Rosh Hashanah

The Hardest Questions

Delivered at Temple B’nai Abraham, Livingston, NJ, September 23, 2025

If you or your children have been to Jewish summer camp, you may know of the mishlachat—the young Israeli emissaries who come for the summer as counselors and educators. Over many summers—whether as camper, staff, or faculty—I’ve watched these Israelis bring Hebrew, culture, and their vision of Jewish life to our kids. They learn from us, too—about the vibrant Judaism we practice here in North America. This past summer, I spent several weeks with them. And this year, everything felt different.

The camp where I spend time as faculty typically brings around thirty Israelis each summer. But days before camp began, we thought we’d have none—Israel had struck Iran, airlines stopped flying, and young staff were needed on the ground, in the war. Unlike last year, when they could still travel despite the chaos, this year they were literally coming off the battlefield days before camp began. Most made it eventually, grateful for the quiet of Ontario’s forests and lakes, for a night without sirens and blasts. But they were not okay. Past summers meant homesickness, but this summer meant untreated trauma, from nearly two years of war, and from horrors seen only days before.

One morning, I was called to lift the spirits of an Israeli counselor who was struggling badly. I told him a joke. While my jokes get mixed reviews—as you all know—this one worked. He and another friend kept coming back for more, until we had a WhatsApp group where my rabbinic, pastoral role is, simply, to make them laugh. Because they need it and it helps. And, humor can only reach so far against the heartache.

Meanwhile, one of my colleagues at camp had created something more lasting as a summer project: a memorial garden for fallen soldiers, a Gan HaChayalim. These gardens are common in Israel, planted with native desert plants, honoring those who fell so that our people might live. At the dedication, the mood was somber and steady. The Israelis spoke carefully, serious and gentle, trying to help our teens understand what they were carrying while also holding space for the teens’ own fear and confusion. We stood together, wept together, and committed to keep going, together.

In our grief, we chose life.

On Rosh Hashanah we feel the weight of our lives, our people, our world. We imagine the Holy One examining us closely, with deep care, urging us to choose life in every sense of the word. But two years into this war, what does that really mean? Sometimes choosing life requires us to grapple with questions that are literally about life and death. We are living through ever-increase chaos—watching Israel do what it must to survive, while feeling the repercussions here at home and across the diaspora. It has been really hard, and this is something I hear about often from so many of you.

Not a week goes by when I don’t hear from a congregant who simply doesn’t know how to respond anymore. We have a big tent here, with many perspectives. Everyone I speak with is concerned about antisemitism and agrees that Israel has not only a right but an obligation to defend itself. After that, views diverge: some say keep fighting until Hamas is gone; others say the fighting should have stopped long ago, that the cost to Palestinian life is too high. Some see most Palestinians as complicit; others weep for the innocents. Some are dovish, some hawkish. Some say ceasefire now; others insist on total victory. Some are in the middle, and many just don’t know. But everyone with whom I’ve spoken agrees on this: the remaining hostages must come home.

The High Holy Days call us to turn over the stones of our choices and examine them, even if we are convinced that we were right all along. So, let’s ask the hard questions. From the very beginning, this war has had two non-negotiable priorities: ensure that October 7 never happens again, and bring the hostages home. Both are sacred obligations. Both are matters of Jewish survival. But nearly two years in, we must ask honestly: are we still striking the right balance? Because it is becoming devastatingly clear that the drive for total eradication of Hamas may mean that the hostages never come home alive.

When we traveled to Israel last February, we met Danny Miran, whose son Omri was kidnapped from Kibbutz Nahal Oz. None of us imagined that we would still be fighting, and waiting, two years later. Omri may still be alive, though in what condition we dare not guess. Danny, at the time, was living at Hostage Square, clinging to hope because he had no other choice. I cannot imagine what he and the other families continue to endure.

What do Israelis themselves say? Poll after poll shows the same pattern: a clear majority want a deal that prioritizes bringing the hostages home above all else, even if it means ending the war before Hamas is fully eliminated. In recent months, roughly two-thirds of Israelis—including many who vote for Netanyahu’s own coalition—they have voiced that view. When those with the most at stake are the ones saying “enough,” we should listen.

Our tradition teaches that redeeming captives—pidyon shvuyim—is among the highest of mitzvot. Accordingly, Israel’s social contract has long declared: we do everything possible to bring our people home. This is why we exchange so many prisoners with blood on their hands for individual Israelis. Having a civilian army, where parents who choose to live in Israel also choose to send their children into battle, it only works when parents know that the state will do everything in its power to ensure that everyone comes back.

And the hostages’ families, along with so many Israelis, are gathering, protesting, and speaking out to all who will listen. Bring them home. Their cries force us to ask: if what we’re doing now has not brought us closer, might we there be a need for a change in approach? Listen to Nira Sarusi, mother of Almog Sarusi, kidnapped from the Nova festival: “Let anyone who dares say military pressure doesn’t kill look into my eyes. Every minute might be their last. Our soldiers risk their lives every day. Stop the war. Bring back all the hostages and allow us to lift our heads, mourn less, and smile more.” Hear from Rachel Goldberg-Polin, whose son Hersh was murdered by his captors: “We are waiting for people with power to decide it is enough.”

Calls for change are now coming from rabbinic and communal leaders whose voices typically lean hawkish. In August, 80 Modern Orthodox rabbis—staunch Zionists—condemned Hamas while also insisting that Israel has obligations “to prevent mass starvation.” Around the same time, nearly 2,000 prominent Jewish philanthropists, CEOs, and community leaders signed a letter recognizing the toll this war is taking on Israel and Jewish people worldwide, and telling Prime Minister Netanyahu that it is now time to end the war.

We just read the story of Sarah and Abraham casting Hagar and Ishmael into the wilderness. The text does not soften the anguish: Hagar places the boy under a bush—va-tashlech et ha-yeled—and sits at a distance because she cannot bear to watch him die. Then the Torah says, “Vayishma Elohim et kol ha-na’ar ba’asher hu sham”—God hears the voice of the boy as he is, where he is. An angel calls to Hagar, “Al tiri”—do not fear—and opens her eyes to a well of water that had been there all along.

On Rosh Hashanah, we read this to remind ourselves that God cares about our people, and cares for all life. Not one more than the other, but both. The text teaches us that to honor God is to hear every human cry, from wherever and whomever it may come.

In just over two weeks from now, we will reach the two-year mark—two years of war, two years of upheaval for Israel and our people, two years of captivity for the hostages. Anniversaries, like Rosh Hashanah, call us to look back at the path we’ve taken and to look ahead at the choices that lie before us. They remind us that what made sense last year does not automatically the right choice for this year.

In Deuteronomy, Moses implores the Israelites about to enter the holy land: “Choose life.” There is so much life that needs choosing this year—the lives of hostages still held, the lives of young Israelis like the mishlachat carrying unbearable burdens, the lives of Israelis yearning for a return to calm and normalcy. The lives of Palestinians trapped in this horror. And our own lives too—we who need reprieve from the chaos of protests and threats, worn down by attacks from all around, all while holding concern for our people and our state. Our voices may not be loud enough to change minds in Jerusalem, but they can strengthen those making impossible choices each day, giving as much as they can to bring us through in wholeness.

After October 7, survivors of the Nova festival massacre declared: “We will dance again.” The words became the title of an Emmy award-winning film, a mantra repeated at rallies and vigils, and the inspiration for songs of hope. It is more than a slogan; it is a commitment. Saying we will dance again does not deny grief—it insists that grief not define our future. This Rosh Hashanah, as we pray to be inscribed in the Book of Life, let us be the people who choose life at every turn, so that one day we may find healing, safety, and comfort, so that one day we emerge from this darkness to dance once again.

Shana tova!

Yom Kippur

Error: Truth Corrupted

Has anyone here ever had one of those moments when you poured your heart and soul into a project—late into the night, perhaps—and the next day you go to open the file, only to see: “Error. File corrupted.” Everything you did should be there, but the file is broken and unusable. Sometimes, it’s even worse: the whole hard drive crashes, the backup fails, and everything is lost.

As we know, corruption happens in many aspects of life. Our Torah gives one of the earliest accounts of something intended for good going entirely corrupt. In Noah’s time, the earth had become violent and depraved, unrecognizable from what God had intended. The only way forward was a total reset, and Noah and his family became the backup—the source code for rebuilding Creation. 

I am deeply concerned that we may have hit another point of corruption—this time not of people, but of one of civilization’s central pillars: truth. Regardless of politics, backgrounds, and beliefs, it is becoming increasingly difficult to tell the difference between falsehood and fact, something necessary for the basic functioning of society.

Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harari, in his book Nexus, describes how human civilization has always been shaped by information networks. The Torah was revolutionary not just in telling a foundational story but in being accessible, as a book—a shared identity built on shared ideas. The rabbis pushed farther: Creation itself, they taught, was built with the letters of the aleph bet. God spoke the world into being and formed a reality run on words, argument, and interpretation. Harari writes: “The rabbis maintained that the entire universe was an information sphere—a realm composed of words and running on the alphabetical code of the Hebrew letters… [so much so that if] Jews ever stop reading [our] texts and arguing about them, the universe will cease to exist.”

Human civilization rests on shared information—on stories, values, laws, and truths that we agree to hold together. Which makes it so alarming that truth itself is becoming increasingly elusive.

How many of us have clicked on an article that looked plausible, only to discover that it was entirely made up? While there have been journalists fabricating stories as long as there has been news media, the scale of fabrication and falsehood is far beyond anything that we’ve yet experienced. Once, we could tell the difference between trusted sources and tabloids. Then came the internet and social media, which brought more access to information and people than we ever thought possible, but also, dangerously effective tools for bad actors. Conspiracy theories spread. Trolls and bots exploited algorithms to sow division. And now, with Artificial Intelligence, falsehood is produced en masse, sometimes appearing more convincing than actual truth. Honestly, when we find these false articles and sites in an internet search, can we actually tell whether they are real?

I’m no luddite. The internet has connected us remarkably, and AI has extraordinary potential. But its dangers are substantial. And the greatest one? The breakdown of our ability to communicate with common languages, common stories, and common truths.

Harari argues that democracy depends upon shared information. In ancient Athens, democracy could work only because it was a small city state, as information couldn’t travel far. Mass media changed this, giving us the ability to have conversations across a country as vast as this one. But today, with our fractured media and algorithmic feeds, we’ve lost that shared conversation. Harari warns us: “Democracy is a conversation, and conversations rely on language. By hacking language, computers could make it extremely difficult for humans to conduct a meaningful public conversation.” 

This is not theoretical. AI-generated content is already flooding the platforms we use every day. If we can no longer distinguish authentic human thought from machine-generated content, how can we possibly agree on the basic essentials, like what’s real?

The rabbis taught in Pirkei Avot that the world stands on three things: justice, peace, and truth. Without shared truth, the justice and peace which we need to live and thrive, are in jeopardy. Without shared truth—or at least an agreed upon foundation for conversation—our trust, confidence, and support for our institutions, leaders, news sources, and each other—they’re being eroded and undermined.

Long ago, the rabbis understood that shared truth was essential. The Sanhedrin, the ancient council of rabbinic leadership, relied on witnesses who had seen the first crescent of the new moon to determine the dates of the holy days. The Talmud tells an account of Rabban Gamliel, the head of the Sanhedrin, accepting the testimony of two witnesses that the new moon had arrived and accordingly, they could now set Yom Kippur’s date.

Rabbi Yehoshua disagreed, based on different testimonies, arguing for another date. Of course, both could not be right as Yom Kippur had to be observed by our entire people as one community. One truth had to be accepted. The Sanhedrin was the ultimate authority on this question, and so Gamliel’s ruling stood. To press the point, Gamliel ordered Yehoshua to appear before him on the day Yehoshua believed was Yom Kippur, Yehoshua would have to come with his staff and money—an act that would violate the holy day if Yehoshua held to his calculations. Distressed, Yehoshua turned to Rabbi Akiva, who reminded him: Torah teaches that festivals are proclaimed “at their appointed times”—meaning appointed by the people, through the courts. Once the Sanhedrin rules, that’s the date. Because if we unravel one ruling, we unravel them all. Yehoshua, though unconvinced, accepted the court’s authority so that the community could observe the holy day as one. 

To be clear, dissent is expected and valued by our tradition. But we also need shared processes for deciding what’s true. Sometimes we compromise; other times we accept rulings so that society can stand. We do preserve minority opinions, historically and presently, not to discredit dissenters, but to remind us thatruling decisions might flawed, since human logic is fallible, and that tomorrow’s truth might rest with today’s minority. But just as we make space for dissent, dissenters must be ready to accept the community’s ruling because social cohesion depends upon it.

We seem to have forgotten this. At today’s rate of disagreement—in science, history, diplomacy, politics, and more—we risk total social fragmentation. A few years back, social psychology scholar and author Jonathan Haidt, in looking at the past decade of American life, wrote “Something went terribly wrong, very suddenly. We are disoriented, unable to speak the same language or recognize the same truth. We are cut off from one another and from the past.” He wrote these words three years ago, and sadly, they are just as valid, if not more so, today.

When we gather on Yom Kippur, we do so not just to confess our private failings, but our communal sins too, to name and take in the ways we’ve collectively broken that which holds us together. As part of society, each of us holds responsibility for that which goes wrong. Accepting this responsibility for that of which we are part, no matter how large or small our role, that’s what Yom Kippur demands. We don’t shy away. We don’t deny culpability. We accept, we act, we do our best to change.

Al cheit shechatanu l’fanekha—for the sins we have sinned before You: for choosing acceptance over critical thinking, for choosing tribes over the collective, for being stubborn rather than open, for accepting at face value rather than looking more deeply, for failing to challenge not only others but ourselves too.

We can keep going as we are—arguing that we alone are right, dismissing the rest, continuing to let algorithms feed us that which we want to hear. Or, we can do teshuvah and guide humanity—starting with us—back toward a time when, despite disagreements, we found ways to survive and thrive as one. We were not perfect, by any means, but we held ourselves together. Chadeish yameinu k’kedem—renew our days, like those before.

How do we rediscover not only truth but the value of seeking it in community? The answer is one that has always been central to Judaism: learning through conversation and debate. We don’t make choices on assumptions. We don’t accept conclusions as final. The Talmud, the great source of Jewish law and teaching, isn’t a law code but a compendium of arguments—often contentious, but pursued b’shem shamayim, for heaven’s sake. We encourage arguing, as long as the goal is truth, and not victory.

Our tradition teaches that ideal learning happens in chevruta—in partnership, where learners propose, analyze, disagree, and argue. Through this process, learners sharpen each other and uncover truth. Michelangelo said of David, his famous sculpture, that he simply removed what was not David to reveal the form within. As Jews, that’s how we find truth: chipping away at ideas, with our fellow learners as chisels. In a Jewish study hall, you won’t find the silence you might expect when entering a library; you’ll find loud voices—debating, challenging, finding new conclusions.

One of the beauties of synagogue community is that it brings together a diverse group of people— even though we have some things in common, we come from different walks of life with different backgrounds and perspectives. Our diversity is our strength, because when we harness it, we’re pushed to test our assumptions and refine our understandings.

With polarization everywhere, many of us hold back from debate, wanting peace and quiet, and ease. When we do engage in controversy, it’s often just to vent with people who already agree. And sometimes we need that. But we also have an obligation, as Jews and human beings—to engage with the world and each other, and this means being ready to dive into difficult topics. Otherwise, we lose the chance to test our view points, to become more sure of our positions, or to be able to change course.

In recent years, with so much turmoil, we’ve focused here at Temple B’nai Abraham on providing comfort. But now, even with—and maybe because of—the state of the world, we may need to shift, even if just in part, from comfort to challenge. With society so fragmented and trust so corrupted, we can’t afford to retreat into silos and avoid controversy. It’s time to step forward, to uncover truth together, and to encourage others to do the same.

This means showing up for classes and conversations to debate and wrestle with one another. This means engaging with sermons—not deciding quickly whether we agree or disagree, but to take them as starting points for exploration with each other. It means using this sacred community as a place for growth, so that together we can keep building God’s creation, one word at a time.

So, let us show up with intellectual curiosity, with humility, with a mindset of disagreement for sacred purposes—b’shem shamayim—where we’re ready to grapple for the sake of discernment and understanding. I don’t think it’s hyperbole to say that civilization’s future depends on our willingness to do this work. We won’t always agree. But we will deepen our commitment to each other and a shared, diverse society. And we’ll grow, together. It is now time that we embrace the skill, and act, of difficult, humbling, and invigorating learning—the very practice that for centuries has sustained our people.

Let us renew our days as of old. In our turning—in our teshuvah—let us turn to one another and engage one another. Let us reboot the system by flooding it with respectful and curious debate. And slowly but surely, as each of us takes part and brings others along, we will find truth once again—and with it, a serious turn toward wholeness.

Kein y’hi ratzon, May it be God’s will.