“If Not Now, Tell Me When?” Rabbi Oberstein’s 5786 Kol Nidre Sermon
Rabbi Andrew Oberstein
Kol Nidre, October 1, 2025
The Riverway Project | Temple Israel of Boston
Many of you are familiar with a pair of rabbis who lived in the land of Israel around the end of the first century BCE: Hillel and Shammai.
As a pair,
they’re household names in our tradition,
not necessarily because of what they taught,
but because of the way they disagreed.
And the Talmud is filled with debates between their two schools.
In one famous passage from Tractate Eruvin,
the followers of Shammai and the followers of Hillel argued for three years straight –
especially about how to shape Jewish law.
The House of Shammai said,
the law follows us!
The House of Hillel said,
no,
the law follows us!
Until a Divine Voice broke through and declared –
“אֵלּוּ וָאֵלּוּ דִּבְרֵי אֱלֹהִים חַיִּים הֵן” –
both these and those are the words of the living God.
If the story ended there,
we might think the message was this:
everyone is equally right.
A case study in moral equivalence.
But that’s not how Jewish texts work.
Rather,
the passage continues:
Eilu va’eilu –
Both these and those are the words of the living God –
and the law is in accordance with Hillel.
The Talmud itself asks the obvious question:
If both are God’s words,
why was Hillel privileged to have the law follow his opinion rather than Shammai’s?
And here’s the answer we are given:
Hillel and his students were agreeable and forbearing.
When they taught Jewish Law,
they included Shammai’s words alongside their own.
More than that,
they sometimes cited Shammai’s view first –
out of humility and deference.
That,
the rabbis say,
is why the House of Hillel endured.
Not because they were smarter.
Not because they were stronger.
But because they modeled a kind of intellectual and spiritual generosity.
They could hold fast to their own convictions while also lifting up the words of their opponents.
The message is subtle but profound:
taking a position is not wrong.
We don’t have to pretend all views are equally true.
But when we refuse to even acknowledge another perspective,
when we dismiss it outright,
we simply cut ourselves off from wisdom.
*****
There are likely sermons being delivered tonight across the Jewish world about the importance of big-tent communities,
about listening respectfully to those who see things differently.
Those are important messages.
But tonight,
on Kol Nidre,
I want to focus a little more inward.
Because our tradition doesn’t just ask us to sit politely with people who disagree.
As hard as that is,
it seems to me to be the bare minimum asked of us.
Rather,
our tradition asks us to let disagreement live inside of us —
to allow multiple truths to reside not just across a community,
but within a single human heart.
That’s a far harder task.
******
It’s easier to pick a side and stick with it.
Harder to say:
I believe this deeply –
and yet I also hear the truth in the opposite claim.
That’s what Hillel did.
And that’s what our moment demands.
*****
Hillel himself left us another teaching –
one that I think maps perfectly onto our own very fractured moment.
He famously taught us in Pirkei Avot,
אִם אֵין אֲנִי לִי, מִי לִי
If I am not for myself, who will be for me?
וּכְשֶׁאֲנִי לְעַצְמִי, מָה אֲנִי.
But when I am for myself alone, what even am I?
וְאִם לֹא עַכְשָׁיו, אֵימָתָי:
And if not now, when?
******
Over these past two years since October 7, 2023,
I have watched our Jewish world fracture largely into two camps,
each clinging to one half of Hillel’s teaching.
On one side are the “If I am not for myself,
who will be for me?” Jews.
They look at the world and see the imminently present dangers around us.
They remember centuries of betrayal and abandonment.
They say:
“We stood with others in their struggles.
And then,
when it was our turn,
too many of them did not stand with us.
If we don’t look out for our own people,
who will?
אִם אֵין אֲנִי לִי, מִי לִי
If I am not for myself, who will be for me?
*****
On the other side are the “If I am only for myself,
what am I?” Jews.
Their first instinct after October 7th may have been to turn outwards.
They stress that every human being is created in God’s image.
They say:
“The lessons of Jewish oppression mean nothing if they are not applied universally.
Our history obligates us to focus on the most vulnerable,
even if they are not our own.
וּכְשֶׁאֲנִי לְעַצְמִי, מָה אֲנִי”
If I am only for myself, what am I?
*****
Both of these positions are Jewish.
Both arise from our tradition.
And both are incomplete on their own.
******
For a long time,
I stumbled over Hillel’s final phrase:
וְאִם לֹא עַכְשָׁיו, אֵימָתָי:
And if not now, when?
What does this sense of urgency have to do with balancing these two poles?
As we approach the two year anniversary of October 7th this coming week, I finally understand,
better than ever,
what Hillel meant.
It’s not enough to cycle between one truth and the other.
There isn’t a defined season for each.
The poet Yehuda Amichai wrote:
A man doesn’t have time in his life
to have time for everything.
He doesn’t have seasons enough to have
a season for every purpose. Ecclesiastes
was wrong about that.
A man needs to love and to hate at the same moment,
to laugh and cry with the same eyes,
with the same hands to throw stones and to gather them,
to make love in war and war in love.
In other words,
life doesn’t wait for us to sort things out.
וְאִם לֹא עַכְשָׁיו, אֵימָתָי:
If not now, when?
If not now to defend ourselves, when?
If not now to care for others, when?
******
So what does this mean in practice?
It means rejecting the false choice that we have to divide into camps like rival sports teams.
It means insisting on both/and.
It means we can name the crime against humanity that is the ongoing hostage crisis –
without slipping into “what-aboutism.”
It means we can acknowledge the real threats to the Jewish people around the world and the rising scourge of antisemitism,
without discounting anyone else’s vulnerability or pain.
It means we can distinguish between a people,
a nation,
and a government.
To love or support one does not require endorsing every action of the others.
It means that we can look into the face of a starving child and have our initial gut reaction be one of empathy and compassion,
before we begin assigning blame or,
God forbid,
justification.
It means that we can admit the impossible truth:
that real security fears and urgent human dignity must both matter.
Neither is more or less important.
Eilu va’eilu –
Both these and those are the words of the living God.
*****
I hear Hillel crying out to us –
if now is not the time to wear our Judaism proudly,
to embrace our connection to Israel,
to turn our efforts and attention and resources to supporting our own Jewish communities,
then when?
And simultaneously,
no louder or quieter,
I hear Hillel calling out to us –
if now is not the time to vocalize and demonstrate solidarity with all oppressed peoples,
to remember the Torah’s urgent command not to oppress the stranger because we ourselves know the heart of the stranger,
because we’ve been there and we have felt what they feel,
then when?
*****
I want to acknowledge something directly:
talking about Israel and Gaza in a Jewish space is fraught.
Some of you hear this and might worry I’m “both-sides-ing” by acknowledging these multiple truths.
Others hear this and worry I’m not being supportive enough of Israel, despite my lifelong love and commitment to that land.
Some of you carry deep pain from feeling abandoned by progressives you once called allies.
Others carry deep pain from feeling silenced in Jewish spaces when you name Palestinian suffering.
I see all of that.
And I want to say clearly:
I am not asking you to stop feeling what you feel.
I am asking you to consider that our tradition demands more of us than picking one camp and rejecting the other.
*****
It has been devastating to see the implications pervading the Jewish community – that publicly supporting the hostages is a right wing standpoint,
that anything short of unequivocally condemning the State of Israel or the concept of a Jewish state itself is complicity in violence.
The message is clear:
abandon any positive connection or affiliation with the State or you can no longer call yourself a progressive.
And on the other side,
any statement of heartbreak for the loss of Palestinian life,
for the starvation of children who never chose this,
any compassion for a people living subject to another people’s rule,
without self-determination –
these are grounds for being labeled a traitor to the Jewish people,
a self-hating Jew.
I know for some of you,
just hearing these words stirs grief,
anger,
or fear.
I honor that.
This is not easy.
But there is another path.
Eilu va’eilu –
Both these and those are the words of the living God.
*****
I want to speak from my own heart now.
Because I am a Zionist.
I know this word lands differently for different people.
Let me tell you what I mean when I use it.
I am not a Zionist because I think Jews are superior.
That is not the definition of Zionism.
I am not a Zionist because I think Palestinian lives matter less than Jewish lives.
That is also,
thank God,
not the definition of Zionism.
I am a Zionist because I believe that the Jewish people,
like every people –
including Palestinians –
has the right to self-determination in our historic homeland.
We don’t have to agree on the best outcome.
We don’t have to share the same vision for the future of the Holy Land.
But if your hatred of Israel is so all-consuming that you can’t publicly cry for the release of the hostages,
that you can’t imagine any motivation for Zionism other than colonialism,
if you cannot call out rising antisemitism infiltrating our campuses and our neighborhoods,
then you are not hearing all of the words of the living God.
And if your allegiance to Israel has turned into an unwavering allegiance to the current government administration,
if you are unable to access empathy for Palestinian parents who will never hold their children again,
then you are not hearing all of the words of the living God.
If the voices we listen to and the narratives we consume dehumanize either Israelis or Palestinians,
then we are not hearing all the words of the living God.
These distortions are not the same in scope or consequence.
But each,
in its own way,
narrows our vision of Jewish values.
Elu va’eilu –
both these and those are the words of the living God.
*****
Kol NIdre is a night of contradictions.
We annul vows while knowing we will make them again.
We confess sins we may not have committed and ask forgiveness for what we may yet still do.
We stand together,
as individuals and as a community,
both guilty and forgiven,
both broken and whole.
Tonight,
our challenge is to extend that same spiritual paradox to Israel and Gaza.
To hold pain and compassion at the same time.
To refuse the easy escape of simplicity.
To let the contradiction live inside us.
*****
Hillel’s words reverberate tonight –
urgent and unrelenting –
and,
as is the custom for Yom Kippur –
I’d like to adapt them into the plural:
Im ein anachu lanu,
mi lanu?
- If we are not for ourselves,
who will be for us?
Uch’she’anachnu l’atzmeinu,
mah anachnu?
- And when we are only for ourselves,
what even are we?
V’im lo achshav,
Ematai?
- And if not now, when?
*****
We actually can’t wait any longer to embody both of these.
We do not have the luxury of living only one half of this teaching.
Not in 5786.
Not after these past two years.
If not now,
when?
If not on this one night a year,
when we face our mortality and fragility –
then when?
May the one who makes peace on high make peace for us,
for all Israel,
and for all who dwell on this earth.
And let us say,
Amen.