Rosh Hashanah 2024: Power & Vulnerability

Here’s the good news: I’m not going to preach to you today. Here’s the bad news: I’m still going to deliver a sermon. What I’m actually going to do is open up to you about a deep struggle I’m having, one that I am guessing a lot of you are also having, and see if we can find our way through it together.

In the late 1970s, in the midst of tensions with President Carter and other American leaders over how to bolster Israel’s security in its tough Middle Eastern neighborhood, Prime Minister Menachem Begin would periodically gather scholars, politicians, philosophers and activists to study Torah at his home. For the first session, he chose to explore the verse from the book of Bamidbar:“עם לבדד ישכון ובגוים לא יתחשב/ Israel is a people that shall dwell alone, and shall not be counted among the nations.”

The biblical words are still hauntingly resonant these millennia later. We’re marking a year now of vicious and violent anti-Zionism and antisemitism in Israel and around the world, including right here at home in Montreal. Almost 55 years ago, Begin turned to his invited guests and asked the same question we’ve been grappling with since October 7th: “Why does the Jewish State so frequently face solitude in the family of nations?” Why do we always feel so alone and misunderstood?Why do our allies seem to abandon us in our time of need?”

This year the Anti Defamation League has recorded the highest number of antisemitic incidents than in any year since they started tracking in 1962. We know what’s happening. We’ve experienced it ourselves. In our places of work; among our friends; in the words and actions of elected officials; in taxis and metros.

Jews have been assaulted in restaurants in Germany; beaten on the streets of Manhattan. Here in Montreal Jewish schools have been shot at. In Toronto a Jewish store was set on fire. A Jewish book talk in a bookstore was canceled in Brooklyn of all places! In Chile, major roadways were covered with Nazi graffiti. In South Africa the Jewish captain of the junior cricket team, David Teeger, was removed from his role because of his support for Israel. On campuses all over the globe protesters are still to this day shouting for our death and Israel’s destruction, unimpeded by most university authorities who seem to have forgotten the difference between free speech and incitement, and the fact that they would not for a second tolerate such behaviour if it was directed at people of colour or LGBTQ students. Signs have appeared in Parisian storefronts saying “no Jews allowed”. The ICC has requested a warrant to arrest the Prime Minister of Israel. It’s old news and it’s shocking news all at once.

It seems unfathomable that in 2024 Jews in almost every country fear being identified as Jewish. While there are those who have risen to this moment and embraced their Judaism more loudly and proudly than ever before, too many have removed kippot, Magen Davids, and yes, even changed their names - on their Starbucks orders and in their Uber profiles. Have you seen the video taken on a crowded NYC subway of a group of kaffiyeh-wearing agitators yelling “raise your hand if you're a zionist”?? If your kids were on that subway, as ours could easily have been, how would you have instructed them to respond? How do we prepare our kids for the increasing risk of someone threatening them for being Jewish?

So it’s not surprising that the refrain we hear again and again among our friends and families, in a tone of resignation but also hostility, goes like this: “They hate us”. “They always have. They always will.” Not surprising, not entirely untrue, but deeply upsetting. It’s upsetting for the obvious reason that we shouldn’t have to feel that way. But it’s upsetting for another reason, too, and here’s my struggle: Surrendering to the idea of endless Jew-hatred at the hands of morally degenerate antisemites breeds a sense of Jewish victimhood that might be understandable, but if left unchecked, can undermine our own moral integrity. In two serious ways: first, it can distract us from the sacred task of learning to embrace our Jewish power; and second, sequestering ourselves in our own pain can make us indifferent to the pain of others; can blind us to our own responsibilities to the world of which our suffering has never, and will never, relieve us.

I understand why some of you might be thinking that in this time of distress for the Jewish people, we should focus on fighting the hate, on standing up for our rights and our freedoms, not on analyzing our justified rejection of those who marginalize, demonize, and even rape, kidnap and murder us. I get it. It makes perfect sense. It’s a very human response. The problem is, it’s not a very Jewish one.

Let’s start with the first issue: Jewish victimhood is a dangerous distraction. In 1982, Rabbi David Hartman, z’”l, challenged a generation in Israel whose triumphalism in the wake of 1967 and 1973 was giving way to some serious soul-searching over the complexities of having and using Jewish power. He asked whether Auschwitz or Sinai ought to be the orienting narrative for an era of Jewish resilience and renewal; whether the building of our future should be rooted in our suffering or in our eternal call to responsibility. He argued against using Auschwitz, saying, “It is both politically and morally dangerous for our nation to perceive itself essentially as the suffering remnant of the Holocaust.” The danger, he explained, was that our suffering would lead to self-righteousness rather than to a deepened sensitivity to all human suffering. He worried we would think that our pain placed us beyond moral scrutiny as we took action to rebuild and renew.

Just a few weeks ago, the noted American-Israeli journalist and Senior Fellow at the Hartman Institute in Jerusalem, Yossi Klein HaLevi, offered his own warning to those who seek moral shelter in the oversimplified worldview of “Us vs. Them”. He did so by clarifying the difference between antisemitism in an age of Jewish disempowerment, which describes most of our history, and antisemitism in an age of Jewish power, such as the one we are blessed to live in right now.

Having power, Yossi asserted, means forfeiting our innocence; our innocence which always pleads that we have been “done to”. He agreed that on October 7th we were victims. But on October 8th, he insisted, we were not. We made a collective decision to go to war and not to maintain the narrative of Jewish victimhood. You cannot simultaneously be a victim and have power. And having power, he said, means facing the consequences of using it.

He reminded his listeners of that scene in the Kuzari: after the rabbi declares that Judaism is the most ethical of all the world’s religions, the king of the Khazars looks at him and says something like, “Just wait until you have an army.”

In his most provocative statement, Yossi said that antisemites no longer have to invent stories of Jews killing Christian babies as they did in the Middle Ages, because we have killed other people’s children. Most of us can’t get those words out of our mouths. But we know there have been innocent children caught in the crosshairs of this brutal, if necessary, Gaza war. We also know that the ultimate responsibility for their deaths - the military and moral responsibility - lies squarely with Hamas who fights from within civilian enclaves of homes, schools and hospitals. We know we value those children’s lives more than Hamas and its sympathizers do. But that won’t bring those dead children back.

Yossi’s point is that when we dismiss every critic of Israel as another shameless antisemite, we absolve ourselves of needing to listen to their claims because they have no moral credibility. But that just may cause us to lose our own. We have to do business with the reality of Jewish power. We have to make sure those who deploy it do so ethically, as I believe the IDF endeavors to do, even if tragic mistakes sometimes happen. And we have to deal with the often unavoidable devastating consequences that result from using our power.

Relinquishing the narrative of Jewish victimhood was a hard lesson for post-Shoah Jews. It is just as hard for post October 7th Jews. But which story do we want to define the future we are committed to building? The story of our victimhood on October 7th, or the story of our agency and sovereignty of October 8th?

As an aside, Yossi also shared that he hates the defiant chanting of “Am Yisrael Chai/the Jewish people live!!”. Who are we trying to convince? We do live. We are here. And we’re not going anywhere.

And now it gets even harder. Let’s wrestle with the second issue: Jewish victimhood can make us indifferent to the pain of others, and to their very humanity.

Think of how many different ways the Torah has taught us never to turn away from someone who’s suffering, even our enemies. Make a window in the ark so you aren’t blind to the destruction around you while you stay safe; don’t save your body at the expense of your soul. Relieve the discomfort of your enemy’s donkey. בִּנְפ ֹל אַל-תִּ שְׂ מָ ח,􀀁ְאוֹיִב/don’t rejoice at the downfall of your enemies. What is hurtful to you, do not do to someone else; anyone else. Never allow the scarring of our bodies to grow calluses over our hearts. What extraordinary Jewish values we have! We should be proud! But it gets harder.

In a little-known commentary on the story of Pharaoh persecuting our enslaved nation, God approaches a frustrated Moses whose task of freeing the Israelites from Egypt is proving more difficult than expected, in part because God isn’t really helping - notwithstanding those plagues. Once again, God declares to Moses, “אֲ ֞נִיהִ כְ ַבּ֤דְ תִּ י אֶת־לִבּ֙וֹ” - most often translated as, “I hardened Pharoah’s heart”. God took away Pharoah’s free will so he wouldn’t let the Jews go. Avoiding how problematic that is, the Hasidic teacher known as the Kedushat Levi reads the phrase differently, creating an even more difficult challenge for us. He interprets אֲ ֞נִיהִ כְ ַבּ֤דְ תִּ י אֶת־לִבּ֙וֹ” using the root of the word “Kavod” which means respect or dignity, suggesting that God restored dignity to Pharaoh by restoring his own self-understanding as someone who can make different, better choices to be an agent not of cruelty but of compassion. If God can be open to an evil oppressor changing, suggested the Kudushat Levi, must we not also be?

“Seriously???” You really expect me to be open to the idea that terrorists may one day see the error of their barbarism even as they swear to massacre us again and again when they have the chance?? That those who spew venomous hate imperiling us and our children will one day return to being productive citizens? Are you kidding me?

There is no Jewish teaching that calls us to turn the other cheek when we are attacked or endangered. Our tradition allows for a just war, such as the one we’re waging now against enemies sworn to our destruction, provided it’s waged justly. But it also measures a warrior’s strength by their ability to turn an enemy into an ally. We read in Avot D’Rabi Natan:

איזהו גיבור? … זהו שכובש את יצרו... ויש אומרים מי שעושה שונאו אוהבו. Who is the strongest of the strong? One who conquers their inclination...some say, one who turns someone who hates them into one who loves them.

What the Kedushat Levi is trying to tell us in his reading of אֲ ֞נִי הִ כְ ַבּ֤דְ תִּ י אֶת־לִבּ֙וֹI have dignified Pharaos’ heart is that when we fail to see people in their full complexity, even our enemies, we’re hardening our own hearts; enslaving ourselves to anger and resentment; and worse, paving the way for our own moral unraveling.

After all is said and done, reflecting on the Exodus, the Torah commands us:

א־תְ תַ ֵע֣ב מִ צְרִ֔ י כִּי־גֵ ֖ר הָ יִ֥יתָ בְאַרְ צֽוֹ׃􀀂 ה֑ וּא􀀁א־תְ תַ ֵע֣ב אֲ ד ֹ ֔מִ י ִכּ֥י אָחִ ֖יֽ􀀂 “Don’t hate an Edomite, for they are your kin. Don’t hate an Egyptian, for you were a stranger in their land.”

Hatred breeds hatred, and we are commanded to disrupt the cycle. Don’t hate those who hate you. That’s the ultimate freedom: to stop hating.

And do this while continuing to defend and protect your country and your people! It seems impossible, if not ridiculous. I am struggling with this teaching just as I imagine you are right now. And yet the Torah guides us to both bring bad actors to justice and to see in every human being the potential for good. We may not see jihadists reconsider their murderous zeal, but can we stay open to the possibility of a time when those monsters will be overwhelmed by more people choosing a world of hope over a world of hate; by more people choosing a future for their children over a destiny of death?

Hayom Harat Olam, we say repeatedly today.Today the world was conceived. Today life is continually reborn. On this universal Jewish holiday we’re asked to believe not just in the miraculous birth of a person or a nation, but to believe in the possibility of their re-birth!

Listen to the Rosh Hashanah Torah readings challenging us to learn the same lessons, their ancient echoes pounding in our ears today. As my colleague Rabbi Elliot Cosgrove points out, this morning, Hagar and Ishmael are banished from Abraham and Sarah’s home, rescued only by an angel and a lifesaving well of water. Abraham and his son Ishmael never speak again. Tomorrow morning, after another angel saves Isaac from Abraham’s sacrificial knife, he too, never speaks to his father again. Sarah dies of heartache just from hearing about her husband’s intentions. Isaac and Ishmael go on to birth two separate nations, Jewish and Arab. They share ancestry. They share a claim to the same homeland. Yet they are each divided fromtheir common father, and are divided from each other. As Rabbi Cosgrove summed it up: “It is a tragedy of generations, filled with distrust, violence, heartache, and the hardening of hatreds, a tragedy whose ripple effects play out to this very day.”

In fact, just a few weeks ago a poll of Israelis and Palestinians showed nearly equal levels of fear and distrust on both sides. In the words of the pollsters, almost “90%of respondents on each side attribute[d] extreme, maximalist aspirations to the other. Sixty-six percent of Jewish Israelis and 61% of Palestinians believe the other side wants to commit genocide against them…”.

And yet, the Rabbis offer another reading of our stories. After the Akedah Abraham and Isaac descend the mountain separately. Abraham goes back to Be’er Sheva. But Isaac goes to Be’er Lachai Roi. Why? The Rabbis say he went to see Hagar to bring her home to his father.

He’s traumatized by nearly being sacrificed, he’s mourning his mother, he’s totally estranged from his father, and he goes to this woman who has every reason to hate him because it was his birth that led to her abandonment by Abraham. Still, the Midrash says Isaac went to reunite what remained of his family. He overcame his resentment of his father. Hagar overcame her resentment of Isaac and of Abraham and followed him home. Two enemies setting aside their mutual hatred and distrust to emerge from their isolation, bridge the gulf between them, and find a way forward.

עם לבדד ישכון/a nation that will dwell alone: singled out for relentless reproachfrom other peoples and countries, when none would have hesitated one secondbefore responding if attacked in the same way, without the IDF’s moral checks and balances; a solitary people struggling to live up to its noblest ideals while fighting daily for its survival; a lonely people seeking allies and friends.

But consider this: the force of the words “עם לבדד ישכון/a nation that shall dwell alone” must account for allies great and small who do stand with and for us: the pro-Israel/pro-Jewish solidarity among some courageous political leaders, religious leaders, Indiginous leaders, human rights activists, professional associations, academic associations, national security experts, NGOs and media watchers across the globe and among lay people, too. And, of course, the steadfast, if sometimes rattled, bond between Israel and the United States. Though we feel alone much of the time, we are never without friends and we ought to remember that – for their sake and for our own. As the late Rabbi Jonathan Sacks warned, “If you define yourself as the people that dwells alone, you are likely to find yourself alone. That is not a safe place to be.”

In fact, a closer look at the letter shin in the word ‘yishkon’, meaning “shall dwell” reveals seven tagim, or crowns, traditionally calligraphed on top by a sofer/scribe. The Ba’al Haturim, a medieval scholar, suggested the crowns symbolize the seven nations who dwelled in Canaan before we arrived from Egypt. The dissonance between the verses’ foreshadowing of our aloneness in the land and this artistic remembrance of the others who also called it home might serve as a scriptural catalyst to courageously and carefully harmonize our independence in the land of our ancestors with the yearnings of those whose destiny today converges on the same land.

Perhaps the most eloquent, yet tragic hero who embodies these ideas that our suffering at the hands of others should never mire us in victimhood but rather embolden us to use our agency and our power to manifest more and more radical empathy, is none other than Rachel Goldberg-Polin. Over and over again throughout the horrifying, terrifying months of crisscrossing the globe and pleading with anyone - anyone! - who could possibly help her and Jon save their abducted, maimed and tortured 23 year-old son Hersh, z”l, Rachel awed us not just with her poise and strength, but with her razor sharp elucidation of Jewish moral responsibility.

Last December, in a speech before the UN in Geneva, Rachel recited a poem she had written, as she said “for a woman in Gaza”, a nameless woman who “knows who she is”. She called it, “One Tiny Seed”. Her simple, pure offering inspires and motivates more powerfully than any sermon possibly could. I leave you with Rachel’s words:

There is a lullaby that says your mother will cry a thousand tears before you grow to be a man.

I have cried a million tears in the last 67 days.

We all have.

And I know that way over there

there’s another woman

who looks just like me

because we are all so very similar

and she has also been crying.

All those tears, a sea of tears

they all taste the same.

Can we take them

gather them up,

remove the salt

and pour them over our desert of despair

and plant one tiny seed.

A seed wrapped in fear,

trauma, pain,

war and hope

and see what grows?

Could it be

that this woman

so very like me

that she and I could be sitting together in 50 years laughing without teeth

because we have drunk so much sweet tea together and now we are so very old

and our faces are creased

like worn-out brown paper bags.

And our sons

have their own grandchildren

and our sons have long lives

One of them without an arm

But who needs two arms anyway?

Is it all a dream?

A fantasy? A prophecy?

One tiny seed.