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| Joy, Independence, and Curiosity |
Rosh Hashanah sermon from 2026/5787:
Shanah Tovah and Shabbat Shalom. For the people who think Ed Sheeran is a good musician, and for the rest of us who don’t, he’s been in the news of late for more reasons than just songs people play at weddings. He had a concert recently with 2012’s top artist, Macklemore, most noteworthy previously for his concern for Palestinian suffering in the immediate aftermath of October 7th, and now, for calling out “Free Palestine” as Sheeran’s opening act, which, bad enough on its own, got an enthusiastic and rather anti-Zionist if not downright antisemitic response from the crowd, causing many Jewish attendees to feel unsafe and leave. Sheeran hasn’t called out Macklemore in any significant way.
So what should I have to say about that? Or about Mayor Mamdani’s continuing insensitivity and hostility to the Jewish community and to Israel? Or about the troubling shift in the Democratic Party, or the troubling statements of Vice President Vance? “Be Angry”? I can give you plenty of things to be angry about if that’s what you want. “Be Proud”? I can tell you over and over about the importance of Jewish pride as an answer. And I do believe we should be angry. And probably scared, too. And we most certainly should be proud.
But I have said all that before. And others have said that before, some of them even more eloquently than me! If you’re going to give me your time today, I feel beholden to you to offer something more than anger and pride. I want to suggest, “joy,” “independence,” and “curiosity” as three more important ways to respond to antisemitism.
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The most subversive response to antisemitism may be Jewish joy. Not oblivious to the world, Stepford wives, happy. Not happiness as denial, but simchah, real “joy” as resistance. What has antisemitism done to Jews - Jewish college students, demonstratively Jewish people walking the streets, to members of our own congregation who worry about coming to shul? It has done what it always seeks to do - to frighten, humiliate, isolate and shame.
Continuing to celebrate Shabbat, weddings, babies, Torah, food, music, humor and community is therefore not escapism. It is a profound response of a people not willing to be cowed. And not just proud of who we are, but in a true and real way - joyful about who we are.
Psalm 100 says, “Ivdu et Adonai b'simchah”—serve God with joy. Anyone who’s been to Simchat Torah has seen an example of the way we take joy remarkably seriously!
We see that even today. Rosh Hashanah is extraordinarily serious, yet we celebrate it with meals, wine, sweetness and hope. Judaism's response to danger has never simply been grim determination. Even in the face of God’s judgement, we put honey on the table. We put apples on the table. We wish each other not just a good new year but a sweet new year. Even as we seek to do teshuvah, we do so with simchah as well. How much the moreseo every other day of the year?
Sure, we hire security. And we call out hatred. We will defend Israel and defend one another. But after the security meeting, after the rally, we're also going to make Kiddush, and sing and stuff our faces with simchah, with joy!
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“If the only reason your grandchildren know they are Jews is because someone hates Jews, then antisemitism has already taken too much from us.”
Antisemitism seeks to make us live reactively. Seeks to grab the initiative, the proactivity, the independence of thought and action, from out of our hands as yet another way to cripple us. We mustn’t let it. We must, to paraphrase Pirkei Avot, “in a place where there is nobody willing to be a mensch, it means you need to be one.”
We usually understand it as stepping forward when others fail to act. But there is another possibility: Don't let somebody else's behavior determine yours.
Antisemitism is inherently reactive—they hate, so we become angry; they protest, so we counter-protest; they post, so we post. Eventually our enemies are setting our emotional schedule.
Another way it is reactive - Antisemitism can tempt us into becoming the people it accuses us of being. When people demonize us, there is a tendency to become suspicious of everyone—to assume everyone secretly hates us, nobody can be trusted, the whole world is against us.
Think again of today. Rosh Hashanah asks: Who is actually sovereign over your life? Are you? Is someone else? Or is God?
We recite in the Malchuyot section of Mussaf, verses proclaiming God's kingship. To say Adonai Melech—God is King—is also to say: the antisemite is not. He doesn't get sovereignty over my attention, my mood, my Judaism, or the kind of human being I become.
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Perhaps the best piece of advice I want to offer, my favorite, is that antisemitism should make us more curious about Judaism.
When someone spray-paints a swastika on a synagogue, we automatically ask questions like, “Who did this?” “Why do they hate us?” “How do we stop them?”
Turn it around. Ask a different, a defiant question:
“What is inside this building that generations of people have been so determined to destroy?”
Instead of allowing antisemitism to lead primarily to the study of antisemitism, let it provoke the study of Judaism.
They burned the Talmud. But have we opened it?
They prohibited Torah study. Do we study it?
They forbade Jews from observing Shabbat. What does Shabbat mean to us?
They tried to prevent Jews from teaching Judaism to their children. What are we teaching ours?
That is not guilt. It's curiosity.
Perhaps the great tragedy would be to spend so much time studying why people hate Judaism that we never find out why generations of Jews loved it.
Those who hate us don’t get to decide what we can be and what we can feel. Our enemies don't get to take away our joy. They cannot make us more focused on their insanity than on Judaism’s wisdom and wonder.
So this year, let them hate. And let us learn, let us act, and let us celebrate. And in so doing, let us live our lives as God intended and as the world needs us to do. Am Yisrael Chai!
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