As rabbis approach Rosh Hashanah 5785 and October 7, 2024, I can imagine what we look like from kisei harachamim (the Throne of Compassion).
How we struggled to hold up our communities in the hardest year to be a Jew since 1945.
How we showed up despite our own overwhelming grief and despair.
How we comforted our people when we needed comforting.
How we found words week after week when there were no words.
How we held complexity when others demanded simplicity.
How we were criticized no matter what we did or said.
How we listened to angry congregants, trustees, and donors.
How we became the available target for their grief and fear.
How we faced the profound disappointment and biting critique from our kids.
How we faced antisemitism and eliminationism from our interfaith colleagues, in our coalitions, on our streets, and scrawled on our buildings.
How, despite all of the pressure to speak only of Israeli pain, we tried in the ways we could to also lift up the humanity and suffering of the Palestinian people.
How, despite all of the pressure to speak only of Palestinian pain, we tried in the ways we could to also lift up the humanity and suffering of the Israeli people.
How we taught facts and history in an environment of distorted slogans and memes.
How we spoke out against injustice, cruelty, and abuse of power.
How, through all of the exhaustion, we kept trying to hold our communities together across their bitter divides.
Find more commentaries on Rosh Hashanah.
Yes, I think I can see what we look like from God’s throne of compassion. And, as we approach this Rosh Hashanah 5785 and October 7, 2024, I shudder to think what we look like from the perspective of kisei hadin (the Throne of Judgement). Here are some questions I’m asking myself for my own cheshbon hanefesh (accounting of the soul):
Did I play it safe?
Did I fail to fulfill my obligation as a leader of the Jewish people?
Did I internalize the faces and voices of angry congregants and donors and allow them to restrain me from teaching the Torah of this moment, from saying and doing what was right?
Did I define loyalty to Israel incorrectly?
Did I pretend that it was as simple as blaming Hamas or Netanyahu when I know that it is much more complex?
In my attempts to stand in solidarity with traumatized Israelis, did I fail to adequately criticize their desire for vengeance and its consequences?
In my attempt to stand for Palestinian lives, did I fail to hold enough compassion for traumatized Israelis?
Did I call for an end to the war while secretly wishing that the IDF would continue until they obliterate Hamas?
Did I, in reaction to the antisemitism and eliminationism on the left, fail to call for a ceasefire early enough, when it could have saved tens of thousands of Palestinian and Israeli lives and brought the hostages home?
Did I do enough and say enough to keep the hostages front and center?
Have I hidden behind my place as an American Jew to say it wasn’t for me to speak out?
Did I allow my distance as an American Jew to harden me to the all-encompassing fear of Israelis?
Did I fail to fully use my distance from the trauma and fear of Israelis to call Israel to its higher self?
Did I wait too long to visit Israel to bear witness up close?
Did I look away from the sexual violence and other excruciating brutality of October 7?
Did I look away from the hostages because I couldn’t bear it?
Did I look away from the investigative reports about Israel’s war crimes, including the +972 reports and Sde Teiman?
Did I raise money for displaced and mourning Israelis but not starving, homeless and mourning Palestinians? If I raised money for both, what was the ratio? What should it be?
Did I focus on the Israeli hostages but not those Palestinian prisoners who are innocent?
When the headlines and protests about battered starving Gazans receded did I feel relief even though the people were still starving and the war was ongoing?
Did I care as much about Palestinian lives as I care about Jewish lives? Almost as much?
Did I focus so closely on Gaza that I failed to adequately appreciate the regional picture and the multifaceted threat from Iran?
Have I spoken to my congregation’s hearts in such a way that on this Yom Kippur, they will have the awareness to beat their chests not only for the Israeli dead but also for the Palestinian dead?
Did I fail over many years to take antisemitism on the left seriously enough? What should I have done differently?
Did I fail this year to challenge the left on their dehumanizing use of “settler colonialism” and “genocide”?
Did I personally shy away from confrontations about antisemitism on the left, including among friends, family, and colleagues?
Did I fail to challenge the Jewish community, including among friends, family, and colleagues, on their racism and Jewish supremacy?
Did I unwittingly allow myself to be used by those weaponizing antisemitism for political gain?
Did I fail, as a teacher of Torah, to do everything in my power to honor the image of God in every Jew and every human being?
Find more commentaries on the Israel Hamas-War.
Upon reflection, I am finding that I am guilty of some of these and not others. The thing about High Holy Days is that all of it — din, rachamim, teshuva, selicha, kapparah (judgment, compassion, repentance, forgiveness, atonement) — all of it is premised on truth. Truth-seeing, truth-telling, some kind of clarity about what is true. And like with every other matter we might bring forward from our own lives and place on the scales that open the books of life and death, the truth is unfathomably complex.
May we ask hard questions. May we see ourselves from both the throne of din and the throne of rachamim. And may we, steeped in self-compassion and God’s compassion, do better.
Shanah Tovah.
Rabbi Rachel Timoner is senior rabbi of Congregation Beth Elohim in Brooklyn.