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A few months ago I received something wonderful and awful in the mail. It was a postcard, it was green, and it informed me that I was being summoned for jury duty. Not just any jury duty, mind you, but grand jury, one full day a week for 17 weeks, every Thursday from August through Thanksgiving.
My first thought: A rabbi, serving jury duty in September? No way. Everyone I told agreed. I was sure I’d get out of it.
The appointed day arrived. I walked into the court building in Newark full of excuses. I had a letter describing my duties here. I wore my kippah – I don’t always wear my kippah in public spaces but I had it on that day, part of my strategy to get out of this – and a well-practiced script in my mind.
About one hundred of us sat in the appointed room. The clerk explained: one by one you will be called before the presiding judge. The judge will ask you one question: Can you serve? It is a yes or no question. There are two answers: yes, or no. That is all. Not your excuses, or your reasons or your backstory. Can you serve?
And then she said something that completely shifted the scene for me: “I know a lot of you came here today thinking you were going to get out of this. But this might transform your life. You might hear things that change you. You’ll get to know new people, and you’ll learn a whole lot about the community you live in. This country needs its citizens for the justice system to work. Can you serve? Yes or no.”
What a question for 2025. In Israel, the question of compulsory military service is heartwrenching, from the national conversation over the ultra-orthodox refusing to serve, to the families sending their sons, daughters, and husbands into a war zone. Here in America, we’ve become cynical, skeptical that our service – be it jury duty, voting, or participating in public life – even matters. “Can you serve” sounds less like an ethical summons than a request for a second helping of dessert.
Our ancestors asked this question, too. They knew the question runs deep. They gave us a phrase that is inscribed in so many sanctuaries around the world, including our own, right here above the ark behind me: da lifnei mi atah omed. Know before whom you stand. Our sense of service begins with that awareness.
Before whom do you stand today?
Last year on the shabbat of July 4th weekend, I shared a story that I love. It is the story of a man you’ve probably never heard of, named Jonas Philips, a Jew who came to America from Germany in 1756. He arrived in Charleston, an indentured servant to another Jew. By 1776 he had earned his freedom, and was living in New York with his wife and – get this – their 21 children. A patriot, Jonas Phillips joined the fight for American liberty and fought in the Revolutionary War. He loved the idea of this country. But he had a problem.
In Pennsylvania, where he moved after the British invaded New York and where he stayed after the war, you could not serve in the legislature unless you affirmed under oath that both the Old Testament and the New Testament were divinely inspired. Aware that no Jew could take such an oath, Philips wrote a letter to the Constitutional Convention. He reminded the delegates that Jews had “supported the cause, bravely fought and bled for Liberty” – but could not swear against their faith.
And at the top of the letter to the framers of the Constitution, he wrote the date: September 7, 1787, or 24th Ellul 5547.
24th Ellul 5547 – he put the Jewish date at the top of the letter! Recall there were no Jews participating in the Constitutional Convention, and George Washington and his peers must have been mystified by that opening line. Rabbi Meir Soloviechik calls these 8 words – “September 7, 1787 or 24th Ellul, 5547” – “the most audacious words in American Jewish history.” Audacious because Philips insisted he would not amputate his faith to serve his country. Audacious because he dared to hold both commitments together, his faith in America and his faith as a Jew. He stood before the founders of this nation, as a Jew, and he stood before God as an American. He knew before whom he stood.
So here we are, 238 years later, in a bewildering America. I wanted to share the story of Jonas Philips because I’m not sure we know what stories we are still telling about ourselves…or how those stories connect to our sense of service.
As Americans, we’ve become so focused on flaws—of our founders, our leaders, our neighbors—that we risk losing faith in the nation itself.
What story are we telling about America? Are we making it great, or greatly misguided? When someone is shot – on the street, at work, or on a stage – how is the story anything but one about murder, failed mental health care, easy access to guns and moral collapse? How can anyone justify the death of the innocent? When a news anchor is fired over remarks about the government – is the story about censorship, or accountability? What stories are we telling?
And as Jews, it is even worse. All year we’ve been hearing stories other people have been telling about us: that we (God forbid) are bloodthirsty, merciless, inhumane. That (has v’shalom) we care only about money or power, that we are among the cruelest peoples on earth committing the worst atrocities. This war is complicated and cruel, but we know for sure none of those stories is our story. None of those stories are true.
When a 12-year-old sat in my office recently and said about her Instagram or Tiktok feed: I just don’t know what stories are true or not – I thought: welcome to the club.
So here is my question for us, this Rosh Hashanah on the the eve of this county’s sesquicentennial: what stories are we telling about ourselves, and how do they enable us to serve?
Here is a story that can help us. The story of Joseph. Which is action packed, full of ups and downs. Some pretty terrible things happen to him, including his brothers planning to kill him, being sold off into servitude in another country, and Potiphar’s wife falsely accusing him which lands him in jail for many years. But he never loses his faith in God and eventually he becomes Pharaoh’s right hand man. You probably know the rest of the story: he creates a plan to store Egypt’s crops for the famine that he predicted in Pharoah’s dreams, and his brothers, who have run out of food, come to Egypt to beg for help, not realizing he is their brother. When he finally reveals his identity the brothers are astonished and terrified. They’re sure he will want vengeance. But that is not the path Joseph chooses. Instead he says:
“You meant it for harm, but God meant it for good.”
That line is everything. Because Joseph takes hold of the pen. He takes control of the narrative. Instead of revenge, he writes reconciliation. Instead of betrayal, he writes redemption. Instead of brothers fighting he writes a story of brothers helping one another and becoming close. Instead of letting others tell his story, Joseph tells it himself.
We choose how to tell the story. WE choose what story to tell. And that choice shapes not only us and our relationships, but the world.
This is what Professor Jennifer Mercieca at Texas A&M found, in a recent experiment with her students that I’m a little obsessed with.
Like many of us, Dr. Mercieca’s students were chronic doomscrollers, their phones “misery machines.” Instead of accepting it, she tried something new: what if they spent time hopescrolling? She had them create accounts devoted to solutions journalism—stories of problems solved and hopeful headlines. None went viral, but what happened to the students was remarkable.
Fixing the News, Sept 18, 2025:
“Many of [her] students reported that the experience was both illuminating and healing. “Before our Hopescroll project,” one wrote, “I really didn’t realize the amount of negative content I consume daily. I see scary news articles, I see people being mean to one another on social media, and I spend hours scrolling through posts that have no meaningful purpose.” Some students even noticed that their social media algorithms began to change, as they started to see more positive content on their feeds instead of so much doom.
What Dr. Mercieca’s experiment shows is that we’re not passive victims of algorithmic manipulation. We have more power than we think. Every time we share outrage bait or doom-laden headlines, we’re feeding a machine that makes everyone more miserable. But we also have the ability to choose differently. The algorithms will follow us wherever we lead them. We just have to decide what story to tell. This is not just true online. It is true in real life.
When that court clerk told me the story of jury duty, I changed. When Jonas Philips wrote the Hebrew date atop a letter, he changed the unfolding of history.
We stand (and sit and stand and sit) in synagogue on a weekday in September. The beginning of a new year, 5786. Both dates written in bold at the top of this page of our lives. We stand before our history, before one another, and – as our ancestors imaged on this Day of Judgment – before God who has each one of us stand one by one and asks us: Can you serve?
We know the answer is yes. But how do we go about it? First, by turning to these words over this ark as a reminder.
Know before whom you stand.
Today we stand before something larger than ourselves.
Know before whom you stand:
-God.
-History.
-Future.
-One another.
We stand before our grandparents who sat in these pews, and the ones who perished so that we could.
We stand before our grandchildren who will inherit this earth, and the wars we do not turn into peace, and the messes we do not clean up.
We standing before one another. We stand before history. We stand before the future. We stand before all we hold dear. Da lifnei mi atah omed. Know before whom you stand.
And then, decide: what stories will you tell this year, and how will they enable you to serve?
The blessing we offer one another at this time of year is Ketivah Tovah. May you be inscribed in the book of life.
But I think this year we need to think of it this way: May we inscribe the Book of Life. May we fill our next pages with stories of sweetness, of progress, of hope, of all the ways we serve.
May we stand before one another this year and write one another into our story in love and in peace, and most of all, in service. And then may God seal it for good, gmar chatima tovah.
Let us say: amen.