Words of Wisdom from the Bimah

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This Rosh Hashanah was an inflection point for many American Jews. Amid the tyranny of bad news, it was a time to silence the incessant noise and absorb words of wisdom, comfort, and purpose emanating from the bimah.

For me, this Rosh Hashanah felt similar to the dark days after October 7, when some of us found light in our Jewish community and synagogue. The first Shabbat after October 7 was my son’s Bar Mitzvah. As hard as the six days prior to his Bar Mitzvah were, we found community, family, and solace at shul. While I am not particularly observant, I realized that Judaism is prepared to nurture us back to health in ways I did not anticipate. For example, Judaism was prepared with a prayer for the captives, which we recite to this day for those still held in Gaza.

Our rabbis do not have all the answers, but they have some, especially when they hold up a mirror to our collective struggle and pain, and speak about it with refreshing candor. What I find most helpful is when the leading rabbis in our communities urge us to see what many of us choose to ignore, because turning away or tuning out is easier than facing what may seem too hard. The truth is that we have to face, confront, and try to overcome our challenges, and it’s easier to face them together.

On this Rosh Hashanah, many rabbis focused on what is dividing us and eroding our moral compass amid political tumult and ongoing war. They expressed pain, decried our divisions and judgment, reminded us to find empathy, and pointed out where we could collectively do better in the new year.

While I experienced one of the following sermons in person, I’m grateful to have experienced sermons across the country via YouTube, which many of you sent to me. Here are a few Rosh Hashanah sermon highlights that I want to share with all of you.

Words of Wisdom from the Bimah

Rabbi Angela Buchdahl, Central Synagogue, New York:

“Is our capacity for empathy so finite? Are our hearts so small that if we increase our empathy for certain people, we need to reduce it for others… until one day we conclude that the other side is not deserving of any compassion?”

In her sermon focused on empathy, Rabbi Buchdahl focuses on how difficult and divisive it has become to speak about the war in Gaza, critiquing the false binary between expressing love for Israel and empathy for Palestinians. She laments how conversations about Israel and Gaza, and broader political issues, are eroding compassion and deepening divisions among us. She addresses a growing cultural argument that empathy is weak or dangerous and emphasizes how Judaism teaches us that empathy must be limitless. Rabbi Buchdahl urges us to see that empathy is not a betrayal but a moral obligation.

The sermon closes with a moral charge for the new year: to resist hardening our hearts, to embrace empathy as Judaism’s “superpower,” and to cultivate “a heart of many rooms” – expansive enough to care for both our own people and the stranger, for all of God’s children.

Rabbi Sharon Brous, IKAR, Los Angeles:

“If we are to rescue the soul of Judaism, of the Jewish people, it will be through the reclamation of our moral instinct, our moral voice, our conscience. It will be through embracing that small, precious space between prophecy and distinct possibility and insisting that there is another way. And that is the path that I pray we will have the courage in this new year to pursue.”

Rabbi Brous focuses her sermon on the war in Gaza, framing it as a “spiritual catastrophe” for Judaism, echoing Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harari’s warning that Israel’s current trajectory is moving away from the core values of learning, debate, and compassion. Rabbi Brous acknowledges the pervasive fear and antisemitism Jews face worldwide, while also lamenting the inability of many outside our community to see Jewish pain. Amid these multiple truths, she insists silence is impossible, even at the risk of backlash.

Rabbi Brous critiques the Israeli government’s descent into extremism, accusing its far-right leaders of abandoning Jewish ethical traditions, prolonging war in Gaza for their own political survival, disregarding the sanctity of life, and turning their backs on the hostages. She describes a catastrophe that is not only political, but moral – a failure to grieve Palestinian suffering alongside Jewish suffering, and a betrayal of the principle that every human being is created in the image of God.

She calls on Jews to reclaim their heritage as a people of mercy, debate, and justice, and to resist leaders who distort our values. Ultimately, she argues that the redemption of the Jewish soul will not come from extremists or compromised institutions, but from ordinary Jews – Israelis and Diaspora Jews who insist on honoring life, conscience, and the eternal command to be pursuers of peace. Judaism’s survival depends on reclaiming its moral compass – affirming the equal value of all human life, rejecting revenge and extremism, and choosing peace even when enemies choose war.

Rabbi Lauren Holtzblatt, Adas Israel Congregation, Washington, D.C.:

“I’m not giving up on the responsibility that we can repair all that has gone wrong and all that is broken. Repairing and finding our humanity is not going to come like finding the Messiah in one major moment. It’s going to come by noticing the small, holy ways people are caring for each other.”

Rabbi Holtzblatt starts her sermon with refreshingly honest extemporaneous remarks, indicating she was afraid of the world, but concluded that being afraid and showing up anyway is what we should all be doing at this moment. She focuses her sermon on the tragic loss of our collective humanity, and how “we have to locate it, uncover it, and remember what it looks like.” With cruelty “in so many pockets of the world,” she encourages us to do what we can to restore our humanity, and to begin by searching for and finding it.

Rabbi Holtzblatt revealed the challenging conversation she had with herself about making sense of the senseless in our current world. She observes that “we are broken; the world is broken, on every side and every way, and there is a collective pain that is perhaps more severe than most of us have ever seen or experienced in our lifetime.” She implores us to find and rebuild our humanity, and to “build, to love, to fix…not to destroy.” She encourages us to be like the stars, which do not replace darkness with light, but bring rays of light into otherwise dark places. This is our job, one act and one mitzvah at a time, to bring light and reclaim our humanity.

Rabbi Rachel Timoner, Congregation Beth Elohim, New York:

“The struggle for our humanity is not easy, but it is our purpose. It is actually Judaism. When the dangers have been less obvious, we believed it could be a side project. To be a Jew is never actually a side project. To be an American is not a side project. To be human is not a side project. The question of how to live, the question of how to be the best us we can be, is the question that forms the meaning of our existence.”

Rabbi Timoner begins with personal reflections from her travels in South America, where she gained a new perspective on the extraordinary resilience and endurance of the Jewish people. She marvels at Judaism’s survival across millennia and emphasizes the unique moral contributions of the Torah: the inherent dignity of every human being, the call to justice, protection of the vulnerable, and the idea that people can be partners with God in shaping history.

She then turns to today’s crises – antisemitism, extremism, authoritarianism, and war – and insists that the Torah was made for precisely such moments. Drawing on a wide range of biblical and rabbinic sources, she argues that Judaism demands compassion, justice, and the rejection of dehumanization. She denounces extremism in Israel as a desecration of Judaism, warning that the integrity of the tradition itself is at stake.

Quoting Viktor Frankl, she underscores that no one can strip Jews of their moral compass but themselves. The essential question is how Jews respond to suffering and fear: by hardening into inhumanity, or by recommitting to their highest values. She calls on the community to choose humanity, nonviolence, and moral clarity in the face of rising hate and political violence.

Rabbi Elliot Cosgrove, Park Avenue Synagogue, New York:

“Today, the voice of [Jonas] Phillips calls to us. A voice that demands that we push back against any effort to limit our Jewish presence or muffle our voice or threaten our safety. A voice that demands and reminds us that the free exchange of ideas is fundamental to who we are as Americans, as Jews, and as human beings. A voice that insists that the defense of freedom of conscience and expression is an American duty and a Jewish commandment.”

Rabbi Cosgrove tells the story of Jonas Phillips, an early American Jew whose life embodied both the promise and the struggle of Jewish life in America. Arriving as an indentured servant, Phillips became a successful merchant, a patriot who supported the American Revolution, and a proud Jew who fought for religious freedom. He smuggled a copy of the Declaration of Independence to Amsterdam, wrote to George Washington to oppose religious test oaths, and even refused to testify in court on Shabbat – all early examples of Jews asserting their rights as Americans.

The sermon highlights how radical the ideals of the Declaration of Independence were for Jews: for the first time, Jewish identity could be lived proudly in both public and private life. Phillips understood that liberty was not self-executing but required defense, and that Jews had both the opportunity and the obligation to claim their place in American life. Bringing the lesson into the present, he reflects on today’s challenges: rising antisemitism from both right and left, when anti-Israel rhetoric morphs into antisemitic violence, internal Jewish divisions, and the temptation to retreat into silence. He warns against new “test oaths” within the Jewish community that stifle debate and fracture unity, arguing instead for a Jewish future built on open dialogue, education, observance, and courage.

Rabbi Cosgrove’s central message is that American Jews must embrace their freedoms not passively, but actively – by living proudly as Jews, defending free expression, debating vigorously, and building a vibrant Jewish future.

I know that the political news of each day – in fact, each hour – is difficult, and I encourage everyone to take these days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur to consider how we can channel our Jewish values into action in the new year. It’s important to remember that as our core values are being threatened, we all have agency to do something and a community to support us. JDCA is here for you to do just that – to stand up, speak out, and take action, including at the ballot box – and we’re grateful for your partnership and support.

Shana Tova and Shabbat Shalom,

Halie Soifer

CEO, Jewish Democratic Council of America