For Good- Erev Rosh Hashanah 2026

 For Good

Erev Rosh Hashanah 5787

September 11, 2026

 

 

The senior English orator at Harvard University’s commencement this year was a physics major named Noah Eckstein.  Eckstein began his remarks by explaining that his maternal grandparents were Muslim and Christian.  He went on to say that his mother was raised as a Christian who later converted to Judaism and married his father.  He proclaimed that he today is a proud Jew, and that he also remains cognizant of his complex heritage.

 

Eckstein argued that the very makeup of his family is a refutation of the binary understanding of the world that pundits and politicians and others in positions of leadership try to dictate to us.  We have been reduced, he said, to a sort of tribalism where we are expected to declare our allegiances to particular teams, political parties, ideologies, identities, and so forth.  

 

This arguably false binary has existed for millennia.  It memorably became particularly entrenched in American society twenty-five years ago today.  Americans reeled from the deadliest attack on U.S. soil in the history of our nation, as we mourned, seethed in anger, walked around in a daze, and tried to comprehend the enormity of it all.  President George W. Bush addressed Congress nine days later—which happened to be the evening following Rosh Hashanah—in an effort to show resolve and to soothe the spirit of our wounded nation.  He memorably declared, “Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.”[1]

At the time, this felt like a fair and appropriate statement.  Ground Zero in New York City was still smoldering.  The dead were still being buried; people still clung to hope in searching for news of their missing loved ones.  Expressions of solidarity had poured in from governments and from civilians throughout the world.  Whatever one felt about President Bush and his somewhat contentious ascent to the presidency fewer than nine months earlier, we were thirsting for decisive leadership.  It was not difficult to embrace his message.  

 

However, as the battle with the Taliban and Al Qaeda unfolded, as Republicans and Democrats in Washington moved ahead with governance of our nation, as some twisted the rawness of the moment to foment hate and distrust against our Muslim neighbors and other ethnic minorities, the initial cohesiveness that President Bush may have hoped to project slowly unraveled.  Spurred on by a 24-hour news cycle—which we must recall was still fairly novel at the time—featuring talking heads who were all too happy to breathlessly remind us of who our enemies were, Americans fell back into old prejudices.  Worse, many developed new ones, eyeing with suspicion and occasionally even malice those who didn’t vote the way they voted, worship the way they worshipped, or see the world through the same lens they did.

 

A quarter-century later, I believe that we do best homage to those whose lives were lost on September 11, 2001, to those who worked tirelessly as first responders and emergency personnel, and to those brave individuals who served in our armed forces as they sought to preserve and defend our nation’s ideals when we strive to return to President Bush’s words and interpret them generously and with the best of intentions: that he sought at that fearful, tearful moment to unite us as Americans – supporting one another, working to uphold for all the promise of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”[2]

In his Harvard address, Eckstein noted that his family would not exist—that he would not exist—if they embraced the simplistic binary view of the world.  He explained:

 

One of my grandfathers was a Pakistani Muslim who grew up during the Indo-Pakistani War of 1947. The other was a Jewish refugee from the Holocaust. They met many times over the course of their lives. As you might imagine, they disagreed on a great many things.

Yet one of my strongest memories growing up is seeing them sitting together around a coffee table discussing everything under the sun. And when they weren't together, I remember hearing their voices over the phone as they called my parents, always remembering at the end of each conversation to ask about the other: "How is he doing? What's he been up to?"  Of course, there were many differences they never resolved. But they acknowledged each other. They cared for one another. They stayed in contact. They debated despite vast differences in life experience, ideology, faith, and belief.  Those differences were points of contention, but they were never points of division.[3]

 

Here at Sinai Temple, we have often referred to ourselves as “a family of families.”  And like many families, we are not always homogenous in our beliefs.  The ongoing challenge is to allow our passion for this holy congregation, our intense desire to be in community with one another, to erode some of the barriers we’ve set up to shield ourselves from those who think or feel or act differently from us.

 

Please don’t misunderstand me.  I recognize that, just as Eckstein’s grandfathers discovered, there will be some differences that we cannot resolve.  We are each entitled to set boundaries, and there will be those that we personally establish for the sake of personal safety and self-preservation, as well as those red lines that are enshrined as norms by mutual agreement within our community.  

 

That said, we need not have complete agreement with our friends, our family members, our neighbors, those sitting next to us in the pews in order to value them, love them, and honor the roles they play in our lives.

 

Our congregation has thrived for more than 120 years.  As a community, we have weathered moments on a local, national, and even international stage that have been monumental, causing us perhaps to reexamine our faith, our understanding of the world, and our allegiances.  It happened twenty-five years ago, I’m sure, in connection to the terrible events of September 11, 2001.  It undoubtedly happened during the first and second world wars, as well as the conflicts in Korea, Vietnam, and the Persian Gulf.  It happened with the establishment of the modern state of Israel, and with various ensuing conflicts between her and her neighbors.  I can only imagine that there are numerous other social and political issues that have served as points of contention among different groups or individuals within our congregation.  

 

Each of these moments were consequential.  Each of them commanded a great deal of attention, and emotional and physical energy.  Each of them took a toll in some way on how we would live our lives as Jews and as Americans—not necessarily in that order.  Yet I’ll also note that we continued, through even the toughest of those moments, to gather for Shabbat services; to hold Passover seders; to read the megillah and dress up on Purim; to dance on Simchat Torah.  We educated our students and we had social events and we fundraised for important causes within and beyond our community.  We came together for simchas and we held each other in moments of struggle or grief.  We did not permit our different ways of parsing the events of the day to deter us from the sacred reality that we are a kehillah kedosha, a sacred congregation that relies upon one another for community, for love, and for strength.

 

Peace activist Bassam Aramin suggests that people are often afraid of opening themselves to those with opposing viewpoints because they are “terrified that their lives might get diluted, that they might lose themselves in the tangle of knowing each other.”[4]  But I believe that we can and must know one another, even in our differences, if we hope to continue to thrive as a congregation.  Listening to and knowing one another does not necessarily mean acquiescence to their opinions.  It does not mean diminishing one’s own closely held beliefs.  Being in conversation and communion with others is not a zero-sum game.  We’re not scoring points or seeking victories; we’re attempting to build and maintain something bigger than ourselves.

 

I recently heard an interview with author Kate Medley.  She’s a travel writer and photojournalist who has recently completed a book studying the impact of gas stations on the culture of the southern United States.  She notes that gas stations are “one of the few places we all continue to pass through, regardless of how much money you make, regardless of where you worship or who you voted for.”[5]  This synagogue can and should serve much the same function—we are a Beit Tefillah, a house of worship; and we are also a Beit Midrash, a house of study; as well as a Beit K’nesset, a house of gathering.  Our prayerbook notes that “each of us enters this sanctuary with a different need,”[6] but whatever draws us to Sinai Temple, I hope that we can help you “fill your tank”—emotionally, educationally, or spiritually.  And if you’re seeking something different than your neighbor, or if you respond to a program or service or class differently than they do, that’s OK.  

 

Many African cultures subscribe to a philosophy known as ubuntu.  In most countries that follow this line of thought, ubuntu simply refers to “humanity.”  But in the Xhosa language, it takes on a more complex meaning: “I am because we are.”[7]  Our human interdependence on one another, which was so meaningfully highlighted in the aftermath of that solemn morning twenty-five years ago, should not be an anomaly observed only in moments of crisis.  It is a core feature of a healthy society, and a healthy congregation.

 

Those of you who regularly attend Shabbat evening services will recognize that we frequently open with Hinei mah tov u’mah-na’im shevet achim gam yachad, “How wonderful and pleasant it is for us all to be together.”[8]  The Psalmist celebrates that, even in our differences, we have something to offer one another by being in community.  From time-to-time, however, our Shir Unplugged ensemble will open the service with an English language tune that I personally interpret as a meditation on the same themes as Hinei mah tov.

 

We shall be known by the company we keep

By the ones who circle ‘round to tend these fires[9]

 

I believe we are indeed known by the friendships we make and maintain, by the diversity of the company that we keep.  The more that we break free of confining silos that seek to dismissively relegate us to narrow categories and instead seek relationships and entanglements—as complicated as they may prove to be—with those who may challenge or question us, the richer our world may become.

 

I noted earlier, and it bears repeating, that I am not advocating for anyone to violate their personal “lines in the sand” by providing a soapbox for those who might seek to do them harm.  Each of us is entitled to establish the boundaries that we feel will preserve our emotional, physical, and spiritual well-being.  Yet we should not set those limits so restrictively that we confine ourselves to an echo chamber in which we are only listening to those voices that are directly analogous to our own.  In many cases, even if we find a particular stance antithetical to our understanding of the world, or politics, or current events; the person espousing those views might still be worth knowing.  We may feel that we need to negate or delegitimize an idea, but we should strive not to be dismissive of an individual.  

 

I can pretty much guarantee you that no two people sitting in this sanctuary this evening, or watching on YouTube, are experiencing this worship experience, or even the words of this sermon, in exactly the same way.  But we have chosen to unite in community to have this experience because of our embrace of this congregation and its principles, and I hope that can encourage us to seek some sort of common thread with others sitting among us.

 

Dr. Afshine Emrani reminds us, “Our oldest prayer begins with a single Shema: Listen.  Before you judge me—hear my story.  Before I judge you—I owe you the same.”[10]  Learning to truly listen to one another can be challenging, but it is one of the surest paths I can think of to bring harmony and understanding to our aching world.

 

The Talmud speaks of two major schools that guided the development of Jewish practice: the school of Hillel and the school of Shammai.  They frequently differed, sometimes bitterly.  Though the Talmud asserts that both opinions were well-reasoned and represented, “the words of the living God,” most frequently the law sided with the teachings of Hillel.  Later generations sought to understand why this was the case, and the Talmud explained, “students of Hillel were agreeable and forbearing, … and when they taught the law they would teach both their own statements and the statements of Shammai’s students. Moreover, when they were explaining a dispute in the law, they prioritized the teachings of Shammai over their own statements, in deference to the school of Shammai.”[11]  We are encouraged to do the same; though we may strongly disagree with an opponent’s position, we are urged to recognize the passions and personal experiences that may have led them to that stance.   Pirke Avot, the so-called “Ethics of the Fathers,” recounts the teaching of the sage Ben Zoma, who remarked, “Who is wise?  One who learns from every person.”[12]

 

Our congregation has participated in the past in workshops facilitated by Rabbi Fred Reeves of the One America Movement.  One America strives to foster dialogue across differences, noting that some degree of polarization is to be expected in any group.  It is normal to say to another person, “I disagree with you on this issue,” and indeed, that is part of a democratic and pluralistic society.  Where polarization becomes toxic is when we treat one another with contempt and close-mindedness, when we engage in zero-sum thinking.  We risk dehumanizing those with whom we disagree.[13]

 

Composer Stephen Schwartz spoke to this value a bit differently:

“I've heard it said
That people come into our lives
For a reason
Bringing something we must learn
And we are led
To those who help us most to grow
If we let them
And we help them in return.”[14]

 

We best honor the spirit of our nation that was fostered 25 years ago in the aftermath of 9/11; we best honor the legacy of our faith; we best honor the character of this beloved and sacred congregation; and we best honor the promise of this New Year when we strive to live together, build bridges of understanding, and find what is good and holy in the eyes and the hearts of our neighbors.

 

Ken y’hi ratzon.  In this new year, may this be God’s will

 

 

 

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[1] Speech delivered by President George W. Bush to the joint houses of Congress on September 20, 2001.  Transcript retrieved from https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2001/09/20010920-8.html, July 6, 2026

[2] From the United States Declaration of Independence

[3] Noah Eckstein, “The Punchline.”  Senior English Address at Harvard University, May 28, 2026.  Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bz_iIA3kaLI July 9, 2026

[4] McCann, Colum.  Apeirogon (New York: Random House, 2020).  P. 124

[5] Kate Medley, in interview with Francis Lam for The Splendid Table’s podcast series, “Road Tripping.” Released July 21, 2026.

[6] Meditation by Rabbi Chaim Stern

[7] See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu_philosophy  Retrieved July 16, 2027

[8] Psalm 133:1

[9] “We Shall Be Known,” by Karisha Michelle Longaker, 2016.

[10] “Take a History” by Afshine Emrani.  Posted on Jewels of Elul, August 12, 2016.

[11] Babylonian Talmud, Eruvin 13b

[12] Mishnah Avot 4:1

[13] Paraphrased from the slide presentation “Introduction to Polarization,” prepared by Rabbi Fred Reeves for the One America Movement

[14] Schwartz, Stephen. "For Good." Wicked: Original Broadway Cast Recording, performed by Kristin Chenoweth and Idina Menzel, Decca Broadway, 2003