This is my love letter to you.  I think you need one.  We all need one. I need one.  

This has been an incredibly bruising year to be Jew, no matter what your politics or your feelings about Israel.  October 7 was devastating, not only because of the immense scale of the attacks, the incredible loss of life, and dysfunction and divisions in Israel that allowed such a shocking breach of security to happen. And not only because of the war that began, first in retaliation for the attacks and is now so much more.  We have so much grief and fear and confusion, and so many questions.  We are wrestling with the various attitudes about Israel within our community, to the point where some of us wonder if we have a place within the community.  All this would be more than enough, so much more than enough.

But there is a secondary war we have had to wage concurrently, happening mostly outside of Israel, and that is the war being conducted on social media, on college campuses, and in the mainstream media.  It’s more than a war of propaganda and disinformation, it’s a war of language and semantics.  I remember, early on, innocently and respectfully questioning a Facebook “friend’s” (someone I know in real life) use of the word genocide with regard to the terrible number of civilians and children being killed in Gaza as Israel deepened its ground incursion. I was unprepared for the attack. People I didn’t know jumped in, leveling accussions at me, telling me as a Jew that I needed to “do better.”

That was just one incident.  I quickly retreated – deleting my comment, blocking that so-called friend, who had noticeably stayed silent. I share this with you, because you probably have your own version of such an incident.  Since then, I muted Facebook and other social media, though I still check it.  But now I am much more careful about posting details of my life and my thoughts about the news. I am now more cautious in general about who I call a “friend.”

We were all unprepared to deal with the level of vitriol, the breathtaking assumptions based in willful ignorance, and the chasms of difference that would open within our communities, our families, and ourselves.  As I stated in my sermon one year ago on Yom Kippur, we haven’t been talking about Israel, we turned away from the complexity and the challenges of Israel being a real and imperfect country. We either made Israel out to be some kind of ideal, or we quietly distanced ourselves from its problems. 

Al chet she’chatanu lifanecha – for the sins we have committed before You by thinking we were supporting Israel by giving it a pass.   For the sins we have committed before You by suppressing diverse views about Israel and Zionism in our communities.  

I spoke about anti-semitism too, saying that the weaker Israel is, and the more divided we are as a people, the more anti-semitism spikes world-wide.  I was unprepared for how right that was.   

Thank God for the return of Jon Stewart.  He had a segment recently about Israel where he pointed out that plenty of Israelis criticize their government, now more than ever, so why shouldn’t we?  Then he does this very Jewish internal dialogue, saying to himself, “But Jon, People are going to see this segment and go, ‘Maybe Israel isn’t perfect, but criticizing them feeds the fire. Don’t you worry about antisemitism?'” And Jon answers himself, “No. I believe antisemitism will be fine. And I gotta say, not for nothing, but from what I’ve experienced, it’s very resilient and it’s not really tied to any event or war or activity or reality.” And then (Jewishly) he questions himself again, wondering aloud “Maybe I’m wrong, maybe the blame the Jews for the Black Death, the Spanish Inquisition, and the space lasers will all go away if Israel does right and peace will reign, and people will no longer baselessly and conveniently blame the Jews when things don’t work out exactly the way they want them to.” He then cuts to a clip of Trump saying, “This is the most important election in the history of the United States. In my opinion the Jewish people would have a lot to do with a loss if I’m at 40%.” 

Permit me to state the obvious – none of this is our fault.  If an election goes one way or another, it is not the fault of a teeny religious minority that makes up 2% of the US population. It is not our responsibility to educate our friends and co-workers, or teachers and administrators in our kids’ schools and colleges, or even strangers on social media. Anti-semitism is not your fault. Israel’s cirises are not your fault, and it is the definition of anti-Semitism to say that it is.

A colleague of mine, Rabbi Nina Mandel, noted recently that as she was preparing memorials for 9/11 and 10/7, much was the same in the planning process, yet the expectations were far different.  She wrote, “For Oct 7, I have to be ready to defend the legitimacy of mourning a terrorist attack that upended the lives of Israelis and Jews around the world and in one day killed and imperiled so many innocent lives. I have to explain that mourning these deaths does not mean celebrating the deaths of thousands in Gaza, or condoning the actions of the Israeli government. I have to defend my right, as a Jew, to, on this day, simply mourn the death of other Jews.”

It is simply too much.  So I want to say to you, this Yom Kippur, it is not your fault. You are not responsible for carrying it all.  This Yom Kippur, we may tap our fists to our hearts in our confessionals, but the message isn’t “Do better.” This year, the message “Release it all. It’s ok not to know the answer, and it’s ok to be wrong. It’s okay to cry for Palestinians in Gaza, and it’s okay to feel a sense of loyalty to your people.  It’s not your fault.”

The cognitive dissonance is real.  Before October 7 I thought I knew where I stood. I’ve always considered myself a pro-peace, progressive Jew who champions human rights, co-existence, and interfaith social justice efforts.  After October 7, I’ve felt more defensive and protective of “my tribe” than ever before.  But as the war drags on and expands, I feel more and more conflicted. 

I worry that October 7 has changed us, and not for the better. I have retreated from much of my interfaith work, because of the ignorance, false equivalences, and most of all, the silence of many of my local clergy colleagues.  Most recently, the Newtown Yardley ministerium, our local interfaith clergy organization, decided to hold its monthly meeting on the first day of Rosh haShanah.  They did so knowingly, and refused to reschedule. To make matters worse, nowhere on their agenda was any mention of the anniversary of October 7.  There is obviously more to this story, but I assure you, the more you know, the more questions you will have.

I tell myself that right now, it is most important to build up and strengthen the Jewish community.  As I’ve often taught, from Pirkei Avot, Ethics of the Fathers, Rabbi Hillel says, “If I am not for myself, who will be for me?” 

But Hillel continues, “If I am only for myself, what am I?” I can’t lose hope that peace is achievable, that Israelis and Palestinians can co-exist.  The mishnah’s third line, “And if not now, when?” reminds me of the urgency in all this brokenness: Peace and coexistence will not happen without my recommitment to rebuild relationships and forge new ones.  The interfaith friendships I have maintained are more precious and important than ever.  We somehow need to find our way back out there, even though it feels much safer to stay in Jewish spaces.

But we Jews have to reckon with ourselves as well.  Whenever I hear us referring to terrorists as animals, I cringe.  Animals would never have done what they did.  But I can’t tolerate any human being, no matter how reprehensible their views, being characterized as less than human. We have to reckon with the fact that humans, all of us, of every creed, have a real capacity for evil.  It begins when we don’t see or dismiss the humanity of the other.

When I went to Israel earlier this year as part of the Venture Israel Education fellowship, our group met with diverse individuals and groups across Israeli society.  In East Jerusalem we met with a Palestinian bookstore owner. He told us, “What happened on October 7 did not happen in Jerusalem, or Haifa, or the North.  It is not happenstance that the violence came out of Gaza, when the walls are higher and the separation of Israeli and Palestinians is more complete.” He told us that when we deal with threats of violence by erecting barriers so we can’t see or interact with one another, this is not making peace. And, in the long run, it actually makes us more unsafe.

We can say, “War is hell,” and we can have very reasonable explanations for why Israel needed to carry out a particular strike or why Israel is justified in defending itself, but that does not absolve us.  While my concern is primarily with Israel and my people, I am gravely concerned about the plight of all the people in Gaza.  Nobody deserves to live in such a hell, and there is no humane justification for it.  

As a rabbi, my greatest fear since October 7 is that we lose our sense of humanity and forget what is at the heart of Judaism and who we are as Jews. We cannot allow the horrors of war make us calloused or indifferent, resigned to blame the other side or dwell in anger or hate. We are ultimately responsible to one another, still even more so than ever. While we can be forgiven for retreating in order to grief and heal, we can’t forget that while we are alive we have an incredible capacity to be a force for goodness and healing. This is our ultimate sacred responsibility.  

I have never before resonated so much with the prophet Jonah, who we read about on Yom Kippur afternoon, as much as I do this year.  Jonah is the epitome of the reluctant prophet. Told by God to tell the people of Nineveh of their sins and to beg God’s mercy, he instead shirks his duty and runs away from God.  Or tries to, because can anyone truly run away from God?  My kids could tell you that God is everywhere.  What kind of a silly prophet is he?  He is judgmental of others when they do wrong, and pouts when they then do teshuvah. 

There is an essay about Jonah called “Those who Flee from God” by Rabbi Moshe Avigdor Amiel, a Lithuanian scholar and leader who lived in the first half of the 20th century.  I was taught this essay by Rabbi Jill Jacobs, who leads the rabbinic human rights organization called Truah.  In this essay, Rabbi Amiel shares how he too never understood Jonah’s actions until he experienced a similar situation . He came upon a Polish soldier, an enemy, someone he should fear, who is mortally wounded.  Instead of staying with him and perhaps easing his pain in his dying moments, Rabbi Amiel chose to flee, at great risk to himself.  He was so bothered by his reaction: why did he flee? He realized that he fled from having to look into the soldier’s face, from confronting the humanity of his energy, from seeing the face of God in the face of his mortal foe. 

We are always running from God, from seeing God in the face of another.  We skim past the difficult headlines, we scroll past disturbing images – the faces of hostages, Palestinian children in Gaza. We are constantly running away.  But God does not.  God remains with the captive and the persecuted, the voiceless and homeless.  

Like Jonah, we have retreated from our sacred responsibility – for very understandable reasons!  Here we are on Yom Kippur, truly in the belly of the whale, pleading our cause, admitting our failures.  Like Jonah, we

realize that the only way out is by recognizing that there is a Divine Grace and a Mercy and Love that is far greater than what we can perceive.   

That is what Judaism is about, in its essence but also in its most expansive sense.  Judaism is about love. Love beckons us back into relationship with one another and into relationship with God. It calls us to be accountable to each other. It demands that we overcome fear and respect humanity as created in the image of God, especially in the time of war and division. 

Now, you might think, Judaism is about love? Isn’t that the definition of Chrisitanity? Rabbi Shai Held came out with a book last year called “Judaism is About Love.” Its many insights form the basis of this sermon and helped me frame my thinking this difficult year even though it was written mostly before October 7, 2023.  He wrote the book because, as he was teaching Judaism, he was constantly coming up against distortions in the way Judaism is understood that were both perpetuated by Jews and in our wider society.  

At a book signing event I attended last spring, Rabbi Held shared an account of an exchange he had with a group of Protestant high school students many years ago when he was presenting about Judaism to them. These were exemplary students who were chosen to attend this presentation because of their engagement and commitment to the church. During the discussion, as an aside, Rabbi Held asked, “Remind me guys what does Jesus say is the great command?” and they immediately and proudly answer “love of God and love of neighbor.” When Rabbi Held followed up, “And remind me what is Jesus quoting?” Not a single hand went up. In that moment Rabbi Held realized that “this is how a culture can perpetuate a story whereby Judaism is loveless and Jesus comes into the world to fill in something that has been completely absent. These students had no idea what wells Jesus trained from. They didn’t know where he got the love. They didn’t know that Jesus is quoting Leviticus and Deuteronomy.”

In a time of so much hate, fear, hurt and sadness, I feel a sense of urgency to be grounded in a sense of my Judaism that speaks to the fullness of our tradition and the beauty of our spirit and religious values, that makes me truly proud to be Jewish. 

Often, in the US, Judaism has been depicted in narrow, stereotypical ways in popular media.  We laugh at shows that depict our families as neurotic, our synagogues as overly concerned with assimilation, and our spiritual expression as primarily gastronomic, because let’s face it, there’s definitely an element of truth.  As a rabbi, those shows always bugged me, because I know that Jewish experience and expression is far richer and broader than simply “they tried to kill us, let’s eat” or “Never forget.” It’s important that we define Judaism on its own terms and not in defense of how others perceive it or in reaction to our fears or trauma.

What is Judaism at its core? What is our mission in the world?  Our leadership went through a process of rewriting our mission statement and articulating our core values as a community just this past year.  So, is it about social justice? Is it about survival, overcoming the fires of hatred, and choosing life?  Is it about Israel? Is it about community and inclusion? Is it about Torah?  Is it about God?  

I think all those things are key elements, but what ties them together, for me at least, is love. Our tradition explicits tells us to love one another, to love our neighbor as ourselves.  This precept, stated in Leviticus 19:18, Rabbi Akiva called the heart of Torah.  It’s not a truism, a trite nicety, it’s a challenge.  I mean, think about your neighbors, the ones who make noise late at night, whose dog bit your kid, who cut down the tree that was on your property – they are much harder to love than the people down the street. And yet you share a border, and often so much more than that. So you have to figure out how to respect, even love one another, beyond the disagreements and hurts.  

The Shema, Deuteronomy 6:4-9, tells us that we must love God with all our heart, with all our breath, and with all that we have, and that we are commanded to impart that love to our children and remember to act with love when we are in our homes and out on the street.  

Judaism challenges us not to look away, to find God in the face of the stranger. Over and over the Torah tells us since we were once strangers, it is incumbent on us to respond with love to the stranger – meaning, all those on the margins of society – the poor, the immigrant, the widow and the orphan, ethnic, racial, and religious minorities.  Deuteronomy 10:18 and 19 says specifically that God loves the stranger by giving the stranger food and clothing, and so too must we love. Love is what happens when we are awake to the divine recognition of our responsibility to one another. Love is an action. 

We are limited in our capacity to hold in our hearts and consciousness the unique and infinite value of every life stolen from us on October 7, of every hostage taken, of all those killed since the war began, including the hundreds of IDF soldiers, and tens of thousands Palestinian civilians. It is impossible for us to fathom the number of families ripped apart and displaced, much less the wounds and scars people will carry, visible and invisible, for years and years to come. The loss is staggering and mind-numbing.

I have leaned a lot on Psalm 147 this past year, which says in verses 3-5, “The One who heals the broken-hearted and binds their wounds, is the One who numbers the stars and gives each of them a name.” What we humans cannot fathom, God remembers each unique soul with love. It’s an impossible task, really.  But it is a truth we must constantly strive for, according to our ability.

One way to do it is to make it personal, like Hersh Goldberg-Polin’s parents Rachel and Jon did: we focus on one life that we can know with love and that we can have hope of saving in some way. Not only did they look right into the camera so that we could see the pain and love in their eyes, they also shared hundreds of images and stories of their son, who was taken hostage by Hamas, every day on social media so that we could appreciate Hersh’s uniqueness and individuality.  So as I came to know Hersh, I could return to the knowledge that everyone killed, all of them, had a mother, a family, who now will no longer be the same.

Love does not mean being a doormat, or turning the other cheek. Love means sometimes choosing your heart, your truth, your sanity, your dignity, your family, your tribe. Rabbi Held would say that, in the face of all the complexities, contradictions, and hatred in this world, we are capable of choosing what is good and right.  Not that we always do, but we must ultimately return to love.  We are capable of choosing love.

Yom Kippur is centrally about love.  In biblical times, the Holy Temple was the physical symbol of God’s loving presence, where people went to be closest to God.  On Yom Kippur, the day that God is said to be nearer to us than any other time of year, the high priest would enter the Kodash Kodashim, the holiest place in the Temple, and would make atonement for the people.  

Today, the day of Yom Kippur itself takes the place of our Holy Temple.  Our liturgy depicts a loving, compassionate God that forgives where we are unable, who grants us atonement when our shame is too great.  Our sins distance us from God, but on Yom Kippur all our sins are voided, and with it, all the distance between us and our most expansive selves.  

This Yom Kippur may we return most fully to love – love of self, love of community, love of the stranger, love of God.  Let us take all of our pain, our sorrow, our grief, and return to relationship, return to beauty and joy, and return to love.  May we locate our roots in love.

Ken yihi ratzon, May it be so for the well being and healing of all the world.