A version of this sermon was delivered Yom Kippur Morning, 5785/2025 at Temple B'nai Torah - A Reform Congregation, Wantagh, NY
Sitting before a committee in the House of
Representatives last December, the now former President of Harvard University,
Claudine Gay, was asked by New York Rep Elise Stefanik: “At Harvard, does
calling for the genocide of Jews violate Harvard’s rules of bullying and
harassment?”[1]
Her now infamous answer: “It can be, depending
on the context.” Rep Stefanik pressed
Dr. Gay who added: “Antisemitic speech when it crosses into conduct that
amounts to bullying, harassment, intimidation — that is actionable conduct and
we do take action.”
But Rep. Stefanik was not satisfied: “So the
answer is yes, that calling for the genocide of Jews violates Harvard code of
conduct, correct?” she asked.
“Again, it depends on the context,” Gay said,
doubling down on her equivocation.
What a disappointing answer, of course. What a frustrating place to be in this
nation, that the president of Harvard, the now #3 university in this country,
can’t seem to find the moral backbone to say that antisemitism and calling for
the death of Jews is unequivocally against their code of conduct. You’ll remember that this testimony came
after weeks of protests and encampments at universities across this
nation. These encampments purported to
be protesting Israel’s actions in the war, but they soon devolved into
protesting against Israel’s right to exist and ultimately against Jews in
general. Anti-Zionism is not always
antisemitism, but it almost always devolves into it because anti-Zionism is
predicated on singling out Jews and the Jewish state. Jewish students were harassed, prevented from
getting to classes and activities, and ostracized from their peers. Protestors chanted slogans, knowingly or
unknowingly, advocating the destruction of Israel and violence against
Jews. Protestors vandalized public
property, cosplaying revolutionaries, puppets of a Messianist Islamic regime.
How did it get to this point, Congress wanted
to know, that Jewish students have had to sue their universities for violating
their title VI protections? How did it
get to this point, indeed.
Dr. Gay’s remarks in front of Congress faced
so much backlash from students, clergy, and even the White House, that she was
forced to offer an apology and ultimately resign from that position. It’s Yom Kippur, so I’ll accept that Dr.
Gay’s apology was sincere, and I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt that the
forum and setting maybe got to her, and that her lawyers maybe overly coached
her to prevent her from saying something damaging to the university. I don’t believe that she is an antisemite. I believe that to understand her answer
requires context.
This last year we have learned that context. Harvard and other universities have an
allowance for antisemitism in their professors, in their student groups, and in
their curricula. Their ivory towers
gleam flawed intersectional theories of oppressed and oppressor to the point
that they are blinded into believing that Hamas terrorists, who raped and
desecrated women and men, who murdered babies, who murdered whole families
hiding in safe rooms, and who use their own women and children as human
shields, that this group is the just and righteous party in this conflict. The Israelis, the one Jewish state in the
world, the one democracy in the Middle East, are monsters and must be stopped,
according to this twisted world view.
While Dr. Gay was wrong in that moment to
declare that antisemitism and calling for genocide require context, she is not
wrong about the importance of context in general. Context is necessary to understand the world
around us. When we don’t understand a
word, we use context clues to figure it out.
Context means we factor in more than just what’s in front of us to help
us make sense of conflict. Context in
this case also means that there are no easy answers and many conclusions that
can be drawn. Seeing ourselves in a
broader context is also what this day, HaYom, the Day, as the Mishnah calls it,
asks us to consider, in many ways.
Context can give us comfort; it helps us to see a bigger story and
understand patterns in the life of Jews and Judaism.
Understanding the context is why October 7 was
for me, and I think for many of us, so confusing and yet made so much
sense. It left us shaken but not
necessarily surprised. It was both
unprecedented as well as steeped in precedent.
Let me explain what I mean. This
is not Israel’s first war. This is not
Israel’s first war with Hamas in Gaza.
This story has been told before. Every
few years since Israel’s disengagement from Gaza in 2005 there has been a flare
up. More rockets, more airstrikes, not
always ground troops, but sometimes. A
few months of discomfort for Israelis, a few months of airstrikes degrading
Hamas abilities, a few more batteries of Iron Dome, a few months of Israel
being harangued in the press for the tragic death of Palestinian civilians. We grew accustomed to the pattern. Al chet
that we did. We expected that the IDF
would prevent anything worse from happening.
Al chet that they did not.
And yet, this attack was
different. This attack was not the random
rocket fire which accompanied the beginning of previous attacks. This attack was well-organized and
multi-faceted, coordinated with help and information from workers that had been
welcomed to Israel by peace-loving kibbutzniks, who tried to love their
neighbors, and who built their homes with shelters. This felt like an attack on the good will of
the Israelis who live near Gaza. And it
felt like it was intended to cause as much pain and death to civilians as
possible. I saw what was done to the
homes on the kibbutzim and heard firsthand about the sense of betrayal. I heard from the rabbis who processed the
bodies of the victims about what they saw.
Black Saturday, October 7, was more expansive, more sadistic, and more
death-centered than anything that had happened before in this conflict between
Israel and the Palestinians. It
undermined our sense of safety and plunged us into seeing ourselves in the
context of being Jews under attack. This
is a new experience for most of us.
October 7 set off a wave of antisemitism that seemed almost too easy for
society to slip into. We have no context
for this and feel unmoored.
The Palestinians have a context for the
conflict as well. Unfortunately, too
many in their community see these patterns violence and death and the
destruction of Israel as the only recourse.
Too many in their leadership fail to see that these patterns, and opting
for death instead of life, will not yield any progress.
The October 7 attack was more brutal and
savage than anything that had ever happened in the state of Israel, but it is
not without precedent in Jewish history.
My travels in Europe this summer reminded me of that context. The maps of the many cities and shtetels that
used to be, where Jews were shot, or burned, or otherwise massacred in their
homes, in their synagogues, with their families. The sites of mass murder. The rounding up of children. The attacks that require that Jews are seen
as less than human. These kinds of
attacks are, sadly, part of our history.
That probably doesn’t do a lot to bring us comfort, but I do think it
provides us some solace, because it puts us in a place where our ancestors and
relatives have been. And through it all,
we are still here. Celebrating Yom
Kippur, on the same day as outlined in the Torah, as we have been doing for
thousands of years. Enemies rise and
enemies fall.
From Pharaoh, to Amalek, to Haman, to the
Greeks, to the punishments and tortures at the hands of the Romans, to the
Muslim conquests, to the Crusades, to the Inquisition in Spain, to the Czar, to
the Nazis, to Nasser, to the Iranians and their proxies, we know the history of
being in the crosshairs, of being subject to the whims of politicians and Popes,
of being subject to the whims of the economy and charismatic leaders who seek a
scapegoat. But we’ve mostly known it as
history. Now it is our present.
Our year is peppered with holidays that remind
us of our complicated history. Passover
begins with a decree to kill all the Jewish children. Purim is a story of a thwarted genocide of
our people. Chanukah’s enemy sought to take
away our identity and Torah. Many of our
holidays, we often joke, fall into the category of: they tried to kill us, we
survived, let’s eat. On October 7, we
were moved from a time of, “we survived, let’s eat,” to a time of “they tried
to kill us.” We’re in a time of war. They’re still trying to kill us. The rockets are still falling. The hostages are still in captivity. It’s a scary place to be. We feel out of context even though we are
deeply within it. We’re in a different
part of the pattern now. And recognizing
that is at the heart of what this day can do for us: give us strength from
history and the reminder that we will make it to “we survived.” And, ultimately, to “let’s eat.”
Yom Kippur can give us strength because this
day asks us to see ourselves in a series of broader contexts, to remind us of
larger eternal truths and of the patterns of Jewish existence. At the same time Yom Kippur helps us to
acknowledge that, often, what is going on around us is hard, and violent, and
sad, and maddening. Yom Kippur offers us
the opportunity to rededicate ourselves to our relationships with God and with
each other. When we do this, the madness
may abate, the difficulties may stop. As
we acknowledge our failings, our prayers also acknowledge the failings of the
world, the unfinishedness of creation, the broken vessels waiting to be
repaired to gather God’s light. We are
imperfect beings. The world is imperfect, and yet we choose life, our Torah
portion reminds us. We have a choice
before us. Life or death. Our enemies choose death. We choose life. We choose shelters and missile defense. We choose life and we choose blessing. When we make it to the end of this day, if we
hold out to that last shofar blast, then God will have pardoned and overlooked
our imperfections, and perhaps as we repair ourselves, we believe that the
world can be on the way to tikkun, to
repair, as well.
On Yom Kippur, we spend time living in our history. We follow the path of the High Priest in the
Temple in Jerusalem in our Avodah Service.
As a part of our afternoon on our holiest of days we are tasked with reenacting
in word and story the ancient ritual of atonement that would begin by the High
Priest entering the Holy of Holies and atoning for his sins. Then, we read, he would atone for his
family’s sins. He moves from himself
alone, to his family. He broadens his
context. Finally, his context expands
again as he atones for the entire people.
Each time, he’d go in, face to face with God, and he’d represent a
broader group. He would see himself as a
part of something bigger. And only then
would God grant atonement. It required
the High Priest to see himself as more than just himself, but as a part of a
bigger society.
Like the High Priest of old, we each go
through a similar process. We focus on
our own sins and we atone. In order to
do that, we have to first consider ourselves in the context of other
people. We have to consider our
relationships and the ways we missed the mark in word, in deed, and in
thought. We focus on committing to be
better individuals in the year ahead.
We also expand our context and focus on our
families and our personal histories. We
include a Yizkor service to remember where we come from, to recall those who have
a lasting influence on us. We expand the
way we think about ourselves on this day as we open up to the immediate and
recent past. We see ourselves in the
context of our families. The context
transports us to times of love and joy and difficulty, stories of laughter and
ache. Yizkor is powerful as a way to remember
values we learned from our loved ones of blessed memory, to remember the life
that they gave us and the life that they taught us. For some of us, it’s those values we learned
despite them, too. Either way, Yizkor
challenges us on this day to focus on remembering that we come from somewhere
and that we are a part of a bigger story.
Yizkor gives us the chance to expand our frame of reference for a part
of the day, to broaden the context in which we come seeking atonement.
Yom Kippur also asks us to see ourselves in
the broader, difficult context of Jewish history. There is an entire section of the service
dedicated to remembering the 10 martyrs.
These were 10 rabbis whose stories of martyrdom form the basis of a
midrash and ultimately a liturgical poetic setting known as the Eleh Ezkarah,
these I will remember. It has not been
our custom here to read this poem, but the stories of how the rabbis were killed
are not pleasant. They are stories of
torture, of sadism, and of deep faith.
They are stories that demand on this day that we look at what can happen
to our people. They demand that we
consider the tenuous place of being a Jew in the world. This is not the context in which we have
lived, but it is the context we feel right now.
It’s hard to be a Jew. We know
it. God knows it. Yom Kippur knows it. Yom Kippur reminds us of this
difficulty. And ultimately, Yom Kippur
says that our people make it through, the same way we make it through this
day.
Today, we won’t hear the stories of the 10
martyrs. But our Yizkor service does
have a powerful section of tribute and prayer for those who died on October 7
and since. We will hear some stories of
those who died only because they were Jews.
We will offer prayers for them, and we will grieve alongside Jews
everywhere. I encourage everyone to stay
for Yizkor this year, even if it is not your custom, and, yes, even if your
parents are still alive. Be with us in
community as we mourn and remember together.
It is a beautiful and powerful service, and it’s not that long.
There is one more piece of context that I
think is important before we make our way toward our Yizkor, and that is that
our prayers, and the way that Yom Kippur works liturgically is predicated on
there not being an Israel, predicated on there not being a state where Jews can
go, where we have self-determination, and where we are the majority. In the context of the broader Jewish history,
our ancestors could have never dreamed and imagined the way that Israel has
flowered and grown and progressed, how a new Jewish culture emerged from the
ashes of Europe and the rubble of the Arab world. It’s not a perfect nation, to be sure, but it
is here.
Historically speaking, this might be the best
time to be Jewish in history. I know it
doesn’t feel like that right now as we are mired in war and heartache. Yom Kippur asks us to remember that where we
are now is a point in history. We have
much that brought us to this point, and context matters. Yom Kippur asks us to see ourselves in the
patterns and contexts of Jewish history, to remember that it is sometimes hard,
but always beautiful, to be Jewish. We
will not come out of history or this war unscathed. But through our prayers and our repentance
and our charity, we will come out of Yom Kippur cleansed of sin, purified of
soul, rededicated to each other and God, and always choosing life and blessing.
G’mar Chatimah Tovah
[1]
All quotes in this section taken from the Harvard Crimson: https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2023/12/8/gay-apology-congressional-remarks/
