An Engaged, Caring, and Complicated Relationship to Israel: Three Torah teachings to bring us closer to our people and to hope – Rosh Hashanah 5787/2026 Day 1 Sermon

Rabbi Lauren Grabelle Herrmann

The central act of these High Holidays is teshuvah — turning: turning away from what’s holding you back, and turning toward a more authentic and honest version of yourself. It is in that spirit that I turn toward this congregation today.

Over the past few years, I have not been as honest and open as I could have been about my relationship to Israel.

I have not shared as much as I wish I had about my love of the land: how the map of Jerusalem is permanently etched in my mind, and how, from the mountains in the north to the desert in the south, there is hardly a region that doesn’t hold a memory that shaped me; how my decision to apply to rabbinical school, and become a Reconstructionist Jew, were both formed there.

I have also not shared, as passionately as I could have, my commitments to self-determination, dignity, and equality for all who live in the land… how this conflict keeps me up at night and sits close to my chest all day. How I refuse to accept that things have to be the way they are.

I held back because I did not want my volume to be heard as abandonment. 

I held back because I did not want anyone to feel they don’t belong in this sanctuary.

And I held back because I am part of the many who are “troubled and committed,” a phrase coined by Rabbi Donniel Hartman of the Hartman Institute in Jerusalem. That position — of loving struggle — doesn’t always lend itself to a clarion call.

But after returning to Israel in February, on a trip with Nadiv, my 15-year-old kiddo, I realized it’s time for more radical honesty. It’s time to share some of my stories, my commitments, and — most importantly — the Torah –the guideposts– that supports me in sustaining an engaged, caring, and complicated relationship with Israel.

I do this not for my own sake, but for all of us: because we need more honest, measured conversations about Israel — conversations that, even as we wrestle with complex and painful realities, draw us closer to the land, the people, and, even now, to hope.

I hope these guideposts can challenge, affirm, and support us — individually, and as a community. They are:

“Kol Yisrael Aravim Zeh Bazeh:” Jewish interconnectedness and mutual responsibility;

“Asher Shivarta,” the courage to break the narratives that no longer serve us; and 

“Bo U-N’ta,” Keep Planting.

Before I go further, I want to pause and invite us to check in. Talking about Israel can bring up a lot of feelings: defensiveness, anger, pain, confusion – to name a few. Whatever you are feeling, take a moment to breathe and notice what’s coming up.

Breathe, and see if you can come back to the present moment, to be with us in the conversation.

And remember: You do not have to agree with the rabbi! 

Guidepost 1: Kol Yisrael Aravim Zeh BaZeh. 

Kol Yisrael Aravim Zeh Bazeh can be translated as: “All of Israel — all Jewish people — are responsible for, and mixed up and entangled with, one another.”

A story:

When I lived and studied in Israel as a 23-year-old, I visited an Israeli friend, Lior, in his hometown of Petach Tikva, a suburb of Tel Aviv. We walked to the main square and happened upon a street fair — more than that, it was a full-town celebration.

I was astounded by what I was taking in: Orthodox Jewish Israelis — in black long coats, kippot and tzitziot — next to secular Israelis in cut-off shorts and bare midriffs. A group of elders huddled in a corner – Lior told me later they were survivors of the Shoah. Teenagers chased each other around the square and played soccer. There were parents and children of many colors — white, brown, Black — moving between getting face paint or balloons or dancing. The languages I heard: Hebrew, Arabic, Russian, Amharic. The DJ was blasting a song — and though my Hebrew wasn’t so great at the time, I made out the words: “Aizeh Medinah. What a country.”

It might sound cliché, but in that moment it felt like time stopped. I knew I would never see a single one of those people in the square again — and yet, for a second, it felt like we were one. These strangers became part of my neshamah, my soul and my story.

At that moment, I felt the power of peoplehood in my bones — not only the long history we carry, but the wide, wide present we share.

I know that to some, peoplehood is an outdated concept. I think most people who know me already know that I do not agree. Peoplehood is a big part of Reconstructionism. And it is an aspect of Judaism that I treasure. 

To me, peoplehood is the messy blessing of being interconnected with all of you who throw your lot in with this community and with people across the globe I will never get to meet. Even the ones who don’t acknowledge me as a rabbi, even the ones whose politics I detest. 

It means my life is part of something so much bigger than me; it means — and it meant for our rabbinic ancestors — a sense of shared destiny. Whether we like it or not.

But Kol Yisrael Aravim Zeh Bazeh has another meaning too. The word “arev” means guarantor — like someone who co-signs a loan. You’re not just interconnected with the other person. You’re on the hook for them. 

Held this way, the text isn’t only about connection. It’s about responsibility. And that responsibility cuts two ways: it means defending our own when they are attacked. And it means holding our own accountable when they go astray.

The first aspect calls us to stand beside fellow Jews — Israeli and American alike — targeted by antisemitic and anti-Israel hate. *There is sadly no shortage of examples in the last three years of Israelis or Israeli-run institutions that have been targeted for boycott or harassment simply because of their identity. But today, I want to focus on an example that has touched SAJ directly.* 

Beejhy Barhany, an Ethiopian-Israeli-American chef and owner of Tsion Café in Harlem, came to SAJ this past fall to speak about Ethiopian-Jewish holiday of Sigd and share the delicious food of her community — and just a few months later, Barhany had to close her restaurant to the public due to incessant harassment and threats of violence because of her Israeli identity. She said: “I am demoralized and heartbroken that there are so many bigots out there,” she said. “It’s mind blowing. We can’t  handle the burden anymore,” she said.

Barhany has since moved to private events only. I am calling on all of us to flood her with love by ordering catering from Tsion Café in the coming weeks and months. Can we commit to this? And most importantly, let’s be ready to stand up when others face the same kind of treatment.

The second part of arevut (responsibility) is about holding people accountable when they have gone astray. In that spirit, I want to talk about our responsibility, as Jews, to call out actions of the Israeli government that violate our Jewish values. 

I recognize that some of you may feel uncomfortable right now. Some of you have told me that in today’s climate — when Israel’s very existence feels threatened, when it becomes a pawn in public debate — we cannot afford to criticize, or we risk adding fuel to the fire

I empathize with these concerns — and I want to invite us to learn about arevut from someone you might not expect to hear it from:  Rabbi Moshe Lichtenstein, co-head of the prestigious Yeshivat Har Etzion in Alon Shvut, a West Bank settlement.

Rav Lichtenstein has become one of Israel’s most outspoken critics about settler violence over the last three years: 

He has called it “a moral stain that taints us all.” 

He has called out Ben Gvir and his fellows for “their glorification of power, unrestrained use of force, and their unwillingness to recognize the humanity of the other side.” 

And in an impassioned sermon given just days ago, Rav Lichtenstein railed against not just the perpetrators but the society that tolerates their behavior, calling it “moral complacency” and saying “the reality is broken.”

If one of the most prominent Orthodox rabbis in Israel can see arevut as including critique from within, so can we.

Following his lead, I am asking each of us to learn what is happening in the West Bank right now and to speak out — as settlers displace, beat, and sometimes even kill, Palestinian farmers trying to plant and harvest their olive trees

Let’s speak out- Because Kol Yisrael Aravim Zeh BaZeh: we are interconnected — and we are responsible for one another.

Guidepost 2: Asher Shivarta.

The second guidepost is “Asher Shivarta” — “which you broke.” In a surprising turn, the rabbis creatively re-read the words used to describe Moses hurling down and breaking the Divine Tablets of the Commandments after he saw the sin of the Golden Calf. According to this teaching, God sees the broken tablets and says to Moses: “Yashar Koach! Great job!” Wow! 

Through this radical retelling, the rabbis instruct: there are times when we need to break the ideas that seem “set in stone” — ideas that no longer serve us.

So what, today, needs breaking?

I believe it is the binary, the zero-sum game that says you cannot hold both — love for or connection to Israel and a commitment to Palestinian dignity — at once. This idea isolates, silences, and dehumanizes.

Two stories:

The first: Alex Sinclair, a British-Israeli academic who has worn a Kippah with Israeli and Palestinian flags woven together for over 20 years, to show his personal commitment to both Israeli and Palestinian self-determination. This past April, Sinclair was working at a coffee shop when a man shouted at him that his kippah was illegal, and called the police. Officers arrived and told Sinclair that his kippah was, in fact, “against the law.” Sinclair was brought to a prison, searched and held in a cell for about 20 minutes. When released, he insisted that the kippah be returned. They gave it to him — with the Palestinian flag cut out.

The second: Two Jewish students at Sarah Lawrence College tried to start a campus chapter of J Street U — the campus affiliate of the pro-Israel, pro-peace group. The student senate rejected the chapter’s application, with one senator comparing the act of recognizing the club to approving a “white supremacist organization” — presumably because J Street identifies as a Zionist organization.

In an increasingly polarized world, where one’s position on Israel has become a litmus test for good versus evil, this zero-sum game can feel like an inescapable reality.

But I want to name, plainly, what this binary actually costs us.

The binary empties out language, turning words that should carry meaning and history into simple weapons — labels to sort people into friend or enemy, nothing more.

Binaries make nuance look like weakness, instead of serious moral wrestling. They privilege the loudest, most extreme voices, and silence the rest.

Worst of all, the binary dehumanizes. It teaches us to see a person’s identity and politics before we see them as a human being. Many of us have experienced this personally — feeling the pain of people celebrating Hamas’s massacre as an act of resistance on October 8th; minimizing or ignoring the plight of the hostages, and contextualizing violence against Jewish institutions here in America as somehow understandable. This same zero-sum thinking is how people can look at pictures of children killed in Gaza and talk about the politics of war before talking about their humanity.

But I’ve also seen what happens when that binary breaks.

I mentioned that Nadiv and I went on a nine-day trip to Israel in February — Nadiv’s first time. Since October 7th, I had talked with Nadiv about holding everyone’s humanity and pain — Jewish and Israeli, and Palestinian alike. 

But for Nadiv, the idea of going to Israel was still a struggle. Nadiv saw the real horror of the Gaza war on social media. Nadiv also saw influencers spouting conspiracy theories about Israel. And when kids at school were talking about February break, and Nadiv mentioned they might go to Israel, more than one paused: “Why would you want to go there?”

We went anyway. We prayed at the Kotel, drank Aroma iced coffee every day, wandered the graffiti-covered streets of Florentin in Tel Aviv, went bowling in the Baka neighborhood of Jerusalem where I lived twenty five years ago — — and ate as much shawarma as we possibly could. We spent our last few hours in Israel at the Tayelet, admiring the view of Jerusalem laid out below us.

We also attended a protest at HaBimah — a tired, small one, after years of Saturday nights, first for democracy, then for the hostages. I watched Nadiv hold an Israeli flag while speakers called for a Commission of Inquiry into October 7.

On Shabbat, we had dinner at the home of Daniel Chinn, son of SAJ member of blessed memory Carol Chinn. Daniel railed against Netanyahu, Smotrich, and Ben Gvir — and, in the same breath, spoke of his commitment for the country. Nadiv was enraptured and told me. “It sounds just like a Shabbat dinner at home…when we’re talking about politics and immigration.”

And most significant of all: Nadiv and I spent hours on a dual narrative tour of the Old City, Jerusalem. Our guides were Elad, an Israeli tech-entrepreneur turned peacemaker, and Mahmoud, a Palestinian whose family’s roots to this land trace back sixteen generations. At each stop, Elad would share the historical and theological significance of each site according to Judaism. Mahmoud did the same regarding Islam. We also shared a meal and visited Mahmoud’s ancient artifacts shop in the Muslim Quarter, talking over tea. By the end, Mahmoud and Elad weren’t just our tour guides. They were our friends.

Over the nine days, I watched, in real time, as the binary — pro versus against, good versus bad— broke apart. 

And in its place: instead of distance, proximity; instead of othering, empathy; instead of division, connection.

Asher Shivarta.

Guidepost 3 – Bo U-N’ta – Keep Planting

Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai, a rabbi who lived through the destruction of the Second Temple, used to teach: If you have a sapling in your hand, and people excitedly announce that the Messiah has come — Bo U’N’ta, go and plant it first, then go greet the Messiah.

This is a piece of Torah I taught on the second day of Rosh Hashanah last year — that people have quoted back to me this year many times. I think the text is so resonant because it reminds us that what matters is the work, not the reward. The day-to-day work of fixing, healing, and planting. Planting even when we are unsure. Planting even when everyone around us tells us it is no use, and our small sapling won’t make a difference. Planting for a future that is beyond our current grasp.

This is the work of the fearless activists in Israel, who choose to show up every day to fight for civil rights, democracy, and equality. Who understand that seven million Jewish Israelis and seven million Palestinians both call this land home, that neither is going anywhere, and that our future depends on finding a way to live alongside one another.

There is Fida Tabony, a Palestinian citizen of Israel and longtime activist, co-director of programs at the New Israel Fund. With the upcoming Israeli election on the horizon, Tabony has taken on leadership in her own community, working on voter turnout among Palestinian citizens of Israel, including a focus on young people. Her message is that each person must take responsibility for their lives and their futures, as citizens and as Palestinians. Tabony refuses to let anger or despair have the final word. What moves people, she’s found, is vision and hope.

There is Roei Kleitman, a Religious Zionist leader in Smol Emuni, who provides protective presence to Palestinians whose villages are being attacked by settlers. 

I heard him speak about Palestinian children who would cry at the sight of him — because they saw his beard, kippah and tzitzit and thought he was another settler coming to raid their homes. Then, they realized he’s there to stand with them, not against them. Roie said “This is a battle for the face of Judaism.” 

There are Maoz Inon and Aziz Abu Sarah, whom some of you may remember — Aziz spoke here last year, and I spoke about them last Rosh Hashanah. Maoz lost his parents on October 7th. Aziz lost his brother years earlier, to violence in an Israeli prison. And out of those losses, the two of them found each other, and have become one of the most powerful forces for peace.

And there are so many others.

Though we do not live in the land, we are not bystanders.

Today, on this New Year, I call on us to Bo U’N’Ta — keep planting saplings. Support the heroes working for peace, equality, and self-determination for Israelis and Palestinians. Lift up their stories. Donate so they can continue their work. Most of all, stand with those who refuse to give in to despair.

Kol Yisrael Aravim Zeh BaZeh — may we feel interconnected and responsible for one another.

Asher Shivarta — may we break down the binaries that silence and dehumanize.

Bo U’N’ta — may we keep planting, even when others say it is impossible.

And in this New Year, may we turn toward each other with honesty and compassion.

Shana Tova! Shabbat Shalom!