Rosh Hashanah 5786-2025
Once there was a small village preparing for the king’s visit. The townspeople decided to fill a giant barrel with wine and present it to the king upon his arrival. They concluded that each family of the town would bring one flask filled with wine and pour it into the giant barrel and the barrel would fill with wine.
They placed a giant barrel in the center of the town with a ladder reaching to the top and everyday people lined up to pour their flask of wine into the barrel.
The big day finally arrived, and the king visited the town. The people were so excited to present the king with this wonderful gift. He walked up the stairs to the top of the barrel with a large, shining goblet. He ceremoniously dipped his cup into the barrel.
The king took a sip, and quickly his broad smile faded into a look of disappointment and disgust. The towns people were shocked by the look on the king’s face. The king swallowed his large gulp, peered carefully into the cup, and slowly poured it out for all to see.
Quickly the people’s excitement receded to embarrassment, when they realized that the entire giant barrel was just plain water.
All week, each family had thought to themselves – I work so hard to put wine on my table, surely no one will notice if there is just one flask of water among all that wine. Which is true, one flask of water would have gone unnoticed. But when everyone in the town made the same calculation, the celebration turned sour. During a time of communal need and sacrifice, they had thought only of themselves.
Each day we make decisions in the delicate balance between self-interest and the other. Striving for this balance, 2000 years ago Rabbi Hillel taught us: “If I am not for myself, who will be for me? And if I am only for myself, what am I? If not now, when?”[1]
Rabbi Hillel cuts to the heart of our communal existence: the sacred tension between self and community, between the “I” and the “we.”
As we wrestle with this balance in our own lives we consider: “If I am not for myself, who will be for me?” Judaism has always honored the self. Each of us is created b’tzelem Elohim, in the Divine image, and our lives have infinite value. We are responsible for nurturing our souls, advocating for ourselves, and protecting our dignity. We often praise ourselves for leaning into “self-care.” But Hillel recognizes that a society cannot endure if everyone is focused only on themselves.
Thus he continues, “if I am only for myself, what am I?” When we act only for ourselves, we become isolated, cut off from our communities.
Maimonides, in the 13th century warns that “A person who separates themselves from the community and does not take part in their hardships…but rather goes on their own individual path as if they are from another community… does not have a portion in the world to come.[2]” Maimonides reminds us that we are all in this together.
In the Torah God commands us to create a society in which “There will be no needy.” Several verses later our Torah pragmatically reminds us that “If, however, there is a needy person among you… do not harden your heart [like Pharoah] and shut your hand against [them].” The paragraph concludes that there will always be needy people, and therefore we give readily.
This Biblical allusion to Pharaoh warns of societal collapse when our leaders govern by the “I” – fear and self-interest – rather than the “we” – hope and care for others. Pharaoh grew so wary of the immigrant Israelites that he sacrificed his entire kingdom because of his hardened heart. Unlike Pharaoh, we are commanded to create a society that is based upon compassion for others grounded in “We.”
As Americans today we find ourselves caught in a crisis of individualism. We are encouraged to pursue our own happiness, to defend our own rights, to seek our own dreams and to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps And we should do these things – as long as we consider others’ wellbeing and don’t cause them harm.
Our strength as a nation is born from our ability to care for one another, to sacrifice for the greater good, to lift up the vulnerable and create a society where all can flourish. The foundation of democracy—like the foundation of Judaism—is not the “I,” but the “we.”
Our American forefathers understood the importance of the collective and enshrined them in our country’s most sacred documents: The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution: We the people… and We hold these truths to be self-evident.
The power of “we” has sustained our country over the past 249 years. No society is perfect, but our collective voice has allowed us to confront our past, learn from our mistakes, and create a better future for everyone. We have worked to turn Lincoln’s famous quote into a reality and construct a government “of the people, by the people, for the people.”
Yet for many years now, this balance has been shifting further away from the “We” and more towards the “I.” Our country is becoming out of balance as we cross the line from self-care to selfishness and cause harm to others.
This conversation transcends politics. While we want to see our core values enshrined in society, balancing “I” and “We” must happen in every moment of our lives – our interactions with family, friends, neighbors, and community. We already do this: we volunteer at Connections for the Homeless, we welcome guests into our sacred home for Family Promise, we visit friends who are ill, we console those who are in mourning, and we celebrate with newlyweds. We commit ourselves to embrace these values at ALL levels of our society.
In his book Morality, Rabbi Jonathan Sacks writes, “Love your neighbor. Love the stranger. Hear the cry of the…unheard. Liberate the poor from their poverty. Care for the dignity of all…Feed the hungry, [and] house the homeless. Fight injustice, whoever it is done by and whoever it is done against.
And do these things because, being human, we are bound by a covenant of human solidarity, whatever our color or culture, class or creed. These are moral principles,” he teaches, “not…political ones.”[3]
When we disregard the needs of others, we risk taking the entire ship down with us.
Once while on a fishing trip in lake Michigan with a few other friends, John was the only one who had not caught even a single fish. As his friends started making fun of him, asking him what he was going to do for dinner, John looked over the boat and saw a school of fish, swimming around but ignoring his rod. “If only I could reach them with the net,” he thought. Realizing that no one was going to help him, John took matters into his own hands.
He entered into the cabin, found his saw and went to the lowest point on the boat, and started cutting away at the floor, working to make a hole big enough to dip his net into the water, and catch dozens of fish. Before he broke through to the water, his friends saw him and ripped the saw out of his hands. “What are you doing?” They asked, “If you cut through the bottom of this boat we will all drown!” “Why should I care about you,” John retorted, “when you clearly do not care about me?!”
We are cutting holes in our collective ship.
When we reduce food benefits and eliminate health care for the neediest, when we celebrate deporting mothers, fathers and children and cut funding for foreign Aid where it has saved lives, and when we refuse to learn from our past, we are no longer balancing I and We. Instead, we have slid into a dangerously selfish posture, like a seesaw with only one person on the end, furiously trying to get off the ground, threatening the very future of our country.
“If I am only for myself, what am I?” What will we be, as Americans, if we do not confront this growing reality.
Five years ago, one month before he died, Rabbi Sacks questioned if we are destined for divisiveness or if we can restore the trust and civility of public life and private relationships. “We can [restore trust],” he writes, “because people have done so in the past…cultures can shift from ‘I’ to ‘We.’”[4] He shows how America has gone through these shifts twice before, in the mid-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
If we embrace Hillel’s wisdom we can once again become a country of “We.” We can imagine a nation where healthcare is not a privilege for the few, but a right for all. We can imagine a Chicago that has enough housing for everyone. We can imagine a society in which no child goes to bed hungry. We can imagine a society that measures success not only by our own prosperity, but by the flourishing of our community.
This is the heart of our commandment to love your neighbor as yourself. Not instead of yourself, not more than yourself, but as yourself. The “I” is sacred, but it is incomplete without the “we.”
Hillel implores us to act now. He concludes his teaching by asking, “If not now, when?” a 2000-year-old call to action. On the eve of our 250th birthday of our nation, we have the chance to reimagine the American story in the 21st century—not as a tale of rugged individuals, but as a chorus of voices singing together. We are summoned to build a society where we lift each other up and recognize that our own liberation is bound up with the liberation of all.
May we have the courage and strength to create a society based upon morality and values. May we have the courage to use our powerful voices to move from “I” to “we.”
[1] Pirkei Avot 1:14
[2] Mishneh Torah, Teshuvah, 3:11
[3] Sacks, Jonathan. Morality: Restoring the Common Good in Divided Times (pp. 10-11). (Function). Kindle Edition.
[4] Sacks, Jonathan. Morality: Restoring the Common Good in Divided Times (p. 359). (Function). Kindle Edition
Rabbi Brian Immerman 