We are Responsible for One Another: Cultivating a Both/And Jewish Identity
Kol Nidre 2025, Rabbi Sarah Shulman
I dedicate this sermon to the memory of Karen Diamond who died from injuries sustained in the Boulder attack this year and to the remaining hostages – may they be returned home to their families & our people at last.
My daughter Lielle once asked me: “Ima, why do we wear white on Yom Kippur?” And I froze, wondering – do I tell her it’s because tonight is a time of joy and holiness, so we dress like angels in garbs of purity as a metaphor for new beginnings and moments of transcendence? I considered quoting her the words of Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel who claimed: “There are no days as joyous for the Jewish people as the fifteenth of Av and as Yom Kippur, as on them the daughters of Jerusalem would go out in white clothes” (Mishna Ta’anit 4:8).
Or, do I tell her that we wear white because this is a dress rehearsal for death. Tonight, we enter with uncertainty about who will be inscribed in the Book of Life and who will not. Tonight, we will recite the vidui, a confessional like I’ve recited with gentle compassion at the bedside of so many before they’ve passed. Lielle, I might say, there is a serious, sacred, even scary quality to tonight. And yet we are comforted by the presence of one another.
Which response do I share? There is only one option in my mind? Both. For I want my daughter and all our youth to grow up with the ability to hold complexity. This is a both/and world – in a single moment we can mourn and laugh, we can be in serious work mode and be covered by the spills of our children or grandchildren. God, after all is even described in a both/and manner on this holiday as “Avinu Malkeinu” – a parent AND a leader. Surely, we mortals can be both these things and others too!
Life is full of competing obligations. Sometimes our child has a birthday the same day our mother goes into the hospital for surgery. Sometimes we are called in for jury duty and a Colonoscopy on the same day, which, it turns out, is also a major Jewish holiday, of course! Sometimes we feel conflicted, mixed, or bewildered. Author Philip Roth once put it “Life is and” – meaning that we do not live for the most part in a world of either/or, but a world of connection and multiplicity.
We see this in our Torah and liturgy repeatedly – just as we did minutes ago in the Kol Nidre prayer – in a literary device known as “polySYNdeton,” which strings a sentence together with many ands, or vuvs in Hebrew: Kol nidre ve’esarei va’haramei, v’konamei, v’khinuyei, v’kinnusei. In English: “All vows and renunciations and bans and oaths, and formulas of obligation and pledges, etc, we hereby retract.”
Perhaps through all these conjunctions, our tradition is demonstrating for us that God is in the ands, the in betweens. In a text, in a world, in a holiday when words matter tremendously, we cherish every “and” as an important pathway to the Divine.
This year I had the opportunity to teach 10 pathways to God as a curriculum based on the teachings of Rabbi Jonathan Sacks. Our discussions in class revealed many divergent pathways to God, including identity, study, prayer, chesed, tzedakah, Israel, mitzvot, and more. Few of us choose just one path but many in a lifetime.
The world in its elegant sophistication requires us to respond in kind; so to be pulled in multiple directions is not to be discombobulated but to be authentic. So often we look down at the one who is conflicted as indecisive. But in all honesty, it’s the people who are certain they stand in the right without question or conscience who concern me the most today.
The Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai said it well: “From the place where we are right flowers will never grow in the spring. The place where we are right is hard and trampled like a yard. But doubts and loves dig up the world like a mole, a plow. And a whisper will be heard in the place where the ruined house once stood.”
We must not feel a sense of shame for feeling pulled in multiple directions. For example, I imagine there are many of you in this room tonight who feel unsettled – anchored in being proud Jews while feeling conflicted about certain policies of the current government in Israel, and yet also not wanting to dignify the noxious antisemites outside these walls. That’s a lot to hold. Yet to meet the call of a world that increasingly becomes more complicated and divided, I believe complexity is completion, is wholeness, or as we call it in Hebrew, Shlemut, Peace.
In fact, unearthing what a multifaceted, enduring peace means is essential for the future of our world, in Israel, Ukraine, and many aspects of our own lives. Peace by definition is complex, as we feel at this moment of waiting for a deal and as we sing in the famous lines that conclude both the Kaddish and Amidah prayers:“Oseh Shalom bimromav who ya’ase shalom, aleinu v’al kol Yisrael, ve’imru amen.” May the one who makes peace on high bring peace for all Israel and we say: Amen.
What makes Oseh Shalom complex? Well in case peace itself wasn’t complicated enough today, you may have noticed that we utilize not just one but two different versions of Oseh Shalom in our songs and prayer books: one version of the prayer (as we just sang) includes the additional bracketed words [al yoshvei tevel] to extend peace “to all who dwell on earth” while the other leaves this insertion out.
Do we include this section that broadens peace and wholeness to all people in our prayers, or do we stick with the original version from the book of Job?
To fully answer that question with integrity, one must understand the origins of this prayer. These words were first said not by one of our patriarchs or even Job himself, but by an outsider offering comfort. After Job loses everyone and everything in his life, one of his friends, Bildad the Shuhite offers him the words “oseh shalom bimromov” as part of a well-intentioned but failed attempt at consolation, much like the person at shiva who approaches the mourner to say, “Don’t worry, it will be ok, God has a plan.” Likely a member of a nomadic tribe dwelling adjacent to the Jews, Bildad is understood by his name to be a descendent of Shuah, son of Avraham and his third wife Keturah.
The origin of these central words in our tradition thus only further drives home the point of complexity in a time when the divide between particularism and universalism is fracturing the Jewish community more and more each day.
We struggle to engage in civil discourse with one another, let alone listen to the other’s perspective. Some scholars worry that synagogues of the future will be designated not by denomination but by ideological orientation. And yet the liturgist of Oseh Shalom took the words of a non-Jewish biblical character about God’s power to impose peace upon the heavens and turned them on their head into the rallying cry of our people to God to help us transform suffering into peace. Thus, in a fascinating both/and sort of way, Oseh Shalom is a particularistic Jewish prayer from universalistic origins!
I imagine if I were to put to a vote today which version of Oseh Shalom you all prefer – with or without the universalizing words al yoshvei tevel – we would right here on the spot prove the statement “two Jews, three opinions.” To that I say, yes, beautiful, how Jewish! It’s your choice, and it might not even be the same each time you say these words because we change as does our world! This spiritual choice that we make each time we pray Oseh Shalom is just one case study of a larger question about our core values.
When Yossi Klein HaLevi spoke here earlier this year, he made an important point about how we each prioritize our values. He distinguished himself from his chevruta at the Shalom Hartman institute, Donniel Hartman, by the nature of their highest values. Specifically, while Yossi prioritizes security for the people of Israel above everything else, Donniel upholds the moral leadership of the Jewish people. They both value one another’s choice, but it’s not their core value.
This perspective is important for our own conversations today whether about Israel/Gaza or issues in America, in which we each fundamentally have a hierarchy of values that drives our opinions, our hopes and dreams for the future, how we give of our time and resources, how we raise our families, and how we cast our ballots. Do you know what your top values are?
Whether you value security, Jewish continuity, compassion, moral leadership, the preservation of life, or something else, will fundamentally affect how you view our world today and the decisions of tomorrow.
Yet no matter how you prioritize your values, and no matter how you choose to recite Oseh Shalom, I want to point out that no one is questioning the inclusion of the words v’al kol Yisrael – peace upon all of Israel – in the prayer. In other words, what unites us even in our different perspectives and divergent core values is a fundamental responsibility to Kol Yisrael – all Israel, which is us, all of us. “Belonging to Israel is in itself a spiritual act,” said Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel.
To heal an ever-fracturing Jewish community, we need to return to a fundamental principle of our tradition from the Talmud: kol Yisrael araveim zeh ba zeh, all of Israel is responsible for one another (Shevuot 39a). Judaism is a religion with a foundation in responsibility, not a base in rights as the US constitution and Bill of Rights offers. We’ve always been a people in which belonging and responsibility for one another are core. I have felt it at the Kotel, in the hospital, on Pearl St after the Boulder attack, and right here in services at HEA in the prayers we say and in the way we show up for one another. I hope you have too.
When Jewish author and former Whitehouse speech writer, Sarah Hurwitz, was in town recently, she asked me to describe our HEA community in the car ride from the airport to our synagogue to speak.
“We’re a purple community with a shared heart, and I’m proud to say, we find strength in our connections to one another, tradition, and Israel. We don’t agree on everything, but we do agree to be here with and for each other.”
I experienced such a moment of kinship just the other week at a shiva minyan: at first few were singing aloud the prayers, sharing comfort in their presence more than their words. That is, until we got to Oseh Shalom, and everyone in the room raised their voices as one – “Oseh shalom bimromav” led by the granddaughter of the deceased, and for a moment we carried one another and cried.
My colleague Rabbi Nolan Lebovitz further illustrates this principle of responsibility in his book The Case for Dual Loyalty: Healing the Divided Soul of American Jews with the story of the Reuvenites and Gadites from the book of Bamidbar. As the Israelites are nearing the Jordan to cross into the Promised Land where they have been heading for years, these two tribes announce that they’d rather stay with their animals and live on this side of the Jordan. Moses, as you can imagine, is aghast at their sudden change of plans. He confronts Reuven and Gad and asks, “Will your brothers go to war inside the land while you live here?” (Numbers 32:6).
So, they make a deal. As long as the rest of the Jews were at war in the Promised land and needed their help, the Jews living outside would be with them, shoulder to shoulder. The tribes of Reuven and Gad would support the other tribes when needed and then they could live in the land they chose across the Jordan.
Rabbi Lebovitz argues, “we are the inheritors of that ancient promise.” Kol Yisrael araveim zeh ba zeh, all of b’nai yisrael are responsible for one another. That is what we do here at HEA, and that is who we are as a people.
So, how do we support the people of Israel as American Jews and loved ones of American Jews at such a contentious time? First, by embracing the both/and of our identities: We are American Jews with dual loyalties to America and the Jewish people, period. We can, and we must be both. Wear a star of David, a hostage tag, or a kippah in addition to paraphernalia for your favorite American sports teams; listen to music in English and Hebrew; hang a mezuzah on your door and American and Israeli flags in your yard; love Israel and struggle in meaningful ways to make it the modern country we want it to be for our people.
Yisrael, after all, means to struggle– going back to Jacob’s wrestling with a divine messenger that resulted in blessing alongside hardship. Own both identities in your own way; but own them, wear them, be them proudly, an ambassador for our people.
Next, we must engage in not just the news but the business of our people: Listen, read, and ask questions of other Jews – not to point out your differences and disagreements, but to understand who they are and where they are coming from.
I’ll never forget the summer that the progressive group If Not Now protested Ramah and the pedagogy of the Jewish camping movement while I was a Ramah Director. At first, I felt threatened – what would they say and do at my camp?
But in fact, that summer we had the most thoughtful dialogue amongst staff across different viewpoints based in our shared cored values that I have ever experienced in a camp setting. We’ve always been a religion of questions, of listening, of honoring different opinions. Let’s not let the war in Gaza, American politics, or differences in religious practice lead us to stop listening to each other.
Let’s engage with Israel and one another directly – consider joining us on our congregational trip to the holy land this March. Buy Israeli products and support Jewish institutions that align with your values. Consider purchasing property or even becoming a citizen and voting in Israeli elections. Pose serious questions about Israel at your dinner table. Grab coffee with friends with different views from your own with curiosity and respect. We must work together to support, heal, and reconnect a fractured Jewish community.
When Haman described the Jewish people in Persia he said they were mefuzar u’meforad — scattered and divided. When we look around America today, we feel that too: We are scattered, and we so often don’t understand each other. We are too often divided against ourselves, consumed by our differences, expending our energy to fight those who are supposedly part of our family. A people such as this is easy prey, Haman told King Achashverosh.
But Esther commanded “Go and gather all the Jews/ kol hayehudim” so that there should be a connection and unity between them. With this she toppled Haman’s observation that “We are a people scattered and divided” with irreconcilable division between us. Esther got it right: Go gather the Jews. Make a connection between them while honoring their different core values. Overturn the designs of Haman and Hamas. If we can do that and stand together, we’ll be OK.
On this Kol Nidre night, we are whole again. We are home again – b’yachad, all together. We are celebratory and solemn. We are forgiven and open to change. We are American and Jewish. Community implies responsibility for one another.
Returning to my initial conundrum, I wish to say to Lielle and all of our children: know that our strength has always resided in our connection to one another, kol Yisrael aravim zeh ba zeh. May you grow up in the world and feel proud of your Jewish identity and be able to hold complexity, questions, and difficult conversations not as a failure of our people but as a function of our resilience and our wholeness. As you stand proud in your white clothing of joy and seriousness to face the challenges of our time, may you have the capacity and foresight to go gather all the Jews.
G’mar Chatimah Tova – I wish you all wholeness and goodness, meaningful connection to our people (even in disagreement) and the fullness of a fulfilling Yom Kippur and year ahead.
