Teshuvah and “Good Trouble”: Rabbi’s Sermon for Kol Nidrei 5787

Picture a cemetery.  A large cemetery hundreds of years old in a town where people had lived for generations and generations.  What do you see?  Perhaps some old tombstones and overgrown grass.  But in this cemetery, there are no tombstones or grave markers.  Not one.  You would not even know it was a cemetery but for the few people old enough to remember their neighbor’s being buried there, and for the eerie fact that children wanting to play soccer would say to each other, meet me over at the Jewish cemetery.

This cemetery exists in the Polish town of Gniewoszow, less than two hours south of Warsaw.  We screened a film about the town this past summer called Among Neighbors by Yoav Potash.  The film begins in the backyard of a 90-year-old Polish man, Grandpa, with his adult grandson.  In the yard are some flowers, some piles of scrap metal, and a Jewish tombstone lying on the ground with some random hardware on top, and enough dust and dirt covering the engraved Hebrew letters that it is illegible.

The filmmaker asks grandpa and his adult grandson why the tombstone was there.  Grandson tries to deflect the question hoping to protect his grandfather, but the grandfather is not embarrassed.  Grandpa explains: “the Germans during WWII destroyed the Jewish cemetery, and built a road nearby with the tombstones.  After the war, when the Germans left, everyone tore up the road and took the tombstones for their own use.  So I took a piece myself.  I said, let’s keep it as a souvenir.  You could make it into a grindstone.  But it wasn’t worth it for me to cut it,” he said.  So there it was.

The man spoke matter-of-factly.  The body language of his adult grandson, however, was not matter-of-fact.  He was embarrassed, possibly ashamed.  The filmmaker asked, “Why not return the tombstone to the Jewish cemetery?”  And the grandson said with some emotion: “Here’s the thing.  I live in this town.  I don’t want to start any trouble.”

“I don’t want to start any trouble.”  And I understood what he meant.  It would have been trouble. There would have been consequences, at least from the neighbors, if not from the government.  For decades Polish people had angrily resisted any suggestion that they had done anything wrong to Jewish people during and after WWII.  After all, the Polish people had suffered enormous losses at the hands of the Nazis and the Soviets.  They suffered from historical trauma as victims of large scale war crimes.  And they did not want to face a complicated truth– that they were not only victims of the Germans, but some of them were also perpetrators against their Jewish neighbors, and perhaps most of them were in some way complicit, not only during the war but after it ended.  If you pointed to that reality, the reality that Poles were both victims and perpetrators, it would be a problem for you in that town.  Because returning a Jewish tombstone lying in your yard, would implicate neighbors who had Jewish tombstones in their yards.  And not just in this town.  All over Poland Jewish tombstones were used as raw material after the war for grindstones, parts of stone walls, even as lining for children’s sandboxes.   They were everywhere, seen but not seen, because they did not signal to most people that it was wrong.  How could it be, if Poles were only victims. But if one person did return a tombstone,  if one person spoke up and did the right thing, that person would break the illusion that there was nothing wrong.  That person would make what was unseen, not only seen but understood.  And that person would indeed, as the grandson said, be starting “trouble.”

And I was thinking, perhaps “trouble” or “good trouble” as John Lewis would say, was another word for Teshuvah, the theme of Yom Kippur.  Teshuvah is often translated as “repentance” but literally means “return,” as in returning to God, returning to truth, returning to moral behavior.  Teshuvah is about accountability, forgiveness, change, and potential healing.  But accountability and change can be profoundly destabilizing for most of us who are invested for whatever reason in certain things staying the same, being seen but not seen.  All of us are attached to some illusion or another—personally and collectively.  But Teshuvah and illusions do not rest easy together, for Teshuvah can only begin when we are open and vulnerable enough to listen to others, to listen the truths of other people’s lives and perspectives.

And there have been people in Poland doing teshuvah or causing good trouble, so to speak.  Enough people so that Poland created a law against it.  In 2018, what is called the “Law and Justice Party” amended the act that had established the Institute of National Remembrance.  The Institute had been founded in 1998 to investigate and remember the crimes committed against the Polish people in the twentieth century, especially during WWII and its aftermath.  And there were grave crimes against Polish people that do need to be uncovered and remembered.  But some of the crimes committed at that time were committed by Poles, and not everyone agreed that those crimes should be uncovered or remembered.    So the party created a law that protected the “reputation” and “good name” of Poland.  In other words, it criminalized speech that pointed to Polish complicity in the Holocaust or its aftermath.  And while it was later reduced after pushback to a civil violation rather than criminal, the point was made.  And that point was that it was unpatriotic to point out historical faults or moral violations of the country.  It was unpatriotic, in other words, to do Teshuvah.

It is indeed beyond sad to have to deal not only with the trauma of crimes against ourselves as a people, but also with our own people’s crimes against others.  Stories with clear victims on the one hand and demons on the other are the most captivating.  But as the  Polish-Jewish journalist Konstanty Gebert said in the film: “Victims can do evil things.  In each town [in Poland] you will find examples both the most vile and the most noble of human behavior.  And the truth about us is in the totality of it all.”

And it is only in the totality of it all, as best we can understand, that Teshuvah can begin.  We need each other to lovingly help us see our faults and the faults of our collective.  Maimonides, the great medieval Jewish philosopher who wrote the most famous tractate on Teshuvah, writes that there are several things that lock us out of teshuvah, and one of them is not being open to these different and critical perspectives, called in Hebrew Tokhekha, or rebuke.   Teshuvah cannot be done in a bubble where we are all confirming what each other sees but doesn’t really see or understand.  As philosopher Noam Weinreich[1] points out, there is a difference between seeing and understanding.  Applying that to our example of the tombstones, everyone saw that the old Jewish cemetery did not have tombstones.  And everyone saw that  Jewish tombstones were being used as grindstones.  But only a few people understood that this was a moral desecration that needed to be said aloud and repaired.  The Teshuvah of all required those voices of the few to be heard.  But those who did understand were scared to raise their voice, because there would be trouble.

There is a famous story in the Bible which Weinreich brings to illustrate the importance of critical voices outside our bubble to enable teshuvah.  It is the story of David and the prophet Nathan.  David, you may remember from the Bible, went from being a young child victim of the Philistines who wanted to kill him, to a young adult victim of King Saul, who wanted to kill him.  But David survived, and grew to be a powerful king himself.  And one of the holy things about our Bible is that it doesn’t shy away from looking at the imperfections, even the grave sins, of our own people.  The Bible tells how David, after years of being a victim, himself abuses his power terribly.  He lusts after Batsheva, his soldier Uriah’s wife, and sends for her to sleep with him while Uriah is away fighting.  When Batsheva informs the king she is pregnant, David does not want to be found out.  So he sends Uriah to the front lines where he would be killed, and David would not be held accountable.

David shows no guilt about this terrible sin.  He probably had a thousand excuses.  But his prophet Nathan had a different perspective.  So he came to him and told him about a very rich man who used abused his power over a very poor and vulnerable man.  And David, not understanding this was a parable about him, became furious at the injustice of the man in the story.  “As God lives,” he says to Nathan, “the man who did this deserves to die, and must pay reparations.”

“That man,” Nathan said, “is you.”

Nathan was courageous.  He gave the king rebuke, but gave it wisely. He was able to change David’s perspective about his actions.  As Weinreich writes, “a change in perspective that will allow one to achieve understanding is often difficult, if not impossible to achieve on one’s own.”  David needed Nathan’s rebuke to open the way for his teshuvah.  And to David’s credit, he was able to hear it, and his teshuvah began.

We all need “Nathans,” people brave and caring enough to give loving criticism, thereby helping us to do Teshuvah. But sadly, many places around the world, authoritarian states, as well as democracies that are weakening, have put legal blocks to hearing the Nathan’s among us, those among us courageous enough to enable national Teshuva.  Dariusz Stola, a Polish historian who was director of the Polin Museum for the History of Polish Jews during the time of the 2018 law, was pushed out of his position for opposing it.  “Poland is a case of a much broader problem which we see in many countries,” he said in the film, “the growing intervention of governments in ‘making our past great again.’  In Poland this is the Polish-Jewish past and the Holocaust.  In France it is colonialism and the colonial past of France.  In the U.S. it is slavery, the Civil War, and race.”

And indeed, in the United States, in March of 2025, Executive order 14253, named “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History,” ordered that “materials at national parks should not ‘inappropriately disparage Americans past or living.’”  Following that directive, according to the New York Times, “the Park Service has taken down plaques about slavery at Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia, a sign about climate change at Fort Sumter in South Carolina and a sign about Indigenous people at Acadia National Park in Maine,” making national teshuvah unpatriotic.  This is very painful to me, as I’m sure it is for you, as an American who feels that patriotism includes facing our past with honesty and courage in order to move forward with repair.

And saddest of all for me right now is that in the land where Nathan and David and the Prophets of Israel lived, the state of Israel is also repressing dissent and prophetic voices, making Teshuvah not only difficult but dangerous.  There are so many brave Nathans in so many walks of life in Israel.  To give one example, there has been a growing number of Israeli and American Jews who have taken on “good trouble,” or teshuvah, and have gone to the West Bank on what is called “Protective Presence.” “Protective presence”  is what has come to mean the  accompanying of Palestinians who live on the West Bank during the harvest so they can get to their fields and groves at harvest time and home safely.  Those on protective presence serve as witnesses to that potential violence against with the hope that their presence will protect the lives and rights of Palestinians.  You may know, that settler violence against Palestinian residents have been enormously brutal and worse than it has ever been.  There has been little to no accountability as homes are burned and people are beaten or killed with soldiers watching and doing nothing.  Israeli and American Jews who go on protective presence take great risk for the love of the country and commitment to its future,  yet they have been harassed, beaten, and called traitors.  What is more, dozens of American Jews, including those with close family in Israel, have had their entry permits revoked, sometimes while they are still in the country with the threat of not being able to return to Israel.

This repression of criticism of what is happening in the West Bank, as well as of the destruction of Gaza, has spread to suppression of some Israeli journalists and artists, whose work has been shut down and who live with harassment and threats of violence.  And this past week, in response to a documentary called Naza made by two Israeli filmmakers that shows IDF soldiers’ testimonies on the killing of civilians in Gaza,  Prime Minister Netanyahu said that he plans to revoke the citizenship of the filmmakers, and raise the damages in defamation cases of the Israeli military to 1 million shekel.  But some of those Israelis who speak up are in the military.  Their testimony is an act of Teshuvah, so that a path can open to what is right.  Patriotism and national greatness lies in honest wrestling with our faults, not in censored stories.  Yet today in the Jewish state as well, this kind of Teshuvah is “unpatriotic” as well.   It is, as we have seen, starting trouble.

I do want to acknowledge just how impossibly hard it is to examine one’s own people’s actions when it is a state of trauma, as the people of Israel are after the brutal atrocities and massacres of October 7^th.  Our brothers and sisters in Israel deserve to be seen by all fully and lovingly in their deep suffering, which for some may well continue for their entire lives, and beyond that to generations.  That is one of the meanings of the famous Talmudic phrase, “all of Israel is responsible for each other,” kol Israel arevim zeh bazeh. Part of our love and responsibility is to see their pain.  The other meaning of kol Yisrael arevim zeh bazeh, made explicit in the Talmud (BT Shevuot 39a), is that part of our love and responsibility is to steer each other away from wrong doing, because the wrong doing of our people becomes ours as well, ours to do Teshuvah for. This is true for all peoples. So for those of us who love Israel and the people living there, our love and responsibility must include a prophetic cry against injustices toward Israel, and when they occur, against injustices by Israel. Israel needs us, all of us, with our different perspectives and experiences, to stand up for the Jewish values that we have been proud inheritors of for almost 3,000 years.

This is the time.  I used to tell people, that we waited 2,000 years for a Jewish state, and we are living at a time when this dream is a reality.  So we must engage with the culture, learn Hebrew, explore the possibilities of a renewed Judaism with Israel in our lives.  But now, I say something perhaps difficult to hear, but with urgency. We have waited 2,000 years for a Jewish state, and are we are living at a time when this dream is a reality.  But the dream is becoming nightmare unless we change course.  Israel is destroying itself under our watch.  We must, we must, stop that self-destruction, stop the destruction of another people, and be a part of the Jewish and Palestinian effort to create a shared future.  The outlines of that future could be two separate states, or two confederated states, or one binational state.  That will be the decision of the people there and is not the core issue.  The core issue is that we must insist that all the people there deserve to live, and live safely and live freely.  And building that future, will require everyone, on all sides, to be open to Teshuvah.

I understand that when we feel vulnerable, we fear that honest teshuvah will aggravate antisemitism.  Or that people will see us differently if we admit our errors, and will not respect us.  And some may not.  But the right people will. And we must remember that even though we may feel vulnerable as we engage in teshuvah, teshuvah actually leads to a deeper strength.  It is the only real strength and security anyone can really have in this world, the security and strength of admitting when we are wrong, and trying to correct it and do right.  As the Talmud teaches—someone who does something wrong, even terribly wrong, but does real teshuvah, is more “righteous” than someone who has never done wrong (BT Berakhot 34b).  Judaism does not ask us to be perfect.  It asks us to reflect with honesty, spiritual openness, and courage.  It asks us do teshuvah.

I am often asked whether I have hope for the future.  I absolutely do, because I believe in the power of teshuvah to shape a potential future, and shape even our understanding of the past.  Teshuvah is the antidote to helplessness in the midst of brokenness.  According to the Talmud, Teshuvah is one of the seven things created before the creation of the world, along with Torah (BT Pesachim 54a)  Just as we are made of the same material as the stars, we are made of the spiritual material and inclination of Teshuvah.  It is our superpower, so to speak.

And yes, it is trouble.  And, thank God, there are Israelis and Palestinians doing that good trouble, standing up courageously to repressive authorities within their own people, with the hope of creating a new future.  So let me offer some hope by naming them.  “Standing Together,” the Jewish-Arab grassroots organization in Israel is doing that good trouble.  “Combatants for Peace,” the organization of Jews and Palestinians who were former fighters but who have laid down their arms and work together to “build a future of peace, equality, and freedom for all” are doing that good trouble. “A Land for All” whose mission is “two states, one homeland,” includes a group of Jews and Palestinians who work for a 2 state confederation as a solution to the conflict.  Rabbis for Human Rights and Smol Emuni (the Faithful Left), in Israel, and the “Halakhic Left,” in the United States are all religious organizations who have as their missions justice, faith and equality for both Jews and Palestinians, bringing Torah and Jewish values into the discussions.

Will the peace envisioned by these groups be the future?  That depends on all of us—there and here.  Will we allow them to be our “Nathans”?  Will we join them as the Nathans for our people, as we pray others will be for their  people.  Will we support the people who dare to make good trouble, and raise our voices when they are attacked and threatened.  If we do so each in our own way, we will not be alone.

In Poland,  the director of the Jewish museum who was pushed out in 2019 for speaking up, he was just reinstated in March of this year.  And in the town of Geniewoszov, the film show that a family descendants of their Jewish family from that town worked to reconsecrate the cemetery and rebury the bones.  They had asked the Mayor to be there for the cemetery, and he said he couldn’t because there was an election in the next month, and it wouldn’t be good for him to be in a Jewish setting.  So the family went expecting just a few people.  But there were hundreds of people.  They had closed the school and all the teachers, students and parents were there. The town priest was there, and the City Council was there.  And they all stood together.

And remember the adult grandson in the film whose grandpa kept a tombstone in his scrap metal yard?  The one who didn’t want to start trouble?  He started some. By the end of the film, we see him cleaning off the tombstone, and other tombstones as well.  And with friends, they lifted the tombstones carefully into their truck, and took them to the town cemetery, where they mounted on a wall as a moving memorial—a  memorial to their lives, a memorial to the wrong done to them, and a memorial to the teshuvah, the reparations, that we humans are capable of.  “It is wrong to destroy someone’s history,” the grandson said, with tears in his eyes.  It took three generations.  But those souls are now resting in peace.  And the people living in the town who are making right, doing teshuvah, their souls are more at peace as well.

It is wrong to destroy each other’s history. And it is wrong to destroy each other’s future. We don’t need to wait three generations to stand together.  We are alive and have this precious time right now.  There is so much teshuvah to do.  Let this year be a year to make some good trouble, and forge a new history and a new future together.

[1] Noam Weinreich, “Teshuvah For What?” in Strengthen Us This Day: Essays for Tishrei 5787, pp. 13-18, https://www.halachicleft.org/.  Also cited and explored in the Beinart Notebook, https://peterbeinart.substack.com/p/repenting-through-listening?publication_id=105260&post_id=215770535&r=c1qtx&triedRedirect=true