 | Rabbi David introduces our High Holy Day theme for 5785 amidst the anxiety of this hour. We remember that the core mitzvah of Jewish life is to love – not to be loved – come what may. And we remember that, even when deep pain causes us to lose this elemental love, we can find it anew. |
By Rabbi David Evan Markus
Note: These remarks note numerous forms of societal tumult that have come in recent years. New York's Rules Governing Judicial Conduct ban me from making public comment that might cause my impartiality reasonably to be questioned, including many comments that are partisan in nature, and the Mideast conflict's root causes or the merits of views about it. I take no position on any of these, instead focusing my comments on the spiritual call to love, what happens when life chases love out of us, and how what happens next can transform us.
Shanah tovah. Welcome to Jewish year 5785 zakhur la-tov – may it be recalled for good – for us, our loved ones and our world.
Each Rosh Hashanah, we say that this new year is like no other, a unique creation, a seed of potential rising within us and around us. Each year we say it. Each year we mean it. Each year it’s true.
Note: These remarks note numerous forms of societal tumult that have come in recent years. New York's Rules Governing Judicial Conduct ban me from making public comment that might cause my impartiality reasonably to be questioned, including many comments that are partisan in nature, and the Mideast conflict's root causes or the merits of views about it. I take no position on any of these, instead focusing my comments on the spiritual call to love, what happens when life chases love out of us, and how what happens next can transform us.
Shanah tovah. Welcome to Jewish year 5785 zakhur la-tov – may it be recalled for good – for us, our loved ones and our world.
Each Rosh Hashanah, we say that this new year is like no other, a unique creation, a seed of potential rising within us and around us. Each year we say it. Each year we mean it. Each year it’s true.
This year all the more. We know what’s at stake for the U.S., the Mideast and the world. Israel is at war. Antisemitism is surging. Brutality maims innocents. Fear and fury grip politics. A nation divides against itself. Global climate teeters on a tipping point.
After so much for so long, many hearts are agitated, exhausted, bruised, stuck, skittish to feel fully, even walled off in self-defense. But we can’t afford to retreat and hope for the best. Whoever we are, whatever our politics or beliefs, 5785 will drive the future of the United States and democracy, Israel and Judaism, pluralism and our planet.
We didn’t come here to pretend otherwise: that’s not who we are. We didn’t come here to do what’s easy: that’s never been our way. We come here to renew our best selves: only our best can meet this moment. We come here to affirm that we are equal to this moment. Our ancestors flow through us, and theirs, up the ladder of time. They faced humanity’s worst and achieved miracles. If they could, we can.
Our question tonight is how. What is it about our spiritual legacy that, century after century, lifts us by our bootstraps amidst worst fears and longest odds? What can turn the ordinary into the extraordinary? What turbo-charges the audacity, the hutzpah, to make deserts bloom, bridge divisions, and transform great pain into birth pangs of rebirth?
Tradition’s answer is the core of our creed, the heart of Torah, and our High Holy Day theme for 5785. In a word, it is love – even when our world seems loveless, even while so many battles rage.
After so much for so long, many hearts are agitated, exhausted, bruised, stuck, skittish to feel fully, even walled off in self-defense. But we can’t afford to retreat and hope for the best. Whoever we are, whatever our politics or beliefs, 5785 will drive the future of the United States and democracy, Israel and Judaism, pluralism and our planet.
We didn’t come here to pretend otherwise: that’s not who we are. We didn’t come here to do what’s easy: that’s never been our way. We come here to renew our best selves: only our best can meet this moment. We come here to affirm that we are equal to this moment. Our ancestors flow through us, and theirs, up the ladder of time. They faced humanity’s worst and achieved miracles. If they could, we can.
Our question tonight is how. What is it about our spiritual legacy that, century after century, lifts us by our bootstraps amidst worst fears and longest odds? What can turn the ordinary into the extraordinary? What turbo-charges the audacity, the hutzpah, to make deserts bloom, bridge divisions, and transform great pain into birth pangs of rebirth?
Tradition’s answer is the core of our creed, the heart of Torah, and our High Holy Day theme for 5785. In a word, it is love – even when our world seems loveless, even while so many battles rage.
Let’s be clear about what we mean. Judaism’s love is more than a feeling. It’s a way of life, a calling, a catalyst, an eternal flame, a power to dare, a portal in time, a shining of spirit. We say אַהֲבַת עוֹלָם אָהַבְתִיךָ (God loves you with unending love). וְאָהַבְתָ אֶת ה׳ אֱלוֹהֵיךָ בְּכָל לְבַבְךָ (Love your God with all your heart). אֲנִי לְדוֹדִי וְדוֹדִי לִי (I am my beloved's and my beloved is mine). וְאָהַבְתָ לְרֵעַךָ כָּמוֹךָ (Love another as yourself). וַאֲהַבְתֶם אֶת הַגֵר כִּי גֵרִים הֱיִיתֶם בְּאֶרֶץ מִצְרָיִם (Love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt). These are keystones of Jewish life. It’s why Rabbi Shai Held teaches that “Judaism is love.”
This love isn’t sugar coating or a cover up. It’s not “thoughts and prayers” or blind to reality. This love sees clearly and feels fully. It’s both soft and tough, quiet and fierce. What does it ask of us if it’s not reciprocated? amidst hate, war, political turmoil and climate crisis? We need real answers to keep our hearts open and live our creed. That’s why our theme for 5785 is love:
This love isn’t sugar coating or a cover up. It’s not “thoughts and prayers” or blind to reality. This love sees clearly and feels fully. It’s both soft and tough, quiet and fierce. What does it ask of us if it’s not reciprocated? amidst hate, war, political turmoil and climate crisis? We need real answers to keep our hearts open and live our creed. That’s why our theme for 5785 is love:
- The Heart of Creation: Renewing Our World – for tonight
- Our Shared Heart: Calling Community – for tomorrow, RH1
- When Hearts Harden – for Friday, RH2
- The Heart of Forgiveness – for Kol Nidre evening
- On Love and War – for Yom Kippur morning
- Undying Love – for Yizkor on Yom Kippur afternoon
Here’s a recent banner with these words at an Israeli train station during the Gaza war. Both love and war? We’ll get to that on Yom Kippur.
Parents, gardeners and artists know that creating or tending anything asks love – an impulse to care beyond self, an optimism that creation and care are possible. This love is wondrous, and sometimes hurts. Mothers don’t need me to mansplain childbirth. Parents hurt if children hurt. In this life, much can struggle, falter, crumble and die.
Creation is risky – yet in our spiritual tradition, the risk is worth taking. To Jewish luminary Abraham Joshua Heschel, the very fact of creation proves that God wasn’t enough for God: otherwise there’d be no point. Love's impulse for relationship, for connection beyond self, sparked tonight’s Yom Harat Olam, birthday of the Big Bang – light from darkness, life from lifelessness.
And our world is a mess. What’s more, our ancestors figured that a God worthy of that title had to know that we and our world would be a mess – yet here we are. What are we to a creator of a messy world, and how are we to be in it? Torah's opening words aim light at these questions that are so pivotal precisely now (Genesis 1:1-5):
Parents, gardeners and artists know that creating or tending anything asks love – an impulse to care beyond self, an optimism that creation and care are possible. This love is wondrous, and sometimes hurts. Mothers don’t need me to mansplain childbirth. Parents hurt if children hurt. In this life, much can struggle, falter, crumble and die.
Creation is risky – yet in our spiritual tradition, the risk is worth taking. To Jewish luminary Abraham Joshua Heschel, the very fact of creation proves that God wasn’t enough for God: otherwise there’d be no point. Love's impulse for relationship, for connection beyond self, sparked tonight’s Yom Harat Olam, birthday of the Big Bang – light from darkness, life from lifelessness.
And our world is a mess. What’s more, our ancestors figured that a God worthy of that title had to know that we and our world would be a mess – yet here we are. What are we to a creator of a messy world, and how are we to be in it? Torah's opening words aim light at these questions that are so pivotal precisely now (Genesis 1:1-5):
| בְּרֵאשִׁית בָּרָא אֱלֹהִים אֵת הַשָּׁמַיִם וְאֵת הָאָרֶץ: וְהָאָרֶץ הָיְתָה תֹהוּ וָבֹהוּ וְחשֶׁךְ עַל־פְּנֵי תְהוֹם וְרוּחַ אֱלֹהִים מְרַחֶפֶת עַל־פְּנֵי הַמָּיִם: וַיֹּאמֶר אֱלֹהִים יְהִי־אוֹר וַיְהִי־אוֹר: וַיַּרְא אֱלֹהִים אֶת־ הָאוֹר כִּי־טוֹב וַיַּבְדֵּל אֱלֹהִים בֵּין הָאוֹר וּבֵין הַחֹשֶׁךְ: וַיִּקְרָא אֱלֹהִים לָאוֹר יוֹם וְלַחֹשֶׁךְ קָרָא לָיְלָה וַיְהִי־עֶרֶב וַיְהִי־ בֹקֶר יוֹם אֶחָד | When God began to create the heavens and the earth, the earth was chaos: darkness was on the face of the deep. God’s spirit hovered over the face of the waters. God said, “Light, be!” – and light was. God saw that the light was good, and God separated between the light and the darkness. God called the light “day” and the darkness God called “night.” There was evening and there was morning – a first day. |
Did we learn that the Biblical creation began with nothingness? Look again: earthly chaos and deep darkness pre-existed creation. The point of creation is to order chaos and illuminate darkness. That’s what we call God: powering a better future, lighting the way. That’s what love does: olam hesed yibaneh (the world is built by love). Love is that light, the holy power to begin transforming chaos.
For all of us wrestling spirituality and Judaism, struggling to align them with the brokenness of the world, the implications can be huge. The biblical God didn’t create today’s mess: chaos is baked in. God is about connection, love, order and light – not chaos or darkness. And as for God, so for us: in us flows this same power, the same drive for connection, that is love's power to re-create our world.
We’re born naturally loving. We may forget if we are hurt, if the world seems loveless, when chaos storms. But my teacher, Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, called us the world’s white blood cells – innate healers drawn to infections of injustice, suffering and fear. Even if chaos exhausts us and triggers our frailties, holy love is so very close (Zohar Aharei Mot 41:243):
For all of us wrestling spirituality and Judaism, struggling to align them with the brokenness of the world, the implications can be huge. The biblical God didn’t create today’s mess: chaos is baked in. God is about connection, love, order and light – not chaos or darkness. And as for God, so for us: in us flows this same power, the same drive for connection, that is love's power to re-create our world.
We’re born naturally loving. We may forget if we are hurt, if the world seems loveless, when chaos storms. But my teacher, Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, called us the world’s white blood cells – innate healers drawn to infections of injustice, suffering and fear. Even if chaos exhausts us and triggers our frailties, holy love is so very close (Zohar Aharei Mot 41:243):
| בְּשַׁעֲתָא דְּבָרָא קב׳׳ה עָלְמָא, בָּעָא לְמִבְרֵי בַּר נָשׁ, אַמְלִיךְ בְּאוֹרַיְיתָא, אָמְרָה קַמֵּיהּ, תִּבְעֵי לְמִבְרֵי הַאי בַּר נָשׁ, זַמִּין הוּא לְמֶחֱטֵי קַמָּךְ, זַמִּין הוּא לְאַרְגָּזָא קַמָּךְ. אִי תַּעֲבִיד לֵיהּ כְּעוֹבָדוֹי, הָא עָלְמָא לָא יָכִיל לְמֵיקָם קַמָּךְ, כ׳׳ש הַהוּא בַּר נָשׁ. אָמַר לֵיהּ, וְכִי לְמַגָּנָא אִתְקָרִינָא אֵל רַחוּם וְחַנּוּן אֶרֶךְ אַפַּיִם | At the time that the Holy Blessed One created the world, Torah foresaw humanity and spoke to God saying: “This humanity You are about to create will sin – and if You do to them as they deserve, they will not survive.” God answered Torah: “Is it for nothing that you call Me (Exodus 34:6) ‘God, compassionate, graceful, patient, greatly loving and truthful’?” |
In this view, God knew how messy we and our world would be, but created anyway because creation’s purpose is relationship. Our imperfections, even this era’s chaos, summon us to reach back toward love. Only by compassion and grace, patience, great love and truth can anyone or anything be redeemed. Our capacity and calling to bounce back and re-claim love is built into the fabric of spiritual life.
Which can be very difficult. Just ask Lynda Blackmon-Lowery.
Some of us met Lynda last spring during our civil rights journey in Selma, Alabama. Lynda was the youngest victim of Bloody Sunday in March 1965. A 14-year-old Lynda, trained in the nonviolence and love at the heart of the civil rights movement, joined John Lewis and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at the Edmund Bridge in Selma. Segregationist police beat them. Lynda needed 35 stitches to her head. Days later, bandaged and oozing, Lynda marched with Dr. King and Rabbi Heschel from Selma to Montgomery for voting rights.
The landmark Civil Rights Act of 1965 followed just months later – a triumph of right over wrong, love over hate. Lynda spent her adult life teaching love's power to re-make our world. Lynda’s faith taught Lynda to love the segregationists, even the officer who beat her.
Then Lynda’s life took an unexpected turn. In 2015, CBS News found archived footage of Bloody Sunday, which showed the face of the Alabama National Guardsman who had beaten Lynda. CBS showed Lynda this footage on the 50th anniversary of Bloody Sunday.
For the first time, Lynda saw her attacker. “Suddenly the love was gone,” she quivered. “The love I lived and taught flew out of me. For the first time, I felt grief, fear and hate. It ate me alive.”
That’s how many in our world feel tonight. It doesn’t matter if we ourselves were physically beaten. When over 1,100 innocent Israelis were slaughtered at a music festival on October 7, all of Israel felt bludgeoned. Many of us, too. Fear and hate surged like the chaos of primordial darkness. Haters celebrated. War followed. Devastation followed in Israel, even more in Gaza. And tonight it’s far from over.
While the Mideast isn’t the civil rights movement, and the earth’s most complex geopolitics isn’t Jim Crow, fear and hate operate much the same. Chaos and darkness are catchy. Both can choke off love.
But Lynda’s story wasn’t over, and neither is ours. A year after seeing that footage, she read a book by John Lewis – the same John Lewis who 50 years earlier marched with her in Selma. He wrote:
Which can be very difficult. Just ask Lynda Blackmon-Lowery.
Some of us met Lynda last spring during our civil rights journey in Selma, Alabama. Lynda was the youngest victim of Bloody Sunday in March 1965. A 14-year-old Lynda, trained in the nonviolence and love at the heart of the civil rights movement, joined John Lewis and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at the Edmund Bridge in Selma. Segregationist police beat them. Lynda needed 35 stitches to her head. Days later, bandaged and oozing, Lynda marched with Dr. King and Rabbi Heschel from Selma to Montgomery for voting rights.
The landmark Civil Rights Act of 1965 followed just months later – a triumph of right over wrong, love over hate. Lynda spent her adult life teaching love's power to re-make our world. Lynda’s faith taught Lynda to love the segregationists, even the officer who beat her.
Then Lynda’s life took an unexpected turn. In 2015, CBS News found archived footage of Bloody Sunday, which showed the face of the Alabama National Guardsman who had beaten Lynda. CBS showed Lynda this footage on the 50th anniversary of Bloody Sunday.
For the first time, Lynda saw her attacker. “Suddenly the love was gone,” she quivered. “The love I lived and taught flew out of me. For the first time, I felt grief, fear and hate. It ate me alive.”
That’s how many in our world feel tonight. It doesn’t matter if we ourselves were physically beaten. When over 1,100 innocent Israelis were slaughtered at a music festival on October 7, all of Israel felt bludgeoned. Many of us, too. Fear and hate surged like the chaos of primordial darkness. Haters celebrated. War followed. Devastation followed in Israel, even more in Gaza. And tonight it’s far from over.
While the Mideast isn’t the civil rights movement, and the earth’s most complex geopolitics isn’t Jim Crow, fear and hate operate much the same. Chaos and darkness are catchy. Both can choke off love.
But Lynda’s story wasn’t over, and neither is ours. A year after seeing that footage, she read a book by John Lewis – the same John Lewis who 50 years earlier marched with her in Selma. He wrote:
You are a light. You are the light. Never let anyone – any person or any force – dampen, dim or diminish your light... It is the source of hope. [So] release the need to hate, to harbor division, and the enticement of revenge. Release all bitterness. Hold only love, only peace in your heart, knowing that the battle of good to overcome evil is already won.
Lynda took these words to her pastor – perplexed how to live them after what she experienced, knowing that Congressman Lewis did, too. He even funded armies and voted for military intervention. Is that love? Her pastor answered much as Rabbi Shai Held teaches that Judaism is love. Each in their own way, both said this:
Love can mean fighting in the ways we must. Love doesn't mean letting others cause harm with impunity. Love doesn't mean pacifism, or tolerating abuse, or letting hate proliferate. But most times, our confusion about love is that we ourselves feel unloved amidst the hurt of our lives and the world that let it happen. But the Bible commands love – not to be loved. The command is to love.
tttttttJohn Lewis’ words changed Lynda’s life. In time Lynda learned how to love again – not despite her attacker’s face but because of it. She learned to see that her attacker, like her, was born with innate ability to love. Life taught him to forget, and now taught her to forget. And that’s why the command is to love, not to be loved, because we are that light – the same light that split the darkness. We can choose to love even if others do not. We can't make them choose, but we can choose to do what's right ourselves even when it's hard.
Learning how to love again healed Lynda to release grief, fear and hate. This second love, Lynda whispered to me, was resilient, fully real, totally alive.
It can be much the same for us. Terrorists, religious vigilantes, antisemites, Islamophobes, homophobes, misogynists, white supremacists – all were born with the same innate ability to love as our own. Life taught them to forget. Perhaps they’ll never remember, though occasionally some do. When lives and safety are at stake, we may need to fight how we must.
But we also must not forget who we are and who we must be. We are children of God, daughters and sons of light born to shine into the darkness, white blood cells drawn to fight infection, creators called to transform chaos. The hurts we absorbed and caused, the stakes of this year’s election, the antisemitism out there, the anxiety in here, the exhaustion of it all – we must not let them steal from us who we are. Otherwise our faith can become calcified or brittle, a self-defensive cover of self-righteousness that ultimately is a prison of fear and pain. The command is not to be loved. The command is to love – broken hearts and all.
Reb Nahman of Breslov taught that “there’s more room in a broken heart” – more room for compassion, for hope, for love, for pain, for repentance, for healing, for the fullness of life itself. So whoever you are, however your heart is – limber or stuck, quiet or anxious, even broken – these High Holy Days are for you. In these Days of Awe, together we’ll explore the way forward through our gauntlet.
May these sacred days turn our hearts to rediscover the fierce love at our core – the love that is our birthright, our sacred calling, our moral duty. And in that merit, may 5785 bring new blessings for us, our loved ones, and our world that needs all the love it can get.
Learning how to love again healed Lynda to release grief, fear and hate. This second love, Lynda whispered to me, was resilient, fully real, totally alive.
It can be much the same for us. Terrorists, religious vigilantes, antisemites, Islamophobes, homophobes, misogynists, white supremacists – all were born with the same innate ability to love as our own. Life taught them to forget. Perhaps they’ll never remember, though occasionally some do. When lives and safety are at stake, we may need to fight how we must.
But we also must not forget who we are and who we must be. We are children of God, daughters and sons of light born to shine into the darkness, white blood cells drawn to fight infection, creators called to transform chaos. The hurts we absorbed and caused, the stakes of this year’s election, the antisemitism out there, the anxiety in here, the exhaustion of it all – we must not let them steal from us who we are. Otherwise our faith can become calcified or brittle, a self-defensive cover of self-righteousness that ultimately is a prison of fear and pain. The command is not to be loved. The command is to love – broken hearts and all.
Reb Nahman of Breslov taught that “there’s more room in a broken heart” – more room for compassion, for hope, for love, for pain, for repentance, for healing, for the fullness of life itself. So whoever you are, however your heart is – limber or stuck, quiet or anxious, even broken – these High Holy Days are for you. In these Days of Awe, together we’ll explore the way forward through our gauntlet.
May these sacred days turn our hearts to rediscover the fierce love at our core – the love that is our birthright, our sacred calling, our moral duty. And in that merit, may 5785 bring new blessings for us, our loved ones, and our world that needs all the love it can get.
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