Sermon for Yom Kippur morning 5786
October 2, 2025
Among the first pieces of liturgy that we recited in our service this morning was the blessing for Torah study. You can find it on the bottom of page 329. The phrase used in that traditional blessing to describe that particular action is “la’asok bedivrei Torah”. Our machzor translates this as “the mitzvah that words of Torah must occupy us in all we do each day.”
That Hebrew root “Ayin-Samech-Koof” also has the sense of active give and take, of argument for the sake of coming to a better understanding. The writers of the Talmud even described this act of occupying ourselves with Torah study as a veritable “war” --- with scholars battling one another in an attempt to defend their own interpretations of ambiguous texts.
For example, in Tractate Megilah we learn:
״מְשִׁיבֵי מִלְחָמָה״ — שֶׁנּוֹשְׂאִין וְנוֹתְנִין בְּמִלְחַמְתָּהּ שֶׁל תּוֹרָה.
“Them that turn back the battle”; refers to those that give and take in their discussion of halakha in the battle of understanding the Torah.[1]
And in Tractate Berachot, Rabban Gamliel refers to those who “battle” in this “war of Torah” as
בַּעֲלֵי תְּרִיסִין
“masters of the shields”.[2]
But the underlying ethos of those descriptions was that such heated debates were done with respect and humility. In the well-known description in Pirke Avot, they were makhlekot lshem shamayim/ arguments for the sake of Heaven.
As we learn in Pirke Avot:
כָּל מַחֲלֹקֶת שֶׁהִיא לְשֵׁם שָׁמַיִם, סוֹפָהּ לְהִתְקַיֵּם. וְשֶׁאֵינָהּ לְשֵׁם שָׁמַיִם, אֵין סוֹפָהּ לְהִתְקַיֵּם
Every dispute that is for the sake of Heaven, will in the end endure; But one that is not for the sake of Heaven, will not endure. [3]
In our blessing for Torah study some prayerbooks translate the phrase “La’asok bedivrei torah” as “to ENGAGE with words of Torah.
“Engagement” --- now that’s a loaded word!
It can mean emotional involvement or commitment, as when two people become engaged to get married.
Or it might imply a quite different scenario --- a hostile encounter, in the sense of a military engagement between opposing armies.
Depending on the type of “engagement” we envision in any particular situation, we might sometimes find it more prudent to decline to engage --- especially if the prospective “engagement” is unlikely to be a respectful, humble search for truth like the scholarly debates by the likes of Hillel and Shammai.
As the saying goes in the world of online forums – Don’t feed the trolls.
It often seems that that’s the best advice regarding online debates about Israel.
Trollish behavior! To my mind, that’s how I would characterize some of the hateful language we find online and in public discourse that accuses Israel of being a settler colonialist enterprise of white Europeans having no legitimate connection to the region and unworthy of existing.
The war in Gaza, now almost two years old since that horrid day of mass terror perpetrated by Hamas and its fellow terrorists on October 7th, 2023, has given rise to an unprecedented level of hostility against Israel. Israel was the victim of that attack, yet charges against Israel of committing genocide were already being thrown around within days of the Hamas attacks – weeks before the start of any Israeli military response.[4]
I hate talking about any of this because I know that doing so risks the sort of “engagement” that has more in common with war than with marriage.
Last year at Yom Kippur I barely addressed the topic before pivoting to the idea that it would be better for the health of our community to keep our opinions to ourselves.
As I said in my 2024 Kol Nidre sermon:
My inclination is to be a peace-maker – to put metaphorical band aids on our communal hurts and just give them time to heal on their own with the passage of time. I know this modus operandi does not work for all situations. But I really do appreciate band aids! And I pray that, as a congregation, as a society, as a world – we be graced with the ability and the opportunity to find common ground without insisting upon identical ground.
That’s still my inclination.
The Jewish people are engaged with one another these days in fierce disagreement over the nature of Israel’s response to October 7th. And increasingly the fight has escalated into a battle over the legitimacy of Zionism itself.
This is a very, very painful place for any Jew to find oneself in.
The issues are so close to one’s heart that arguing about them is likely to be destructive.
Some Jews feel that other Jews are violating basic Jewish values by supporting Israel.
Other Jews feel that those who would abandon support for Israel are traitors to our people.
As for me, the connection between all of us here in the diaspora --- with the land, state and society of Israel is a fundamental core of my Jewish identity.
As the psalmist says:
If I forget you, O Jerusalem,
let my right hand wither;
let my tongue stick to my palate
if I cease to think of you,
if I do not keep Jerusalem in memory
even at my happiest hour.[5]
I was comforted by a recent essay by Jay Michaelson that appeared in the Jewish Forward in which he speaks to this situation:
It was an article of his published on September 22nd entitled:
“This Rosh Hashanah, give your rabbi a break”[6]
He writes:
Regardless of where their congregation stands politically, [Rabbis] are torn between right, left and center. If a shul is left-leaning, it’s between the anti-Zionists on one side and the pro-Israel centrists on the other. If the shul is right-leaning, it’s between the bring-them-home-now folks who support Israel but want a swift end to the war and the Israel hawks who want to keep fighting until Hamas is destroyed.
Even if the congregation has found ways to accommodate nuance, complexity and disagreement, I know rabbis who can’t say what they believe because they’ll alienate an active member, or a donor, or a schmendrik with a loud voice. Did the rabbi condemn the loss of innocent lives in Gaza and the fact that Hamas is still holding innocent Israeli hostages? Which did she do first? Did he make a false equivalence between the two sides? If so, which side should she have favored? Did the prayer for the state of Israel come before the prayer for peace, or after? Did the rabbi come out against the war too soon, too late, or never?
A bit later in the piece he writes:
Rabbis are afraid to say anything, but also afraid to say nothing. They, like the rest of us, feel some degree of ambivalence — a majority of American Jews support the state of Israel, but oppose the practices of the Netanyahu government. Already, without getting into the topics of food distribution networks and the biases of major media outlets, that’s complicated.
And yet, rabbis tell me, even a single misstep to the right or to the left invites criticism that, really, should have no place in a synagogue community.
But my favorite part of his essay comes towards the end when he offers this observation:
For a long time, I found it preposterous when people didn’t address the proverbial ‘elephant in the room.’ We’re all thinking about it, I’d say to myself, so why not say it?
Now, let’s just say I have a new appreciation for elephants in the room, and simply letting them sit there. The Israel/Palestine elephant is just too hard to talk about in the ways that we usually talk about things. It is too fraught for ordinary discourse, let alone vituperative tweets and emails.
And some of this is actually a good thing. It’s good to have strong opinions about a defining moral issue of our time, and, again, I’m not saying we shouldn’t have those opinions, or shouldn’t protest, debate, or take action on the basis of them. Absolutely, the pursuit of justice (as we perceive it) is a moral and Jewish imperative.
But sometimes, in some times and places, the best thing to do is, as the kids say, to STFU for the sake of shalom bayit [domestic harmony]. I want to suggest that congregational life is often not the best venue for vitriolic political debates, precisely because we are so close to one another. And I especially want to suggest that it’s unhelpful to expect our rabbis and cantors to share and demonstrate our political views. We share many other things: our lives, religions, communities, and many though not all of our values. That is more important than ‘taking a stand’ in a way that, definitionally, will exclude some even as it includes others.
Let me offer a caveat here: I think we in this congregation have been doing a good job during these past two years of remaining in community and friendship with one another during times when we could just as well be at each other’s throats over conflicting views about Israel.
And I firmly believe that it should continue to be the case that there are no political litmus tests for being counted as beloved members of this congregation.
******
There is a traditional teaching in Judaism that we should not utter a blessing in vain. In particular, if we say a blessing involving the formula “asher kidshanu bemitzvotav vetzivanu” / “who has sanctified us with Divine commandments and commanded us to do such and such action --- then whatever that specific action is that we’re mentioning at the end of that blessing ---- we should immediately go ahead and do it.
The traditional understanding of “la’asok bedivrei Torah”/ “engaging with words of Torah – is that one can do so by turning to study texts not only from the written Torah (i.e. the five books of Moses), but also from the so-called Oral Torah (i.e., the Talmud and other classic Jewish texts).
In traditional prayer books one of the most well-known classic Jewish texts that is recited in response to the blessing for Torah study is the passage from the Talmudic tractate Masechet Shabbat that lists various types of virtuous deeds that bring merit to us both in this world and beyond.
Let’s turn to the bottom of page 331 to read it again together, as we did earlier this morning:
These are acts and words whose fruit we can enjoy both in this world and store up in the cornucopia of the world to come; honoring father and mother, deeds of lovingkindness, regular attendance at the house of study, hospitality to strangers, visiting the sick, giving support to new brides and bridegrooms, honoring the dead by attending the funeral, sincerity in prayer, and making peace with one another. Equivalent to them all is the study of Torah which motivates us to perform the rest.[7]
I find myself obsessed these days with the part about “making peace with one another.” -- or, in the original Hebrew -- הֲבָאַת שָׁלוֹם שֶׁבֵּין אָדָם לַחֲבֵרוֹ.
I pray for peace and reconciliation in the world at large --- especially between Israelis and Palestinians.
But no less important to me is that we continue to the best of our abilities to have peace and friendship amongst ourselves.
At any rate, that’s my focus as your rabbi.
Tzom kal u’gmar chatimah tovah/ May the remaining hours of the Yom Kippur fast be easy for those of us observing that tradition – and may we all be inscribed and sealed for a good year. A year of peace and good fortune for us, for all Israel, and for all the world.
Amen.
© Rabbi David Steinberg
October 2025/ Yom Kippur 5786
[1] Megillah 15b:4 with Connections
[2] Berakhot 27b:16 with Connections
[4] https://jewishcurrents.org/a-textbook-case-of-genocide
[5] Psalms 137: 5-6
[6] https://forward.com/opinion/771133/why-you-should-give-your-rabbi-a-break-this-rosh-hashanah/
[7] Shabbat 127a (slightly paraphrased)
