The alarm interrupted a dream about my son (Jonah) surprising me at home. In the dream he wasn’t feeling well and decided to come home from college for a little TLC. The dream made me smile; it felt comforting, somehow.

Later in the day, I texted him. “I dreamed about you last night,” I wrote. “That you weren’t feeling well.” “That’s amazing,” came the response. “Because I’m sick.”

The coincidence made us laugh. It also made me wonder.

Just a few days after Jonah was born, the pediatrician asked us, “What’s he like?” We had no clue how to answer the question. New parents, we were in a sleepless stupor of complete shock. He was a baby, an actual human whom we loved more than life itself, who depended on us to keep him alive, and we had no clue. We were in over our heads, that much was clear. Sensing our panic, the doctor smiled. “Just trust your instincts,” he said. “You’ll be fine.”

Instincts?! Our pediatrician – not an alternative-medicine, holistic-homeopathic guy, but an old-school MD – was telling us that our best hope was our instincts?! We agreed on our way home that we – and our newborn child – were in some very deep trouble.

So now here it is, all these years later. Jonah turns 21 this week. And somehow… those instincts are still what it’s about. Kicking in at some subterranean level, to have me dreaming about what’s going on with my child even when he hasn’t actually told me what’s going on. How does that happen? How does that work? Is it real, or a coincidence?

On Wednesday night, the Bible discussion group kept coming back to the question: did these stories really happen? Is there evidence? Is it history or legend? Accurate, or fables woven long ago and handed down as history? It was a repeat conversation in some ways of the ones we had around Pesach (Passover), too: did the Exodus really happen? Were we really slaves in Egypt?

Causing me to wonder aloud with you all: why does it matter so much? Why does this question keep nagging at us? What is our need for veracity with our stories, our history, these texts? Is it the flotsam of the “fake news” era, a defensive posture protecting our authenticity as Jews? Perhaps it is born of some nagging insecurity, that if we don’t have a historical claim to realness then… we aren’t real, valid, or worthy?

I wonder: what if we shifted our question away from “is it true?” What if we become like the Velveteen Rabbit, made real not by proof of fact, but by the depth of our love? Like, if it were all made up – if the whole Torah and our most ancient history is “fake news,” chas v’shalom – but we still lived it and loved it for three thousand years, or two thousand or one thousand… wouldn’t that be enough? Enough to justify our own attachment to the stories, the teachings, the morals? Do they also need to be true to matter to us?

What if part of what matters is our instinct? I would posit that that, too, is a form of truth. That our instincts are also real. Go ahead, Google the psychology studies, they’re there; and laugh as you do for wanting data-driven knowledge about the non-data-driven knowing. Intuition is part of how we know things as Jews and as humans. As Jews, our instincts urge us to learn the stories, live the rituals and values, and pass them on to the next generation. As parents, as friends, in our casual interactions with strangers around town as well as in our most intimate relationships, we do best when guided by our instincts. Sometimes we get a “gut feeling” that turns out to be exactly right. Sometimes we have a “sixth sense” that gives us information we need. Sometimes we dream something, like I did just days ago, and sometimes we think of someone just as the phone rings, because they were thinking of us, too; our instincts and subconscious connecting us faster than our fingers can get to the phone. 

There is more than one way of knowing. Knowledge – דעת da’at in Hebrew – has many layers. We can know something intellectually. We can also be filled with ru’ach hakodesh, the holy spirit, to know something in a different way. In the Talmud (BT Sanhedrin 11a), the bat kol, or divine echo, is described as a subtle, intuitive “voice” that guides our decision-making. Elsewhere (BT Brachot), the rabbis discuss dreams as a form of communication with the holy spirit, often reflecting intuitive insights about one’s life or the future. In the daily liturgy, as part of the weekday Amidah, we ask for “grace to receive wisdom, understanding, and knowledge” (chochmah, binah, and da’at). Barukh atah adonay, the blessing concludes, chonen hada’at. Blessed are You, who graces us with da’at – knowledge. Not just the kind you go to school for, but the deeper, wordless kind. 

I share this as a reminder to trust your gut and to work on that, as part of your psycho-emotional-spiritual toolkit.  There is more than just what we see or know with our eyes, or by logic, reason, and book-learning. There is also what we know in our kishkes. Truth matters – and right now that feels like a super important value to keep repeating over and over, to ourselves and our children. Some things really did happen and others did not, and our ability to honor the difference constitutes the bedrock of civilized society as well as our own integrity. But there are some aspects of life which depend not on that kind of knowing, but on the other kind. On intuitive knowing. Like parenting, like friendship, like showing up for one another with big hearts. Like making decisions and feeling good about them. Like reaching for faith and hope and brightness to shine us through our days. For all of these, we need more than just intellectual knowledge. We need to know that our instincts are a form of grace. We need to honor that our work as humans, part of it, is to come closer and closer to hearing the whispers of the ruach hakodesh, the holy spirit, in our dreams and in our hearts.

P.S. Part of how I work on intuiting is through meditation, song, and prayer. That’s why Cantor Kissner and I are leading a renewal-style Shabbat morning experience tomorrow and regularly over the next several months. Click here for the line-up of when we will be doing what tomorrow morning at Soul Refresh.

I’ve told the story before: of a woman who, as part of a long illness, found she could not eat. Every day of her convalescence, the hospital staff would bring her fresh milk and other nourishing foods but the idea of drinking even the tiniest sip disgusted her. One day a friend came to visit, and seeing the untouched milk asked if she could drink some. Watching her friend drink with gusto that which she abhorred, the woman realized: we are all so profoundly different. What tastes awful to me, is delicious to her.

As simple as this story is, I have found it helpful this week – as I did when I first shared it, after Roe v. Wade was overturned and I watched as some people celebrated and others wept. Here we are again, it seems: some people elated and relieved with the outcome of this week’s election, and others grieving and anxious about what the future holds. What tastes awful to some is delicious to others. And if we thought those tastes were delineated across state or county lines, or if we thought that it was just our own families or friendships that bear this complicated dynamic of political difference – well, we now know it’s not. The election results prove what a mixed bag of values and ideas we are. I know I’m not the only one whose nephews and nieces (all six of them, from both sides of the family!) posted very different reactions on Instagram than my own children had to the election news. 

They are good, kind, fun, wonderful, menschy kids and teens, my nieces and nephews. The news tastes different in their mouths than it does in my own children’s – who are also good, kind, fun, wonderful, and menschy. Family is hard, community is hard, and democracy is hard, because in all of these groups we agree to live with our differences. We agree that the work is worth it. Pluralism is predicated on honoring differences including the ones that taste the worst in our own mouths. 

The parasha this week is the opening of Abraham’s story. Lech l’cha, the opening words, mean “Go to yourself.” Go, get going, for yourself, into yourself, to you. It is God’s call to Abraham, and to us. It is literal – Abraham (still Abram, actually, at this point in the story) is to leave one place and travel to a new one; but it is so much more than that. As Israeli journalist and Torah scholar Sivan Rahav-Meir put it: When Abram hears this call to get going, he has no idea where he is headed. We know he is going to the Promised Land, and we can picture Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, Ben-Gurion Airport, the landscaped neighborhoods of friends and family. But none of this exists yet, and moreover – Abraham has never been there. He is journeying into the complete unknown.

Which is where we are, too. Like Abraham (and Princess Elsa, in Frozen 2) we have never been here before.  Whether we voted for our President-elect or not, whether we are excited about his policies or find them abhorrent – we are in a new phase of American life and American history. We are also in a new phase of Jewish life and Jewish history. More than a year into this war, its geopolitical consequences are only one layer of what we witness as we follow the news of, for example, last night’s pogrom in Amsterdam against Israeli athletes and fans, or whatever crops up each day for Jewish communities around the globe. While antisemitism is thousands of years old, this particular moment (“globalized intifada,” some are calling it) with its particularities is new. We can learn from history, but are going to live through this new moment in new ways because we have never been here before.

As humans, the unknown is frightening. We are designed to hold fear around change and difference. It serves us well sometimes, and sometimes it does not. I’d like to suggest that right now, it does not. I’d like to offer us instead two qualities that Abraham brought with him into his unknown: faith and kindness.

Faith: Abraham lived among people who believed in many gods, and he believed there was only One. His faith was bold and he was not afraid of it or where it would take him. We may disagree with our neighbors and families about the best course for this nation. We may be convinced that our values and vision and ethics are correct and theirs is not. What sorts of faith can we nurture in ourselves now that can help us in this moment? Is it a faith that we are all acting out of best intentions and highest ideals? That even the most distasteful people and leaders have something to teach us or to offer the world? Might we cultivate faith in the goodness of humanity? Most famously, Abraham modeled for us faith in a Higher Power that has a plan. A plan that we can’t see or hear or understand and has not been shared with us. Abraham’s faith was tested over and over again throughout his life; so too our faith is tested, perhaps especially in moments like these where we may feel bewildered. Faith is faith because it is not about proof or logic; it is about recognizing the clenched-heart feeling of fear and taking a deep breath and saying: the sun came up this morning, the world will keep turning, it will be okay.

Kindness: Abraham’s kindness mirrors in so many ways the ways we might be kind in this moment. Abraham opened his tent to those who appeared on his doorstep (flap?) and shared his food. He risked his life to rescue his nephew Lot when taken hostage. He worried for Sarah’s safety and took action to keep her, and him, safe. He made peace treaties with his neighbors. Over and over again he sought God’s help in creating shalom bayit, a peaceful home marked by smooth relations with his family. Abraham’s kindness is for us to emulate. It, too, is an antidote to grief, fear, anxieties of all sorts. Because when we are kind to others, that kindness spreads. We create the world we want to live in, a world where people care for one another. It helps others, but it also helps us.

Faith and kindness will be our guides as we step into the unknown. Abraham and Sarah will be our companions, along with all of the stories our ancestors gave us as an inheritance to accompany us on our journeys. The news of the day is going to taste differently for each of us. But as a Jewish community, we can continue to create for and with one another the sanctuary and solace we seek through faith, through kindness, and through Torah.

A snippet of a phone conversation yesterday with a friend:

Me: Hi, how are you?
Friend (a bit down): Y’know, I’m okay.
Me: What’s going on?
Friend: The elections. I’m so anxious.
Me: That’s why I watch very little of the news.
Friend: Yeah, well, I’m a politics junkie. I can’t help it. I doomscroll.

Sound familiar? Yeah. If not you, surely someone in your household or life. For months-into-weeks now we have been ramping up. Every headline an all-caps shout about who might win, how close the race is, how the future of the nation depends on this particular election in ways that are unique and unprecedented. Maybe it does, maybe it doesn’t. Maybe that is true, or maybe that idea keeps us hooked on the news. Election-related stress is now as much of a news item as the actual election. We’re stressed out hearing about how stressed out we are. And then… national attention is focused on our community’s voting patterns: is one candidate or party better for Israel, or the Jewish people here in the US? How do our answers to that question align or misalign with the rest of that candidate or party’s stated agenda and values? How do we activate our activism in positive ways to influence the outcome of an election we are super anxious about? How do we vote our conscience this year? And will it, and us, ever calm down?

I’m not a politics junkie, I’m a life-of-the-spirit junkie. All week, I’ve been gearing up to write this blog, my first since the fall holiday marathon ended and I turn my attention back to other things. I’ve been wondering: what can I say that is spiritually helpful to us right now? What is really at the heart of the matter?

What is at the heart of the matter is that – as the Native American fable has it – we each have two wolves inside of us, and the one you feed is the one that grows. In Buddhist terms, as taught by the late Thich Nhat Hanh, it is the idea of inviting positive seeds. “We each have many kinds of ‘seeds’ lying deep in our consciousness. Those we water are the ones that sprout…[and] nothing exists without its opposite.” So if you have a seed of anxiety, you have also a seed of calm. If you have a seed of despair, you also have a seed of hope. When we focus on the seed that will nourish us, it naturally grows.

In Jewish thought, this idea is taught through the framework of the yetzer hatov (good inclination) and yetzer hara (evil inclination). “Who is strong? One who conquers their inclination.” This teaching in Pirke Avot (4:1) emphasizes inner strength as the ability to control our impulses and habits – including our addiction to the news, to doomscrolling, and most of all of allowing ourselves to feed our own despair and anxiety. “A person should always incite the good inclination (yetzer hatov) against the evil inclination (yetzer hara)” (Talmud, Brachot 5a). The yetzer hara will always be there, “crouching at the door” as God says to Cain in last week’s parasha. “But you can master it” (Genesis 4:7).

This next week will be full of temptation to despair, to worry, to anxiety. We can choose to feed that in ourselves, doing ourselves harm as well as doing our part in making that the air we collectively breathe in this cultural moment. Or we can choose to nourish something else. We can choose to water the seeds of calm, of looking for the good in every situation, of hope. If we choose that for ourselves – the yetzer hatov – then we will shape this cultural moment for the better, helping others feel that tov, that goodness, too. In fact, I think I just came up with my new favorite translation of yetzer hatov: positive vibe. We can choose that, create it together, if we want to.

I close with a reminder, one that I think may get lost in the frenzy this year. The reminder is that our living in a democracy – while stressful, to be sure, and full of problems – is a blessing. This country, with all it suffers, is a blessing, in so very many ways. Voting is a blessing. Few generations in the history of the planet have been blessed to be able to participate in any way in the rule of government. In that spirit, I share a meditation to be recited before (or after) voting, composed by Rabbi Lev Meirowitz Nelson:

May it be Your will, at this season of our election, to guide us towards peace.

By voting, we commit to being full members of society, to accepting our individual responsibility for the good of the whole. May we place over ourselves officials in all our gates…who will judge the people with righteousness (Deut 16:18), and may we all merit to be counted among those who work faithfully for the public good.

Open our eyes to see the image of God in all candidates and elected officials, and may they see the image of God in all citizens of the earth.

Grant us the courage to fulfill the mitzvah of loving our neighbors as ourselves, and place in our hearts the wisdom to understand those who do not share our views.

As we pray on the High Holidays, “May we become a united society, fulfilling the divine purpose with a whole heart.”

And as the Psalmist sang, “May there be shalom within your walls, peace in your strongholds. For the sake of my brothers and sisters and friends, I will speak peace to you.” (Ps. 122:7-8)

To watch this sermon, delivered on Yom Kippur 2024, click here.

If I am honest, I want more than my one life. It’s just the truth. I remember sitting outside in the yard as a young girl, five or six, looking up close at the leaves on a branch, or a caterpillar. There’s a picture of me, kindergarten or so, doing something intense-looking like tying a string on a branch or something that brought me up close to the branch, the leaves. Maybe I’m remembering the picture more than the moment. I feel the love of my parents taking that picture. They are getting older. I am so blessed they are still here, and full of grief too, knowing they won’t be forever. I mean, I hang out with you guys, that’s part of what we do together, we bury our most precious loved ones, together. (And also the less precious loved ones, too, let’s be honest.) We grieve, that’s my point. And we anticipate the grief, that’s so much of the pain we all carry. I’m no different in that regard than anyone else, even if I get to sit here in the fancy chair.

I thought about what I wanted to say today, what sermon I wanted to give. And then I remembered something I’d heard on a podcast, or maybe I read it, that we no longer have the interest in or capacity for oratory; that all we really want is sound bytes. I thought of the Red Zone, how we don’t even sit through a whole football game anymore, instead we watch 4 games simultaneously but just the good parts, and also we have a screen on our laps featuring something else altogether the whole time. So I thought about it, and then I thought: what if I don’t? What if I give sound bytes, along the way—and that’s what I’ve been doing, teaching, giving drashot along the way, getting in what I think is important for us as we go.

What are we doing here? What is this all about? What is at the heart of the matter?

Forgiveness. Compassion. Kindness. Course-correcting so we don’t find ourselves off by one degree our whole lives and then discover that instead of landing in LA you’re in the Pacific Ocean—for those who were with us last night —the lesson from the world of aviation, that if you’re off just 1 degree you won’t get where you thought you were going, especially if you travel for a long time. So we are who we are, and maybe we can’t really change who we are but we can course-correct. Chet, after all, sin, is not actually sin in the Christian, Western World sense. Chet in Hebrew, the word that gets translated as sin, is more like missing the mark. In archery or cornhole. You aim for here and you end up over there. Not because you weren’t trying but because we’re not perfect. Because we need to practice a whole lot to stay on course.

Dear God, help me give this kahal what they need to course-correct this Yom Kippur. No, that’s not quite how I mean it. Dear God, help us course-correct this year. We’re not off by a lot, maybe just one degree, most of us. Help them sit with me, help me bring them along as I just draw up a chair and talk. Pray, I mean. Which is just talking, talking to you, talking to God. I could teach them there’s a fancy name for it, hitbodedut.  How that word means “alone”—the Hasidim invented it, the Baal Shem Tov, a few hundred years ago, I mean he didn’t invent it but he gave it a fancy name or maybe his followers did, because they needed a way to reference that thing we do. That thing where you find yourself talking to God. When you’re out up close to the branches of the tree, tying those strings on the leaves or whatever. Or when you’re up at night all alone in the kitchen, wondering what happened to everyone you love. And then you’re talking to yourself, which is also talking to God. I could just sit here and pray-talk, show them that the siddur, the mahzor, all this liturgy—which I treasure, which is our treasure —that’s only the half of it. 

Yeah, I’ll share with them out loud some of what’s in my heart. Let that be enough for today. Let it maybe help ease someone out of thinking that the rabbi only prays in Hebrew or singing these words. I love praying that way too. It can be very deep, very holy. But this, this is good too.

If I am honest, I want more than my one life. It’s greedy. “Not enough time, for all that I want, from you.” “If I could save time in a bottle.” “Time keeps on slipping, slipping slipping, into the future.”

We are dying. All of us. Every day we are living and dying all at once. From the minute we are born. Life is finite. That’s really at the heart of all of this, Yom Kippur stuff. We won’t live forever. So—make the most of it while you can, while we here. That’s what the fasting is all about, and the wearing the death shroud, this kittel—in some shuls everyone wears them, not just the clergy—we will be buried in this. It’s like we’re in hospice today. No eating, no drinking. No ice chips, even. The body wasting away. But then when we don’t die—when we get through this day—we are reborn. Every single day, actually, reborn over and over and over again, every breath, every morning, after afternoon. Today—please God we should live another afternoon—reborn with the knowledge that it’s not going to last forever so we have to cherish it, and don’t waste ourselves on holding anger, on fighting and self-righteousness. 

That’s the heart of the matter. The heart of the matter is that our fists have been clenched so tight this year. I want to share with them, with you, the exercise Krista Tippett shared this summer, that she got from a retreat in France, from a dharma talk where the monk invited everyone to clench a fist with one hand. So yeah, let’s do that, everyone try this: make a fist. And then try to move to force that fist open with your other hand. Notice that the fist only clenches tighter—this natural reaction to force. And then I invite you to try too a counterintuitive approach: cradle the fist with your other hand. How wonderful, that the fist naturally relaxes a bit, softens. 

A sea of clenched fists. A metaphor for the world right now. No, my friends, we don’t need to beat ourselves up anymore today. No more clenched fists holding tighter and tighter. We need softness, tenderness. Sweetheart.

I read something recently—it was a Yom Kippur sermon from a few years ago, by Rabbi Amy Bernstein whom I don’t even know, but her Torah is so beautiful, and she wrote about how we live in a world with dishwashers, microwaves, and jet engines, time ought to feel more expansive and abundant… But this is nobody’s actual experience, we don’t feel like we have more time because of the washing machine, and then she quotes some writer I don’t know named Malcolm Harris who wrote, “life accelerates, and everyone grows more impatient. It is somehow more aggravating to wait two minutes for the microwave than two hours for the oven.”

I love that line. “It is more aggravating to wait two minutes for the microwave than two hours for the oven.” We used to be able to wait days for letters from friends and now if my browser takes more than 4.5 seconds to refresh I’m beside myself. And underneath that, behind that aggravation, I think it’s deeper. It’s like whatever we are doing, there’s this sense that there is something else at least as wonderful to be done. Like we know there’s just not enough time, because—we only get this one life. And mine is more than halfway done. 4,000 weeks, the book, remember when that came out? Oliver Burkeman. Do the math, the average lifespan, that’s all you get. If we’re blessed with the average lifespan, we get 4,000 weeks, that’s it. So do the math, that’s not so many more weeks. We want more. I want more. For me, for all of us. But we don’t get it, we don’t get to choose, so we clench our fists, fighting against death and fighting one another and just fighting. 

This is the heart of the matter: to live knowing we are dying, right here, right now. Choosing life every minute. By softening the grip.  

One of my teachers, Jon Aron, shared with me a story that maybe I’ve shared before, I don’t remember, the story of a Buddhist monk on an airplane. How he’s on the plane traveling back from California where he’d been teaching to his home in Sri Lanka, they’re out over the Pacific Ocean and the plane suddenly take a deep dive and the announcement comes on to put the life vests on and the oxygen masks drop and there’s smoke, the engine is on fire. Everyone freaks out, they’re screaming and crying and praying and this monk he’s sitting next to the window and he looks out and sees—the most beautiful sight. Bright orange flames against the bright blue sky. And he just sits appreciating the beauty of that. Like here he could be panicking because he might be about to die but instead just experiencing what is, the panic and sadness but also the beauty, seeing that something beautiful is also happening. And then the story goes that they make a water landing, and the inflatable slide-ramp comes out the exit door and it’s his turn and remember he grew up in a monastery, he’s been in training since he was a child and he’s never actually been on an inflatable slide before. So the story ends with him laughing and enjoying the ride off into the water. That’s it, to be able to know that at every minute we’re living and dying, we don’t actually know if this is it, can we laugh and appreciate beauty and enjoy the ride while it lasts? 

My friend Anne told me that the purpose of the Kol Nidre prayer, the one we sang last night that all of our vows are null and void, is to help us let go of the life we promised ourselves and instead pay attention to the one we are living. Because life, in Hebrew, is always plural. Chaim. “I have lived many lives, some of them my own…” (Stanley Kunitz) Always plural because there’s so much to it, more than one, plural, no one to speak of it in the singular even. 

Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
(Mary Oliver)

B’rosh hashanah yikatevun
U’vyom tzom kippur yachetamun.

I guess that’s it for now. Thanks for listening, God, friends. Thanks for choosing this life, this day, over and over and over again, as long as it lasts.

To watch this sermon, delivered October 3, 2024, click here.

Sebastian Junger is now an accomplished journalist but he had just graduated college when he decided to hitchhike across the country. He had never been west of the Hudson River, having grown up in a Boston suburb where people’s homes were set behind deep hedges, and neighbors hardly interacted. And they didn’t need to—nothing ever happened that required collective effort. Anything bad was handled by the police, fire department, or town crews. The sheer predictability of suburban life left him hoping, oddly, for something like a hurricane or tornado—anything that would require people to band together to survive.

He was heading to California and had made it as far as Gillette, Wyoming, where he found himself standing by a highway one cold October morning. Standing there waiting for a truck or car to pick him up, he noticed a man walking up the on-ramp towards him—wild-haired, wearing a dirty old union suit, and carrying a black lunch box. Though the man didn’t seem threatening, Sebastian was nervous. He was alone, and had with him in his backpack everything he owned, for the moment, including a week’s worth of food. He didn’t mind sharing but he didn’t want to get robbed. The man walked right up to him, looked him and up and down, and asked:  “How much food do you have?” Sebastian hesitated. He didn’t mind sharing especially with someone hungry but he didn’t want to get robbed and that seemed like what was about to happen. So he lied, saying, “Just a little cheese.” The man replied: “I’m out of work today, so I won’t be needing this.” The man handed his lunch box to Sebastian, saying, “You need more than a little cheese to get to California.”

Sebastian thought about that man for the rest of his trip. For the rest of his life. It wasn’t just the man’s generosity. It was the fact that he had taken responsibility for Sebastian, a stranger, in a way that made Sebastian feel part of his tribe. (Sebastian Junger, Tribe)

Tribe.

What a year, for us, for this tribe. Can you believe, I stood here one year ago, and preached… laughter? This year was a lot of things, but it was mostly not very funny. Not the kidnappings, the rapes, the murders, nor the deaths and suffering of innocent civilians caught in the cross-hairs of war. Not the campus protests that made many Jewish students feel unsafe and Jews everywhere wonder what happened. Not the anti-Semitism so many of us—our children and grandchildren—have encountered this year, often for the first time in our lives.

This year has been anything but funny.

This year has forced us to confront the unsettling reality that we might not have proven our worth to the world in the way we thought we had. For decades, we’ve shown how our Jewish values make us good citizens, generous philanthropists, and humanists. We’ve been excited to embrace tikkun olam—repairing the world—as the mission of the Jewish people. And we should be proud of that. But now, we face another question, one that feels more urgent: How can we show up for ourselves? How can we show up for the Jewish people?

In 1789, at the dawn of the French Revolution, Count Clermont-Tonnerre stood before the National Assembly. What to do with the Jews in a nation newly formed on the principles of equality, freedom, and secularism? Until then, Jews had few rights in France, or anywhere else in Europe. We were largely confined to ghettos, barred from owning land, excluded from many professions. We could not become craftsmen, join the military, hold public office, or into any profession requiring a university education. In the Arab world—yes, the Arab world—things were better, but across Europe, this was the standard. 

It is against that backdrop that the Count made an impassioned speech. “Il faut tout refuser aux Juifs comme nation et tout accorder aux Juifs comme individus.” “We must refuse everything to the Jews as a nation, but grant everything to the Jews as individuals.” This statement shaped the way the Western world would view Jews for generations to come. Jews could be accepted as individuals—citizens of France, Germany, or America—but only if we left our “nationhood” behind. Yes, we would be freed from the ghetto—but not truly free to be Jews. The bargain was summarized by the Yiddish poet Judah Leib Gordon: “Be a man in the streets and a Jew at home.”

For centuries, we internalized this bargain. In exchange for access to education, jobs, and social acceptance, we learned to downplay our Jewish identity as a collective. Last spring at the Anti-Defamation League Conference, I sat among 20-somethings who pointed out how often we say, “I’m Jewish, but not religious,” or “I’m Jewish, but not Zionist,” as if we need to qualify our identity. In past generations, Jews converted as a way of leaving the Jewish community; today, we don’t need to convert to another religion, we simply leave by disassociating, by saying “I’m not really Jewish” or “I’m Jewish, in a way that I perceive will be acceptable to you.”

The bargain has worked beautifully, in so many ways. Here in America, we have found affluence and influence at levels rare in our 3,000-year history. We have thrived, welcomed into every sector of society.

But what this year has reminded us is that we are still a people, a nation. When Jewish Federations of North America organized the March for Israel in Washington last November, they expected about 60,000 people. Instead nearly 300,000 Jews and allies showed up. That day was one of the most moving and powerful of my life, to be standing as a proud Jew in our nation’s capital surrounded by am yisrael. I think of the teens and college students donning Jewish star necklaces, and the way so many of us have worn Bring Them Home signs around our necks all year long. I think of sitting in my office with Allison (I changed her name), a mom of a Zeman student and a toddler. She sat on the couch across from me, crying. “I don’t know why I’m crying,” she said. “I’ve never cared about Israel at all, it’s never been something I think about.” How she went on to organize a Jewish women’s gathering, the first time she ever thought she’d want something like that. I think of the way we have come together with our neighboring synagogues, setting aside whatever squabbles we have because finally, we get it: together is all we have. 

My friends, we have outgrown the bargain. It’s time to show up not just as individual Jews but as Jews for Jews, Jews for the Jewish people, to reclaim our pride in being part of this ancient, resilient nation.

So how do we do it? How can we show up for our people? We who are here, and not on the front lines; we who can send donations and love but cannot physically be there right now; we who are mostly not students on college campuses and not professional activists – how can we, as individuals, show up for the Jewish people?

After writing more drafts of this sermon than I care to count, I realized only a few days ago that I needed to give this sermon now, here, at the end of our service this morning. Because of the Alenu.

The Alenu was written for today, for Rosh Hashanah, at least 1,800 years ago and perhaps even further back, for that moment we chanted it together in musaf, in full prostration. Many of us know the first part, alenu l’shabeach la-adon hakol, because of the melody, which is about 200 years old, and because we sing it at the end of every service. Why? Why was the alenu plucked from Rosh Hashanah to be recited every day? It was moved because it’s the statement of who we are and what we do. Alenu—the word means “it is upon us,” “we must.” We must fix the world, l’taken olam—this is where the phrase tikkun olam first appears. Right here! It’s our job: l’taken olam, heal the world, it is upon us.

But we cannot bring about healing for the world without first strengthening ourselves. The tikkun olam part is, after all, the second paragraph of the prayer. The Alenu begins with us, with the Jewish community. 

Showing up for the Jewish people doesn’t mean closing ourselves off to others or abandoning our commitment to tikkun olam. On the contrary, we are called to care for ourselves, just like the flight attendants remind us to put our own oxygen masks on first. When we give tzedakah, according to Jewish law the poor in one’s family receive priority over the poor of one’s city, and the poor in one’s city receive priority over the poor far away. This is not selfishness—it’s wisdom. We start with our own and from there, help everyone who needs us.

So – how? How do we make this move, from caring for ourselves to caring for the world?

With the most Jewish of actions—mitzvot. A mitzvah is often translated as “good deed” but it’s actually much richer than that. A mitzvah is something we are obligated, as Jews, to do. The word comes from the root tzavta, which means connection. A mitzvah is an act that brings us closer to others. Good intentions are good, but they are not mitzvot. A mitzvah is more than a creed; it is a deed.  Some mitzvot are ethical (“love thy neighbor”) and others are ritual (“light candles on Friday night”). Some fit into the overall ethical code of humanity (“thou shalt not kill”) and others are quite particular to the Jewish people (“blow the shofar”). Baruch atah adonai eloheynu melekh ha-olam asher kidshanu—when we do mitzvot kidshanu, we connect, we become holy, WE, in the plural, even when we each act on our own.

Today, I invite us each to take on a mitzvah. This year, I’m asking us to go deeper—not just to show up intellectually, or at home in our tents, but out in the world, with one another, for our people. At the end of the service today, Cantor Kissner and I will stand by the doors to greet each of you and there we have baskets. Inside the baskets are slips of paper, each containing one mitzvah. As you leave today, take one slip from the basket. This is your mitzvah for the year 5785, your way of showing up for the Jewish people. It doesn’t matter if you’re Jewish or not. All of us here today, every person in our families, is part of the Jewish community and is integral to Oheb Shalom and the fabric of the Jewish people. 

And here’s the thing: when we do these mitzvot, we will be showing up in small concrete ways for one another. We will be delivering meals to one another for shiva. We will be inviting one another to sit at our tables on Shabbat. We will be making minyan together even if we have no clue what that is or what to do.  Oheb Shalom has grown over the past three years and nearly one third of our congregation is new. Doing mitzvot for and with one another is how we will be here for one another, getting to know one another and deepening this community. Because showing up for the Jewish people isn’t an abstract concept. It is right here, right now. Strengthening the Jewish people from this very sanctuary and from here, the world.  

Don’t like the mitzvah you chose? Take another. Already doing the one you picked? Swap it, or take this as a sign to deepen it. You could also decide that whatever you pull is meant for you and go for it. Unsure what to do once you’ve chosen? Good! That means we’ll need to ask each other for help, which is also a way to show up for one another and the Jewish people.

Showing up for the Jewish people is not about closing ourselves off to the rest of the world. It is not about insisting we are better than anyone else, nor is it about hiding and pretending we are anything but who we are. We are Am Yisrael, the Jewish People. The world needs us. We need one another. Let’s show up.

As the Alenu teaches, it is upon us. Alenu. We must.