Ambassador Dr. Deborah Lipstadt, the US Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism tells a story from when she was a professor at Emory University. A student came to her office and for the first time in the four years that she had known him, he was wearing a kippah. Not wanting to be rude, she said nothing; but as he stood up to leave, he turned around and said to her, “Look. You notice?”

“Oh, yeah. What’s that about? You haven’t worn that before,” she said. And he responded, “There have been so many attacks on Jews recently. I’ve decided every time there is an anti-Semitic act, I am going to wear my kippah to show the anti-Semites they can’t frighten me.”

She admired his moxie, his chutzpah, his desire to show his identity and not cower in fear. And at the same time, inside, her heart was breaking – because he had allowed the anti-Semites to determine when he felt Jewish. They were controlling his Jewish identity. He had ceded to them the power over his Judaism. 

In short, he was motivated by the “oy” and not the joy of Jewish life.

Lipstadt ends the story saying, “That’s not my Judaism, and I don’t want it to be his.”

Amen, Ambassador Lipstadt! That is not my Judaism either, and I don’t want it to be any of ours.

It’s been a hard year. According to the FBI, anti-Semitic incidents rose by more than 60%. Congregants have asked me, “Rabbi, are you going to speak about antisemitism at the High Holy Days this year?” Yes and No. Here’s my sermon: The best response to antisemitism is living joyful, vibrant Jewish lives.

To be clear, for those that have witnessed or experienced antisemitism this year, we are here for you. We see you, we feel your pain, and we are ready to stand with you. We must not ignore antisemitism. 

And we cannot allow our Judaism and our lives to be driven by it. The constant barrage on social media, protests in our own backyard, or finding hate symbols in our parks and schools can make us angry – can make us want to be defiant, just like Lipstadt’s student. 

Tonight, I want to urge you (and myself) to not get sucked down that rabbit hole of anger and hate. It’s not worth it. If doom scrolling is not helping you (and it’s probably not), turn it off. And instead of focusing on the hate – focus on the joy.

On October 7th we witnessed the single greatest loss of Jewish life in a day since the Holocaust. Not long after the Holocaust, at a time like ours, when it might have seemed inconceivable to find any joy, German Jewish Reform Rabbi, Emil Fackenheim wrote about what he called the 614th commandment, “Thou Shalt Not Let Hitler Have a Posthumous Victory.” There are traditionally 613 commandments in the Torah; Fackenheim proposed adding a 614th: we have an obligation to ensure our Jewish community continues to thrive. For some, this may sound just like Ambassador Lipstadt’s student, a very negative reason to be Jewish, spiting Hitler and all the anti-Semites. Yet, I do not believe that was Fackenheim’s intention. Rather, he saw the education of each Jewish child as a victory over forgetting and over darkness. Every mezuzah hanging, every conversion, every wedding, every Torah study is an opening for joy and a triumph over despair, hatred and indifference. 

That is my Judaism. Cultivating joy through the everyday of Jewish living.

The traditional haftarah reading for tomorrow morning comes from the Prophet Isaiah. Exiled in Babylon, and praying for a return to Jerusalem, Isaiah (55:12) writes:

כִּֽי־בְשִׂמְחָ֣ה תֵצֵ֔אוּ וּבְשָׁל֖וֹם תּוּבָל֑וּן

Go out in joy, and be led home in peace.

Isaiah is in literal exile in Babylon from Israel. But Isaiah is also in spiritual exile. In some ways, we are all in exile – even (especially) those that physically live in Israel feel like they are in spiritual exile this year. Distanced from God. Dislocated from joy. 

But if we lead with joy, if we go out in joy, Isaiah reminds us, we might find some shalom – some sense of peace and wholeness, some escape from the feelings of exile and dislocation; some sense of return.

The High Holy Days are all about joy. We begin tonight with a celebration; Rosh Hashanah marks Hayom Harat Olam, the Birthday of the World. With the exuberance of a birthday party, our tradition sets the stage for this season of joy. The High Holy Days end with Simchat Torah, literally, the Joy of Torah. And in the middle of this month of haggim/festivals, under the full moon, we go out into nature and we build. On Sukkot, known as zman simchateinu/our season of rejoicing, we are commanded to, “v’samachata, b’chagecha, v’hayita ah sameach/celebrate in our festivals and have nothing but joy!” 

And even Yom Kippur is traditionally a time of joy. The rabbis of the Talmud (Bava Batra 121a) teach, “Yom Kippur is a day of joy, because it is a day of pardon and forgiveness.”

Chaviva Gordon-Bennett, a writer for ReformJudaism.org, notes: “While it is true that these holidays ask us to tie our joy to the calendar, our tradition also recognizes that one cannot set a timer and say “this will be my joyful moment.” These holidays ask something of us that is more difficult: we must actively set the stage for joy and allow ourselves to revel in it, if and when it arrives. We cannot force joy, but we can beckon it.”

We need to set the table for joy and invite it into our lives. Easier said than done. It’s hard work. But that is what this season is all about; doing the intentional work that we know will make our lives more joyful and fulfilling. And we must not do it alone. The path to joy is communal. In fact almost every time we find the word, “Simcha/Joy,” in the Torah, it is in the context of communal celebration. Simcha is joy that is shared. 

Chaviva Gordon-Bennett also reminds us that, “Beckoning to joy can require assistance. For those struggling with their mental health or with substance abuse, setting the stage for joy can include a call to a mental health professional.”

Tonight, we re-gather as a community to mark the end of one year and the start of another. It is an opportunity to look back and reflect on the joy we were able to find this past year. And a chance to think about the joy that we want to invite into our lives in the coming year. 

As I look back on this year, I think of the moments when my own family worked to cultivate joy amidst so much pain and challenge. Shortly after October 7, some of our own family were evacuated from their kibbutz in the north of Israel and came to live with us here in Philadelphia. Many of you had the chance to meet Dorit and Zohar during their time here. As this year comes to end, and we begin anew, I am holding on to the joyous Jewish moments we shared. Zohar riding bikes with his new friends from Rodeph Shalom and his Jewish day school. Our whole family decked out in matching Hanukkah pajamas that we bought at the Weitzman Museum gift shop. Home cooked Shabbat dinners each week with matbucha, schnitzel, and Dorit’s challah (which, I have to admit, is even better than mine). In each of these moments, we didn’t force the joy, we simply created space for it to grow. For Dorit and Zohar, that little bit of joy gave them the all important peace that they had been seeking since the moment of their physical and spiritual exile. Isaiah was speaking to us, “Go out in joy, and be led home in peace.”

Another story of joy. Recently, one of our local Philadelphia Hillels, the center for Jewish life on campus, was the target of anti-Semitic protests. While I am thankful to university leadership for speaking out and ensuring the safety of all students, I am especially impressed with the Hillel students. In the moments of vitriol being spewed at them, they chose not to directly respond and get dragged down by the hate, but rather to embrace Jewish joy. What did they do during the protests? They went into the kitchen and braided challah for Shabbat. For those students who found the joy in challah braiding amidst so much hate, Isaiah was speaking to them, “Go out in joy, and be led home in peace.”

One last story of cultivating joy (and the resulting peace that it brings). Our clergy have the pleasure of leading Tot Shabbat with our Buerger Early Learning Center students every Friday morning. We set the stage with songs and stories but the joyfully climatic moment comes when we take out our stuffed Torah scrolls. The students each take a colorful plush Torah and we march! Through our Philadelphia Museum of Jewish Art galleries, past our security desk, filling the lobby with the sounds of singing, giggling, and tiny feet dancing to the joy of Torah. Let me be clear, the students bring the joy, we just create an intentional opening. And I have to tell you, Isaiah was right: Go out in joy, and be led home in peace. The sense of peace that our clergy and staff walk away with each Friday morning comes from knowing that there is a future generation of children who will one day lead our community in joy.

As you think back on the past year, how did you cultivate joy? How did you set the table and invite Jewish joy into your lives?

And as you think forward, how will you choose joy this coming year? What concrete actions will you take to beckon joy this next year?

Recently, I found myself getting upset at something I was reading online and my daughter reminded me of something that I often tell her, “You can’t control what other people do, but you can control how you respond.” There is still so much tumult, antisemitism, and pain in this world and in our Jewish lives. And so much of it is out of our control. For so many in our community, this year has felt like a year of exile and we are simply seeking some peace. There is an answer – beckon joy – do the work and invite joy to sit at your table this year. Isaiah’s words to his people some 2500 years ago still speak to us today, “Go out in joy, and be led home in peace.”

Shanah Tovah! 

Ours, is not the first time of disquiet in the memory of the Jewish People. In ancient days, after decades of oppression from the Canaanites the Israelites cried out to God.  At that time, the Bible describes a leader named Deborah–a prophet, a judge, and a military commander. Calm and wise, Deborah sits under her palm tree as her people come to see her, seeking insight about their dilemmas. Deborah hears her people’s pain, and knows their terror.  As she protects the Israelites through crisis, and through battle, Deborah bravely leads them to victory.  After she defeats the Canaanites’ commander, Sisera, Deborah composes a poem to recount the victory. With gratitude for her people’s devotion and survival, she recites:

“I will sing to God…My heart is with the Israelite leaders, with the dedicated of the people…bless God.”

And then, she focuses on her adversary, Sisera. As though she understands there can be no one-sided victory Deborah — imagining her enemy Sisera’s mother waiting for her son’s return from battle—Deborah recites the following words:

“Through the gate peers Sisera’s mother, behind the lattice she wails, Why is his chariot so long in coming?”

In Deborah’s verses it is clear: passion for her people. And then within that same poem it is unmistakable: compassion for the other. At the same time: this military commander protects the survival of her own people, and bears witness to the suffering of her adversary.  In later generations, our sages are moved by Deborah’s compassion. In the Talmud, in a discussion about the Rosh Hashanah shofar blasts, the sages describe the shofar sound as, yevava, meaning: a trembling cry. And how should we get that trembling sound in our ear? The sages teach: recall the sound of the enemy, Sisera’s, mother. The tekiah, her wail.  Shevarim, her broken sigh. Truah, her whimper. Deborah knows the sound of a mourning mother.  Our sages honor it.

Today, can we hear it?  Can we, at one and the same time, hear the call for the survival of our own people, and bear witness to the humanity of the other?  Even if we do not hear equally the cries of Sisera’s mother, and the cries of the Jewish People—our own siblings—can we hear both?  I pray that as a congregation, we, and personally, I, can learn from Deborah.

Today, nearly 1 year after October 7, with every breath we pray for the hostages’ return home.  And now, days after the sight of the ballistic missile attacks, we hold our breath for Israel’s safety.

Last October 7, the repressive terrorist group Hamas’ brutal charge to hunt down, massacre, and eradicate our people with murder, rape, abduction of civilians of every age, including Israeli peacemakers who devote their lives to Palestinian statehood–left us shattered. The cries of babies and Holocaust survivors, young adults at a musical festival, Israelis celebrating Simchat Torah–the cries, pierce the soul of the Jewish People. From our despair, we’ve asked: how can so many, have the capacity to look past the humanity of the Jew?

On October 8, even before Israel launched its response, while our people remained in pieces, the world’s hateful attack on Israel’s very right to exist–left us abandoned.

By October 9, the world, the American Jewish community, even the streets of Philadelphia, had, denying complexity and nuance, ceded the narrative to the loudest extremes–to an only-Pro-Israel camp, and to an only-Pro-Palestinian camp–and left us divided into a binary.

There is so much pain—immeasurable loss, fear, and alienation—so I understand the temptation, even comfort, of simplicity, of sides. But what if the pain might instead serve as a signal that we need to listen all the more closely, to Deborah’s teaching.  For the binary is false.

Our hearts are expansive enough to champion the security of Israel and to grasp the needs of the Palestinian people. The parents of Hersh Goldberg-Polin, of blessed memory, in their brave plight to keep hope for the hostages alive put it simply: “In the competition of pain, there are no winners.”

When we allow that competition of pain we relinquish the microphone to, and center the voices of, those who advocate a zero-sum. But we do not have to indulge the false binary.

Resisting the binary means respecting two things can be true at the same time.

Resisting the binary means acknowledging there are Pro-Palestinian protests that tolerate hate speech, that make no space for Israeli rights, and in some cases, make no space for Jews–whether in the classroom, the boardroom, or on campus; and resisting the binary means conceding that too many Jewish spaces omit concern for Palestinian rights.

Resisting the binary means affirming that we can mourn Palestinian deaths while remaining loyal to Zionism; and we can mourn Jewish deaths while remaining committed to Palestinian statehood.

Resisting the binary means affirming that I can call for the hostages’ return home while at the same time opposing this Israeli government and its territory policies; and resisting the binary means affirming that I can believe the war should end, and that it’s failing to bring the hostages home, while at the same time, supporting Israel’s right to defend itself.

Resisting the binary means acknowledging that when modern Jewish pioneers settled the land there were Arabs living on parts of that land; and resisting the binary means acknowledging

Jews have lived there since ancient days–in the very land where the biblical Deborah sat under her palm tree.

Resisting the binary means honoring the gate, the door, even the window, that can open to sacred, trusted conversation.

Resisting the binary, for me, is in the privilege of having hard and holy conversations, striving not to persuade each other but to more deeply understand each other. In these months there have been so few places in my life where I see nuanced conversation across lines of difference. It is my honor to be in conversation with and learning from, you–to hear your love for fellow Jews, your fear for Jewish safety, your hopes for all people’s children, your longing for peace. You challenge me, you complicate my understandings; it is not easy, but I try to resist the temptation of the comfortable binaries.

In one conversation I have permission to share I sat with a congregant who has close family in Israel who remain evacuated from their Kibbutz, escaping months and months of Hezbollah attacks. Although he appreciates the need for a two-state solution he sees the possibility as so far-off that it feels almost irrelevant to speak about Palestinian rights. To him it’s more important to express and hear words of comfort and support for Israel, for the hostages’ return, to advocate for Israel’s right to protect itself by any means, somehow end the threat of Hamas, Hezbollah and the Islamic Republic of Iran, and return his family to their homes. There are deep truths in his perspective, that are important for me to understand.

In another conversation I have permission to share I asked a young adult, a young woman, to help me understand how she uses the term “anti-Zionist.” For me, Zionism—pluralistic and progressive Zionism–binds me to ancestral Jewish history, liberation, and spirituality; and the Israeli flag deepens my sense of Jewish Peoplehood.  I imagined that everyone who identified as anti-Zionist today, opposed the existence of a Jewish State, and believed millions of Jews living in Israel, should be forcibly deported, or as the Hamas charter mandates, driven into the sea. Anti-Zionism sure sounded a lot like, antisemitism. Yet, for this young woman I met, and many others in her circle, antizionist means: she opposes the occupation of the territories from 1967, and opposes aggression in Gaza. Although she identifies with this description of antizionist, she avoids the term, because people assume meanings different from her intent. And she does not want to shut down the conversation. There are deep truths in her perspective, that are important for me to understand. These talks are challenging. But I want to understand this next generation—who became B’nai Mitzvah and Confirmed, here, and in congregations like ours–these are our kids.  I have been sitting with them here in synagogue, where they do not know if they have a home, but where I desperately want them to have a home.

Real conversation is not social media-friendly or protest-banner-friendly.  It is hard. So much language is being used in one way, and heard in another way.  I am learning from you: real conversation stretches our curiosity and our generosity.

There’s a Yiddush proverb that teaches: You cannot bring two mountains together, but you can bring two mensches together.  This sacred congregation is filled with mensches, that is, good people. This is a place of profound connections, where we can talk – really, deeply talk with complexity –find wisdom in the diversity. RS leaders from our Israel ConnectRS Group, and from our Israel/Palestinian Discussion Group– leaders with vastly different points of view and deep love for this congregation – have been meeting to better understand each other. I am grateful that they will open this opportunity to us all with a congregational facilitated dialogue. This October 6, at our gathering just for RS members called Tell Me More: A Facilitated Conversation about Israelis and Palestinians, in a large room of small facilitated groups we will share and we will listen.

Then, to mark one year, this October 7 we will join together in mourning for a Memorial Service with Prayers for the Hostages’ Return. Rodeph Shalom means pursue peace, but it also means pursue wholeness; we would not be whole without any of you.

Deborah the prophetess sitting under her date palm–Deborah the military victor who pictures her enemy Sisera’s mother peering through the gate–Deborah knows trauma.  And, somehow at the same time, she protects the survival of our people and she hears the trembling shofar sound of Sisera’s mother’s cry. We can hear Deborah’s desperate call to us, the call of passion and compassion, the call to resist the binary and to embrace a vision of a bound future—inextricably linked.

To embrace a bound future means to consider: only when Israelis and Palestinians each have their own home where they are secure and free, will both be physically safe and morally whole.

To embrace a bound future means to mourn the tears of our adversary’s mothers, and the tears of our own.

To embrace a bound future means to commit to the discovery of common ground and of truths across lines of difference. To embrace a bound future means to know an unshakeable love of Zion – our millennia-long, righteous, social justice dream.

Like the blast of the shofar, Deborah– with moral courage, with passion for her people, and compassion for all –Deborah calls us to hear Sisera’s mother’s cry, and to hear one another’s cry –the wail of tekiah, the broken sigh of shevarim, the whimper of truah. May we heed that call of shofar as together we open the gate to this new year.

L’shanah tovah.