For The Sake Of The Soul of the Jewish People

The High Holy Days now carry a kind of anticipatory grief—a trauma-tinted reminder of the days that led up to October 7th, and that have changed since that day. Two years.In the spirit of vidui, I confess a deep sense of dread for these holy days. I tried to take an Al kol eleh approach—blessing the honey and the sting—but anticipating this Yom Kippur has felt profoundly painful. 

As often happens with grief, I can’t help but play back the tape of the last two years.

On the first Shabbat after October 7th, which would typically have been a quiet Shabbat, this sanctuary was packed, as our community gathered in shock and grief. That night, I invited some of the rabbis who call Hevreh home to share in the honor (burden?) of having something to say. I remember Rabbi Howard Jaffe reading a prayer another colleague had written, which included the line:

God, protect us from acts that would tarnish our souls.

The line struck me. I didn’t know what it meant, yet. 

Tonight, I do. Our souls are tarnished.

Our task tonight is daunting, even to me. 

Kol Nidre is a night for resetting our most sacred intentions. Kol Nidre sits at the heart of our worship: majesty and memory wrapped into one. And yet, it is not a prayer- but a legal formula: a way to say “I know how much words matter; and so if I am unable to fulfill and stand by the words I have made as a promise, then I release myself from their power.” In other words, if through a careful accounting of my soul, and a sincere process of teshuva, I cannot stand by the vows I have made, I am released— washed clean of them. 

This preemptive annulment of illusory promises may seem like a legal fiction- an oddity of Jewish worship. But perhaps, it is the most crucial of steps in the work of Yom Kippur. These Yamim Noraim are meant to be a time of Cheshbon haNefesh: an accounting of the soul. We look deep within ourselves- searching the contours of our soul for the imperfections rendered by our own misdeeds. And then, Yom Kippur arrives and we reach toward repair; toward a process of TIkkun HaNefesh: repairing our souls. 

So much of Yom Kippur is about nothing less than our very souls!

Our tradition tells us: Elohai neshama shenata bi, t’horah hi! 

God: the soul you gave to me is pure. But in the process of being imperfect human beings in an imperfect world; in living through the extraordinary challenges of war, violence, and suffering: our souls have become tarnished. 

God, protect us from acts that would tarnish our souls.

Tonight, I understand what that means. 

We must confront our impurities,  our words, our loyalties, and our silences.

So I need to say to you outloud this evening:

The war against Hamas in Gaza must end. 

The soul of the Jewish people depends on it.

This is the most truthful thing that I could say tonight, and I want to honor that for some, it might be the hardest part for you to hear.  Or, perhaps, you wish I had said that more explicitly last week, last spring, or last year. 

I say this out of a deep well of love for Israel: out of a respect for what it means to say it from across an ocean, with incredible pride and love for my niece and nephews in Israel who are marking Yom Kippur on their bases tonight. And I say this because I want my children— all of our children to hear, on the holiest night of the year, in their Jewish home that it is not too late to change. 

I would also name that at this moment, we find ourselves waiting— hanging on to that tikvat chut ha’shani; a thin thread of hope. As Yehuda Cohen, father of Nimrod Cohen who has been held hostage since 10/7 yesterday said yesterday, “we’re in a kind of limbo- kind of ‘out of hell but let’s see if we’ll go into heaven’. Until that deal is done- until there is an agreement for this hellish war to end, until every hostage is returned- we are not there yet, and the soul of the Jewish people is high stakes. 

Our tradition is clear: at any time, we can change. We can turn. We can say something new. That is the generosity of Kol Nidre. 

Tonight is about a recalibration; of turning. And for the sake of the Jewish people, undertaking the work of Tikkun Hanefesh, we must begin by saying out loud what the problem is. 

The heart of our tradition is wise, especially when the hearts of our people are broken. Even in the face of cynicism, revenge and bloodthirst. 

We, the Jewish people, have a responsibility to say: Dai! Enough! 

To say that tonight is to echo the remarkable activism of the Hostages Families Forum, and the hundreds of thousands of people across Israel almost every night of the week, flooding the streets, crying with full throats for an end to this war. To bring the hostages home.  

To say that tonight is to echo the words and the work of Rabbi Gilad Kariv, the first Reform rabbi in Knesset, who this very morning stood on the bima of Knesset and with great passion and purpose accused the government of transforming revenge into national policy, of polluting the public sphere with calls that resemble those of our enemies, of making pacts with extremists who trample soldiers, pogromize Palestinians, and silence bereaved families. 

To say that tonight  is to echo people like Ibrahim Abu Ahmad, a 33 year old activist from Nazareth, who shared a video this week saying “Perhaps the most important fact about me is that I believe in peace. We have two options. Either we decide from within that the only option is war, and then we doom ourselves to an endless war. Or we turn toward peace.”

Throughout this Day of Atonement, we will make confessions, worded always in the plural. If we truly believe Kol Yisrael Arevim zeh l’zeh—the Jewish people are responsible for one another—then we share equal responsibility for the collective soul of this dynamic, diverse, and stubborn people. In that process of looking sincerely at our souls, were we to roll back the tape of this past year in the collective life of the Jewish people, it would be hard viewing. 

It would highlight moments of blessing, of simcha, yes—

But, the images would illuminate a darker truth:

Videos of hostages forced into tunnels, digging graves for themselves.

Toddlers in Gaza, dirty, bruised, alone.

Hostage families with dark circles under their eyes, screaming outside the Prime Minister’s residence—begging the world to care.

Gazan mothers and fathers shaking empty cooking pots, fists toward the sky.

Streets and waterways thronged with protesters—some chanting, “Release the hostages, let Gaza live,” others shouting, “Glory to the martyrs—death to Israel.”

And antisemitism alive around the world: two Israeli embassy staff shot outside the Capital Jewish Museum in DC; a molotov attack at a hostage vigil in Boulder that killed an 82‑year‑old woman; synagogue arson in Australia; Jews assaulted in the streets of France, Italy, and Germany.

Nothing will change, if nothing changes. 

Yom Kippur reminds us that after an honest accounting of the soul, we speak the truth out loud. We confess. 

There is much for us for us to confess- the soul of the Jewish people cries out for relief from the burden of these truths: 

Al Chet Shechetanu l’fanecha….For the sin we have committed against You 

By looking away

By abandoning the Jewish imperative to redeem those who are captive

By ignoring the pleas of the children, the spouses, the parents and siblings who cry out for justice

By acting with bloodthirst and seeking revenge

By excusing starvation

By excusing the needless death of children. 

We know the power of vidui; of speaking hard truths out loud. 

But we also know all too well that words alone will not suffice. 

So then what? 

There is no doubt that we are living through a profound crisis. And yet, as I learned from Rachel Goldberg Polin, mother of Hersh Goldberg Polin, the Hebrew word mashber—usually translated as “crisis”—carries a second, deeper meaning. In Biblical Hebrew, it means “birthing pain.”

Rachel teaches us that perhaps this very moment of rupture, this mashber, is itself the pain of labor. This crisis may be the labor pains of a rebirth—and we are called to move toward it.

We move toward the vision of rebirth— we do not allow ourselves the luxury of overwhelm or indifference. 

Even when we are exhausted, exasperated, and hopeless.

The writer Rebecca Solnit said “history is staged like a theater. The powerful stand in the limelight, and command our attention.”

But hope, she says, is not born under these bright lights. Hope lives in the shadows–where no one is watching, where quiet courage takes root, where ordinary people make unseen choices that, over time, bend the world toward mercy. 

Even here in the shadows, we keep what is at stake in front of us, like a true mizrach— a vision of what the soul of the Jewish people will look like with repair. 

Perhaps now the hardest part. 

You and I- sitting here in Great Barrington, MA tonight may feel entirely powerless to do anything to change what happens. What is currently happening. 

And in a literal sense, I believe that is true.  Our fates are bound up one with another; but we are not in control. The task of this sacred day is to release ourselves from unkeepable vows, and to recommit ourselves to the tasks of humanity. 

In his book “How To Cure A Fanatic”, author Amos Oz writes: 

I believe that if one person is watching a huge calamity, let’s say a conflagration, a fire, there are always three principal options.

 1. Run away, as far away and as fast as you can and let those who cannot run burn.

2. Write a very angry letter to the editor of your paper demanding that the responsible people be removed from office with disgrace. Or, for that matter, launch a demonstration.

3. Bring a bucket of water and throw it on the fire, and if you don’t have a bucket, bring a glass, and if you don’t have a glass, use a teaspoon, everyone has a teaspoon. And yes, I know a teaspoon is little and the fire is huge but there are millions of us and each one of us has a teaspoon. 

When the soul of the Jewish people is at stake, a teaspoon may not seem like a whole lot. 

But it is more than an empty hand. 

It is more than running away, it is more than shouting out into the universe.

I know it doesn't seem like much right now. Teaspoons. 

This moment is precarious; with each passing day, the stakes feel higher and higher. 

But we are not the only in the shadows of power, trying to sow seeds of hope. 

We are not the only ones with teaspoons. 

I began tonight by saying that the truest thing I could say is that this war must end—for the sake of the soul of the Jewish people. Our soul is on fire and each one of us needs to start bringing a teaspoon of water to this crisis. Fill your small spoons with hope, fill them with teshuva, fill them with hard truths, with reconciliation, and with urgency. 

Teaspoon by teaspoon, we can shift the tides of our soul. Teaspoon by teaspoon, act by act, we are part of that labor. We may feel small, powerless, even inadequate—but every act of conscience matters. Every choice to speak, to act, to refuse complicity, is a small spark of hope in a dark world.

Hope is born where quiet courage takes root—where ordinary people make unseen choices that, over time, bend the world toward mercy. It is the hundreds of thousands of Israelis filling the streets, crying for the hostages’ return. It is the activists, the rabbis, the human rights workers standing up, speaking out, and sometimes risking everything. It is the voices of people choosing to believe in peace, even when the world seems irredeemable.

May this Yom Kippur remind us: hope is born in the shadows. Even in the darkest moments, change is waiting to emerge. May we be sealed for a better year for humanity—for the sake of the soul of the Jewish people.