A New Torah Will Emerge

Torah Hadasha Me’iti Tetzei (Isaiah 51:4)
Rosh Hashanah 5786 Sermon

by Rabbi Caryn Broitman, Martha’s Vineyard Hebrew Center

Shana Tova. What a comfort to gather and celebrate the New Year together. What a comfort to be with friends and family, to taste familiar foods and sing familiar melodies. We need the familiar. We need the rituals to give us a sense that all will be ok. We need another Rosh Hashanah to reassure us that we are part of a cycle, and that things will return or become the way we hope they should be. 

And yet, this isn’t just another Rosh Hashanah. Even amidst the familiar, there is something profoundly unfamiliar. I think most of us know that deep down. Maybe that is why so many people have said to me over the last month: “It must be so hard to write sermons this year.” I’ve wondered what the hard thing is that people are thinking, but not naming. It certainly isn’t hard to find a topic this year. The topics are finding us. I remember so many other years when the hard thing was finding a topic that was interesting. Maybe even entertaining. I remember years when lots of rabbis would look for a good joke to start a sermon to capture the congregation’s attention. 

But this year isn’t like those years. And this is no joke. It is no joke because this year, the topics that are finding us are the ones that are tearing us apart. They are the topics that have been keeping us up at night, or causing us to question so much of what we have believed. What we need from sermons this year is not humor or even familiarity. We need truth. We need strength. We need courage. And we need hope. 

And yes, that kind of sermon is indeed hard to write, because it is hard to hold all of these at once. It is hard to talk about truths almost too painful to face, while holding on to the courage and strength we need to face them. And we need strength and courage, for we are in a terrible crisis. Using the idea of cosmic brokenness from Jewish mysticism, Professor Melila Hellner-Eshed, a well-known Israeli teacher of Kabbalah, shared an image that has remained with me. She said, “Something is cracked very high up.”1 Indeed, we feel that crack in many places in the world. And we feel it deeply closest to home. We feel it here in this country, the place so many of our grandparents and great grandparents called the goldene medinah, the Golden Land, for its promise of refuge, welcome and democracy. We feel it in Israel, the Jewish homeland and refuge, whose state, according to its Declaration of Independence, would be “based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel.”

The goldene medina, however, has now been lined literally with gold—the gold of corruption. Cotton Mather’s utopian image of the “City upon a Hill,” has become a city of cruelty, abuse of power, and political violence. And in our precious homeland, the vision of the prophets which has inspired millions is at this moment barely audible. The utopian image of Isaiah’s “light unto the nations” is darkened by a shadow of violence and hubris. 

We are living in painful and even frightening times. In Israel since October 7th, our people have been experiencing a crisis that has biblical proportions. Just as the death of a loved one evokes grief for all our previous losses, October 7th unleashed grief both for the enormous tragedy of that day as well as of memories of so many tragedies of our people. The indiscriminate war crimes and atrocities of Hamas on October 7th, has caused unbearable pain and shocked our souls and our conscience. Calling to mind the hostages still in Gaza, the book of Lamentations in the Bible, written in the aftermath of the invasion of the Babylonians in the sixth century, reads: “her infants have gone into captivity (1:5)… “My eyes are spent with tears, my heart is in tumult, my being melts away over the crisis of my poor people” shever bat ami. (Lamentations 2:11).

And this crisis, this shever which literally means brokenness or cracking, earth-shattering as it has been by itself, has yet another tragic dimension. As Melila Hellner-Eshed expressed, we are mourning “the terrible devastations that have come upon us, and of the terrible devastations that we are creating for other people.”2 The headline of the Times of Israel last Tuesday, quoting defense minister Yisrael Katz, was “’Gaza is Burning’ Katz Boasts.” With most Israelis wanting an end to the war and a negotiation for all remaining hostages, with many hostage families desperately forming an encampment outside the Prime Minister’s residence to stop the war, Gaza is burning and its people are starving. The book of Lamentations also echoes that tragedy, as it is written: “They keep asking their mothers,/“Where is bread and wine?”/As they languish like battle-wounded/ In the squares of the town,/As their life runs out/In their mothers’ bosoms.”

How did our biblical ancestors deal with such tragic and catastrophic times when it befell them? One answer is the prophets, but where are our prophets? Then, as now, people were divided. There were prophets such as Jeremiah who urged the people to see the hard truths of their own sins and self-justifications. And there were people with power whom the Bible called false prophets, who told the people what they wanted to hear and justified what the leaders did. In the words of Lamentations (2:14): 

Your seers prophesied to you
Delusion and folly.
They did not expose your iniquity
So as to restore your fortunes,
But prophesied to you oracles
Of delusion and deception.

How do we know who is a true prophet, the book of Deuteronomy asks? Some of the answers must wait for future generations. But some of the answers can be discerned at the time. As Jeremiah says to the people, true prophets have the courage to say the hard things, and not just what the people want to hear (Jer. 28:8-15). Jeremiah did say hard things, and for that he was beaten, imprisoned and called a traitor by his own people. But according to the Bible, Jeremiah was the real prophet. 

Who are our prophets now? The last recorded prophet in the Bible was Malachi, and the Talmud says that after Malachi, prophecy has ceased in Israel. Malachi was the last person God officially designated as His messenger. So that leaves us. That leaves us, with all our differences and, God willing, our humility, to speak the truth, to speak of justice, to speak of right, as we have learned from the Torah and the prophets. And one thing we have learned over and over again is that in the Bible, no matter who the leader, no matter what king or what priest was in power, no matter whether it was Moses or Aaron or King David, all of them were held to account by God or by the prophets who taught justice and compassion. In Deuteronomy, the King was instructed to have a copy of the Torah next to him, so he would have a physical reminder that he was under the law. Prophecy rose alongside kingship, alongside political power, to ensure that the powerful did not, like Pharaoh, see themselves or their kingdom as divine, as beyond accountability. 

Who are our prophets today? I must say, there are many brave people in Israel, in Gaza, and in the West Bank working for peace. This includes families of hostages, and Jews and Palestinians demonstrating together to end the war and begin a path to a better future for all. There are many rabbis and young Jews here in our country as well. But we are so divided we are not listening to each other and what is on our hearts. And in the context of that division, there are some leaders among our people who step in and demand an unconditional loyalty to a 77 year old modern state that has somehow risen above a 3,000 year old tradition of justice, compassion, and truth. 

Who are our prophets today? Rabbi Ismar Schorsch, who served as chancellor of Jewish Theological Seminary, the seminary that graduates rabbis for the conservative movement, for 20 years, asks, “Where is the religious voice today, so that long after today, we can still proudly be Jews?”3

Rabbi Schorsch has been one of the foremost leaders of the Conservative movement and of American Judaism. An historian of Jewish history, a man committed to law and tradition, a holocaust survivor, and a Zionist immensely proud of the state of Israel, he is sounding an alarm. This past summer he wrote an article, referring to the two 24 hour fasts in Judaism—Yom Kippur and Tisha B’Av, the holiday that commemorates the national catastrophes of the destruction of the first and second Temples at the hands of invaders, the Babylonians and the Romans. These two fasts, one national and one spiritual, shows the balance in Judaism, he argues, between the national and spiritual. That balance, he writes, is severely out of kilter today. In his words:

“Our immediate challenge as Jews is to retain that balance, to make sure that Judaism qua religion is not submerged and shredded by the power of the Jewish state.  The unremitting violence against helpless Palestinians in Gaza and their wholly innocent coreligionists on the West Bank will saddle Jews with a repulsive religion riddled with hypocrisy and contradictions.  The messianism driving the current government of Israel is sadly out of kilter with traditional Judaism — and an utter moral abomination.”4

These are powerful words. They are painful to hear. And the crisis as he describes is two-fold. One is the enormous tragedy we are causing to another people in Gaza and in the West Bank. And the second is the unfolding tragedy we are causing to ourselves. And so he decided to speak out in defense of Judaism. And while many believe that defending Judaism means putting all of the blame on the other side, Schorsch sees himself as defending Judaism from our own hypocrisy. “There is nothing more destructive of religion than hypocrisy,” he said. “For us to defend what is happening on the West Bank and in Gaza, religiously is simply hypocritical, and I think will be a burden for the future history of Judaism.”5

So we are faced with this two-fold crisis, and we need first foremost to raise our voices to end the war and the violence, and save people’s lives, both Israelis and Palestinians. But we are also faced with a crisis of the future, which is to save our 2,500 year-old moral tradition from hypocrisy. Inheriting our ancient tradition is a privilege. And privileges have their responsibilities. This is the meaning of L’dor v’dor, literally “from generation to generation.” Passing on Judaism to the next generation is a sacred task, and a crisis like this, requires a rethinking of the stories we have grown up with, and a courageous questioning of whether those stories meet this moment. And if they don’t meet this moment, we need to create them anew.

Rabbi Benay Lappe is a person who has talked with wisdom about new stories.6 She is a conservative rabbi who is the founder of Svara, a Queer Yeshiva, a name which means “moral intuition.” For her, we all have a master story that answers the questions “who are you, what do you believe and how you are going to live your life.” But the problem is that, in her words,

“Every story will ultimately and inevitably crash. You’ll find a more compelling story whose answers you like better. Or, an event will occur, that makes your story’s answers no longer workable. Or something inside of you has shifted. You’ve changed. And those old answers just don’t seem true anymore. Now you’ve got to figure out who you are, what you believe, and how you’re going to live your life.”

She spoke those words well before our current crisis, but for me they speak to us as if they were written today. Because for many of us, in the midst of crises in the United States and in Israel, our master stories are crashing. And when that happens, Rabbi Lappe argues, we have three options. We “can deny the crash and return to [our] master story and take a refuge there…” Though to do so we have to “build a wall around that story and shore it up and make sure that no threatening information gets in.” We can “completely reject your master story and jump off into a new story.” Or, the third option, and the one she is proposing, is to acknowledge that the story as it has been told has crashed, and go back to the tradition, take what works, mix it with the new and create a new story, in this case, a new Judaism this continues to be meaningful, challenging and true to our lives.

This is how Judaism as we know it came to be. The story is told in the Talmud7 — the story of Yavneh and Rabban Yochanan ben Zakai. The story takes place around 69 C.E., the time when the Roman Empire was suppressing freedom and autonomy of the Judeans, eventually destroying the second Temple. This was a time of great division among Jews, as there is always division for people facing a crisis with their master story crashing. In fact, the Talmud says that the reason for the destruction of the Temple was this division, which the rabbis called it sinat hinam, baseless hatred.

The story describes how the Roman Emperor sent Vespasian and put the walled city of Jerusalem under siege for three years. The Judeans had stocks of grain and food that would last the people 21 years. Some Judeans wanted to keep within the walls, living life as normal as possible, as if nothing changed. Other Judeans wanted to fight the Romans. The Talmud sees this path as a kind of suicide, and refers to these militants as “zealots” or “thugs.” And then there were the “Rabbis,” the ones who wrote the Talmud and founded the Judaism we know today. As they tell the story: “There were these thugs among them. The rabbis said to them, ‘Let’s go out and make peace with the Romans.’ The thugs would not let them. They said, ‘Let’s go out and make war against them.’ The rabbis said to them, ‘It won’t help.’ The thugs rose up and burned the stores of wheat and barley; and there was famine.”

Now it happened that the leader of the militants was the nephew of Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai. There were divisions in families then as well. But in this story, they used it to their advantage. They had a secret meeting where the Rabbi asked, “How long will you act this way and kill everyone with starvation? His nephew said, ‘What can I do? If I say anything to the thugs, they will kill me.’ ‘Figure out a remedy for me so that I can get out. Perhaps it will save a little.’

And so they worked together secretly on a plan. Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai would pretend to be sick and then pretend to die. His students would then say they needed to carry him outside the city walls to be buried. This was a risky plan. If the Jewish militants found out, they would kill Rabbi Yochanan. And indeed they nearly did. But Rabbi Yochanan escaped. He eventually got to Vespasian, and after predicting correctly that Vespasian would become emperor, Rabbi Yochanan was granted three requests, and what Rabbi Yochanan asked for, was to establish an academy in the North of Israel where they could teach and pass down a different kind of Judaism. Not the Judaism of the priests and not the Judaism of the militants, but the Judaism we practice today.

I want to offer this as a story for our own day. The walled city for me symbolizes a response to a crisis where we are content to wall ourselves off—from other opinions, from other people’s experiences and truths. 

We think that walls always protect us. Sometimes they do. But sometimes they prevent us from responding to a crisis by creating something new. The Judaism of Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai and the rabbis was a different vision from the priests and the militants and the messianists. But this minority of people, these dissenters sometimes called traitors, were the unlikely founders of a new Judaism that carried us into the next era. It was a Judaism that was immensely skeptical of militarism and militant messianism. Instead, Rabbi Yochanan decided to compromise and “save a little” rather than risk everything. That moderation, that creativity, took courage and saved Judaism.

This is our task. The time to speak up against reducing Judaism to militancy is now. As Rabbi Schorsch said, like the Judeans of 69 C.E. “Judaism is at that critical moment.” And just as Rabbi Yochanan and his students could not let the Judean militants sacrifice everything, we, Rabbi Schorsch says, “in raising the ethical constraints that need to be imposed on the Israeli government, we are defending Judaism, a Judaism that is going to have to survive this catastrophe. And how are we going to be able to live with ourselves if we were silent.”8

And we, like Rabbi Yochanan, cannot only be against something. We, like him, must create a new Judaism, and a new Torah for our time. And indeed, many people are calling for the creativity expressed in the phrase, a New Torah.9 Israeli Orthodox rabbi Elhanan Nir published a poem in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz in December 2023 called “Now We Need a New Torah.”10 To quote from the poem:

Now like air to breathe
We need a new Torah.
Now in this stifled breath and the hacked neck
We need a new Mishnah, a new Gemara, a new
Kabbalah, new mystical ascents
And in all the brokenness and salt and ruin, now
A new Hasidism and a new Zionism…
And new art and new poetry
And new literature and new cinema
And new-ancient words
And new-ancient souls from the treasure of
souls.
And new love out of the terrible weeping.
For we have all been flooded by the rivers of
Re’im and Be’eri
And we have in us no mountain and there are no
more Tablets
And we have no Moses and we have no strength
and into our hands everything now has been
given.

Into our hands. It is up to us. In 1994, the great American Jewish writer and teacher Leibel Fein, founder of Moment Magazine, in an article called “Smashing idols and other prescriptions for Jewish Continuity”11 wrote: “Whichever the yesterday we try to copy, we will fail, for yesterday was not an abstraction. It was a specific point in space and time and a specific community living and responding there and then. Here and now, it is our own story we must write, and live. That is the starting point for authenticity.”

What is this new Torah of today? The Torah of our lives and of our hearts. We need all of us, for each of our lived experiences is a revelation from God that is a part of our people’s Torah, and we need to connect those individual experiences with centuries of texts, traditions and wisdom, so what we create is both new and old. We must continue to learn, to challenge ourselves, to speak our truth with love. We must include, not discount the Torah of others—whether our parents and grandparents, or our children and grandchildren. Do not listen to the false prophets who tell us to read each other out of our people. They are false prophets of hinat sinam, baseless hatred, calling ourselves or our loved ones names like “antisemitic” or “enemies” or any one of a number of insults in order to keep up our walls, in order to insure we are walled off from each other or other peoples.

What is this new Torah going to look like? For me, it will include a balance, as described in the prophets, of the national, the universal and the spiritual, all based on a moral foundation. True healing, true spirit, true resilience cannot go through ultranationalism and messianic militarism. Our Bible shows that Samson may have been the mightiest, but his strength was used in a way that resulted in his own demise, taking everyone down with him.

We need strength and peace. We need, as the psalm says, hesed v’emet, love and truth; tzedek v’shalom, justice and peace. This is what we learn from Torah. This is our inheritance. In our new Torah, we are not perpetual victims of others with no choice but the sword. We have the power of our spiritual and our moral tradition wherever we live. We must choose life.

Think of the spiritual strength of a Jewish diaspora that works in equal partnership with Jews in Israel to write such a new Torah. The diaspora has a proud history of creativity. Much of the Torah and all of the Babylonian Talmud were written there. The Torah was revealed at Sinai, outside any national boundaries. We must not outsource our Judaism to a community 7,000 miles away, however miraculous and nurturing it is. We need to invest ourselves and our resources in a liberal, moral, rooted Jewish tradition right here, where we live, and recognize that the resilience of Judaism will rest on both the miracle of Israel and on the miracle of our own communities and our own lives.

This is happening right now. Young people are creating their own communities and organizations, right now. More and more rabbis and leaders are speaking out at great risk, right now. We need to support them with our love and our appreciation for the courage of youth and the wisdom of old age. Together we need to create and recreate a New Torah. We need to reread our Torah with new eyes and see in front of us the Torah of dignity. The Torah of Empathy. The Torah of Teshuvah. What do you hear the Torah calling us to do, when you see what is happening around us here, and in Israel and Gaza. We must all dare to speak our truth, whatever it is. It is this Torah of truth that we call forth in the Torah blessing when we rise for an Aliya. We say asher natan lanu Torat emet, who gave to us a Torah of truth. And with this truth, we can act with courage and this strength which will give us hope.

Remember the questions Rabbi Lappe voiced that gives rise to our stories: “who are we? what do we believe? and how are we are going to live our lives?” Our children are asking the same questions. What will our answer be? It may seem like our children and grandchildren are not listening. But they are. We cannot give them the same story in 2025 that serve us decades ago. What is the new Torah we are leaving with them? 

In the book of Isaiah, God tells the people, “From me (God) a Torah will go forth” (Is. 51:4). The classical rabbis, the descendants of Rabbi Yochanan, take the verse radically out of context, and makes the “me” not God but ourselves.12 And since “go forth” can be understood as a future tense, they understand the verse to say, “From me a (new) Torah will go forth.” That is, I believe, from each of us. 

Perhaps this was Moses’s charge to future generations. Before Moses died, he didn’t say, to Joshua, “say just what I said.” He said “Hazak V’ematz” “may you have strength and courage.”

This is our charge. May we have strength and courage. That is our hope.