 | For all of modern society's focus on individual rights and choice, even in the internet age, we still are carbon-based creatures who utterly need each other. Community has long been one of Jewish life's superpowers, but today hangs in the balance, buffeted by tides of social change and amnesia about who we really, truly are. |
By Rabbi David Evan Markus
Kol Nidre 5786
Gut yontif on this holy Kol Nidre of light and renewal of soul.
Six months ago at this very hour, at 7:00 p.m. on March 31, 2025, Sen. Cory Booker began what became history's longest filibuster. For 25 continuous hours, Booker was on his feet – no breaks, no food, no water – urging our country's better angels against legislation that to him pierced our country's core. For 25 hours, Booker's filibuster riveted the nation: the Senate stopped. Afterward, he learned that his voice helped others find their own.
Booker's filibuster was a tikkun – a repair of sorts. The record Booker broke previously was held by segregationist Sen. Strom Thurmond filibustering the 1957 Civil Rights Act. It was a moral repair that an African-American consigned Thurmond's record to the dust heap of history.
Booker's filibuster also was a kind of Yom Kippur. Yom Kippur also is 25 hours. We too invoke our better angels against threats to our core in spirit, community and peoplehood. Some of us also go with no food or water. Our Yom Kippur declares a moral reckoning against our own history, when we went astray. And like Booker's filibuster, on Yom Kippur our world stops. We reclaim our voices.
Booker was not alone in his filibuster: he served community, and his filibuster also created one. Over 300,000 watched all night; 350 million liked the TikTok feed; 28,000 left voicemails. We too inhabit circles of community radiating outward from us: our loved ones, each other, our nation, our world. Yom Kippur calls us into a power far more than our own – to stand together, belong together, pray together, promise together, release together, be real together and heal together.
#StrongerTogether is our High Holy Days theme – what we need to weather troubled times and heed the angels of our better natures. Rosh Hashanah asked what rules us, affirmed our sacred power to choose and change, and invoked our moral power amidst the Mideast. Tonight is for community, our shared circle dance of spiritual life.
The general welfare of community in society has been straining for decades. Seemingly long gone is Pres. Kennedy's 1961 inaugural call to his fellow Americans, "Ask not what your country can do for you: ask what you can do for your country.... [L]et us go forth... asking [God's] blessing and [God's] help, but knowing that here on earth God's work must truly be our own." Long before covid, tectonic forces began sapping this sense of service and belonging. The causes are many: a warping of patriotism into nationalism in our own image, at-home conveniences, untold news outlets that let us opt into news we want to hear, social media dividing a once shared sense of reality into echo chambers that amplify differences, and re-surging xenophobia.
As a result, we tend to join fewer community groups, and make less common cause with people different from us. No wonder there's record societal mistrust about most anything and everything: no issue, person or group is exempt. At stake is our felt sense of community, literally "feeling with unity" – which is one reason why this country faces twin epidemics of loneliness and unhappiness.
Modernity's gambit that we each alone has what it takes to thrive is false. Recently columnist David Brooks wrote of this dynamic. Tracing decades of polls worldwide, Brooks spotlighted a growing gap between affluent democracies and happiness, with a surprise: declines in wellbeing are largest where standards of living are highest.
Kol Nidre 5786
Gut yontif on this holy Kol Nidre of light and renewal of soul.
Six months ago at this very hour, at 7:00 p.m. on March 31, 2025, Sen. Cory Booker began what became history's longest filibuster. For 25 continuous hours, Booker was on his feet – no breaks, no food, no water – urging our country's better angels against legislation that to him pierced our country's core. For 25 hours, Booker's filibuster riveted the nation: the Senate stopped. Afterward, he learned that his voice helped others find their own.
Booker's filibuster was a tikkun – a repair of sorts. The record Booker broke previously was held by segregationist Sen. Strom Thurmond filibustering the 1957 Civil Rights Act. It was a moral repair that an African-American consigned Thurmond's record to the dust heap of history.
Booker's filibuster also was a kind of Yom Kippur. Yom Kippur also is 25 hours. We too invoke our better angels against threats to our core in spirit, community and peoplehood. Some of us also go with no food or water. Our Yom Kippur declares a moral reckoning against our own history, when we went astray. And like Booker's filibuster, on Yom Kippur our world stops. We reclaim our voices.
Booker was not alone in his filibuster: he served community, and his filibuster also created one. Over 300,000 watched all night; 350 million liked the TikTok feed; 28,000 left voicemails. We too inhabit circles of community radiating outward from us: our loved ones, each other, our nation, our world. Yom Kippur calls us into a power far more than our own – to stand together, belong together, pray together, promise together, release together, be real together and heal together.
#StrongerTogether is our High Holy Days theme – what we need to weather troubled times and heed the angels of our better natures. Rosh Hashanah asked what rules us, affirmed our sacred power to choose and change, and invoked our moral power amidst the Mideast. Tonight is for community, our shared circle dance of spiritual life.
The general welfare of community in society has been straining for decades. Seemingly long gone is Pres. Kennedy's 1961 inaugural call to his fellow Americans, "Ask not what your country can do for you: ask what you can do for your country.... [L]et us go forth... asking [God's] blessing and [God's] help, but knowing that here on earth God's work must truly be our own." Long before covid, tectonic forces began sapping this sense of service and belonging. The causes are many: a warping of patriotism into nationalism in our own image, at-home conveniences, untold news outlets that let us opt into news we want to hear, social media dividing a once shared sense of reality into echo chambers that amplify differences, and re-surging xenophobia.
As a result, we tend to join fewer community groups, and make less common cause with people different from us. No wonder there's record societal mistrust about most anything and everything: no issue, person or group is exempt. At stake is our felt sense of community, literally "feeling with unity" – which is one reason why this country faces twin epidemics of loneliness and unhappiness.
Modernity's gambit that we each alone has what it takes to thrive is false. Recently columnist David Brooks wrote of this dynamic. Tracing decades of polls worldwide, Brooks spotlighted a growing gap between affluent democracies and happiness, with a surprise: declines in wellbeing are largest where standards of living are highest.
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Why should that be? Here's the answer researchers found: "People thrive where they live in societies with rising standard of living, and dense networks of relationships, and where they feel their lives have a clear sense of purpose and meaning. That holy trinity undergirds a healthy society. It's economic, social and spiritual."
This new research is old news to Jews. Community as fount of economic, social and spiritual wealth has been one of our superpowers from the start. Soon after Rome exiled the Jews from Israel in 70 CE, our ethics text Pirkei Avot 2:4 cited the great Rabbi Hillel that we must not separate from community lest we lose our own selves. R. Ovadia Bartenura in the 1400s heard Hillel;s words pragmatically: if we do not invest in community, then naturally we cannot fully experience the benefits of community.
This new research is old news to Jews. Community as fount of economic, social and spiritual wealth has been one of our superpowers from the start. Soon after Rome exiled the Jews from Israel in 70 CE, our ethics text Pirkei Avot 2:4 cited the great Rabbi Hillel that we must not separate from community lest we lose our own selves. R. Ovadia Bartenura in the 1400s heard Hillel;s words pragmatically: if we do not invest in community, then naturally we cannot fully experience the benefits of community.
Whatever our wealth, absent thick community ties that are social and spiritual, inwardly we end up poor. Too many have become so – unhappy, isolated, at best muddling through – and the cost transcends the individual: the cost is collective.
The national fraying of community is a clear and present danger to our civic covenant, what Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King's 1963 Letter from a Birmingham Jail rightly called our "inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all directly." But this truth impacts us only if we feel it. Only feeling mutuality can make meaningful the creed that "injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." If we don't feel how we're in it together, then in key ways we're not.
If folks don't feel each other, if we don't feel that what happens to others affects us, if we act out but do not feel the effect on others, if we go our own way – then what single garment of destiny?
As a nation, we are turning away from each other, and the ripple effects touch the spirit of community itself. If we think about it, we know Dr. King was right. We feel how antisemitism anywhere can land here. We feel the Mideast. At home, in real community we feel each other's joys and sorrows. We share one heart: we feel together.
Obvious enough, so we who are here tonight might imagine that, because we're here in the circle of community, these words are mainly for someone else. Showing up is one thing; feeling and lifting up are quite another – so these words truly are for all of us, myself included.
Long before Enlightenment philosophy evoked a social compact of rights and duties, Judaism taught that community is more than a felt sense of shared welfare: community is a duty, a command to serve and lift up. When we see another's hurt or loss, we cannot turn away: as Deuteronomy 22 and Isaiah 58 put it, we cannot התעלם – hide ourselves. If we don't invest in each other, in community, then a piece of us goes missing. And the same goes for our joys: in Jewish life, solo celebration makes no sense. Judaism is a team sport.
This ancient wisdom is more than aspirational: it is hard-nosed practicality. Showing up in community is great, but not enough to keep community strong – to insure the reliability of community for all of our joys and oys. It's a dilemma for all groups because we all have vested interests to get as much as we want with as little effort as we can. Most of us benefit from community, even if just the comfort of knowing community is here, without giving back in the form we benefit. Only relatively recently did economists call this dilemma "free riding." To economists, free riding goes something like this: How many of us have built a road? How many have created a public park? Roads and parks are open to all, but who maintains them? What if we overuse them?
Government and taxes exist to help address free riding. But for spiritual communities and clubs, free riding is a tougher nut to crack. If we all take without giving back, then what happens? It's one reason that this year, 15,000 U.S. houses of worship will shut their doors.
Our ancestors knew 2,000 years ago that community keeps us strong, while free riding risks community. So they made it a duty, not a choice, for each of us to keep community strong. Whether we define our identity by community or dip in just sometimes, whether we take much or little, whether we've led before or not, whether we're tired or not, community is not guaranteed. We're in it together, or we're not.
In this truth there is power, and empowerment. Some of us know in our bones that spiritual community offers strength, comfort, companionship, intimacy, learning, resilience, ethics and meaning that we can get in few other ways. In a big world that can feel toxic and even nihilistic, spiritual community is both a respite and a third place, not private but not totally public either – a microcosm in which we cultivate in here the power to invest out there.
We begin curing national epidemics of isolation and unhappiness by standing up for community and especially the vulnerable. In Torah, the Amalek tribe became Judaism's first enemy by cowardly picking off the weak, differently abled, young and elders: essentially, Amalek was a bully. Economist Robert Reich, who studies economic forms of bullying, concluded that "[l]iving a moral life in an age of bullies requires collective action: it cannot be done alone." The same goes for communities – small ones like ours that offer outsized opportunities for meaning and impact, and also are vulnerable. We need you.
Even when fighting Amalek – as, alas, sometimes we must fight – Moses couldn't lead the fight alone. He grew tired, so Joshua and Caleb had to hold him up. And when Moses finally sat, he sat on a sharp rock: he could not sit comfortably while others gave their all.
When we sit back from community, we take ourselves out of the story – but in reality we can't because community health is our health. However introverted we may be, we still are carbon-based social creatures whose welfare is partly communal. What affects you affects me, how one behaves affects another. We cannot התעלם: in truth, we cannot hide – especially not on this holy Kol Nidre night.
The reason you are here, dear friends, is community – and also continuity, meaning, holiness, maybe old fashioned Jewish guilt, but for sure community. Alone we do not have all power to renew our lives. To truly transform and heal, we need a power beyond ourselves in our circle dance of life – and in this truth, there can be great joy amidst all. Nahman of Breslov, the 1700s spiritual teacher with modern secular impact, put it this way at another time of great upheaval in the world and especially in Jewish life:
The national fraying of community is a clear and present danger to our civic covenant, what Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King's 1963 Letter from a Birmingham Jail rightly called our "inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all directly." But this truth impacts us only if we feel it. Only feeling mutuality can make meaningful the creed that "injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." If we don't feel how we're in it together, then in key ways we're not.
If folks don't feel each other, if we don't feel that what happens to others affects us, if we act out but do not feel the effect on others, if we go our own way – then what single garment of destiny?
As a nation, we are turning away from each other, and the ripple effects touch the spirit of community itself. If we think about it, we know Dr. King was right. We feel how antisemitism anywhere can land here. We feel the Mideast. At home, in real community we feel each other's joys and sorrows. We share one heart: we feel together.
Obvious enough, so we who are here tonight might imagine that, because we're here in the circle of community, these words are mainly for someone else. Showing up is one thing; feeling and lifting up are quite another – so these words truly are for all of us, myself included.
Long before Enlightenment philosophy evoked a social compact of rights and duties, Judaism taught that community is more than a felt sense of shared welfare: community is a duty, a command to serve and lift up. When we see another's hurt or loss, we cannot turn away: as Deuteronomy 22 and Isaiah 58 put it, we cannot התעלם – hide ourselves. If we don't invest in each other, in community, then a piece of us goes missing. And the same goes for our joys: in Jewish life, solo celebration makes no sense. Judaism is a team sport.
This ancient wisdom is more than aspirational: it is hard-nosed practicality. Showing up in community is great, but not enough to keep community strong – to insure the reliability of community for all of our joys and oys. It's a dilemma for all groups because we all have vested interests to get as much as we want with as little effort as we can. Most of us benefit from community, even if just the comfort of knowing community is here, without giving back in the form we benefit. Only relatively recently did economists call this dilemma "free riding." To economists, free riding goes something like this: How many of us have built a road? How many have created a public park? Roads and parks are open to all, but who maintains them? What if we overuse them?
Government and taxes exist to help address free riding. But for spiritual communities and clubs, free riding is a tougher nut to crack. If we all take without giving back, then what happens? It's one reason that this year, 15,000 U.S. houses of worship will shut their doors.
Our ancestors knew 2,000 years ago that community keeps us strong, while free riding risks community. So they made it a duty, not a choice, for each of us to keep community strong. Whether we define our identity by community or dip in just sometimes, whether we take much or little, whether we've led before or not, whether we're tired or not, community is not guaranteed. We're in it together, or we're not.
In this truth there is power, and empowerment. Some of us know in our bones that spiritual community offers strength, comfort, companionship, intimacy, learning, resilience, ethics and meaning that we can get in few other ways. In a big world that can feel toxic and even nihilistic, spiritual community is both a respite and a third place, not private but not totally public either – a microcosm in which we cultivate in here the power to invest out there.
We begin curing national epidemics of isolation and unhappiness by standing up for community and especially the vulnerable. In Torah, the Amalek tribe became Judaism's first enemy by cowardly picking off the weak, differently abled, young and elders: essentially, Amalek was a bully. Economist Robert Reich, who studies economic forms of bullying, concluded that "[l]iving a moral life in an age of bullies requires collective action: it cannot be done alone." The same goes for communities – small ones like ours that offer outsized opportunities for meaning and impact, and also are vulnerable. We need you.
Even when fighting Amalek – as, alas, sometimes we must fight – Moses couldn't lead the fight alone. He grew tired, so Joshua and Caleb had to hold him up. And when Moses finally sat, he sat on a sharp rock: he could not sit comfortably while others gave their all.
When we sit back from community, we take ourselves out of the story – but in reality we can't because community health is our health. However introverted we may be, we still are carbon-based social creatures whose welfare is partly communal. What affects you affects me, how one behaves affects another. We cannot התעלם: in truth, we cannot hide – especially not on this holy Kol Nidre night.
The reason you are here, dear friends, is community – and also continuity, meaning, holiness, maybe old fashioned Jewish guilt, but for sure community. Alone we do not have all power to renew our lives. To truly transform and heal, we need a power beyond ourselves in our circle dance of life – and in this truth, there can be great joy amidst all. Nahman of Breslov, the 1700s spiritual teacher with modern secular impact, put it this way at another time of great upheaval in the world and especially in Jewish life:
| לֶעָתִיד תִּתְגַּדֵל הַשִׂמְחָה מְאֹד, וְעַל־כֵּן אָמְרוּ רז''ל עָתִיד הקב''ה לִהְיוֹת רֹאשׁ חוֹלֶה לַצַּדִּיקִים ... דְהַיְנוּ ֹשֶיַּעֲשֶׂה מָחוֹל לַצַּדִּיקִים, וְהוּא יִתְבָּרַךְ יִהְיֶה רֹאשׁ חוֹלֶה . | In the future, joy will greatly increase. Thus the rabbis said that the Holy Blessed One will be head of a circle of the righteous – that is, the righteous will be made into a circle dance, and the Blessed One will be at its head. |
Why a circle dance, and how can God or anything be at the head of a circle, which has no head, no start or end? Maybe so each of us can learn that the sacred is everywhere in our circle, so we must step up as if the circle is holy – because it is; as if it depends on each of us – because it does; as if each of us is the missing link – because we are.
What if our people are more than a history? What if we are a testimony to the power and joy of our circle dance of community? What are we willing to do, each of us – who are we willing to be, each of us – to place what is sacred at the head of a circle without beginning or end, to raise up beloved community, to help heal at least a bit of the acidic toxicity of these troubled times – and thereby seek healing in turn?
Mark Twain said that in each life there are two most important days: the day we are born, and the day we find out why. May this holy Kol Nidre night inspire us together to lean into our why, this circle dance, and find anew the light and joy of who we are called to become.
What if our people are more than a history? What if we are a testimony to the power and joy of our circle dance of community? What are we willing to do, each of us – who are we willing to be, each of us – to place what is sacred at the head of a circle without beginning or end, to raise up beloved community, to help heal at least a bit of the acidic toxicity of these troubled times – and thereby seek healing in turn?
Mark Twain said that in each life there are two most important days: the day we are born, and the day we find out why. May this holy Kol Nidre night inspire us together to lean into our why, this circle dance, and find anew the light and joy of who we are called to become.
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