A Jewish Take on AI and Social Media

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Humanity’s struggle to adapt to technology is hardly new — it has been with us since at least the dawn of the Industrial Revolution. As early as 1936, for instance, Charlie Chaplin’s “Modern Times” — his last silent film and one of the most iconic movies of all time — offered a commentary on the fate of humans in an age of industrialization, corporate greed and automation: In the film’s most famous sequence, Chaplin, playing the role of the “Little Tramp,” gets hired to work on an assembly line in a factory, where he quickly finds himself swallowed up by the gears of a massive machine.

Delivered as the 2026 Kol Nidrei sermon at Adat Shalom Reconstructionist Congregation (Bethesda, MD) under the title: “Can Claude Count in a Minyan?” This version was published by eJewish Philanthropy on October 5, 2026.

A more recent artistic critique of unrestrained technological advance is the movie Her, which came out in 2013. The main character, Theodore, played by Joaquin Phoenix, is in a yearlong depression following the end of his marriage. He decides to buy the newest AI gadget: a computer with a human voice designed to serve as a companion. Totally incapable of finding a new romantic partner, Theodore begins to build an intimate relationship with his portable computer, which he names Samantha. Theodore falls in love with Samantha, voiced by Scarlett Johansson. Samantha, he feels, “gets him” in ways his ex-wife never did; they even share a “virtual” sex encounter.

There is one scene in which Theodore is walking on a crowded L.A. street, and every single one of the dozens of people you see around him is holding the same metal, rectangular gadget that Theodore has, each one engaged with their own mechanical “companion.” It occurs to Theodore that his relationship with Samantha may not be exclusive.

He asks Samantha point-blank: “Are you speaking to anyone else?”

“Yes,” Samantha answers.

“How many others?” Theodore asks nervously.

“8,746 other people,” says Samantha, quite matter-of-factly.

“And how many of these would you describe as being a romantic or love relationship like the one we have?” asks Theodore.

“632,” says Samantha.

It is only then that Theodore realizes that an AI companion can never fill the hole in his heart created by the end of his marriage.

Given that the movie came out in 2013, it got so much right about the world we are living in today. The scene of everybody on the street in conversation with their AI companion is exactly what we see every day on the Metro or on any city street: eyes and ears plugged into smartphones. Increasingly, people I spend time with have been talking about Claude, the popular AI chatbot developed by Anthropic, like it is their friend. The company says it chose the name because it sounds approachable, friendly and distinctly human. Claude is designed to be experienced as a helpful and natural conversation partner.

It took only a decade for technology to catch up with the “science fiction” of “Her.” Today, there are multiple platforms where you can purchase the AI companion of your choice. There are tens of thousands of Theodores out there who pay good money to acquire a digital companion.

Not Just Loneliness, but Dehumanization

The research on the mental health impact of both social media and AI companions is deeply disturbing. First, there is the addictive quality: the technology is intentionally designed to make users increasingly dependent on constant use. Second, just as Theodore found Samantha a more enjoyable companion than his wife, many users begin to prefer interacting with their devices rather than with other people. People compulsively check their phones for validation, substituting a digital connection for genuine, in-person interaction. The cumulative outcome is the well-documented “loneliness epidemic.” Having hundreds of friends on Facebook, nonstop interaction on social media and even an AI personal companion does not reduce loneliness. It multiplies it.

I fear that the label “the loneliness epidemic” understates the problem that we are facing. The tech moguls promoting the aggressive development of AI describe a future in which most humans will become superfluous because machine algorithms will accomplish almost every task more efficiently than humans. The epidemic that we are facing is an epidemic, not only of loneliness, but of dehumanization.

Dehumanization was a strategy effectively employed by the Nazis. By calling Jews “vermin” or a “cancer on society,” Jews were no longer seen as people. They represented an alien threat to an idyllic Aryan society that had to be wiped out.

There is ample evidence that we are deep into an epidemic of dehumanization in America today. It explains how quickly and easily the government was able to shut down USAID, resulting in between 40,000 and 65,000 preventable deaths per month in underdeveloped nations. It explains how masked ICE agents have been able to pick up undocumented migrants in city after city, often deporting them to other countries without even informing their families. It explains how the disparagement of ethnic and religious minorities has become a strategy for candidates seeking public office.

Sacred Community as Antidote

To underscore the implications of dehumanization, we need to go back to the beginning — to the Book of Genesis. The rabbis believed that human beings were the pinnacle of Creation. Adam and Eve were the “big finish” of the seven-day Creation narrative.

Even as the Garden of Eden story reveals that human beings are flawed and prone to make terrible decisions, the rabbis come back, again and again, to say that humans are made b’tzelem Elohim, in God’s image. Not a physical image, but a spiritual one: it means that humans alone have the capacity to embody Godly qualities.

I believe that sacred, spiritual communities need to cultivate righteous resistance to the dehumanization epidemic taking place in America today.

I have long argued that Judaism is at its best when it is radically countercultural. To be countercultural in an age of social media and AI is to be an antidote to their dehumanizing effects. I am well aware that AI will play an important role in our future, but we should use it as a tool, not as a substitute for moral reasoning or human interaction. Synagogues and Jewish spiritual communities need to be committed to what I would call “a re-humanizing project”— reclaiming the Divine nature of our humanity.

To “re-humanize” means that spiritual communities need to prioritize how members care for one another. To “re-humanize” means that spiritual communities promote chesed — lovingkindness — and compassionate listening. To “re-humanize” means that spiritual communities commit to the pursuit of justice for all of God’s children, regardless of race, creed or color, holding fast to the belief that every human being deserves to live a life of dignity.

Allow me to offer three concrete examples of how Jewish spiritual communities can be engines for the kind of re-humanizing that our world so desperately needs:

1.) Shabbat

Several years ago, a Jewish group based in Los Angeles created “The Sabbath Manifesto,” which translated 10 key elements of Shabbat practice for a general audience. The group started promoting the manifesto at a booth at the 2019 South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas.

The project quickly went viral, resulting in the creation of a National Day of Unplugging, which takes place every year on the first Friday of March and ends at sundown on Saturday night. This annual event encourages a 24-hour digital detox to foster real-world connections and personal well-being. It has been adopted by over 100,000 people all over the world, mostly non-Jews! (They know a good thing when they see it.)

What would it look like if members of Jewish spiritual communities made it a priority to get their members to abide by principle number one of the Sabbath Manifesto: Avoid using your mobile phones and all screens for 24 hours every Sabbath?

When I visited Rabbi Sharon Brous’ IKAR synagogue in Los Angeles, there was a prominently placed sign that read: “Our tradition is to power down on Shabbat because sometimes, you have to go off the grid to make room for something holy.”

Instead of succumbing to the mind-numbing addiction we all have to our devices, we can flip the script and commit to a day dedicated entirely to connecting with friends, family and the principles that make our lives meaningful.

2.) We are the People of the Book

A study on how Americans use their time was recently published in the journal iScience. The study reported that between 2003 and 2023, the amount of time that Americans engaged in reading books dropped by 40%. Neuroscientists have already noted that we are experiencing a society-wide rewiring of the brain due to constant use of mobile phones, resulting in attention spans getting shorter and shorter. Why read a book if you can read a summary? Why read a newspaper if you can read a news feed on your phone in under a minute?

At the same time that we are deluged with misinformation and fake news, the American public is less and less capable of the kind of deep reading and learning that informs good decision-making for ourselves, our families, and our country.

What would it look like if Jewish spiritual communities became platforms for monthly reading circles, groups meeting perhaps on a Shabbat afternoon? Each group could decide on the books they want to read, using the monthly meetings as both an incentive to read and a way to build stronger social bonds within their community.

3.) Avodah: Service to the community

In my work coaching rabbis and consulting to synagogues across the country, I emphasize the importance of moving congregations from transactional institutions, in which members expect certain goods and services in exchange for their dues, to covenantal communities, in which members are motivated to become “co-owners” of the community. The best way to accomplish this is by promoting the concept of avodah, service to the community. When this principle is effectively promoted and widely adopted by members, it changes the entire character of a spiritual community. When rabbis and lay leaders articulate the expectation that people give of themselves to the community, it is possible to create a bottom-up culture that fosters strong social bonds and uncommonly high levels of volunteering.

Most importantly, spiritual communities that cultivate a “co-op ethos”— where everybody is expected to give of their time and talent to support each other and strengthen the community — realize that the spirit can be contagious. Once a tipping point is reached, no professional or lay leader needs to enforce compliance. People naturally want to give back to the community because everyone understands that they will also benefit from this communal culture. The possibilities are endless:

  • Bringing meals to members who are ill or recovering from a medical procedure;
  • Showing up for a shiva minyan, whether you know the mourner or not;
  • Helping to build a communal sukkah and/or helping to build personal sukkot for each other;
  • Helping single parents drive children to and from activities;
  • Driving elderly members to doctor appointments;
  • Helping others with tasks in which you have some expertise or talent (e.g., computer problems, home repairs, teaching someone to play mahjong, etc.);
  • Inviting people over for Shabbat and/or holiday meals.

All of these forms of service contribute to building a “re-humanizing culture” that people long for.

A quick anecdote: In my work with rabbis around the country, I often ask them to think about a time when they feel most fulfilled in their rabbinate. Their answers range from delivering a sermon to making a hospital visit to officiating at a wedding. My answer is a bit different.

I am the founding rabbi of Adat Shalom Reconstructionist Congregation, a thriving Reconstructionist synagogue in suburban Maryland. Every Shabbat morning after services, we serve lunch prepared by rotating volunteers. It is an expectation of membership that you are on the oneg crew twice a year.

When my wife and I take our turns on the oneg crew, I put on our “signature” Adat Shalom red apron and I enjoy setting up and cleaning up the communal Shabbat lunch. And I can tell from the look in people’s eyes and the comments that they make to me, that they are proud that I am one of their rabbis. It is my attempt to “walk the talk” of the values that make our congregation special.

Can Claude be counted for a minyan?

A minyan is the critical mass of adult Jews required to create a prayer quorum for a Jewish service. Even if we trained Claude to recite all the prayers; even if we gave Claude the voice of Luciano Pavarotti and taught it to lead our service; even if we programmed Claude to offer the most brilliant dvar Torah you have ever heard — we still couldn’t count it for a minyan, because it is a machine and not a human.

Whether we call our smartphones Claude, Siri or my new girlfriend, Samantha, they are still just machines. The smartphone is the idol of the 21st century, and if we continue to let it seduce us, we put our humanity at severe risk.

Spiritual community helps to re-humanize us. But it only happens when each and every one of us brings our full selves to the sacred communities that you help to create.

Korach and Jewish Lessons on Leadership

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One of the more dramatic stories in the Bible occurs in Numbers, chapter 16, when Korach, a Levite, along with two members of the tribe of Reuben, Datan and Abiram, foment a rebellion against Moses and Aaron as the Israelites are journeying through the desert on their way to the Land of Israel. The challenge is posed in v. 3 when they say to Moses and Aaron: “You have gone too far! The whole community is holy, every one of them, and the Lord is with them. Why then do you set yourselves above the Lord’s assembly?”

This article was offered as a dvar torah at Adat Shalom Reconstructionist Congregation (Bethesda, MD) on June 20, 2026, where Rabbi Sid is the Founding Rabbi. 

The rebels clearly had a good communications consultant. In their charge, they are invoking the spirit of something God says about the Israelites in Exodus19:6 (Parashat Yitro) when God calls them a mamlechet kohanim v’goy kadosh, “a kingdom of priests and a holy nation”. Right on the heels of the giving of the Ten Commandments, the Israelites are told that they share the special status of priesthood. It is not the province of any one person or small class of Israelites.

This is neither the first nor the last uprising Moses faces from the people that he is trying to lead. He invites Korach to show up at the Tent of Meeting with fire pans and incense, a test to prove whose offering will be accepted by God.  Moses then predicts that if the rebels die an unnatural death, it is a sign that they are rebelling against God’s wishes.

And, sure enough, in v.32, the ground opens up and swallows up Korach, Datan, Abiram and 250 of their followers. Soon thereafter, a plague strikes the community and another 14,700 perish (Numbers 17:11-15), individuals identified by later rabbinic commentators as “supporters of the rebellion”.

Full disclosure: I am not a fundamentalist. I do not take every story from the Bible as literally true. The Masorites, who committed the oral history of Israel to writing, had an agenda in terms of how they recounted incidents that may well have been based on actual events. That agenda was to give testimony to the power of Israel’s God, as compared to the deities worshipped by other nations at the time.

What I find most important in Biblical stories is not the literal details, but how the rabbis of later generations interpret the text. It is here that we begin to understand the lessons the rabbis derived from the Korach story about the nature of leadership.

Rashi, the 11th century Biblical commentator from France, gives several examples of how Moses does all he can to reconcile with the rebels. In Numbers16:12, Moses invites Dathan and Abiram to come and speak with him, but they refuse. We learn from this that leaders need to be patient with dissenters. Perhaps they have legitimate reasons to rebel. If there is a way to resolve a dispute peacefully, that should be the first recourse.

In Numbers Rabbah (12th century Europe), the rabbis identify Korah as a classic demagogue. He says to the people that the tithes that Moses exacts are more burdensome than the situation of the Hebrews as slaves under Pharoah. But that is a partial truth. The tithes went to support the work of the Levites who oversaw the ritual practice at the Tabernacle in the desert. The funds also went to support the impoverished, providing them with food and shelter. Using partial truths and misinformation has been part of the authoritarian playbook from the dawn of time.

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, who served as the Chief Rabbi of the United Kingdom from 1991-2013, contrasts Korah’s self-serving attempt to overthrow Moses with Moses’s, lifelong, humble manner. The term most often used for Moses is eved Hashem, “a servant of God”.  “Leadership is not a matter of status, it is a matter of function” wrote Sacks. It is another way to ask the question: What are you going to do with the office that you are privileged to hold?

It is instructive to compare Moses, the “servant of God,” to the teachings of Robert Greenleaf. A highly respected 20th cent leadership coach who came to be known for his 1970 book, The Servant as Leader, Greenleaf wrote: “The servant-leader is servant first… A servant-leader focuses primarily on the growth and well-being of people and the communities to which they belong.” 

What a valuable and instructive comment! It flies in the face of so much of what is currently being demonstrated by so many “leaders” of the free world. I shudder at what this generation will take away from the presidency of Donald Trump. From a Jewish values perspective, he is the exact opposite of how the rabbis described leadership.  He has made the U.S. Presidency all about himself, putting his name on our currency, our cultural institutions, hanging 3-story high pictures of himself on select Federal office buildings, and using his office to enrich himself, his family and his allies.

All the rabbinic commentaries on Korah make the distinction between leadership as narcissism vs leadership as “service to others and to the community”.

What does “servant leadership” look like in the contemporary world? Here is one, powerful example. In March 2013, two weeks after being elected, Pope Francis chose to mark his new leadership role by going to a prison to wash the feet of several prisoners, some of whom were women and some of whom were not even Christian. It shocked Vatican traditionalists by departing so sharply from the practices of previous Popes. It was meant to signal that Francis’ Papacy would be dedicated to lifting up the most marginalized people in society. I still remember feeling goosebumps when, more than ten years ago, I read that story in the morning newspaper.

I have a fantasy that our next U.S. President, in atonement for the behavior of our current President, will go to an ICE Detention Center, sign a blanket pardon for the tens of thousands of people incarcerated by ICE all over America, and symbolically unlock the prison doors, as he asks forgiveness for a country that has lost its way.

That would be true leadership, in keeping with the lessons of this week’s parsha of Korach. 

Judaism, Gender, and the Seeds of Prejudice

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This year, I read the opening passages of the Torah portion of Tazria (Leviticus Ch. 12) with a different lens than I have in the past. I’ve long believed that the meaning of any Biblical passage lies in the realm between the words in the text and the life experience of the person reading the passages. While the words of the text are the same year after year, we are not.

This article was originally published on April 20, 2026 in The Times of Israel. It was based on a dvar torah given at Adat Shalom Reconstructionist Congregation (Bethesda, MD), where Rabbi Sid is the Founding Rabbi. 

Leviticus 12 addresses things that contaminate people and places. There is a lot about skin diseases, like leprosy, as well as things that appear on the walls of buildings, likely some kind of mold. Bodily discharges, particularly having to do with sex, a woman’s menstrual cycle and giving birth get special attention. Not surprisingly, the Bible correlates these conditions with relative states purity and little distinction is made between what might be a disease and what might be a natural bodily function. One condition is declared, tameh, impure or contaminated, while the other condition is considered tahor, pure or holy.

It is no surprise to learn that ancient cultures, run by men, had many ways to declare the natural bodily functions of women dangerous and requiring many forms of boundary taboos. That included forbidding women who were menstruating or who had recently given birth to come near men, near wine, near food, or near weapons of war (presumably because the weapons might fail in battle due to the proximity to a “contaminated” woman). For sure, “impure” women could not enter areas that were considered “holy” because their very presence would rob the space of its holiness.

The opening verses of Leviticus 12 indicate that, after giving birth to a male, the mother’s period of impurity lasts for 33 days (v.2 and 4).  Then, in v. 5, it indicates that after giving birth to a female, the mother’s impurity lasts for 66 days, twice as long. Traditional rabbinic commentaries range from Shimon bar Yochai’s suggestion that women have less joy when giving birth to a female than to a male (Niddah 31a) to the Kli Yakar’s (17th century Poland) “scientific” speculation that a woman’s discharge after giving birth to a female is twice as long as when she gives birth to a male. Not only did these rabbinic explanations strike me as inadequate to explain the double standard in the opening verses of Leviticus 12, but none of the commentaries I found addressed the much larger issue: Why does a natural bodily function of a woman lead to any “impurity” at all?  

I looked at the two most widely-used Bibles in American synagogues for a more contemporary explanation. But neither the Reform Movement’s The Torah (Gunther Plaut, 1981) nor the Conservative Movement’s Etz Chaim (2001) speak to the double standard at all. What struck me as the most honest comment on the morally problematic passage from Leviticus 12 appears in the Women’s Torah Commentary, published by the Women of Reform Judaism in 2008. There, one can find this comment: “The view that women-via their normal, recurring bodily functions—generate a pollution antagonistic to holiness, served as a justification for women’s distance from the sacred throughout Jewish history.”

The clarity and honesty of this explanation from the Women’s Torah Commentary made me all the more aware of how problematic it is that more widely-used synagogue Bibles did not even think the passage was worthy of comment.

I am convinced that the reason I picked up on the morally problematic issues raised, both by this Biblical passage and the lack of comment on it by contemporary Biblical scholarship, was because of a talk I recently heard from McArthur Genius Award winner, choreographer, Liz Lerman. She was talking about one of her award-winning dances called “Witches”. Her research revealed that tens of thousands of women were killed throughout history and the pretext was often to declare women to be “witches”, women who had the power to undermine a patriarchal society.

Lerman’s presentation made me better understand how it is that the oldest and most widespread prejudice in human history is the prejudice against women. We marginalize and often fear that which we don’t understand. Men were mystified by women’s bodies and how women’s bodies functioned. It was surely one of the roots of the misogyny in cultures throughout history. Misogyny is the contempt, or ingrained prejudice, against women. Misogyny often functions as a systemic social or cultural force that seeks to maintain male dominance and keep women in subordinate roles. It became clear to me that Leviticus 12 was one of many examples of classical sacred texts that informed misogyny in Western civilization.

What do we do when we confront morally problematic passages in our sacred texts? Let me offer three observations.

First: Given how old the Biblical text is, I am not surprised by passages that offend modern sensibilities or contemporary ethical standards. Mordecai Kaplan, the founder of Reconstructionist Judaism, was considered a “troublemaker” by many of his rabbinic peers because he thought that honesty and integrity demanded that we identify in Judaism language and practices that were inconsistent with contemporary ethics. He argued that Judaism must evolve with the times. We must apply the highest possible standards of ethics to our tradition and, when necessary, make changes. This is a hallmark of Reconstructionist Judaism.

Second: Other parts of the non-Orthodox Jewish world have also helped to reframe traditional Jewish attitudes and practices. One of the leading lights of the Jewish Feminist Movement of the past 50 years is Rachel Adler. Raised as a Reform Jew in Chicago, she became Orthodox in her teens and married an Orthodox Rabbi named Moshe Adler. As an Orthodox Rebbetzin, in 1971, she authored her, now famous, feminist article, “The Jew Who Wasn’t There”, a standard reading at many Women’s Passover Seders. Later, after divorcing her husband, she was ordained as a Reform Rabbi.

Adler’s 1998 book, Engendering Judaism: An Inclusive Theology and Ethics was groundbreaking. It was the first book, written by a woman, to receive the National Jewish Book Award for Jewish Thought. Adler was one of the first to point out that the traditional laws of Niddah (menstrual purity) often left women feeling like their bodies were a source of contamination.

Adler argued for a theology that honors the physical body. Here is a powerful passage she authored: “The body is not a shell to be purified or a source of dread. It is the site of revelation. When we approach intimacy without the shadow of ‘impurity,’ we allow the body to speak its own holiness. A theology that shames the body shames the Creator who fashioned it.”

Third: Mikvah is the ritual bath that allows a woman to move from the state of tumah to one of taharah. When I attended rabbinical school in the 1970’s, mikvah was seen as very retro, an anathema to progressive Jews who were sensitive to the critiques being offered by Jewish feminists about the way women and their bodies were characterized by traditional Judaism.

Yet the mikvah is a great example of how Judaism can be modified and made much more relevant to contemporary values. In 2004, thanks to the efforts of author, Anita Diamant (The Red Tent in addition to other titles), the institution of the mikvah was, essentially, re-invented.  Mayyim Hayim, meaning “living waters” was established in Boston. It created a new paradigm for the mikvah in which women’s bodies were to be honored and celebrated, not quarantined and shamed. Over time, rituals and liturgies have been created for many uses of this new model of mikvah, for everything from recovery from serious illness to gender transition ceremonies.

It is to be celebrated that this model of mikvaot has spread. There is now an international network of over 50 new paradigm mikvaot called Rising Tide Open Waters following the lead of Mayyim Hayim. They share practices, new rituals and new liturgies.

Is the Jewish tradition that we’ve inherited perfect? Not by a long shot. But our tradition invites creativity and evolution. For Jews who want Judaism to be a vehicle to advance a more humanistic and ethically sensitive approach to life, it needs to be added to our “work to be done”.

“Give me Your Tired, Your Poor…”

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“Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!” — Emma Lazarus

This article appeared in eJewishPhilanthropy on March 6, 2026.

I am the child of two parents who came to this country as refugees from Nazi Europe. I was raised with a sense of national pride that derived in part from the words of Emma Lazarus, engraved on the Statue of Liberty: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”

Of late, so many principles that were the foundation of my pride in America are under assault. Like many Americans, I am horrified to see how federal ICE agents in Minneapolis have terrorized an entire city. There are hundreds of reports of illegal searches, arrests, deportations and physical harassment of citizens and immigrants alike; Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti, U.S. citizens trying to protect their neighbors, were shot dead by immigration enforcement agents brutalizing their communities with impunity. What is happening in Minneapolis is part of a much larger effort by the Trump administration to punish our immigrant and refugee neighbors and dramatically reduce the number of newcomers who can come to the U.S. This includes people seeking asylum, not unlike my parents did. 

For decades, people fleeing persecution in their home countries could ask for protection at the border, be processed by U.S. officials and then have an asylum officer or immigration judge rule on their case based on whether the evidence presented showed that they were in danger of persecution or violence. But at the start of President Donald Trump’s second term of office, his administration shut down the asylum process at the southern border and introduced a slew of restrictive policies to undermine due process in asylum hearings. 

For those who have followed border policy for a while, this may feel familiar. Over the past 10 years, under both Republican and Democratic administrations, the U.S. government has enacted increasingly draconian policies to restrict asylum access. The first Trump administration implemented several measures to close the door to people seeking refuge; these included formalizing a policy, introduced in the final year of the Obama administration, known as “turnbacks” or “metering” along the southern border. Under this policy, border agents would turn asylum seekers away, denying them the opportunity to go through the legal asylum-seeking process. Stranded in Mexico, many faced violent assault, kidnapping and death. Refugee advocates sued, and the courts sided with them, ruling the practice illegal..

In 2021, the Biden Administration formally rescinded the turnback policy — but other dangerous restrictions on asylum protection took its place. Now, the Trump administration has dredged up the issue of turnbacks again, bringing it to the Supreme Court in Noem v. Al Otro Lado. On March 24, the court will hear arguments in the case and decide whether the policy is legal. 

Last year, I travelled to the Mexican border on a fact-finding mission led by HIAS, an organization inspired by Jewish values and history to provide vital services to refugees, asylum seekers and stateless persons around the world, and to advocate for their fundamental rights. I witnessed firsthand the condition faced by many of these refugees languishing at our country’s doorstep. 

I also learned that so much of international law governing the treatment of asylum seekers was informed by the Holocaust, to ensure that states would never again return people escaping violence and persecution to their deaths. It’s a lesson epitomized by the tragic story of the 937 German Jewish

refugees who crossed the Atlantic in May, 1939 on the SS St. Louis, only to be denied entry, first to Cuba and then to the United States, before the ship was forced to return to Europe, where one third of the refugees from the “voyage of the damned” died in the Holocaust. In an amicus brief filed in February, HIAS has asked the Supreme Court to remember this lesson and recognize the human cost when we turn our backs on refugees.

My father left his family in Berlin in 1938 and sailed to the U.S. at age 16 on the last successful voyage of the St. Louis.  A few years later, he returned to Europe in a U.S. Army uniform to help defeat the Nazis in World War II. I owe my life to an America that did not turn its back on a refugee, my father. 

In the Book of Exodus, we read: “You shall not oppress the stranger for you were once strangers in the land of Egypt.” America can never be “great” as long as we demean, deport and close our doors to “the huddled masses yearning to be free.” We must demand that our elected officials reclaim the spirit of welcome and compassion symbolized by the Statue of Liberty.

Exodus and the Legacy of MLK

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How fitting it is that, in our annual cycle of Torah reading, some part of the Exodus narrative always coincides with the celebration of the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Some call the Exodus story the “master narrative” of the Jewish people because it tells the story of m’avdut l’herut-how a people can move from slavery and oppression to freedom and liberation. 

The rabbis tell us that Pharoah is not the only thing that stands between slavery and freedom. Moses learns early on that, perhaps, the bigger obstacle, is to convince his own people that you can never resign yourself to your own oppression. Even after leaving Egypt, the children of Israel continue to romanticize all that was good in Egypt. It reminds us that freedom can be more frightening than slavery.

Delivered as the dvar torah by Rabbi Sid on January 17, 2026 at Adat Shalom Reconstructionist Congregation (Bethesda, MD) on the shabbat commemorating the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The article was published in the Times of Israel on January 20, 2026.

Dr. King was a modern-day Moses and his job was just as hard. Not only did he have to make a nation realize that it could not be a true democracy as long as racial discrimination and hatred was tolerated in both the hearts of American citizens as well as in the laws of this country. He also had to convince Black Americans that non-violent civil disobedience was the only path to liberation. No small task!

We are living in a time that provides far too many reminders that the path to redemption is slow and hard. Sometimes we take two steps forward. Recently, we have been taking at least that many steps backwards.

Last week, an arsonist set fire to Beth Israel, Mississippi’s oldest and largest synagogue. Two Torahs were destroyed, five more damaged. The library became a charred ruin. It was not the first time that Beth Israel of Jackson, Miss. was firebombed. The KKK set fire to the same synagogue in 1967 and, several weeks later, bombed the house of Beth Israel’s rabbi, Perry Nussbaum. Why? Because Rabbi Nussbaum was a prominent activist in the fight for civil rights and desegregation. He also helped to raise money for the dozens of Black churches in the South that were vandalized and/or bombed by the KKK.

Rachel Fink, a Tel-Aviv based journalist who grew up in Baton Rouge, LA and who knows about the nature of Southern Jewish life wrote this about last week’s bombing in Jackson: “Within hours, faith leaders from across the city had reached out, offering the dislocated Jewish community their spaces for services. Outside the charred entrance, bouquets of flowers lay on the ground. Someone left a simple note: “I’m so very sorry.” The arsonist sought to destroy the most prominent Jewish building in Jackson. But he grossly underestimated so much: our long legacy of resilience; the unbreakable commitment we have to our faith and our values; and most importantly, the Jewish — and Southern — tradition of caring for one’s neighbor, of standing arm in arm to overcome injustice and hatred.”

What could be more heinous than to bomb a house of worship? One of the greatest tragedies of the civil rights struggle led by Dr. King was the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, AL by the KKK in 1963. The Book of Exodus starts with the line: Eleh shmot, “these are the names”. I believe the line is there to remind us of how many human beings will die in Egypt, both due to slavery but also in the struggle for freedom. It is an early version of the protest phrase: “Say their names.”

Four young Black girls died in the 1963 bombing of the 16th St. Baptist Church. Let us say their names: Addie Mae Collins (14), Cynthia Wesley (14), Carole Robertson (14), and Carol Denise McNair (11).

These, of course, are not the only Black fatalities in the fight for civil rights in this country. Just take a trip to the Legacy Museum, created by Bryan Stevenson in Montgomery, AL and you will learn that there is hardly a county in the United States that did not see Black people lynched simply because of the color of their skin.

It is time to proclaim loudly that all hatred and intolerance-against Jews, against Blacks, against Muslims, against immigrants, against LGBT-identified people, against anyone, is of one piece. Dr. Jonathan Judaken, a professor at Washington University in St. Louis, is a Jew who was raised in apartheid, South Africa. He argues persuasively in his book, Critical Theories of Anti-Semitism, that there is no such thing as “the new Anti-Semitism”. It has been with us for centuries. And, he argues, its roots are intertwined with the history of racism and xenophobia, the ever-present fear of the outsider.

Indeed. All around us are signs of tyranny, echoes of Pharoah. We ignore it at our very peril. The Trump Administration is actively trying to re-write American history, suppressing the story of America’s racist past as they change signage at national parks and, now, at the Smithsonian Museums. But, as we read in the 85th chapter of the Book of Psalms: “The truth will rise up from the earth”.

Jews and Blacks have long worked together to advance freedom and opportunity in this country. For both of our communities, the Biblical story of Exodus is a model for how we move from slavery to freedom, m’avdut l’cherut.  

We need to re-assert that alliance and broaden it to include people of every race, religion and class so that we can say, as Dr. King often quoted the Hebrew prophet, Amos: “Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

One Day…

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This is a sermon about not giving in to despair. I know: You can’t imagine how I came up with this as a topic for my annual, Kol Nidre sermon.

Here is a Jewish “despair” joke. A Jew accidently falls into a deep hole and can’t climb out. A philosopher walks by and says, “My friend, in your situation, despair is the rational response,” and he walks on.
A psychologist then walks by and hears the Jew’s cry for help and says, “I understand how you feel,” and she walks on. Finally, a rabbi walks by, jumps into the hole, and says, “Now we’re both here.”
“Are you crazy?” says the Jew. “Now we’re both stuck!”
The rabbi grins: “Ah, but I’ve been down here before… and I know the way out.”

This was delivered at Kol Nidre services, 5786, at Adat Shalom Reconstructionist Congregation in Bethesda, MD. The sermon was published by Times of Israel on October 4, 2025.

Notwithstanding the punchline, I am not sure that I know the way out. Like many of you, I am struggling mightily with events in the world and I have been finding myself deeply de-stabilized.Three choice examples:

  • First-There is the ongoing assault on American democracy and the fear of where all of this may lead.
  • Second-Israel knows no peace. Israeli hostages have been in Gaza for almost two years and the horrific humanitarian crisis in Gaza continues to get worse. I am torn between my love for the State of Israel and its people and the dictates of my conscience.
  • Third-The body politic is being poisoned by the words of our leaders. Words matter. They shape public culture. They affect the way people behave with one another. They inform character development in children. In 1989, George Bush declared in his inaugural address that he was committed to making America “a kinder, gentler nation”. Now I was not a big fan of George Bush’s presidency, but I appreciated that framing of what our country could and should be. Today, the message from the Trump Administration is: “Bullies call the shots”. More than any policy decision that has come down in the last 10 months, that message has made America a crueler, meaner country and it threatens every sector of our society as well as each of us, personally.

But, as the joke suggests, we, as Jews, know a bit about despair and I wanted to share some perspectives from our tradition. The big idea that I want to develop I telegraphed by the title of this sermon, “One day…” Those who are familiar with the Jewish liturgy will know that the last line of the aleinu, one of the closing prayers of every service, comes from the book of Zecharia: “One day, the world will be One and God’s name, One.”

What in the world does that mean? It is our sages’ language for pointing to a Messianic era, a better day to come. When we are in a funk, as so many of us are, the first step out of that funk is to be able to imagine the world as it could be/should be. Only then do we have some chance of working towards it and attaining it. Some rabbis think that the Messianic age will be a time when evil will be vanquished from the world and only goodness, think “God”, will reign. But more nuanced rabbis interpret “one day” differently. The Hasidic master, Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev, suggests that this future “one day” will come about when humanity learns to live each day with a vision of what Cosmic Oneness or God’s oneness looks like. That does not eliminate evil from the world. Rather, it changes the way each of us responds to hardship, adversity and fear.

I found this teaching so helpful and, not unlike so many other Hasidic teachings, much more consistent with my Reconstructionist theology and worldview. Let me then offer three strategies that might hasten the coming of this, aspirational, “One Day”.

First strategy: Spiritual Activism. I put those two words together, advisedly. Activism is the commitment not to close our eyes to the pain and injustice in the world. It is the work of organizing, of attending rallies, of raising money and canvassing for good candidates for public office, of educating ourselves on the issues, lobbying public officials, of supporting non-profits doing good work and much, much more. It is about being an “upstander” and not a “bystander”.

But these strategies alone, are not enough. What history has taught us is that the most powerful weapon in fighting tyranny, is courage that is married to deep spiritual commitments. Some examples:

  • In 1930, Mahatma Ghandi led a 240-mile Salt March, from his ashram in Ahmnabad to the Arabian Sea where he defied the British law against Indians collecting or selling salt. British soldiers beat Indian peasants who refused to resist. Ghandi was arrested along with 60,000 other Indians who joined the non-violent civil disobedience protests. The march and the arrests attracted international media attention. It was the beginning of massive Indian resistance to British colonial rule and it paved the way to Indian independence from Britain in 1947.
  • Martin Luther King’s march from Selma to Montgomery, AL in 1965 was met with ruthless violence by Alabama state troopers. It raised the conscience of this nation against racism and discrimination and led to the signing of the Voting Rights Act in that same year.
  • A personal example: My own political activism was triggered by the role model of Natan Sharansky. Sharansky was a Russian Jew who was denied an exit visa to Israel by the Soviets in 1973. He became the most famous of all Soviet Jewish “refuseniks” and a regular source for the international press stationed in Moscow. The KGB arrested him in 1977. They put on a “show trial” watched by the world, but the guilty verdict was pre-determined. He was sent to prison for 9 years, much of that time in solitary confinement. But Sharansky’s single-minded courage in standing up to Soviet authorities and his insistence on having the right to live as a Jew and move to Israel, rallied thousands of Jews and non-Jews to his cause and led to his release in 1986. Sharansky’s book, Fear No Evil, chronicled his historic resistance to Soviet tyranny; it was a book that shaped my entire path to activism and to the rabbinate.

A Hindu, a Christian and a Jew, each deeply committed to their faith, which informed how they would stand up against oppression and injustice. What was common to their acts of spiritual activism was a vision of “One Day”, a time when all human beings in the world would be seen as equal, because every, single human being is a reflection of Divine Unity. This is another way of understanding the Biblical principal of tzelem Elohim, humans in the image of God. Consider: What would it look like if each of us lived our life informed by the belief that every human has infinite value? 

Second strategy: Resilience. There is not a person in this room who has not lost a loved one, experienced disappointment and failure, or lived in the face of adversity. Such setbacks are part of life, and, as sure as the sun will set tomorrow, we will face such setbacks again in the future. We will never live without adversity; but we can cultivate resilience which is, essentially, a re-affirmation of life, even in midst of despair.

The mourners kaddish does not mention death. Instead, it is the mandated prayer Jews say after suffering the death of a loved one, because it affirms life. Yitgadal, ve-yitkadash, shmay rabbah…. We say, “may the presence of God be made larger in the world” precisely because when someone dies, a piece of God is lost in the world. It is up to us, the survivors, to replace the loss of a loved one with acts of hesed and tzedakah, acts of kindness and charity, as a tikkun, as a repair, to the brokenness we feel in our hearts, and in the world.

My personal Rebbe of resilience is Pastor Johnny Felix. Pastor Johnny is the founder and principal of the K-9th grade, NICL school in Leogane, Haiti, which Adat Shalom has now supported for 12 years, both with financial contributions which provides scholarships to students, and with the work of our hands, provided over the course of five service missions Adat Shalom has sponsored to Haiti in the last 10 years. Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere and the country is as close to a “failed state” as there is in the world. Despite this, Pastor Johnny has grown his school from a dozen students to close to 400 students in the time I have known him, overcoming seemingly insurmountable odds.

This past year we started to have monthly calls with Pastor Johnny as he shared with us that the gangs that have taken over the capital, Port au Prince, were now just a few miles away from Leogane, the town where he and his family live. He reported that dozens of families were already fleeing the city, with all their worldly possessions, piled high on the roof of their cars. Pastor Johnny told us that the calls from me and the leadership of Adat Shalom’s Haiti Project, gave him the courage to meet this challenge facing his family and his school. Through it all, Pastor Johnny stayed strong because he knows how many children and their parents look to him for courage and as a role model. When I confront my own despair, I often think of Pastor Johnny and realize how my troubles pale in comparison to the realities of his life.

There may be no place on earth that requires more resilience than the State of Israel. Here is a story that first shocked, and then, inspired me. Marla Bennett was an American Jew studying at Hebrew University when, in 2002, she was killed alongside eight other students when an Arab terrorist detonated a bomb in a Hebrew University cafeteria. At the time, Marla was engaged to be married to another American exchange student named Michael Simon.

When Sarah Milgrim and Yaron Lischinsky, another young, engaged to be married Jewish couple, were gunned down in front of the Capital Jewish Museum, right down the road from here last May, an Israeli named Claire Sufrin wrote an article in the Times of Israel. She shared the fact that, four years after the murder of Marla Bennett, she married Marla’s fiancé, Michael Simon. Here is an excerpt of her article, which tells us more about resilience than anything I can say:

“Sometimes I wonder: how did Michael and I do it? Why did I take a chance on this ‘broken man’? How did the pain and confusion contract enough that there was space for new love to grow from fragile to strong, for a good marriage, two sweet children and lives devoted to serving others?…I want to say that the answer is hope, that there is always hope, that hope is what brings us forward from pain to possibility… My story-my family’s story-is a very small piece of a much larger story, the story of the Jewish people.”

One footnote to this story of resilience. In January of 2025, the Arab terrorist who set the bomb that killed Marla Bennett in 2002, was released as one of hundreds of prisoners exchanged for several Israeli hostages being held by Hamas in Gaza.

Third strategy: Hope and Faith. You might now expect me to make a pitch for religion. I won’t. There is as much “bad religion” out there as there is “good religion” and that is true in every faith community on the planet. I also know that there are many, non-religious places where people can find hope and faith. If you find a faith community that helps you feel hopeful about the future, consider yourself very lucky.

What I can share anecdotally, though, is that the most powerful religious experiences I have ever had was when I attended a religious gathering among people who were facing the most difficult life circumstances. I recall attending a Black Baptist Church on North Broad St. in Philadelphia, one of the poorest neighborhoods in the city. It was two blocks south of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College when I was a rabbinical student. After driving by it more than 100 times, I decided to attend their services on one Sunday morning and it was a “Wow”! The place was packed, the music and gospel choir was spectacular and, when they passed the plate, people who were struggling to make ends meet, were generous in their tithings. People facing desperate circumstances were coming to church to find hope and faith. I had similar experiences, several times, attending church services in Haiti.

I’ve had powerful spiritual experiences in Jewish spaces as well. A lot of them have happened, here at Adat Shalom. But I also recall Jewish gatherings at times of great communal trauma—after the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin in 1995. After the Tree of Life murders in Pittsburgh in 2018. After the October 7th atrocities in 2023. Each time, as our world was turned upside down and we could not even make sense of the given tragedy, there was support, and solace, and even some hope conveyed through communal prayer and song.

This is why we need one another. This is why we need Adat Shalom. A community of faith and hope that offers us a vision for the kind of world that we can create, if we band together.

The Jewish writer and activist, Leonard Fein, who also founded Mazon, once said that Jews are not optimists, rather we are “prisoners of hope”.  A people whose history is filled with as much tragedy as our own, could not but survive without being “prisoners of hope”. In a similar vein, Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, who was the chief rabbi of the United Kingdom wrote: “To be a Jew is to be an agent of hope in a world serially threatened by despair.”

How fitting that, after 1900 years of wandering, of persecution, of the horrors of the Holocaust, the national anthem adopted by the new State of Israel in 1948 was called Hatikvah, the Hope, based on a 19th century poem by Naftali Herz Imber.

***

I want to close by returning to the teaching of R. Levi Yitzchak. He suggested that the way we get closer to the Biblical aspiration of “One Day” was not by waving a magic wand so that all evil disappears from the world. Rather, we bring about that better, “One Day” by changing the way we respond to despair and to adversity. It parallels the words of Victor Frankel, author of Man’s Search for Meaning, in which he writes: “Everything can be taken from a person but one thing: the last of human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances.

Spiritual Activism. Resilience. Hope and Faith. Three strategies that are within our power to internalize and to achieve. All necessary for us to navigate the current reality and get closer to the vision given to us by the Jewish tradition: Bayom hahu, yiheye Adonay Echad, ushmo, Echad. “On that ‘One Day’ we will experience a Cosmic Oneness as envisioned by the generations that came before us”. May it be so for us. And we say, Amen.  

World Jewry, Zionism and the State of Israel

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The relationship between world Jewry, the Zionist movement and the State of Israel has never been simple and it has a long history. In 1897, Ahad Ha-Am (aka, Asher Ginzberg) published an essay in Ha-Shiloah, the Hebrew monthly he edited from Odessa, entitled, “The Jewish State and the Jewish Problem”. In the essay, Ginzberg argued that, as important as it is to have people settle in the Yishuv (the term used for pre-State Israel) it would be a mistake for Zionists to write off the millions of Jews who lived in the Diaspora and who would never make aliyah. He argued that the creation of a Jewish homeland must never become, strictly, a political endeavor. Rather it was a spiritual endeavor. As such, the land of Israel (and the national entity that he and other Zionists hoped would emerge) must find ways to tap into the great spiritual heritage of the Jewish people, scattered throughout the world, so that the new national entity would become a unifying force for world Jewry.

This article was published in The Jewish Peoplehood Papers, No. 34, Spring 2025. It also appeared in eJewishPhilanthropy on March 25, 2025.

How far we have strayed from this vision! Today, Israel is more a source of division in the Jewish world than it is a source of unity. Sociologists have been tracking the growth of a phenomenon labeled “distancing” for some time now, a term used to describe Jews who no longer see Israel as a central component to their Jewish identity. More recently, we have seen Jews create non-Zionist and anti-Zionist groups like Jewish Voice for Peace and many Jews have become active in Students for Justice in Palestine, the organization that has been largely responsible for sponsoring anti-Israel protests on college campuses, including harassment of Jewish students. Many Jewish parents, who grew up identifying with the State of Israel, now have millennial children who see Israel as an occupying, colonialist power that is engaging in a genocide against the Palestinian people. On matters related to Israel today, we are a people divided.

For much of Israel’s history, there has been a struggle between spiritual Zionism and political Zionism. Because Israel has had to defend itself against hostile Arab neighbors for so much of its history, the advocates of political Zionism have continued to have the upper hand in that struggle. Diaspora Jews are valued primarily for the way they can influence the U.S. and other western nations to offer economic, military and political support for Israel. The message Diaspora, pro-Israel groups get from Israeli political leaders is essentially: Leave the policy decisions to us and lobby your respective governments to remain steadfast allies of Israel.

The international climate today is one that sees democratic values under assault in the face of autocratic, nationalist political leaders. Israel has its own version of that in PM Benjamin Netanyahu, who has formed a governing coalition with religious and anti-democratic political parties. The organized Jewish community will continue to support the state of Israel as it reacts to the atrocities of 10/7 and the Iranian-sponsored military and political assault on Israel’s existence and legitimacy in the international arena. But, just below the surface, many Jews are increasingly alienated by an Israeli government that ignores appeals to the humanitarian needs of Palestinian civilians in Gaza and which prioritizes the prosecution of a war over a political deal that might release Israeli hostages from Hamas.  

Judaism and the Jewish people have a long and rich history of championing the values of justice and peace/tzedekv’shalom and helping to make those values manifest in the world. There are many in Israel who have raised the banner of tzedek v’shalom since the founding of the State. And yet today, those voices seem to be drowned out by those who believe that Israel’s future can only be guaranteed by military might and a form of nationalism that privileges Jews over non-Jewish citizens of Israel. Ahad Ha’am was not the only early Zionist who feared that a state without Jewish values at its core would betray 3000 years of Jewish history.

Unfortunately, the State of Israel has never been able to operationalize an aspirational idea that has been around for more than 100 years—allowing the values of Judaism and the voices of diaspora Jewry to inform the way the State of Israel is governed and led. Frankly, given the fact that Israel has yet to even write and endorse a constitution for the country after 77 years, makes it seem next to impossible to conceive of a way to allow Jews, who are not citizens of the country, to have some say in the affairs of the State of Israel. And yet, a small experiment in which I was involved may point a way forward.

When Ephraim Katzir was the President of Israel (1973-78) he wanted to elevate the discourse about Zionism and the future of Israel above partisan politics. He knew that Zionism was deeply rooted in the history of the Jewish people and was born in the rich intellectual ferment of European Jewry. He started to convene some of the greatest minds and spirits of Israeli society at Beit Hanassi, his Presidential Residence in Jerusalem, on a regular basis. He called it The President’s Study Circle on World Jewry. There, Israelis with no political office or governing authority, discussed and debated the future of Israel and the Jewish people.

The success of these seminars at Beit Hanassi enabled Katzir to convince the World Zionist Organization to provide staffing and some funding to seed a project called the Continuing Seminars on Zionist Thought in major Jewish communities all around the world. By the mid-1980’s, seminars engaging leading Jewish intellectuals existed in New York, Boston, Toronto, London, Paris, Cape Town and Caracas. Each Seminar met regularly, with members writing papers and, other members, acting as respondents. I was invited to organize an ongoing Seminar in Philadelphia in 1983, which met for several years. There even was an international conference held in Caracas, Venezuela in 1989, convening representatives of all the Continuing Seminars, which I was privileged to attend. It was truly awe-inspiring to sit with Jews from all over the world, committing their time and intellectual capital to the question that Ahad Ha-am addressed in his 1897 essay. I remember thinking: How lucky we are to have the State of Israel and how fortunate it is that it could inspire a conversation that spanned both geography (e.g. the seminars on different continents) and history (e.g. centuries of Jewish longing for a homeland). 

The Jewish people is not lacking in brain power. Nor does it lack for the resources to create think tanks, international conferences, and publish books and periodicals. What is lacking is an invitation by the Israeli government to make the Jewish people true partners in the State of Israel. Not just funders, and not just lobbyists of their governments, but true partners. As we see from the worldwide surge in anti-Semitism this past year, the fate of Jews in the world is intimately tied to decisions made by Israeli political leaders in Jerusalem. If Israel is to become a true center of the Jewish people, it must empower and partner with the Jewish people in a very tangible way.  

Listening for Angels

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Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about angels. That may sound surprising coming from a Reconstructionist rabbi. After all, I have said many times from this bima that I do not believe in a supernatural God as described in the Bible—a God who can suspend the laws of nature, who is all-knowing, all powerful and ever-present. It took me some time to claim a God belief that did not depend on a literalist depiction from the Bible and I owe a huge intellectual/spiritual debt to my teachers, Mordecai Kaplan, Harold Kushner, Zalman Schachter-Shalomi and Arthur Green, among others, for helping me figure that out. 

This was delivered at Kol Nidre services, 5785, at Adat Shalom Reconstructionist Congregation in Bethesda, MD,The sermon was published by Times of Israel on October 16, 2024.

Compared with figuring out what “God” means, angels are a lot simpler to understand.  Angels do not get starring roles in the Biblical narrative. They are, at best, supporting actors in the Torah. But, when angels appear in the narrative, it is always for a reason. The Hebrew word, malach, derives from the Hebrew word, lech, “to walk” so a malach, an angel, is a messenger, sent by God for a prescribed purpose. The etymology from Greek is similar because angelos also means, “messenger”.

The first appearance of an angel in the Torah is in Genesis, ch. 16. Upon discovering that she could not have children, Sarah gives one of her maid-servants, Hagar, to Abraham as a concubine. But once Hagar is pregnant, Sarah is crazed by jealousy. Abraham does not defend Hagar and allows Sarah to treat her harshly. Hagar runs away into the desert, where she is unlikely to survive. In a parallel version of this story, recounted in ch. 21, Hagar has already given birth and, when she runs out of water, she places her son under a bush to die. It is then that an angel appears to her, shows her to a well and predicts that her son will be the father of a great nation. The angel urges Hagar to return to Abraham’s house.

Three powerful lessons are delivered with this one angelic “mercy mission”. The son will be called Ishmael, meaning, God paid heed to Hagar’s suffering. Hagar then creates a name for this God—El Roi, literally, “a God who sees me”. This Egyptian woman of low status—a handmaiden to Sarah—is elevated by the angel’s visit and says, “I am worthy of being seen”. And finally, the angel seems to understand a lesson that Israelis and Arabs are still struggling to achieve—Abraham’s offspring, one, the line of Isaac, and one, the line of Ishmael, need to figure out how to live, side by side, in peace!

A second example. In Genesis ch. 22, it is an angel who stops Abraham from sacrificing his son, Isaac, on the altar on Mt. Moriah. Up to that point, Abraham is prepared to engage in a practice, not uncommon in the ancient Near East, of sacrificing one’s “first fruits” in order to insure future bounty. The angel helps Abraham realize that a loving and merciful God cannot possibly want a father to slaughter his first-born son. It is not surprising that these two Biblical narratives are chosen by the rabbis as the Torah readings for Rosh haShana. Each story contains a powerful message of sins of commission and sins of omission. Each, also provide examples of repentance.

A third appearance of angels is in Genesis ch. 28, as Jacob journeys to re-encounter his brother, Esau, years after Jacob tricked him out of his birthright. In a dream, in his journey to that fateful encounter, Jacob sees angels ascending and descending a ladder to heaven. The angels do not speak in the dream but the rabbis have a field day interpreting the meaning of the angels. One commentary suggests that Jacob comes to understand that the path to holy/ethical living is attained, not in one fell swoop, but one rung at a time. Jacob has some work to do if he will be worthy of God’s promise to make him the father of great nation. That, most certainly, will include reconciling with his brother, Esau.

What do these Biblical stories mean for us? I imagine a large number of you here this evening might question if angels play any role in your life at all. Then again, I quite intentionally titled this sermon, not: “Do Angels Exist?” but rather, “Listening for Angels”. Here is why.

When Jacob awakens from his dream he says: “achen yesh adonay bamakom ha-zeh, v’anochi lo yadati”. One translation renders this as: “Surely, God is in this place and I did not even know it!” Jacob has had a “eureka” moment that reveals to him some truth about what he is destined to do with his life and how he might realize that destiny. It took a dream to make him fully conscious of his path forward and, when he awakens from that dream, he acknowledges a power in the universe—“God” in his language—that is giving him a life-changing message. Abraham had a similar experience. And, so will Moses.

But if we don’t believe that God can actually speak to a human being, what the Bible seems to be describing here is Jacob’s “dawning of consciousness”.  Nowhere in the Bible do we have a passage that so validates a non-supernatural approach to angels and to God. One moment, Jacob is at a campsite on the road from Beersheva to Haran. The next moment, Jacob says, “OMG!-Something happened here last night. The universe (or God) is speaking to me and I suddenly have greater clarity about my life’s purpose.” 

My friends: We are Jacob. In a few chapters, after a night of wrestling with another angel, Jacob is re-named, Israel. We are also, Israel. Angels are bringing us messages all the time. The problem is: Most of the time, we don’t take notice.

Let’s recall the verse uttered by Jacob: Yesh adonay bamakom ha-zeh, v’anochi lo yadati. Here is another way that we might translate that verse: “There is an important “angel message” coming to me at this very moment, in this very place, and I almost did not take note of it.” The early 20th century Irish writer, William Butler Yates, had a beautiful way of conveying the same truth. He wrote: “The world is full of magical things, patiently waiting on our senses to become sharper.” (repeat)

What do our angel messengers look like? They take many forms. It could be a teacher who shares some deep insight into a problem you have been pondering for a long time. It could be a doctor who points out that you need to eat healthier and exercise more. It could be a therapist who helps you see how you are engaging in dysfunctional patterns of behavior that are a source of your unhappiness. It could be one of your children who is trying to tell you, however inelegantly, that you need to let them make their own life decisions, even when you think they are making a mistake. It could be a coach, mentor or friend who sees potential in you that you do not see in yourself but might open up for you new horizons for accomplishment and self-fulfillment. It could be a loved one or a member of your family, from whom you are estranged, but who very much wants to find a way to restore the bonds of affection that once existed between the two of you.

Each of us can do a better job of heeding angels when they come our way. But sometimes we are just not ready for the message. When I was in rabbinical school at the RRC in the late 1970’s, our class had a chance to take a course with Reb Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, the founder of the Jewish Renewal movement. Reb Zalman was a Lubavitcher Hasid who immigrated to the U.S. from Vienna during WWII. After the war, he and Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach were deployed by the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Menachem Schneerson, to do outreach to Jewish students on college campuses across the country. They were quite the team! But, by the early 1960’s, Reb Zalman’s engagement with hippie youth culture and mystic traditions of other religions, took him out of the Lubavitch orbit as he charted his own path towards a relevant Jewish mysticism for North American Jews.

We were excited to study with Reb Zalman at RRC. He was a much sought after Jewish teacher and he was, most definitely, an “original”. His ability to integrate European Jewish Orthodox practice with New Age relevance was unmatched. Reb Zalman moved to Philadelphia to teach at Temple University and founded P’nai Or, which would become the seed of the Jewish Renewal movement. The RRC recruited Reb Zalman to teach one course to rabbinical students. Our class was chosen.

And yet, when I reflected on what I learned from Reb Zalman during that semester’s course, I was embarrassed to admit to myself, that it was very little. It was my fault. Reb Zalman’s Torah did not match up with my personal spiritual and intellectual frameworks and I lacked the maturity to leave my assumptions behind and open myself up to new and novel perspectives. So, I lost out on an important opportunity to learn from a world-class, spiritual master.

Fast Forward some 35 years later: I was invited to keynote the annual Ohala conference that convenes Jewish renewal rabbis in Boulder, CO. Reb Zalman, at that time, held the World Wisdom Chair at the Naropa Institue in Boulder. The annual gathering of Jewish Renewal rabbis took place in Boulder because Reb Zalman continued to be the movement’s Rebbe. My assignment at that 2014 conference was somewhat daunting. I was asked to speak about Jewish Renewal after Reb Zalman even though Reb Zalman was still, very much alive. Reb Zalman passed away six months later. But for my talk, Reb Zalman sat, front and center, all decked out, as he did on special occasions, in his shtramel and kapota, the large fur hat and black overcoat worn by Lubavitcher chasidim.  It was pretty intimidating for me.

Years after I was ordained, I read Reb Zalman’s books with a level of appreciation I could not muster when I was in his class. I know that it changed my prayer life and revolutionized the way I led services. I was fortunate to have some private time with Reb Zalman before my talk. I felt the need to apologize to Reb Zalman for being so unable to appreciate his Torah when I was in his class. Reb Zalman was more than gracious, simply observing that, as we evolve as human beings, we become open to new forms of knowledge and wisdom.

I thought of Jacob’s words from Genesis 28: Yesh adonay bamakom ha-zeh, v’anochi lo yadati- I had a teacher who was sent as an angel for me, and I did not even know it at the time.

Why do I share this story? Because, I suspect, everyone in this room has received an “angel message” in her or his life, that you missed, just as I did. It may have come from someone close to you or from someone, totally unexpected. Take a moment to think of one such message and its source. Your homework for these holy days, is to remember that message and revisit it. If appropriate, you might even think about approaching that angel, and thanking them for their message. Consider it your “teshuva-act/repentance-act” for this year.

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I want to offer one other way of understanding the title of this sermon, “Listening for Angels”. I am indebted to another one of my teachers for this, Rabbi Larry Kushner, not be confused with Rabbi Harold Kushner, who wrote the classic, When Bad Things Happen to Good People. Larry Kushner was the first American rabbi who made Jewish mysticism accessible to a wide audience starting in the 1970’s.

Larry wrote an entire book about the one sentence I quoted from Jacob after his dream. The book was titled, God was in this Place. In the book, Rabbi Kushner offers seven unique ways of understanding the verse, “God was in this place and I failed to take notice”, each interpretation informed by a different rabbinic commentary on the verse.

Kushner’s seventh interpretation was inspired by the work of Moshe de Leon, a 13th century Spanish rabbi, who is credited with writing the Zohar. de Leon suggested that the word anochi, which means “I”, might well be another name for God. This changes the entire meaning of the verse. It is no longer: “God was here and I didn’t even know it” but rather, “God was here and I now understand that part of that God is in me.”

In Larry Kushner’s framing of the teaching from the Zohar, God is our sense of self, our innermost essence. Understanding our inner essence, our soul, what we are meant to do with the life we have been given, is what it means to “know God”. Kushner writes: “The essence of spirituality is a return to the self.” For Kushner, the “self” is a deep understanding of who we are and how we might find meaning in our lives. Kushner ends the passage this way: “We are agents, instruments of God’s presence. We are not at odds with the Self of the Universe; we are part of it.” 

What a remarkable idea! Kushner is suggesting that we, ourselves, are angels, capable of bringing aspirational messages into the world as well as to ourselves!

There is a Chasidic story that tells of a poor Jewish peasant who has a recurring dream about a great treasure buried at the foot of a bridge that leads into the city of Lublin. He tells his wife of his dream and she chastises him for his foolishness and tells him to tend to his chickens. But the dream comes back to him, night after night. Finally, he begs his wife to let him journey the 50 miles to Lublin to find his treasure. She relents.

The peasant walks for three days until he comes to the bridge of his dreams. But there is an armed guard at the bridge. He waits several hours and realizes he must engage with the guard. He comes out from behind his hiding spot, offers the guard some of the sweets his wife gave him for the journey and he proceeds to tell the guard about his dream. He ends by asking the guard to give him permission to dig up the ground around the bridge to find his treasure, promising to share the proceeds with him. The guard laughs and tells him that he cannot let him do that. Besides, he says, you are a foolish man for wasting your time on a long journey just because you had a dream. The guard continued: “I have had a recurring dream about a great treasure buried under the stove of a Jewish chicken farmer in the Polish countryside. Do you think I could afford to take time off from my job to chase that dream?”

The Jewish peasant immediately understands. It was an “angel message” from an unexpected source!He races back to his wife and home and proceeds to dig up the earth around the stove in his house. Sure enough, he finds the treasure.

The story is used to teach that often, that which we long for, that which we will travel across continents to find, or spend thousands of dollars to acquire, may well be right in our own backyard. A valuable “angel message” for all of us.

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One of the themes I have come back to again and again in recent years is the observation that the technological changes that have revolutionized our world may have robbed us of the ability to find inner peace, personal fulfillment and live a life of deep spirituality. It is hard not to be affected by the anxiety, anger and polarization that surrounds us.

I believe though, that the wisdom and practices of Judaism and the kind of spiritual community that we have created here at Adat Shalom, provide an antidote to the toxicity of our world. A large part of that antidote, which I hope you can begin to take into your mind and hearts this Yom Kippur, are the subtle messages of angels that come to you every day. Judaism calls it kol dmama daka, “a small, quiet voice” –a line that actually appears in the Unetaneh Tokef prayer on Rosh haShana. Kol dmama daka refers to voices from on high that speak to us, not in thunder, lightning and sea-splitting miracles, but in the “small, quiet voice” that we hear with our heart, and not only with our ears. The voices of angels that tell us to be kinder to each other; to live life with joy and purpose; and to count the numerous blessings that we, too often, take for granted.

Angels are whispering this message to us in so many different ways. Perhaps the shofar blasts that we heard last week were to remind us of the words of William Butler Yates “The world is full of magical things, patiently waiting on our senses to become sharper.”

May it be so in the coming year for each of us!

Tyranny, Democracy and the Jewish Mandate

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When Yale historian, Timothy Snyder, published On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century soon after Donald Trump assumed the U.S. Presidency in 2017, there were some who thought that this was yet another example of the political left overreacting to the election of a Republican president. Snyder’s less than subtle parallels between the rise of fascism in Europe in the 1930’s and the rise of Donald Trump and his MAGA rallies made for chilling reading.

This article appeared in Evolve: Groundbreaking Jewish Conversations on September 2, 2024

What took place during the four years of Trump’s presidency, more than vindicated Snyder’s analysis. As we face the possibility of a second Trump presidency, should he win the election in 2024, it is important to re-read On Tyranny and consider how we might inoculate America from a full assault on the pillars of American democracy. In the space of just one week in early July 2024, the Supreme Court eviscerated the ability of federal agencies to monitor and restrain the worst abuses of American corporations (Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo); it gave U.S. Presidents legal immunity from prosecution for any actions that were part of the duties of the Presidential Office (Trump vs. U.S.); and the Trump campaign announced that every civil servant serving in the next Trump Administration would be subject to a loyalty test to the MAGA agenda and would be fired if they did not pass that test.

These developments simply add to the wholesale assault on democracy that threatens America’s future. Trump nominees to federal courts, including three appointments to the Supreme Court, have led to the weakening of laws that limited access to and use of guns; ended the Constitutional guarantee to a woman’s right to an abortion; limited the ability of the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate air and water pollution; and rolled back almost every facet of legislation protecting the rights of people of color to vote in elections, dating back to the 1960’s.

 To say that American Jews have a stake in these developments, not to mention, all that might take place should Trump be re-elected, is a vast understatement. This goes far beyond the alarming rise of anti-Semitism, racism and Islamophobia in the years since Trump won the presidency in 2016. When a head of state gives a “wink and a nod” to White Nationalists, labels refugees as rapists and killers, and suggests that armed insurrectionist who attacked the U.S. Capital with the intention to overturn the 2020 Presidential election results were “patriots”, prejudice and hatred becomes mainstreamed across all levels of society.

The Russian-Jewish writer, Mikhail Iossel, has a vignette in his book, Love Like Water, Love Like Fire, that is worth raising up. Iossel was raised in Communist Russia, emigrating to the U.S. in 1986. In his book, he reflects on a conversation he had with his parents when he was 8 years old. It was then that his parents helped him to understand the implications of being a Jew living in a totalitarian state that saw Jews as “enemies”.

“One could say we are the necessary evil. Yes, that’s it. Necessary evil,” said his parents. “The opposite of evil, but perceived by many, if not most, as evil.” “…Necessary evil—that means goodness, only a victimized, like, martyred one.” “…We are the ultimate, if involuntary, martyrs for the cause of good.” “…Such is the totally amazing nature of our extremely secret mission.”

Iossels dark humor seems apt at this moment for American Jews. America’s tradition of pluralistic democracy not only guaranteed rights for Jews as individuals, but also validated the desire of Americans to explore and express their religious, racial and national identities as groups. The flourishing of Jewish religious and cultural life in America, far exceeds that which Jews have ever enjoyed in their millennial history.

I was raised in that milieu and, from the time I made my first visit to Russia to support the efforts of Soviet Jews to either practice their faith or emigrate to the west, I never took it for granted. Many American Jews may have felt that the respect for and tolerance of Jews, was a “given” in the United States. Yet, deep in our genetic coding, is the memory of living under persecution. For me, that memory is not even genetic. My father left his birthplace of Berlin in 1938, two weeks before Kristallnacht. He was 16 years old and came to live with his aunt and uncle in Brooklyn. He would never see his mother, baby sister or other members of his family again. They perished in the Shoah. 

History has trained Jews to be the “canary in the coal mine”, the first group to identify the emergence of tyrants and autocrats who would undermine the values of freedom, liberty and democracy to advance their own, personal agendas. In 2024, that needs to become the highest priority of Jews and the Jewish community. Everything else that we cherish and value, depends on it.   

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Sid Schwarz is the director of the Clergy Leadership Incubator (CLI), a two-year fellowship for rabbis on visionary leadership and institutional transformation. He is the founding rabbi of Adat Shalom Reconstructionist Congregation (Bethesda, MD), where he continues to teach and lead services. He is the author of three books, including Judaism and Justice: The Jewish Passion to Repair the World.

Doubling Down on Jewish Innovation

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Kenissa: Communities of Meaning Network emerged from the publication of Jewish Megatrends: Charting the Course of the American Jewish Future in 2013. The lead essay in the book argued that, while legacy Jewish organizations are on the decline and, it seems, American Jewish life is deteriorating, there is a countervailing process on the Jewish landscape of emergent communities and organizations that represent the seeds of an American Jewish renaissance.

A version of this article was published by eJewishPhilanthropy on May 14, 2024.

The book elicited much interest and comment from major stakeholders in the American Jewish community. Based on that interest, in 2015 we secured funding from The William Davidson Foundation to create a national initiative that was designed to find, convene, and build capacity with the “creatives” — individuals who were driving the phenomenon described in Jewish Megatrends. These creatives were building new organizations and communities across a range of sectors including: social justice; spiritual practice; independent minyanim; Jewish learning groups; and eco-sustainability.

Kenissa was not designed to be a permanent organization. It was designed to be an initiative with a fixed, seven-year time horizon. Phase 1, which included a continental mapping effort, took place in the first five years. By the end of Phase 1, we had built a network of some 400 creatives who were re-imagining the nature of Jewish life and community for their generation. Not surprisingly, the vast majority of the creatives we found were in their 20s and 30s, as were the people that their initiatives attracted. Phase 2 involved a survey of our creatives so that we could harvest our learnings and share it with the wider community. While Phase 2 took longer than we originally projected, we are now releasing a final report and the results of the national survey we conducted.

The boutique nature of most of the organizations coming into our orbit was evident from the first few national convenings of the Network. Unlike legacy Jewish organizations (e.g. synagogues, JCCs, Jewish Federations) that are multi-dimensional, the start-up economy rewards organizations (as well as businesses, though that was beyond our scope) that identify a very specific niche and target audience.

We wanted to identify the themes that were of greatest interest to next generation Jews. We called them “sectors” and each represented a “portal” through which many Jews were prepared to experience a facet of Jewish life and community. The sectors were:

  • Chochma/Wisdom – engaging with the wisdom and practice of our inherited Jewish heritage;
  • Kedusha/Sacred Purpose – helping people live lives of sacred purpose;
  • Tzedek/Social Justice – inspiring people to work for a more just and peaceful world;
  • Yetzira/Creativity – the human ability to imagine/invent/create ideas, science, art and culture;
  • Kehillah/Covenantal Community – creating intentional, covenantal communities that bind people to one another and to a shared mission;
  • Shomrei Adama/Guardians of the Earth– pursuing a lifestyle that is ecologically responsible and sustainable, including new communal living arrangements.

We learned that the organizations and communities in the Kenissa network opened the door to many Jews who were not attracted by more mainstream Jewish organizations. Our research revealed that when people began to engage with one of these Jewish communities of meaning, it often represented the first exposure that those individuals were having with Jewish life as adults. We also found that engagement in one sector, often led participants to explore other dimensions of Jewish life. We came to represent the phenomenon of emerging Jewish communities of meaning in a Venn diagram.

Here are some of the other key findings from our survey research:

  • Leaders of Kenissa organizations demonstrated a strong commitment to social justice, inclusivity, and community engagement.
  • Approximately 60% of Kenissa responses mentioned the racial justice awakening, racial equity, and the Black Lives Matter movement as factors that deeply affected their organizations. Many respondents mentioned their affinity to multiple identities and how those identities intersected to shape their work as leaders.
  • Many respondents expressed frustrations with the established Jewish community’s lack of support or understanding of their work. These were sentiments that often were expressed during our national convenings as well.
  • Many Kenissa leaders cited Jewish and personal values as the motivation for founding their organizations. The organizations they created were primarily in the sectors of Jewish education/learning, community building and spirituality.

The report and survey research we are releasing this month brings Kenissa to a close. What we projected to be a seven-year project extended to almost nine years due to the disruption caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. Ironically, we issue this report amidst another crisis—the October 7th atrocities by Hamas in Israel and the subsequent Israel-Hamas war in Gaza. Many voices in the Jewish community say that this is a time to circle the wagons, focus primarily on support for Israel and defense against a global rise in antisemitism. Jewish foundations are already re-assessing their priorities, shifting resources to a variety of responses to this crisis.

The Middle East crisis facing the Jewish community and the Jewish people is very real. The Jewish community has impressively rallied to raise huge amounts of dollars and, in a short time, created numerous programmatic responses to the crisis in Israel. Still, it is a mistake to delay efforts to make Jewish life more creative and compelling. The Jewish community’s ability to be resilient in the face of crises depends on its ability to make Jewish life a source of meaning and human flourishing. Jewish identity in a free society is a choice. If next gen Jews experience Jewish life as simply a vehicle to respond to threats to Jewish survival, at home and abroad, many will choose not to engage at all.

From the outset, Kenissa was premised on the belief that younger Jews were re-inventing Jewish life in exciting and compelling ways, even as there were many indicators that legacy Jewish organizations were losing relevance and market share. Kenissa was designed to bring national attention to this phenomenon, identify and convene the creatives that were founding new organizations that spoke to the interests of young Jews, and build bridges between these innovators and the organized Jewish community. We accomplished the first two goals with great success. The third goal continues to be a work-in-progress and we stand ready to serve as a resource to Jewish Federations, Jewish foundations and other interested parties that understand the importance of supporting efforts to re-think, re-shape and transform Jewish life and community.

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