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.