Rosh Hashanah 5785/2024 

The day started like any other. Sun peeking in through the blinds, Aiden standing in front of my face asking me to wake up. I took him downstairs, made coffee, poured him a cup of milk, and read our usual litany of books about trucks, dinosaurs, and unicorns.  

Later that morning I went upstairs to prepare for Torah study, and I opened my phone for the first time. Instinctively my thumb reached for the New York Times app and the giant headline at the top forced me to sit back down. “Israel at War.” It was October 7, and nearly one year later, Israel is still at war. 

Technically, since her founding in 1948, Israel has been at war. Israel does not enjoy peace so much as a pause in the perpetual fighting. The green line that today serves as the border to the West Bank was simply an armistice agreement, a cease-fire, between Israel and Jordan. A true peace agreement between the two countries didn’t happen until 50 years later in 1994.¹ A peace treaty with Lebanon in 1983 lasted only 10 months before Lebanon withdrew. Syria and Israel have never declared peace. For the last several decades, Hamas and Hezbollah, terror proxies of Iran, attack Israel, Israel responds, and eventually a cease-fire is declared. Horrifically, however, October 7 was so different than the past. 

Over three days more than 1,200 people including Children, Jews, Christians, Muslims, and Buddhists, were brutally murdered by Hamas fighters who took over 200 people hostage. Hamas killed with complete disregard for any sense of humanity. And Hamas still holds nearly100 people in Gaza terror tunnels. We continue to pray for their return. 

I often talk about the existential connection I have to Israel – a feeling embodied by the idea in the Talmud that “All of Israel is responsible for one another, 

 כל ישראל ערבים זה בזה,  – kol Yisrael aravim zeh bazeh.²”  

The Aramaic word aravim can also mean guarantor or “mixed up,” for to become responsible for someone or to guarantee someone, we must be ‘mixed up’ in their lives. Our lives mix and connect through our shared stories, history, and values. Kol yisrael aravim ze ba zeh – All of Israel is mixed up together. 

I have never felt so mixed up with the global Jewish community than in the days, weeks, months and now year following the October 7 attacks. As I began to read the stories and hear testimonies. I wasn’t reading about “their” children, their parents, their grandparents, their cousins, their aunts and uncles, their neighbors, the victims were MY children, my parents, my grandparents, my cousins, my aunts and uncles, my neighbors and my people. This is what it means to fulfil our Golden rule ‘Love my neighbor as I love myself.’ 

My love, my entangled and existential connection to Israel was so strong that it felt like Hamas attacked me. This war continues to feel personal.  

In many ways Hamas did attack us.  

At Sukkat Shalom and across the country, synagogues immediately increased security in response to concerns about domestic attacks. In those weeks after, we increased our security procedures in response to our fear. 

We continue to feel the increase in Antisemitism that has accompanied this war. We have seen Swastika’s drawn in middle school bathrooms, teenagers hurling ancient antisemitic tropes, Jewish businesses vandalized, people celebrating Hamas as freedom fighters and graffiti proclaiming that all Jews will die. All examples of modern antisemitism that serve as a constant barrage of microaggressions. 

In the weeks following October 7, we braced for the horrific war we knew was coming. It came. And today it continues for far longer and causing far more death and destruction than many of us could imagine. This war fills us with grief, despair, and exhaustion.  

This last year has been exhausting as we balance the tension of this war coupled with the increase in antisemitism. Our own fatigue recalls a moment when Moses needed help during an intense war in the Torah. In a situation similar to the Hamas attacks, we read that the Amalekites attacked the Israelite community from the rear – decimating the weakest civilians with no regard for age or gender. The Israelites had no choice but to go to war to defend themselves. 

Our Torah teaches that during the ensuing battle, when Moses raises his hands the Israelites prevail, but when he lowers his hands, the Amalekites prevail. He had to keep his hands aloft. Soon, we read, “Moses’ hands grew heavy. [Aaron and Hur] took a stone and put it under Moses, who sits. while Aaron and Hur, one on each side, supported Moses’s hands so that his hands remained steady until the sun set.”³ 

Imagine Moses’s perspective for a moment. He stationed himself on the top of the hill, overlooking the battlefield. Look out over the field below and the horrors Moses witnessed, the violence of warfare, his own people being killed, his own people killing. He literally held the fate of his community in his hands.  

In battle there are no winners, and yet to save his people the burden was on Moses not to lower his exhausted hands. 

In this essential moment our Torah teaches that Moses didn’t do this alone, because Moses couldn’t do this alone. Two men, Aaron, Moses’s brother, and Hur, a member of the community, come to help Moses. They put a stone under him and help hold up his hands in theirs. 

Our sages in the Talmud focus on the stone that they put under Moses. They ask, “But didn’t Moses have one pillow or one cushion to sit upon; why was he forced to sit on a rock?” and they answer, “Rather, Moses said as follows: Since the Jewish people are immersed in suffering, I too will be with them in suffering, as much as I am able, even though I am not participating in the fighting.¹” 

Moses taught us what it means to be mixed up with your people – kol yisrael aravim ze bazeh – all of Israel is mixed up together. 

Even though we are not directly engaged in war we are suffering along with our Israeli family in their fighting. We are suffering knowing that Hamas keeps nearly 100 hostages in bondage. We are suffering with each IDF soldier killed. We are suffering whenever we learn about another hostage who isn’t returning home. We are suffering with the PTSD inflicted upon a nation constantly running to bomb shelters, a nation in which bomb shelters and safe rooms are a regular part of life.  

And, we feel the burden and despair for more than just the people of Israel. In our raised hands we also hold our grief for the innocent people, the thousands of men, women and especially children who have been killed and who are suffering in Gaza and Lebanon. Like Moses, we have walked through this past year with two hands aloft – in one we carry our special connection to Israel knowing that our fates our intertwined. In the other hand we carry our grief for all innocent victims killed in this war because we know that God created all human beings in the Divine image.  

That includes all of us here today, it includes our friends and enemies, it includes both Israelis, Palestinians and Lebanese. All human beings contain and reflect the divine. 

From the moment I read the headline “Israel at War,” it felt like I raised my hands, and I haven’t been able to put them down. We enter this new year holding up our hands carrying this burden and tension. We cannot put down our hands until this war ends. We want the hostages home, we want Israel to survive, we want an end to the suffering. We want to maintain our sanity and our humanity. 

The burden is too much for any of us to carry alone. 

Fortunately, we are not alone.  

Like Moses, none of us could hold our hands in the air for that long. Since October 7, the Sukkat Shalom community has surrounded each other, offered respite, and borne this enormous responsibility together. Our care and concern for each other allows us to survive, and thrive, during one of the most difficult years for the American Jewish community in decades. For some of us in our entire lives.  

We don’t have to agree with each other about who to blame or what to post on social media. True community, like we have here tonight, on Sunday mornings, at book club, Torah study, when we volunteer to feed the homeless or set up a new apartment for a refugee family, doesn’t require agreement. It just asks us for love and support, for empathy and respect. To love each other as we love ourselves. I am so proud of the Sukkat Shalom community because we celebrate diversity in all its forms, including diversity of opinion. We have created a place, physically and spiritually, where we can all go to feel safe.  

For thousands of years, we have practiced holding each other up – whether we are facing a challenge as a community, such as we did during COVID – or whether our challenges are more personal, such as sickness, struggle and loss. Just as Aaron and Hur supported Moses, we will always be there to support each other as well. 

We are going to need each other more than ever as this conflict grinds on. For 11 months, many of us have held onto the idea that eventually, like in the past, Israel and Hamas would reach a cease-fire deal pausing the fighting and releasing the hostages. After the six hostages were found murdered last month, hundreds of thousands of Israelis took to the streets pleading with Netanyahu to secure a deal to release the remaining hostages. He responded by digging in further and declaring that Hamas must be completely defeated. Regardless of what we want to happen, many strategists, including the official IDF spokesman, believe such an end is not even possible.⁴ The last two weeks have seen a horrific escalation of the fighting with Hezbollah, another Iranian-backed terrorist organization, as Israel begins to defend itself from the 9,000 rockets Hezbollah has launched since October 8. Just yesterday Iran fired over 200 missiles toward Israel. Each day brings more destruction and more uncertainty. 

I was hoping to stand on this bima tonight to talk about a peaceful future after a year of war. I don’t know where this war goes from here. 

I do know that we will begin the new year 5785 holding our hands up, reaching out for peace. Until the war ends, we will continue standing next to each other, supporting each other, caring for each other, and loving ourselves and strangers alike. Judaism has survived for over 2000 years because when we see people struggling to remain upright, we rush over to help them. 

Take a moment, if you are willing, and hold up both of your hands like this. Now put one hand into the other. Feel what it’s like to be supported. We may be exhausted, but we will walk this long path together. As one community. 

Tomorrow morning, the sun will peek through our blinds, and Aiden will come and wake me up. As I take him downstairs, pour myself a cup of coffee and him a cup of milk, and together we will sit and read more books about trucks, dinosaurs and unicorns. Then we’ll come here, because this is our community, a community filled with comfort, support, joy and love. 

Am Yisrael Chai, the people of Israel live. As we begin a new year, may we find comfort, sweetness and peace. Shanah Tova.