Erev Rosh Hashanah 5787 – “It’s Hard Enough Being Human” Rabbi Andrew Oberstein
It’s Hard Enough Being Human (1)
Rabbi Andrew Oberstein | Erev Rosh Hashanah 5787 | September 11, 2026
Temple Israel of Boston | Riverway Project
View the video recording of this sermon
“I know a lot of fancy words.
I tear them from my heart and my tongue.
Then I pray.”
This was the first of late poet Mary Oliver’s “Six Recognitions of the Lord” and in my humble opinion,
the most important recognition of all.
Our tradition is full of a lot of fancy words.
We’ve said many of them tonight and will continue to say them over these next Ten Days of Awe.
But what Oliver teaches us in her prophetic poetry is the importance of taking a step back,
of stripping away all of the complex Hebrew and theology and dogma that can enhance our spiritual experience but often actually detract from it.
Our tradition has much to say about living a deep Jewish life.
There are countless pages written over thousands of years of Jewish thought designed to help us navigate the complicated relationship between people and the Divine,
to infuse holiness into the otherwise mundane,
to find meaning in the seemingly incomprehensible.
//
But this year,
as I began my preparation for these High Holy Days,
I heard Mary Oliver’s voice imploring me to tear the fancy words from my heart and tongue.
To find the beauty in simplicity.
And I found myself drawn,
over and over,
to the words of our sage Hillel.
This isn’t the first time this year Hillel has had something urgent to tell us.
Last Kol Nidre,
I turned to another of his teachings –
“im ein ani li, mi li,
If I am not for myself,
who will be for me?” –
to talk about holding two hard truths inside one heart.
Tonight,
a different teaching,
and Hillel is still not finished with us.
Among many teachings recorded in Pirkei Avot,
the ethical chapters of our ancestors,
Hillel taught something devoid of the fancy words Mary Oliver rejected.
His teaching is so simple that it’s easy to ignore.
But,
as we’ve seen so clearly manifest in the world around us,
we’ve been ignoring it at our own peril.
//
In chapter 2 of Pirkei Avot,
Hillel is recorded as saying,
“וּבְמָקוֹם שֶׁאֵין אֲנָשִׁים,
הִשְׁתַּדֵּל לִהְיוֹת אִישׁ”
In a place where there are no humans,
strive to be a human.
//
I can only imagine that this lands differently in 2026 than it did in the first century BCE.
Our ancient relatives could not have conceived a world with two types of intelligence –
one organic and human and the other machine and artificial,
not to mention the difficulty that we,
their descendants,
would one day face in attempting to differentiate between the words each one produces.
The place where there are no humans,
for Hillel,
is perhaps better translated as the place where there is no humanity.
He was differentiating between degrees of human moral quality.
But to even get to Hillel’s starting point today,
we first need to be able to differentiate between what is and isn’t human.
We are inundated with conversations today about the role of humanity in the era of Artificial Intelligence.
We discuss AI’s economic implications,
the ways that it will reshape the structure of our society.
But,
from what I’ve seen over this past year,
we don’t need to worry about AI taking away what makes us human.
We are quite readily doing that to ourselves.
At the risk of painting humanity with a broad brush,
in 2026,
overall,
we are not treating each other well.
People have said this in every generation.
I know that.
Every generation looks at the next and worries it’s ruder,
it’s colder,
it’s less kind.
I can’t tell you whether they were right.
I can tell you what I’m seeing now;
and I’m sure you’ve seen many of the same things.
Some people point to the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown as the beginning of the end,
the turning point when we forgot how to function as human beings,
how to be in relationship with our neighbor,
how to walk through this world with basic human decency.
Some point to the now ubiquitous social media landscape as the culprit –
the ease with which we hide behind our computer screens to spew virtual vitriol that we’d never be brave or foolish enough to actually espouse in person.
They may both be right.
There are countless other thinkpieces and podcasts with their own theories.
But from a spiritual perspective,
I am more interested in how it’s manifested than in settling on a single cause.
You’ve felt the shift in how human beings relate to each other.
The cashier who used to say good morning,
back when there was always a cashier.
The silence in a checkout line.
The customer service chatbot that answers instantly and somehow still leaves you feeling unheard.
The family group chat where somehow everyone is ruder than they’d ever be in person.
Callous, dehumanizing thoughts turn into callous, dehumanizing words.
It may begin with demeaning encounters at the cash register.
But the more we train ourselves to believe that only certain human beings deserve our respect,
the easier it is to believe that only certain human beings even deserve to exist in society,
or God forbid,
to exist at all.
We are not imagining this.
The most recent National Customer Rage Survey (2) found that 55% of Americans believe civility is getting worse.
And when researchers asked why,
more people pointed to a single cause than any other:
what the survey called,
“the moral decay of society.”
We know it.
We feel it.
Many of us are participating in it,
even if we don’t realize it.
//
I know I’m not exempt.
I’ve rushed past people because I was in a hurry and told myself I’d circle back, knowing I wouldn’t.
I’ve let a phone call go to voicemail when I knew,
in the moment,
exactly what it would have meant to pick up.
I’ve learned someone’s politics and decided,
before they’d said a word to me,
that I already knew who they were.
And I know I’m not alone in this room tonight.
I’m generalizing and I know it.
Not everyone.
Not always.
But enough and often enough that I don’t think we can call it an aberration anymore.
//
Here is my own theory.
And yes,
it does involve technology,
even though I just told you not to blame it exclusively.
We spent years learning how to check ourselves out at the grocery store,
how to order our coffee from a screen,
how to ask a machine instead of a person.
And somewhere in all that practicing how to talk with machines,
we forgot that the moment a human being enters the equation,
our behavior is supposed to change.
Not just supposed to change;
It has to change.
Not because kindness is nice,
but because treating human beings with dignity comes from the very foundations of Torah.
Every single human being is created b’tzelem Elohim,
in the image of God.
In fact,
only human beings are created b’tzelem Elohim.
That includes the person who annoys you and the stranger who won’t make eye contact and the one who never says ‘good morning’ back to you.
We still need to care about the rest of this planet,
but humanity matters in a way nothing else does.
When we treat any person carelessly,
we’re not just being rude.
We’re failing to see God’s image standing in front of us and to address them accordingly.
//
So what do we do with this awareness –
this understanding that humans,
by and large,
seem to be relinquishing our own humanity and,
perhaps even worse,
growing less and less able to see the humanity in one another?
The trend may be worrisome but I simply refuse to see this as an inevitable downward trajectory.
Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur,
by their very definition,
fight back against the idea of inevitability.
The foundational principle of these Yamim Nora’im,
these Days of Awe,
is that we are able to identify patterns of behavior that we may have fallen into, subconsciously or otherwise.
But the true revelation of this season is that these patterns can be broken.
No one ever said the work was easy.
It’s demanding and it’s countercultural.
But it is always possible.
Hillel,
importantly,
never said “in a place where there are no humans,
be a human.”
He said “in a place where there are no humans,
strive to be a human.”
Hishtadel lihiyot ish.
The 16th century commentator Rabbi Yom-Tov Lipmann Heller points us to something remarkable.
He notes that Maimonides observed that the ancient Aramaic translation of a familiar verse from Genesis –
Jacob’s wrestling match with a mysterious figure –
renders the word “wrestled” as veishtadel.
The very same root as Hillel’s word for “strive.”
To strive and to wrestle,
embodied in the same word.
With this context,
we might translate Hillel’s teaching as:
in a place where there are no humans,
wrestle your way toward being one.
A participant in the Riverway Project (one of the young adults I work with) told me something a few months ago that I haven’t been able to shake.
He said he always says please and thank you to AI.
Every time.
He doesn’t do it because he thinks the computer cares,
but because he doesn’t want to get used to a world where he doesn’t.
He doesn’t want to fall into a pattern where his heartless behavior toward machines translates to heartless behavior toward humans.
My instinct was the opposite.
I don’t say please.
I don’t say thank you.
I’ve been careful about it,
actually.
I don’t want to blur the line between a person and a machine,
not even a little,
not even in my own habits.
//
We’re both trying to do the same thing.
We’re both trying to protect our own humanity and the humanity of others,
just going in opposite directions to do it.
I don’t know which one of us has it right.
Maybe neither of us?
Maybe both?
But I do know that both of us are wrestling;
wrestling with how easy it would be to stop paying attention,
to let the line blur,
and to forget what it costs us to treat anyone on autopilot—
as if we were machines ourselves.
Wrestling, striving, is about effort,
not achievement.
And the High Holy Days are the one time a year when we are structurally required to put in the effort.
So,
tonight,
tear the fancy words from your heart and tongue.
Strip everything back to basics.
In a place where there are no humans,
strive to be human.
I actually do believe that AI could be an incredible tool for good in this world.
But,
at the same time,
we now live in a world where people trust Claude or ChatGPT like they would a doctor,
a teacher,
or a friend,
and where human beings are treated like machines,
dispensable and devoid of dignity.
What might we be able to achieve in 5787 if we chose another path?
//
Here’s what I don’t have for you tonight:
I don’t have a solution to the political challenges of our country,
the seemingly insurmountable division and animosity,
the erosion of democracy,
or the silencing of dissent.
I don’t have a solution to the geopolitical quagmire of the Middle East.
I don’t have theological answers to explain why there is so much suffering in this world and why people are so cruel to one another.
I’ve watched siblings stop speaking.
I’ve watched people quietly unfollow,
unfriend,
disappear from each other’s lives over what they believe.
I’ve watched members of this very congregation avoid each other in the hallways of this building because of something one of them said,
or posted,
or voted for.
And I’ve heard both of them,
separately,
tell me they miss each other and don’t know how to fix it.
We did that to each other and it wasn’t because of the disagreement itself.
It was because we forgot there was a person at the other end of it.
A messy,
complicated,
but flesh-and-blood-image-of-God person.
I don’t quite have an answer for that either.
//
But I do have a first step.
If I’ve learned anything from failed New Year’s resolutions,
whether on January 1st or,
tonight,
on the 1st of Tishrei,
I know it’s that they work better when they’re made simple.
So tonight,
as we once again stand on the precipice of the unknown,
I do know this:
this year will bring warmth and joy and healing and adventure and laughter and music and love.
And I also know that this year will bring suffering and illness and loss and great disappointment.
And I also know that none of us ever knows which cards we will each be dealt.
All of us are in that same boat.
Because all of us are human.
And we need to act like it.
//
So this year,
even in a place where no one behaves with humanity,
especially in a place where no one behaves with humanity,
wrestle with your own humanity.
Strive to be more human.
Strive to honor the humanity in yourself.
Strive to see it in every single person you encounter.
Most of us are not in a position to solve the world’s greatest challenges this year.
But all of us are in a position to return to the basic human decency that we’ve let slip through our fingers.
If nowhere else,
then let it start here in this congregation.
In 5787,
if every other space is one where there is no humanity,
let this be the space where we strive to be more human.
Let this be the space where we call each other by name,
where we smile at the person passing us in the halls,
where we notice the new person sitting alone and introduce ourselves to them.
Earlier this week in the New York Times (4), a man named Charlie Greene wrote an op-ed in honor of his father, Donald F. Greene, who died 25 years ago today, on September 11th, 2001, as a passenger aboard United Airlines Flight 93.
He wrote, “As we mark 25 years, I find myself grappling with a different kind of grief – not for my father, but for the country we shared in his memory.”
He writes that in the aftermath of 9/11, he “felt the visceral, unprompted pride of being an American. It was a patriotism born not of military might or political rhetoric, but of radical, neighborly empathy.”
Greene implores us to honor those we lost by “recommit[ting] to the steady, everyday work of citizenship – greeting our neighbors, bridging our divides and choosing unity before tragedy forces our hand.”
“I know a lot of fancy words.
I tear them from my heart and my tongue.
Then I pray.”
I pray for nothing more than this:
In 5787,
B’makom she’ein anashim –
in a place where there are no humans,
Hishtadlu lihiyot anashim –
may we strive,
all of us,
together,
to be human.