 | Judaism's time-tested superpower is community – not because it's easy, not because we're similar, but because community is the mainstay channel for the kind of existential love that heals society. This love is possible because spiritually, we share one heart. It's equally true if times are tough and even more important then – but also harder. |
By Rabbi David Evan Markus
Note: These remarks concern the importance of community amidst the many kinds of hurts pulling at our hearts, including current Mideast turmoil. New York's Rules Governing Judicial Conduct ban me from making public comment that might cause my impartiality reasonably to be questioned, including about the Mideast conflict's root causes or the merits of views about it. As such, I focus my remarks to how we can stand together in all our diversity.
Shanah tovah. From my heart to yours, welcome to 5785.
In the immortal words of medieval poet Yehudah HaLevi, today “my heart is in the East.” Before we say anything else, let’s turn our hearts eastward as we yearn for a just and lasting peace for all the peoples of Israel, Lebanon, Gaza, the West Bank, Syria and Yemen.
כָּל יִשְׂרָאֵל עֲרֵבִים זֶה בָּזֶה (All Israel are responsible for each other). Literally, all Israel are mixed together in an alchemy of mutual being and becoming. This Talmudic maxim holds that the Jewish people share a common destiny, so we oblige each other to our best selves.
It’s never easy, especially not now. I suspect many of us feel in our bones the complexity of being, living and doing Jewish today.
Note: These remarks concern the importance of community amidst the many kinds of hurts pulling at our hearts, including current Mideast turmoil. New York's Rules Governing Judicial Conduct ban me from making public comment that might cause my impartiality reasonably to be questioned, including about the Mideast conflict's root causes or the merits of views about it. As such, I focus my remarks to how we can stand together in all our diversity.
Shanah tovah. From my heart to yours, welcome to 5785.
In the immortal words of medieval poet Yehudah HaLevi, today “my heart is in the East.” Before we say anything else, let’s turn our hearts eastward as we yearn for a just and lasting peace for all the peoples of Israel, Lebanon, Gaza, the West Bank, Syria and Yemen.
כָּל יִשְׂרָאֵל עֲרֵבִים זֶה בָּזֶה (All Israel are responsible for each other). Literally, all Israel are mixed together in an alchemy of mutual being and becoming. This Talmudic maxim holds that the Jewish people share a common destiny, so we oblige each other to our best selves.
It’s never easy, especially not now. I suspect many of us feel in our bones the complexity of being, living and doing Jewish today.
Last week, the cover of the Canadian Jewish News depicted a Jewish family at Rosh Hashanah. In typical Canadian subtlety, this picture is worth a thousand words. Two folks are on their phones, one watching the latest violence on Instagram. On the left, the girl wears a “bring them home” necklace around her neck. On the right, a young woman wears a Palestinian kaffiyeh around her neck and looks away. Two men, facing each other across the table, divided by decades, are locked in heated debate. At the head of the table, one elder wears a yellow ribbon for the Israeli hostages still in Gaza. In the foreground, another elder closes her eyes and puts her heavy head in her hand.
And that’s just the subtle Canadian version for just one family. The U.S. has had encampments and counter-protests at colleges, public buildings and train stations, and chants to free Palestinians from Israel and also to free Palestinians from Hamas – all chanted by Jews, all at the same time. Israel has seen mass protests, tear gas in Tel Aviv, ultra-Orthodox protests of their military conscription, and Israeli Jewish police clearing major highways filled with protesters.
Jewish divisions get the headlines; seemingly less newsworthy is when we come together. After the October 7 attacks, we united in solidarity. We’ll do so again Monday on the first anniversary. After the attacks, psychologists and trauma specialists from Israel and beyond fanned out across Israel for victim families and witnesses to violence. After army reservists were activated, an Israeli created an app for them to ask for comfort foods; Israelis of all political stripes cooked and drove the food around the country – all for free. For over 100,000 Israelis internally displaced, doctors and pharmacists – many of them Palestinians or other Arabs – are sending prescriptions where they’re needed. Heroes all.
And that’s just the subtle Canadian version for just one family. The U.S. has had encampments and counter-protests at colleges, public buildings and train stations, and chants to free Palestinians from Israel and also to free Palestinians from Hamas – all chanted by Jews, all at the same time. Israel has seen mass protests, tear gas in Tel Aviv, ultra-Orthodox protests of their military conscription, and Israeli Jewish police clearing major highways filled with protesters.
Jewish divisions get the headlines; seemingly less newsworthy is when we come together. After the October 7 attacks, we united in solidarity. We’ll do so again Monday on the first anniversary. After the attacks, psychologists and trauma specialists from Israel and beyond fanned out across Israel for victim families and witnesses to violence. After army reservists were activated, an Israeli created an app for them to ask for comfort foods; Israelis of all political stripes cooked and drove the food around the country – all for free. For over 100,000 Israelis internally displaced, doctors and pharmacists – many of them Palestinians or other Arabs – are sending prescriptions where they’re needed. Heroes all.
People who bitterly protested each other one day came together the next, battled and united, back and forth, apart and together. כָּל יִשְׂרָאֵל עֲרֵבִים זֶה בָּזֶה – all Israel, all Jews, all people, ultimately share a common tapestry whatever our divisions. When this truth shapes how we live, it’s thanks to a gravitational pull between people that Judaism defines as love – our High Holy Day theme for 5785.
Whatever one’s views about the Mideast, odds are good that they arise from our sense of identity and purpose touched by love – though the object of our love may vary. For some of us it may be Jewish peoplehood, or the State of Israel, or her ideals, or her ideals imperfectly fulfilled in a uniquely difficult neighborhood, or our morality, or our humanity, or our common collective future. This love, whatever its object, can be impassioned, inspiring, perplexing – even maddening. Maybe all at the same time.
So today we explore this love as the tie that binds us, and that also can rip us apart – and how community depends vitally on how this love flows or doesn’t flow among us.
Last night on Erev Rosh Hashanah, we saw Judaism’s core love as both an emotion and a way of life that centers connection and relationship. We saw how at most times the core Jewish mitzvah is to love – וְאָהַבְתָ לְרֵעַךָ כָּמוֹךָ (love another as yourself) – not to be loved. We saw how this love transforms what it touches. We also saw that this love is especially difficult if not reciprocated, if we’re hurt, if the world seems loveless, if we feel unsafe. And we floated the reality that love and war sometimes must coexist – which we’ll revisit on Yom Kippur.
Whatever one’s views about the Mideast, odds are good that they arise from our sense of identity and purpose touched by love – though the object of our love may vary. For some of us it may be Jewish peoplehood, or the State of Israel, or her ideals, or her ideals imperfectly fulfilled in a uniquely difficult neighborhood, or our morality, or our humanity, or our common collective future. This love, whatever its object, can be impassioned, inspiring, perplexing – even maddening. Maybe all at the same time.
So today we explore this love as the tie that binds us, and that also can rip us apart – and how community depends vitally on how this love flows or doesn’t flow among us.
Last night on Erev Rosh Hashanah, we saw Judaism’s core love as both an emotion and a way of life that centers connection and relationship. We saw how at most times the core Jewish mitzvah is to love – וְאָהַבְתָ לְרֵעַךָ כָּמוֹךָ (love another as yourself) – not to be loved. We saw how this love transforms what it touches. We also saw that this love is especially difficult if not reciprocated, if we’re hurt, if the world seems loveless, if we feel unsafe. And we floated the reality that love and war sometimes must coexist – which we’ll revisit on Yom Kippur.
Today I invite us to cast our memory back to times we most felt love in community – not just belonging and feeling cared about, but feeling that community helps make us who we are. Most of us recall the 9/11 attacks. Perhaps we also remember 9/12, the day after. In national grief, for precious weeks people stood together. Commuters were kind. More drivers yielded the right of way. When hate mongers blamed Jews and Muslims for the attacks, a rightful outcry rose up that as a nation we are better than that.
We saw this kind of unity again during the covid crisis. Do we remember the instinctive abundant kindness, how neighbors checked on each other, the impromptu public celebrations for health care workers? And when again conspiracy mongers tried to cast blame, this time at Jews and Asians, especially people of Chinese ancestry, again there was an outcry that as a nation we are better than that.
What we experienced then is what the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. called "beloved community," a phrase he first used in a 1956 speech, “Facing the Challenge of a New Age.” King drew inspiration from Harvard philosopher Josiah Royce’s 1913 writing that “life means nothing, either theoretically or practically, [except as] members of a community.” King saw community not only as a source of connection and shared responsibility but also as the system that makes possible fairness, belonging, freedom from prejudice, peace and prosperity – all arising from an existential love. Dr. King said this:
We saw this kind of unity again during the covid crisis. Do we remember the instinctive abundant kindness, how neighbors checked on each other, the impromptu public celebrations for health care workers? And when again conspiracy mongers tried to cast blame, this time at Jews and Asians, especially people of Chinese ancestry, again there was an outcry that as a nation we are better than that.
What we experienced then is what the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. called "beloved community," a phrase he first used in a 1956 speech, “Facing the Challenge of a New Age.” King drew inspiration from Harvard philosopher Josiah Royce’s 1913 writing that “life means nothing, either theoretically or practically, [except as] members of a community.” King saw community not only as a source of connection and shared responsibility but also as the system that makes possible fairness, belonging, freedom from prejudice, peace and prosperity – all arising from an existential love. Dr. King said this:
 | “[T]he end is redemption. The end is the creation of a beloved community. It is this type of spirit and this type of love that can transform opposers into friends. It is this kind of understanding and goodwill that will transform the deep gloom of the old age into the exuberant gladness of the new age. It is this love which will bring about miracles.” |
Beloved community catalyzed the civil rights movement: it made possible the incredible self-control and dignity necessary to put forward a non-violent movement of social change.
Beloved community also was the foundation for much that became rabbinic Judaism. Nearly 2,000 years ago, our spiritual ancestors taught אַל תִּפְרוֹשׁ מִן הַצִבּוּר (do not separate from community), lest one be inconsolable in times of strife (Pirkei Avot 2:4; Ta’anit 11a). Even more, don’t separate from community because, in truth, we can’t. We are too bound in shared fate, and in shared heart. Our tradition even holds that in important ways, we share one heart.
Take that in: we share one heart. After all, we feel it if a community member goes missing. We feel another’s hurt and we feel their joy.
This notion of a shared heart isn't just spirituality: it's also science. Neurobiologists figured out that it's really true, and they found out why: mirror neurons.
We evolved as social creatures literally wired to feel each other. Mirror neurons are a key way that we learn. Mirror neurons are why yawning really is contagious, and why emotions flow in groups. Mirror neurons are the scientific basis for empathy. They’re why we become together in community: we share one heart.
Torah taught this truth long before science figured it out. Deuteronomy 20 taught in ancient days that a frightened soldier must be sent home because fear is catchy: וְיָשֹׁב לְבֵיתוֹ וְלֹא יִמַּס אֶת־לְבַב אֶחָיו כִּלְבָבוֹ (send him home so he won’t melt their heart like his heart) – "their heart," singular. Why singular? We share one heart.
Same for celebrations. Judaism defines a hag (festival) as a time of gathering together. It is not possible to be joyful in that way except together, in community, in shared heart. And the converse is true: Proverbs 24 teaches never to celebrate an enemy’s downfall: our heart (singular) – again, one heart – must not rejoice. We share one heart.
These principles are why community always has been a Jewish superpower. For centuries our ancestors weathered the worst together. History is full of examples – weddings while at war, Purim celebrations during pogroms in Europe, comedy clubs in concentration camps, birthdays in bomb shelters. Jewish community is the fount of our resilience precisely because we’re in it together.
So when our shared heart grows calluses of self-protection, when we feel less, when we retreat from each other, when community weakens, the stakes are high. The stakes are high for most everyone, as Robert Putnam’s book “Bowling Alone” documents in tracking the decline of social capital in American life – a book I highly recommend. And the stakes are especially high for spiritual life and Jewish community.
When we forget that we share one heart, we ourselves are at stake. It's why Torah says over and over again, “Circumcise the foreskin” – literally, the covering – “over your heart.” It’s so we will feel each other and not be so stuck in our own selves, perceptions, grudges and hurts that we lose our core identity of community. It's so that existential love can flow through, even amidst disagreement and strife.
That, my friends, is the spiritual purpose of Rosh Hashanah – to thin the covering over our heart that grew back during the prior year, especially the past year of tumult. And it is why Rosh Hashanah, our spiritual anniversary of biblical Creation, returns us to first principles of who we really are and who we must be. We are each called to be a shining example of what humanity can be when we all really love another as ourselves. If we really did that – if we all really loved another as ourselves, imagine what our world would be.
The very fact that Rosh Hashanah returns us to biblical Creation underscores the point. Our ancestors asked why the creator God of Genesis, knowing that we'd be social creatures, nevertheless first created only one primordial human, the first Adam. Our ancestors' answers (Sanhedrin 4:5): so nobody can say that their ancestor is better, for we all have the same one ancestor. And so nobody can say that their God is better, for we all have the same one God.
During Israel’s war of independence in 1948, while surrounding nations simultaneously tried to destroy the State of Israel at its creation, Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan – founder of the Jewish Reconstructionist Movement – published the Movement’s first High Holy Day prayerbook. With Israel fighting for its life, he wrote in that prayerbook as follows:
Beloved community also was the foundation for much that became rabbinic Judaism. Nearly 2,000 years ago, our spiritual ancestors taught אַל תִּפְרוֹשׁ מִן הַצִבּוּר (do not separate from community), lest one be inconsolable in times of strife (Pirkei Avot 2:4; Ta’anit 11a). Even more, don’t separate from community because, in truth, we can’t. We are too bound in shared fate, and in shared heart. Our tradition even holds that in important ways, we share one heart.
Take that in: we share one heart. After all, we feel it if a community member goes missing. We feel another’s hurt and we feel their joy.
This notion of a shared heart isn't just spirituality: it's also science. Neurobiologists figured out that it's really true, and they found out why: mirror neurons.
We evolved as social creatures literally wired to feel each other. Mirror neurons are a key way that we learn. Mirror neurons are why yawning really is contagious, and why emotions flow in groups. Mirror neurons are the scientific basis for empathy. They’re why we become together in community: we share one heart.
Torah taught this truth long before science figured it out. Deuteronomy 20 taught in ancient days that a frightened soldier must be sent home because fear is catchy: וְיָשֹׁב לְבֵיתוֹ וְלֹא יִמַּס אֶת־לְבַב אֶחָיו כִּלְבָבוֹ (send him home so he won’t melt their heart like his heart) – "their heart," singular. Why singular? We share one heart.
Same for celebrations. Judaism defines a hag (festival) as a time of gathering together. It is not possible to be joyful in that way except together, in community, in shared heart. And the converse is true: Proverbs 24 teaches never to celebrate an enemy’s downfall: our heart (singular) – again, one heart – must not rejoice. We share one heart.
These principles are why community always has been a Jewish superpower. For centuries our ancestors weathered the worst together. History is full of examples – weddings while at war, Purim celebrations during pogroms in Europe, comedy clubs in concentration camps, birthdays in bomb shelters. Jewish community is the fount of our resilience precisely because we’re in it together.
So when our shared heart grows calluses of self-protection, when we feel less, when we retreat from each other, when community weakens, the stakes are high. The stakes are high for most everyone, as Robert Putnam’s book “Bowling Alone” documents in tracking the decline of social capital in American life – a book I highly recommend. And the stakes are especially high for spiritual life and Jewish community.
When we forget that we share one heart, we ourselves are at stake. It's why Torah says over and over again, “Circumcise the foreskin” – literally, the covering – “over your heart.” It’s so we will feel each other and not be so stuck in our own selves, perceptions, grudges and hurts that we lose our core identity of community. It's so that existential love can flow through, even amidst disagreement and strife.
That, my friends, is the spiritual purpose of Rosh Hashanah – to thin the covering over our heart that grew back during the prior year, especially the past year of tumult. And it is why Rosh Hashanah, our spiritual anniversary of biblical Creation, returns us to first principles of who we really are and who we must be. We are each called to be a shining example of what humanity can be when we all really love another as ourselves. If we really did that – if we all really loved another as ourselves, imagine what our world would be.
The very fact that Rosh Hashanah returns us to biblical Creation underscores the point. Our ancestors asked why the creator God of Genesis, knowing that we'd be social creatures, nevertheless first created only one primordial human, the first Adam. Our ancestors' answers (Sanhedrin 4:5): so nobody can say that their ancestor is better, for we all have the same one ancestor. And so nobody can say that their God is better, for we all have the same one God.
During Israel’s war of independence in 1948, while surrounding nations simultaneously tried to destroy the State of Israel at its creation, Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan – founder of the Jewish Reconstructionist Movement – published the Movement’s first High Holy Day prayerbook. With Israel fighting for its life, he wrote in that prayerbook as follows:
“The God of Israel is also the God of all mankind. We see on all sides conflicts between nations, between religions, between races. Nevertheless we hold to the faith that God intends mankind to be one. We believe that the day will come when God’s law of justice, peace and brotherhood will prevail on earth and His unity will be manifest in the unity of mankind.”
Today we wouldn’t use such gendered language, but Kaplan’s point then is true now. It underscores why on the first day of Rosh Hashanah we read the Genesis 21 story of Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Hagar and Ishmael. It reminds us that amidst real divisions – then Israelite and Arab, today Jew and Muslim, tracing ancestors to Isaac and Ishmael – we still are cousins by our common parent, Abraham. We're still cousins! And it reminds us that whatever our divisions in Jewish life, we all still have the same spiritual ancestor, Isaac.
We forget far too often. We forget because we are hurt, because we are taught to hate, because it hurts to feel, because we don't get our way, because we don’t know what to do with the hurt, because it can seem safer to pull back. And yes, it can hurt to live Jewishly – and not just because of antisemitism. It can hurt to live Jewishly because it is our calling to love, to engage, to learn, sometimes to wrestle, sometimes to fight, and always to care.
These are difficult callings, and yet our longevity and resilience as a people testify to the power of community to ease these difficulties so we needn’t bear them alone. Our Harvard philosopher Royce was right that “life means nothing ... [except as] members of a community.” Dr. King was right that beloved community is humanity’s best hope. Judaism is right in teaching us not to separate from community, because essentially we can’t – not really, not at acceptable cost. We share one heart.
And community does a few more things: it sweetens the journey, it cultivates our heart, and it holds us accountable to be our best selves. If we pay close attention, we’ll even notice that if we hurt another, we also hurt ourselves. Why? Say it with me: We share one heart.
Please notice. Notice how you are in community and especially spiritual community. Membership in beloved community isn’t merely showing up: it’s a heart courageous enough to open, to touch and be touched. It’s about casting our lot with a greater good in all our beautiful, complex and sometimes maddening diversity – which ultimately is our great strength. Notice if your heart is calloused over, and why. Lean into these precious days – even amidst all that is happening, even amidst the hurt – to awaken your heart, thin its protective veil and feel again the fullness of what poet Mary Oliver called our "one wild and precious life."
We all enter life, and ultimately we all leave. In between we each have the choice to share our one heart, sit at our big and messy table, celebrate, mourn, learn and love together. In these pivotal days especially, may we each choose wisely. Amidst all that’s unfolding, may we draw ever closer together in community, drinking from that deep well of soul wisdom and core love that sustained our ancestors in their times of trouble.
And in that merit, may these opening days of 5785 lead toward a better year for us, our loved ones, and our world.
We forget far too often. We forget because we are hurt, because we are taught to hate, because it hurts to feel, because we don't get our way, because we don’t know what to do with the hurt, because it can seem safer to pull back. And yes, it can hurt to live Jewishly – and not just because of antisemitism. It can hurt to live Jewishly because it is our calling to love, to engage, to learn, sometimes to wrestle, sometimes to fight, and always to care.
These are difficult callings, and yet our longevity and resilience as a people testify to the power of community to ease these difficulties so we needn’t bear them alone. Our Harvard philosopher Royce was right that “life means nothing ... [except as] members of a community.” Dr. King was right that beloved community is humanity’s best hope. Judaism is right in teaching us not to separate from community, because essentially we can’t – not really, not at acceptable cost. We share one heart.
And community does a few more things: it sweetens the journey, it cultivates our heart, and it holds us accountable to be our best selves. If we pay close attention, we’ll even notice that if we hurt another, we also hurt ourselves. Why? Say it with me: We share one heart.
Please notice. Notice how you are in community and especially spiritual community. Membership in beloved community isn’t merely showing up: it’s a heart courageous enough to open, to touch and be touched. It’s about casting our lot with a greater good in all our beautiful, complex and sometimes maddening diversity – which ultimately is our great strength. Notice if your heart is calloused over, and why. Lean into these precious days – even amidst all that is happening, even amidst the hurt – to awaken your heart, thin its protective veil and feel again the fullness of what poet Mary Oliver called our "one wild and precious life."
We all enter life, and ultimately we all leave. In between we each have the choice to share our one heart, sit at our big and messy table, celebrate, mourn, learn and love together. In these pivotal days especially, may we each choose wisely. Amidst all that’s unfolding, may we draw ever closer together in community, drinking from that deep well of soul wisdom and core love that sustained our ancestors in their times of trouble.
And in that merit, may these opening days of 5785 lead toward a better year for us, our loved ones, and our world.
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