All the Jews Are Jewish

Kol Nidre Sermon 5787, Malkhut

Student Rabbi Emily Herzlin

(NOTE: For a larger text version, please click here).

A few months ago our four year old asked us a question that I had dreaded him asking since before he was born.

“Mommy, what does Jewish mean?” he said.

Oh, crap.

I knew it was coming, but I didn’t know it was coming quite this soon.

That night, the question came up because we were getting the table set for Shabbat, and were just trying to get him to sit down at the table.

“Yeah but why?” he asked, as he tends to do.

“Because it’s time for Shabbat,” I said.

“Yeah but why do we do Shabbat?” he asked.

I said, clearly without thinking, “Because we’re Jewish.

So of course he followed up with, “Yeah but, Mommy, what does Jewish mean?”

My spouse Kris and I looked at each other as if to say, not it.

Wasn’t this supposed to be what rabbis live for? Shouldn’t I be excited? And part of me was. But mostly I was worried. What we said now could have a lasting impact on his relationship to Judaism. And so, we tried. I talked about some of the things we do together that he would recognize: we eat challah and drink grape juice and light candles on Shabbat; we say special blessings for things; we go to Malkhut. All those things are part of what it means to be Jewish.

Kris added, It feels like family, but a lot bigger.

Toddler attention spans being what they are, our kid was already on to the next thing. I felt relieved to be off the hook, at least for now, but also disappointed and concerned, because I knew that no matter what we told him Jewish means, now, or in the future, it would never be sufficient.

I remember one day when I was a little kid, we were driving in town and we drove past the Conservative synagogue. (My family went to the Reform one.) I noticed the Hebrew letters on the building and I asked my parents why we didn’t go there ever. My mom, may her memory be a blessing, told me they were more religious than we were, but it was in a tone of voice that made it sound like maybe not a good thing to be more religious than we were. I didn’t understand what she meant by “more religious,” but I did understand that if we thought they were weird, they probably thought we were weird. After that, every time we drove past the Conservative synagogue, I felt my body instinctively tense up at the idea that the people in there didn’t like me, which made me not like them. That was my initiation into the long Jewish tradition of Jews judging Jews.

In a different early conversation with my parents about who God is, I remember my mom said to me, “I wish I could believe in God, I think I would be a lot happier. People who believe in God seem so much happier. But I just can’t. I’m too smart.” Message received.

It’s such a familiar, secular Jewish take that religion and intellect cannot coexist. Intellect can make room for Jewish culture: music, art, food, social justice. It can hold the concept of Jewish peoplehood: a shared ethnic identity, the idea of membership of a tribe. To an extent it can even hold Jewish spirituality: personal development, reverence for nature, living ethically. But the gatekeeper of intellect often slams the door shut when it comes to the idea of religion.

According to the Rambam, this is actually kind of fine. The Rambam teaches that it is not necessary to intellectually understand the reason behind every mitzvah, every commandment, and in fact that there are some mitzvot (like kosher laws, or the Mikvah) that are beyond the grasp of human logic. While God understands God’s reasons, humans cannot fully understand them, and yet we are commanded to follow them out of trust in God, out of faith.

Trust in God. Faith. Religion. These words have, for many of us, acquired negative connotations, have become associated with delusion, with harm, especially as we experience daily the weaponization of religion, faith, God, Scripture, both in our country among right-wing Christian conservatives, and in Israel among extremist Jews. So many of us in turn instinctively push away religion because it’s associated with “bad people” doing “bad things.” I think this is why for so many Jews, it is more comfortable to identify ourselves as “spiritual” or “cultural,” rather than “religious.” Almost six years into rabbinical school, I still feel that tension.

I remember in 2023, the night my mom died, my family members were discussing when we would hold the funeral. Someone asked me if I felt okay with waiting a few days for out-of-town family to fly in, or if I needed the burial to be right away. In a sleep deprived, grief-stricken stupor I said, “It’s okay, I’m not that Jewish.” To which my sister said, “But Em, you’re in rabbinical school! What do you mean you’re not that Jewish?!” The exchange gave all of us a much-needed laugh. What I meant was: I feel flexible about Jewish burial customs. What I was reinforcing about myself to myself was: there’s a spectrum of Jewishness based on some vague permutation of observance of halakha (Jewish law), knowledge, experience, Hebrew proficiency, beliefs, and probably some other stuff, and I’m not anywhere near the top of the spectrum. While in theory I agreed with the idea that “All the Jews Are Jewish,” a slogan used by the organization Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, I still had trouble applying it to myself.

This has caused me at times to experience, and perhaps you have as well, a tiny glistening pink bubble, floating through the air, getting larger and larger as it approaches me, and inside the bubble in her poofy dress and glittery crown: Glinda The Good Jew of the North, hovering before me asking me, “Are you a Good Jew, or a Bad Jew?” And I reply, “Who me? I’m not a Good Jew or Bad Jew at all, I’m just Emily, a Jew from Queens.”

Bad Jew. I’m so tired of that phrase, which unfortunately is not a modern invention, but is in line with how Jews have talked about ourselves and each other for time immemorial. First Temple destroyed? Must be because we were Bad Jews. Second Temple destroyed? We were Bad Jews who hated each other! Exiled to Babylonia? Dang it, it was all those Bad Jews! Spanish Expulsions? All those Bad Jews assimilating! Did you Bad Jews talk in synagogue? If so, you caused the Chmielnicki Massacres. Even the Holocaust. (Yes, painfully enough, some Jews found a way to blame that on ourselves, too).

Even more than accusing each other of being “Bad Jews,” we have become comfortable denying each other, as well as ourselves, of our Judaism altogether. It’s become easier to separate ourselves from the community than to admit we are in community with people whose values oppose our own. For example, when I read about two Orthodox Jewish schools gathering in front of Gracie Mansion on the Friday before Yom Kippur for a prayer vigil/protest against our mayor, how do I make sense of the fact that we belong to the same religion? Because if I can’t make sense of it, then the lizard part of my brain says that either they are not real Jews, or I must not be a real Jew.

Pirkei Avot teaches, אַל תִּפְרֹשׁ מִן הַצִּבּוּר, do not separate yourself from the community. This is a theme throughout Jewish texts and Jewish liturgy. In the Yom Kippur confessional liturgy, we confess our sins as a we–we have sinned, we have transgressed. In Tefilat HaDerech, the Traveler’s Prayer, when I go on a journey as an individual, I still pray for “us” to arrive safely. The word used for community, tzibur, essentially means a heap, a pile, as in a pile of sand, or coins, or leaves. We are individual grains of sand, yes, but we are also the entire beach, even if the grains of sand down on that end of the beach go to a different shul than we do.

Tosafot Yom Tov comments on the line from Pirkei Avot אַל תִּפְרֹשׁ מִן הַצִּבּוּר, do not separate yourself from the community: Rav writes that such a one [who separates themself from the community] will not be comforted when the people are. I find this difficult, for if so, one could say “I’ll have neither your honey nor your sting!” This phrase, “neither your honey nor your sting,” is usually wielded to justify cutting off someone who is plying you with sweetness, who would later harm you. But right now I’m reading this differently. In separating ourselves from the painful sting of our aversion to religious observance, are we not also separating ourselves from the honey, the sweetness, the richness, the comfort?

My grandmother Evie, my mom’s mom, may her memory be a blessing, was one of the most skeptical Jews I ever knew (next to my mom), completely distrustful of organized religion, and much more connected to her Yiddishkeit than to Judaism. My sister recently unearthed a college paper that grandma Evie wrote in an adult education course, as she was studying to become a therapist. My grandma begins the paper describing sitting at the bedside of her sister, who is dying of cancer at the time, and how afraid she feels for her. She writes, “I had thought of many other topics on which to do my research paper, but I found it impossible to concentrate on anything because of my emotional state. When I decided to write this, I knew I had stopped running away….I am not religious, nor do I believe in prayer, but I do know that the “profound psychological insights implicit in the highly structured Jewish mourning observances speak eloquently of Judaism's concern for the integrity of the human personality.” My sharp grandma, despite her distrust of religion, found herself drawn, as so many of us are, to Jewish mourning practices. In the paper she writes about the shomer’s role in never leaving the deceased person alone; about kriya, the rending of garments; the custom of shoveling dirt onto the grave. She quotes Ecclesiastics, Psalms, even the Zohar, an esoteric Jewish mystical text I had no idea my grandma had ever encountered. She closes the paper saying: As I write the conclusion of this paper, my sister is gone. She died this week. I am writing, and it is helping me with my grief. My tears flow freely as I write.” I am so grateful, and so glad, that despite my grandmother’s aversion to religion, that she allowed herself permission to connect with it when she needed it, that she tolerated the sting, in order to experience the honey.

The sting of self-consciousness made it take a long time for me to be able to admit something to myself. And that is that I love the Torah. Weirdly scary to admit that to an auditorium full of Jews but here we are. I love the Torah so much. I just do. I love the Torah. Just, look at her! She’s gorgeous! I love Torah so much I want to cry sometimes.

And I feel the need to clarify that I do not love everything that is written in the Torah. But even the Torah that is aversive to me I relate to as a kind of sting that is my responsibility to encounter, because whether I like it or not, it’s in Judaism and therefore it is in me. And like white supremacy, like homophobia, like all the other toxic things we breathe in the air that is America, we don’t get liberated from those things unless we let ourselves turn towards them, with love. I do not love the Torah in spite of the things in it that sting; I love the Torah in the way I try (and usually fail) to love myself, loving all of myself, even the things about myself that I want to change.

There is so much that stings about being Jewish right now, so much that we want to change, so much that makes it hard to allow ourselves to draw close to Judaism. Jews are telling us we’re Bad Jews because we’re too secular. Too religious. Too intellectual. Too spiritual. Too political. Too apolitical. Too modest. Too sexy. The Reform Jews are too lax. The Conservatives are too conservative. The Reconstructionists are too gay. And at the same non-Jews are telling us we’re bad because we’re Jewish. It’s exhausting. It feels like we can’t win, (which, we can’t), and that it’s too much work, so why even bother?

Why even bother? Why even bother? Oh, let me tell you why.

Because ven svet zayn dray teg resh choydesh, ven in himmel vet zayn a yarid, ad sof koladoyres (which basically are all colorful Yiddish ways my grandmother might have said BECAUSE WHEN HELL FREEZES OVER) is when I will cede ownership of religion to the right-wing, the fascists, and the extremists. Just because they often shout louder than us does not mean they get to own religious experience. They do not get to own Scripture. They do not get to own the concept of fearing God. They do not get to own my love of Torah. They do not get to own all the honey.

For a lot of my life, I ceded having a relationship with Torah, as well as a relationship with God to people who were more religious than me. That shifted dramatically about nine years ago in a conversation with one of my teachers, Rabbi Sheila Peltz Weinberg. I was in the midst of some deep anxiety I was going through, and Rabbi Sheila asked me, “Have you tried talking to God about it?” I told her I didn’t talk to God—I didn’t know who I’d be talking to, and I felt like I should really figure that out first. She said to me, “Who cares? Just talk!” The permission Rabbi Sheila granted me to let myself not have to understand, to not have to know, and be in relationship with God anyway, changed everything for me. The experience of talking, of reaching out beyond the smallness of myself, even if I didn’t know who or what was receiving it, allowed me to access a doorway to comfort that I believed would only open for other people, not for me.

It reminds me of many conversations I have had with folks in our community who have told me “I don’t know enough” to do XYZ Jewish ritual thing I invited you to do. What’s implicit in this is that clergy are holding the essential human experiences of Judaism. It’s very understandable that this is how things have evolved. In our contemporary society there just isn’t time to have a full time job, take care of your health, your family if you have one, eat, sleep, AND devote time to nurturing our Jewish neshamot. It took me going to rabbinical school to immerse myself in Judaism, and a lot of the time, I still have Jewish Imposter Syndrome. But you don’t need to go to rabbinical school to ask a friend to read the weekly parsha with you, or observe a holiday you’ve never observed before, or learn a new blessing, or pour out your feelings to whatever you call God, or say yes when the Rabbi or Student Rabbi asks you to lead something even if you don’t know how to do it (we will support you in learning how, that is literally what we live for). All of those things can be joyful and meaningful. Might be the sweet, healing honey we didn’t even know we were craving until we tasted it.

In tomorrow’s Torah reading, Moses is preparing for his death, and needs to prepare the people–us–to be able to continue on without his leadership. Moses gathers the Israelites together to stand before God to enter into the covenant. All of us. The text is very specific, that it is ALL of us. The heap. All the Jews who all are Jewish. (And fellow travelers, too). And though he is addressing everyone, in the Hebrew, the “you” who Moses addresses is not the plural you of the many, it’s the singular “you” of the individual. Speaking to the collective “you” that is the diverse heap of the entirety of the Jewish people, and at the same time speaking directly to each and every one of us as unique individuals, Moses says:

This Instruction that I am giving you today is not too difficult for you, and it is not out of your reach.

It is not in the heavens, that you should say, “Who among us can go up to the heavens and get it for us and bring it down to us, so that we can do it?”

It is not beyond the sea, that you should say, “Who among us can cross to the other side of the sea and get it for us and bring it to us, so that we can do it?”

No, this thing is very close to you, in your mouth and in your heart, and you can do it.

Moses knows from his own experience how easy it is to fall into the trap of Jewish Imposter Syndrome. To believe that you are not good enough to convey Torah through your own mouth, just as when God spoke to Moses through the burning bush, charging him with representing God to Pharaoh, to liberate the Israelites from enslavement. Moses believed himself not good enough. Who am I to do this? he said. My mouth isn’t up to the task. I’m not a good enough speaker. Someone else better should do it. God, in response, does not fill Moses with knowledge, does not fix his mouth. Moshe Rabbeinu’s mouth does not need fixing. God tells Moses: I will be with your mouth. And I will guide what you say. Don’t worry, honey. You have everything you need.

And so do you.