Healing Divisions in Our Community- Yom Kippur 5786

There’s a commandment found in parshat Re’eh, which we read earlier this summer. The Torah teaches in Deuteronomy chapter 14 verse 1:

בָּנִים אַתֶּם לַיקֹוָק אֱלֹהֵיכֶם לֹא תִתְגֹּדְדוּ וְלֹא תָשִׂימוּ קָרְחָה בֵּין עֵינֵיכֶם לָמֵת

You are children of the Lord, your God. You shall neither cut yourselves nor make any baldness between your eyes for the dead.

The Torah in this verse is describing a ritual that was practiced by other peoples in the land of Canaan when someone died. As a sign of mourning, a person would lacerate their body, or shave a space in their hair right above the hairline between their eyes.

But this verse has a different, deeper interpretation as well. It’s taught in the Talmud that “Reish Lakish said to Rabbi Yochanan: Read the verse ‘Lo Titgodedu’, which means do not form separate groups.”

Later commentators, such as Maimonides, pick up this thread and expound on it, codifying the need for communal Jewish unity. The deeper teaching, therefore, is that we are not to purposefully cause divisions or divisiveness in the Jewish community. This is a communal transgression for which we must atone; dare I say, it is a transgression that is very prominent in some quarters of the Jewish community both in Israel and in the Diaspora at this moment.

Daniel B. Schwartz wrote in a recent issue of Sources, a journal published by the Shalom Hartman Institute:

“The American Jewish community is fractured: over Israel/Palestine, over the meaning of antisemitism, over the legitimacy of Jewish nationalism, and over the very definition of Jewish peoplehood. These disputes are not intellectual. They determine who feels welcome in any given Jewish space- and who does not.”

And as we know, it’s not just American Jews. In Israel there are deep divisions between the haredim and less observant Jews. There are Jewish men who verbally and physically harass Jewish women who pray and sing aloud at the Kotel; there are less-observant Jews who travel to Cyprus to get married, in order to avoid the auspices of the rabbanut, or national rabbinic association. There’s much more- and let’s not even get started on Israeli politics.

Words borne out of division can hurt. A noted Jewish scholar and educator whose work I follow related on a podcast that, due to his strong pro-Israel stance during the current war, fellow Jews who disagree with his views wrote to him saying “Your grandchildren will do teshuva for you”. What a thing to say!

Divisions can, and do, run deep in our various communities, both Jewish and not. There are certain Jewish organizations whose views I vehemently disagree with. There are modes of Jewish behavior exhibited by some individuals, ostensibly cloaked in tradition and law, that I find abhorrent. Less severely, there are some rituals and modes of Jewish worship I’ve encountered that simply “don’t feel right” to me; they’re not my proverbial cup of tea. And you know what? In those cases, it’s not about me. Jewish practice doesn’t look just one way, and moreover hasn’t for thousands of years.

And yet, they are as Jewish as I am- no more and no less. To be considered a Jew is simply a circumstance of either birth, or halachically kosher conversion. No matter how far one may stray from the tradition and from mitzvot, a person is always considered a Jew if they meet the halachic standard, and is welcomed back in love should they do teshuvah.

Disagreement and different perspectives, I want to point out, are a cornerstone of Jewish tradition. Hevruta study- studying our sacred texts with a partner- does not exist so that our hevruta can reaffirm our views, but rather so that they challenge us to reconsider them if necessary. This is rooted in the verse from Proverbs:

בַּרְזֶ֣ל בְּבַרְזֶ֣ל יָ֑חַד וְ֝אִ֗ישׁ יַ֣חַד פְּנֵֽי־רֵעֵֽהוּ׃

As iron sharpens iron, so a person sharpens their friend.

Disagreement, conversation, and honesty, ideally, are supposed to sharpen us. When I say “sharpen us”, I don’t mean bringing us to a place of being capable of hurting others, G-d forbid. Rather, to become sharpened means to be better attuned to others, and to increase our own learning. A true relationship with others, whether they be our hevrutot or not, should be one that, on occasion, challenges us.

And here, I feel, is a source of disconnect. We’ve forgotten that it’s okay to be challenged, and to be uncomfortable. We’ve forgotten as a community that thoughtful pushback on our ideas is not violence, and that allowing other voices and perspectives in the proverbial room does not equate to platforming and centering them. To not know discomfort and be able to work through it communally can lead to stunted growth. Multivocality and multiple perspectives in our community keep us honest, and allow us to continually check in with ourselves.

The communities we belong to can indeed feel uncomfortable at times. We may wonder if we truly belong there. Sadly, it is sometimes necessary to separate from those communities whose views are actually, truly, anathema to our own and that we cannot tolerate despite our best efforts. I’ve known people for whom this has been the case- people who left rabbinical school due to political reasons, people who have left certain shul communities, and others who don’t recognize themselves in the midst of others, who make the bittersweet decision to separate from them.

This is an action that, religiously speaking, should not be taken lightly. In Pirkei Avot 2:5, it’s taught that “Hillel taught: Do not withdraw yourself from the community; Do not be sure of yourself until the day you die; Do not judge other people until you stand in his situation.” These are three teachings that speak to our communal Yom Kippur experience.

“Do not withdraw yourself from the community”: Today, of all days, is a day for dissolving divisions. The declaration immediately preceding Kol Nidre, the liturgical opening of Yom Kippur, declares: “We grant permission to pray with those who have transgressed.” We have all transgressed, and none of us are completely free of sin. That is why we recite both the shorter Ashamnu and longer Al Chet confessions in the plural- we have committed all of these acts, and we all should merit to be forgiven for committing them. As I’ve said elsewhere, we can only experience the full richness of Jewish ritual and communal life with others. We need a minyan to read Torah, to recite the kedusha, to perform hoshanot on Sukkot (please join us next week!), and to perform other acts as well. To separate yourself from the community is to consciously forego the warm embrace of the Tradition.

“Do not be sure of yourself until the day you die”: Yom Kippur has been described as “the day that is like death”. Like the dead, we don’t eat or drink on this day, or engage in bodily comfort in other ways. We wear the white of the kittel, the same color and garment used as a burial shroud. We repeatedly confess our sins, which is the tradition of one who is near death. All of these associations with mortality bring us back to Hillel’s teaching: Am I sure that I would act the same way in a certain situation this past year, or would I act differently? Where can I change and do better? Do I really, truly, feel at peace with myself?

Finally, “Do not judge other people until you stand in his situation”. We don’t know what is on each others’ hearts. Despite the strength and individual bonds in our community, we often can’t truly know another individual’s thoughts, feelings, concerns, and “baggage”. When I think about how others in the community have mistreated me, I can’t know what their motivation was for doing so. I don’t think it was truly out of malice. Were they stressed about another situation? Were they feeling harried? Were they simply having a bad day? I can’t truly know. Hillel teaches us to put ourselves in their shoes before we ascertain someone’s motivations; we very well may have done the same thing ourselves in similar situations.

A teaching that is very resonant for me right now is from Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, who was the first Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of Mandate Palestine, before the State of Israel was founded. He wrote:

“The relationship between the Jewish people and its individual members is different than the relationship between any other national group and its constituents. All other national groups only bestow upon their individual members the external aspect of their essence. But the essence itself each person draws from the all-inclusive soul, from the soul of God, without the intermediation of the group… This is not the case regarding Israel. The soul of the individuals is drawn from … the community, the community bestowing a soul upon the individual’s. One who considers severing himself from the people must sever his soul from the source of its vitality. Therefore each individual Jew is greatly in need of the community.”

When it comes down to it, we need each other. Sadly, we may not always like each other. And I want to add that we all have our red lines- the boundaries that, should they be crossed by someone else, would be dealbreakers to us being in community with them. Yet, despite all this, I have reason to hope- and to hope actively. Not standing idly by, but doing the hard work of improving of community, and welcoming those who wish to join it.

We Jews are truly unique- we are part of a unique relationship with G-d and with each other. As Moses says in his final speech at the very end of the Torah, which we’ll read in two weeks on Simchat Torah: “Who is like you, Israel; a people delivered by G-d, who is your protector.” Similarly, the final passage of this afternoon’s haftarah, immediately after the final lines of the Book of Jonah, are the final lines of the book of Micah, which highlights G-d as the other unique party in our unique covenant:

מִי־אֵ֣ל כָּמ֗וֹךָ נֹשֵׂ֤א עָוֺן֙ וְעֹבֵ֣ר עַל־פֶּ֔שַׁע לִשְׁאֵרִ֖ית נַחֲלָת֑וֹ לֹֽא־הֶחֱזִ֤יק לָעַד֙ אַפּ֔וֹ כִּֽי־חָפֵ֥ץ חֶ֖סֶד הֽוּא׃

“Who is a God like You, forgiving iniquity and remitting transgression—Not staying angry forever toward the remnant of Your own people, because You love graciousness!

In our own moments of frustration in community, we should emulate this divine behavior- anger is often temporary, and not seeing eye to eye does not mean we should cut ourselves off entirely from those around us.

A friend who is not Jewish asked me recently what the “one thing” is that I try to communicate to people about Judaism. I thought for a moment and said: “Being Jewish means being part of a community with shared aspirations. It’s knowing that you’re beholden to something greater than yourself- to G-d, to mitzvot, and to the wider Jewish community. Judaism is not an individual enterprise.”

I stand by those words. We are all in this together. And despite our communal divisions and challenges, many if not most of them can be overcome in our better moments. Let us do the hard work of attempting to bridge differences, and to see eye to eye- to do as Hillel taught, and not judge each other until we stand in each other’s place. That alone will not mend our broken community, but it’s a starting point- the same way that Yom Kippur is a starting point for a better year.

So let us begin. May we, and the entire House of Israel- those with whom I have differences, and those with whom I do not- be sealed for a good year.