Every year, the High Holy Days ask us to pause long enough to hear questions that the noise of ordinary life makes easy to avoid. Who are we becoming? What have we al lowed to shape us? Where
have we fallen short? What do we love enough to protect, repair, and carry forward?
We enter 5787 at a moment of profound division and unease. America is marking its 250th anniversary even as Americans increasingly struggle to recognize one another as members of the same national community. Antisemitism has made many Jews more cautious about expressing who we are. Anxiety and outrage follow us through our phones and into our homes. Israel, once a source of uncomplicated connection for many Jews, has become a subject that can divide families, friendships, and congregations.
It is tempting to believe that unity requires agreement. If only everyone could see what we see, understand what we understand, and reach the conclusions we have reached, perhaps we could
finally become one. But that has never been the Jewish understanding of community.
When the Israelites arrived at Mount Sinai, the Torah describes them encamping in the singular. Rashi explains that they stood there k’ish echad b’ lev echad, “like one person with one heart.” Not one mind. One heart.
The people at Sinai didn’t become identical. They carried different experiences, fears, hopes, and understandings. The Judaism that emerged from that moment would become a tradition of argument, interpretation, minority opinions, and sacred disagreement. Sinai didn’t give the Jewish people one mind. It gave a people with many minds one heart.
That teaching will guide us through these High Holy Days. What would it mean for Americans with many minds to recover a shared heart—not by denying our country’s fai lures, but by loving it enough to cal l it toward its highest promises? What would it mean to respond to antisemitism by becoming more Jewish, rather than merely more afraid—to remember that the guards protect the doorway, but prayer, music, Torah, friendship, and joy are what wait for us inside? What would it mean to care about a broken world without al lowing every crisis to break something within us—to cultivate menuchat hanefesh, a settledness of soul that helps us respond with courage and discernment rather than permanent anxiety?
These questions don’t have easy answers.The High Holy Days don’t ask us to pretend that they do. They ask us to enter the questions honestly and together.
My hope for 5787 isn’t that we will eliminate disagreement. It is that we wi l l refuse to let disagreement become contempt, fear become identity, anxiety become virtue, or criticism become abandonment. May the year ahead give us hearts large enough to hold complexity without surrendering relationship. May we argue honestly, listen generously, rest deeply, and live joyfully. And may we enter the new year as we stood at Sinai: many minds, one people, and a single heart. Shanah tovah.
