Rosh Hashanah 2024: Why?

My mother is 86 years old. She was raised in a non-observant, secular Jewish home just a few blocks from here. As a young adult, she felt increasingly drawn to Jewish tradition and became Orthodox at the age of 21 when she married my late father and joined his family. What might have begun as an accommodation to her in-laws quickly took hold of her as a deeply personal, religious commitment which has sustained her to this day, long beyond my parents divorce many decades ago. While our beliefs about God are different, I have always been moved by my mother’s unwavering faith - a faith which has rejoiced in the Jewish people’s triumphs, especially Israel’s miraculous rebirth and resilience; and a faith which has grieved our tragedies, especially Israel’s endless cycles of terrorist attacks and wars.

My mother and I are very close and speak every day or two. I know how deeply affected she’s been by the horrors of October 7th and the battles throughout the year since. It has consumed her waking hours and disrupted her sleeping ones. But I wasn’t expecting to hear her say what she said when we talked a few weeks into the beginning of this nightmare. For the first time in my life, and I think for the first time in hers, with a trembling voice and unstoppable tears, barely able to muster the courage to say it, my mother confessed that her faith had been shattered. That she could no longer believe in the covenant made with the Jewish people that promised God would love and protect us. On October 7, 2023 and over the ensuing months, the relationship my mother always believed she had with God ended. It was yet another loss, opening another layer of mourning for her. And I know she’s not alone in that particular grief. 

How many of us - whether we’ve admitted it or not - have lost some faith this year, or at least have felt it challenged? How many congregants and students have reached out to me confused and angry, unable to pray, unable to study. And what about those whose own lives and families were scarred forever by October 7th?

Two weeks ago I was humbled to spend the evening with Madison Reisler, a young Jewish leader who works for the Joint Distribution Committee. This past August Madison brought 25 emerging leaders from across North America on a mission to Montreal during which they came up to the Laurentians and spent a beautiful Shabbat afternoon with us in Ivry exploring the blossoming nature-oriented Jewish community we’re building in the region. Madson and I formed a special bond that weekend. Maddie is also the first cousin of Hersh Goldberg-Polin, z”l. Her mother Abby is Jon Polin’s sister. Maddie and Abby are also close friends of my brother and his family and were meant to be at my niece’s wedding on the Sunday of Labor Day weekend until they got the news on Saturday night that Hersh had been murdered. 

As an aside, that was one of the most challenging but heartfelt weddings I’ve ever officiated at, trying to hold everyone in our collective grief and give people the permission they craved to celebrate with the bride and groom; a religious obligation made even more compelling by our knowledge that celebrating the young couple was a celebration of our unwavering commitment - even in the face of evil - to building the Jewish future. 

A few weeks after Hersh’s funeral Maddie and I were talking. In the much-needed respite from the intense shiva in Jerusalem, the emotional chaos unleashed by Hersh’s murder, and the fatigue of the unplanned trip from New York to Israel, she shared with me her grief not only for her cousin, but for the clarity she once felt about her Jewish faith and Jewish purpose. She asked if we could sit together to study and talk. And we did. In many ways this sermon - on one of the holiest days of the Jewish year when we reckon with ourselves, with each other, with our people, with all people, and with God - was inspired by my time with Maddie.

Suffering, loss, fear, loneliness -- for some these feelings prompt a return to or a deepening of their spiritual consciousness, but they can’t reconcile it with their despair over how a loving God could allow for such horrors as October 7th. For others, they awaken a new desire for spirituality or a relationship with the Divine but feel hypocritical for having rejected it all beforehand, often precisely because of religion’s inability to explain why the righteous suffer. Even once we account for human frailty - and often human failure - that lie at the heart of tragedies that befall us, and even for those of us who don’t believe in a god who decides which strings to pull and which not to and when, many of us are left to wonder if there’s something the universe is trying to tell us through such catastrophes. As we engage with this question of theodicy, of how God can allow such evil, let’s remember one critical thing: each time it's asked it has its own authenticity and meaning. Today, this year, this is our question. And in our bold and courageous tradition, it needs no justification. 

Many have wondered if our struggles are new. We’ve heard echoes of the Jewish past in our descriptions of the terror of October 7th and the theological and spiritual destruction it left in its wake: the hurban/the destruction of ancient Jerusalem, the Spanish Inquisition, pogroms, the Holocaust. But the agonizing confusion around why horrible things happen to innocent, good people is as old as humanity itself; and certainly as old as Judaism itself. The Sages even describe Moses on Mount Sinai accessing each of the 50 Gates of Wisdom except for one - the gate of understanding why good people suffer. 

The loudest echo reverberating in our tormented souls is the biblical Book of Job, a book which contains the most profound challenge to the entire Torah, and one whose various interpretations offer us different pathways through our struggle. 

A righteous man named Job, blessed with numerous children and abundant wealth, becomes the pawn in a game between God and Satan to see whether Job’s loyalty to God is only because of his good fortune in life. Under God’s watch, Satan kills Job’s children, destroys all his property, and inflicts Job himself with a terrible illness, and thus the test begins. And when did all that happen? On this very day of Rosh Hashanah, says Rashi. After all, this is Yom HaDin, the day we are being judged, the day we reflect on what’s happened over the last year and our prayers - and anxieties - for the year ahead. This is the very day we confront life’s inevitable disappointments and injustices, even as we celebrate its promise of new beginnings. A perfect day to be tested, and a perfect day to test. A perfect day to wrestle not with good and evil, but with God and evil.

The normative biblical tradition captured in such iconic texts as the Sh’ma teaches that if we do good and follow in God’s ways, good things will come to us, and if we don’t…

וְהָיָה אִם־שָׁמֹֽעַ תִּשְׁמְ֒עוּ אֶל־מִצְוֹתַי אֲשֶׁר֯ אָ֯נֹכִי מְצַוֶּה אֶתְכֶם הַיּוֹם לְאַהֲבָה אֶת־יְהֹוָה אֱלֹהֵיכֶם וּלְעָבְדוֹ בְּכָל֯־לְ֯בַבְכֶם וּבְכָל־נַפְשְׁ֒כֶם: וְנָתַתִּי מְטַר֯־אַ֯רְצְ֒כֶם בְּעִתּוֹ֯ י֯וֹרֶה וּמַלְקוֹשׁ וְאָסַפְתָּ דְגָנֶֽךָ וְתִירשְׁ֒ךָ וְיִצְהָרֶֽךָ: וְנָתַתִּי עֵֽשֶׂב֯ בְּ֯שָׂדְ֒ךָ לִבְהֶמְתֶּֽךָ וְאָכַלְתָּ וְשָׂבָֽעְתָּ::

And it will be— if you vigilantly obey My commandments which I command you this day, to love Adonai your God, and serve God with your entire hearts and with your entire souls— that I will give rain for your land in its proper time, the early (autumn) rain and the late (spring) rain; and you will harvest your grain and your wine and your oil. And I will put grass in your fields for your cattle, and you will eat and be satisfied. 

הִשָּׁמְ֒רוּ לָכֶם פֶּן֯־יִ֯פְתֶּה לְבַבְכֶם וְסַרְתֶּם וַעֲבַדְתֶּם אֱלֹהִים֯ אֲ֯חֵרִים וְהִשְׁתַּחֲוִיתֶם לָהֶם: וְחָרָה אַף־יְהֹוָה בָּכֶם וְעָצַר֯ אֶ֯ת־הַשָּׁמַֽיִם וְלֹּא֯־יִ֯הְיֶה מָטָר וְהָאֲדָמָה לֹא תִתֵּן אֶת֯־יְ֯בוּלָהּ וַאֲבַדְתֶּם֯ מְ֯הֵרָה מֵעַל הָאָֽרֶץ הַטֹּבָה אֲשֶׁר֯ יְ֯הֹוָה נֹתֵן לָכֶם

But watch out lest your hearts be swayed and you turn astray, and you worship alien gods and bow to them. And Adonai’s fury will blaze among you, and God will close off the heavens and there will be no rain and the earth will not yield its produce; and you will perish swiftly from the good land which Adonai gives you. (Devarim 11: 13-17)

Clearly, our generation is hardly the first to challenge that description of the world and say: “Sorry, that is just not how the world works. That system is clearly broken”. But where do we go from there? Do we live with what feels like a broken system? Do we repair the system? Do we even understand the system well enough to say it’s broken? Do we build a new system? What can we learn from Job and others who have faced this truth?

A common refrain heard among rabbis and regular folks is some form of what Rabbi Yannai said back in Talmud: “It is not in our power to explain why the wicked are at ease, or the righteous suffer.” (Babylonian Talmud Mishna Avot 4:19). Common as that idea is, and comforting as it may be to some people to think that whatever crisis just happened to them is part of some Divine plan, that was never the first, or last, word on the subject. Abraham challenged God on the notion that righteous people should suffer along with the wicked. One of our greatest Talmudic Sages, Elisha ben Abuyah, abandoned his faith after witnessing a child die while fulfilling a mitzvah and seeing his teacher tortured by the Romans, a story we read about during our Yom Kippur martyrology prayers. I am in good rabbinic company when I tell you that I would never offer this framing to someone in the throes of loss. Surrendering ourselves to a system that feels broken, that undermines our sense of right and wrong that lives within our divinely crafted souls, is not the only, or even the preferred option. 

At the very least, those who are willing to surrender to it don’t yield quietly. Relationships sometimes break down, and part of the repair process is making space for partners to express their emotions. The same is true of the Divine-human relationship. Professor Dov Weiss, in a book called Pious Irreverence, chronicles a long and deep Jewish tradition of Jewish protest theology. He lists the biblical injustices committed by God such the flood, Sodom, the Akeda, Isaac’s blindness, Jacob’s wounded thigh, the outsized punishments of Miriam and Korah, the death of Aaron’s two sons, Moses’ exclusion from the Holy Land, and analyzes how, through midrash/homiletical commentaries, the Rabbis put words of protest into character’s mouths so the characters say what the Rabbis really wanted to say when they encountered injustices that they believed God could have - and should have - prevented.

He also suggests that classical anthropomorphic language about God engaging in all kinds of human behavior - feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, praying -  is what establishes our intimacy with God to be able to lash out when God angers and disappoints us. He quotes rabbinic texts wherein when confronted, God concedes to have made mistakes, shows remorse, and demonstrates the capacity to refine the divine moral compass.

Weiss wrote, “When a person’s life is infused with a consciousness of a providential and personal God, very real feelings of frustration and dismay are bound to surface. Indeed, disappointment is a typical experience in all loving relationships … holding back feelings of anger might even be detrimental to an honest and open relationship.” He considers rabbinic midrash an exercise in self-expression, the Rabbis owning their emotions, often venting rage and resentment, precisely to be able to remain in relationship with God, even if, in the end, it can’t provide any answers.

Jewish protest theology comes in many forms beyond rabbinic midrash. It comes as poetry, music and art. It even comes as jokes. Exhibit A: There was a hugely popular and successful Jewish comedian who died and went to heaven. As she stood in judgment before God, God said: Listen, before I let you into heaven, I understand you’re a very funny comedian who tells great jokes. So tell me a joke. Tell you a joke? She says?? Now?? Yeah, God says, you’re a comedian, tell me a joke. Ok, she says, and she tells God a Holocaust joke. God doesn’t laugh. That’s not funny, God says. Hmm, she replies. Guess you had to be there.

Channeling the Book of Job, Israeli journalist, lawyer and musician Assaf Gur wrote this protest poem called “Kaddish” after October 7th:

Yitgadal V’yitkadash Shmei Raba

And no one came

Many thousands called Him on Shabbat morning

Crying His name out loud

Begging Him with tears just to come

But He ceased from all His work (אבל הוא שבת מכל מלאכתו)

No God came

And no God calmed

Only Satan celebrated uninterrupted

Dancing between kibbutzim and the slaughter festival

And our correspondent goes on to report

All the while sobbing

Saying there is a burnt baby

And there is an abducted baby

There is an orphaned baby

And there is a day-old baby

Still linked to his mother’s body by the umbilical cord

He hadn’t even managed to find out his name

What will be inscribed on the tiny headstone

With a single date for birth and death

This is what the kibbutz looks like after Satan’s visit

Turning the broadcast back to the studio

Quiet now they are shooting

They are also launching rockets

And there is no government

And there is no mercy (אין רחמים)

Just the screaming and the pictures

That will never leave the mind

The seventh of October

Two thousand twenty three.

For some it’s not enough to protest the system. Maybe we’re not understanding how the system actually works. In a close reading of the Book of Job, my friend and colleague, Rav Haim Ovadia, sees four models of how the text responds to this timeless question of why bad things happen to good people. 

One: In response to the trauma of losing his children, his property and his health, Job remains steadfast in his loyalty to God. Not so much his wife. She says to him: 

וַתֹּ֤אמֶר לוֹ֙ אִשְׁתּ֔וֹ עֹדְךָ֖ מַחֲזִ֣יק בְּתֻמָּתֶ֑ךָ בָּרֵ֥ךְ אֱלֹהִ֖ים וָמֻֽת׃

His wife said to him, “You still keep your integrity! Curse God and die!” (Job 2:9)

She says: How can you sit there and still sing praises to God?? The system doesn’t work. There is no justice. Give up. Just curse God, invoke God’s wrath, and let it all be done. Job refuses to listen to her. He accepts that evil and suffering are inevitable parts of life and maintains his devotion to God.

Two: Then some of his friends come along and say: “The system works perfectly. Of course God’s world is just. The righteous prosper and the wicked suffer. You just thought you belonged to one group, but really you belong to the other. You and your children must have sinned to incur God’s wrath, you just don’t realize what you’ve done. But the system works.” Job rejects them too, insisting on his innocence. Instead, he speaks of humbly surrendering to a God whose overwhelming power he can neither challenge nor change. 

Three: Job gives up on justice and instead submits to God in the hopes it placates God’s inscrutable, unyielding power and that it leads to some restored blessings for him in the future. In other words, Job’s devotion to God becomes self-serving, self-protecting. 

Four: One more friend comes along, Elihu, and offers a final, paradigm-changing response to the injustices of life. He basically says, “You've got the system all wrong. Our human actions have no impact on God, they neither provoke God’s punishments nor God’s blessings.” 

אִם־חָ֭טָאתָ מַה־תִּפְעל־בּ֑וֹ וְרַבּ֥וּ פְ֝שָׁעֶ֗יךָ מַה־תַּֽעֲשֶׂה־לּֽוֹ׃

If you sin, what do you do to God?

If your transgressions are many,

How do you affect God?

אִם־צָ֭דַקְתָּ מַה־תִּתֶּן־ל֑וֹ א֥וֹ מַה־מִּיָּדְךָ֥ יִקָּֽח׃

If you are righteous,

What do you give God;

What does God receive from your hand? (35:6-7)

With these lines the Book of Job challenges the entire biblical system which 

suggests that God responds to what we do and either punishes or rewards our actions. Elihu says that asking why God allows bad things to happen to good people is to ask the wrong question. Whoever and whatever God is, and if God even is, God is not affected by our choices to inflict terror on each other or to show compassion to one another. The only beings affected by our choices are our fellow human beings:

לְאִישׁ־כָּמ֥וֹךָ רִשְׁעֶ֑ךָ וּלְבֶן־אָ֝דָ֗ם צִדְקָתֶֽךָ׃

Your wickedness affects people like yourself; Your righteousness, mortals. (35:8)

With this single line the Torah’s whole theology is reworked: we should do mitzvot not because we seek to satisfy God, but because living a righteous and compassionate life is simply the right thing to do. We should provide for the needy and support the vulnerable not because we believe we’ll be rewarded for that with either material blessings or even Divine protection, but simply because others will benefit from our actions. That is the most noble way to honor our own humanity, the sacred lives we’ve been gifted, and the humanity of those with whom we share this world, and to honor the Source of Life itself. 

For some people, this theological shift requires a letting go of long-held beliefs of how God functions in our world and in our lives, and is yet another loss to be mourned in this time of overwhelming loss. But it can also be a source of deep healing and hope, reinvigorating our commitments to bring love, generosity, respect, humility, and hope to those who are suffering, driven not by theology or politics, but by our very humanity.

The Torah’s essence lies not in its simplistic fantasies of reward and punishment, as the Sh’ma and other texts suggest. In fact, the heart of its promise to be a source of holiness, of meaning and purpose, lies in two frequently quoted words these days from the book of Deuteronomy: וּבָֽחַרְתָּ֙ בַּחַיִּ֔ים/CHOOSE LIFE! Choose the lives around you. Choose love. Choose hessed. Choose kindness. Choose tzedaka. Choose each other. As Rachel Goldberg-Polin would literally shout to Hersh, z”l, whether from the Gaza border or into a mic at the UN hoping he was listening: “I LOVE YOU. STAY STRONG. SURVIVE”. If only. Only by prioritizing LIFE do we choose the Divine, the holy One that permeates and unites us all.

Another voice raising this reading of Job belongs to the contemporary theologian Judith Plaskow whose work harnesses our embodied experience of life to speak a renewed language of Jewish faith and theologically-grounded Jewish practice. 

About our question she wrote: “God, the wellspring of life and creative energy that dwells within all that exists, is unconcerned with justice; indeed, the very word “concern” unduly personalizes the Ground of Being that sustains and enlivens all that is, good, bad, and indifferent. But it is our job to be concerned with justice. Job has spoken well of God for two reasons: first of all, unlike the friends, he tells the truth. Lambasted by his supposed comforters, hemmed in on all sides, he still refuses to say what he knows to be false—that the good are rewarded and the wicked punished. Second, Job refuses to relinquish the yearning for the justice he fails to see in the world. Finding set before him life and death, first blessing and then curse, he chooses life in the form of speaking truth and demanding justice. This is our task as human beings in the face of an all-embracing God: to affirm the ties that bind us to each other and creation, and to be the justice required for creation to flourish.”

How are we to be the justice required for creation to flourish? In his recent magnum opus, The Triumph of Life, Rabbi Yitz Greenberg clarifies his Jewish theology for a post-Shoah world where protecting and enhancing life is our core responsibility. To Yitz, the Shoah was the sign that God broke the Brit as we understood it and now our role in the evolving covenant is to perform all those sacred acts that at one time God took responsibility for: protecting the vulnerable, comforting the suffering, holding accountable those who disdain life. As he says, “It is not that God is uncaring, but God…wants humans to take full responsibility. Reward and punishment is no longer the model. It’s all about relationship and shared values.” 

Those who find meaning in this response to tragedy even as they still yearn for an intimate relationship with God often share that they don’t seek God in the cause of their suffering, but discover Divine presence in their very pain, and in the love and compassion shown to them by those who try to bring them comfort.  עִמּֽוֹ־אָנֹכִ֥י בְצָרָ֑ה/I will be with you in your distress, says the book of Psalms. As Yitz himself commented on this verse, “... God is totally intertwined and suffering with us in our agony. In our time, God saves (and does miracles) only through divine agents [in this case, humans] as it says earlier in this psalm (v. 11): כִּ֣י מַ֭לְאָכָיו יְצַוֶּה־לָּ֑ךְ לִ֝שְׁמרְךָ֗ בְּכׇל־דְּרָכֶֽיךָ׃/‘[God] will command God’s agents [malachav, meaning us!] to guard you wherever you go.’

But for others, this shift in the covenant moves God to the margins of our world.

Israeli poet Aharon Shabtai said as much in his poem, “Tikkun”, written October 10th:

The horror,

The terrible disaster

The shame

The fragments of stupidity

The foolishness of religion

The blindness of eyes

The violence of despair

Will not be repaired, neither by an officer,

Nor a bomb, nor an airplane,

Nor any more blood.

Only the heart’s wisdom can repair,

It is only the good teacher who can repair,

The medic, whether Arab or Jew,

The peaceful traveler can repair, the bicycle rider,

The sandwich carrier

The one who walks in the street.

The one who opens eyes can repair,

The one who speaks compassionately can repair

The listener can repair,

The educated person can repair,

The one who waits and ponders can repair,

The guide can repair

On the paths of generosity, of love,

The painter can repair, the poet,

The students of peace can repair,

The gardeners of peace.

And finally, for some, what this moment in Jewish history demands is not a revised version of our covenant with God, but the need for a new one altogether. Like Rabbi Richard Rubenstein’s “Death of God” theology after the Shoah which posited that the God we thought we knew - an all-knowing, all-powerful, loving God bound to the Jewish people by a unique covenant - is dead; but Judaism and Jewish peoplehood are very much alive. He wrote:

“It is precisely because human existence is tragic, ultimately hopeless, and without meaning that we treasure our religious community. It is our community of ultimate concern. In it, we can and do share, in a depth dimension which no secular institution can match…[Jewishness] continually reminds us of the community of experience, wisdom, insight, and common need which has linked the generations of Israel one to another. Certain behavior patterns are Jewish and we freely choose to live in a way which our ancestors have done, not because we have to, or because we are commanded to, but because our free understanding of our Jewish situation makes these choices more rewarding and meaningful than others…

If we must live without God, religious law is more necessary for us than ever. Our temptation to anarchic omnipotence and the total indifference of the cosmos to our deeds call forth the need for a set of guidelines to enable us to apprehend the limits of appropriate behavior. Without God, we need law, tradition, and structure far more than ever.”

Among the Israeli artists who have given voice to the anguish of this past year and who are calling for a new Brit, is Elchanan Nir, a rabbi, novelist, poet and philosopher. This is his poem, “Now We Need a New Torah”: (there are references to classical texts which the English translation elides)

On this particular day of Rosh Hashanah 2024, this Yom HaDin 5785, we’ve come together not only to be judged by God for the new year ahead, but to judge God in return. Whatever your theology, whether that judgment is real or mythical, it is necessary and appropriate. Remember that what feels just and appropriate today may yield to a different feeling or belief tomorrow. And that’s ok. Relationships are dynamic, even relationships with God. They evolve and change continually. That’s what keeps them alive.

I have provided you with no answers, just with options. But providing answers wasn’t my task or my goal. It was merely to help you raise your voices, unmask your souls, and give us some tools to help heal each other’s broken hearts. It is those tools, tools which come from deep within our wise and compassionate tradition,  which will help us build the year - and years - ahead. It is those tools which will help us build a world of love, an olam hesed, whose urgency we feel more than ever. A place for godliness to dwell, with or without God.

May our renewed commitment to one another restore our shattered faith - in the sacredness of life and in the worthiness of humanity. May it strengthen us to keep fighting to bring the hostages home, and to bring Israel and the world closer to peace. 

Shanah Tovah.