25 Years after 9/11 Erev Rosh Hashana 5787/2026
Tomorrow morning, we will read what might very well have been the abrupt ending of “our story” in the Torah. The first eleven chapters of Genesis, before Abraham, relate the rather disappointing account of humanity’s failings—from Adam and Eve eating the fruit, to Cain killing Abel, to the building of the Tower of Babel, to God’s devastating flood. For 11 chapters, humanity moved further and further away from God, until finally we come to Avram (Abram) and the beginning of “our story” which starts in chapter 12.
And God said to Abram, “Get yourself going, away from your country, and from your family, and from your father’s house, to a land that I will show you; And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great. . . and I will bless those who bless you, and curse those who curse you; and in you shall all families of the earth be blessed.” (12:1-3)
That dramatic opening statement from God is then gravely, even mortally, bookended by tomorrow’s reading:
And God said, "Take your son, your only son, the one you love, Isaac, and go to the land of Moriah, and there sacrifice him as a burnt offering on one of the mountains that I will show you." (22:1)
God had, on multiple occasions, through ten Genesis chapters, promised Abram that through Isaac he would father “a great nation”. And then God tells him in tomorrow's Torah reading, to kill his son. What’s this father supposed to believe? And even more importantly-- what is he supposed to do?! Abram (now called “Abraham”) trusted in God’s promises for 10 chapters and believed in those over 30 years that it would be through Isaac his line would continue. Imagine his sudden realization that what he had always assumed was his safe and secure world was now apparently and disastrously annulled.
That world-upending, shock-and-surprise is something like what we felt 25 years ago today on September 11. I remember specifically, on the Friday night after, a congregant telling me that she just didn’t know what to believe anymore. She had trusted, as we all did, that in America we were safe from the rampant terrorism on the other side of the world. So much of what we thought to be true, dependable, reliable-- no longer was. We had faith in America’s security. Our national defense apparatus would surely protect us from foreign attacks. And we also believed that if people came to America, lived here, got to know us, and experienced the rich diversity of our culture, they would be our friends.
25 years ago, the sharp and painful thrust of terrorist violence tore into the body of our American community. In the days and weeks that followed, as we slowly recovered from the immediacy of the attack, from our shock in the magnitude of its horror-- we found strength and comfort in the overwhelming solidarity of Americans coming together. We gathered in churches and synagogues at every opportunity, reaffirming the strength, dignity, and dedication of the American spirit. As Jews and Christians, we were drawn to the safety and comfort of our congregational sanctuaries, as there, with our friends and our Jewish family of faith, we expressed the depth of our pain and anguish, and came together in support of one another. In the aftermath of 9/11-- America was united, bonded in body and spirit.
25 years later, that sense of national and local solidarity is long gone, a distant memory. We live within our own silos of information. We wonder if our former interfaith friends still stand with us. We are fearfully suspicious of anyone around us who seems out of place. We increasingly describe the world out there as “us and them”. The only place, it seems, where our sense of security might be found is here. Indeed, we came together this evening and will tomorrow morning, and on Kol Nidre night and all day on Yom Kippur, expecting to be enveloped in an emotional, as well as physical, “sanctuary”. Here, we can depend on each other and have faith in the solidarity of our small community. But having faith in America to protect us from haters within, or terrorists without, is another story altogether.
Our father Abraham, in chapter 22 of Genesis, tomorrow’s portion, must also have questioned his faith— how could he believe in God’s prior promises? If God’s words then were true, then this command to kill Isaac must be wrong. How was he to know what to do? And what about us? Though we have faith in the unity of our community here, trust in and depend on each other here, how are we to know what or who will secure our safety out there?
Abraham, I choose to believe, must have realized that the only voice he could ultimately trust was that of his own conscience, the only thing he could know for sure was that in the end, he controlled his own actions. And for us, our Jewish “conscience” is the set of values that our tradition demands, that command us to live lives of justice and righteousness, to act in such a way that we work to repair our world. And as much as that world around us changes, we still look within for what we know to be true. Our tradition demands that we must “be”, over and above what we “believe.” And that what we in fact “believe”, must be demonstrated in what we “live by”. And in the long run, it will not matter much what you and I believe—what will matter is what you and I do, how we conduct ourselves in the world, and how we manage our relationships with other people.
We worry too much, I think, about trying to find truth and clarity in a world that shifts and changes from day to day. We want our America to be that great guiding beacon of light that cuts through the darkness and illumines a world of ultimate meaning and fulfillment. And though there were times when it seemed that America was everything we hoped and expected and needed it to be-- something like the events of 25 years ago, and now more recently, force us back into the frustrating realization that maybe we don’t really know what to believe about our neighbors, or our leaders, or our international relations, or even God’s role in the apparent chaos revealed in the daily news.
And then, the story of Father Abraham comes along. God appears and invites him to let go of everything and everyplace and everyone he’s known. And Abraham (then Abram) sets off with absolute assurance in himself and confidence in his ability to know what to do when challenged. He heads into the unknown, not knowing where he is going, or how long it will take to get there, or what he will find when he does arrive. The Genesis text does not tell us how (or even why) he believed, trusted, had faith in God’s call-- but it doesn’t matter. Our Jewish tradition says that it wasn’t what he believed that made him the father of this Chosen People, and it wasn’t that he and the nation that came from him believed that they would eventually change the world—it was what he and they and we did, and what we yet will do.
And nothing has changed since Abraham. We make our mark on the world around us because of what we do: how we conduct ourselves in our families, with our neighbors, and out in the community. Our Jewish tradition reminds us that justice and righteousness and lovingkindness are what God requires of us.
Twenty-five years after 9/11, Americans do not feel safe and secure. The far right fears that black and brown immigrants are out to replace their white hegemony, feeding the inherent racism that has always been just below the surface of our culture. The far left wants to dismantle the norms and structure of government, turning social controls and restraints into a free-for-all. And for Jewish Americans? We have our own reasons to be apprehensive and worried. Synagogues have armed guards at their entrances tonight. Hardly a week goes by without reports of attacks on Jews or Jewish groups. And Americans generally are finding it hard to believe in a safe and secure America.
When all else around us seems unclear and unstable, when we are unsure of what to believe—let us remember that we Jews have not been called to merely ‘believe the right thing.’ We are called to do the right thing. And in the end, we cannot know how the great issues of the world will work themselves out. We cannot know how international conflicts will be resolved, if they even will be resolved.
In the end, all we can know for sure is that our tradition, our history, our heritage demands of us that we make this world a little better each day for having lived in it. And nothing else much matters as we, each of us, set out each morning on our journey to day’s end. Like Abraham, we just go.
You and I cannot and will not, on our own, calm the uncertainty that has embedded itself in our culture and our lives. We can, however, control what we do within the circle of our contacts and activity. We can support organizations that reflect our values of justice and righteousness. We can speak out against the efforts of those who would tear apart the fabric of our society. And we can vote this November.
Rosh Hashana, the new year, is also a reminder that each day is a new day. And tomorrow morning, we’ll be back here, promising with our prayers that we will endeavor to build a better world in this new year with each new day. Nothing much has changed since Abram became Abraham. We make our mark on the world around us because of what we do-- how we conduct ourselves in the world, and how we manage our relationships with other people, “doing justice, loving kindness and walking humbly before God”.
May our eyes and ears be newly open to the Presence of God in the hearts and souls of ourselves, and of each other, and of every other.
Three Years after 10/7 Rosh Hashana 5787/2026
In the three years since October 7, everything has changed in how we, our neighbors, our political leaders, and Americans in general, think about Israel. These past three years have seriously divided our Jewish community, to say nothing of our relationship with other faith groups. When I’m asked or questioned about “Zionism,” or Israel, or Netanyahu, I tend to initially respond, “well, it’s very complicated.” And yet, for some of us it’s still a simple issue: it’s black and white, good and bad, Israelis and Arabs, us and them. For those folks, the primary issue always was and still is “necessary survival”, “defense at all costs”. Other Jews, often younger, don’t understand or appreciate the history of the past 80 years, the import of events in their “distant past”: the 1947 UN vote, the War for Independence, the Six-Day War, the Yom Kippur War, the PLO, the Intifada. And some casually accept misinformation about Hamas and Hezbollah.
I spoke last night about beliefs shattered after 9/11. And after October 7, now three years past, what was previously praiseworthy and admirable about Israel, attributes that went without saying, no longer are. And when the local and national news programs announce an upcoming report about Israel, we collectively, reflexively, cringe, fearing what will be said or shown.
I know that within this room we have very different attitudes, beliefs, and positions about Israel as a democratic nation, about Israel as a Jewish state, about the land of Israel, and about current Israeli leadership. We, in just our small community here, will never come to any agreement on what is right or wrong about what’s happening over there, on who or what is to blame or at fault. And if it’s the case that even in this small space, among ourselves, where arguments would probably outnumber agreements-- what is the possibility of any rreal, lasting agreement anywhere out there, on a resolution of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict?
But we all still care-- the Jewish State of Israel is embedded in our identities as American Jews. We can’t pretend we don’t care, and we can’t ignore the unsettling reality of what is happening in and to the Jewish State. However, there are certain facts, objective truths, on which we can, and do, agree.
Number one: On October 7, 2023, on Simchat Torah morning, Hamas invaded Israel from Gaza, slaughtered civilians, butchered, kidnapped, and brutally held captive men, women and children, some of whom were raped and some executed.
Number two: Israel responded by first shelling Gaza before entering in search of Hamas fighters and to rescue the hostages.
Number three: Now, three years later, most of our most vocal former Israel supporters, political and religious, have backed away from their unconditional defense of the Jewish State.
And Number four: The Western World has, for the most part, become increasingly critical and disparaging of Israeli policies. Last May, for instance, in a joint statement, the leaders of the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Norway, and the Netherlands condemned settler violence and continuing construction in the West Bank, warning that such settlements violate international law.
Those are all facts, they are non-debatable, objective realities. Whatever one’s position is on Israel or Palestine, or the Middle East generally, those things are true. We might disagree on the effectiveness or the morality or the calculation of what and how Israel responded, or even the Hamas rationalization of its attack on Israel —but what is, is.
For decades, the general consensus of the American public was that Israel had a right to exist and the right to defend itself. That consensus is now disappearing. Israel has been recast not as a small country making agonizing choices in a hostile region, David against Goliath, but as a genocidal colonizer. We are seeing our former coalition partners: religious, social and political no longer speak of outrageous Palestinian attacks on civilians, but of the “moral context” of the Palestinian reaction. We find ourselves having to explain why Jews have a right to live in a land of their own, why this people, returning to the land of its history, is not a colonizing invader. We have to remind folks that the UN established both a Jewish and a Palestinian state in 1947, and that the Arab states rejected them both. And finally, and unbelievably, we now have to explain why the slaughter, abduction, and rape of Israeli citizens is not “acceptable resistance”.
I find that for many folks, both on the right and left, their response to the ongoing Israeli/Palestinian conflict, and the larger Middle East confrontations, is an immediate, emotional reaction based on long-held personal values, rather than the reality on the ground. But we can’t afford to fall back on what Israel was to us then, because “then” is no longer the reality of today.
For so long, we thought of Israel in simple terms: falafel, flags, and summer trips. We felt personal pride in all she accomplished: from a nostalgic admiration for the early kibbutzniks to our delight in the modern democracy she has become. We were thrilled to walk in the footsteps of our ancestors and see history unearthed in Jerusalem. We heralded her many achievements: that Israel absorbed millions of Jews from around the world; built great universities and a thriving modern culture; became a world center of innovation in medical, communications, environmental, and agricultural technologies; and a leader in pharmaceutical production and computer software, with start-up companies of every kind.
And while all of that was and is true-- none of it figures now in how the world sees her. Whatever the opinion of any one of us, it is true that in the months, and now years, after October 7, the news we read and the videos we see have condemned her in the court of worldwide public opinion. And claiming that the media is largely biased against Israel, true as that may be, does not change the reality that out there in the world, in today’s political campaigns, and regularly in the media-- the tide has turned. Today, we see very little national or international support for the Jewish State.
And I come back to where I started: our multitude of opinions of how Israel is responding to the mess that is the Middle East does not get us anywhere. Yes, we may feel compelled to applaud or condemn Israeli leadership, America’s political and military support, American and international media, Arab nations, Palestinians. And yes, we may feel the need to name out loud those who we think are most to blame or at fault for igniting this devastation and the current deplorable status of Israel on the world scene. And yes, we do need to publicly applaud those who will defend and support Israel’s existence. But in the end, aren’t we all talking past each other, because none of us as Americans, or as America, can resolve the appalling reality of the mess that is the Middle East.
But we can come to agreement about the realities, the objective realities, of what is happening with and to and about Israel. We can agree that it is objectively true that today, three years after October 7, the Israeli government’s actions in Gaza, along with its support of the settler attacks in the West Bank, have brought worldwide condemnation. And here in America, Israel has become a political football for candidates who want to take advantage of her fall from grace in the public’s eye.
A February Gallup poll found that Americans sympathize more with Palestinians than with Israelis, and 58% of Democrats now say that the U.S. supports Israel too much. And Republican support for Israel has also declined. A recent University of Chicago poll reported that only 23% of American Jews say that they think of themselves as “Zionist”.
And to be clear, all of this is Israel’s own doing, and none of us can do anything about it. Agree with Israel’s actions or not, think them justified or not, it’s bad for Israel out there in the American ether. The Israeli government chose how it would respond to October 7, how it would attack and occupy Gaza. And the Israeli government was complicit in initiating this seven-month war with Iran. And the Israeli government still turns a blind eye to the behavior of the West Bank settlers. And our opinions, supporting or opposing her actions matter little, if at all.
One can still be critical of Israeli government policies and still love the country and its people. One can still respect and support the Zionist promise and its eighty-year project. But we sit on the sidelines of what is, by all accounts, Israel’s public relations catastrophe. And yet, my belief in the Zionist idea, my support of her people and the promise of a liberal, democratic, and pluralistic country is not at all diminished. Here in Michigan, the most we can do, the best we can do, is remind our friends and neighbors of what is true: Israel has a legitimate and internationally affirmed claim on this ancient land, that in these 80 years she has achieved so unbelievably much, and that she has been forced to defend her existence over and over again.
And if there is a hint of hope that Israel can and might regain her reputation of those former years, then it lies in another undeniable truth and objective fact-- Israel is a real democracy; she has the ability to change the leadership and policies that have resulted in her fall from grace.
We prayerfully say ken y’hi ratzon, may that be God’s will.
Atonement with a Footnote Erev Yom Kippur 5787/2026
Kol Nidre is one of the most beautiful and also one of the most peculiar prayers in all of Jewish liturgy. As well as something of a cultural icon, the quintessential hallmark of the holiday. Typical of what one finds on the internet when looking up Kol Nidre are these notes:
On the eve of Yom Kippur, as darkness settles and the congregation gathers, the haunting melody of Kol Nidrei fills the synagogue.
[On Sunday night] Jews across the world will file into synagogues. Some come every week; others only once a year. Some arrive with their [prayerbooks] in hand, others with nothing more than a memory of a parent or grandparent’s voice. All will be united by one haunting moment: Kol Nidre.
We’ve been told that the significance of Kol Nidre is that these words are our plea to God to forgive us for promises we were unable to fulfill in the past year. But behind the “haunting” melody, what Kol Nidre really says is something else altogether. The Aramaic text in fact begins All vows from this Yom Kippur until the next, may they be deemed absolved, annulled, and abandoned. Future vows are already annulled?! Of course, this is entirely at odds with the meaning and message of Yom Kippur, which wants us to reflect on our actions of last year.
We are entering what many call the “holiest day of the year”, sincerely seeking atonement for past wrongs. Why, then, do we begin the evening by asking that all future vows, promises, pledges, and oaths be pre-emptively annulled? Are we really asking, in advance, to be fully free to break future promises?
Apparently, it’s not news that Kol Nidre is a problem. In the fine print below the prayer in the traditional “Rödelheim Machzor”, published in 1800, the reader is told that these words only concern one’s “personal vows and intentions”. Kol Nidre, the footnote explains, is not about annulling “actual promises to others”, but only to those personal promises we make to ourselves.
Other machzorim, like a 2007 German holiday prayerbook, also state that Kol Nidre refers only to interactions between the person and God. Its footnote to the prayer reads: “This utterance relates solely to vows made to God, and in no sense obligations entered into between person and person.” A 1949 French machzor’s footnote cautions: “We ask our readers not to misunderstand the meaning of this formulation.” And in one modern machzor is found this reassuring footnote: “Don’t worry, it’s not what you think!”
What many Jews consider the holiest moment of the Jewish year apparently begins with a footnote. And in prayerbooks lacking an advisory footnote, the usual “solution” is to simply change the English translation! After all, how many of our folks can translate Aramaic?
In the machzor of today’s Rabbinical Assembly (Conservative Movement, 2010), the footnote was simply wrapped into the English translation, which reads: All vows, renunciations, bans, oaths, formulas of obligation, pledges, and promises that we vow or promise to ourselves and to God. But the Aramaic text never says to whom promises might be made, though it clearly implies those oaths and vows, person-to-person and public.
Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, the leading voice of German orthodoxy in the 19th C, just removed Kol Nidre altogether from his synagogue’s service. But when he left his congregation, the folks put it back in. Abraham Geiger, a founding father of German Reform Judaism, changed the entirety of the text to read: all my transgressions and the transgressions of this congregation, they shall be removed and made null. And in the old Union Prayer Book II, the 1945 edition that we who grew up in the Reform Movement remember, the page for Kol Nidre is almost entirely English, reading:
All prayers which the children of Israel offer unto Thee, O our Father, that they may depart from sin, from guilt and from wickedness, and follow the ways of Thy Torah, the ways of justice and of righteousness, yea all the resolutions which we make from this Day of Atonement until the coming Day of Atonement—may they be acceptable before Thee, and may we be given strength to fulfill them. And then, beneath this English are two lonely words written in Hebrew letters, “Kol Nidre”. And under these two words, in very small print, in English and in parentheses, are the words: (The Kol Nidre Chant).
And tonight, if you were following along in the English of our machzor, the Kol Nidre text on p. 252 applies only to our promises to God:
Let all our vows and oaths, all the promises we make and the obligations we incur to you, O God, between this Yom Kippur and the next, be null and void should we, after honest effort find ourselves unable to fulfill them. Then may we be absolved of them.
If you thought that Kol Nidre was a petition to God for the forgiveness of our unfulfilled promises from last year-- it doesn’t do that. And if it’s a “get out of jail free card” for any unfulfilled promises in the new year, isn’t that particularly self-serving and theologically troublesome? Here we are at the conclusion of these ten Days of Awe, of teshuvah, of “return”, a time of judgment and truth. Our clergy and scrolls are dressed in white, we have begun our yearly fast, and the prayerbook begins with either a mistranslation or a footnote disclaimer that this most important (“haunting”) prayer not only doesn’t mean what we always thought it did, but is in fact contrary to the essence of authentic atonement!
The truth is that Kol Nidre was always a conundrum. It historically provoked social and cultural resentment among our neighbors who said, “How can we trust these Jews if they’re not in any way obligated to fulfill their oaths and promises?!” As far back as the 9th C, there were attempts to abolish the prayer because of this. The scholars of the Babylonian Academy, over 1000 years ago, called it a “foolish custom” and forbade it!
But Kol Nidre was not so easily done away with. Prayerbooks merely added a footnote, or “adjusted” it, changing it to what they wanted it to mean! And despite the fact that for over 1000 years we’ve rejected it, augmented it, changed it, retranslated it--Kol Nidre has not only taken on a life of its own, but it’s become so central to this Yom Kippur moment that we even call this the Kol Nidre Service.
Clearly, the meaning of the words no longer plays an important role, if any role, in what Yom Kippur is all about! And this is not just any worship service. Already in antiquity, Yom Kippur was important enough to attract Jews who otherwise were non-observant. In the 1st C CE, the Jewish philosopher and theologian Philo of Alexandria observed that the fast day of Yom Kippur was “respected not only by pious people, but also by those who otherwise do not lead active religious lives.”
The early 20th C French sociologist and rabbi’s son, Émile Durkheim (1858-1917), reflected on our High Holidays with the phrase “Collective effervescence,” meaning: the moment a group comes together in solidarity and cohesion. He called it a key element of religion and wrote that no other religion does this so consistently through liturgy as does Judaism. Why? Because we require a group, a minyan, for proper, acceptable prayer. Because our tradition insists that valid, liturgically complete worship happens when we “pray together”, worship is simply not something that Jews can properly do alone.
And if any part of our liturgy exemplifies this notion, it’s the effect of hearing Kol Nidre, assembled in one’s sanctuary. Kol Nidre doesn’t sound like other prayers that are sung, and it’s in Aramaic, not the Hebrew we’re used to. And the very fact that we only hear it once a year, on a particularly solemn night-- all this together gives it a special distinction. And even if we were not aware of its history, we somehow, innately know that its melody is very old. Some traditional Jews even claim that the melody goes back to Mount Sinai. In fact, the earliest written evidence of the melody dates to 1765, but it may have originated two hundred years earlier in the 16th C.
For my money, the proper footnote for Kol Nidre would have nothing to do with its troubling text or misleading translations—the footnote would simply read: See “Collective Effervescence”, the term Emil Durkheim coined. Collective effervescence is the chill you feel when you rise with a whole stadium erupting in cheers. It’s the tears that well up while singing along with strangers at a concert. It happens during those rare occasions when everyone around you comes together in a sense of heightened energy and unity. It’s an electric, bigger-than-yourself, unexpected emotional uplift that can only happen in the midst of a connected, responsive, communal experience. I can only assume that for some, if not most of us, we get a momentary taste of collective effervescence during the singing of Kol Nidre. It’s a transcendent sense of social unity that lifts one beyond one’s individual experiential moment.
Sociologists note that humans are essentially communal-- we need other people. But even more than having friends and close relationships, we need to feel embedded, rooted, personally connected in the community if we are to feel authentically happy and healthy.
Our English word “religion” comes from the Latin religio, “to bind, to connect”. And if our “religion” requires a community for proper worship, and expects us to be “connected” to other Jews—then being Jewish cannot be anything solitary. And worship must be more than just a “happening”. It ought to generate collective effervescence if we are to get the most out of it, if we want it to be an “electric, bigger-than-oneself, unexpected emotional uplift that can only happen in the midst of a connected, responsive, communal experience.”
I can only hope that you might want “some of that” in our Grosse Pointe Jewish Council. If so, then we need each other. On these Holidays surely, but also in the variety of cultural, educational, social, and certainly religious opportunities in the rest of the year.
For my money, the proper prayerbook footnote for Kol Nidre would have nothing to do with its troubling text or misleading translations-- it would read: See “Collective Effervescence”, and not just for tonight or tomorrow. Can we not do more to create the kind of community that releases a collectively shared, vibrant energy that celebrates our Jewish history and culture and social values? Why not? And if not now, then when!?
Jewish in the 250th Yom Kippur 5787/2026
We just celebrated America’s semi-quincentennial, our 250th birthday. And while our country celebrated with parades and fireworks and flag-waving, American Jews were also looking over their shoulders, wary of another “incident”. We are very much aware of surging anti-Jewish, anti-Israel, anti-Zionist rhetoric and assault. And the fractured political landscape that threatens America generally, only adds to the sense that we Jews are becoming increasingly vulnerable, the preferred boogeyman of the disaffected and disgruntled.
But looking back to the German devastation of the 20th C, and the Russian persecution of the 19th C, and the pogroms of the 18th C, and the blood libels, expulsions, forced conversions and massacres of the 17th and 16th and 15th and 14th and 13th C, and the Crusades of the 12th and 11th C— our situation today as Jews in America is very, very different, and certainly better.
To understand, to appreciate, to objectively recognize who we are within the fabric of American society, as well as who we subjectively think we are, or believe we are-- we start with the Hebrew word גלות galut. (you may have heard it pronounced galus). It is regularly translated in two very different ways. If one goes to the Chabad website (should you ever be that interested!) you’ll find this:
Nearly 2,000 years ago, the Jewish nation was driven out of its homeland and sent off into a tear-soaked galut/exile that lasts to this very day. We wait and yearn for the day when our galut and suffering come to an end, when we will be returned to the Holy Land, with the coming of our redeemer, the Moshiach.
But other sources translate the Hebrew not as “exile”, but into the Greek word diaspora, meaning “dispersion”. And those two terms: exile and diaspora are, needless to say, very different. Being in “exile” is a value-laden expression that we are not where we belong, that we long to “return” to our proper place, and that we are instead in exile because either we did something that merits this punishment, or others have cruelly banished us.
But the word “diaspora” or “dispersion” is merely an objective, descriptive term that we are no longer in our original homeland. Diaspora only describes where we are not, it does not indicate how well we are or are not doing in the place where we are now. And for you and me, and I suspect for the majority of American Jews, “exile” does not describe our situation-- that in fact, we belong here, that we are thoroughly woven into the fabric of American culture and society. And additionally, I would contend that our American Jewish community is unique in all of Jewish history, that never have we thrived and succeeded anywhere in the diaspora as we have here.
To understand and appreciate our uniqueness, we have to go back 500 years, to this land that Jews found when they first arrived. This was a Puritan founded and dominated America. Their churches had no picture of Jesus and they revered and venerated Moses. They took Hebrew Scriptures as seriously as any Talmud scholar. They compared themselves to the Israelites who crossed the sea to escape oppression to find freedom. They taught Hebrew in their colleges along with Latin. They observed a strict Sabbath (though on Sunday). The Puritans welcomed us as “cousins”. And the Puritan minister was not “ordained” but a layman called by his congregation, and each congregation was autonomous, using Mosaic law to resolve issues. And most importantly, here in America there was no government control of any faith community.
Jews in Europe answered to a local or regional rabbinic authority which paid the regional clergy, managed the synagogues, and maintained the community. The Jews who began arriving in the 17th C were Sephardic and they had no “ghetto” experience. They came originally from middle and upper class society in Spain and Portugal. And they were, for the most part, lukewarm believers, with no great devotion to the Talmud. Without rabbinic guidance and authority, they created their own style of Judaism, improvising observance without the supervision of rabbis or rabbinic courts (by fact and by choice!)
And because America did not develop as a feudal state, the social and class barriers of European society never developed here. Colonists could become successful middle-class farmers, tradesmen, and shop owners. Jews found, for the first time in centuries, that they could own land and property, and that all trades were open to them. There were no limitations on where they lived or how they lived, or what they did for a living. And the (largely) Sephardic Jewish community in the 17th and 18th and 19th C’s fit in well in socially and economically and even culturally, and were welcomed with other immigrant groups. And their synagogues, like American churches, were autonomous.
The Colonies did not have laws for or against Jews, and Jews got justice from American courts and were able to become equal citizens. And like the Puritans, there was no hierarchy of religious leadership. Jewish spiritual leaders were lay, chosen by membership and a synagogue was lucky if anyone even knew Hebrew. Jews made up their Judaism as they went along. Those who remembered, made do with what they knew. And this notion of total congregational autonomy meant that, for almost 200 years, until 1840, there were no ordained rabbis serving any American congregation! One did come in 1772 but left the next year because he could not accept the synagogue’s lay leaders telling him what to do! And when rabbis did come, with the German immigrants in the mid-19th C, it was too late to develop the religious and social control that traditional rabbis were used to.
250 years ago, our founding fathers were not interested in reforming the European social order, culture, or governmental administration. Our founders were creating a new kind of nation, a new “American” self-awareness. They held certain truths to be self-evident, among them that “all men are created equal.” And it made our experience in America unique. This new reality was fully realized in 1790, when Moses Seixas, of the Newport (Rhode Island) Synagogue, sent a letter to President George Washington, noting that Jews had long been deprived of the rights of free citizens, but now enjoyed a government which, Seixas wrote “to bigotry gives no sanction, to persecution no assistance.” Washington famously echoed these words back to the congregation.
America never demanded that Jews purchase equality at the price of their collective identity. In other countries, it was expected that one’s national allegiance had priority over one’s religious identity. That has never been the case in America. This first-of-a-kind environment meant that American Jews had then, and have now, the freedom to define and express their Jewish identity as they see fit.
The late Sociologist Charles Liebman pointed out that all Jews in America are Jews-by-choice since nothing in American society binds one to his or her Jewishness. He coined the phrase “Jewish personalism” in a 1990 study comparing Israeli and American Judaism. By “Jewish personalism,” he meant the tendency of American Jews to pick those parts of Judaism they find personally meaningful, rather than complying with requirements of religious law or ethnic obligation. But of course, this opportunity of “personalism” is a two-edged sword-- on the one hand, we shape our own understanding of what it means to be Jewish, but on the other hand, that kind of absolute freedom and the variety of choices we might collectively make, could diminish our distinctiveness, and we might quietly fade away, absorbed into the shadowy background of American culture.
So is America our blessing or our curse? I choose to think that we’re going to be OK. But to be sure, there are Jewish voices that decry that freedom, that “personalism”. They denounce our choices as nails in the coffin of American liberal Judaism. And it is true that some of us, perhaps many, will forgo choosing to be personally, authentically Jewish, moving instead to the periphery of our community before fading away altogether. But in choosing “Jewish personalism”, developing our own, meaningful, fulfilling Jewish identities, we create, each our own, authentic Jewish experience that we embrace for its own sake.
And of course we face external challenges beyond personal Jewish autonomy in this 250th year. There are social issues that affect each of us and all of us. This fractured political and ideological landscape, which threatens American society generally, hangs particularly heavily over our heads. Today’s divided America seems even worse than in the Vietnam 60’s and early 70’s.
And for our Jewish community, we are becoming more and more the target of the dividers. And though there is nothing historically new here, America’s DNA is different. In President Bill Clinton's First Inaugural Address, he said: “There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured by what is right with America.” I believe that. America, in her bones, is the country we always thought her to be, believed her to be. Different from the countries we fled, we are not living under the protection of a national sovereign. We are part and parcel of this sovereign people by whose consent the government governs.
And though I am today fearful for America in general, and what it might mean for our Jewish community in the short run, I can only hope that better days do lie ahead. I trust that what made America the country that our founders envisioned, the country that generations of Jewish immigrants believed in, the country to which we pledged allegiance in our elementary school classrooms—is an America where Jews are ultimately safe, secure and protected. This is our democracy as much as anyone else’s. We belong here, we are not in exile.
Moses Seixas, of the Newport Synagogue, in 1790 affirmed his belief that in America we "give bigotry no sanction and persecution no assistance". President George Washington took those words for his own. So yes, we are living in the Diaspora, far away, in both time and space, from our ancestral, spiritual, Biblical birthplace—but we are not in exile. Here in America, we are home-- and therefore we are responsible for ensuring that America lives up to its promise. And if not now, then when?!
Tomorrow morning, we will read what might very well have been the abrupt ending of “our story” in the Torah. The first eleven chapters of Genesis, before Abraham, relate the rather disappointing account of humanity’s failings—from Adam and Eve eating the fruit, to Cain killing Abel, to the building of the Tower of Babel, to God’s devastating flood. For 11 chapters, humanity moved further and further away from God, until finally we come to Avram (Abram) and the beginning of “our story” which starts in chapter 12.
And God said to Abram, “Get yourself going, away from your country, and from your family, and from your father’s house, to a land that I will show you; And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great. . . and I will bless those who bless you, and curse those who curse you; and in you shall all families of the earth be blessed.” (12:1-3)
That dramatic opening statement from God is then gravely, even mortally, bookended by tomorrow’s reading:
And God said, "Take your son, your only son, the one you love, Isaac, and go to the land of Moriah, and there sacrifice him as a burnt offering on one of the mountains that I will show you." (22:1)
God had, on multiple occasions, through ten Genesis chapters, promised Abram that through Isaac he would father “a great nation”. And then God tells him in tomorrow's Torah reading, to kill his son. What’s this father supposed to believe? And even more importantly-- what is he supposed to do?! Abram (now called “Abraham”) trusted in God’s promises for 10 chapters and believed in those over 30 years that it would be through Isaac his line would continue. Imagine his sudden realization that what he had always assumed was his safe and secure world was now apparently and disastrously annulled.
That world-upending, shock-and-surprise is something like what we felt 25 years ago today on September 11. I remember specifically, on the Friday night after, a congregant telling me that she just didn’t know what to believe anymore. She had trusted, as we all did, that in America we were safe from the rampant terrorism on the other side of the world. So much of what we thought to be true, dependable, reliable-- no longer was. We had faith in America’s security. Our national defense apparatus would surely protect us from foreign attacks. And we also believed that if people came to America, lived here, got to know us, and experienced the rich diversity of our culture, they would be our friends.
25 years ago, the sharp and painful thrust of terrorist violence tore into the body of our American community. In the days and weeks that followed, as we slowly recovered from the immediacy of the attack, from our shock in the magnitude of its horror-- we found strength and comfort in the overwhelming solidarity of Americans coming together. We gathered in churches and synagogues at every opportunity, reaffirming the strength, dignity, and dedication of the American spirit. As Jews and Christians, we were drawn to the safety and comfort of our congregational sanctuaries, as there, with our friends and our Jewish family of faith, we expressed the depth of our pain and anguish, and came together in support of one another. In the aftermath of 9/11-- America was united, bonded in body and spirit.
25 years later, that sense of national and local solidarity is long gone, a distant memory. We live within our own silos of information. We wonder if our former interfaith friends still stand with us. We are fearfully suspicious of anyone around us who seems out of place. We increasingly describe the world out there as “us and them”. The only place, it seems, where our sense of security might be found is here. Indeed, we came together this evening and will tomorrow morning, and on Kol Nidre night and all day on Yom Kippur, expecting to be enveloped in an emotional, as well as physical, “sanctuary”. Here, we can depend on each other and have faith in the solidarity of our small community. But having faith in America to protect us from haters within, or terrorists without, is another story altogether.
Our father Abraham, in chapter 22 of Genesis, tomorrow’s portion, must also have questioned his faith— how could he believe in God’s prior promises? If God’s words then were true, then this command to kill Isaac must be wrong. How was he to know what to do? And what about us? Though we have faith in the unity of our community here, trust in and depend on each other here, how are we to know what or who will secure our safety out there?
Abraham, I choose to believe, must have realized that the only voice he could ultimately trust was that of his own conscience, the only thing he could know for sure was that in the end, he controlled his own actions. And for us, our Jewish “conscience” is the set of values that our tradition demands, that command us to live lives of justice and righteousness, to act in such a way that we work to repair our world. And as much as that world around us changes, we still look within for what we know to be true. Our tradition demands that we must “be”, over and above what we “believe.” And that what we in fact “believe”, must be demonstrated in what we “live by”. And in the long run, it will not matter much what you and I believe—what will matter is what you and I do, how we conduct ourselves in the world, and how we manage our relationships with other people.
We worry too much, I think, about trying to find truth and clarity in a world that shifts and changes from day to day. We want our America to be that great guiding beacon of light that cuts through the darkness and illumines a world of ultimate meaning and fulfillment. And though there were times when it seemed that America was everything we hoped and expected and needed it to be-- something like the events of 25 years ago, and now more recently, force us back into the frustrating realization that maybe we don’t really know what to believe about our neighbors, or our leaders, or our international relations, or even God’s role in the apparent chaos revealed in the daily news.
And then, the story of Father Abraham comes along. God appears and invites him to let go of everything and everyplace and everyone he’s known. And Abraham (then Abram) sets off with absolute assurance in himself and confidence in his ability to know what to do when challenged. He heads into the unknown, not knowing where he is going, or how long it will take to get there, or what he will find when he does arrive. The Genesis text does not tell us how (or even why) he believed, trusted, had faith in God’s call-- but it doesn’t matter. Our Jewish tradition says that it wasn’t what he believed that made him the father of this Chosen People, and it wasn’t that he and the nation that came from him believed that they would eventually change the world—it was what he and they and we did, and what we yet will do.
And nothing has changed since Abraham. We make our mark on the world around us because of what we do: how we conduct ourselves in our families, with our neighbors, and out in the community. Our Jewish tradition reminds us that justice and righteousness and lovingkindness are what God requires of us.
Twenty-five years after 9/11, Americans do not feel safe and secure. The far right fears that black and brown immigrants are out to replace their white hegemony, feeding the inherent racism that has always been just below the surface of our culture. The far left wants to dismantle the norms and structure of government, turning social controls and restraints into a free-for-all. And for Jewish Americans? We have our own reasons to be apprehensive and worried. Synagogues have armed guards at their entrances tonight. Hardly a week goes by without reports of attacks on Jews or Jewish groups. And Americans generally are finding it hard to believe in a safe and secure America.
When all else around us seems unclear and unstable, when we are unsure of what to believe—let us remember that we Jews have not been called to merely ‘believe the right thing.’ We are called to do the right thing. And in the end, we cannot know how the great issues of the world will work themselves out. We cannot know how international conflicts will be resolved, if they even will be resolved.
In the end, all we can know for sure is that our tradition, our history, our heritage demands of us that we make this world a little better each day for having lived in it. And nothing else much matters as we, each of us, set out each morning on our journey to day’s end. Like Abraham, we just go.
You and I cannot and will not, on our own, calm the uncertainty that has embedded itself in our culture and our lives. We can, however, control what we do within the circle of our contacts and activity. We can support organizations that reflect our values of justice and righteousness. We can speak out against the efforts of those who would tear apart the fabric of our society. And we can vote this November.
Rosh Hashana, the new year, is also a reminder that each day is a new day. And tomorrow morning, we’ll be back here, promising with our prayers that we will endeavor to build a better world in this new year with each new day. Nothing much has changed since Abram became Abraham. We make our mark on the world around us because of what we do-- how we conduct ourselves in the world, and how we manage our relationships with other people, “doing justice, loving kindness and walking humbly before God”.
May our eyes and ears be newly open to the Presence of God in the hearts and souls of ourselves, and of each other, and of every other.
Three Years after 10/7 Rosh Hashana 5787/2026
In the three years since October 7, everything has changed in how we, our neighbors, our political leaders, and Americans in general, think about Israel. These past three years have seriously divided our Jewish community, to say nothing of our relationship with other faith groups. When I’m asked or questioned about “Zionism,” or Israel, or Netanyahu, I tend to initially respond, “well, it’s very complicated.” And yet, for some of us it’s still a simple issue: it’s black and white, good and bad, Israelis and Arabs, us and them. For those folks, the primary issue always was and still is “necessary survival”, “defense at all costs”. Other Jews, often younger, don’t understand or appreciate the history of the past 80 years, the import of events in their “distant past”: the 1947 UN vote, the War for Independence, the Six-Day War, the Yom Kippur War, the PLO, the Intifada. And some casually accept misinformation about Hamas and Hezbollah.
I spoke last night about beliefs shattered after 9/11. And after October 7, now three years past, what was previously praiseworthy and admirable about Israel, attributes that went without saying, no longer are. And when the local and national news programs announce an upcoming report about Israel, we collectively, reflexively, cringe, fearing what will be said or shown.
I know that within this room we have very different attitudes, beliefs, and positions about Israel as a democratic nation, about Israel as a Jewish state, about the land of Israel, and about current Israeli leadership. We, in just our small community here, will never come to any agreement on what is right or wrong about what’s happening over there, on who or what is to blame or at fault. And if it’s the case that even in this small space, among ourselves, where arguments would probably outnumber agreements-- what is the possibility of any rreal, lasting agreement anywhere out there, on a resolution of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict?
But we all still care-- the Jewish State of Israel is embedded in our identities as American Jews. We can’t pretend we don’t care, and we can’t ignore the unsettling reality of what is happening in and to the Jewish State. However, there are certain facts, objective truths, on which we can, and do, agree.
Number one: On October 7, 2023, on Simchat Torah morning, Hamas invaded Israel from Gaza, slaughtered civilians, butchered, kidnapped, and brutally held captive men, women and children, some of whom were raped and some executed.
Number two: Israel responded by first shelling Gaza before entering in search of Hamas fighters and to rescue the hostages.
Number three: Now, three years later, most of our most vocal former Israel supporters, political and religious, have backed away from their unconditional defense of the Jewish State.
And Number four: The Western World has, for the most part, become increasingly critical and disparaging of Israeli policies. Last May, for instance, in a joint statement, the leaders of the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Norway, and the Netherlands condemned settler violence and continuing construction in the West Bank, warning that such settlements violate international law.
Those are all facts, they are non-debatable, objective realities. Whatever one’s position is on Israel or Palestine, or the Middle East generally, those things are true. We might disagree on the effectiveness or the morality or the calculation of what and how Israel responded, or even the Hamas rationalization of its attack on Israel —but what is, is.
For decades, the general consensus of the American public was that Israel had a right to exist and the right to defend itself. That consensus is now disappearing. Israel has been recast not as a small country making agonizing choices in a hostile region, David against Goliath, but as a genocidal colonizer. We are seeing our former coalition partners: religious, social and political no longer speak of outrageous Palestinian attacks on civilians, but of the “moral context” of the Palestinian reaction. We find ourselves having to explain why Jews have a right to live in a land of their own, why this people, returning to the land of its history, is not a colonizing invader. We have to remind folks that the UN established both a Jewish and a Palestinian state in 1947, and that the Arab states rejected them both. And finally, and unbelievably, we now have to explain why the slaughter, abduction, and rape of Israeli citizens is not “acceptable resistance”.
I find that for many folks, both on the right and left, their response to the ongoing Israeli/Palestinian conflict, and the larger Middle East confrontations, is an immediate, emotional reaction based on long-held personal values, rather than the reality on the ground. But we can’t afford to fall back on what Israel was to us then, because “then” is no longer the reality of today.
For so long, we thought of Israel in simple terms: falafel, flags, and summer trips. We felt personal pride in all she accomplished: from a nostalgic admiration for the early kibbutzniks to our delight in the modern democracy she has become. We were thrilled to walk in the footsteps of our ancestors and see history unearthed in Jerusalem. We heralded her many achievements: that Israel absorbed millions of Jews from around the world; built great universities and a thriving modern culture; became a world center of innovation in medical, communications, environmental, and agricultural technologies; and a leader in pharmaceutical production and computer software, with start-up companies of every kind.
And while all of that was and is true-- none of it figures now in how the world sees her. Whatever the opinion of any one of us, it is true that in the months, and now years, after October 7, the news we read and the videos we see have condemned her in the court of worldwide public opinion. And claiming that the media is largely biased against Israel, true as that may be, does not change the reality that out there in the world, in today’s political campaigns, and regularly in the media-- the tide has turned. Today, we see very little national or international support for the Jewish State.
And I come back to where I started: our multitude of opinions of how Israel is responding to the mess that is the Middle East does not get us anywhere. Yes, we may feel compelled to applaud or condemn Israeli leadership, America’s political and military support, American and international media, Arab nations, Palestinians. And yes, we may feel the need to name out loud those who we think are most to blame or at fault for igniting this devastation and the current deplorable status of Israel on the world scene. And yes, we do need to publicly applaud those who will defend and support Israel’s existence. But in the end, aren’t we all talking past each other, because none of us as Americans, or as America, can resolve the appalling reality of the mess that is the Middle East.
But we can come to agreement about the realities, the objective realities, of what is happening with and to and about Israel. We can agree that it is objectively true that today, three years after October 7, the Israeli government’s actions in Gaza, along with its support of the settler attacks in the West Bank, have brought worldwide condemnation. And here in America, Israel has become a political football for candidates who want to take advantage of her fall from grace in the public’s eye.
A February Gallup poll found that Americans sympathize more with Palestinians than with Israelis, and 58% of Democrats now say that the U.S. supports Israel too much. And Republican support for Israel has also declined. A recent University of Chicago poll reported that only 23% of American Jews say that they think of themselves as “Zionist”.
And to be clear, all of this is Israel’s own doing, and none of us can do anything about it. Agree with Israel’s actions or not, think them justified or not, it’s bad for Israel out there in the American ether. The Israeli government chose how it would respond to October 7, how it would attack and occupy Gaza. And the Israeli government was complicit in initiating this seven-month war with Iran. And the Israeli government still turns a blind eye to the behavior of the West Bank settlers. And our opinions, supporting or opposing her actions matter little, if at all.
One can still be critical of Israeli government policies and still love the country and its people. One can still respect and support the Zionist promise and its eighty-year project. But we sit on the sidelines of what is, by all accounts, Israel’s public relations catastrophe. And yet, my belief in the Zionist idea, my support of her people and the promise of a liberal, democratic, and pluralistic country is not at all diminished. Here in Michigan, the most we can do, the best we can do, is remind our friends and neighbors of what is true: Israel has a legitimate and internationally affirmed claim on this ancient land, that in these 80 years she has achieved so unbelievably much, and that she has been forced to defend her existence over and over again.
And if there is a hint of hope that Israel can and might regain her reputation of those former years, then it lies in another undeniable truth and objective fact-- Israel is a real democracy; she has the ability to change the leadership and policies that have resulted in her fall from grace.
We prayerfully say ken y’hi ratzon, may that be God’s will.
Atonement with a Footnote Erev Yom Kippur 5787/2026
Kol Nidre is one of the most beautiful and also one of the most peculiar prayers in all of Jewish liturgy. As well as something of a cultural icon, the quintessential hallmark of the holiday. Typical of what one finds on the internet when looking up Kol Nidre are these notes:
On the eve of Yom Kippur, as darkness settles and the congregation gathers, the haunting melody of Kol Nidrei fills the synagogue.
[On Sunday night] Jews across the world will file into synagogues. Some come every week; others only once a year. Some arrive with their [prayerbooks] in hand, others with nothing more than a memory of a parent or grandparent’s voice. All will be united by one haunting moment: Kol Nidre.
We’ve been told that the significance of Kol Nidre is that these words are our plea to God to forgive us for promises we were unable to fulfill in the past year. But behind the “haunting” melody, what Kol Nidre really says is something else altogether. The Aramaic text in fact begins All vows from this Yom Kippur until the next, may they be deemed absolved, annulled, and abandoned. Future vows are already annulled?! Of course, this is entirely at odds with the meaning and message of Yom Kippur, which wants us to reflect on our actions of last year.
We are entering what many call the “holiest day of the year”, sincerely seeking atonement for past wrongs. Why, then, do we begin the evening by asking that all future vows, promises, pledges, and oaths be pre-emptively annulled? Are we really asking, in advance, to be fully free to break future promises?
Apparently, it’s not news that Kol Nidre is a problem. In the fine print below the prayer in the traditional “Rödelheim Machzor”, published in 1800, the reader is told that these words only concern one’s “personal vows and intentions”. Kol Nidre, the footnote explains, is not about annulling “actual promises to others”, but only to those personal promises we make to ourselves.
Other machzorim, like a 2007 German holiday prayerbook, also state that Kol Nidre refers only to interactions between the person and God. Its footnote to the prayer reads: “This utterance relates solely to vows made to God, and in no sense obligations entered into between person and person.” A 1949 French machzor’s footnote cautions: “We ask our readers not to misunderstand the meaning of this formulation.” And in one modern machzor is found this reassuring footnote: “Don’t worry, it’s not what you think!”
What many Jews consider the holiest moment of the Jewish year apparently begins with a footnote. And in prayerbooks lacking an advisory footnote, the usual “solution” is to simply change the English translation! After all, how many of our folks can translate Aramaic?
In the machzor of today’s Rabbinical Assembly (Conservative Movement, 2010), the footnote was simply wrapped into the English translation, which reads: All vows, renunciations, bans, oaths, formulas of obligation, pledges, and promises that we vow or promise to ourselves and to God. But the Aramaic text never says to whom promises might be made, though it clearly implies those oaths and vows, person-to-person and public.
Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, the leading voice of German orthodoxy in the 19th C, just removed Kol Nidre altogether from his synagogue’s service. But when he left his congregation, the folks put it back in. Abraham Geiger, a founding father of German Reform Judaism, changed the entirety of the text to read: all my transgressions and the transgressions of this congregation, they shall be removed and made null. And in the old Union Prayer Book II, the 1945 edition that we who grew up in the Reform Movement remember, the page for Kol Nidre is almost entirely English, reading:
All prayers which the children of Israel offer unto Thee, O our Father, that they may depart from sin, from guilt and from wickedness, and follow the ways of Thy Torah, the ways of justice and of righteousness, yea all the resolutions which we make from this Day of Atonement until the coming Day of Atonement—may they be acceptable before Thee, and may we be given strength to fulfill them. And then, beneath this English are two lonely words written in Hebrew letters, “Kol Nidre”. And under these two words, in very small print, in English and in parentheses, are the words: (The Kol Nidre Chant).
And tonight, if you were following along in the English of our machzor, the Kol Nidre text on p. 252 applies only to our promises to God:
Let all our vows and oaths, all the promises we make and the obligations we incur to you, O God, between this Yom Kippur and the next, be null and void should we, after honest effort find ourselves unable to fulfill them. Then may we be absolved of them.
If you thought that Kol Nidre was a petition to God for the forgiveness of our unfulfilled promises from last year-- it doesn’t do that. And if it’s a “get out of jail free card” for any unfulfilled promises in the new year, isn’t that particularly self-serving and theologically troublesome? Here we are at the conclusion of these ten Days of Awe, of teshuvah, of “return”, a time of judgment and truth. Our clergy and scrolls are dressed in white, we have begun our yearly fast, and the prayerbook begins with either a mistranslation or a footnote disclaimer that this most important (“haunting”) prayer not only doesn’t mean what we always thought it did, but is in fact contrary to the essence of authentic atonement!
The truth is that Kol Nidre was always a conundrum. It historically provoked social and cultural resentment among our neighbors who said, “How can we trust these Jews if they’re not in any way obligated to fulfill their oaths and promises?!” As far back as the 9th C, there were attempts to abolish the prayer because of this. The scholars of the Babylonian Academy, over 1000 years ago, called it a “foolish custom” and forbade it!
But Kol Nidre was not so easily done away with. Prayerbooks merely added a footnote, or “adjusted” it, changing it to what they wanted it to mean! And despite the fact that for over 1000 years we’ve rejected it, augmented it, changed it, retranslated it--Kol Nidre has not only taken on a life of its own, but it’s become so central to this Yom Kippur moment that we even call this the Kol Nidre Service.
Clearly, the meaning of the words no longer plays an important role, if any role, in what Yom Kippur is all about! And this is not just any worship service. Already in antiquity, Yom Kippur was important enough to attract Jews who otherwise were non-observant. In the 1st C CE, the Jewish philosopher and theologian Philo of Alexandria observed that the fast day of Yom Kippur was “respected not only by pious people, but also by those who otherwise do not lead active religious lives.”
The early 20th C French sociologist and rabbi’s son, Émile Durkheim (1858-1917), reflected on our High Holidays with the phrase “Collective effervescence,” meaning: the moment a group comes together in solidarity and cohesion. He called it a key element of religion and wrote that no other religion does this so consistently through liturgy as does Judaism. Why? Because we require a group, a minyan, for proper, acceptable prayer. Because our tradition insists that valid, liturgically complete worship happens when we “pray together”, worship is simply not something that Jews can properly do alone.
And if any part of our liturgy exemplifies this notion, it’s the effect of hearing Kol Nidre, assembled in one’s sanctuary. Kol Nidre doesn’t sound like other prayers that are sung, and it’s in Aramaic, not the Hebrew we’re used to. And the very fact that we only hear it once a year, on a particularly solemn night-- all this together gives it a special distinction. And even if we were not aware of its history, we somehow, innately know that its melody is very old. Some traditional Jews even claim that the melody goes back to Mount Sinai. In fact, the earliest written evidence of the melody dates to 1765, but it may have originated two hundred years earlier in the 16th C.
For my money, the proper footnote for Kol Nidre would have nothing to do with its troubling text or misleading translations—the footnote would simply read: See “Collective Effervescence”, the term Emil Durkheim coined. Collective effervescence is the chill you feel when you rise with a whole stadium erupting in cheers. It’s the tears that well up while singing along with strangers at a concert. It happens during those rare occasions when everyone around you comes together in a sense of heightened energy and unity. It’s an electric, bigger-than-yourself, unexpected emotional uplift that can only happen in the midst of a connected, responsive, communal experience. I can only assume that for some, if not most of us, we get a momentary taste of collective effervescence during the singing of Kol Nidre. It’s a transcendent sense of social unity that lifts one beyond one’s individual experiential moment.
Sociologists note that humans are essentially communal-- we need other people. But even more than having friends and close relationships, we need to feel embedded, rooted, personally connected in the community if we are to feel authentically happy and healthy.
Our English word “religion” comes from the Latin religio, “to bind, to connect”. And if our “religion” requires a community for proper worship, and expects us to be “connected” to other Jews—then being Jewish cannot be anything solitary. And worship must be more than just a “happening”. It ought to generate collective effervescence if we are to get the most out of it, if we want it to be an “electric, bigger-than-oneself, unexpected emotional uplift that can only happen in the midst of a connected, responsive, communal experience.”
I can only hope that you might want “some of that” in our Grosse Pointe Jewish Council. If so, then we need each other. On these Holidays surely, but also in the variety of cultural, educational, social, and certainly religious opportunities in the rest of the year.
For my money, the proper prayerbook footnote for Kol Nidre would have nothing to do with its troubling text or misleading translations-- it would read: See “Collective Effervescence”, and not just for tonight or tomorrow. Can we not do more to create the kind of community that releases a collectively shared, vibrant energy that celebrates our Jewish history and culture and social values? Why not? And if not now, then when!?
Jewish in the 250th Yom Kippur 5787/2026
We just celebrated America’s semi-quincentennial, our 250th birthday. And while our country celebrated with parades and fireworks and flag-waving, American Jews were also looking over their shoulders, wary of another “incident”. We are very much aware of surging anti-Jewish, anti-Israel, anti-Zionist rhetoric and assault. And the fractured political landscape that threatens America generally, only adds to the sense that we Jews are becoming increasingly vulnerable, the preferred boogeyman of the disaffected and disgruntled.
But looking back to the German devastation of the 20th C, and the Russian persecution of the 19th C, and the pogroms of the 18th C, and the blood libels, expulsions, forced conversions and massacres of the 17th and 16th and 15th and 14th and 13th C, and the Crusades of the 12th and 11th C— our situation today as Jews in America is very, very different, and certainly better.
To understand, to appreciate, to objectively recognize who we are within the fabric of American society, as well as who we subjectively think we are, or believe we are-- we start with the Hebrew word גלות galut. (you may have heard it pronounced galus). It is regularly translated in two very different ways. If one goes to the Chabad website (should you ever be that interested!) you’ll find this:
Nearly 2,000 years ago, the Jewish nation was driven out of its homeland and sent off into a tear-soaked galut/exile that lasts to this very day. We wait and yearn for the day when our galut and suffering come to an end, when we will be returned to the Holy Land, with the coming of our redeemer, the Moshiach.
But other sources translate the Hebrew not as “exile”, but into the Greek word diaspora, meaning “dispersion”. And those two terms: exile and diaspora are, needless to say, very different. Being in “exile” is a value-laden expression that we are not where we belong, that we long to “return” to our proper place, and that we are instead in exile because either we did something that merits this punishment, or others have cruelly banished us.
But the word “diaspora” or “dispersion” is merely an objective, descriptive term that we are no longer in our original homeland. Diaspora only describes where we are not, it does not indicate how well we are or are not doing in the place where we are now. And for you and me, and I suspect for the majority of American Jews, “exile” does not describe our situation-- that in fact, we belong here, that we are thoroughly woven into the fabric of American culture and society. And additionally, I would contend that our American Jewish community is unique in all of Jewish history, that never have we thrived and succeeded anywhere in the diaspora as we have here.
To understand and appreciate our uniqueness, we have to go back 500 years, to this land that Jews found when they first arrived. This was a Puritan founded and dominated America. Their churches had no picture of Jesus and they revered and venerated Moses. They took Hebrew Scriptures as seriously as any Talmud scholar. They compared themselves to the Israelites who crossed the sea to escape oppression to find freedom. They taught Hebrew in their colleges along with Latin. They observed a strict Sabbath (though on Sunday). The Puritans welcomed us as “cousins”. And the Puritan minister was not “ordained” but a layman called by his congregation, and each congregation was autonomous, using Mosaic law to resolve issues. And most importantly, here in America there was no government control of any faith community.
Jews in Europe answered to a local or regional rabbinic authority which paid the regional clergy, managed the synagogues, and maintained the community. The Jews who began arriving in the 17th C were Sephardic and they had no “ghetto” experience. They came originally from middle and upper class society in Spain and Portugal. And they were, for the most part, lukewarm believers, with no great devotion to the Talmud. Without rabbinic guidance and authority, they created their own style of Judaism, improvising observance without the supervision of rabbis or rabbinic courts (by fact and by choice!)
And because America did not develop as a feudal state, the social and class barriers of European society never developed here. Colonists could become successful middle-class farmers, tradesmen, and shop owners. Jews found, for the first time in centuries, that they could own land and property, and that all trades were open to them. There were no limitations on where they lived or how they lived, or what they did for a living. And the (largely) Sephardic Jewish community in the 17th and 18th and 19th C’s fit in well in socially and economically and even culturally, and were welcomed with other immigrant groups. And their synagogues, like American churches, were autonomous.
The Colonies did not have laws for or against Jews, and Jews got justice from American courts and were able to become equal citizens. And like the Puritans, there was no hierarchy of religious leadership. Jewish spiritual leaders were lay, chosen by membership and a synagogue was lucky if anyone even knew Hebrew. Jews made up their Judaism as they went along. Those who remembered, made do with what they knew. And this notion of total congregational autonomy meant that, for almost 200 years, until 1840, there were no ordained rabbis serving any American congregation! One did come in 1772 but left the next year because he could not accept the synagogue’s lay leaders telling him what to do! And when rabbis did come, with the German immigrants in the mid-19th C, it was too late to develop the religious and social control that traditional rabbis were used to.
250 years ago, our founding fathers were not interested in reforming the European social order, culture, or governmental administration. Our founders were creating a new kind of nation, a new “American” self-awareness. They held certain truths to be self-evident, among them that “all men are created equal.” And it made our experience in America unique. This new reality was fully realized in 1790, when Moses Seixas, of the Newport (Rhode Island) Synagogue, sent a letter to President George Washington, noting that Jews had long been deprived of the rights of free citizens, but now enjoyed a government which, Seixas wrote “to bigotry gives no sanction, to persecution no assistance.” Washington famously echoed these words back to the congregation.
America never demanded that Jews purchase equality at the price of their collective identity. In other countries, it was expected that one’s national allegiance had priority over one’s religious identity. That has never been the case in America. This first-of-a-kind environment meant that American Jews had then, and have now, the freedom to define and express their Jewish identity as they see fit.
The late Sociologist Charles Liebman pointed out that all Jews in America are Jews-by-choice since nothing in American society binds one to his or her Jewishness. He coined the phrase “Jewish personalism” in a 1990 study comparing Israeli and American Judaism. By “Jewish personalism,” he meant the tendency of American Jews to pick those parts of Judaism they find personally meaningful, rather than complying with requirements of religious law or ethnic obligation. But of course, this opportunity of “personalism” is a two-edged sword-- on the one hand, we shape our own understanding of what it means to be Jewish, but on the other hand, that kind of absolute freedom and the variety of choices we might collectively make, could diminish our distinctiveness, and we might quietly fade away, absorbed into the shadowy background of American culture.
So is America our blessing or our curse? I choose to think that we’re going to be OK. But to be sure, there are Jewish voices that decry that freedom, that “personalism”. They denounce our choices as nails in the coffin of American liberal Judaism. And it is true that some of us, perhaps many, will forgo choosing to be personally, authentically Jewish, moving instead to the periphery of our community before fading away altogether. But in choosing “Jewish personalism”, developing our own, meaningful, fulfilling Jewish identities, we create, each our own, authentic Jewish experience that we embrace for its own sake.
And of course we face external challenges beyond personal Jewish autonomy in this 250th year. There are social issues that affect each of us and all of us. This fractured political and ideological landscape, which threatens American society generally, hangs particularly heavily over our heads. Today’s divided America seems even worse than in the Vietnam 60’s and early 70’s.
And for our Jewish community, we are becoming more and more the target of the dividers. And though there is nothing historically new here, America’s DNA is different. In President Bill Clinton's First Inaugural Address, he said: “There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured by what is right with America.” I believe that. America, in her bones, is the country we always thought her to be, believed her to be. Different from the countries we fled, we are not living under the protection of a national sovereign. We are part and parcel of this sovereign people by whose consent the government governs.
And though I am today fearful for America in general, and what it might mean for our Jewish community in the short run, I can only hope that better days do lie ahead. I trust that what made America the country that our founders envisioned, the country that generations of Jewish immigrants believed in, the country to which we pledged allegiance in our elementary school classrooms—is an America where Jews are ultimately safe, secure and protected. This is our democracy as much as anyone else’s. We belong here, we are not in exile.
Moses Seixas, of the Newport Synagogue, in 1790 affirmed his belief that in America we "give bigotry no sanction and persecution no assistance". President George Washington took those words for his own. So yes, we are living in the Diaspora, far away, in both time and space, from our ancestral, spiritual, Biblical birthplace—but we are not in exile. Here in America, we are home-- and therefore we are responsible for ensuring that America lives up to its promise. And if not now, then when?!