There is, of course, no way to sugarcoat that this was an extremely long and brutal year for the Jews. Beyond the traumas and tragedies of October 7th and the subsequent war, these events – heartbreaking and earth-shattering in and of themselves – have also exposed and exacerbated deep fault lines among the global Jewish community, with disagreements over Israel increasingly threatening to permanently and irreparably break us apart.
This year, I found myself caught up in tremors triggered by those fault lines. Last spring, a tragic and troubling incident occurred in the synagogue I used to lead in Richmond. A young Jewish student from a local university, who was outspoken in his criticism of Israel on campus and social media, had been regularly davvening with us throughout the year on Shabbat mornings. He never caused any disruptions in synagogue, never even volunteered his views to any congregant as far as I could tell. Yet a few congregants objected to his very presence in our building, and their objections intensified as campus protests were drawing increased media attention in the spring. One Shabbat morning, the dam burst: an active member of our congregation stormed into the sanctuary, in the midst of services, followed by our on-duty police officer. She approached the student, who was sitting by himself, praying privately. And in full view of the congregation, she aggressively confronted him, loudly demanding that he leave the premises. I was forced to pause the service to help our police officer defuse the situation. Eventually, the congregant, still visibly and audibly agitated, left more or less voluntarily, and we resumed the service, albeit unsettled and shaken.
I honestly didn’t realize how traumatic that experience was for me until the next month, when I attended the American Jewish Committee’s Global Forum in Washington, DC. I had been invited as the guest of several generous TBE members. I had never been to an AJC function before, and it was an extraordinary learning opportunity, informative and provocative in all the best ways. But there was one disturbing incident that both shook me in the moment and has stayed with me ever since: During one of the plenaries, the organization’s CEO, former Congressman Ted Deutch, was interviewing national security adviser Jake Sullivan, a high ranking official in the Biden Administration with a lot of influence over America’s foreign policy.
In the midst of an otherwise thoughtful and challenging, yet civil, conversation, activists, protesting the war in Gaza, stormed the stage, loudly and passionately condemning Israel’s policies, and America’s role in shaping and supporting them: “Jake Sullivan, you are a war criminal!” they cried. “Fifteen thousand kids dead is not self-defense!”
The disruption was resolved relatively quickly, and the program resumed in short order.
Yet watching the scene unfold on the stage, I could feel the trauma response rise in my body; the adrenaline pumping, teeth chattering, hands shaking. It felt like I was back in Richmond, witnessing a congregant disrupt the peace and sanctity of the sanctuary to berate another worshiper; it felt like an attack on the community.
These two moments — one in the sanctuary of my own congregation and the other at a national Jewish gathering — epitomize the divisions plaguing the Jewish community today. If you didn’t personally experience these incidents, I’m certain you’ve felt it in other ways, through conversations and confrontations with friends, family, or fellow congregants.
Of course, divisions like these are not particularly new. For as long as there have been Jews, there has been Jewish diversity; over the millennia, we have had countless disagreements, even fierce and sometimes violent debates, about what it means to be Jewish. In fact, earlier this evening, as we prepared to recite Kol Nidrei, we declared:
“Bi-shivah shel malah, u’vi-shivah shel matah,
Al da’at ha-makom, v’al da’at ha-kahal,
Anu matirim l’hitapellleil im ha-avaryanim.
By authority of the court on high, and by the authority of the court below, with the consent of the Divine, and with the consent of the congregation, we are permitted to pray with the sinners.”
When we say, “we are permitted to pray with the sinners,” we are acknowledging that we have since time immemorial shown up to shul on Yom Kippur a community divided.
Yet many of us feel deep down that there’s something different about our time, that the divisions are deeper, the debates are more charged, the chasms increasingly uncrossable. Even before October 7th, Jewish communities around the world were splintering over ideological divides, especially around Israel, but also over many other issues. And over the past year, it has increasingly felt as though there are different Jewish factions who speak different languages, are guided by divergent values, and are driven by opposing visions of Jewishness.
It’s important to recognize that these widening Jewish divisions reflect broader cultural trends: in recent years, polarization has steadily increased, partisanship has intensified and calcified, discourse has coarsened and become more vicious, and truth itself has become politicized. We have seemingly become quicker to outrage and slower to forgiveness. Social media has been a particularly pernicious force in driving these societal shifts, commodifying our outrage, amplifying the nastiest voices, encouraging us to demonize and destroy one another. The Jewish community is an inseparable part of this brokenness; we are impacted by it and contribute to it, which means that the path to fixing our fractured world must start with us striving to repair ourselves.
It’s tempting to respond to these realities by declaring that Jews simply shouldn’t talk about hot-button issues, particularly in synagogue.
However, there is a difference between an absence of tension and the presence of unity. This kind of so-called “civility” is a false peace. It serves only to silence those who dissent from the dominant view. We can’t build a meaningful, authentic Jewish community by forcing one another to refrain from expressing our opinions unless we hold views aligned with existing communal consensus, or otherwise pretending that the core issues and values that animate our lives don’t exist, even if those issues are potentially divisive.
It is for this reason that ours has long been a tradition that repeatedly brings together divergent points of view, modeling that discord can be helpful, even holy, and showing that, without disagreement, understanding is obscured, and wisdom is diminished. As the ancient sage Ben Zoma taught, “Who is wise? The one who learns from every person” (Mishnah Avot 4:1). Learning from others’ views and appreciating a diversity of perspectives is the path to wisdom. Indeed, our tradition holds that God desires our difference. Diversity is divine.
Now, that may be nice in theory. But how does it work in the real world?
According to a talmudic tradition (B. Eruvin 13b), there once were two great rabbinic academies, the schools of Shammai and Hillel, who frequently had disagreements about matters of Jewish law. At one point, they even engaged in a dispute that lasted for three years. Ultimately, God was forced to directly intervene; otherwise, who knows how long the debate may have lasted?
What’s striking about this story is not the content of the debate itself — we’re not even told what they were arguing about — but rather the fact that these two schools continued to engage with each other for three whole years. This is even more noteworthy when we consider that differences of opinion about matters of Jewish law were not taken lightly by the ancient rabbis. It’s not that the schools of Hillel and Shammai were wishy-washy about their perspectives. On the contrary, each side believed its view was nothing less than a reflection of God’s will.
Imagine sitting across the table — not for three minutes or three days, but for three years! – from a person you believe with all your heart is not only prepared to violate God’s will themselves, but who also wants to make you do so, and simultaneously refraining from abandoning your beliefs while also refusing to walk away from the conversation. What kept them at the table together, despite the fact that they believed the other side was not only wrong but potentially a dangerous heretic?
For starters, the students of these ancient academies understood that, even if they believed the opposing side was fundamentally wrong, there might still be something to learn from them, and that their own views might well be refined and strengthened through creative tension and conflict.
Apparently, this approach was particularly practiced by Hillel’s school. The Talmud reports that Hillel’s disciples were kind and humble, teaching both their own rulings and the rulings of Shammai’s school; and not only this, they even prioritized the rulings of their ideological opponents above their own. According to tradition, this is ultimately why, for all practical purposes, Jewish law follows Hillel’s school – not because they were necessarily more right – the Talmud refers to the opinions of both academies as “the words of the living God,” and we traditionally study the rulings of both schools side by side – but rather because they were more kind. They listened seriously – to learn, rather than to respond. They sought to understand, rather than win. That open-mindedness and generosity of spirit not only made Hillel’s school worthy of emulation – it also doubtlessly helped them arrive at a deeper and clearer understanding of their own perspectives, enhancing the wisdom of their rulings. Or, to put it a different way, being more kind made their views more right.
This sort of intellectual humility is hard enough for many of us. Harder still is maintaining meaningful relationships, and all the more so remaining in community, with those who have views with which we vehemently disagree. Once someone’s objectionable views are made known to us, we can’t unhear them. So what do we say to those people when we see them at the supermarket, or at shul? What do we do when our kid wants to go over to their kid’s house for a playdate, or gets invited over for Shabbos dinner? How do we respond when our Romeo and their Juliet fall in love and want to get married?
According to tradition, these were questions with which the students of the schools of Hillel and Shammai wrestled as they disagreed about the particulars of God’s will. Yet despite all their passionate debates about foundational issues, the Talmud reports not only that the followers of the two schools refused to stop talking to one another, but moreover that they continued to marry one another and eat in each others’ homes (Tosefta Yevamot 1:10). Through all their vehement disagreements, they refused to sever their relationship, and remained together in community.
So what held them together? What enabled them to maintain their bonds of community, despite their deep differences?
On Rosh Hashanah, I spent some time exploring insights from my rabbi, Sharon Brous’, powerful new book The Amen Effect. Among the wisdom she offers is that the strongest relationships share two core components, which together foster mutual commitment and care: shared story and paired purpose; common heritage and conjoined destiny.
Shortly after I was ordained, I became Assistant Rabbi of Har Zion Temple in Penn Valley, Pennsylvania, just outside of Philadelphia. And every year, Adira and I would go for Seder to the home of my shul’s cantor and his wonderful wife, who was of Egyptian Jewish descent. From her we learned two amazing Sephardic Passover traditions that have remained part of our own Sedarim ever since: first, we stuff our korekh, the matzah-maror-charoset sandwich, with morsels of the most delicious roasted lamb shanks you’ve ever tasted, dry-rubbed with a Middle Eastern spice blend, the recipe for which is a secret passed down by God to Moses at Mt. Sinai; and second, as we approach Magid, the section in which we retell our people’s liberation story, we pass around a piece of matzah wrapped in a cloth, and each person slings it over their shoulder like they are carrying a satchel through the wilderness, and the participants all ask, “Where are you from?” The one holding the matzah says, “From Egypt.” The other participants then ask, “And where are you going?” To which the one holding the matzah says, “To Jerusalem.”
Jews may disagree, and indeed over the centuries have disagreed, about many things. We have maintained communities all over the world with disparate ethnicities, cultural norms, ideologies, and modes of spiritual expression; yet over and above these differences, we have always maintained a sense that we are one people – one tree, with many branches.
The beautiful Sephardi Pesah tradition encapsulates the twin forces that have kept us from outright division throughout Jewish history, in all of our disagreements and debates: On the one hand, a deep sense of connection to one another that sees our personal and communal stories as interconnected and inseparable, that while our branches may be distinct from one another, we are all part of the same family tree, (even if we’re not technically related); and on the other hand, that our destinies are intertwined; that all the distinct branches of our family tree strive toward the same supernal light, even if they take divergent paths to get there; that our fate is bound up together, for good or ill; that we share a common story whose trajectory is from degradation to dignity, oppression to liberation, brokenness to repair, and that, inspired and empowered and guided by this story, we share a common purpose of advancing both national and universal redemption.
The reason the students of the schools of Hillel and Shammai were able to prioritize staying in community over winning their debates was because, despite all their many deeply held differences, they saw themselves and each other as sharing the same story and a common purpose; that they were all ultimately headed in the same direction, even if they disagreed about how to get there.
Rabbinic tradition actually has a term for this kind of dispute: it’s called mahloket l’shem shamayim, an argument for the sake of Heaven. According to the Mishnah, the debates between Hillel and Shammai and their respective schools were the paradigm of mahlokot l’shem shamayim (M. Avot 5:17. See also commentary of Bartenura, ad loc.).
They passionately and persistently held forth their respective truths while never losing sight of their relationships with their opponents, appealing to their common values and refusing to take adversarial stances toward or demonize the other side – what Christian theologian and legal scholar Cathleen Kaveny calls “Prophecy Without Contempt”. They weren’t just engaged in an intellectual exercise or an ideological food fight; they were wrestling with the question of how to enact God’s will on earth – how to live lives of meaning and purpose, how to repair the world. They stayed at the table because they understood that the stakes were too high to walk away.
We too are called to sit down deliberately, respectfully, and persistently with those in our community who hold views that differ from our own. For three long years these two schools argued. They never agreed with each other. But they continued to sit together, refusing to get up from the table in frustration; rejecting the temptation to delegitimize, excommunicate, or coerce the other side.
Can we, as Jews, in our time, and in our place, come to relate to one another in this way? Can we feel that we and those with whom we deeply disagree are both connected to the larger story and destiny of the Jewish people, and approach our arguments in light of those connections?
Can we cultivate a Jewish community in which Jews of all perspectives have a place in the tent, in which we refuse to get up from the table – or force others to leave the table – even when we hear a perspective that makes us uncomfortable? Can we take hold of our legacy as the people of the Talmud and rededicate ourselves to being the people of “these and these are both the words of the Living God”?
We began our worship this evening with a declaration that we are permitted to pray with the “avaryanim” — sinners; those who we see as being on the wrong side of things. But pay attention to the language here: to say, “We are permitted to pray with the sinners,” really means, “I am permitted to pray with them.” We preface Kol Nidrei by asserting that there are among us, in our community, in this room tonight, at least two opposing factions: there are saints on one side of the sanctuary, and sinners on the other. And, perhaps even more striking, each of us is actually declaring “I am righteously on one side of the divide, while they – those sinners, that brood of vipers – are on the other.”
But think about this: if I put others in the category of “them,” I must also acknowledge that I, too, might be part of someone else’s “them.”
The prayer subtly forces us to acknowledge that, at times, we are all “sinners” in the eyes of others. We all fall short. None of us is perfect. We therefore dare not start excluding those who don’t meet our standards, for if we were to go down that road, none of us would be able to be here. And so tonight we affirm that regardless of who is right, and who is wrong, we can and must still refuse to break the bonds of community with one another.
This work isn’t easy. It’s certainly counter-cultural. Perhaps it’s even downright radical. But that’s why it’s so important. And that’s why we must try. This day reminds us that, inevitably, we will fall short. And then we must get back up and try again.
As we turn the page on a difficult and divisive year, let us dedicate ourselves to building and growing our community – not only despite our disagreements, but indeed through them.
In the coming year, let us commit to staying at the table, and in the tent, with one another.
Let us model what it looks like to embrace our community’s diversity – not by shying away from the complicated yet crucial conversations, but rather through cultivating a culture of inclusive, respectful, yet passionate dialogue across lines of difference; for just as well as disagreements can destroy, they can also build up.
Let us talk about the issues that animate us, even those that threaten to divide us, seeking light while shunning heat, listening to and learning from one another; and even and especially when we hear ideas we don’t like, continuing to hold one another in love.
Let us light the way toward our people’s healing and wholeness, helping to advance the age when a unity that honors and embraces our infinite diversity – heterogenous yet harmonious – will reign supreme throughout the world.
And on that day, at long last, we – in all our majestic difference – will be one; and our name, One.
So may it be God’s will. Amen.
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