needed to arise and do something.”

Much of Mivasair’s moral and spiritual orientation comes from Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel. “His writing and teaching about the Sabbath, the prophets, the Psalms — thinking about God in our lives, God in Search of Man — enabled me. It helped me take spirituality seriously. That concept God needs humans to do God’s work-to answer the call of justice, to be partners with the divine--is key. Otherwise, God’s work will not be done. The world will not progress. The world is not complete until we do this work, to bring it to fruition.” He continues, reflecting on Heschel’s vision of human dignity. Heschel taught that each human is an image of God, every one of us. He lived his life with this vision: the sanctity of each and every person.

Mivasair’s perspective is candid and existential. I think the ultimate message of the Book of Job is that we cannot know. Job demands of God, “why am I suffering? Why are you doing this to me? Finally, Job concedes, “It is beyond me; I cannot understand.” What makes us think that we can understand this? We do not have a theology that covers all of the bases.”

He cites another Talmudic teaching that guides his moral philosophy in practical terms: “You are not obliged to complete the task, and neither are you free to desist from it.”

After leaving retirement and congregational life, Mivasair’s practice of being a rabbi evolved. “Very much what I am doing now — supporting Palestinians to maintain their own existence — I do that as a rabbi. Throughout my career, I had been oriented toward helping Jewish people learn about and live their religion. Since leaving synagogue life, that is much less a priority for me. Other people are doing that. There are urgent needs we must attend to. I do what I do as a rabbi.”

He cites Heschel again as a model for courage and moral imagination. “I have images of him walking with Martin Luther King Jr., saying, ‘My feet are praying.’ To see an older rabbi, saved from the Holocaust and transplanted to America, taking a stance that was not popular… many leaders in the institutions were not supportive of him doing that. That was a teaching for me.” Heschel’s activism, bringing together clergy across traditions against war and injustice, inspired Mivasair to step into spaces that demand moral courage.

For Mivasair, faith is measured in action. We have not yet been able to stop a single bomb or bullet,” he says, “but still, we can directly help the people enduring that suffering. We can help at least some of them buy food, water, and medicines. We can help some families escape the most intense bombing. We can help secure a tent for some children. We can stay connected with people so they know that someone somewhere is witnessing and cares.”

He is clear-eyed about the broader forces at work. “The United States and its Western allies are not just passive observers. They are supplying the bombs, the bullets, and the political cover that allows these attacks to continue. Palestinian life is negotiable to them. Palestinian death is acceptable. And yet, we refuse to accept this.”

In the face of such staggering power, Mivasair’s method is both simple and radical. Connecting Gaza delivers immediate aid, sustains basic needs, and builds networks of empathic witnessing. Volunteers offer daily messages of solidarity, reminding families they are not forgotten. Every transfer of funds, every WhatsApp check-in, every shared story is an act of defiance against indifference and annihilation.

I asked him, “If you could bring one Gazan family and one Israeli family to your dinner table, what question would you ask them both to answer honestly before they ate?”

“I would ask them,” he says slowly, “what do you want for them, for the family across the table? I hope they both would reply that they want them to live in peace, to raise their children, to live in their culture, and be safe and celebrated. I want for them what I want for myself. They are as worthy as we are. Their blood is just as red as ours.”

Mivasair’s moral certainty is grounded not in texts or tradition alone, but in an inner ethical compass. “How do you know that you know, “he asks rhetorically. “I do not have a good answer to the question. I just know I know that God does not want people pushed out of their homes, their land stolen, I know that God does not want people maimed.”

He clarifies that his conviction is not derived from scholarship or scripture. “I can’t rely on what I’ve read. I get it from deep inside of me. There are other people who apply the same concept in inverse ways, but this is my moral compass. It guides my actions.”

For those who want to act, Mivasair offers practical steps. “If you want to help, here’s what you can do: visit our website, www.connectinggaza.org. Donate. Donate again. Ask those you know to donate. Actually learn about someone in Gaza — you can write to them, connect with them. If more people do that, there will be more people we can help. And remember, there are hundreds of very worthy large organizations to give to.”

I ask the question that often arises in conversations about aid in conflict zones: how can donors be sure that the money will not end up in the hands of Hamas?

“We know these people,” Mivasair says simply. “We know the families. We know how they are using the support. That is the foundation of everything we do.”

It is a reminder that human connection, attention, and accountability are as vital as the aid itself. In a world overwhelmed by conflict, indifference, and distance, Mivasair’s model is straightforward: bear witness, give what you can, and prioritize the lives of the vulnerable. In his words, “We act because we cannot turn away.”


George “Casey” Payne is a poet, essayist, and crisis counselor based in Rochester, NY. His writing has appeared in The Good Men Project, Buffalo News, CITY Magazine, Adirondack Life, Common Dreams, City Watch LA, The Courier, and other outlets.