The Most Jewish Thing There Is: Rosh Hashanah Sermon 5786
Two weeks ago, I started thinking about moving to Costa Rica. Or maybe Vancouver. Or how about Australia? Now, to be fair, I say this every year about two weeks before Rosh Hashanah. But this year, the situation was a little different. I was sitting in the chapel, just behind where I stand now, with a group of committed, passionate, beloved BZBI congregants as they each bared their souls on the complicated, beautiful, and painful topic of the modern state of Israel. Although my role in the conversation was simply to be present and listen, I was struck suddenly with an enormous sense of inadequacy: no topic brings up in me such a feeling of helplessness as that of how to keep a community together when people in that community hold such opposing views on Medinat Yisrael. An intense fear gripped me. Would BZBI be yet another congregation that broke apart, shattered like holy vessels into irreconcilable fragments as a result of our debates?
As the days passed and I reflected back on that meeting, though, I remembered a few key pieces of information. One: everyone who came to that meeting shared a love and commitment to BZBI. No one who sat there in the chapel that night wanted to see the synagogue fail or the community to fall apart. Two: every single person in that room carried a deep and intense relationship with Am Yisrael, the people Israel; Eretz Yisrael, the land of Israel; and also with Medinat Yisrael, the modern state. Every single person cared – and that’s why they were in the room.
As the conversation progressed, two approaches became clear. For some in our community, one of our most important obligations as Jews is to support Israel, no matter the situation. Israel, in this view, is the key to Jewish survival and is always in danger of being destroyed by its hostile neighbors. War is brutal and ugly and terrible but necessary in order to keep our people safe, particularly after the horrendous and repugnant attacks of October 7. Even if we may privately have concerns about Israel’s conduct at times, it is essential to project support in public. Just as we stand with family members, through thick and thin, we stand with Israel.
Others came to the conversation with a very different perspective. Indeed, Israel has been important for Judaism’s survival and flourishing, but over the last few years, the far-right government of Israel has ceased to represent Jewish moral values. From extremist settlers in the West Bank who repeatedly torch Bedouin homes to a prime minister who orders bombing campaigns on hospitals, humanitarian “safe zones,” and ceasefire negotiators, leaders in this Holy Land are not guided by Judaism’s reverence for life and care for those in need. How can we stand with Israel when Israel no longer stands for tzedek, justice, and shalom, peace?
Living in between these two points of view, this particular combination of anger and love, of despair over what Israel has become and hope for what Israel could be, nearly brought me to tears on Wednesday night. As I sat there, listening to my fellow congregants, I wondered: was it possible to be one community in the face of these core disagreements? And furthermore, how could I, a simple human being without any exceptional abilities, help be the one to bring these voices together in some productive way?
I went home that night and thought, “Maybe I should move to Costa Rica.” But then I had a few other, more productive thoughts.
First, I remembered a painful experience I had last spring. A Jewish leader in a reproductive rights organization emailed me to ask that I get the word out about an upcoming action. I responded enthusiastically, asking if I could speak at the event, in order to show the community that there are religious leaders who support access to abortion and comprehensive women’s health. A few days later, she wrote me back, thanking me for my offer but politely declining. “Unfortunately,” she wrote, “some of my fellow volunteers are uncomfortable working with Zionists, and for this reason, while that disagreement is ongoing, I won’t send more information about upcoming abortion rights actions.” I haven’t received anything from her since.
Second, I remembered a marvelous experience I had, also last spring. We at BZBI were honored to host Philadelphia’s citywide Tikkun Leil Shavuot, an all-night Jewish learning event that includes communities all across the Jewish spectrum. It’s one of my favorite events of the year, as it actually draws people from Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, Reconstructionist, and unaffiliated backgrounds to learn together about topics as disparate as Jews in baseball (I think you know who taught that class) to the halacha of our city eruv. One Orthodox rabbi from the neighborhood even did a magic show while teaching about Jewish approaches to tarot and divination. What a paradise of Jewish unity and study!
I was heartbroken, though, in the weeks leading up to that event, when I learned that some Jews in the Philadelphia area wanted to shut down the program because one of the presenting rabbis has expressed views very critical of Zionism. To be clear, I don’t endorse the views of this rabbi, and some of his actions have been upsetting to people in our community. However, I also don’t endorse the views of some of the other presenters that night, including those who don’t count women in a minyan, who don’t see me as a legitimate rabbi, or who think that LGBT people are sinners. But I was glad that every single one of them was there, because we are Am Yisrael, a mixed multitude, and we all stood at Sinai to receive the Torah.
Having experienced the pain of exclusion due to my love for Israel, even as I also often receive hearty criticism from fellow Jews about the ways that I express that tough love, I have no interest in ever making people feel that they don’t belong in the Jewish community based on how they engage with the Holy Land. Social exclusion is one of the most painful psychological experiences a person can have. In fact, recent research shows a fascinating effect: both people who are excluded and people who exclude others experience intense negative emotions, including guilt, shame, helplessness, and a loss of a sense of meaning in life. When we push people out, we also hurt ourselves.
Today, in our Torah and Haftarah readings, we heard two gut-wrenching stories of exclusion. The Torah reading for the first day of Rosh Hashanah, from the book of Genesis, begins with a beautiful moment of being seen: God takes note of Sarah and causes her to conceive a child in her old age. But one of the first acts that Sarah takes after giving birth to that child is to cause another parent deep pain: she sees her child, Yitzchak, playing with his half-brother, Yishmael, and is upset. She orders her husband to send away Yishmael and his mother, Hagar. It breaks Abraham’s heart to send away his own child, but he heeds his wife’s wishes. Out in the desert, dying of thirst, Hagar places her beloved child under a bush, horrified by the thought of watching him die. She breaks into desperate tears. It is at this moment that God hears Yishmael’s cry and sends down an angel.
“What troubles you, Hagar?” the angel asks. “Fear not, for God has heeded the cry of the boy where he is. Come, lift up the boy and hold him by the hand, for I will make a great nation of him.”
Then God opens Hagar’s eyes and she sees a well of water, perhaps there the whole time but just out of reach.
Can you imagine the anguish that Hagar must have felt upon being cast out of her home? Of being rejected by her family, her community? Of being left to die in the desert along with her child?
Indeed, God does not argue with Sarah when she expresses the desire to ostracize her rival. God encourages Abraham to listen to his wife. But I get the sense that God’s heart is also breaking at this moment. How could human beings, gifted with free will, use that will to cast others out? God has no choice but to send an angel to right this wrong.
Abraham must hold onto this heartbreak for the rest of his life. But the Midrash, in Bereishit Rabbah, tells us something remarkable: after Sarah’s death, the text points out that Yitzchak settles in the Negev, in Be’er Le’chai Ro-i. And why did he settle there? He wanted to go find Hagar and his brother Yishmael, in order to bring them back to his father. The midrash teaches us that Abraham’s second wife, Keturah, was actually Hagar, and that Yitzchak succeeded in his task of reunification. Be’er Le’chai Ro-i literally means, “The Well of the Living One Who Sees Me.” Yitzchak chooses to live in the very place where God’s angel spoke to Hagar, where Hagar was finally seen after being unseen by her own family. And in the end, when Abraham dies, it is both of his sons, Yitzchak and Yishmael, who come together to bury him.
In this story, humans make the terrible mistake of casting out their own family out of fear. It is an act of God that saves Hagar and Yishmael – but it is the act of another human being, Yitzchak, who ultimately brings them back into community.
Our haftarah, too, tells the story of a woman who is nearly cast out by a powerful man. Chanah, weeping with despair as she prays for a child, is almost kicked out of the Temple by Eli, the priest. Watching her lips move though no sound comes out, Eli shouts at her, “How long will you make a drunken spectacle of yourself? Sober up!” In this situation, though, the resolution is swift. Chanah explains that she is not drunk, but is instead praying fervently to God. Eli is immediately contrite, praying that God give her what she requests. Chanah goes on to give birth to the prophet Samuel, the one who will anoint the king of Israel.
Why do we read these stories on Rosh Hashanah? The traditional answer is that both tell the story of conception and birth. Just as the world was born on Rosh Hashanah, so too did Sarah and Chanah conceive and give birth. But both stories contain, as well, a warning about the dangers of pushing out people in our community. If God had not interceded on behalf of Hagar and Yishmael, Abraham would have lost his son – Yitzchak would have lost his brother. If Chanah had not spoken up for herself and remained in the Temple despite Eli’s criticism, Samuel would never have been born, and there would never have been a king of Israel. When we push people out, we hurt them and we hurt ourselves.
But there remains, of course, a question about what kind of community we want to have. Surely, there must be ground rules in any congregation. For example, if a congregant came to the bimah and gave a dvar Torah about the evils of homosexuality, that person would certainly not be invited back to this bimah. Each of us has a right to set boundaries around what we are willing to hear about, to talk about, to pray about. And each of us must decide what kind of community we want to live in.
I remember vividly the first time that I went to an LGBT synagogue. I was already in rabbinical school and finally had the chance to spend Shabbat at CBST, the gay synagogue in Manhattan. At the end of the service, the people in the balcony lowered a giant rainbow flag while we all put our arms around each other and sang. I was surprised by how moved I was. Everyone here was gay, just like me. Everyone here was Jewish, just like me. These were my people. This was my place.
But you know what? I didn’t feel a need to go back. It’s nice to be in a place where everyone shares this really big thing in common – but for me, one of the things that I love most about synagogues is that they both push and enable people to come together across lines of difference. I often tell the story of sitting at Board Game Shabbat here at BZBI, watching a couple in their 80s play Ticket to Ride with an 8-year-old, a 15-year-old, and a 40-year-old. Where else are people who are not directly related to each other connecting in this remarkable intergenerational way?
I don’t want to live in a community where everyone is the same age as me, or prays the same way as me, or thinks the same way as me. I want to be in a place where people challenge one another, with love. Where people push one another, gently and only with consent. Or, at the very least, where people sit together at a Shabbat table, agreeing on what we can agree on and letting go of the rest, for the sake of shalom bayit, peace in our home.
Rabbinic Judaism is founded on this very concept. Devar acher, our earliest midrashim repeat again and again: “another point of view.” Another perspective. An opposite belief. Contradictory ideas sit next to each other all across our Talmud. And when our rabbis, unable to bear certain opinions in their midst, excommunicate one of their members, disaster almost always ensues.
This wasn’t only true in the Talmudic era. In June of 1945, just one month after the Allies declared victory in Europe and less than 6 months after the liberation in Auschwitz, there was a book burning right here in the United States. But it wasn’t Nazis or Klan members who conducted the burning. It was New York rabbis. Rabbi Mordechai Kaplan, who happens to be the great-grandfather of our member Sharon Musher, had just been officially excommunicated by the Union of Orthodox Rabbis of the United States and Canada. Raised Orthodox but at the time a professor at the Jewish Theological Seminary, Kaplan’s great crime was to understand God as a being who existed beyond all personal connection. In the course of a great “cherem” ceremony, the rabbis threw Kaplan’s Sabbath Prayer Book into the flames, believing that they were protecting the Jewish community from the ultimate heresy.
It goes without saying that their effort was a failure – and for that I am grateful. The Reconstructionist movement, based on Kaplan’s teachings, is thriving, including right here in Philadelphia where its seminary sits. All that those New York rabbis did was reject the core Jewish belief in devar acher. They hurt themselves and they hurt the Jewish community.
Today, in this country, we see the despicable results of what happens when people forget how to talk to each other. The murder of Charlie Kirk, a person with whom I had very little in common, is a grave reminder of how people behave in a fractured and isolated society. The assassination of Representative Melissa Hortman and her husband. The burning of Governor Josh Shapiro’s residence. All of these represent a society where people cannot tolerate the viewpoints of others. As much as it hurts, we need to learn how to live with one another.
And so, after all this, I decided that it is my personal and rabbinic duty not to quit. Not to move to Costa Rica. Not to give up on Jewish unity. Not to despair of nurturing and maintaining the kind of synagogue where people can be uncomfortable – not in pain – but just a little uncomfortable, for the sake of something bigger. For the sake of Am Yisrael.
That Wednesday night meeting was hard. It was uncomfortable. Some people, on all sides of the conversation, left that meeting thinking, “Maybe this isn’t the right community for me.” I want to tell you: this is the right community for you. BZBI is where you belong. My goal in 5786 is to do better. To help craft the right conversations. To get to a point where everyone in this room, everyone who makes BZBI their home, feels that they belong here.
Because we do all belong here. There is far, far more that unites this group of people than divides it: commitment to Jewish tradition and practice. Adherence to gender egalitarianism in prayer and study. A focus on urban living. The joys, and sorrows, of supporting Philadelphia sports teams. Care for one another, in times of celebration and in times of mourning. And always, a deep dedication to lots and lots of food. And…there are some issues that we have a hard time coming to agreements about. How we connect to our beautiful, sacred, beloved Holy Land is one of them.
Starting just after the chagim, I intend to launch, with the help of our synagogue leadership, a serious, community-wide effort to identify our shared values when it comes to Israel. This isn’t the first time that BZBI has made this effort, and it certainly isn’t the first time we’ve talked about making this effort, but it is about time that we actually do it. Israel is at the greatest crossroads, perhaps in its whole existence – certainly within my lifetime. We cannot solve the crises in Israel. But we can solve a crisis that exists here, in the United States: how to live with and even love those whose views are not our own. There will be discussion groups, surveys, listening sessions, and talks by experts with different perspectives. I hope, too, that within the next 2 years, we will host a congregational trip to Israel that features many voices on the experience of living in this exceptional place.
And if this all sounds terrible to you, don’t worry – no one will be forced to join! If what you want is to come to BZBI on Shabbos and daven and kibbitz with your friends and eat some bagels and shmear, without worrying too much about foreign affairs and people’s political opinions, no problem. Please keep doing that. All that I ask is that at least once, you look around this beautiful community and appreciate just how special it is. Each person here is unique. We are not coins cast from the same die. Some of us have drastically different opinions than others. And that’s the most Jewish thing there is. Shanah tovah.
