Age Old Answers to Today’s Fears

What follows is my Rosh Hashanah morning sermon. To print a copy of the tradition’s recommended morning prayer Modeh Ani, visit sefaria.org.

These days I am thinking about a young couple. We should remember their names. Shira Milgrim and Yaron Lischinsky. They were gunned down on Washington DC’s streets in May. I could also add Governor Josh Shapiro whose home was firebombed on Passover evening. The list is sadly far too numerous to enumerate. I could speak about Karen Diamond who was killed a few months ago while marching to free the hostages or Saturday evening’s attack at a New Hampshire wedding. Antisemitism and the violence it engender are part of our lives. Such reports have become far too frequent and all too common.

And I am thinking as well about Charlie Kirk’s murder. Political violence is on the rise. We no longer know how to calm our nerves or assuage our country’s ills. We are afraid. We are worried about our nation. We are terrified about our community and where we stand as Jews.

I have been thinking about how best to respond. How can we calm our fears? On this Rosh Hashanah morning, I wish to suggest some responses. I admit these are not original ideas. They are the age-old answers of my rabbinic forebears. That is my impulse. When things get really, really difficult double down on rabbinic wisdom. The rabbis’ answers to trauma and external forces beyond our individual control, was to offer wisdom for the everyday. Their suggestions are the antidote to our fears. Here are their answers: recite blessings and affirm argument. Allow me to unpack these two bedrock principles.

Recite blessings. Like many when I awake, the first thing I do is check my phone to see what messages and Instagram posts I may have missed since falling asleep. I also read through the alerts from the Times of Israel, the New York Times and the many other news sources I follow. I read several articles before rousing myself out of bed. Sometimes I send an article with some lengthy missive to the family group chat or to my brother. And so, by the time I get out of bed I am on edge. This should come as no revelation, but social media and the iPhone are intent on creating a perpetual excited and agitated state. This is what keeps people engaged. I then tried following more cooking influencers on Instagram but that did not help and then a slew of tequila brands, but again to no avail. The alerts about tragedy kept reappearing.

A few years ago, and I admit prior to October 7th and our now debilitating worries about Israel and the Jewish people, I tried another approach to the morning. I made myself read a poem first thing. Before I touched my phone I insisted on grabbing hold of a book. I began with Mary Oliver’s, A thousand Mornings. Listen to her words: “Every day I’m still looking for God/ and I’m still finding him everywhere,/ in the dust, in the flowerbeds./ Certainly in the oceans, in the islands that lay in the distance/ continents of ice, countries of sand/ each with its own set of creatures/ and God, by whatever name.”

On the morning of October 7th I stopped somewhere in the middle of Billy Collins, Sailing Around the Room and it remains dog eared on page 38 by my bedside. (The book stands unfinished on Billy Collins’ poem “The History Teacher.”)

Terrorism not only takes innocent lives, but it prevents us from tending to our inner lives. Take note of the phrase so often used, the luxury of the inner life. One needs the luxury of time to tend to it. But for my teachers, and our rabbis, there was nothing luxurious about tending to the spiritual. It was essential. The rabbis did not turn their backs on politics or what was going on about them, although that was the Zionists’ critique of the rabbinic tradition. Take up arms against our enemies, they argued. Do not retreat to prayers, Zionism counseled. Isn’t it interesting that modern day Israelis are among the world’s largest consumers of poetry? Perhaps the rabbis were right after all.

Our rabbinic forebears did not of course read Mary Oliver or Billy Collins, or Yehudah Amichai or even Leah Goldberg. For our rabbis our prayers were their poems.

And they of course instructed us to recite a blessing when awakening. They understood that the world’s noise causes agitation and distraction. Although they could not have imagined social media and this triggering world we now live in, they believed that filling our lives with blessings was in our hands. We must not wait to receive blessings. Instead, we create them ourselves, by saying words. So here is my challenge to each and every one of us, including myself. Begin the morning with the words, “Modeh ani l’fanecha. I give thanks to You, every-living Sovereign, that You have restored my soul to me in mercy: How great is Your faith. She-hechezarta bi nishmati. You have restored my soul to me!”

Rabbi Meir once advised that we should strive to fill every day with the recitation of one hundred blessings and while that may seem excessive, imagine how different life might feel if it we read one hundred blessings rather than one hundred posts or alerts.

There is plenty of time to fill our day with the world’s noise and controversies and pains, but it really is in our hands to create the blessings and to say them and acknowledge them. That is Judaism’s intuition. By saying them we make them real. The words we utter can fashion a different reality than the one we inhabit. A soul filled with gratitude cannot be beaten down. We can banish fear by offering blessings. It’s not that we are going to get rid of all the terrible things happening in the word. We are not going to make peace between Russia and Ukraine, or Israelis and Palestinians by offering these prayers, but we will strengthen our souls by doing so. We will fortify ourselves so that we can go headfirst into the day’s troubles.

People might now be saying, “How quaint! While the world is on fire and burning, the rabbi wants me to say blessings.” Well, yes. That’s actually exactly what our tradition says. In fact, the last phrase of this prayer “rabbah emunatechah—how great is Your faith, O God” is taken from one of the saddest books in our Bible, Lamentations. This book portrays the prophet Jeremiah’s lament over the destruction of the first Temple. Just like 2,500 years ago, we are not ignoring the world’s traumas, but we are strengthening our resolve to face them.

Start the day with a blessing. Begin the morning with gratitude. Allow your first moments to be filled with thanks. Then read through the alerts and posts and articles. It’s not going to change the world, but it is going to change you. And that is where we must start. Banishing our own fears is where we must begin. Otherwise, we become prey to our worst impulses. Modeh ani l’fanecha. We give thanks to You O God.

Suggestion number two. And this one is going to require a lot more effort and work but if we start with the blessings then this step becomes easier. Here it is. Affirm argument. I recently remarked to a friend that everything has become politicized. It has gotten so intense that I have started worrying about the color of my ties. I can’t wear a solid red tie or blue tie. To which my friend said, “You better not wear a red tied!” That’s exactly my point. I tested my theory on a more conservative friend and guess what she said, “Oh my God. Don’t wear a blue tie.” It used to be that people welcomed the challenge rabbis’ sermons offer, but now people seem more interested in searching for affirmation. They want the rabbi to affirm their opinion. It’s as if our virtual world has become real and there are like buttons in the seat pockets before you. I appreciate affirmation just like everyone else but to be honest I much prefer argument and debate. Our society no longer appears able to sustain robust, and even heated, discussions. “Either you agree with me, or you are my enemy,” is the mantra of today’s world.

And nothing is more antithetical to the rabbinic world view than this notion. The Talmudic rabbis built an entire tradition around argument. They called it machloket l’shem shamayim, arguments for the sake of heaven. Most people think the Talmud is a law code. It is not. It is a record of discussions and debates. It preserves minority opinions alongside those of the majority. It places on the same page disagreements between rabbis who lived centuries apart and sometimes even in different cities. Two rabbis who never met each other argue with each other on the same page. The brilliance of the Talmud lies not so much in all of its opinions but in that of the editor who stitched together argument in this beautiful, and confusing, tapestry of wisdom that people like me spend a lifetime trying their best to figure out. We need a Rav Ashi, the Talmud’s editor, to stitch together the broken fragments of our society that these days appear only to know how to scream and yell at each other and label those with whom they disagree as traitor.

But if agreement was the measure of loyalty there would be no Talmud. If we labeled the views of those with which we disagree as dangerous, there would not be this 2,000-year-old rabbinic tradition. I am pretty sure there are few if any of Charlie Kirk’s views with which I agree save his embrace of argument, but murder silences debate. That is not who we are or what we are about. To the rabbis there was nothing that was out of bounds.

Take this one Talmudic example. It is the story of Elisha ben Abuya who after watching a young boy die in the midst of performing a mitzvah renounced his faith in God. (Babylonian Talmud, Kiddushin 39b) Did the rabbis write him out of the Talmud? Did they cancel his late-night show? Absolutely not. Granted some unfriended Elisha and others refused to even utter his name and called him instead Acher, meaning the other one, but they preserved his doubts and his questions and even his rejection of what they held most dear. And I love them for that simple, but profound lesson.

On this Rosh Hashanah we all need to double down on that rabbinic value. Listen to what Van Jones said who Charlie Kirk reached out to twenty-four hours before he was assassinated. He writes, “I’ve taken issue with many of Charlie’s words—sometimes strongly—but never his right to speak them. Never his right to express those views and then go back to his family. That is a sacred American value.” It’s not an argument for the sake of heaven when we call someone else dangerous. It’s not even ok to label their views as dangerous. That opens the door to violence and even murder. It grants permission to censorship. There must never be a silencing of ideas. Wasn’t that what the Right once accused the Woke Left of doing?

How do you think we survived for so many thousands of years? It was not because of a strong army. That’s a very, very new thing and it remains a rather unparalleled thing. The great lesson of our history is that we survived because we embraced arguing about any and all ideas. One cannot confront new and different circumstances if you don’t think, and argue, about different possibilities.

And these debates were built on the notion of hevruta, partnership. You argue over something sitting across the table from someone else. So here is my practical suggestion. Find a friend with whom you do not always agree. If you don’t have such a friend, then to be honest you might not know true friendship. In our siloed social media age, we argue with some disembodied other side and then retreat to our circles of agreement that offer us dopamine blasts of self-affirmation and self-congratulation. But that’s not the point. The whole point is about the sharpening of ideas. It’s about honing our responses. The only way this works is if we argue face to face with other people. I admit. It’s exhausting and can even be maddening, but I am absolutely sure that it is the only thing that has any hope of preserving community and country. We have lost the ability to argue with love.

The Jewish mystics Moshe Cordervero and Shlomo Alkabetz, the author of one of our favorite payers Lecha Dodi, had a wonderful custom. The two friends would go on regular walks through the fields of sixteenth century Safed. There was one rule and it was this. They must debate Torah. In other words that had to converse about ideas. They insisted they not fill their walks with gossip. They did not say, “Did you hear where the Rabinowitz’s are hosting their wedding?” They argued about tough questions like the one we will debate tomorrow morning, if two people are traveling in the desert and they only have enough water for one, should one person drink and thereby survive or is it better they both die? People often think that mysticism is about removing ourselves from the world, but our mystics wished to engage with each other and engage with ideas. Want to know the best answer to such difficult, if not impossible questions, then find a friend and argue.

What is the best response to antisemitism? Fight like we always have. With words. Of course we should make our institutions more secure, but the rabbis remind us that we are not arguing to convince. We are arguing for the sake of heaven. We have it all wrong. We think argument is all about winning and losing. It is not. It’s l’shem shamayim. It’s for the sake of heaven. Too often we have taught that l’shem shamayim is all about how we argue. We have to argue with love and with respect. One cannot resort to ad hominem attacks. I think it might be better to understand l’shem shamayim to be about the purpose of our arguments. It’s for heaven’s sake; it’s for God’s sake that we debate not for our own.

Find a friend and go for a walk and discuss controversial and important topics. Listen to each other. Argue and debate about things that really matter. You are probably not going to change anyone’s opinion, and the walk is probably not going to end with words like, “Wow rabbi you are so wise. I was completely wrong. And you are so right. I now agree with everything you say.” That like button does not exist in real life. Affirmation is not what argument is about. It’s not about how many likes one accumulates. Instead, here is what will happen from honest debate. You will learn and you will grow. Keep in mind it’s not about us, but about heaven. It’s all about God. We bring gratitude to God and arguments for God. That’s what is going to fortify our souls and enable us to face the difficult times ahead.

One more bit of advice. Try keeping that in mind when you host an upcoming holiday dinner. Try not to play the role of peacekeeper who lays out rules for what is allowed and not allowed to be said around the family table. Instead make sure everyone has enough time to express their views and argue their ideas. No shouting. No saying, “That’s idiotic.” Or “Are you stupid?” Why must we only wrap our arms around those with whom we agree? Forbidden family topics are antithetical to our beloved tradition.

There is a rabbinic value called shalom bayit which is usually translated as peace in the home. This may seem like it contradicts our embrace of argument. It doesn’t always sound so peaceful when everyone is arguing at the Thanksgiving table when some are saying, “Israel is committing genocide.” And others are shouting back, “Israel is defending itself against Hamas’ desire for genocide.” Or when one person says, “Immigrants are ruining this country. They are taking away jobs from you and me.” And others are shouting back, “Immigration is what built this country. I don’t care if they come here legally or not; we are a nation of immigrants.” Passions can run high. Agreement remains elusive. Shalom seems like it was not even on the menu with all those sweet potatoes. And so, the peacemaker says, “Let’s not talk about politics.” And instead says, “Did you hear where the Rabinowitz are holding their wedding? I mean L’Dor V’Dor does not even have a caterer, and Rabbi Moskowitz still thinks people should not eat lobster.”

I have come to believe that avoiding heated topics is not the shalom bayit the rabbis imagined. They wanted family harmony. They believed in relationships. They thought they could endure even the most strenuous of disagreements. Back to Elisha ben Abuya who everyone called Acher and who lost most of his friends because of his heresy. When no one else would even talk to him, Rabbi Meir the same guy who counseled us to say one hundred blessings every day, continued his friendship despite his profound disagreements with Elisha. No one was filled with more faith than Meir who even though he buried two children held on to his abiding belief in God’s providence. One Shabbat Rabbi Meir saw Elisha riding his horse. And what did Rabbi Meir do? Did he castigate his friend and teacher for his Shabbat transgression? No. Instead, he ran after him and walked alongside the horse so the two friends could continue discussing Torah. (Babylonian Talmud, Chagigah 14b)

Shalom is not about agreement. Elisha and Meir could not have disagreed more. Where there is such disagreement there is often passion and sometimes even the heartache of thinking that a friend’s views are woefully wrong and misguided. The Hebrew shalom comes from the word meaning whole. Shalom bayit means not family harmony but instead wholeness. Somehow, and as so often happens, our families and friendships stay whole despite our disagreements. We have to hold on to each other. It’s as simple as that. We have to hold on to each other while holding on to our differing commitments. We have to continue to walk together.

One of the things I love about weddings—wherever those Rabinowitz’s might end up holding their festivities—is the hora. As you are swirling around to the music and singing “Siman tov u’mazel tov” have you ever thought to yourself, “I wonder if she voted for Trump. I wonder if he voted for Biden? (Is that a blue tie?) I wonder if he is for abortion rights? I wonder if she is pro-gun rights?” Of course not—or maybe these days, I should say, “I really hope not.” In the swirl of the Jewish dance that really requires no dance moves—which is why I am so damn good at it—there is only the insistence of wrapping your arms around the person next to you. The only thing that matters is our embrace of others. The hora insists that we hold on to each other. It’s not the most peaceful moment of the party, but you have to admit the hora does live up to the shalom of wholeness.

Rebbe Nachman of Bratslav had it right about the importance of dancing and the significance of wrapping our arms around each other. His followers can still be found—and even on these days and during these turbulent times—on Jerusalem’s’ streets blasting their music and inviting people in for a dance. Nachman taught. “Kol haolam kulo gesher tzar m’od. The whole world is a narrow bridge, but the essence is not to be afraid.” The world is indeed narrowing, and our fears are growing larger, but we can combat them.

Affirm argument. Recite blessings. The fears won’t go away, but I can promise you this. “V’ha-ikar lo l’facheid klal.” The essence will no longer be our fears. We will have transformed the ikar, the essence, by our blessings and yes, even our arguments. And then our inner lives will be strong enough to face the turbulent years ahead.

Recite blessings. Affirm argument.