Shalom From Rabbi Chalom

Where is the messiah? It seems like everything is falling apart - no social order, no values, no kindness, environmental collapse, war, antisemitism, communal conflict, poverty - the list goes on and on. It just seems too much for us to fix. A messiah promises to solve ALL of our problems: miraculous intervention, cosmic authority, universal peace and fellowship. Belief in the messiah was born from disaster - the first destruction of Jerusalem and the end of the line of King David. Since that disaster, believers have claimed that mashiakh, the anointed, was about to come, or he was here, or he was JUST here and is coming right back. From Jesus in late antiquity to Shabetai Zevi in early modernity, Jews have argued whether this “messiah” is the REAL messiah. Part of the argument has been whether the world is truly bad enough. They believed it would be darkest before the dawn and the birth pangs of the messiah would be the undoing of the world. Even today, some believers do not really care whether things are getting worse - the worse it gets, the happier they are, they may even try to move things along. 

I do not want a messiah; I do not want to want a messiah. Desperate times plus hoping for miracles equals bad decisions. You’ll believe anyone and you’ll do anything. We recognize that human feeling of doom and disaster, and we must find another response. We declare that we are NOT doomed because we know that we can make a difference in this world, right now, today. No messiahs need apply. THAT Jewish tradition is even more dangerous than reality!

Tonight is the beginning of the Jewish New Year, tonight we connect to our extended Jewish family - everyone here tonight, whatever your identity, is connected to the global Jewish people at this moment. We see candles, we hear the Shofar, we grapple with Torah and Tradition just as Jacob grappled with his brother Esau in their mother’s womb. Jacob is renamed Isra-El, he who wrestles with God in the night. The next morning, when Isra-el finally sees his estranged brother Esau, Israel says that seeing his brother’s face is like seeing the face of God. In other words, the Jewish people truly wrestle with each other. Even those welcoming Rosh Hashana with a family meal instead of services face the challenges of extended time with extended family. Verbal wrestling guaranteed.

There is nothing new about Jewish disagreement. There is one universal, ancient Jewish tradition: some Jews telling other Jews, “you’re doing Judaism wrong.” During the Exodus, Miriam and Aaron tell Moses: “you’re doing it wrong.” When Hebrew kings worshiped other gods or oppressed the poor, Hebrew Prophets told them, “you’re doing it wrong”. In the Roman era, Jerusalem Temple priests competed with early rabbis. The early Christian church and the Jewish establishment debated whether messiah had already arrived and left, or had he not yet arrived at all. In medieval times, Jewish rationalists like Maimonides battled Jewish mystics. In Eastern Europe, pietist Hasidim and religious legalist Misnagdim and enlightenment Masikim argued with each other, even excommunicated each other! In the early 20th century, Reform Jews wanted  integration to the dominant culture; Zionists emphasized separation & creating a unique Jewish national culture in Hebrew; Diasporists promoted distinct Jewish culture in Yiddish while living among the nations. Each of these groups in their own day said the same thing to other groups: “you’re doing Judaism wrong.” Judaism has always been diverse, multivocal, multicultural, multi-practice, multi-theological. If we argue today, same as it ever was. 2 Jews, many arguments, with or without a messiah.

There are bitter Jewish divisions today, no doubt. Not talking about our disagreements will not make them disappear. We speak the truth, you can handle the truth, we live by our values and we believe what we say, so you’re going to get the emes, the truth as I see it on three key Jewish battles:

1. Those who celebrate the new Jewish diversity vs. those who hate it; 
2. The Ultra-Orthodox vs. everyone else
3. Zionists, Anti-Zionists, and those caught in between

Touching ANY of these third rails gets rabbis fired. At Kol Hadash, I would FAIL my rabbinic duties if I did NOT address them. Agree with me, disagree with me, or be unsure or change your mind half a dozen times. It may well be that there is no one answer to some of these problems. There is a Jewish tradition for no answers, too.

When early rabbis debated Jewish law, sometimes a problem stumped them. Rosh Hashana is the first night of a Jewish month; therefore it is a new moon. Every Jewish month begins with a new moon. Before we could mathematically predict new moons, months were decreed by a rabbinic court in Jerusalem - they saw the new moon and then they let everyone know the month had begun. But what if it was cloudy in Jerusalem? Solution: use witnesses from elsewhere. New problem: what if your deciding witness is 12 years and 11 months old? Boys under age 13 are not bar mitzvah, not subject to the commandments, so they are valid witnesses. If the boy is right and he did see the new moon, the month is set and he IS age 13 and a valid witness. If he is wrong, there was NOT a new moon and he is NOT a valid witness. {pause} In these circumstances, the Talmud’s rabbis declared “Teiku” - we cannot resolve it. They could have relied on 13 year old girls, but they didn’t accept women as witnesses. Teiku is understood as “The Tisbhee will resolve the problems” - when the prophet Elijah returns to announce the messiah, Elijah will also make a stop in a yeshiva and solve all these Teiku situations! Of course, there is no guarantee today that all Jews will agree on his answers, or for that matter be happy about a messiah at all. In this life, in this world, we may agree, or we may disagree, or Teiku - agree to argue and still live together.

Debate number 1: the New Jewish Diversity. The whole idea of “looking Jewish” is over - “looking Jewish” meant “looking like a European Ashkenazi Jew.” The idea of “looking Jewish” is part of a whole system called Ashkenormative: “Jewish food” means bagels, Jewish music is klezmer, Jewish jokes are shtick. 

For centuries there have been Sephardic Jews from the Balkans and Turkey, Mizrahi Jews from Syria and Iraq, Mughrabi Jews from North Africa, Persian Jews from Iran, Mountain Jews from Central Asia - it was NEVER all Yiddish and Europe. Today our diverse Jewish family includes thousands who have joined the Jewish people from every ethnicity, and thousands of children adopted into Jewish families. There are millions of people who are “Jewish AND” - one Jewish parent and another parent with their OWN cultures and identities. By now, there are plenty of Jewish AND parents with their own Jewish AND AND children! The “Jewish AND” can celebrate one or both or all of their backgrounds. There are millions of partners who love a Jewish person and may be raising Jewish children or Jewish AND children. We call those partners “Jewish-adjacent” or “Jewish-ish” - you could call them “Jew-lovers”: technically accurate but…not the best term. The point is, looking Jewish? No more!

Now there are those who reject the new Jewish diversity; they long for the “good old days” when everyone Jewish looked the same, ate the same food, knew the same jokes. They tell these new Jews “you’re not REALLY Jewish, you’re not REALLY doing Judaism, go away.” To break that old Jewish tradition of “you’re doing it wrong,” we must understand that declaring that “Judaism says” only what your kind of Jew believes is destructive because it denigrates and delegitimizes other Jews and their Judaisms. And, it is flat-out wrong because, with so many Jewish opinions, Jewish liturgies, Jewish rituals, Jewish cultures and customs. Jewish diversity is the Jewish tradition. We who celebrate Jewish diversity are the majority. No one Jewish messiah, no one Judaism for all these varied Jews.

Debate number 2: Ultra-Orthodoxy. There’s fake news out there about Jewish history that too many Jews believe: before modern times, all Jews were Orthodox, they were all strictly observant, they all prayed 3 times a day, they never questioned the rabbis. This is just not true. First of all, they were people, and second, they were Jewish! Medieval rabbis complained a lot about lax Jewish practice, argumentative Jews, too much mixing with the outside world. The WORD “Orthodox” did not appear until the 19th century, when early Reform Jews started making changes; those who did NOT want change claimed to have the correct… doctrine - Ortho-Dox. Yet even the Orthodox were split, as some were open to learning from modern knowledge and accepting some of modern life. Others felt that ANY change was the camel’s nose in the tent, a slippery slope, the first step on the road to ruin. The rejectionists, the Haredim, raised all the walls, drew up the drawbridge, closed the doors and windows. In a phrase, the doctrine is “khadash asur min hatorah” - what is new is forbidden according to the Torah. Yes, you can drive a car or use a phone (not a smartphone, that could lead to the internet!). Changing ideas? Challenging tradition? Unthinkable. Haredi communities still live in Yiddish; they refuse to teach modern science & history & math past arithmetic; 

they marry off children in their teens so they will be fruitful & multiply and not have time to wonder whether there is anything more beyond the eruv, that imaginary boundary that enables carrying on shabbat but also binds you into a web of isolated community.

This ultra-Orthodox Jewish world is alien to the majority of American Jews and Israeli Jews. The large majority of Jews do not keep kosher, we do not believe that observing traditional Jewish law is essential to being Jewish, we do not reject general human learning and culture and society - we endorse them! And yet, ultra-Orthodox groups like Chabad receive millions of dollars from NON-ultra Orthodox Jews because too much of our 90% thinks that their 10% is “preserving Judaism.” They are preserving ONE KIND of Judaism, but so are we! The Haredim refuse to serve in the IDF; they claim that their study of Torah and Talmud does more for Israel’s security. Their real objection is to mixing with the outside world and seeing the grass may be greener beyond the eruv. They believe that the real solution to Jewish problems is the messianic age - some Chabadniks think the messiah already came as Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneersohn, who died in 1994; others believe that if every Jew everywhere observes the commandments like lighting shabbat candles, redemption will be at hand - thus their outreach with “are you Jewish?” even at Highland Park High School. Shaking the lulav or lighting candles is just the first step, they hope. They are not waiting patiently for a messiah to deliver them; they want moshiach now! 

Their “solution” to Jewish pluralism is that everyone should do what they say. Their Judaism is not our Judaism; their solution is not ours. Our Judaism will survive and thrive if we support each other, if we have the self-confidence of authenticity, if we stand proudly at the meeting point of tradition and modernity, saying Yes AND. We who live an open Judaism, we are the majority. No messiahs needed or wanted.

Debate #3: Zionism. We are not the first Jews to declare that we did not need a messiah. The founders of Zionism were done waiting for a messiah to save them - most of them were secular, so they did not WANT a king messiah, or rebuilding the Temple, or restoring animal sacrifices and imposing religion. Theodor Herzl wrote, “our rabbis will stay in their temples like our soldiers stay in their barracks.” {The Jewish State} The ultra-orthodox waiting for the messiah were ANTI-zionists, odd bedfellows with today’s anti-Zionist universalist who may oppose the very idea of nation states, especially ethnic nation-states. The ultra-Orthodox are also odd bedfellows with anti-Zionist liberal pacifists, pro-Palestinian protestors, progressives who sees everything through racial and colonial lenses and thus sees Israeli Jews as white Europeans - even though the majority of Israeli Jews have roots in the Middle East and North Africa. In the era of the protest sign “Queers for Hamas,” there is no limit to confusing connections.

The key is WHICH Zionism, just like American “patriotism.” A Zionist could be someone who believes in the basic concept of a Jewish state: as a refuge, as a spark for Jewish cultural creativity, as the right of any self-aware ethnic group, just like Armenians, or Serbs, or even Palestinians. Or, a Zionist could insist that every Jew must move to Israel, or should at least root for and work for Israel from Diaspora sidelines. A religious Zionist can believe that God promised the land of Israel to the Jewish people, both sides of the pre-1967 Green Line. A secular Zionist can believe that Jews have historical roots in the land separate from workable borders and nothing to do with divine promises - Israel was Israel from 1949 to 1967 within the Green Line, and the Israeli Declaration of Independence cites ZERO divine promises. In the balance of Jewish state and democracy, some Zionists emphasize the democracy, working for a Jewish state that is also a state for all of its citizens with basic rights, recognition of minority cultures, and fundamental dignity. Other Zionists prioritize the Jewish over democracy, insisting the Jews are the “masters of the land” and treating the “other” as an enemy to oppress, or even expel. There are Jewish terrorists who are Zionists, there are Jewish civil rights activists who are Zionists. The thousands of protestors rejecting Netanyahu through 2023 in peacetime and through 2024 in wartime, they are Zionists, waving the flag and singing the anthem. So too are Netanyahu’s supporters. These days, “Zionist” can even be used as a slur, and sometimes as a thin substitute for “evil Jew,” or worse.

You may or may not consider yourself a Zionist. Maybe you’re Zionist agnostic, or you do not choose a position one way or the other. Maybe you call yourself or you know people who call themselves “anti-zionist”. As for me, I do not fit into an easy box. I am anti-religious-zealot Zionist, I support civil rights Zionists. I have no plans to move to Israel, though I have been there many times and have colleagues and friends doing important work there whom I support. I endorse a culturally Jewish state in some portion of that land, and I do not believe that ethnic states are impossibly anti-democratic - there are established national churches in Sweden and Norway, and ethnic right of return in many countries! It all depends on HOW you do your Zionism. Maybe I’m Zion-ish…

What about anti-Zionism? Anti-Zionist Jews have two official commitments: they are committed to Jewish identity, since they still identify as Jews; and they are also committed to human empathy and human rights for all peoples. I believe one can value both Jewishness and universal empathy and still be some variety of Zionist. I understand if anti-Zionists see the two sides as incompatible. Teku, as long as we DO agree on one thing: if violence against Palestinians is wrong, so too is violence against Israelis. “Death to Israel” “by any means necessary,” those are not simply conceptual exercises - they are justification for violence, both there and here. Sometimes we have to tell our allies they have gone too far, no matter which side of this Jewish divide we are on.

What we do NOT need is the Jewish establishment telling those challenging Zionism, “you’re doing Jewish wrong, and thus you are beyond the pale.” We also do NOT need Anti-zionists telling the rest of the Jewish world THEY’RE doing Jewish and humanitarian wrong and must be excluded, banned, boycotted. With no messiah, there is no one capital T Truth - we do our best to find our truth and to learn from others. The prophet Micah wrote, “kee mitzion tetzey torah - the Torah comes forth from Zion” {Micah 4} - is that a Torah of strict laws and commandments and a promised land, or a Torah of compassion and kindness and justice? One Mount Zion, many truths, many Torahs.

The Jews have never had an infallible pope; the Jerusalem rabbinic court is long gone, and were a Davidic messiah to arrive tomorrow, how many Jews would actually respond “naase v’nishma, (loosely)  we will do whatever you tell us?” {Exodus 24} If we heard a messiah was arriving, we might ask, “What is his platform and who is his running mate?” We might also follow a different piece of Jewish wisdom: “if you hear the messiah has come while you are planting a tree, finish planting the tree first and then examine the messiah.”{Avot d’Rabbi Natan} Live life! No one votes for a messiah, or for a god, and we who value democracy and freedom, we like it that way. In our days, we celebrate what the Book of Judges lamented: “there is no king in Israel, and everyone does what is right in their own eyes.” {Judges 21} Sounds good! No king, no messiah, no consensus, more freedom. Two Jews, many Judaisms, more wrestling, some Teiku hallelujah! So to speak…

I would like to wish you good wishes for the new year. It seems hard to wish each other a shana tova a good year not knowing what the new year will be. Some have begun to shift that blessing or hope for the future a little bit, to wish each other a shana yoter tova a better year in the year that begins. And so I wish you Shana Yoter Tova, a better year for this year.

Doing Jewish Differently

 July/August 2024

We like to say that, at Kol Hadash, we’re “Doing Jewish Differently.” Indeed, if you read through our recently revamped website, you’ll see how we do Jewish holidays, life cycle celebrations, education and community differently. Yet what do we mean by “differently?” What makes us different, and why is different good?

We do Jewish differently by assuming that today’s values and meaning are equally valid to Jewish tradition. We respect our inheritance, and at the same time our inheritance can and should adapt to what we believe, whom we treat as full people, our commitment to individual empowerment to choose the course of one’s life. Both wedding partners can break a glass, B Mitzvah students can choose the focus of their presentations, the Passover seder can incorporate new ideas and new symbols (as it always has).

We do Jewish differently by understanding Jewish religion as part of Jewish culture: made by people, evolving over time, responding to its context, in creative dialogue with other cultures. Studying Torah is doing Jewish culture, and so too is cooking (and eating!) Jewish foods, singing Jewish songs, appreciating and creating Jewish art, learning Jewish history, telling Jewish jokes, and having Jewish arguments. Put simply, food is as Jewish as fasting.

We do Jewish differently by balancing our particular Jewish identity with our broader commitments to our non-Jewish family, our neighbors, our fellow citizens, and global humanity. Jewish values and traditions are our people’s response to the human condition. Sometimes our dual commitments to human rights and Jewish survival and thriving are in tension, at other times they positively reinforce each other. We celebrate both Jewish roots and human branches.

Most important, each of us do Jewish differently, differently! As a Humanistic rabbi, my task is not to tell everyone what to do Jewishly. Instead, it is to empower you to pursue what is meaningful, beautiful, profound from your own Jewish roots and possibilities. I can share my perspective, my experiences, my knowledge, but there is no one prescription for doing Jewish correctly. “Doing Jewish differently” means different strokes for different Jewish folks and their families. And that is what makes it good – your Judaism is yours. Yours to create, yours to inherit, yours to celebrate.

Humanist Patriotism

This post originally appeared in The Shofar newsletter of Kol Hadash Humanistic Congregation in July 2018. 

As July 4 approaches, we can appreciate how complicated Humanist patriotism can be.

We are familiar with frequent connections of piety and patriotism. We are lucky the “Star Spangled Banner” was legally declared the National Anthem in 1931; after its popularity during World War II, we could have easily wound up with “God Bless America” instead. Despite the Bill of Rights’ promise to not establish religion, and Thomas Jefferson’s vision of “a wall of separation between Church & State,” presidents add “so help me God” to the Constitution’s prescribed oath of office, every presidential address ends with “May God bless the United States of America,” and for many it seems impossible to separate “God and Country.” Even my alma mater’s school song ends, “For God, For Country and for Yale”!

All this religious endorsement of American nationalism might turn us off only by association. Added to this, Humanists tend ask hard questions about group loyalty and identification. Does the group serve my needs and reflect my values? Is the connection meaningful, inspirational, beneficial, or simply a legacy of the past? It’s why many Humanistic Jews and their families have evolved from the religious institutions and traditions of their birth and upbringing. Internationalists have often been secular, since they see any human division by ethnicity, nationality, or religion as inevitably a hierarchy, a source of oppression and hatred.

Even if we try to be secular nationalists, our wider sympathies to all of humanity would seem in conflict with the inevitable prioritization of our national group over others, be it on immigration laws, humanitarian aid, or economic priorities. If we had to choose between the Bill of Rights and the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which would we choose?

Some years ago, a Kol Hadash member told me she was considering putting up an American flag on her house, but she didn’t want others to think she was “one of those people.” A friend of hers rebuked her, saying, “No one political perspective owns the flag – it’s your flag too!” Likewise, the moral psychologist Jonathan Haidt remembered that after 9/11, he put TWO bumper stickers on his car: an American flag and a UN flag!

The truth is that love of country is challenging. Sometime love means we forgive or ignore our beloved’s guilt, and sometimes love means we call on them to correct it. Those kneeling to call America to live up to its vision that “all [people] are created equal” can be as patriotic as those who serve in the military or those who sweat through their American flag boxer shorts. Loving and even prioritizing our family (or our country) does not mean betraying ethics and commitments to a wider world, provided that family or national loyalty does not supersede the humanity of those beyond it. If our nation does good in the world, we can be proud. If we fall short, we can pull together to do better.

So feel free to fly those flags, sing those songs, walk in those parades, feel those feelings. And also feel free to stand up for justice, to protest, to demand that America live up to its own ideals. If you need an alternative, you can always sing “Godless America” to the same tune!

Values Voting

This post first appeared in The Shofar newsletter of Kol Hadash Humanistic Congregation in February/March 2020

Ready or not, here comes another national campaign year. Primaries, debates, rallies, fundraising appeals, op-eds and Facebook posts. And finally, long after we have had enough, a chance to vote and put an end to our misery. Or perhaps to see a new misery begin.

Ever since election pundits coined the term “values voters,” it has been applied to religious and social conservatives who vote based on their “values” of opposing abortion and same-sex marriage. Every year the Christian fundamentalist Family Research Council hosts a “Values Voter Summit” with an explicit goal: “to preserve the bedrock values of traditional marriage, religious liberty, sanctity of life and limited government that make our nation strong.” In 2016, then-candidate Mike Pence called it “the greatest gathering of conservative pro-family Americans in the nation.”

All of this goes rests the false belief that people need religion to be good people, and that religion defines the complete set of positive, socially-desirable values. It is feared that without the belief that a god commands you to love your neighbor as yourself or to care for the widow and orphan or thou shalt not kill or steal, the alternative is amoral anarchy of “Nature, red in tooth and claw.” [Tennyson] And so people who vote with their values, it was assumed, must be the religious since THEY have values.

We all know that this is not true. Secular people, and for that matter adherents of liberal religions, DO have positive values and beliefs, even if they differ from those of traditional and fundamentalist religions. We believe in the dignity of human beings to choose how they live and whom they love. We believe in equal treatment for all, and thus see through a ploy to use “religious liberty” to continue discrimination and disparate treatment. We are “pro-family” – we have a broader definition of “family” (see illustration, except for “Batman” example). We value scientific literacy, and cultural diversity, and much more.

So if and when you choose to vote, feel free to vote your values. After all, you too are a values voter.

Israel Agonies

It has been a horrible few days, and the future looks bleak.

There are four questions that we want answered now, even if the answers are not yet clear.

• What can I do?
• What happened and what’s happening now?
• Why did it happen?
• What will happen next?

Here are 3 things you can do right now.

1) If you know people in Israel or people here who have relatives there, reach out to them to let them know that you are thinking about them. I sent a dozen messages yesterday to colleagues there, and they were all warmly received. Humanistic Jews are sometimes asked what we do if we do not pray. The answer is: we DO. Personal connections are vital at moments of shock, confusion, sadness; make them if you can today.

2) The Chicago Jewish Community will be rallying tomorrow at 10am at North Shore Congregation Israel, 1185 Sheridan Road in Glencoe. You must register in advance for this outdoor gathering, and please do not bring any large bags or signs: https://eventregistration.juf.org/?EventID=28037. There are many national and international Jewish organizations that have set up special appeals to help those in need, including the Jewish United Fund of Metropolitan Chicago, Magen David Adom (Israel’s “Red Cross”), the Jewish Agency and others.

3) While there are immediate needs for humanitarian recovery, emotional support, and rebuilding, the underlying conflict between Israelis and Palestinians will not be solved by Hamas murder or by Israeli missiles. If you are moved to try to look forward through charitable giving or activism, consider supporting those with visions for coexistence and peace, even in the midst of war. Some are Israeli, others Palestinian, still others are joint initiatives. Instead of singing “oseh shalom, He makes peace,” we sing “na’ase shalom, we will make peace.” Now is a good time to act on our beliefs.

What happened?

The last time Israeli home front communities were occupied by hostile invaders was during the 1948-9 War of Independence. The last time Israel was taken this completely by surprise was the 1973 Yom Kippur War – on the general calendar, exactly 50 years and one day before this attack. The last time Israelis were taken hostage in large numbers was the 1970s. This is Pearl Harbor and 9/11 put together but even larger – 700 Israeli soldiers and civilians dead, 2500 wounded and 150 hostages would be proportional to 24,000 Americans killed, 87,000 wounded, and 5,000 captives. Every Jewish Israeli family has been touched or know those who have been: dead or wounded, military prisoner of war or civilian hostage. Rockets have fallen on Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, the northern front with Lebanon threatens to accelerate, and the West Bank simmer may yet boil.

As Israel ramps up its response and Hamas continues its “rockets and hostages” strategy, more civilians will die on both sides. Hamas puts operations centers in residential buildings with its own people and now Israeli hostages as human shields, and even if Israel often gives notice of an attack for civilians to evacuate, homes and lives will still be destroyed. We can and should differentiate between collateral damage to Palestinian families from missiles into Gaza and the face-to-face brutal kidnapping, rape, and slaughter of entire Israeli families on October 7 and its aftermath. Yet civilian deaths are still tragic, whoever we determine is ultimately to blame; our human sympathies coexist with our Jewish grief.

As for what is happening now, that is all over the news and social media, and any summation would be out of date soon. You will need to decide how many images you can see, videos you can stomach, heart-wrenching personal stories you can stand. You do not need to watch them all, read them all, cry through them all. And there will be many coming at us from every direction.

Why did it happen?

We will hear many theories in the days to come. Why Hamas and Islamic Jihad attacked may include derailing attempts to normalize relations with Israel without addressing Palestinians, both past Abraham Accords and proposed Saudi initiatives; undermining the Palestinian Authority by achieving the release of Palestinian prisoners; disrupting Israel’s sense of security and dominance; and, quite simply, bloody revenge for a situation they see as hopeless and going nowhere. Hamas knows what will follow their attacks. If they consider the coming disaster better than the status quo, that tells us much about both their desperation and their fanaticism.

As for why Israel’s defensive catastrophe, factors include failures of Israeli intelligence and imagination; a false sense of security in technology, rocket defense, and static barriers; an illusion of maintaining an unsustainable status quo. What is unthinkable remains impossible until it happens, as with the 9/11 airplane attacks in the United States. The strategic and political implications of this weekend’s events will echo for months and years. The sadness they feel, and that we feel as part of the global Jewish family, is immediate.

What will happen next?

Hosea 8:7 says that those who plant the wind shall harvest the storm. Whichever side planted first, or worst, or most recently, the storm is coming. We will need to hold on to each other, to remind ourselves of our values and commitments, to maintain our humanity as we support our people. The short version is that we do not know what will happen beyond a likely Israeli invasion of Gaza and intensification of the conflict. Where else, for how long, how many casualties cannot be known.

This coming Shabbat on October 13, we will come together to mourn, to share, to consider what has been and what will be. You are invited to be with us in person or online in this difficult moment.

Shock and sadness, confusion and anger, bitterness and despair are in our hearts today. May we soon make the turn to resolve and courage, caring and compassion, and, someday, hope.

The Past: A Complicated Relationship

Memory is a tricky thing. Over and over the Torah commands zakhor - remember. Many of the events we are told to remember did not actually happen in history. On one level, it matters whether or not there really was an exodus, a revelation at Mount Sinai, divinely authored miracles as recorded in the Torah and Jewish tradition. On another level, it does not matter. People are going to remember what they choose to remember, how they choose to remember it, what they are told to remember. “Remember the Alamo,” the way we tell you to remember it. “Remember the Maine” to start a war with Spain and gain a short-lived American Empire even though most of us do not remember the Maine anymore. “Remember Pearl Harbor:” to actually remember Pearl Harbor, say you were 5 years old in 1941, that would make you at least 87 today. The vast majority of us do not remember Pearl Harbor in that way. We are like anyone under age 25 today who was told “Remember 9/11.” They don't actually remember the event. They remember what they are told to remember. They remember the story, but not the actual experience.

For events that we did experience for people we knew personally and whom we loved who are now gone. We might think the past would stay the same. Time travel is fiction. What's done is done. Those who are gone are gone. We will not see them again for the rest of our lives. However, it turns out our memories do not stay the same. Because we do not stay the same. We are not an unmoved observer of the past. An objective camera recording everything that comes into our frame. We are artists painting the scene over and over. Sometimes we are realistic, trying to capture every line and curve, every shade and silhouette as close to reality as we can. Sometimes we are impressionists, our emotions making the details fuzzy even as we are taken back to how we felt at that moment with the same intensity. Sometimes we are abstract, remembering shapes that get jumbled in our recollections with other moments of the past. Memory is not a science. Memory is an art, a moving sea between the shores of then and now.

Memory is a complicated relationship between yesterday and today. We change, so too do our relationships. Our service this afternoon quoted Mitch Album's Tuesdays with Morrie: “Death ends a life, not a relationship.” After a loved one dies, it takes time to get past the immediacy of loss, the pain of separation, sometimes the agonies of a last decline. Over time, our relationship to them changes as it always did before. Perhaps our relationship to that person began as a child to a parent. It later became an adult child relating to a fellow adult parent. Then maybe we became a parent ourselves and they became a senior parent and a grandparent. If they did not die suddenly, perhaps we became a caregiver to them as their needs grew. When they are gone, we transition from caregiving to remembering.

Yet remembering is still a dynamic and complicated relationship. If we had a good connection while they were alive Maybe we find more peace. Or maybe we missed them more because the relationship was so good. If our relationship had challenges, are we relieved to no longer argue, or do we regret that we no longer have the chance to create a better connection or to reconcile?

What is true for these lost loved ones is true for all of our memories, for each of our past connections to spouses or children, to grandparents, siblings and friends. We have regrets and hopes and wishes for what might have been. Without even thinking, we asked to change the past. We ask, “if only.” We ask, “what if?” Yet we can only shade and sculpt the past so far. We can add a new soundtrack, change the lighting, zoom in on different parts of the screen, but a replay is still a replay. We cannot change the plot. And we cannot make a realistic Rembrandt into a surrealist Chagall. There are limits to the creativity of imagination when we remember the past that we lived, and our loved ones who lived it with us.

We need to learn 2 things from our complicated relationship with the past. First, we need to find peace by reminding ourselves that the past is the past. “What if only” will not fundamentally change what was. Forgive yourself for what did not happen. Forgive yourself and forgive them for what was not done or said. Forgive yourself and forgive them for what was not felt then or is not felt now. We can retell the past with generosity, with forgiveness for them and for ourselves. Relationships change even after someone is gone. The other person does not change, but we do.

Second, if we cannot fundamentally change the past, then this is our opportunity to make our living relationships, complicated, challenging, fractured, yet repairable relationships with living loved ones into the relationships we want and wish for. Do not wait to say if only. Do not wait and ask what if. Act now. Speak now. Feel now. Forgive now. Why wait for regrets when we can begin the repair today.

One of my favorite songs of our entire high holiday repertoire is the song with which we begin our Yom Kippur Memorial Services. Nifkah et ha-sha’ar, let us open the gate even at the time of the closing, literally the locking of the gate, before the day is done. The gate is forgiveness. The gate is an opening to changed relationships, an opening to the past and to the present. An opening to others and to ourselves. Ha-yom yifneh, the day vanishes, ha-shemesh yavo v’yivneh, the sun is setting. If we can face the truth and embrace the people in our complicated relationships past and present, shalom yavo, peace will come. Let us wish, let us hope, let us act to make it real in our lives. Shalom yavo, peace will come.

Each Other: A Complicated Relationship

Dating is bad practice for marriage. Most of the time when you start dating, you put on your best face, you act how you think will be attractive to the other, you plan witty conversation. Dating is hard work. You may avoid arguing because any disagreement could be the end. And you might avoid conflict because you'd rather stay in a so-so-dating relationship than be alone. When I meet couples getting married, I hear again and again that their first dates were surprisingly easy. The conversation just flowed. They felt amazingly comfortable. It was like they were in a relationship rhythm right away. It was a natural fit. Each of them was their honest selves. They let their guard down and their quirks show, and the other person still wanted more. No relationship is entirely smooth. As an old Yiddish saying has it, the smoothest way is full of stones. As engagement becomes wedding, wedding becomes marriage, marriage becomes family, and individuals continue to grow in their own ways, there will be new challenges, new complications. That partnership that grew to love and then to marriage was the beginning of a real relationship. And real relationships start with truly seeing and meeting each other. Real relationships can be complicated. In fact, real relationships should be complicated because people are complicated.

Today it seems like the world is on fire. Compared to huge issues like our relationship to the Jewish past and Jewish tradition, or the battle between thinking for ourselves and groupthink, or the split between American Jews and Israel, getting along better with each other seems like small potatoes. Why am I not talking about the global democracy disaster? Or climate change or the ongoing refugee crisis. There's enough in the big picture to give anyone an anxiety attack. Here is why the small picture is important. If you are in a mental health moment, the first thing they say to do is to make sure the basics of self-care are covered before opening the big issues. Are you eating regularly? Are you sleeping? Are you taking your medication? Are you exercising? Are you staying clean? Because if you are not eating or on your meds or sleeping, how can you fix anything else? The basic building block of community and family, even a sense of ourselves, is relating to other people. So we need to make sure that is working before turning to any step two.

Some social media platforms let you indicate your relationship status. Single, married, divorced. It's complicated. That last one has been the theme of our High Holiday explorations of the human and the Jewish condition. If we are honest, any of the other answers should also be labeled, it's complicated. You can be married and it's complicated. Single and it's complicated. No one disputes it being divorced is complicated. Relationships should be in-depth, multi-layered, rich and challenging. Of course, not every acquaintance needs to be a deep, complicated relationship. You can just smile and nod or t chat with your regular waiter, your supermarket checkout clerk, your bus driver. Some people have many close friends, others just a few. Each one of those deeper relationships means more of ourselves revealed, more emotional capital invested. Greater risk, but also greater reward. As investment advisors always say, past results are no guarantee of future returns. But nothing ventured, nothing gained either.

Other people can be really difficult. My work as a rabbi would be much easier if it were not for all the people. Of course, without the people there would be no work. I love that I get to work with people of all ages, from baby naming to funerals and everything in between. I love that other people welcome me into the most intimate and challenging moments. I love that I get to witness the family dynamics and the special connections behind the scenes up close and personal. Working with families through these stressful moments can be complicated because people are complicated. They have emotions. They get offended and upset. They hold grudges. They like some people and they do not like other people. They do not always share or play well with others or clean up after themselves. They want attention and they pout if they do not get it. And they want what they want when they want it. Children can be even more challenging!

I sometimes remind couples getting married that the original symbolism of the huppa, the wedding canopy, was not the spreading of angels’ wings, nor a representation of the home they were building together. Because Jewish weddings were traditionally held outside, the huppa represented the chance of rain. In other words, every day together will not be your wedding day, full of joy and excitement and special moments. There will always be more dishes to wash. There is always more laundry. There will be miscommunications and disagreements, moments when one of you wants to be alone and the other one wants quality time. Priority conflicts and differing parenting styles that need negotiating. Just as Jewish culture is a response to the human experience, so too are all cultures in the world. I was once celebrating a wedding between a Jewish partner and an Irish partner and I learned about the tradition of a wedding bell because they wanted it in their ceremony. The wedding bell is a Celtic tradition that you ring a bell during your wedding ceremony and then that bell lives on the mantel of your home so that at any point in the future, if there is a disagreement or you're feeling a disconnection, either partner can go to the mantel to ring that bell and remind you of that moment in your life when you truly loved and were living for each other. It's a timeout. It's a break. But it's also accepting that relationships are naturally complicated and is trying to deal with it in a productive and positive way.

Other people can be difficult because their brains work differently than ours. Sometimes that can be very helpful. They can pack a suitcase or load a car trunk way better than we can. They can do math in their head amazingly fast. They remember names and faces and relationships that we forget. It can be annoying when the other person finds in 15 seconds what you have been looking for for 15 minutes. But it's definitely helpful! It's more than just having another set of hands and eyes to work together. It's having a different set of hands and eyes and thoughts to complement our own. That difference can also create problems. Other people's brains just work differently than ours. And it's impossible to see the world exactly how they see it. With their experiences and their perspectives and their emotional responses. Sometimes we have to hammer out together what reality actually is between our different perspectives before we decide what we want to do about it. If we try to solve the problem first, we won't even agree what the problem is.

There is no one type of personality, just as there is no one correct thermostat setting that is right for everyone. In this room at least one person is too hot. At least one person is too cold. And at least one person is just fine. The realization that people are different is not a modern insight. One of the earliest collections of rabbinic teachings, Pirkei Avot, has a kind of personality test, describing 4 types of people in different aspects. As I read a few of these, consider which one are you? And which one is the other person to whom you are closest.

Question one, character. There are 4 types of character in people. One says, what's mine is mine and what's yours is yours. This is ordinary. One says, what's mine is yours and what's yours is mine. This is foolish. One says, what is mine is yours and what is yours is yours. This is the saint. And one says, what is mine is mind and what is yours is mine. This is the wicked.

Ignore for a moment the moral judgment of wicked or saint. Which one is your impulse? And which one is theirs? Mine is mine and yours is yours. Or mine is yours and yours is yours. Or mine is mine and yours is mine. There is a time for each of these, a time to be generous and a time to stand up for ourselves and what we need. Our impulse might not be what we ultimately do or say. But our impulse might be what we blurt out before we think. Or what we assume any normal person would say or do, whatever normal is. Understanding our tendencies is an important step to becoming the person we want to be from the person we currently are.

Question 2. Temperament. There are 4 kinds of temperaments. One who is easy to anger and easy to pacify gains what is lost. One who is hard to anger and hard to appease. Loses what is gained. One who is hard to anger and easy to pacify is a saint. One who is easy to anger and hard to appease is wicked.

I know people like each of those four. Which are you? Which are the people close to you? Get mad fast, but also calm down fast? Get mad slowly, but then get calm slowly once you are mad. Get mad slowly and calm down quickly. Or get mad fast and take a long time to calm down. Certain combinations of these temperaments could work well together. Other combinations would be a disaster.

Question 3, learning. There are 4 types of students. Quick to understand and quick to forget. Slow to understand and slow to forget. Quick to understand and slow to forget. Slow to understand and quick to forget.

Imagine a teacher who was one of these and students who are different from the teachers learning character. How would someone who is quick to understand and slow to forget, handle a student who is slow to understand and quick to forget? Imagine being paired for a group project in school or at work with a different character. Or marrying one. Possible? Sure. Complicated.

Personality is not destiny. People can gain skills and work on their patients or learn to be more generous or to advocate for themselves. We can collaborate with and we can love people whose personalities are different from ours. The benefits of our differences working together are worth the challenges of our differences clashing with each other. Think of an orchestra playing. They play different notes on different instruments that make different sounds. When they clash, it sounds terrible. When they all play in unison as when they tune up at the beginning, the sound is both beautiful and strange, and it does not last as they shift to harmonies to finish their tuning. The orchestra at its best is harmony, not unison. When we choose music for our celebrations, we find a balance between singing all together as one community. And our choir creating beautiful harmony out of many notes at once. It's certainly more complicated than singing everything in unison. At this moment I'm definitely preaching to the choir. Harmony is certainly more beautiful than everyone singing whatever notes they want as loudly as they want whenever they want.

We find life partners. Friends, a community. We join them and we celebrate good times. And then something goes wrong. A misunderstanding, a differing perception, a moment of anger, a willful slight. Maybe we let it go. Maybe we do not. Maybe we forgive even if we do not forget. If the relationship is worth it, proper repair on both sides allow a wound to become a scar and we add this moment as one more complication to a complicated connection. The Jewish cultural genius of Yom Kippur requires human forgiveness from the person you have wronged before looking anywhere else, be it above and beyond or inside your own heart.

That is what we need to do when complicated but important relationships go wrong. How do we make them go right? The Jewish philosopher Martin Buber described 2 kinds of relationships. I-It and I-Thou. An I-It relationship treats the other person as a means to an end, as a thing, as an object to be looked at and then ignored once they have served our purpose. An I-Thou relationship is different. We address the other person as an active presence, as full being in their own right, another personality we can connect with on a deep emotional psychological some might say spiritual level.

Here is how Buber described it.

If I face a human being as my thou. He is not a thing among things and does not consist of things. This human being is not he or she bounded from every other he and she a specific point in space and time within the net of the world. Nor is he a nature able to be experienced and described, a loose bundle of named qualities. But with no neighbor and whole in himself, he is thou and fills the heavens. This does not mean that nothing else exists except himself, but all else lives in his light.

This is the difference between listening at another person and truly listening to another person. The difference between glancing at someone and really seeing them. It can be as simple as thanking the busboy clearing dishes and filling your water. Or as profound as looking into the eyes of your beloved and seeing them as they truly are.

In this room there are over a hundred potential Thous. They even have name tags. We do not truly know each other in the more profound way Buber describes. Imagine this. What if you came to High Holiday services and the chairs were arranged in pairs, each chair facing another. What if you experienced these peak moments of the congregational year not facing me or the choir, but facing the person or the people you came with. Or facing someone new whom you have never met, but whom you will know by the time you leave. What if Yom Kippur was focused on talking to each other instead of listening to me? We talked to therapists and counselors, friends and family. We can also talk to the people next to us. Guiding questions, interpreting a Jewish text, simply looking at each other's faces. There's a reason why the Jewish tradition of studying in hevruta or partnership with another person has become a treasured pedagogy among all kinds of Jews. What we see is different from what they see. And if we can glimpse the world through their eyes, our horizon of possibilities becomes that much wider.

If that image of sitting in pairs facing each other for 80 min was not to disturbing enough for the introverts. Here is one step further. What if you came into high holiday services and the chairs were arranged in 3 or 4 large circles? You would be forced to face people you did not know. You would be eye to eye with 30 or 40 people at once. Any act of speech would be public. Would that create community? Would you say “nope!” and head for the door? A large circle would take even more trust than face to face for us to uncross our arms and legs, to speak honestly, to connect deeply with that many people. There is a reason that the Jewish innovation of the havurah or intimate friendship of limited numbers has been popular in the last 50 years of Jewish communal creativity. It takes more than 80 min to build trust and community. It does not have to take a full lifetime either. The alchemy of friendship and community is complicated. And we have done it again and again in our lives.

Relating to other people is challenging. But so too is it challenging for American Jews to relate to Israel for free thinkers to risk group think as they create community. Or for non-traditional Humanistic Jews to celebrate Jewish traditions on Rosh Hashana and on Yom Kippur. If we know who we are, we can meet the other side where they are. What starts with one person can be the first step to wider influence.

One of the anthems of our movement is a simple song written over 40 years ago by Rabbi Sherwin Wine. It begins with the self and then goes beyond, because knowing ourselves is but the first step to connecting with each other. Where is my light? My light is in me. Where is my hope? In me. My strength? In me. V’gam bakh and in you. We draw light and hope and strength from each other. Genesis put it even more simply: lo tov heyot adam levado - it is not good for humanity to be alone. That is why we are listening, thinking, being present with our full selves today. Whether we are in this room or anywhere in the world, we are with each other. I and Thou. That is the start.

Israel and the Jewish People: A Complicated Relationship

There are many reasons why the relationship between American Jews and Israel has become strained over the last several years. I blame Marie Kondo. Do you remember Marie Kondo? The declutter. What was her mantra to make your life better? If something does not spark joy, Get rid of it. Today when American Jews think of Israel they see conflict in the West Bank and Gaza, assertive and violent religious nationalism, Jewish orthodoxy imposed on a non-orthodox majority, Netanyahu's corruption, skyrocketing violence among Arab Israelis that national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir refuses to address because it serves his Jewish supremacist politics. The last 9 months have seen massive protests to derail judicial reforms that could undermine an already fragile democracy.

Does any of that spark joy? Is the joy that is sparked by fantastic hummus, beautiful landscapes, and rich history enough to overcome all of that? Israel sparks stress. Israel sparks cognitive dissonance, social pressure, we are not joyful. And so we avoid it. We don't visit. We don't call, we don't write. In some congregations they don't even talk about Israel because they fear it is too divisive. It does not spark joy. And so it is gone. Thanks a lot, Marie.

A generation ago, The relationship between Israeli Jews and American Jews was very different. 50 years ago tonight on the Jewish calendar, Israel was on the brink of destruction on Yom Kippur. Casualties mounted. Equipment ran low. Morale was shaken. Not 30 years after the end of the Holocaust, another Jewish disaster seemed imminent. The Yom Kippur War did not bring anyone joy. But few American Jews considered a disconnection. If anything, they were more committed than ever. One key difference between 1973 and 2023? Marie Kondo was born in 1984.

I do not remember the Yom Kippur War. Because I was not yet born. 2/3 of Americans alive today were born after 1973. Most Israelis do not remember the Yom Kippur War since 3/4 of them were not born yet either. In my lifetime post Yom Kippur War Israel has not been under existential threat from invading armies. Its three greatest dangers today are Iranian nuclear weapons, trying to swallow the West Bank and choking on it, and suicide by civil war. Whether we care for Israel or have become disconnected, or we strongly reject what is being done in our name by the Jewish state. we do not wish ill on people there who are part of our world Jewish family. You can love the spouse, you can be separated and alienated from a spouse, you can certainly divorce a spouse. But none of those mean that you hate them and want them destroyed.

This high holidays, we are exploring complicated relationships, connections it can be hard to live with and hard to live without. Yom Kippur is dedicated to relationship repair. Apologizing for our mistakes and finding it in our hearts to forgive others and ourselves. We agree with the Jewish tradition that the first step is interpersonal repair and then we refocus step 2. Instead of looking above and beyond for cosmic forgiveness. We look inside to see if we are ready to let it go and be at one with ourselves. We look backward so that we can live forward. Therefore, before we look forward to our relationship with Israel, the land, the state, and the people, we need to go back to where the Jewish story began, in Israel and everywhere else.

The land of Israel or the land of Canaan or the Levant or Palestine or between the river and the sea, that is where the Jewish people started in the first millennium BCE. We began as Judeans from Judah, Yehudim from Yehuda. We spoke Yehudit, Jewish, according to the Book of Kings. After Jerusalem was destroyed in 586 BCE the Judean elite were taken into exile in Babylonia. But they stayed Yehudim, Judeans, or even Jews. They asked in Psalm 137 “How can we sing the songs of our God in a foreign land?” In time, some Judeans return to the land and some stayed in Babylonia, the first Jewish diaspora. For the latter, Jerusalem was a place of attention and pilgrimage, but not home. This was the beginning of a new Jewish tradition: Judeans beyond Judah. Jewish religion and culture outside Jerusalem.

In the 2,500 years since then, there have been many complicated relationships between Israel and Diaspora Judaism. Messianism hoped to magically restore the kingdom of David. The traditional Passover song, Eliyahu ha-navi, hopes for Elijah to arrive “im moshiach ben David” with the Messiah, the son of David. Some Diaspora Jews moved to Israel at the end of their life to pray, to die, and to be first in line for the resurrection. The Talmud claims that at the time of resurrection, those buried elsewhere will roll through underground tunnels and then pop up alive in Jerusalem. So why not be buried at the front of the line? Since modern Zionism began in the late nineteenth century Thousands of Jews have moved to live in Israel, not just to die there. Some came by enthusiastic choice. Some came as refugees. Even after the losses of the Holocaust and mass expulsions from Arab nations, Today, the majority of the world's Jews still live outside of the Jewish homeland. Israel is home to 7 of our 6 million. The reality is even more complex. Most Israeli Jews have personal and historical roots outside the land of Israel. Sherwin Wine once quipped that Israel is an unusual homeland. In what other homeland do people ask, “where are you from?” By comparison, over half of the world's Armenians also live in diaspora outside of Armenia.

But is “diaspora” the right word for what we experience today? The historical term for Jewish dispersion was galut, exile. Exiles belong somewhere else. Exiles want to return. An exile's identity is defined by their origins. “Diaspora” has a different meaning: “dia” as in diagram means spreading out. And “spore” is like seeds. Seeds that set down root and grow differently in new soil and sun, that is a more organic, a more vibrant image than exile. A diaspora still envisions a center dispersed from a central original point, being able to return to a homeland. What is my family homeland? Is it the United States, land of my and my parents birth and citizenship, my mother tongue and my native culture? Is my homeland the old country of my ancestors? My father's family roots in Syria, my mother's roots in Belarus and Lithuania. Am I jumbled up enough to claim to be a citizen of the world? Roots simultaneously everywhere and nowhere? Or is my homeland the birthplace of the Jewish people, a country I have visited a dozen times but never lived in. There are times I feel like a diaspora from Detroit, rooting for my “hometown” teams when I've lived here for 20 years. We ask each other where are you from? We will get many answers. And we celebrate those diverse answers. The Jews dispersed too many places, and we have also dispersed from many places that are all our routes not only Israel.

Yet our roots definitely include Israel too. In 2019 on our trip to secular Israel, which we'll be repeating this December, one of the most meaningful stops that an ancient synagogue that had been lost for a thousand years. The synagogue was beautiful, the mosaics on the floor were beautiful, but even more beautiful was the fact that they were setting up chairs for a Bar Mitzvah to take place later that day. An ancient synagogue, a modern bar mitzvah, all in the same place. It was electric. It was moving. It was our roots, further back. If we are part of a world Jewish people, then we must relate to Israel in some way.

We know that there are many differences between American Jews and Israeli Jews. American Judaism has created a dozen liberal Jewish denominations. But those denominations have not taken root in Israel. There, Jews tend to identify as some variety of Orthodox or hiloni, secular, or masorti, traditional. Masorti also means the synagogue I do not go to is Orthodox. But when I do go, like n Yom Kippur, the synagogue is orthodox even if I am not. In America, Orthodox Jews are 10% of the Jewish population, as they have been for decades. Surveys run in 1993, 2001, 2013, and 2020 all show between 9 and 11% orthodox in America. In Israel, the orthodox population is over 20% and is growing, both in proportion and in pushiness. We American Jews hear Hebrew once in a while. Like Anon Kippur, while they speak it every day. That maybe one problem for liberal religious Judaism there. Here you can keep the traditional Hebrew and rely on creative translation to soften the dissonance between ancient text and modern value. There, they easily understand what the prayers actually mean. We in America live as a minority in a non-Jewish culture. Their calendar is the Jewish calendar. There is never a conflict between work and Yom Kippur. There is no need to sneak a high holiday glance at Israeli sports scores. School breaks are always during Hanukkah and Passover by design. The majority of American Jews are Ashkenazi background, connected to Yiddish and Europe. The majority of Israeli Jews are non Ashkenazi. Mostly from Arabic experiences in North Africa and the Middle East. We live in a country with a written constitution and a separation of religion and government (to some degree). Israel has neither. Most Israeli Jewish eighteen-year-olds are drafted into the army since Israel has to protect itself. Most American Jewish, year olds go to college. And we rely on general American police and armed forces for our security. American Jews live in a huge country of 3.5 million square miles from sea to shining sea. While Israelis live in 8,000 or 10,000 square miles depending on your borders. Imagine all the Jews in America living in Massachusetts or Maryland. For some, that would be wonderful. For others, claustrophobic.

The difference between being 2% of the population and being 80% of the population was dramatized for me some years ago when I visited Israel during Hanukkah/Christmas season. In Jerusalem, all the public symbols were menorahs and dreidels on street posts. The music was all Hanukkah music. All the holiday decorations everywhere were Hanukkah. The only place it was different was if you went into the Christian quarter of Jerusalem and there was Santa and red and green and carols. I almost went there just out of homesickness, you know? I hadn't heard those songs in too long.

Of course, there are also many similarities between Israeli Jews and world jury. We're connected to the same history. We read or do not read the same Hebrew Bible as our founding literature. We celebrate the same holidays even if we celebrate them somewhat differently. Both Israeli and American Jews have roots remembered in a global Jewish dispersion. The old country and old traditions in Yiddish, Latino, Arabic, they mean a lot to both of us. The truth they are us and we are them. Thousands of American raised Jews now live in Israel. And thousands of Israelis live in America. Both Israeli and American Jews have a substantial population that is not conventionally religious. They celebrate Hanukkah and Passover with their family. They go to synagogue rarely if at all. They make their own choices about their own Jewish lives. Here at Kol Hadash, we use Israeli music like Erev shel Shoshanim and Lu Y’hee, we enjoy Israeli food, we appreciate Israeli art and creativity. Kibbutz Jews were doing secular and Humanistic Judaism a generation before we started. And, perhaps most important, both Israeli Jews and world Jewry both claim the excuse of “Jewish time” to be late. I will note that Israeli special forces managed to arrive on time and American Jewish funeral homes start memorials exactly on time. It can be done.

You may or may not have noticed that I have not yet said the word Palestinian in this talk. 20% of Israeli citizens and hundreds of thousands of more live in the West Bank and Gaza under Israeli control. Our complicated relationship with Israel is about more than just American Jews and Israeli Jews. Our Torah reading this evening from Exodus 23 describes the divine promise of the land including expelling its inhabitants to make room for the Israelites to be in charge. Some Israeli Jews see this promise and the Torah's narrative as justification for their claims to all the land, including what the world calls the West Bank, but they call Yehuda, Judea, to make a more ancient claim. That divine promise, by the way, does not appear in the Israeli Declaration of Independence. That declaration did promise this:

To foster the development of the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants. To ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all of its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex. To guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education, and culture.

For secular Israelis, that passage from their Declaration of Independence is now a holy text. And they parade it on posters at their rallies and protests. They recite it as an addition to their Passover seders.

The belief in the promised land is the root of the judicial overhaul that threatens Israeli democracy. The settlements, the occupation of the West Bank, the Orthodox right wing parties in the government, they're all connected. Religious settlers do not want the Supreme Court to provide even minimal restrictions on building on private Palestinian land because they claim the land is Jewish by divine promise. Jewish supremacists do not want a government for “all the lands’ inhabitants,” whether in two separate states or in one political state for two ethnic nations. What they want is one non-democratic state from the river to the sea run by and for Jews. And they have run riot for years. Sometimes in response to violence, sometimes to assert dominance and intimidate Palestinian neighbors. The ultra-orthodox do not want a Supreme Court that can demand their youth be drafted into the army or national service alongside non-kosher Jews, or that can force their schools to teach basic knowledge for 21st century citizenship. There's a very wry Israeli joke that in Israel one third of the population serves in the army, one third works and one third pays taxes. The problem is it's all the same one third that does all three! And that one third is now refusing to accept a government that does not represent them and their commitment to democracy. At least democracy for themselves is not clearly for all the land's inhabitants.

Palestinians are less than fully real for most American Jews and most Israelis. To many American Jews, Palestinians are either terrorists or terrorist sympathizers who are rabidly antisemitic and demonize Israel on college campuses through the BDS movement to destroy Israel. Or else Palestinians are somewhere between a PR problem and a democracy dilemma. In legal limbo for decades, they have no meaningful voice in any power controlling their lives. The most recent Palestinian Authority election was in 2006. And they also have no voice in Israeli military rule. American Jews see the Palestinian problem like Jefferson described slavery: holding a wolf by the ears. It's not very comfortable, but you don't dare let it go. There are clearly human rights and democracy issues, but what can be done?

For many Israeli Jews, the Palestinians are a difficult yet mostly distant problem. Most Israeli cities and towns are Jewish or Arab, but not both. Most Israeli Jews do not speak Arabic and they expect Palestinians of Israeli citizenship to know English or Hebrew. They largely live separate lives. American Jews seeing Palestinians as a theoretical problem do not appreciate that the Israeli fear of danger is real. Just the Friday before this Rosh Hashana, a bomb was planted in a park in Tel Aviv. And Israelis are not imagining when they remember terror bombings, shootings and stabbings of the past decades and recent months. What is also real is the lived experience of the Palestinians. Without much hope or prospects for self-determination. It's not just an abstract dilemma or a distant issue that occasionally flares up. For them, it is every day.

The most challenging difference between American Jews and Israeli Jews, the source of many of our relationship complications is the question of power: power over others and power to rule ourselves. For most of our history, Jews lived as minorities under the ultimate control of others. At times we ran Jewish communal affairs, but we could not make war or peace. We could not conquer territory or rule others. We could not enact laws and impose them by force. Under the Maccabees, we had a window of about 100 years of real independence. We minted coins with menorahs on them. We conquered other peoples and forcibly ruled them. And we wound up in bitter civil conflicts that weakened us. Otherwise in Jewish history, we managed under Persian and Roman empires, Islamic empires in Iraq and North Africa, Christian empires in Constantinople and Rome, multi-ethnic European empires in the Balkans and Central and Eastern Europe. Centuries of experience as a minority under tolerance at best oppression at expulsion at worst do not prepare you to govern generously. Nor does it prepare you to manage diverse and mutually contradictory Jewish opinions, politics, and lifestyles in one community.

The American Jewish experience is also a break with Jewish history. The last 200 years have seen Jews live in democracies in Western Europe and the Americas. Most American Jews do not follow Jewish religious law. We do not even use the minimal self-government we managed in ghetto and shtetl. We do not have to. The Orthodox can do their thing and we can do ours. We have no legal power to enforce a particular definition of Jewish identity. But we do have voices in our government because we live in a democracy. America is not eleventh century Baghdad or sixteenth century Poland where we needed court Jews to finagle stability from feudal lords. American Jews are 2% of the population. But we are 8% of the Senate and 6% of the House. State and local government and their elected officials welcome our volunteering, our donations and our votes. Intermarriage has strengthened our position: Second gentleman Doug Emhoff, spouses of President Biden's grandchildren, and former President Trump has Jewish grandchildren too. Even more important than access to power is protection by law and constitution and the power to vote. Like Jewish power, Jewish citizenship is relatively new. I am not at all blase about the challenges American democracy faces today. Just as the thousands of Israelis protesting in their streets take challenges to their democracy very seriously. Democratic values even if they are new are vital for the success of Jews everywhere both in America and in Israel.

That is why this complicated relationship is worth working on. Like any complicated relationship, we need each other. And we need to not take the other and what they bring to our partnership for granted. After 30 years of marriage, or 75 years of the state of Israel, the relationship can become part of the background, an unchanging landscape. It can be simply an assumed part of the furniture. But we are always changing. Each of us and both of us and the relationship between us. In any relationship, between American Jews and Israeli Jews or between two individuals, we are not building bridges between solid ground. We are stretching a rope across two boats at sea, each one moving and changing. That's true for American and Israeli Jewry and for any two individuals maintaining a relationship, as we will see more tomorrow. Some forgiveness, some accommodation, some acceptance of difference is necessary for the relationship to survive its complications. No, Marie Kondo, sometimes a complicated relationship does not spark joy. It sparks tension, it sparks anger and frustration. It sparks sadness. It's not only about the sparks of joy to have a deep relationship.

Israel is Netanyahu and Israel is also thousands of Israeli Jews resisting Netanyahu and his yahoos. American Jews are religious and secular, rich and economically challenged, organized and anarchic. And so are Israeli Jews. Israel today is nothing like the fledgling country facing military annihilation in the Yom Kippur War. It could be destroyed by Iranian nukes, by falling apart in a civil conflict or by trying to swallow the West Bank and choking: politically, ethically and demographically. For 20 years after the Oslo Accords were signed in 1993, I thought the solution of 2 states for 2 people was both preferred and possible. Today, I see little hope of that resolution. And I also see little hope of one democratic Israel-istine that supports the national cultures of two people. I will not divorce Israel, because they are us and we are them in so many ways. Part of the Jewish family, diverse and divided each in our own ways. Instead, I will work with those of like mind and values to keep a relationship, to help them get to their next election when the energy of pro-democracy protest can be translated into votes. And we will see if the lessons in democracy are extended to their Palestinian neighbors and subjects.

We are both in uncharted waters in 2023: ruling ourselves and others, integrating democratic values into Jewish life, trying to talk to each other despite growing apart. But talk we will. You do not choose your family, for good or for ill. And if we are part of the Jewish people, then Israeli Jews are part of us.

Do not worry, I am indeed a committed Humanistic Jew and rabbi. Sometimes our parents make choices we actually agree with. Raising me as a Humanistic Jew worked, both for them and for me. It gave me Jewish roots and a way to understand the world that makes sense, that responds to new evidence, that provides values based on human experience and human need rather than revelation and religious authority. I am a Humanistic Jew for the same reason as everyone else: this Judaism speaks to my heart and mind more meaningfully than any other identity. A key tenet of Humanistic Judaism that speaks to me strongly is the core principle that each of us has the right and responsibility to think for ourselves.

But do we? Do we think for ourselves? Last night and today we sat together. Hearing the same words, singing the same words. Standing up and sitting down in unison. And in general, following instructions. If we are literally on the same page at the same time Is that not groupthink? While services are happening, I have no idea what you are actually thinking. In your mind, Perhaps you are focused on the weather or sports scores or what other people are wearing. Maybe you are preoccupied by a health challenge. Or you miss someone you care about. Or you're thinking about anything other than the lyrics to Hinnay Matov or a poem by Maya Angelou. I chose which words you would hear. Ellen and I chose which songs we would sing. I chose which ideas would enter your ears to rattle around in your mind. If groupthink is always and forever bad, then ideological community like a Humanistic Jewish congregation or action for social justice or advocacy for any issue: they are all fatally flawed. We reject groupthink, but we will have a hard time creating community or finding solidarity with others without at least some of it. Groupthink is a complicated subject. It is emblematic of the complicated relationship between individual free thought and living together.

Let's clarify our subject. What is groupthink? Groupthink is going along with what the collective believes and not thinking for yourself Groupthink is conformity, enforcing boundaries orthodoxy with a lowercase o. Ortho as correct like orthodontist, dox as in doctrine: ortho-dox. Groupthink affects politics, religion, social mores, cultural expression, fashion, family dynamics. Groupthink is seductive. Being part of the clan is deeply ingrained in our evolutionary brain. And we feel more secure about our beliefs, our practices, even ourselves if everyone agrees with us. And we agree with them. One person making a statement is an opinion. 1 million people making that same statement feels like a fact. We have seen the dangers of group thinking, fascism and communism, in religious fanaticism and rigid communities. We've seen the social dangers of challenging groupthink. Kneeling during the national anthem. Challenging either/or gender binaries. Asking questions about what everyone else knows to be true. Challenging the social consensus endangers our social standing, and that can apply to questioning orthodoxies right, left, and center.

One of the most interesting blessings in the rabbinic canon is the blessing on seeing a large multitude of people, understood to be 600,000 people or more. So it's not a blessing that's used very often. The blessing praises God, the knower of secrets, “because the multitudes opinions are not the same, one from the other. And their appearance is not the same, one from the other.” Who they are and what they think are all different. From our perspective, we celebrate the multitude of human opinions, 600 or 600,000, knowing that nothing and no one will ever know them all, understand them all, control them all. At least until AI takes over. In the words of a German folk song made famous by Pete Seeger, Di gedanken sind frei, thoughts are free. I think as I please, and this gives me pleasure, my conscious decrees, this right I must treasure. My thoughts will not cater to duke or dictator. No one can deny. Di gedanken sind frei.

Our thoughts do not cater to duke or dictator or to rabbi or to religion. And yet, it takes some group thing to gather together people based on shared beliefs and values. Groupthink is how humanity evolved beyond clans of 100 people into tribes of thousands. Nations of millions, civilizations of tens of millions. Religions of hundreds of millions. We need groupthink to accept shared concepts like money, or the nation state, or human rights. There is no basic human equality in “nature, red in tooth and claw.” The cougar does not care about your human rights. And neither does a rival clan conquering your territory. If we sometimes question the virtues of unthinking national allegiance, we also acknowledge the precarious nature of the useful fictions, the groupthoughts we all agree to, to believe in for the sake of social harmony, stability, and happiness.

When we affirm that we as a community have the right and responsibility to think for ourselves, there is a paradox in that statement. If I tell you “Think for yourself,” how would that work? If you DO think for yourself, you're doing what I told you to do, so you're not. If you do NOT think for yourself and therefore you agree with me, then you need to think for yourself because that's what I told you to do.

Humanistic rabbis only have so much authority. We don't work in commandments. At best we offer 10 strongly worded suggestions. The word mitzvah comes from the Hebrew root 4 to command. Rabbinic Jewish theology believed there were 613 myths votes, commandments given by God and the rabbis. Some were what we would call good deeds, like honoring your parents or respecting elders or paying workers their wages on time. Some were ritual commandments like dietary laws or wearing fringes or fasting on Yom Kippur. And some commandments were intellectual. Love God. Fear God. Believe the Torah came from heaven. All of them, all 613 were commandments, not suggestions, not proposals submitted for debate and democratic approval. Today we use the word mitzvah more colloquially, meaning “good deeds,” something we should choose to do, exemplary behavior. But commandments without a cosmic commander do not have the same force. Maybe they are folkways, the lifestyle of our ancestors, elements of our cultural inheritance that still resonate. But I cannot command you to do anything. As tempting as it might sometimes be. Maybe, just maybe I can persuade you.

What does it mean to persuade? Persuasion straddles the line between individuals thinking for themselves and groupthink. Persuasion means encouraging someone else to make up their own mind, but in a certain way. Persuasion encourages someone who is unsure to actually make a decision. Persuasion asks someone to change their mind from what they believed before. These are all very hard things to do one at a time. To make up your mind, to make a decision, to actually change your mind. If I'm persuading you, I'm asking you to do all of those all at once. And what if you are trying to persuade someone to change their mind on a core belief of their group identity? That is another order of magnitude harder. Now you're not just asking me to change my mind, you want me to change who I am.

Yehuda Kurtzer of the Shalom Hartman Institute explains that true persuasion, true dialogue, is a risk. If I want to change your mind, the most effective path is to first understand you. But learning about what you believe might change my mind. When you were a teacher debating your student or a parent with a child and the student or the child changes your mind, In many ways, that's a wonderful experience. It shows they have learned from you. Instead of believing what you believe, they are self-actualizing their own intellectual life. They are thinking for themselves. And they are not listening to you because of who you are. A famous story in the Talmud describes a rabbi rebuking a voice from heaven, telling the heavenly voice to butt out when rabbis are debating the law that God gave long ago. Since the law is ours, they declare now it's up to us to make a decision in a postscript to that surprising moment. A later rabbi asks what God's response was when he was told to leave them alone. That rabbi is told that God smiled and said, “nitzkhuni banai, nitzkhuni banai. My children have defeated me. My children have defeated me.” The text actually says that twice. You can picture the God character shaking his head and smiling, just as we might if and when our children outsmart us or make us change our minds.

True dialogue with an antagonist, however, was someone in a different groupthink bubble that is opposed to yours. That's a risk many of us will not take. It does make sense to me that certain basic issues of human dignity can be deemed non-debatable. I am not required to respect Nazis by publicly debating whether there really is or not is not a global Jewish conspiracy controlling governments and operating space lasers. I will not debate whether there is such a thing as being transgender or whether same-sex couples should be allowed to marry. Maybe human rights are just groupthink, but dignity and respect are non-negotiable. I accept that the cost of this approach is that other people may declare that they will not debate me on the status of a fetus as a full person from the moment of conception. Or their beliefs about transgender people. It may still be worthwhile to understand why our antagonists believe what they believe. If only so we can resist their impact on society. Understanding is not the same as engaging, debating, respecting. If it means we give up on persuasion sometimes, well, maybe they were never really persuaded.

This summer, I attended the Parliament of the World's Religions at McCormick Place in Chicago. The first such parliament of the world's religions was held in Chicago in 1893, part of the Columbian Exposition. The second was also held in Chicago in 1993. This parliament was number 9. 500 years ago, an assembly of the world's religions would have become an ultimate fighting championship. Tom Lehrer once sang, “Oh the Protestants hate the Catholics, and the Catholics hate the Protestants, and the Hindus hate the Muslims, and everybody hates the Jews.” Religion is the most prominent example of group think in human history. So what happened at this 2023 Parliament of the World's Religions? I helped staff an exhibition table shared by Humanistic Judaism and the American Humanist Association. There were basically 4 faces and encounters we experienced. The first was. “What are you doing here?” The second was, “OK, I see why they might be here. I have no interest at all in talking to them, but it's okay that they're here.” The third was “Hmm, that's intriguing. What is a Humanist group doing here? Maybe I'll talk to them and learn more about their perspective.” And the fourth was, “Wow! So excited to see a Humanistic perspective included in the spectrum of religious options!” Many of those were Unitarian Universalists, some liberal Jews. But they were glad to see that humanism was part of the spectrum of world religions. There was no hatred. There was almost no yelling. There were no pogroms. There was no Inquisition. After all, this parliament was a self-selected group of religious people who want to spend time with other religions, to learn about them, to find out what they have in common and what they can work on together to improve the world despite theological differences. The fundamentalist extremists who are convinced that everyone else is going to hell, this parliament would have been their hell. Many different religions, even secular humanists, chatting, getting along, encouraging tolerance. There were certainly plenty of groupthinkers there. But they were willing to dialogue. No one really expected to change anyone else's mind. We were there to share who we were and what we believed and to learn about others.

Sometimes, just sometimes, the barriers of groupthink can go down and minds can change. Sometimes there are 2 sides to an issue and persuasion is possible. Remember the joke about 2 disputants coming to a rabbi for resolution? After hearing the first case, the rabbi says, “You are right.” When he hears the antagonist’s response, he says, “You are also right.” An observer says, “Rabbi, you said person A and person B are both right; they can't both be right!” The rabbi responds, “you are also right!” I can believe that Israeli settlement expansion in the West Bank is wrong. I can believe that Israel's treatment of Palestinians and the Palestinian Authority is both short-sighted and oppressive. I can believe that there are racist anti-Arab sentiments among groups of Israeli Jews and Diaspora Jews too. I can also believe that the Palestinian Authority is corrupt and ineffective. I can believe that many Palestinians would like there to be no Israel by any means necessary. I can believe that anti-Semitic attitudes are widespread in the Arab world. Is this “both-sidesism,” distracting from one set of problems by saying everyone's terrible? Or am I simply acknowledging that there is more than one perspective? Truth and morality are not monopolies held by one side or the other. We will return to our complicated relationship with Israel on Yom Kippur. Consider this your teaser trailer.

The point is that groupthink and group loyalty can close our eyes and our ears to other perspectives. Sometimes we have to force them open to make us think for ourselves. It's very easy to sign on the party line. Very easy to agree with what people like you all think. Very easy to like the same posts and share the same memes that confirm what we already believe. I think it's good for us to be a heretic once in a while from our own orthodoxies. We all have our group think orthodoxies. What are your hairs? Maybe you're a progressive who questions liberal immigration. Maybe you're a libertarian who sees value in government support for healthcare access. Maybe you're a fiscal conservative who would subject all wage income to Social Security tax for fairness’ sake. We all have our orthodoxies. What are your heresies?

Kol Hadash is an ideological community. Humanistic Judaism is an ideological community. We have shared values and beliefs. We affirm everyone's right and responsibility to make up their own minds on the big and the small questions of life, even though sometimes their conclusions take them beyond the boundaries of a Humanistic Jewish community. As the Yiddish saying goes, you shouldn't be so open-minded that your brain falls out. The strength of our community is not built on uniformity, on rigid groupthink, on orthodoxy on demanding agreement. We celebrate the power of “no,” the power of “I disagree,” the power of “I have a different opinion.” We balance our groupthink with our free think. Is that complicated? Of course, but we would not have it any other way. If I had a congregation that agreed with me 100% of the time, that would be disturbing. If I persuade you, great. If I do not persuade you, also great. If I make you think longer and deeper and differently before you make up your own mind, mission accomplished.

Wishing you and yours a happy, healthy and thought-provoking new year.