Israel | Rosh Hashanah Morning Sermon

Rosh Hashanah morning is when I usually talk about the worldly events that shape our lives and our Jewish story. This year, the state of the Jewish world feels like a crisis.

It’s been almost two years since Israel was attacked on October 7, 2023. Hostages are still held. Antisemitism is rising across the globe at levels we haven’t seen in decades.

Last year, I stood here and spoke about October 7 — the shock of that day, the brutality of the attacks, the grief of the hostages, the rise in antisemitism across the world. That was the sermon of a people reeling.

But now, almost two years later, the grief hasn’t gone away. Instead, it has been joined by something else: exhaustion. Questions. Wrestling. Will this war ever end? What kind of peace, if any, is possible?

And these aren’t just our questions. About a month ago, they were given voice by the largest protests in Israeli history — almost a million Israelis in the streets, more than half a million in Tel Aviv alone, a city whose entire population is just under half a million. It’s an entire nation wrestling with itself.

I can’t begin anywhere else but here: I love Israel. For two thousand years our people prayed to return home. And in our lifetime, that dream became real. Israel is a miracle. And Israel is also a country — filled with real people, with hopes and fears, trauma and empathy, dreams and disappointments. Imperfect, complicated, under siege — but a miracle all the same.

So here’s my confession: I have so much to say, and I don’t know what to say. And maybe some of you feel that way too. Our hearts are full, but the words are hard to find. If you’re feeling exhausted, confused, or torn in too many directions — you are not alone. This is what it means to be part of the Jewish people: to carry this together.

This war in Gaza feels unending. For Israelis, it began most recently on October 7, 2023 — with the brutal attacks of Hamas: the massacres in homes and kibbutzim, the kidnappings of men, women, and children. Every Israeli still carries that day. Every Jew carries that day.

But October 7th didn’t come out of nowhere. It came on top of more than a hundred years of frustration. Time after time, Israel has said yes to peace — the Partition Plan, Camp David, the withdrawal from Gaza — and time after time the answer has been terrorism.

And for nearly half of Israelis, the story is also personal. They are descendants of Jews expelled from Arab lands — countries that would never allow Jewish communities to flourish, even as they insist on a Palestinian state in the one and only Jewish homeland. Israelis feel that hypocrisy deeply.

For them, these aren’t just history book entries. They are memories of doors closed and promises broken. And that weight shapes how they see this war.

And still, Israel is judged differently than any other nation.

On October 8th — the very day after the Hamas attacks — protests were already condemning Israel, before Israel had even begun to respond.

And international bodies haven’t been better. Consider the UN Commission of Inquiry that declared Israel guilty of genocide. One commissioner claimed social media is “controlled by the Jewish lobby.” Another dismissed concerns about antisemitism as accusations “thrown like rice at a wedding.” The chair had already signed petitions years earlier calling to “Sanction Apartheid Israel!” — long before leading the inquiry.

And just recently, the UK, Canada, and Australia recognized Palestine as a state — while the war, started by Hamas on October 7, is still ongoing. These governments said they envision a Palestine without Hamas, but recognition that comes while Hamas still rules Gaza, opposes a two-state solution, and holds hostages rings hollow. They recognized Palestine even as Hamas refuses to recognize Israel.

In practice, it may have made things worse. Britain even announced that if there were no hostage deal, they would move toward recognition. But that was exactly what Hamas wanted — and Britain handed them the playbook. And gestures like these also embolden Israel’s far right, who look at the world and say: everyone is against us.

Yes, Israel’s actions can and should be scrutinized. But when the judges have records of antisemitism or open bias, their findings cannot be treated as impartial. That’s not defensiveness. That’s reality.

But if we stop there, the picture isn’t complete. Even as we love Israel, and even as we must defend her against unfair judgment, we are also bound to Israel by covenant and love. And as my colleague Rabbi Asher Knight said, “Love that demands silence is not love. The truth is, in war there are no clean hands. Only broken hearts.”

Still, we must be careful and humble. Because we don’t live in Israel. We don’t go to sleep with rockets overhead or tunnels underneath. Rockets never landed in our kids’ soccer fields, and terrorists never emerged from tunnels into our kids’ classrooms. Israelis live next door to Hamas and Hezbollah — not us.

Israel is the one whose kids all face mandatory service in the IDF. It’s not an abstract policy question for them. It’s whether they see this as a fight worth fighting — and, if need be, worth dying for. That is a burden we in America simply do not carry. And, for us, it’s what it means to believe in democracy.

So yes, Israel needs both our love and our critique. But we must speak with care. Because the consequences of every decision, wise or unwise, fall first on them. And at the same time, what Israel does reflects on us, too. Every Jew outside Israel feels it — as antisemitism rises, as Israel becomes part of our conversations at work, at school, with neighbors. We are bound together. Their choices affect us, and our voices matter because we are family.

Last year, our focus was grief and solidarity. Now, almost two years later, we also carry the burden of wrestling with the choices of the Israeli government — and the weariness that comes with a war dragging on this long. Israelis feel it in particular, as reservists are called up again and again, disrupting lives and families, stretching their endurance thin.

And Israelis know better than anyone the risks of pulling back. When they withdrew completely from Gaza in 2005, the result was not peace, but Hamas’s rise to power and thousands of rockets since. That memory is never far from their minds.

And yet at the same time, we cannot ignore the suffering of civilians in Gaza today. The fear of repeating past mistakes and the pain of present suffering — both are real. Both weigh heavily.

And it’s not only the outside world. Many Jews themselves — Jews who love Israel deeply — raise their voices in concern. Their words come not from hatred, but from heartbreak. They long for Israel to live up to its own highest values. Even when we don’t all agree, these are not enemies; they are family.

These are not easy choices. And we can only imagine the impossible dilemmas Israeli leaders face. That doesn’t remove the pain we feel, but it reminds us of the cost of responsibility.

After reports of widespread hunger in Gaza spread in the Israeli press, a group of Orthodox rabbis — among Israel’s most devoted supporters — wrote: “Judaism’s vision of justice and compassion extends to all human beings... Zion shall be redeemed through justice.”

Jodi and I also see images of widespread suffering, and for me, seeing children suffer is particularly heartbreaking. We responded the only way we knew how. We gave tzedakah — to World Central Kitchen, to IsraAid (an Israeli aid organization that works around the world, including in Gaza), in addition to the tzedakah we give to support Israel and Israelis. Because when Israel struggles to live up to its values, we can’t always change the government. But we can do our part to keep our Jewish values alive. And we raise these painful truths not because we doubt Israel’s place in our lives, but because we love her too much to look away.

Israel has the right, indeed the obligation, to protect its people and bring its hostages home. No nation can live with the threat of terror next door. But the cost has been unbearably heavy. On Israelis. On Palestinians. On the Jewish soul.

That is why our bimah holds an empty chair draped in yellow ribbon — a reminder of the hostages still in captivity. It sits in our sanctuary as a symbol of absence, of lives torn from their families, and as a prayer that they will one day return. We carry their pain with us into this new year.

Speaking of our Jewish soul, Prime Minister Netanyahu recently suggested that Israel may need to become a kind of “Super Sparta.” And Yossi Klein Halevi, in conversation with Rabbi Donniel Hartman, countered: “To create Sparta requires Spartans.” And Jews, he concluded, are definitely not Spartans.

He’s right. Can you imagine? We’re a people most well known for producing people like Tevye, Adam Sandler, Nobel Prize winners, and Supreme Court justices. But Spartans? Sure, Gal Gadot once played an Amazon — still, the point stands. The Maccabees didn’t defeat the Greeks because they wanted to be like them — they fought because they didn’t want to be Greek. Jewish strength has never come from becoming a warrior culture, but from becoming a people bound to justice, compassion, and hope.

The greater danger, though, is not disagreement. The greater danger is walking away. Saying Israel is no longer part of our story.

Always, but especially in a time of antisemitism, we need Israel.Always, but especially in a time of war, Israel needs us.And in a time of division, we need each other.

Rachel Goldberg-Polin, whose son Hersh was kidnapped on October 7th and later murdered in captivity, reflected on the Torah’s story of our Patriarch Yaakov, Jacob. On the night before Jacob was to meet his estranged brother Esau, he found himself alone. A mysterious figure came and wrestled with him until dawn. The Torah leaves the identity deliberately vague — was it an angel, a messenger, or, as Rambam suggested, Jacob wrestling with himself?

The struggle changes him in more ways than one for the rest of his life. On the one hand, he is injured, and can only walk with a limp. On the other, the adversary agrees to bless him in exchange for Jacob letting him go. Jacob receives that blessing, and his name is changed to Israel, one who struggles with God.

Rachel Goldberg-Polin said that Jacob’s night of wrestling mirrors what so many of us are doing now: as individuals, as communities, and as a people, we are wrestling with ourselves. And she noted three things: Jacob emerges wounded, he emerges renamed, and he emerges blessed.

She then reflected on the Hebrew word for crisis — mashber. In modern Hebrew it means a breaking point. It actually comes from the same root as one of our shofar blasts, shevarim, which is the three broken notes. But in biblical Hebrew, mashber also refers to the birthing stool — the place of labor pains. Crisis is not only breaking; it can also be the beginning of something new being born.

That’s where we are. We are limping, we are wounded, we are wrestling. But we are also still carrying the possibility of blessing, of rebirth, of a future not yet seen.

To be Israel is to live in that tension. We don’t always emerge unscathed. We limp. We carry pain. But we do not let go. We wrestle through the night, we carry our wounds into the morning — and still we look for the blessing, still we hold onto the hope that out of this crisis, something new may yet be born.

Last year, I said our task was to stand with Israel in her grief. That hasn’t changed. But this year, nearly two years later, the wrestling has deepened. To love Israel now is to live in the tension — to stand with her, to see both her beauty, her courage, and also for each of us to help one another be the best versions of ourselves, living up to our Torah’s values.

To be Israel is not to have one simple message. It is to live in the tension — to wrestle, to struggle, and still to love. That love has carried our people for generations, and it will carry us still.

On this Rosh Hashanah, the shofar blasts include shevarim — brokenness — but they do not end with shevarim. They end with a tekiah gedolah, the long, unbroken blast of a better, more complete future.

And for us as Jews, that future is bound up with both Israel and Jewish life here. Israel is the homeland of the Jewish people, the fulfillment of an ancient dream. And Jewish life in America, and in communities across the world, is also sacred — part of the same covenant that binds us together as one people. Especially in a time of rising antisemitism, when many Jews wonder if their home countries still feel safe and like home, we need to be safe in both.

And at the same time, we need to live up to the highest values of our tradition: to be a people of justice, of compassion, of hope. That is what binds our future together — in Israel, here, and wherever Jews live.

So may this new year be one in which our love for Israel deepens, our communities here flourish, our commitment to Torah’s values strengthens, and our shared hope for peace endures. May the year ahead be a year of peace.

Shanah Tovah.