The Sermon on Anti-Semitism and Anti-Zionism Everyone Needs to Hear

Taking stock of this past year, there has been adversity to our people.

And I wonder if there should be a line in Unatanatokef, who shall experience anti-Semitism and who will be spared? Or is it already there? Who will be at peace and who will be tormented? Who will be the elementary school child who is subjected to a storybook about the evils of the Jews in the name of celebrating another group's culture week? Who will be the musician whose band expels him because he posted something about Israel in his social media feed? Who will be the Jewish poet at a writing conference whose very presence is considered as causing harm, regardless of his political views? It will be the librarian, the artist, the bookstore manager, the political activist, the teacher, the undergraduate who must live with intimidation.

And I want to be clear, I am not gathering this from social media.

These are all people who have either been in my office or have had coffee with me.

Who will be the parent whose synagogue is attacked with their children inside, listening to the radio afterwards to the channel that is my home, to learn that the word Israel in the synagogue's name makes it a proxy for Israel itself to those who have been hurt? I will leave it to the experts who are doing the complicated work of sorting anti-Semitism from anti-Zionism and to try to bring enlightenment to this world.

And so many of them are at the University of Michigan, at EMU, and so many of them are in the sanctuary today.

And I apologize that they have to hear this on Rosh Hashanah because it's kind of bringing the work into Shabbat.

But I want to share my perspective for the rest of us as a simple rabbi.

It is not my place to know whether hate is in another person's heart.

The liturgy on high holidays repeatedly cites the line in Deuteronomy that The hidden things, like whether someone has hate in their heart, are for God to judge.

But the things that we can see openly are for us to judge.

So I can't see into someone's heart to know whether they have hate or whether they're well-meaning and misguided or just ignorant or trying to fit in with their peers.

I think trying to make that distinction, at least for me, is a fool's errand.

But what I can see is that the mere presence of a Jew wearing a Jewish star is intolerable to a lot of folks in this country and around the world right now.

That our existence is an offense.

And while there are a lot of folks in this world who cannot be free to be themselves without intimidation or worse, on high holidays we are asked to take stock of the past year.

We can only cry out to God if we can say what we are feeling, how we experienced the year, and which is why I feel called to talk about it on this day.

In the best of times, should cause us to feel ,, unnerved, that the things we love are not immune from harm, aging, illness, accident.

But in these times, its force is so much greater, since just being a Jew can invite adversity.

And we're really good as Jews at solving problems.

We have a lot of wisdom, but we can't control this.

Growing up, maybe like you, with the celebration that Jews were fully accepted and included in our society, that their contributions to progressive causes and American culture, from art to law and to science, were acknowledged and valued, I did not realize that what's been occurring could possibly be in the cards in my lifetime.

Even with all the Holocaust education and all the museums of tolerance, I thought we were all just living on that final floor of the museum, that of lifting others out of oppression, because our safety and our acceptance had been assured.

But that was not written into the books this past year, not for all of us.

I received an email while writing this last paragraph.