The People Who Wrestle

This past fall, a little more than a month after the October 7 terror attack, I was sitting on a plane, waiting for my flight to take off, when I started to feel a little bit uneasy.

I had been thinking about some of the more horrifying images from the attack – which, despite my purposefully having not looked at the photos, had nevertheless taken root in my imagination. There on the plane, I suddenly noticed that my feet were tingling, and that my body temperature was starting to rise. I wanted to get up and stretch my legs – but because I was in a middle seat, and because the plane was already taxiing, I couldn’t get to the aisle. I felt trapped. I started to think about the hostages – who also were trapped, but under far worse conditions than mine. By this point, my skin was crawling and I was starting to sweat. I reached into my backpack to try and find a bottle of water, but there was none.

And so, despite being an ardent rule follower, I climbed out of my seat while the plane was still taxiing and went and stood in the back. I told a flight attendant that I was worried that I was about to have an anxiety attack. She gave me a bottle of water. I rested my face against the cool, metallic wall of the galley, and took a few slow sips. The tingling feeling was starting to subside. A few minutes later, I returned to my seat, put my headphones on, turned on an episode of an old sitcom that I had seen a thousand times before, closed my eyes – and eventually fell asleep.

In the moment, I felt embarrassed about what had happened on the airplane. But in retrospect, I recognize that it was not so out of the ordinary. We are living in an era of great anxiety.

According to public health officials, one out of every five adults in the United States suffers from intrusive anxiety. And we see it reflected in our popular culture. Consider, for example, one of this year’s best-selling works of non-fiction: a book by Jonathan Haidt called The Anxious Generation – in which he explains why today’s youth will likely be more anxious than any generation that came before them. Or, consider the award-winning podcast from WNYC Studios called The United States of Anxiety – which made the case that the one thing that Red States and Blue States have in common is that both are anxious about the future of our country. Or, consider the summer’s biggest blockbuster film, the animated family movie Inside Out 2 – in which a teenager must learn to cope with the anxieties of starting high school. It seems that everywhere we look, anxiety is there.

To understand what anxiety is, it might be helpful to first understand what it is not. The American Psychological Association makes a distinction between anxiety and fear. Fear, as they describe it, is a short-lived response to a specific, immediate threat. For example: a car swerves in front of ours; we feel afraid. When the car is back in its lane, the fear dissipates.

Anxiety, by contrast, is not about a specific, immediate threat; rather, it is a general and long-lasting feeling that something bad – something unknown and as yet undefined – might happen to us in the unpredictable future. It is worrying about what tomorrow might hold, and feeling that it is beyond our control.

We, the Jewish people, seem to be especially vulnerable to anxiety. It is not just that we count among ourselves some of the most notable interpreters of anxiety, like Freud and Kafka. Rather, statistical studies have found that Jews are disproportionately represented among the ranks of the anxious. Although in the general US population, Jews comprise a mere 2%, among those who have sought psychological treatment for anxiety over the past century, Jews account for 50%.

Of course, there are many possible ways to interpret this data. Perhaps we Jews have greater access to mental health services than other religious or ethnic groups do. Or, perhaps we have greater trust in the value of psychotherapy.

But even without consulting the data, it is clear that, at least in the popular imagination, we Jews are closely associated with anxiety.

We can see it in the ways that we depict ourselves in literature, theater, and film. There are countless examples of the anxious, neurotic Jewish character. Among my favorites is Gene Wilder portraying Leo Bloom in the classic Mel Brooks comedy The Producers. Leo is crouched behind the desk of his soon-to-be business partner, Max Bialystock, suffering a panic attack. “I’m hysterical!” he shouts. “I can’t stop when I get like this. I’m hysterical.” Bialystock fetches a glass of water – which, instead of offering it to Leo to drink, he instead throws in Leo’s face. For a moment, Leo calms down. But quickly, the anxiety returns: “I’m wet!” he shouts. “I’m hysterical, and I’m wet!”

We see the Jewish tendency to be anxious not just in popular culture, but even in our sacred literature. Think of the iconic moment in our Torah story in which our forefather Jacob has his name changed to Israel. [1] After twenty years of estrangement, Jacob is about to be reunited with his twin brother, Esau. He is nervous about the encounter. How will the two of them get along? Will Esau still bear a grudge for the ways in which Jacob had cheated him in their youth?

The night before they are to meet, Jacob cannot sleep. He lies awake until dawn, fitfully tossing and turning – wrestling with some dark and mysterious creature of the night. Is it an angel? Is it Jacob’s own shadow? The Torah does not say.

In the morning, Jacob is exhausted. And the mysterious creature tells him that, on account of his restless night, his name shall no longer be Jacob, but rather, shall be changed to Yisrael – meaning: “the one who wrestles.” It will become the namesake of our people – a people who have, for many nights since, continued to lay awake: tossing, turning, wrestling.

So central is anxiety to the Jewish religious imagination that we could even reasonably make the case that it is one of the most fundamental themes of this, the holiest day of the year: Yom Kippur. We read earlier this morning the familiar, haunting words of the Unetaneh Tokef prayer, a centerpiece of our High Holiday prayer book. It begins: “Let us proclaim the sacred power of this day – ki hu nora v’ayom, for it is awesome and full of dread.”

The prayer then goes on to remind us of how fragile our place in the world is. The poetic language that the prayer book uses easily fits our description of anxiety – which, again, is: the recognition that something bad, something unknown and as yet undefined, might happen to us in the unpredictable future. The prayer asks us to consider the year that lies ahead. “Will we live, or will we die?” we wonder. “Perhaps by fire; perhaps by water. Will we be tranquil, or will we be troubled? Will we be calm, or will we be tormented?”

We might ask ourselves: why is it that the Jewish people are seemingly so beset with anxiety? Two contributing factors come to mind: one that comes from within ourselves, and one that comes from the outside.

The internal factor is our worldview. Ours is a civilization that prizes the asking of questions. The very soul of our religious life is to examine, analyze, discuss, consider, scrutinize, interpret, and dissect every last aspect of all of human existence. It is a life of constant searching – never fully satisfied, never really at ease.

But it is the external factor, I believe, that has had the greater impact on our Jewish tendency towards anxiety. We are a people that has known many generations of trauma. Many have been the eras of Jewish history in which our people’s safety has been threatened: by the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Crusaders, the Spanish inquisitors, the Cossacks, the Nazis, the Soviets – the list goes on and on.

Indeed, the oldest artifact in the archeological record that mentions the Jewish people is a document dating to ancient Egypt, to 1200 BCE. In it, the Egyptian pharaoh Merneptah describes his great military might. He writes: “I have decimated the people of Israel. Their seed is laid to waste.” The literal oldest thing that human civilization has to say about the Jewish people is that we are subject to being destroyed.

Even if we ourselves did not personally live in one of the many times and places in which Jewish safety was at risk, nevertheless, we carry those experiences with us. At the very least, we carry it in our historical memory – the stories that get passed down from generation to generation. We believe that these things happened not only a long time ago and in a far away place. Rather, in the spirit of the Passover Haggadah, [2] we feel as if we were there; we imagine that it happened to us.

On a deeper level, it is seemingly possible that we carry our people’s historical trauma with us in our DNA. Neurobiologists recently conducted a study in which they trained male mice to be afraid of a particular scent. The researchers then mated these mice with female partners. And indeed, when the resulting baby mice were exposed to the same scent, their brains too exhibited signs of fear.

If fear can be passed down through our DNA, then we should not be surprised to find that a people that has known countless generations of fear would be frequently on edge and highly anxious. For many of us, the warning light is always on. We are highly attuned, regularly looking for the subtle signals that would indicate that our environment is becoming unsafe.

For many Jewish people, October 7 and the ensuing war only heightened or retrigerred our natural predisposition to be anxious. In one traumatic day, our protective psychological shell was cracked wide open – and our underlying anxiety came pouring out like lava. Since then, it has been a restless, fitful, thrashing year, a year filled with worry and anxious thoughts – a year in which many of us felt like Jacob: up all night, wrestling in the dark.

How are we to cope with our anxiety? Unfortunately, the most ancient layer of our tradition, the Hebrew Bible, offers scant advice – and when it does, the advice is not all that helpful. The Book of Proverbs offers the following advice: “If there is anxiety in a person’s heart, let him squash it. Let him turn it into joy by talking about something good.” [3]

But as many good therapists will tell us, this strategy is unlikely to succeed. Papering over our anxiety with happy thoughts will not make the uncomfortable feeling go away. If anything, forcing our anxiety down will only cause it to seep out in other, unexpected, potentially harmful places in our lives.

Rather, the best thing that I, for one, have found is to talk about our anxiety: to try and understand what is motivating it, to let it out through our words. And, if that is not enough, if our anxiety is so intrusive that it begins to hinder our day-to-day functioning, there are helpful medications that a psychiatrist can prescribe to help us find a less anxious baseline. There need be no stigma about either of these approaches. Rather, to get help is praiseworthy.

Additionally, we can come to recognize that anxiety is not all bad. It is a natural human emotion. In fact, when it is properly harnessed, anxiety can be made productive. It can be transformed into a useful tool that generates creativity and meaning.

For the Jewish people, our anxiety has been a tool for our survival. There is a little-known but highly influential 20th century Jewish thinker whom I love named Simon Rawidowicz, who argued that the common theme of all of Jewish history is anxiety.

In each and every generation, he argues, the Jewish people has worried that theirs will be the last era of Jewish history. The prophets of the Hebrew Bible warned that if the Israelites did not improve their moral behavior, then they would be the last generation of Jews. The medieval Jewish philosopher Maimonides worried that, if no future scholars should attain to his and his students’ level of erudition, then they would be the last generation of Jews. In our time, Jewish communal leaders worry that if Jewish life is not made compelling and relevant for the 21st century, then we will be the last generation of Jews. Even Abraham and Sarah – the first generation of Jews! – worried that if God did not grant them a child, then they would be the last generation of Jews!

Rawidowicz sees this pattern, and describes us as “the ever-dying people.” By that phrase, Rawidowicz does not mean that ours is a history filled only with death and destruction. Rather, he says, our constant worrying that we might disappear is, in fact, an assertion of our will to live. “A people that has been dying for thousands of years,” he writes, “is, in fact, a living people.” Our anxiety about the Jewish future is, for Rawidowicz, the impetus that prompts us to survive. “By constantly anticipating the end,” he writes, “the Jewish people has repeatedly managed to avoid it.”

But our anxiety can be a tool not just for survival. Additionally, our anxiety can be a tool for cultural creativity.

In his book Genius and Anxiety, the writer Norman Lebrecht makes exactly this argument. He notes that, especially over the past two hundred years, the Jewish people has made an outsized impact on the fields of art, science, literature, economics, medicine, technology, and music. The reason for our productivity, he argues, is our anxiety.

For starters, if anxiety is a generalized worry about the unknown future, then an anxious person will be naturally attuned to oncoming problems – sometimes anticipating the problems even before they begin to show themselves. When their anxiety is properly harnessed, an anxious person may be able to see a few moves ahead on the chessboard – to intuit possible challenges and begin to dream up novel solutions.

What’s more, as Lebrecht argues, our specifically Jewish anxiety has been especially generative. We are a people that is riddled with contradictions. On the one hand, we feel like insiders in our society; on the other hand, we somehow always continue to feel separate. On the one hand we believe that God is infinitely far beyond our human imagination; on the other hand, we believe that God cares about what we do. These, and many other such contradictions, pervade the Jewish consciousness.

This kind of dialectical thinking causes us, at once, to feel forever unresolved, ill at ease, anxious that the world is far too complex and multifaceted for us to ever fully comprehend. And, at the same time, our dialectical thinking can prove to be immensely generative – like two tectonic plates that refuse to stop pressing against one another, until, miles above the surface, the interminable force of the friction between them has pushed up a mountain peak.

In this era of great anxiety – for our planet, for our country, and for us, the Jewish people – we need a reminder that our anxiety need not control us. Rather, we need the Jewish wisdom that recognizes that our anxiety can be transformed into a helpful tool.

Perhaps this is why we bear the name of our forefather Jacob, who had his name changed to Yisrael. Like him, we have spent many anxious hours wrestling with uncertainty. But also like him, we recognize that our anxiety has compelled us to survive, and has been a prolific source of our people’s creativity.

We are so clearly his descendants. We are the Israelites. We are the people who wrestle.

__________

[1] Genesis 32:25-30

[2] Passover Haggadah, Magid Section: “In each and every generation, a person is obligated to see himself as if he personally left Egypt.”

[3] Proverbs 12:25

If You Can Keep It

It was September of 1787, and the United States’ Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia was drawing to a close. Over the course of the previous four months, representatives from each of the states had gathered together inside the Pennsylvania State House, in order to deliberate over and decide on a new frame of government for the burgeoning American republic.

Outside the Pennsylvania State House sat Elizabeth Willing Powel – an influential Philadelphia socialite, who was known for hosting salons in her home for many of the political elite. Her living room had been the site of many conversations among the likes of George and Martha Washington, John and Abigail Adams, Benjamin Franklin, and their peers, who would dine and drink late into the night, as they discussed what form of government would be best for the young country.

On that September afternoon, Ms. Powel sat outside the State House, eagerly awaiting the Convention’s closing gavel. As the proceedings concluded, and the delegates started to emerge from the hall, she rushed over to her friend Benjamin Franklin, to ask him what decisions had been reached. “Well, Dr. Franklin,” she asked, “what form of government do we have: a republic, or a monarchy?”

“A republic!” Franklin replied, enthusiastically. But then, considering it for a moment, he tempered his answer, and added: “That is, if you can keep it.”

If you listen to much of our national discourse today, you will recognize that we are living in an era in which many people are feeling the same sort of concern that Benjamin Franklin did. With a national election on the horizon, with polarization intensifying, and with politically motivated violence already having emerged from its dangerous lair, it sometimes feels, as Franklin warned, as if our republic might not keep.

Ours is not the only country to be experiencing this kind of political tumult. Rather, we are part of a broader trend in which democracy is waning around the globe.

The well-respected non-profit organization Freedom House publishes an annual report in which they measure the health of democracy in every world country. According to their criteria, a healthy democracy is one that ensures equality under the law; free, fair, and conclusive elections; minority rights; and freedom of the press, among other things. Signs of democratic decline, by contrast, include the quashing of dissent, the spread of disinformation, the scapegoating of vulnerable communities, and the proliferation of extremist thought.

This year’s Freedom House report shows that, for the eighteenth year in a row, democratic norms have been on the decline all around the world – with 80% of countries, including the United States, scoring lower this year than last year.

To be clear: to be concerned about protecting our democracy should not be understood as a partisan issue. Rather, it is a problem that should motivate people from all across the political spectrum. As the writer Adam Gopnik has helpfully described it: Some of us oppose the right to bear arms. Others of us oppose legal access to an abortion. But what we should all agree on is that the one thing more troubling than either of these would be if there were no constitutional order left for us to argue about in the first place.

If we are to protect our country’s democratic norms, then we will need to do more than simply show up to vote for our preferred political party in November. Rather, we will need to invest in rebuilding our country’s civic culture – the values and commitments that undergird our society and inform our politics.

To help us with this task, we, as Jews, might turn to the wisdom of our tradition for guidance. After all, throughout our history, the Jewish tradition has often served a countercultural function – providing an alternative framework for approaching the issues of the day.

This evening, I’d like to share three classical Jewish ideas that can aid us in repairing our civic culture – in hopes that we might be able to heed Benjamin Franklin’s warning, and ensure that our republic will keep.

***

The first Jewish idea is the concept of mitzvah.

We often use the word mitzvah in its colloquial sense, where it means “a good deed.” And while this unofficial definition does in fact have currency, I am thinking here of the word’s proper, technical definition – which is: a commandment. Our tradition teaches that the Torah contains 613 mitzvot, 613 commandments: 613 things that we are expected to do – or, in many cases, things we are expected not to do. And this system of 613 commandments forms the backbone of an observant Jewish life.

The late, prominent professor at Yale Law School Robert Cover has noted that the Jewish legal framework is substantively different from the American legal framework. The Jewish framework is concerned with mitzvot – with obligations, with things we are expected of us. The American framework, by contrast, is concerned primarily not with obligations, but rather with rights: the freedoms to which we are intrinsically entitled – which are enshrined in the Constitution, and are inalienably ours.

Cover takes no issue with the concept of rights. They are an essential part of our democratic culture. Rather, Cover notes that, when taken to the extreme, our American emphasis on rights has often contributed to a culture of rampant individualism, in which the collective good is often bypassed in favor of the individual’s desires.

On a social level, our emphasis on rights has indirectly contributed to political radicalization. Last year, the US Surgeon General declared a national epidemic of loneliness and isolation. Each of us does indeed have the right to be alone. But without some sense of obligation – some sense of commandedness that requires us to engage with others – our right to be alone can quickly sink into the morass of social seclusion, and from there, potentially into political extremism.

On a policy level, our overemphasis on rights sometimes leads us to act only in our own self-interest. In almost every US state, if you are witness to a car accident or a drug overdose, you have no legal obligation to provide assistance. There are understandable reasons why this is so. In the Jewish legal tradition, by contrast, if you see your neighbor’s donkey [1] – even if you see your enemy’s donkey [2] – and it has collapsed under the weight of its burden, you are not encouraged to provide assistance; rather, you are required to do so. A sense of obligation – a sense of commandedness – builds a civic culture in which each person is responsible to all the others.

***

A second Jewish idea to help us repair our civic culture is the centrality of the law.

To clarify: when I say the centrality of the law, I do not mean “law and order,” as the word sometimes connotes. Rather, I mean that our Jewish tradition affirms that, in order for our society to be strong, we need to have a shared set of publicly agreed upon norms and rules.

There is only one time in the entire Torah in which God speaks directly to the entire Israelite community. It happens at Mount Sinai – in that momentous scene in which God gives our people the tablets of the law. The Torah understands that, in order for the laws to be binding, the Israelites need to hear the laws directly from their source, and verbally confirm that they are willing to abide by them. The Israelites respond to God, and say: “All the things that God has spoken, we will surely do.” [3] It is as if our ancestors implicitly understood the notion of the social contract – an idea that the Enlightenment philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau would not articulate for another 2700 years: namely, that the state derives its authority to govern only through the knowing and willful consent of its citizens.

When the Israelites at last complete their forty years of wandering in the desert, and they reach the Promised Land, Moses instructs them that they are to place enormous stones on the top of the tallest mountain. They are to coat these stones in plaster, and carve into the plaster all of the laws that are in the Torah. [4] These stones, Moses tells them, shall serve as a public reminder of all the norms and rules that they have collectively agreed to live by. We might think of it as similar to the Christ the Redeemer statue that towers over Rio de Janeiro – but instead of depicting the figure of Jesus, a messianic symbol of salvation, this giant edifice will remind them of the law, their shared set of communal commitments.

In this manner, the law is not secluded away, unreachable and unknowable, the exclusive domain of the religious or intellectual elite. Rather, the law is every person’s responsibility, so that the Israelites can become, as the Torah commands them, “a kingdom of priests” [5] – in which every citizen is expected to be conversant in the laws, to understand their rights and duties, and to be fluent in their society’s concept of justice.

In our society, by contrast, we seem to have lost our sense of civic duty. Faded are the days in which our educational system taught a student not only algebra and chemistry, but also, how to be a responsible citizen. Our Jewish tradition can provide a corrective, by insisting that the law – our shared set of communal commitments – stands at the center of our public consciousness.

***

A third Jewish idea to help us repair our civic culture is our commitment to ideological pluralism.

We are living in an age of extreme political polarization. For many of us, the vast majority of our social relationships are with people who vote the same way that we do. Similarly, the news that we follow and the media that we consume tend to reaffirm the ideas we already hold.

Our Jewish tradition, by contrast, insists that we engage in genuine conversation across ideological lines – that we try to thoroughly understand the positions with which we disagree. Discussion, deliberation, and dialogue-across-difference all are hallmarks of Jewish life and Jewish learning.

The Talmud starts with a single question: “At what time should a person recite the evening Shema?” It then lists one rabbi’s answer. And then, a second rabbi’s different answer. And then, a third rabbi’s still different answer. It then goes on to explain the logic by which each rabbi reached his differing conclusion. It then offers an anecdote, a short story that subtly suggests yet a fourth possible position. [6] And on and on the discussion goes for fifty-four-hundred pages – a sprawling compendium of conflicting opinions, in which each voice makes room for all the others.

Of course, for every question, our tradition does indeed identify a preferred, semi-official answer. After all, in order for a society to properly function, we cannot just deliberate; we have to make decisions. But even after a decision has been rendered, our tradition requires that we not discard the unadopted minority opinions. Rather, when we study a page of Talmud, we spend equal, if not even more time trying to understand the various positions that were ultimately not adopted.

There is a Jewish value called machloket l’shem shamayim – a phrase that literally means “disagreement for the sake of heaven,” but which we might more loosely translate as “disagreement for a higher purpose.” As Jews, we are instructed to approach our disagreements not for the relatively lowly purpose of trying to win the argument. Rather, we are to approach our disagreements for the higher purpose of trying to discover the truth.

We recognize that no one person has exclusive access to the truth – and, conversely, that every person’s argument has at least some degree of merit, however small. We enter the conversation not to prove our point, but rather, to help us refine our own thinking. We expect that our conversation partner might be able to show us the places in which our logic is flawed – and, equally, we hope that we might be able to incorporate into our thinking the best parts of their position, without having to abandon our convictions. In this way, the deliberative process is not just an intellectual exercise or a stimulating pastime. Rather, it becomes a pathway for discovering the truth – a sacred act.

***

In less than thirty days, our country will vote in a highly charged national election. If we are to meet this moment well, we might look to the wisdom of our Jewish tradition – to remind us to balance our rights with obligations, a sense of commandedness; to remind us that society functions best when law, our shared set of communal commitments, stands at the center of our public consciousness; and to remind us that ideological pluralism, preserving the minority opinion, is a sacred act.

I like to imagine that, many decades into the future, someone who is today just a child will have grown, had a career, and will be spending her retirement serving as a tour guide and museum educator at the old Pennsylvania State House in Philadelphia – a site that we now, of course, call Independence Hall.

She will be leading a group of elementary school-age students on a class field trip – giving them a tour of the historic site, and explaining to them that it was here that our system of government was first established.

One child will raise his hand in curiosity – and, without knowing that his question is an echo of the past, he will ask: “So, what system of government do we have?”

With a knowing smile, the tour guide will say: “It is called a republic.” And then, considering her response, she will pause, and quietly add: “And it is on you to help us keep it.”

__________

[1] Deuteronomy 22:4

[2] Exodus 23:5

[3] Exodus 24:3

[4] Deuteronomy 27:2-8

[5] Exodus 19:6

[6] Babylonian Talmud, B’rachot 2a

We Will Disappoint You

The Reverend Nadia Bolz-Weber is not exactly your typical Lutheran pastor. For starters, her arms are covered in tattoos. She is a recovering alcoholic and drug abuser. Before she went to seminary, she had previously worked as a stand-up comedian. And as if her biography did not already signify that she is not your typical pastor, consider the name of the church that she founded in Denver, Colorado. The church is called: the House for all Sinners and Saints.

But the uncommon things about Reverend Bolz-Weber do not end there. Whenever a prospective congregant approaches her about becoming a part of the church community, she says something rather unusual to them. Of course, she says: “Welcome. We’re glad you’re here.” And also: “Tell us about yourself; we’d love to get to know you.” But in addition to these pleasantries, the Reverend makes a point to say to every new congregant in her church: “Welcome to the House of All Sinners and Saints. I can promise you this: We will disappoint you.”

It might seem like an unusual way to make a first impression. But there is something deeply human and wise about these words. In every relationship, it is a fact that we will indeed, on occasion, disappoint one another. And rather than having her congregants put the church on a pedestal, unrealistically imagining that the church will always get everything right, Pastor Bolz-Weber assures her congregants in advance that, try as they might, the church will indeed sometimes get things wrong. “Welcome to the House of All Sinners and Saints. We will disappoint you.”

This, precisely, is the message of the evening of Kol Nidre. We will stand with the Torah scroll in our arms, and the ark wide open, and affirm that, in the coming year, we, as human beings, will surely disappoint people. We will sometimes say the wrong thing. We will, on occasion, not show up for somebody when they needed us. We will make a decision about which the people in our lives don’t approve. And although we commit to trying our best, these moments of disappointment are certain and inevitable.

It is as if our tradition is telling us: we don’t have to be perfect. Indeed, we can’t be perfect. And when we take that unrealistic expectation off the table, we are left only with what is possible. We will surely disappoint people. So the question is: what will we do after we’ve disappointed them? 

This is the question that Kol Nidre – and, indeed, the entire holiday of Yom Kippur – asks us.

So: Welcome to the new Jewish year of 5785. We will disappoint each other. What will we do after that?

If Not Now, Then When

This past summer – when we were at a substantively different stage of the widening conflict between Israel and its neighbors, before the northern front had heated up to the degree that it has over the past few weeks, and even just the past few days – this summer, a group of TBS congregants participated in a series of conversations about the conflict. At the beginning of the series, each participant shared one core memory that has shaped the way they think about the conflict. The responses were strikingly diverse.

One congregant told us about her experience studying abroad at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Throughout the semester, she would regularly ride a city bus from the university’s campus into the center of town. And then one day, during the morning rush hour – when, thankfully, she was still in her dorm room, getting ready for class – a suicide bomber blew himself up at the bus station right outside the front door of her dormitory.

Another congregant told us about his experience working as a journalist in Israel. He was doing a story about former Israeli soldiers who had decided to speak out about some of the military duties they had performed that they felt were unethical. Our congregant told us about the kinship he had felt with those soldiers, who spoke out not as an act of rebellion, but rather, as an act of deep patriotism – helping the country they love to live up to its own highest moral standards.

A third congregant told us about how, in his adolescence, he had purposefully decided to distance himself from his Jewish identity. That is, until Yom Kippur morning of 1973. He had gone with his parents to synagogue, and he heard from the bimah the news that, overnight, on the holiest day of the year, a surprise attack had been launched against the state of Israel. And it struck him that, regardless of how he might feel about his own Jewish identity, in the eyes of much of the world, a Jew would always be a Jew – and an object of contempt, at that.

The congregants who told these three stories span across a wide swath of the political spectrum. And I imagine that if each of us were to share a core memory that we have about Israel, the range of experiences would only widen.

This coming Monday will mark one year since the brutal Hamas terrorist attack of October 7 – a day that forever changed Israel, the Jewish people, and the world. This past year has been a difficult one. It has been a year of grief. A year of turmoil. A year of anxiety. It has been a year in which hardly a day goes by when Israel, the hostages, Hamas, the Palestinians, Hezbollah, and Iran have not been in the headlines.

It has been a year in which local towns, college campuses, political races – and, in many cases, our relationships with our own family and friends – have been roiled with discord over the terror attack and the ensuing war. Over the past year, I have regularly heard from congregants from across the political spectrum who have felt agitated by – or, worse, estranged from – their neighbors, their coworkers, their friends, and also other members of their own Jewish community.

For decades now, but especially this past year, our Jewish communal conversations about Israel have tended to be highly charged and deeply divisive. There are understandable reasons why this is so. First of all, we recognize that lives are at stake. This is no mere conversation; rather, five thousand miles away, our differences of opinion are expressed in actions that could result in life or in death.

Second, for many Jewish people, Israel is not just a country. Rather, it is also a symbol – a stand-in for Jewish safety. When Israel is threatened, many of us feel ourselves to be threatened – and consequently, the conversation becomes especially intense.

Third, we recognize that, in the eyes of much of the world, Israel is a representative of the Jewish people. For some of us, this means wanting to make sure that the world fully understands Israel’s unique predicament. For others of us, it means wanting to make sure that Israel lives up to the highest moral standards of the Jewish people. But in either case, because we feel that Israel represents us, we are diligent to make sure that we are not even one inch off message.

These three factors combine to make our conversations about Israel highly charged, highly polarized – and, thereby, often highly explosive.

And yet, despite these challenges, Israel remains an essential topic of conversation – one that we avoid discussing at our own peril. In order to help us engage well around this critical and highly charged issue, the Shalom Hartman Institute – a leading Jewish think tank and education center – proposes a different approach to talking about Israel than the one we are usually accustomed to. The Hartman team suggests that, before we try to discuss our widely differing political positions, we first try to articulate the values that inform our political positions.

The group of congregants who met over the summer to talk about Israel sought to engage in exactly this kind of values-based conversation. Our goal was not to solve the conflict; that is a task that would be well beyond our capacity. Neither was our goal to try and convince one another which of us is right. Rather, we had two specific goals in mind: first, to try and articulate the values that inform our own political positions; and second, to come to better understand the values that motivate the people with whom we disagree.

It has become clear over the past week or so that, devastatingly, the war is far from over. As we prepare ourselves for what could be many more weeks or even months of conflict, I want to share this morning two of the values that emerged for me over the summer as central to the way that I think about Israel.

To be clear: these are not the only two values that are important to me. Indeed, I discovered that there is a broad range of values that inform my own convictions.

Importantly, I should stress that I am not asking anyone to be in alignment with me. My hope, rather, is that by starting with values, we, as a sacred community, might be better equipped to engage in this critical conversation, rather than breaking apart over our fault lines.

So here they are: two values that inform how I think about Israel’s conflict with its neighbors.

***

For me, the first value is self-preservation. This has always been an important value for me; but especially since October 7 – which was the worst experience of violence against Jews that we have seen in my lifetime – the weight that I give to self-preservation has only grown.

From the start, Zionism was rooted in self-preservation. Theodor Herzl and the other leaders of the early Zionist movement did not set out to establish a sovereign Jewish state in the ancient land of Israel because they thought it might be a nice place to live. Rather, they recognized that Jewish life in Europe was increasingly untenable; that the Jewish people could no longer rely on the all too often mercurial goodwill of foreign nations; that, if we were to be protected from violence – or worse, from attempted annihilation – the Jewish people would need to take responsibility for our own self-preservation.

It is devastating to acknowledge that what was true in Herzl’s day is still true in our own. The threats may be coming from different places, but nevertheless, 130 years later, there still are powerful forces in the world – Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, and others – who would seek the destruction of the Jewish people.

Our Jewish tradition is unambiguous in asserting that self-preservation is a virtue. Take, for example, the great sage Hillel’s famous three-part aphorism about social responsibility. It begins with a statement not about our obligations to others, but rather, with a statement about our obligations to ourselves: “If I am not for myself, who will be for me?” [1] Or, consider that, while the Jewish legal tradition is clear that murder is utterly prohibited, [2] our sages insist that acting in self-defense is not only permitted, but rather, is required. [3] Or, consider the argument made by the Jewish philosopher and Holocaust survivor Emil Fackenheim. He said that when you prioritize survival in a world that would otherwise wipe you out, you are performing an act of faith – enacting the belief that hope is more powerful than despair. [4]

In our current moment, there are many ways in which the value of self-preservation is being expressed in practical terms. We see it in Israel’s determination to dismantle the Hamas and Hezbollah regimes, working to ensure that the country not have at its borders terrorist organizations whose stated goal is to wipe Israel and the Jewish people off the map. We see it in Israel’s long-term strategic investment in its air defense systems, enabling the country to keep its citizens safe, even when Iran launches 180 ballistic missiles in its direction. We see it in Israel’s efforts to restore its deterrence capabilities – showing the world that you can’t throw a punch and expect that Israel will do nothing.

And yet, as is the case with any value, self-preservation can be taken to an extreme. At the very least, overemphasizing self-preservation can lead to a distrust of others, insisting that we rely only on ourselves. For Israel, this has sometimes meant rejecting the advice of key foreign allies, when, in reality, multinational cooperation is critical to Israel’s security.

On an even more consequential level, the pursuit of self-preservation can lead to a callousness about the casualties of war – in which, despite the military’s stated intentions, far too many journalists, humanitarian aid workers, and innocent civilians have been killed.

Because self-preservation can be taken to an extreme, a second value is needed to temper its influence. Hillel may have begun his famous three-part aphorism with, “If I am not for myself, who will be for me?” But the aphorism did not end there. Rather, he continued: “If I am only for myself, what am I?” And it is this second question that informs my second value. For me, the second value is justice.

Our Jewish tradition recognizes that justice can mean many things. At its most basic level, to do justice means to do no harm: “You shall not steal;” “You shall not murder.” [5] At a deeper level, to do justice means not only to avoid wrongdoing, but also, to actively seek to do good: “to feed the hungry;” “to clothe the naked.” [6]

But the specific kind of justice that I am thinking about here is yet another one – a category of justice that, especially on these High Holidays, we refer to as atonement: the deeply human process of acknowledging past mistakes, apologizing for them, making reparations, and committing to not making those mistakes again.

Over the centuries, our Jewish tradition developed a robust school of thought – our sages wrote volumes upon volumes [7] – about the art of making amends. The holiest day on the Jewish calendar is not Passover, our holiday of freedom, but rather, is Yom Kippur, the day on which we acknowledge and try to fix the things that we have done wrong.

Although it is sometimes difficult for us to acknowledge it – perhaps especially in a vulnerable moment, like the one we are in now – Israel, like any sovereign nation, has indeed sometimes done things wrong. It is true that over the past decade, the Israeli government has undermined the Palestinian leadership in the West Bank, its most viable partner for peace – thereby strengthening Hamas and diminishing the likelihood of a diplomatic resolution to the conflict. This past year, the government has ignored the hostage families, not sufficiently prioritizing among the war goals the safe return of their loved ones. And, by empowering extremist politicians with powerful positions in the cabinet, Israel’s governing coalition has tacitly allowed violent Jewish extremism to run rampant in the West Bank – not cracking down forcefully enough on the near-daily raids on Palestinian villages that have resulted in injury, arson, and death.

When it comes to the conflict, the Jewish state has often had trouble enacting our tradition’s deep wisdom about atonement. There are reasons why this is so. For starters, Israel’s leaders recognize the unfairness that, when the country admits to wrongdoing, the parties on the opposite side of the negotiating table are often not willing to do the same. What’s more, they understandably fear that by acknowledging wrongdoing, they are providing ammunition to their critics and their enemies.

But our Jewish tradition is clear: acknowledging one’s own wrongdoing is not a sign of weakness. Rather, it is a sign of great strength. This, after all, is one of the core messages of the High Holy Days: that a person – and, we might add, a country – can acknowledge their mistakes without forfeiting their right to exist. [8]

***

So there you have it – two of the values that are central to how I think about Israel: self-preservation, which is about protecting ourselves in an often hostile world, and justice, which is the ability to acknowledge and fix our own mistakes.

These two values do not cancel each other out. Rather, they balance one another. They need each other. If we are concerned only with self-preservation, we might become callous and cruel, and forget to do justice. And if we are concerned only with doing justice – focusing only on our mistakes – we might forget about all that is worthwhile and good in ourselves, and deserving of self-preservation. The one needs the other, and the other needs the one.

This is why we, as a sacred community, should strive to understand the values that motivate the people who approach the conflict differently than we do. Doing so not only humanizes them, helping us to appreciate their point of view. It also humanizes us, helping to balance our commitments with additional perspectives.

Some might say that there is a time to focus on self-preservation and a time to focus on justice. They might say: “Don’t bother me right now with justice. Don’t you see that we are under attack? ‘If I am not for myself, who will be for me?’”

Alternatively, they might say: “Stop focusing only on self-preservation. Don’t you see that we are committing real harm? ‘If I am only for myself, what am I?’”

But in our messy world, we do not have the luxury to designate a separate time for self-preservation, and a separate time for justice, and still additional separate times for the many other values that might inform our approach to the conflict.

Rather, we need to have the wisdom, the flexibility, and the courage to affirm many different values all at once. Because, as the great sage Hillel reminds us, we need to be able to hold more than one idea all at the exact same time. As Hillel once asked us: “If not now, then when?”

__________

[1] Pirkei Avot 1:15

[2] Exodus 20:13: “You shall not murder.”

[3] Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 72a: “If a person comes to kill you, kill him first.”

[4] “In this present, unbelievable age, even a mere collective commitment to Jewish group-survival for its own sake is a momentous response, with the greatest implications. I am convinced that future historians will understand it, not, as our present detractors would have it, as the tribal response-mechanism of a fossil, but rather as a profound, albeit as yet fragmentary, act of faith, in an age of crisis to which the response might well have been either flight in total disarray or complete despair.” -Emil Fackenheim, “The 614th Commandment,” in To Mend The World (1982).

[5] Exodus 20:13

[6] Isaiah 58:7

[7] See, for example, Maimonides’s Hilkhot Teshuvah; Bachya Ibn Pekuda’s Duties of the Heart – Treatise 7: On Repentance;  Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg’s On Repentance and Repair; and countless others.

[8] See, for example, Ezekiel 33:11: “It is not [God’s] desire that the wicked shall die, but rather, that the wicked turn from their evil ways and live.” Or, see Babylonian Talmud, Gittin 55a: “The Rabbis taught: If a man wrongfully appropriates a beam and builds it into his house – Beit Shammai says that he must demolish the whole house and restore the beam to its owner; Beit Hillel, however, says that the latter can claim only the monetary value of the beam, so as not to place obstacles in the way of penitents.”