Yom Kippur, BPS 5787
Uncomfortable
וְהָיָה אִם־שָׁמֹֽעַ תִּשְׁמְ֒עוּ אֶל־מִצְוֹתַי
Now it shall be, if you hearken, yes, hearken to my commandments that I command you today, to love Adonai your God and to serve the Eternal with all your heart and with all your being: I will give forth the rain of your land in its due-time, the early rain and the late rain; and you will harvest your grain and your wine and your oil. And I will put grass in your fields for your cattle, and you will eat and you will be satisfied. Beware lest your hearts be seduced, so that you turn aside and serve other gods and bow down to them., and the anger of God flare up against you so that he shuts up the heavens and there is no rain, and the earth does not give forth its yield, and you perish quickly from off the good land that God is giving you!
Do these words sound familiar? They come from the 2nd paragraph of the Shema, Deuteronomy Chapter 11 verses 13-21, that appear in our regular Siddur and in the High Holy Day machzor at the back of the book. From my understanding, the decision of the editors of our Siddur not to include these verses where they follow on after the first paragraph of the Shema arises from a theological rejection of the Biblical perspective on Reward and Punishment:’ If you obey my commandments, I will reward you. If you turn aside from Me, I will punish you.’ As Progressive Jews, we have moved beyond a fundamentalist belief in Reward and Punishment and in a God that gets angry when we don’t do as we’re told.
But is Reward and Punishment what these verses are really about? Aren’t they more stating the facts of Cause and Effect?
In a contemporary interpretation, Rabbi Zalman Schachter Shalomi z’l translates these same verses:
How good it will be when you really listen, and hear my directions, which I give to you today, for loving Yah, who is your God, and to act godly with feeling and inspiration. Your earthly needs will be met at the right time, appropriate to the season. You will reap what you planted for your delight and health. Also, your animals will have ample feed. All of you will eat and be content. Be careful — watch out! Don’t let your cravings delude you; don’t become alienated; don’t let your cravings become your gods; don’t debase yourself to them, because the God-sense within you will become distorted. Heaven will be shut to you, grace will not descend, Earth will not yield her produce. Your rushing will destroy you! And Earth will not be able to recover her good balance in which God’s gifts manifest. May these values of Mine, reside in your feelings and aspirations… Then, you and your children, and their children, will live out on earth that divine promise given to your ancestors to live heavenly days right here on this earth.
Reb Zalman was a passionate climate campaigner and life-long social activist. For him, the warning of Deuteronomy is a simple statement of the consequences of our actions and greed on the planet .
Ve’haya….. whether you inluce, or whether you don’t include it, the 2nd paragraph of the Shema is deeply uncomfortable. It confronts us with an uncomfortable truth. This is a very Jewish approach. Rooted in Judaism’s long prophetic tradition, we shouldn’t feel too comfortable; rather we are called to wrestle with uncomfotable realities and opposing truths…
In a few weeks’ time we will be commemorating the third anniversary of the devastating October 7th attacks in Israel. On the morning of Simchat Torah 2023, some 3,000 Hamas-led terrorists burst through the Gaza border and rampaged through the kibbutzim and villages of the Gaza envelope for hours, murdering, raping, torturing, burning families alive in their homes. 1,200 people, 1,000 of them civilians, were killed. At the Nova music festival, 260 people were gunned down. 251 people of all ages, from babies to the elderly, were abducted to Gaza and held hostage. On October 13th 2025, after nearly 2 years in captivity, the last 20 living hostages were released. Only in January 2026 the body of Ran Gvili, the final hostage remaining in Gaza, was retrieved.
Are there words for the courage and resilience of the Israeli nation in response to the worst attack on Israel since its 1948 founding and the worst single-day killing of Jewish people since the Holocaust? On October 7th the Jewish State, created to protect Jews so that there could never be another Holocaust, was nowhere. Unprepared, the IDF was ineffective in defending the citizens of Israel from this deadly onslaught. It was individual Israelis who carried out incredible acts of heroism to save the lives of friends and strangers. On October 7th and October 8th, with the dead still being counted and terrorists still rampaging through southern Israeli towns, it was civil society that sprang into action to trace the dead and the abducted amidst the chaos and confusion. It was civil society that tracked down survivors in hospitals and connected them with their families, provided food and clothing, relocated the remnants of entire communities decimated by the massacre to welcoming kibbutzim or hotels. The same civil society that had organised a year of protest against the government’s plans to dismantle Israel’s judiciary and the fabric of Israel’s democracy, stepped into the void left by the State in the days and months that followed.
But any hope of restoring unity across the nation is further away than before this Biblical catastrophe in the experience of the Jewish Nation.
The divisions in Israeli society that existed before October 7th have only been further exploited by the most right wing government in Israel’s history. And those divisions have seeped into our communities, here in the UK, with communities tearing themselves apart over the wide range of passionately held political positions on Israel. The media and social media continues to be obsessed with Israel, the war in Gaza and with Palestine whilst 29 current wars and conflicts in the world today go largely unreported, such as Sudan, facing the world’s largest internal displacement crisis, where 17.3 million children are in need of protection and emergency assistance.
The media’s toxic anti-Israel narrative, shamelessly grafted onto timeless, age-old anti-semitic tropes, has fuelled the spike in anti-semitism and anti-semitic attacks since October 7th. But, so uncomfortable, have aspects of the way the war has been conducted in Gaza, by the extreme statements made by members of the Israeli government including senior ministers within Netanyahu’s cabinet, and in recent months, the escalation in State supported, State funded Settler violence on Palestinians in the West Bank. Violence named Jewish terrorism by many within Israel, and described as a Chillul HaShem, a desecration of God’s name, by many within Israeli such as veteran Israeli journalist Yossi Klein HaLevi, as well as by respected religious leaders here in the UK such as Masorti Senior Rabbi Jonathan Wittenberg on a recent visit to the West Bank.
Speaking out against the attacks on the fabric of Israel’s democracy, from the changes to the judicial system to the forced dispossession of Palestinians from their homes and lands in the West Bank, named as ethic cleansing by former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and many other ex IDF commanders and senior leaders in recent weeks, often brings hostile accusations of disloyalty and betrayal to the Jewish State both in Israel and here in the UK. Yet the leadership of Progressive Judaism in Israel and here in the UK recognises that we can both speak out against the actions of an Israeli government that desecrate the values central to the Judaism by which we live, and remain loyal and committed to the State of Israel, the only Jewish Homeland there is. Medinat Yisrael, the State of Israel - still a Light to the Nations in so many inspiring and important ways, from technology to agriculture to medical and scientific research to water innovation, to a society filled with outstanding and incredible individuals, a country of creativity and innovation, that collectively cares for its vulnerable.
We are Yisrael – those who wrestle with God, wrestle with our Tradition, with each other, with the world. Yisrael – God Wrestlers – who wrestle with the discomfort of opposing realities and complex truths. So alongside whatever discomfort the complex truths bring, the bond that ties all Jews together – in Israel and the Diaspora – calls us to do everything within our power to work towards repair, respect, kindness and healing both within our own community, across the UK Jewish community, and in Israel.
The upcoming Israeli elections taking place on October 27th, will be the most consequential in Israel’s history. Although it’s 26 years since I left Israel, and 21 since I lived there for a year, my Teudah zehut, my Israeli identity card, still entitles me to exercise my democratic right in shaping which direction Israel takes from here. There is no postal vote option in Israel’s elections. And so, like tens of thousands of Israelis living outside Israel, I will be heading to Israel to vote in the October election.
You may not have the right to vote in the election! But in this new Jewish Year 5787 let’s renew our connection to Israel, our engagement in supporting its democracy and the very many on-the-ground efforts to bring peace, justice and coexistence to all its people. Let’s renew our pride in being one Jewish People. May we stand together, here in the UK and together with our brothers and sister in Israel, in joy and strength, with courage and resilience and in love.
Ken Yehi Ratzon.