It’s been a year.
The war on Hamas rages on. Forty-eight hostages, alive and dead, remain in captivity. Israel scored notable victories in its campaign against belligerent neighbors, but also was scorned at home for a war seemingly without end and ostracized abroad for the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
On the home front, a new presidency has meant an hourly stream of polarizing headlines and norm-shattering policies. Jews have found themselves at the center of the president’s efforts to remake higher education, and of a New York City mayoral race where the frontrunner holds positions that many pro-Israel voters think put them in danger.
Rosh Hashanah arrives on the evening of Sept. 23, exactly two weeks before the second anniversary of the Oct. 7 attacks. To make sense of yet another unthinkably difficult year spent in the shadow of war and political turmoil, we asked rabbis what messages they hoped to share over the High Holidays. The question we put to them was this: What are Jews hungry to hear this year?
Few spoke in specific terms about the crises at hand, but if there was a common theme to their responses it was this: hope. Many said that what Jews need most is reassurance that they might maintain hope in a time that can feel profoundly hopeless.
Many thanks to Rabbis Scott N. Bolton, Jeffrey S. Fox, Nicole Guzik, Moshe Hauer, Ammiel Hirsch, Rick Jacobs, Miriam Jerris, Avi Killip, Julia Knobloch, Anchelle Perl, Jason Rubenstein, Michael Schudrich, Chaim Steinmetz, Deborah Waxman, David Wolpe, Shmuly Yanklowitz and Wendy Zierler; Rebbetzin Avital Chizhik-Goldschmidt, and Rabba Rachel Kohl Finegold.
Eternal possibilities
I cannot think of a year when our community — and each of us individually — has needed Rosh Hashanah more than we do this year.
We are buffeted by political conflict and technological upheaval; concerned by declines of literacy, happiness, birth rates, and life expectancies; and rightly fearful of rising violence against the Jewish community. From the drumbeat of stress-raising headlines notifications on our phones, to longer thought-pieces rightly alarmed about the state and trajectory of our world — we are all tempted by resignation to a coming year of polarization, tumult and fear.
Rosh Hashanah is a protest against precisely this kind of pessimistically confident prognostication. Together we celebrate the rebirth of the world — hayom harat olam — in the image of not just any birth (each of which is miraculous) but in the image of an elderly Sarah miraculously giving birth to Isaac at the age of ninety, after suffering through 70 long years of infertility. It was in the month of Tishrei, our Rabbis teach us, that Sarah learned that she would miraculously have a son — and Rosh Hashanah’s liturgy is designed around reading and re-living this story. (The Akeidah, Abraham’s near-sacrifice of Isaac, is read on the second day because it is the story that immediately follows Isaac’s birth. But it is Sarah’s previously unimaginable motherhood that was classically, and always should be, seen as the beating heart of Rosh Hashanah.)
We, Sarah’s descendants, are called to remember that we can follow in her path. No matter how great our certainty in the sameness or difficulty or even hopelessness of the coming year, no matter how convincing the evidence or how irrefutable the trends, we can yet be surprised by eruptions of joy that we could neither have predicted nor imagined. May each of us, and all of us together, open our hearts and minds to the eternal possibility of new hopes and new possibilities — ones that, when we see them, we realize that we had given up on.
Rabbi Jason Rubenstein is executive director of Harvard Hillel.
People are struggling
I think there’s one question that people have now, which is just this ennui around this moment in time. People are not hopeful. The world, America specifically, seems to be spiraling towards this ever-more-violent chaos, and people are struggling. They’re struggling from the news. They’re struggling from living online. We live in a very strange world, and I think coming to shul, the messages people are looking for are messages that speak to that struggle and offer clarity.
Avital Chizhik-Goldschmidt is the co-founder and rebbetzin of The Altneu synagogue on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.
To comfort and provoke
We are charged with contradictory and even paradoxical missions: to comfort and provoke. To warn and reassure. To ask people to turn away from screens and public affairs and attend to their souls, and at the same time to mobilize for the solidarity of their people. No single emphasis will suffice. If there is to be a theme to all the discordant music, perhaps it is to listen; there are harmonies as well as noise. We would be better, all of us, if we would shema — hear, listen, O Israel.
David Wolpe is Max Webb Emeritus Rabbi at Sinai Temple in Los Angeles and scholar in residence at the Maimonides Fund.
(JTA illustration by Grace Yagel)
Deal kindly with the stranger
I believe the most important thing for Jews to hear this season is that the most oft-repeated mitzvah in the Torah, by far — there really is no contest here — is the injunction to deal kindly with the “ger” (the stranger), because we were gerim (strangers) in Egypt. According to Bava Metzia 59b, in a baraita quoted in the name of Rabbi Eliezer the Great, the injunction against oppressing the stranger occurs 36 times in the Bible, and some even say, 46 times.
The recent appalling rise of antisemitism has once again placed American and world Jewry in the position of the abused stranger. At the same time, in this country antisemitism has provided a disturbing pretext to remove funding from needed areas of medical research and science. We have good reason to be dismayed by antisemitism on the left, but that does not justify turning our backs on basic Jewish principles of caring for the vulnerable, the strangers, the widow, the orphan, the sick. And while we may be outraged by the way in which Zionism has been turned into an antisemitic slur, rendering strange and intolerable our precious national, Zionist pride, that doesn’t absolve the world Jewish community and current Israeli government from doing everything it possible can do to feed the hungry and prevent violence against innocents.
On the most basic level, there’s a pragmatic side to the Bible’s obsessive injunction not to mistreat the ger: God wants us to engage in productive and fair behavior with those who do not belong to our immediate circle so as not to live in a state of constant war. Which is the other reason why this message is so important for us: the notion that more than anything else, we ought to be trying to pursue amity with our neighbors — not war, not strife, not knock-out debate punches. In the famous words of Psalm 34:15: Shun evil and do good, seek peace and pursue it.
Rabbi Wendy Zierler is Sigmund Falk Professor, Modern Jewish Literature and Feminist Studies, at Hebrew Union College in New York, and the author of the new book, “Going Out with Knots: My Two Kaddish Years with Hebrew Poetry.”
Not the place for politics
The High Holidays are a time when we gather to strengthen our Jewish identity and our shared bond. My message is not about politics but about giving Jews the courage and inspiration to stand strong and united, no matter what challenges we face. The comfort comes from knowing that as a people, we are never alone — we have each other, our tradition, and our faith.
The synagogue, especially during the High Holidays, is not the place to rehash the politics and the opinions that we hear through the nose all year round. This sacred time is about rising above political divides and remembering that what unites us as Jews is far greater than what divides us. My goal is not to validate one side or another, but to remind us of our shared spiritual mission and responsibility.
In my sermons, the focus is not on domestic politics or partisan debates. We get enough of that everywhere else. The High Holidays are about lifting our eyes and hearts to something higher — to G-d, to our tradition, and to our collective future. It’s about strengthening our unity, deepening our connection to Torah and mitzvot, and ensuring the continuity of Jewish life.
Anchelle Perl is the rabbi of Chabad of Mineola, New York.
We are together
What is most important for Jews to hear right now is that a Jew should never feel alone. In reaction to real antisemitism, and the anti-Israel sentiment which is far more widespread now than ever before in our lifetimes, one can feel a sense of alienation and loneliness. We must let our communities know that in no uncertain terms we are together. I do not have solutions for the world’s problems that are impacting people in their normal daily lives. All I know is that we need to be together. As our Rabbis teach us, one reed alone anyone can break but even a small bunch of reeds held together even the strongest person cannot break.
Michael Schudrich is the Chief Rabbi of Poland.
(JTA illustration by Grace Yagel)
Seeking the ultimate authority
Rosh Hashanah’s focus on kingship has long been something that requires me to reconstruct and reinterpret. Except this year. This year is different. This year, as a child of democracy, I really resonate with the idea of God as sovereign, as a ruler who has ultimate authority. I want to be clear. I don’t believe in a personal God, so I’m not picturing an old man with a long white beard sitting on a throne, just the same way I’m not picturing that same old man presiding as a judge writing me or you into the Book of Life. I am thinking about God’s malkhut, God’s sovereignty, as the source of moral authority in the universe to which we are all ultimately accountable. I’m thinking about God’s sovereignty as necessary acknowledgment of the limits of human understanding and on human behavior. I’m thinking about God’s sovereignty as a bulwark against radical individualism that can descend into nihilism, and thinking about a God with whom we can enter into horizontal covenant and then make God’s presence manifest in how we treat each other.
Rabbi Deborah Waxman is president and CEO of Reconstructing Judaism.
A world remade by maturity and holiness
This High Holy Days season, Jews long for moral clarity — condemnations of injustice, affirmations of our values, and new meaning in the teachings of our Torah. But what they may hunger for is the ability to hold more than one idea at the same time despite the strong convictions they hold and to know more about what to do with that multiplicity.
D.W. Winnicott wrote, “Of a true democracy (as the term is used today) one can say: In this society, at this time, there is sufficient maturity in the emotional development of a sufficient proportion of the individuals that comprise it for there to exist an innate tendency towards the creation and re-creation and maintenance of the democratic machinery.”
Jews are hungry to hear that there are sufficiently mature individuals who can be trusted to safeguard the democracy we believe in. Even as we debate wars, rising antisemitism and national destiny, the deepest message of these days is this: God is sovereign, the Source of renewal. To hear the shofar is to glimpse the possibility of a world remade by mature-minded holiness seekers. We are hungry to affirm that there is a President of presidents, a Prime Minister of prime ministers, a Mayor of mayors. God is King, and Father, at the same time. And Shekhinah, and Pure Waters that purify and grant us a renewed maturity of mind and heart.
Scott N. Bolton is rabbi of Congregation Or Zarua in Manhattan.
Do not give up on the world
I’ll be speaking to a thousand people, and they all need something different. And yet, my hope is that they will each feel as if I am speaking directly to them. They’ll hear the same message differently, but our common humanity is aching to feel seen, and that is what I am going to focus on.
What I think people are hungry for this year is for their sense of hopelessness to be acknowledged and held, for it to be named that they just feel “done” with the world right now. And then they need encouragement to not give up on the world, and to find the sparks of goodness, no matter how small. I will be using the concept of God sending the flood in the days of Noah. The Torah text actually says that in response to seeing the pure evil in the world, God regrets having created it. I think many of us can relate to this feeling of being ready to give up on the world. The flood is a “reset” and then a recreation of the world. On Rosh Hashanah, the anniversary of the world’s creation, we also commit to creation, and remind ourselves that there will always be evil, but we don’t need to let it “flood” us. At the end of the flood, the language in the Torah echoes that of creation, and so too we will “recreate” our world — even in small ways — in the new year.
Rachel Kohl Finegold is the rabba of Moriah Congregation, a traditional Conservative synagogue in Deerfield, Illinois.
A very long two years
It’s been a very long two years. Personally, I think the topic for this year is resilience. If there’s a second topic — which has a lot to do with the growth of American antisemitism, both on the left and on the right — it is soldiering on, which is also resilience. It’s keeping our hope going when things seem to be going in the wrong direction. It’s hard then to cope, and so we have to do our best.
Chaim Steinmetz is the senior rabbi of Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun on the Upper East Side of Manhattan
Sharing the pain
How do we navigate despair, the heaviness of every day and emerge with a sense of hope?
My 23-year-old congregant, ill with cancer, was determined to get to his brother’s wedding. I stood under the chuppah and watched him march down the aisle towards his older brother and sister-in-law to be. But he didn’t march alone. He walked arm in arm, hand in hand, hearts eternally woven with his other siblings. I’m not sure who was lifting whom; as one blur, they laughed and cried and made their way as a unit to stand under the tallit with their parents and the exquisite bride and groom.
Almost a year later there was a different procession. This time, the young man’s body, accompanied by his family, was being laid to rest. Once again, hand in hand, arms interlocked, there they were—a family lifting each other up, only able to take one step in front of the other because of a reliance on each other’s strength, courage, faith and love. Hundreds upon hundreds of community members stood behind them, all silent except for the young boy’s guitar music playing through speakers. Five human beings were holding each other but very easily, from the world beyond, we saw the sixth, the boy’s hands so clearly woven throughout theirs.
How do we walk through heartache? We choose to open our hands and lift each other. Forget politics. Forget differences. Forget old grudges and arguments. In our most dire of moments, we simply must be willing to take a loved one’s hand and assure them, in our shared pain, we choose to hold each other. And as my congregant teaches us, from Olam HaBa [the world to come], the souls of our loved ones continue to give us strength and fuel our souls.
Nicole Guzik is senior rabbi at Sinai Temple in Los Angeles.
Standing together as Jews
In 1946, Rabbi Isaac Herzog, then Chief Rabbi of Israel (Palestine), visited the DP camps housing thousands of Holocaust survivors. He spent the holiday of Shavuot in the Foehrenwald camp in the American Zone of occupied Germany and described the experience as follows:
Here was revealed to me the eternal faith of the Jewish people that is embedded within it from generation to generation, a faith that bubbled up and arose from the hearts of each and every resident of that camp…. I will never, ever forget how these thousands gathered around and danced for four straight hours while singing “Ani Maamin,” the Jewish anthem of belief in a better future. I felt at that moment as if here had come together the faith of the generations from Avraham and until our day, a faith that had been purified in the furnace of our history of suffering; a faith that represents the essential truth of the eternity of man created in G-d’s image, and that ignites in his heart the Divine spark.
Witnessing that — even hearing about it — stirs our faith in the Jewish people. But that same faith can be stirred by what is happening here and now in synagogues all over this country and the world. Look around the room and it will be hard to understand how everyone got there, gathering from the four corners of Jewish life, people who grew up closer or farther from tradition. And yet they are here, we are here, standing together as Jews, praying together the High Holiday prayers for a better future for the entire world, where God’s presence is recognized and His word lived by.
Our faith in God’s enduring commitment to the mission and destiny of the Jewish people is not blind faith. We are its proof. The recent challenges, the hate that has targeted Jews in Israel and around the world, have not discouraged or alienated us; they have brought us home to God and to our people and community with hopes and prayers for a better world.
Rabbi Moshe Hauer is executive vice president of the Orthodox Union.
‘I aim to give hope’
For many people it is difficult in these disturbing times to find purpose in attending synagogue, engaging in prayer, thinking about God, when what is going on in the world, in Israel, in our country flies in the face of much of our liturgy and values. I aim to give hope, and meaning to the High Holiday services, by re-instilling a sense of wonder for the world, an awareness for the preciousness of life amidst disenchantment, doubt, heartbreak and loss. Rosh Hashanah in its essence celebrates life, the creation of the world. I believe people are hungry for simple, poetic messages that help face the vicissitudes and uncertainties of these days.
On Rosh Hashanah day I will be more prosaic, looking back at what 5785 brought to Los Angeles, our country, Israel and the world. We have several people among our congregants who were affected by the Palisades and Eaton fires, and of course being in a port town, immigration is a resonant topic. How can we tackle the new year without cynicism and resilience?
Julia Knobloch is rabbi of Temple Beth El and Center in San Pedro, California
Toward a better world
Jews are hungry to hear that there is hope. They want to know that they have the power to join the Jewish community in creating hope for the future. As Jews, as human beings, it is our responsibility to participate in improving and healing the world. We can be empowered and empower others to join together in speaking out to honor the life and dignity of all human beings, to treat others as we want to be treated, to articulate the vision of a world of kindness and compassion, a world safe for our children and their children. I want to be part of this movement of change toward a better world, and I want others to join me in its realization. As Rabbi Sherwin Wine, founder of Humanistic Judaism wrote: “Hope is a choice…Hope is an act of will, affirming, in the presence of evil, that good things will happen.”
Miriam Jerris is the rabbi of the Society for Humanistic Judaism.
Finding strength in diversity
This year, so many rabbis are panicked that their words could further divide our already polarized community. Some may prefer to avoid controversial subjects in favor of sticking to the Torah and prayerbook, even though many of our sacred texts agitate our souls rather than calm them. But when rabbis and congregants speak with love and respect for those who hold different views, hard subjects can be addressed without the congregation coming apart at the seams. Our people are hungry for messages that are thoughtful and serious — even if they disagree with them.
Our High Holiday liturgy is written in the plural: “for the sin we have committed,” a reminder that though we act as individuals, we are inextricably bound together as one Jewish people. The deep bonds between Jews worldwide are why, here in North America, we so viscerally felt the tremendous pain of the Hamas attack on Oct. 7, 2023.
Beyond our general feelings of Jewish peoplehood and pain for what our Israeli siblings are going through, in North America, the war in Gaza is having direct repercussions. It is causing deep divisions within families and within communities, and it has severely tested the nearly 80 years of bipartisan American political support that has helped Israel defend itself from hostile neighbors. All this comes at a time when North American Jews are experiencing a deadly spike in antisemitism.
The members of our community who are lifting up concerns about the war’s expansion, the excruciating plight of the remaining hostages and the hunger gripping Gaza echo those of hundreds of thousands of Israelis who have taken to the streets, week after week, urging the Israeli government to choose a different path.
Let’s be clear: It does not make one love Israel any less to be pained by the loss of life and suffering among innocent Gazans and wish for it to end, or call for more food, water, and other supplies for Gazan civilians. Not everyone who hears my words will agree with me. But I love to pray in communities that don’t all believe, practice, worship or vote the same way. There are precious few places where we gather and find strength, even inspiration, in such diversity. That person sitting next to me in shul may view Israel with different lenses, but that doesn’t automatically make them morallyobtuse or Jewishly disloyal.
Antisemitism is real. There are people who hate Jews — all Jews — not just the liberal or conservative ones. So, let’s find courage and solidarity when we chant these words repeatedly through these Days of Awe: “Avinu Malkeinu, renew us for a year of goodness.” “Us” isn’t just my family, or those who think as I do, but rather the broadest swath of our people, and yes, even the rest of God’s very large and diverse family.
Rabbi Rick Jacobs is president of the Union for Reform Judaism.
(JTA illustration by Grace Yagel)
‘Religion is upstream from politics’
There is a fundamental insight that I think we all need to take in this year: religion is upstream from politics. Our decisions in the voting booth ought to be driven by our understanding of Torah, rather than allowing our choice of a synagogue to be determined by the political preferences of its rabbi. When political alliances and allegiances become primary, communities and even families tend to fracture. People begin to choose their shul, school, and even their friends based on talking points instead of a shared spiritual vision. This turns religion into a tool of politics rather than placing it at the foundation, where it belongs. If every time your candidate speaks, their message perfectly reflects your interpretation of this week’s parasha, then you have misunderstood this week’s parasha. This is true in America, Israel, and the world over.
At the heart of many of our prayers during this season are the Thirteen Attributes of Divine Mercy. They are recited daily in Selichot, central to the liturgy of Yom Kippur, and repeated numerous times during the climactic moments of Neila. In some communities they are intoned in a kind of meditative song, and sometimes they are screamed at the top of our lungs.
Our Rabbis were well aware that the Written Torah ascribes to God many attributes including anger, vengeance and retribution. And yet, when they command us to “walk in God’s ways,” they chose to focus on God as the one who visits the sick, clothes the naked and comforts the bereaved. Just as God is compassionate so too must each of us strive to act with compassion (See Bavli Sota 14a and Shabbat 133b), thereby excluding other characteristics from the human requirement to model our behavior on God. Our political discourse and choices ought to ultimately be driven by compassion.
Here are three steps that we can all take to bring religion back to the center. First, spend time learning Torah. Second, seek out diverse religious communities. Third, cultivate spiritual humility. Each one of these goals are truthfully the work of a lifetime. Let us strive to use this season not only for repentance but for realignment.
Rabbi Jeffrey S. Fox is Rosh ha-Yeshiva and dean of faculty at Yeshivat Maharat.
Stop obsessing — and start acting
It is my practice in preparation for the High Holy Days to ask as many people as I can what they are thinking about, and what they wish their rabbis would address. This year, over and over again, the response I received was “hope.” “Speak about hope. Give us hope. These are such bleak times. Everything is depressing.”
So, I spent weeks pondering this concept of hope. What do people mean by that? What exactly do they want to hear: That religious leaders should dispense perfumed homilies that mask the stench of our times? To improve our hygiene, we must attend to the problem requiring perfume in the first place.
Many religious philosophies sought to address despair by speaking of “the world-to-come,” “messianic times,” “heaven,” “paradise.” Our tradition, too, speculated about the world-to-come. But more of our attention is focused on the present — our lives and the lives of others who share our world. Even what happens to us in the world-to-come is linked to how we led our lives in this world.
“For two and half years the schools of Hillel and Shammai debated whether it would have been better not to have been created,” the Talmud records. “They finally voted, and concluded that it would have been better had human beings not been created: But since we have been created, let us examine our deeds.”
Judaism is concerned with actions. The Sages developed a moral system of behavior that allows us to derive as much meaning, enjoyment, empowerment, accomplishment — and hope — as possible. Ecclesiastes understood that the antidote to despair is to do: “Whatever is in your power to do, do it with all your might.”
Stop scrolling, stop clicking, stop obsessing — and start acting. The more we act, the more hopelessness retreats. Begin with one act, even a small one. It will lead to others. Small steps lead to bigger steps. If we cannot do the small steps well, we will not be able to take the bigger steps. We will become easily frustrated and say to ourselves, “What difference does it make? It’s all hopeless anyway.” But if you are convinced that yours is a struggle for justice, dignity and morality — if you strive to do God’s will — despair’s grip will be loosened.
It is in the doing that we alleviate hopelessness. The prayer for peace that we recite in every service is not in the expectation that God will build a canopy of peace, but that we will build it. Prayer fortifies our commitment to repair: to choose life over death, meaning over despair, action over passivity.
There is hope for this world. Humanity can be repaired and redeemed.
Ammiel Hirsch is senior rabbi of Stephen Wise Free Synagogue in Manhattan.
A time for moral preparation
What are Jews most hungry to hear this year during the High Holidays? Themselves! There is so much noise that few have sustained practices to hear their own thoughts, check in with their own feelings, and hear the callings of their souls.
Yes, we live in a fractured world. But Judaism has never taught us to wait for the world to heal before we begin our own healing. The machzor [High Holiday prayer book] does not contain political policy. It leads with Hineni — Here I am. Vulnerable. Accountable. Open to transformation. It demands we ask not only what is wrong out there, but what is misaligned in here.
Now more than ever, we must turn inward toward our middot (character traits) — not in retreat, but in moral preparation. The world needs courageous souls rooted in humility, patience and love. The Jewish project has always been about changing the world first and foremost through the ethical refinement of the self: resisting anger, practicing compassion, striving toward justice with a full and broken heart. When we cultivate character, we become vessels for healing far beyond ourselves.
Let us not emerge from this season only more entrenched in our views, but more expansive in our empathy. Let our Yom Kippur fast not just cleanse the body, but burn away arrogance, bitterness and blame. Let our prayers be not for victory, but for wisdom. Not just for peace in the world, but peace between neighbors — and peace within.
This year, the holiest work is not proving we are right, but becoming righteous. The shofar blasts not only to shake the heavens, but to awaken our conscience. Will we listen?
This year, may our teshuvah be not just political, but personal.
Rabbi Shmuly Yanklowitz is president and dean of Valley Beit Midrash: A Global Center for Learning & Action.
Keeping an open heart
Yehudah Amichai wrote a poem titled “Open Closed Open.” The phrase has echoed in my head throughout the past year, a voice assessing my own heart as I relate to the world around me. With each news update I assess my heart— open or closed?
Some days my heart is open. Each detail seeps into my body, I absorb it. My breath slows, sometimes I cry. Other days my heart is closed. I see a headline flash across the tiny screen in my hand as if it is a million miles away and then I place a can of Pringles in my child’s backpack, wish them a good day and head for the subway. Closed, the voice will notice. No outrage, no tears.
We cannot be outraged all the time, even waves of grief have low tides. But sometimes I find myself yearning for that feeling of an open, unlocked heart — and in the siddur, I find a key. At the end of the weekday amidah, after we’ve prayed for peace, we say “Open my heart to your Torah.” This year I read the Hebrew as: Open my heart through your Torah.
Torah is what will allow us to keep open hearts. Torah reminds us that we are part of a larger story, that there is a difference between right and wrong and that difference matters, that God made this world and holiness is real. Torah is our tree of life. May we open our hearts to Torah, so that Torah can open our hearts.
Rabbi Avi Killip is executive vice president of the Hadar Institute.
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