To Understand and Discern – להבין ולהשכיל

In his article “The Problem of the Form of a Jewish Theology,” our teacher Rabbi Dr. Borowitz likened doing Jewish theology to arranging items on a flowchart. He argued: When you examine what Heschel, or Kaplan, or Buber has to say about God, we find that they are all quite similar. The interesting differences between them become apparent only when we zoom out, and look to see where God fits among the other elements on each thinker’s flowchart. 

For example: Heschel arranges the elements thus: God → Torah → Jewish people. That is, God reveals the Torah to the Jewish people. Another thinker (Leo Baeck) arranges things differently: God → Jewish people → Torah. That is, God’s universal ethics are filtered through the particular lens of the Jewish people in order to produce the Torah. [1]

I’d like to make the case here for a flowchart that is informed by Kaplan: Jewish people → Torah → God. That is, the Jewish people has recorded our best (and sometimes our prickliest) ideas in our Torah tradition, which allows us to reach towards the divine.

Despite the natural human tendency to assign the greatest importance to beginnings and to endings, I do not by this arrangement intend to emphasize the Jewish people (our starting point) or God (our end point). Rather, for me, the most important element in the flowchart is the middle one: our Torah tradition. Our Torah tradition plays the critical, linking role. It is the bridge that the Jewish people continues to build in our ongoing quest for the divine.

To be clear, when I use the phrase “our Torah tradition,” I do not narrowly mean the Five Books of Moses, nor do I mean the broader corpus of the Hebrew Bible and Rabbinic Literature. Rather, I mean all kinds of Jewish critical thinking and creative expression: our people’s stories, songs, poems, essays, ethical dilemmas, political theories, mystical visions, scientific discoveries, and so much else – Isaiah as well as Einstein, Deborah as well as Dara Horn.

As a rabbi, I find that some of my best work is in doing talmud Torah – that is, in grappling along with our congregants with the best of Jewish ideas. I have found that 21st century American Jews sincerely want to explore the interesting Jewish ideas that they never encountered in their adolescence – and, moreover, that they want a Jewish framework for thinking about the most pressing questions of our times, not to mention the questions that are timeless.

Exploring Jewish ideas is a hallmark of Jewish life. Indeed, we believe it to be a commandment – that is, a sacred responsibility: v’dibarta bam b’shivt’cha b’veitecha, the Book of Deuteronomy instructs us. We believe that it makes our lives holy – that is, that it adds meaning to our existence: asher kidshanu, we say, before we engage in the act of learning. Although to the outsider, study may seem unproductive or pointless, we believe that it is as important as any of our ethical commitments: talmud Torah k’neged kulam, the Mishnah says.

Rabbi Joseph Telushkin [2] makes the case that one of the most salient differences between early Rabbinic Judaism and proto-Christianity was the Jewish emphasis on study and learning. The great Jewish sage of that era, Hillel, is famous for his maxims about study – such as: “Do not say, ‘When I have time, I will study,’ lest you never have time,” and “The rest is commentary. Now go and study.” Noticeably, he had very little to say about prayer. By contrast, Hillel’s younger contemporary, Jesus, had the opposite orientation – saying little about learning, and much about prayer: “Ask, and it will be given to you,” and “When you pray, go into your room and close the door. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.”

For Hillel, study fulfills the same sort of spiritual function that prayer fulfills for Jesus. It is not merely an enriching intellectual exercise. Rather, it is a way to encounter the divine.

Israel Prize recipient Rabbi Aharon Lichtenstein [3] makes a similar point. Writing about the meaning of Torah lishmah [“study for its own sake”], he explains: “In part, talmud Torah is oriented towards accomplishment – with the acquisition of knowledge and skills being obvious goals. However the process is no less important than its resolution. Even if, after one’s studies, one has retained nothing, the experience itself – live contact with the epiphanous divine will, as manifested through Torah – can that be less than invaluable?”

Following our flowchart (in which the Jewish people comes first), we would reframe Rabbi Lichtenstein’s formulation. It is not: God → Torah → Jewish people. That is, it is not that the divine will is manifested through Torah to the Jewish people, as Rabbi Lichtenstein expresses it.

Rather, it is the other way around: Jewish people → Torah → God. That is, the Jewish people has created a record (our Torah tradition, we call it) of our quest for the divine – a record of our seeking after the ideals that we associate with God: truth, beauty, meaning, comfort, mystery, wonder, complexity…

And when we contemporary Jews engage with that record, we, too, might gain a glimpse of the divine. [4]

_____

[1] Not every example is linear in its organization. Additionally, some examples use categories other than God, Torah, and Israel.

[2] In his book Hillel: If Not Now, When? (2010), “Chapter 12: The Jewish Sage and the Christian Messiah”

[3] In Contemporary Jewish Religious Thought (1972), edited by Arthur Cohen and Paul Mendes-Flohr. See the entry on “Study.”

[4] Given more space, I would arrange the flowchart thus: Jews of the past / present → God → Torah; Jews of the present → Torah → God. || That is, the Jewish people of the past and the present have had encounters with God, and recorded those encounters in our Torah tradition. And Jewish people of the present can engage with our Torah tradition, and therein encounter God.

Trump: Mystic, or Messiah?

An item in my podcast feed recently captured my attention – where two interesting people were having a conversation about an interesting topic. 

The interesting people were two New York Times opinion columnists: Ezra Klein and Ross Douthat – who, together, make an odd couple. Ezra Klein is a political liberal; Ross is politically conservative. Ezra is Jewish; Ross is a devout Catholic. But despite these differences, the two of them are often able to come together to discuss important contemporary issues in a thoughtful and nuanced way. But it wasn’t only the interesting people who caught my attention. 

Even moreso, I was intrigued by the advertised topic of their conversation. According to the episode description, Ross and Ezra were going to be discussing the surprising confluence of two wildly different phenomena. As the summary read: “This is a conversation about [on the one hand] religious mysticism – and the role it is playing [on the other hand] in the Trump administration.” 

In rabbinical school, I wrote my thesis on contemporary Jewish mysticism. So of course, I was intrigued by this podcast episode, and wanted to hear what Ross and Ezra had to say. 

In their conversation, they described how some supporters of President Trump view him as a quasi-mystical figure – a person who is so significant that he exceeds the expected image of your average political leader, and instead can best be understood in religious, mystical terms.

Ross and Ezra point out that, like so many mystical figures throughout history, Trump is seen – both by those who support him, and also by those who oppose him – as dramatically ushering in some new and consequential era on the world stage, whether for good or for ill. For his supporters, the story of his unlikely political comeback seems to have a certain mythic quality to it: from his seemingly having hit rock bottom on January 6, to his triumphant return to the White House in an electoral college upset. What’s more, when he was nearly assassinated this past summer, he just so happened (in the eyes of some of his supporters) to tilt his head ever so slightly in just the right direction at just the right moment, and instead of the bullet killing him, it only grazed his ear – as if he were being guided by the hand of a protective angel.

This mystical interpretation of President Trump is fueled by the sociological trends of our era. Ours is a time in which fewer and fewer Americans are affiliating with traditional religious institutions, like churches or synagogues. As many commentators have pointed out, Americans are, instead, channeling our religious instincts into a different outlet – whereby our political convictions become our new religion. Against this backdrop, it is easy to understand how, in some circles, President Trump gets elevated from merely a charismatic political leader into a figure with a much grander, quasi-mystical religious significance.

As is often the case, I found Ezra Klein’s and Ross Douthat’s comments on this matter to be incisive and clarifying. And yet, there is one thing about their analysis – one very important thing – to which I strongly object.

To be clear: I am not about to propose that I am a better interpreter of our political and social climate than these two New York Times opinion columnists. Rather, the piece of their analysis that I object to is this: they seem not to accurately understand the meaning of the word “mystical.”

I do not mean to quibble over religious terminology. Rather, I believe that something larger is at stake. The point is: by using the wrong religious term, Ross and Ezra have partly misunderstood what it is that some of Trump’s supporters see in him.

“Mystical” is one of those fancy religious words that is often said but seldom understood. It is commonly misused as a synonym for the word “magical” – as in: By some mystical power, the bullet only grazed his ear.

But in fact – as I learned while writing my rabbinical thesis – the word “mystical” does indeed have a specific definition. Mysticism is: the spiritual intuition that all things in the universe are one. In our day-to-day experience of the world, we perceive that the universe is comprised of many distinct and separate entities – that a tree is different from a cat, which is different from a rock, which is different from your house, which is different from your grandmother, which is different from the color blue, which is different from the planet Mars. But in the mystical religious imagination, all of these things – though they appear to be separate – are, at the deepest layer of truth, united in a single fabric of reality.

Jewish mystics find hints of this deep truth hidden in the words of our prayer book. For the mystical mind, the Shema is no mere claim that the Jewish people believes in only one God. Rather, it is a radical claim that all things in the universe are, in fact, One.

Would that Ezra Klein and Ross Douthat were correct! If only President Trump were truly a mystical figure! A president who recognized that, on the deepest level of reality, everything in the universe is united – now that’s a president I could (potentially) get excited about!

But Ross and Ezra mislabeled how Trump is seen by some of his supporters. What they described is not a quasi-mystical figure. What they described is, more accurately, a quasi-messianic figure.

Not to be confused with religious mysticism (which, again, is the belief that all things in the universe are one), religious messianism is the belief that some great and heroic figure – the messiah – will come into the world in order to save humanity. The messiah, it is believed, will overturn the corruptions of our society. He will usher in a better era, and take us back to the perfect world that we once inhabited in the Garden of Eden. To (perhaps crudely) blend a religious idea with a political slogan, the messiah will “Make the World Eden Again.”

When Ross and Ezra described the religious significance that some people project onto Trump, they were not describing a mystical figure, but rather, a messianic figure – and, specifically, a Christian messianic figure. The Christian messiah, of course, is Jesus. And just as Jesus was resurrected from the dead, so too has Trump made an unlikely political comeback. Just as Jesus was unfairly persecuted by the Roman Empire, so too do some of Trump’s supporters feel that he has been unfairly persecuted, by establishment politicians and by the liberal media. Just as Jesus’s suffering was intended to vicariously absorb the suffering of his followers, so too has Trump made a similar claim about the way that he has suffered political attacks – saying, in an almost direct quote of the Gospel of John (John 15:20): “They’re not coming after me. They’re coming after you – and I’m just standing in their way.”

When we are able to more accurately name the messianic significance that some of Trump’s supporters project onto him, we might be better able to understand the implications of that terminology – some of which are alarming.

Many books of the Bible imagine what the world will be like when the messiah comes. We might be familiar with some of the more idyllic imagery: a world that will be tranquil and at peace, in which “nation shall no longer lift up sword against nation,” and “the wolf shall lie down with the lamb.”

But the biblical writers also imagined that, in order to bring about this idyllic world, the messiah would first need to wreak havoc and desolation: civilizations would be destroyed; humans would be subjected to immense suffering; the righteous would be vindicated, but the wicked would be condemned with terrifying scenes of fiery punishment.

Let us hope that those who understand Trump in quasi-messianic terms do not have this sort of process in mind.

Unfortunately, the problems with messianic thinking do not end there. As Rabbi Donniel Hartman has pointed out, messianic thinking is a way of retreating into a world of fantasy. On this score, it has two weaknesses. First: it imagines (unrealistically) that some superhuman will swoop in and solve the world’s problems for us. And second: it imagines (again, unrealistically) that a world without suffering is possible. This kind of magical thinking is impractical on both fronts: it both does too little, while also expecting too much.

It is perhaps for this reason that our Jewish tradition is, at best, ambivalent about messianism. It is true that Maimonides – widely considered to be the greatest Jewish philosopher of all time – did indeed include messianism among his list of the Thirteen Principles of Jewish Faith. But we should note that Maimonides advocated for a sort of restrained messianism. On the one hand, he believed that the messiah would come; on the other hand, he believed that the messiah would not be coming anytime soon. After Maimonides’ death, his students would summarize his thinking on the matter in the famous liturgical poem Ani Ma’amin. They wrote: “I believe with complete faith in the coming of the messiah – and although he may tarry, nevertheless, I wait.”

As Maimonides suggests: it is unlikely that the messiah is coming anytime soon in order to magically save us from all our problems. We should likely be wary of anyone who is believed to have such a purpose.

It is conceivable that someone with a mystical intuition – someone who believes that, at the deepest level of reality, all things are united – that a true mystic could potentially make a good president.

But we should, by contrast, be extremely cautious about how much political power we are willing to grant to a quasi-messianic figure. History – and especially, Jewish history – is littered with the carnage of would-be messiahs. Let’s not go that way again.

A Radical Idea to Save Shabbat

I think weekly Friday night Shabbat services are no longer the best model for the 21st century liberal American synagogue.

The honest truth is: in many communities, Friday night Shabbat services are the part of the week in which the congregation is least engaged in the synagogue. At Temple Beth Shalom (450 households; likely 1200+ people), if we are not having a special event, we are likely to see only around 15 people. I understand the argument that “the service was meaningful to those who attended.” But 15 people out of 1200+ is not robust synagogue engagement.

Instead of weekly Friday night Shabbat services, I’d propose: 

(1) Weekly 20-minute Kaddish ritual. Most of the people who come (to TBS, at least) on any given Friday evening are there to say Kaddish. Given this, we should do it as well as we can! Instead of 57 minutes of Shabbat, and 3 minutes of Kaddish, what if we built a brief, focused, weekly Kaddish ritual. Mourners would continue to get a personalized invitation when their loved one’s yahrzeit is approaching. We’d stand in a semicircle in front of the ark. We’d read poems, sing songs, have each person say the name of their loved one and share a brief remembrance, and offer the Mourner’s Kaddish together. If we did it well, my guess is that we’d see even higher participation among mourners than we currently do – knowing that the experience has been designed specifically with them in mind.

(2) Monthly, home-based, small-group Shabbat dinners. If we had only a 20-minute Kaddish ritual each week instead of a full service, this would free up resources to engage a wider swath of the congregation on Friday evenings. Imagine if every household in the congregation was invited to be part of a cohort with 5-10 other families. Each cohort would meet once a month in one another’s homes for Shabbat dinner and lively conversation. Meals would be potluck. Each month, a collection of short articles, essays, stories, and poems would be compiled and circulated to all the cohorts, as food-for-thought for the dinner table conversation. We could train congregants to be conversation facilitators. If we staggered the dinners so that they don’t all fall on the same week, the clergy could rotate among them from week to week. The meal would be ritualized – with Shabbat blessings, and with each family invited to share one thing that is happening in their lives. Over the course of the year(s), members of each cohort would feel a deep sense of belonging with one another.

(3) Monthly, community-wide Shabbat service. Once a month, all of the cohorts would come together at the synagogue for a celebratory, community-wide Shabbat service. Because it is happening only once a month, this service would be more intentionally and artfully crafted than a typical weekly service: with uplifting music, a smart and beautiful sermon, and roles for congregants to speak, sing, and chant Torah.

Doing this would allow us to: broaden engagement; deepen belonging; and do things well, not right.

Prayer for the American Republic

A few weeks ago, I reached out to a group of smart rabbinic colleagues that I’m friends with to ask them what has been the most helpful piece of analysis they’ve read or listened to in the lead up to the election.

The group suggested a variety of articles and podcasts – but two pieces stood out for being recommended several times. The first was a short essay by Yehuda Kurtzer, co-president of the Shalom Hartman Institute, on which presidential candidate he felt would be the best for Israel and the Jewish people.

The second piece that was recommended several times was an audio essay by New York Times opinion columnist Ezra Klein – about which I’d like to share a few reflections tonight.

In his column, Ezra Klein made the following argument. He said: the thing that causes some people, like me, to be so deeply bothered by Donald Trump is exactly the same thing that causes other people to be so deeply attracted to him. Namely, Klein argues, there is one, central personality trait that seems to define the president-elect – one characteristic that causes him, in some circles, to be loathed, and in other circles, to be loved. And that central, defining feature is that he is so highly disinhibited, so lacking in self-censorship.

Before I continue, I should say one thing clearly. My critique this evening is not of people who voted for Donald Trump, but rather, of the president-elect himself. If anything, the election results demonstrate that those of us who voted for Vice President Harris seem to not fully understand the constellation of factors that led more than half of the electorate to cast their vote for Trump. If Democrats want to be successful in future national elections, we would be wise to try and more earnestly understand the decision-making process that motivated those voters, rather than reacting by dehumanizing them. As a close friend of mine put it this week: dehumanizing the other side doesn’t always lead to political violence; but all political violence begins in dehumanization.

So again: my critique this evening is not of the voters, but rather, of Trump himself – who, as Ezra Klein argues, is highly disinhibited.

Most of us, Klein notes, approach our everyday interactions with a certain degree of self-censorship – purposefully inhibiting ourselves from saying every little thing that we think or feel. Of course, all of us have our baser thoughts. But we are socialized not to speak or act on these impulses. Politicians in particular, Klein points out, are especially well practiced in the art of self-censorship. Good ones come across as thoughtful and deliberate in everything that they say and do. Less practiced politicians, we perceive as dissembling and inauthentic.

But for Trump, this whole series of considerations – this process of purposefully inhibiting ourselves – seems not to apply. In fact, he seems to relish specifically in not worrying about whether he is saying the right or the polite thing.

Among many of his supporters, this exactly is his appeal. It is refreshing, even exhilarating to hear someone say outloud the things that others might think, but would never let cross their lips.

Among his opponents, the effect is the exact opposite. His lack of inhibition, many of his opponents feel, ought to morally disqualify him from leadership. He is vulgar and insulting, offensive and bigoted. And when a person who speaks and acts the way that he does is rewarded by becoming one of the most powerful people in the world, it not only opens the door for others to do so, it actively incentivizes it.

But, Ezra Klein goes on to say, president-elect Trump’s lack of inhibition is no mere personality trait. Rather, it is the force that animates his policy positions. Because he is already willing to say things that others would never say, when it comes time to shape policy, he is willing to propose ideas that others would never propose. There are too many examples to try and name them all. He has promised mass deportations of undocumented immigrants. He has promised to impose restrictions on the lives of transgender people. He evidently is considering whether to issue an executive order that, at a national level, would ban abortion at any stage. And many other alarming policies like these.

And now, this disinhibited personality is seeking to build an administration in which dissenters are not welcome – as, meanwhile, his party wins control of all three branches of the federal government. Who, we should wonder, will be there to inhibit him?

Our Jewish tradition might cause us to feel deeply concerned – not only about this kind of leadership, but also, about this kind of character. Ours is a tradition that prizes the inhibiting force. Judaism is concerned with the setting of boundaries, the defining of limits – with a careful eye towards recognizing the difference between what is kosher and what is not.

Our ancestors were well aware of our baser human instincts. For this reason, they instructed us to avoid not only the obvious moral transgressions – “you shall not steal,” “you shall not murder.” Additionally, they instructed us to avoid even subtle shortcomings – “you shall not bear a grudge,” “you shall not covet what is not yours.” In this way, our ancestors sought (in their own words) to “build a fence around the Torah,” so that we might avoid even approaching the edge of moral wrongdoing – knowing full well how slippery is the slope, how easy it is to fall in.

If this is the level of self-control that our Jewish tradition demands of ordinary citizens, how much the more so does it make these demands of anyone who would aspire to a position of leadership?

In the ancient Near Eastern world in which our Jewish tradition was born, rulers were endowed with unlimited authority. A pharaoh of Egypt was no mere leader; rather, he was a god. And like a god, his powers were unlimited.

Our Jewish tradition, by contrast, insisted on a different framework of authority and leadership. The Torah commands that ancient Israelite society be administered by four branches of government. Yes, there was a king. But also, power was vested in the judges, the priests, and the prophets.

The prophets, in particular, were responsible for reprimanding the king when his leadership had turned foul. If the king should try to exceed the limits of his authority, imagining that he might be protected by virtue of his position, the prophet was to chastise him – to point out all the ways in which he had gone astray, to try and convince him to return to the right path. The prophet’s responsibility towards the king was, in a word, to inhibit him.

It is striking to note that, in the biblical passage that outlines the four branches of ancient Israelite government, the role of the king is severely limited. For each of the other three branches, the Torah prescribes a list of active responsibilities – functions and tasks that each role must do. Not so for the king. For the king, the Torah is concerned only with what he may not do. We read in the Book of Deuteronomy: the king is not permitted to amass great wealth. He is not permitted to assemble a large cavalry of horses. He is not permitted to keep a harem of wives. The very definition of an Israelite king is to be inhibited.

There is, however, one active thing that the king is commanded to do – but it’s not what we might expect. We might imagine that the king’s active responsibility is to ordain laws, or to declare war and make peace, or to provide sustenance for his people. But this is not what the Torah prescribes.

Rather, this is the one and only active thing that the king is commanded to do. He is commanded to sit on the royal throne all day long; to keep always by his side his own personal copy of the Torah; and to spend every waking hour of the day reading and studying the laws. In this way, he is personally responsible for ensuring that no one in the kingdom is more familiar with, or has more reverence for, the laws that govern their society.

This is the Jewish vision of leadership: not the disinhibited personality that says whatever base things come to mind, and enacts whatever laws it wants to. Rather, the Jewish vision of leadership is to practice constant restraint, to be subject to admonition, to be primarily concerned with what the leader ought not to do. That is to say: to willingly and purposefully practice being inhibited.

***

A few months ago, a group of TBS congregants went to see the play Prayer for the French Republic on Broadway (which, if you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend). The play takes its title from a traditional section of the Jewish prayer book, in which the Jewish community, having already prayed for its own internal well-being, now turns its attention outward and prays for the welfare of the state in which they live.

The biblical prophet Jeremiah explained the purpose of the prayer like this. He said: “Pray for the welfare of the city in which you live – for in its well-being, you will find well-being.” And indeed, for Jews here in the United States, Jeremiah’s logic has largely proven true. As our country has thrived, so too have the Jewish people here thrived.

But in addition to Jeremiah’s logic, there are other reasons why we might want to pray for the welfare of our country. The ancient Jewish sage Rabbi Hanina framed the argument in the converse. Rabbi Hanina said: “Pray for the welfare of the government – for without the government, every person would swallow his neighbor alive.”

Rabbi Hanina was offering us a warning of what can happen when governments fall apart. And so, let us heed his wisdom. Let us offer a prayer for our country.

Eloheinu, v’elohei avoteinu v’imoteinu, elohei tzetza-einu – our God, God of our ancestors, God of our children and our children’s children: 

You taught us the importance of setting boundaries. You taught us to build a fence around the Torah, so that we might avoid the moral slippery slope that can lead to real wrongdoing. You taught us to expect the best from ourselves – and to demand the best from our leaders. You taught us that good leaders exercise restraint. You taught us that kings should have the most reverence for the law. You taught us that when leaders turn astray, good citizens must become prophets and speak out against what is wrong.

Our God, help the duly elected new leadership of our country rise to this moral standard. And where they do not, help the citizens of this country find the courage and the strength to become the prophets that our society needs.

Help us heed the warning of Rabbi Hanina, in order that the people of this country not swallow one another alive.

We offer this prayer for the American republic. May it be so. Amen.

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.”

Tribute to Rabbi Danny Zemel

My most vivid memory of the summer I spent with Danny Zemel wasn’t that he shared his reading recommendations with me (though I continue to regularly reference The Jews in America by Arthur Hertzberg, My Promised Land by Ari Shavit, and Faith Finding Meaning by Byron Sherwin). It wasn’t going to lunch or coffee with him to meet interesting people. It wasn’t watching him dream up new ideas for the Jewish future – like the American Talmud, or a set of additional, third readings for Shabbat morning to supplement the haftarah.

Rather, my most vivid memory of that summer is from the time that Danny used the F-word.

The memorable part was not the word itself. Of course, I’ve heard and said the word many times before – and of course, I know full well that rabbis aren’t verbal ascetics. If anything, the rabbinic tradition prizes the well-placed use of a colorful word.

The memorable part, rather, was seeing Danny’s passion around an issue that he cared about.

The issue itself is hardly the point. In fact, in retrospect, I can’t even remember what issue it was. It might have been the DREAM Act, or the 2014 Israel-Hamas war, or some other important conversation that was then unfolding in the public square. I can’t recall. But what I do remember, vividly, was Danny saying: “When our teenagers leave Temple Micah and go off to college, we should want them to bring their Judaism to” [this issue] (whatever it was) “and not have wasted their time teaching them the F-ing minutiae” – his voice broke, and his eyes welled up – “of whether you are or aren’t supposed to talk between washing your hands and saying hamotzi.”

The memory is vivid for at least two reasons. First, it showed me that Danny is a person of deep convictions. The things he cares about, he cares about passionately. Second – and, for me, more importantly – it showed me that Danny believes that Judaism is for the world.

As a rabbinical student, I was interested in the world of midrash – the legends that, over the centuries, have been written into the margins of the Torah narrative. I found a certain literary wonder – and, I now recognize, pride – in knowing, for example, that the rabbis of old had imagined that when Isaac learned of the death of his mother, Sarah, he went to stay with her evicted handmaid, Hagar. I learned from Danny that those stories do indeed have a certain beauty to them – but that so far in my rabbinic formation, I had been treating them as fan fiction. Knowing that Isaac visited Hagar might be an interesting piece of Torah trivia (or, worse, “trivial”). Better to ask what that story has to say about the world.

In the pages of the best books, newspapers, and magazines (and also in theater and even stand-up comedy), a great conversation takes place about our country, about illness and death, about technology, about the global rise of authoritarianism, about race and gender, about anxiety. Great thinkers put forth compelling ideas worthy of consideration and debate. But up to that point in my rabbinical formation (and, if I’m being honest, to a greater degree than I wish were the case, still today), I spent my time marveling over the literary wonders of our tradition – forgetting that the greatest among our sages, from Maimonides to Mendelssohn, were not just biblical commentators, but also were philosophers and ethicists, well versed in (and sometimes forcibly thrown into) the most important public debates of their time.

This is not to confuse Judaism for social justice. Rather, it is to recognize that ideas matter – and that Judaism is rich with ideas.

Whenever I go to a Shabbat dinner and I see someone washing their hands and then keeping silent until we’ve said hamotzi, I think of Danny. And I know he wouldn’t begrudge them this ritual. After all, as our other great teacher, Larry Hoffman, has taught us: rituals matter just like ideas matter.

But I’m also reminded that a compelling Judaism for the 21st century will need to be about so much more than just handwashing. It had F-ing better be.

A Living Artifact

Thirty Days Since Hamas's Terror Attack

Dear Temple Beth Shalom community,

Today marks thirty days since Hamas’s gruesome Simchat Torah terror attack on Israel.

In our Jewish tradition, at the end of the first thirty days of mourning – a period known as sh’loshim – we take a moment to pause and reflect on how we’re feeling. With this in mind, I wanted to write and share some of the feelings that I’ve observed among our congregation over the course of the past month.

Many of us have been feeling sadness and anger – sadness at the loss of life, and anger at the brutality of Hamas’s attack. Many of us have relatives and friends – or, at the very least, are only a few steps removed from people – who have been directly impacted by the terror attack, whether they were injured, killed, abducted, or have been called up for military duty.

Many of us are feeling heartache – already grieving for the innocent Israelis who were killed by Hamas, and now also pained by the deaths of innocent Palestinian civilians in Gaza. Many of us are concerned about the worsening humanitarian crisis there, knowing that there is a difference between the people of Gaza and their terrorist leaders.

Many of us are feeling hopeless – sensing that Israel might be in an impossible bind right now. Many of us believe that Israel has the obligation to redeem the hostages, and also to destroy Hamas’s ability to ever again carry out an attack like this one. And yet, we worry about whether those obligations are achievable: that it might not be possible to find and rescue the hostages, and that even if the IDF is able to destroy Hamas, another terror organization could easily arise in their place.

Many of us are feeling worried about the possibility of a widening conflict – watching with trepidation to see whether Hezbollah in Lebanon will more forcefully enter the fray, perhaps setting off an avalanche towards a wider regional conflict.

Many of us are feeling afraid for our own safety – as antisemitism around the globe and here in the US once again rears its ugly head. Many congregants have said that they considered whether to take down their mezuzah on Halloween, and whether to hide their Star of David necklace while in public.

Many of us are feeling isolated from our friends, neighbors, and peers – some of whom seemingly do not understand, on a gut level, the deep-seated trauma that Hamas’s terror attack has stirred up in us. For those among us who identify as politically and socially liberal or progressive, the feeling of isolation has been particularly intense – feeling like the leaders and causes we’ve supported do not fully understand us.

Many of us are feeling lost – struggling as we try to identify the differences between critiques of Israel’s policies, anti-Zionism, and antisemitism. Many of us are feeling unsure of what to do when we hear loaded terminology like “colonialism,” “genocide,” and “apartheid.” Many of us feel that we are suddenly expected to be experts in the Arab-Israeli conflict – and that even if we are well-read, we are not confident enough to engage in conversation.

These uncomfortable feelings, and so much more, hang over our synagogue community. And yet, as Israel’s national anthem, Hatikvah, affirms, there nevertheless are reasons for hope.

I have been inspired, during these past thirty days of sh’loshim, to see that our synagogue community has been able to engage in difficult conversations without devolving into argument. We have held five small-group discussions for adults. In each one, congregants came not looking to score political points, but rather, approached the conversation with humility – recognizing that no single person has all the right answers.

I have been inspired to see that our synagogue community is seeking – and is in fact able to hold – multiple truths at the same time. I have seen that our congregants are not interested in bombast, but rather, in moral clarity and in nuance.

I have been inspired by our youths. We offered a three-week, optional course for 4-6th graders called “Israel 101,” on Israel’s history, politics, and current events. We hoped that ten students might sign up for it. Instead, 25 students enrolled.

A fourth grader in the congregation had the idea to organize a bake sale for Magen David Adom (Israel’s emergency responders) during Religious School. He thought he and a few friends would bake cookies and raise a few bucks. Instead, 22 families volunteered to bake, and we raised more than $1600.

On multiple occasions, we have asked our 7th graders and our teens how they would respond to some of the dilemmas of our current moment. In each of these conversations, our young people showed a sophistication and a moral seriousness that far exceeds their years.

And perhaps most of all, I have been inspired by the power of community. In all of our gatherings (with our Religious School students, with our teens, with our college students, with adults, and when the wider congregation came together for a vigil of solace), we have seen the comfort that comes from recognizing that none of us is alone – that no matter how we might be feeling right now, there likely are other people in this community who are feeling similarly.

Today, the period of sh’loshim comes to an end. But the tumult of feelings – both those that are uncomfortable, and those that give us reason to hope – will decidedly continue to be with us. Throughout it, our Temple Beth Shalom community will be here for us – to provide us with a space to feel all of our feelings, and hopefully, to help us feel less alone.

The Hebrew word tikvah means “hope” – but it also means “thread”: as if to suggest that hope starts out as something thin, but when woven together, can eventually become strong.

Over the coming months, we will continue to weave ourselves together as a part of this synagogue community.

B’tikvah – with a thread of hope,

Daniel