Note: this sermon was delivered on the morning of Rosh Hashanah 5785, October 3 2024, by JRC Rabbi Rachel Weiss. The full transcript is below.

This year, the most difficult question to answer has been, “How are you?”

We often simply connect with “fine, how are you?” but reality for many of us has felt far from fine and connections far from simple. What underlies this casual interaction is the fact that many usual relationships have become fraught and heavy. Not only the world post October 7th, but largely because what has emerged is a new wave of permeating fear and antisemitism.

The violence and trauma of this last year exposed a layer of local and national antisemitism whose embedded ferocity in our culture surfaced at a time when our nerves as a people were exposed and our capacities to respond were and are limited.

How are you? Pause.

It mentally unfolds rapidly. Who is asking, how well do they know me, what do they know about the world, where do I or they stand, what is safe to say, what will I step on or in, and what is my capacity to respond? What do we share, where do we differ, and what is at stake? This exhausting, internal monologue often ends in a few places:

Well, given the state of the world…

But all things considered…

Fine, and you?

What I have found from conversations with so many of you is that underneath this familiar monologue of grief and brokenness is a deep loneliness.

This loneliness has made this year intensely painful and grief-full, even aside from the devastating violence across the world in Israel and Gaza, on college campuses, in legislations against trans and queer people in places like Florida and Texas, and along the US border and now increasingly invited in places like Springfield, Ohio.

This loneliness feels different from pandemic loneliness, which at least felt like in some moments, many of us were experiencing the same thing. No, living as Jews whether it was in the secular world, or some Jewish spaces, has been an increasingly isolating place to be. If we carry multiple identities – liberal, Black, brown, LGBTQ, poor, woman, immigrant, disabled, to name a few – alongside our Jewish identity, this loneliness is even more pronounced.

Antisemitism, so directly linked with white nationalism, was publicly palpable after the 2016 election, after the attacks in Charlottesville and in Pittsburgh and so many other places. But the isolation of now comes from feeling unsure where we stand; It is clear we stand against white Christian nationalism and supremacy. Yet, many of the places where we had stood as allies for civil rights in struggle and solidarity, for whose justice we have done intense communal work, now seemed incapable of viewing our Jewish communities as also experiencing oppression. This was true particularly as some antiracism and other anti-oppression movements took strong stances against Israel, and sometimes, intentionally or not, against Jews.

This is exactly the goal and the point of antisemitism: isolation and division.

So what do we do?

Antisemitism from the white nationalistic right is a public act of oppression that seeks supremacy and control. It is the same force that creates racism, misogyny, transphobia and homophobia, xenophobia, and ableism. It is rooted in power and tyranny.

However, because antisemitism functions differently than other forms of oppression, and because many Jews have enjoyed white privilege in the United States over the past decades, it is often made invisible and therefore susceptible to the progressive left as well.

Most supremacy thrives on the oppression of the people that they are seeking to control and suppression of their voice and power. But Antisemitism functions differently. For antisemitism to thrive, it relies on Jews being in positions of power and influence, and then pointing to something unnatural, manipulative, or controlling. Hence, because it does not appear that Jews are oppressed – think tropes of money, power, land, or control – it becomes easier for other allied and oppressed minority groups to see Jews in the class of oppressors, rather than in solidarity as victims of hatred. It is systemic, both fueling and fueled by other forms of hate and extremism. It becomes easy to scapegoat our people for having privilege and control on the left, and use this false narrative to manipulate that our power is the reason why other suppressed classes have succeeded on the right. We know both are wholly untrue. All are rooted in manipulated stereotypes for the political and power gain of white supremacy, and all lead to violence, disempowerment, and hatred.

Eric Ward, of Race Forward, the Western States Center, and the Southern Poverty Law Center, teaches about the intersection between racism and antisemitism and how both animate white nationalism.

Ward, who is Black and Christian, writes, “Antisemitism is an equal opportunity ideology. Like the novel coronavirus, this virulent ideology disproportionately impacts the most vulnerable—the Jewish population—but in fact imperils us all. Because it doesn’t look like anti-Black racism, we may think it’s not a big deal. But I think it’s the biggest deal. Antisemitism is an effective conspiracy theory that dehumanizes all of us. It distorts our understanding of how the actual world works. It isolates us. It alienates us from our communities, from our neighbors, and from participating in governance. Antisemitism isn’t just bigotry toward the Jewish community. It more accurately utilizes bigotry toward the Jewish community—and those seen as proximate to it—to deconstruct democratic practices, and it does so by framing democracy as a conspiracy rather than a tool of empowerment or a functional tool of governance.”

Ward continues,

“The fight against antisemitism must be values-based or it is nothing. Within social and economic justice movements committed to equality, we have not yet collectively come to terms with the centrality of antisemitism to white nationalist ideology and the authoritarian moment the United States finds itself in. It is desperately time for us to have that conversation.”

Because Antisemitism alienates us from our communities and from our neighbors, this is where we have to start.

Ward continues, “I’m not here to create hierarchies of oppression around anti-Black racism and antisemitism. What I’m here to say is that they’re killing us both….We don’t need more politics; we need more stories that thread us together.”

These stories are most powerful when rooted in relationships. These relationships – particularly on the left in non-Jewish places – is where most change is possible and proximal.

Neighbors. Friends. School superintendents and boards, administrators and teachers. City council and alderpeople, and coworkers. We start where we are, and let our Jewish values guide us in speaking up and speaking out. For if we do not invest in those relationships, and we do not keep showing up for all of the justice issues we care so deeply about then we will continue to feel isolated.

This is hard.

But this is where we are. Superintendent Marcus Campbell of ETHS reached out to me on Monday to say “I’m writing something to our community about October 7 and this moment and I could really use your eyes on this.” This was this past Monday, and I said, “Marcus, I love and respect you, but you’re a pastor’s kid, and this is a little bit like asking your pastor to do all of this work for you on December 23.” And then I said, “That’s the insipid antisemitism at play. You didn’t say ‘I know it’s two days before Rosh Hashanah, and you’re about to lead your community in the biggest, hardest days of the year.’”

And he said, “I’m really sorry. I missed that.”

Relationships.

And then I sent him a meme of a coffee mug that says “Be careful or you’ll end up in my sermon,” to which he said, “fair enough.”

Last year on October 8th, Interfaith Action of Evanston celebrated its annual Visionkeeper Dinner, where each year we celebrate the justice work in each of our congregations and raise funds for our most vulnerable unhoused neighbors, it is usually an evening of solidarity. It was anything but.

It was October 8th, and the confluence of some clerical oversights led to JRC’s honorees being skipped in the recognitions, there was no Jewish voice scheduled to speak in the program, and the closing benediction was given by a Christian pastor who gave a vivid Christ-centered prayer. But the most painful and violating element was an act of omission. It was October 8th. No one said anything about what was happening in Israel, and more directly, no one spoke to the Jews in the room.

It was stunning. I sat with two tables of JRC members, frozen at the end of the event. Surely, in the best of circumstances, a recognition that attacks on Jews, of terrorism, of fear in a shared Holy Land, would warrant a blessing, or an acknowledgment. But there was nothing, and surprisingly, no upstanders from our active interfaith clergy cohort.

I waited a day or so, and still nothing. 1 text from a pastor, but mostly memes and posts begin to appear, none voicing support for Jews from outside the Jewish community.  Many voiced support for liberation of Palestinians, against the actions of the Israeli government, responses to bombings, but as the world began to divide between posting blue and white or red black and green, the silence in between was incredulous.

The grief in our Jewish world this year has been loud and obvious and complex. What I have come to learn is that my colleagues both care deeply, and also that they really did not know or understand. And so they were absent.

They were so torn; how to condemn all of the killing and bombing without sounding anti-Israel, but also naming so many innocent victims?  Where is the voice of justice? This is the trap that Antisemitism creates – a world in which one is either oppressor or victim, and the one with the most pain wins.  It’s the same metaphor as with racism. Racism isn’t a shark in the ocean. It’s the water itself. And our nation is drowning in antisemitism.

On October 11th, hours before our JRC vigil, I sent the most direct message of tochecha, rebuke, that I have ever written, to our Interfaith Clergy group. Its essence: the same question God asks of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. Ayeka? Where are you?

Is it not possible to feel horrified and speak out for justice for people across the world, but also see that your neighbors in front of you are bleeding?  Where are you?

Many clergy showed up that night to our JRC vigil, and then everyone showed up to our monthly clergy lunch the next day, in which myself and Rabbi Andrea London talked and cried for 2 hours, and they witnessed us. We were raw together. We called our colleagues in: we have shown up for you – what about us?

This story ends well, AND what followed was not simple and did not fix or change overnight.  Just as we read in Torah today, perhaps it started with the voice of God who saw Hagar wandering with Ishmael alone in the wilderness after being cast out in fear by Sarah, and intervenes to find the well. And perhaps like the unseen angel who stays the knife in Abraham’s hand that we will read tomorrow, sometimes the voice that interrupts the harm has to be our own.

Our multifaith, multiracial, multigenerational, multiethnic, multi economic clergy group prides itself in being a moral and courageous voice in the Evanston community and sometimes we fail, and when that happens, we have to do Teshuvah – repentance and repair. We have done it for racism and reparations, for homelessness, for sanctuary. And now we do it for antisemitism.

The process of teshuvah is specific: 1. Publicly own the harm perpetrated.  2. Do the work to become the kind of person who doesn’t do harm (which requires a ton of inner work). 3. Make restitution for harm done, in whatever way possible. 4. THEN apologize for the harm caused in whatever way that will make it as right as possible with the victim. 5. Finally, when faced with the opportunity to cause similar harm in the future, make a better choice.

Over the past year, the Evanston Interfaith Clergy and Leaders group has done teshuvah. There were apologies in public. The voices changed – they did not remove support for Palestinians, nor should they have, or shift to blanket support of all things in the Israeli government, nor should they have. But teshuvah fundamentally changed the way we examined invitations to each of our congregations to speak, rally, sign petitions, and support resolutions. In a community activated by anti-oppression social justice values, we paused and looked at the bigger picture together. This pause was the work.

This is not to say that my colleagues don’t have the right to have different political opinions than I do. Our congregations might make different choices about endorsements or speaking out. Of course. But this process of calling in and raising up the insipid ways in which antisemitism has divided us and poisoned our water, allowed us all to learn to recognize these harmful tropes and take one another’s humanity into account first. It invited my colleagues to say “my community is thinking about this – but then, how will this affect you? Am I missing something?”

In February, the clergy group brought two historians to present a side by side History of Israel-Palestine – one professor of Jewish History and the other senior scholar of the Arab Gulf States Institute. They lecture together on shared Jewish, Palestinian, Israeli, and Arab history and divergent paths, nuance and possibility. In preparation to lead hundreds in conversation following these talks, our Interfaith clergy group went through the facilitated exercise ourselves.

In a 2-minute reflection exercise, I was paired with a white male Christian pastor. “What changed for you because of listening to your partner’s experience?” was the prompt. “Well,” he said, “when the war began, I asked myself where Jesus would be standing, because that is how I use my faith as part of my moral compass. And I could so clearly see that Jesus was standing under the rubble in Gaza, crying out with innocent Palestinians, who were running for their lives. Where else could Jesus be?” And then he paused and took a breath and said, “but Jesus is sitting with you too. And because I know you, and you showed your pain, and we are in relationship together I see now that you are broken. So I know that that’s where I have to be, in both places. I missed that before.   Because if Jesus can be in both places, then so can I.”

Jesus has never felt so comforting to me before.

The next exercise we changed partners with the prompt, “what response rose in your community following the attacks in Israel and Gaza.” I felt my own defenses rising as I wondered what people would say. Another colleague, a Black woman pastor of a local Black church spoke, where many congregants had been vocal at the city Council hearings, and on anti-racism Facebook pages that were laden with antisemitic tropes. She said, “when I think about what happened on October 7, I think about the women, the Jewish women and the women taken hostage, and the unspeakable violence committed against them, and how it made me think of how many Black women in my own community live with such violence all the time, and it goes unrecognized and delegitimized because they are Black, and I felt tremendous empathy.”

I exhaled, and then I felt ashamed. In making assumptions because of larger communal voices, and because of stereotypes, I had steadied myself for opposition, not human engagement. My own internalized racism did exactly what Eric Ward is warning against – dividing communities of relationship and allyship against one another. This time, the teshuvah was mine to do.

We continue to work together. If I never see another Google Doc edited by 18 different clergy voices it might be too soon…but bring it on.  You might notice that we’ve gotten very good at writing statements together. They take hours and hours. This might sound familiar, like our JRC community did as the Israel-Palestine Working Group led us in making a statement back in November. Perhaps not the one we individually would write, but one that we all could sign. We have resisted the requests to sign outside letters in favor of the painstaking process of writing our own. We wordsmith, but we ask what is under the word.  When one pastor says “but I can’t sign if it says this,” another gets on the phone and we check the assumption, and oftentimes, one or two words makes the difference. Gradually over this year, it has stopped being the work of the Jewish clergy to initiate, and it has started being the group as a whole.

This past Sunday evening, 18 pastors, reverends, rabbis, ministers, and interfaith leaders stood together at this year’s VisionKeeper Dinner and did public Teshuvah for this last year. As Maimonides taught: the group publicly owned the harm perpetrated; we described the inner personal and group work we did to minimize harm in the future; we talked about the restitution we made, in public and in private. We apologized for the harm caused and those injured accepted the apology, and we lastly, we shared that when we were faced with opportunities to cause similar harm again, we made different choices.

This is hard, but this is the spiritual work these Days of Awe call upon us to do. I am grateful that many of my interfaith clergy colleagues – Christian, Lutheran, Episcopalian, United Church of Christ, Baha’i, Methodist, Presbyterian – have joined us today in this sanctuary to celebrate Rosh Hashanah with us. I am grateful they are my colleagues and I am grateful that they are my friends.

And we don’t just do hard things together like protests and letters and facilitation and teshuvah. We also have lunch together, scheme how we might make more affordable housing together, or keep funding Reparations in Evanston together, go out for drinks or eat waffles together, hold each others’ babies and show up when one another is honored. I, and therefore our community, are very lucky.

Now, I’m aware most people don’t have on hand such a diverse group ready to learn with open hearts and clarity of faith, honed to receive rebuke with grace, with a broad reach, and ability to get our opinions published or read on the US House Floor like we did this year. It’s true. That’s a bit of a clergy luxury.

But many of us do have people in our circles who are different than we are. Many of us have people in our lives who are not intimately familiar with Jewish traditions or how we live our Jewish lives that we could welcome in.

One of the best ways to combat antisemitism is to Be More Jewish.

Who might you invite to a shabbat service, or perhaps to light chanukah candles or eat latkes with you? Maybe you’ll bring food to the office in honor of a holiday, or offer to read a book in your child’s classroom with a Jewish theme. Maybe you’ll talk about going to a Jewish event, or educate the teachers in your child’s school a bit further about why “bring something from your country of origin” isn’t as simple as the modern country. Tell your neighbors when you see an antisemitic sign of vandalism that it’s not just another sign of violence, but that as a Jew it feels scary and you need their support.  Wear the Jewish jewelry and tell the story of how you came to wear it. Pair the conversation with the symbol, because it makes all the difference.

This year, perhaps your answer to “how are you” might simply be “it feels hard to be Jewish right now. Can I tell you why?”  It’s a risk. But if we don’t speak up and connect with our Jewish selves, the insipid antisemitism within our culture will continue to water the roots of supremacy.

It might also provide, as it did for me many times this year, surprising moments of support and connection – and challenge the assumptions we also make from afar.

For this is the moment to move away from isolation, and into a period of connection and generativity. To ask ourselves, how might we invest in our relationships, particularly with those who are different, rather than retreating? How might we make intentional choices to share our Jewish experiences, and show up with them in public, and not compromise our shared social justice values?

As T’ruah exhorts, while our response to increased antisemitism could be to build more barriers around Jewish spaces and separate ourselves from the other, I believe that the safer, more lasting, and more effective responses to antisemitism will come when we build spaces in which we bring our whole selves – the parts of ourselves that are Jewish AND everything else, and keep reaching across differences and diversities. We have to do it, and sometimes, the feeling that this work is upon us is frustrating and unfortunate. But we cannot wait. When we bring our own chairs to the table of equity and diversity, and bring the conversation about antisemitism along with our solidarity to build a stronger democracy, we will be more successful in dismantling antisemitism for good. It will take us showing up as Jews in spaces that aren’t Jewish, and bringing our education, and our open, broken hearts.

This year, may the inscription in the Book of Life be loud. May our Jewish identities keep coming out in all our communities, animating us amid the pain and the loss, to keep connecting. The response to Ayeka – where are you? is Hineni. Here we are. May we bring all of our Jewish selves to our relationships, and may all our relationships grow and flourish in the name of empathy, of wholeness, and justice.

Rabbi Rachel Weiss
Rosh Hashanah 5785
October 3, 2024