“Iron Sharpens Iron: Sacred Disagreement in a Time of Moral Crisis” Rabbi Jacobson’s 5786 Yom Kippur Sermon
Rabbi Suzie Jacobson
Yom Kippur, October 2, 2025
Temple Israel of Boston
This summer, I had the privilege of serving on the faculty at Crane Lake Camp. I taught, prayed while belting out liturgy with creative hand motions, and lived my Judaism in a joyful, immersive community. And, as you do at camp, I made friends. I spent most of my time with Rabbi Jaimee Shalhevet and her family. A veteran, she guided me through camp life, and, as our six-year-olds became instant besties, we found ourselves co-parenting as a rabbi collective.
One day, while we were discussing curriculum, I mentioned an idea about the unfolding aid crisis in Gaza. Jaimee made an offhand comment that I deeply disagreed with. In that instant, I decided: I would never bring up Israel or Gaza with her. I silently assigned her a political ideology, made a host of assumptions, and to avoid potential drama, resolved to avoid the topic altogether.
That moment with Jaimee stayed with me, though I buried it under camp joy. Shortly after I left camp, Ezra Klein published the article, “Why American Jews No Longer Understand One Another.”1 He describes a polarization in the Jewish community that threatens to create lasting fragmentation. Klein notes that rising antisemitism has pushed some Jews closer to Israel, while leaving others alienated and horrified by
actions carried out in their name.
What struck me most wasn’t Klein’s diagnosis—but how wrong it felt. Jewish tradition was forged through holy argument. But today, the existential crisis of 21st-century Judaism is our inability to tolerate one another. We turn debate into broken relationships, retreat into bubbles, and silence ideas that challenge us.
Reading the Klein piece, I thought of Jaimee and felt ashamed. My goal is to make space for nuanced, thoughtful and yes, difficult conversations about Israel. Yet when given an opportunity to live my values, I failed spectacularly. And worst of all, I caricatured and dismissed a friend and colleague I value and respect. Avoiding controversy gets us nowhere.
So, I proposed a tikkun, an opportunity to mend my misstep. With certainty that I was risking our friendship, I reached out to Jaimee and asked if she would become my chevruta to discuss Israel and the war in Gaza with total honesty. I suggested that we could ask each other the hard questions, and listen deeply without trying to convince the other of our perspectives.
I should have given my friend more grace from the start. She said our conversation could be a machlochet l’shem shamayim—an argument for the sake of heaven, a sacred disagreement.”2
Over the past few months we’ve zoomed, sent a thousand texts, emailed, swapped articles, and asked the hard questions. Most importantly, we began with open-hearted storytelling, making space for each other’s perspectives and pain. We asked: why is this what you believe?
We disagreed, quite often—but less than I expected. When we stripped away the jargon, short hand “isms” of identity and affiliation – we found ourselves rooted in the same core values: We love Judaism, care for Jews everywhere, and feel deeply connected to Israel. We believe Isaiah’s call that Israel be an or l’goyim 3, a light to the nations, and believe that the current Israeli government is falling short of this vision.
We believe that at the heart of Torah is God’s moral command. We had, turns out, a lot in common. Our conversations quickly moved from theory to grief—a daily, lived heartbreak for both of us.
Everyday we feel the weight of the trauma of October 7th, when 1200 Jews were brutally murdered by Hamas. We are panicked and furious that after nearly 2 years, 48 hostages remain in Gaza.
And we are heartbroken that this terrible war, with its staggering human cost, still rages on. Each day innocent Palestinians in Gaza— ordinary people struggling to survive—are caught in the crossfire between two forces committed to destroying the other. Meanwhile, millions of ordinary Israelis live with both existential fear and the devastating knowledge that the world is turning its back on them.
I noticed the moments we made each other uncomfortable. We’d bristle at words like: genocide, human shields, homeland, open-air prison, occupation, apartheid, intifada, Zionism, nationalism. Our instinct was fight or flight, but to stay in conversation we learned to ask, “what do you mean?”
In our discomfort we began to ask: Why is it so upsetting to disagree? What I found revealing, and often frustrating, was that our sharpest disagreements weren’t about values, but about how we each process and interpret the news. We read very different articles. From very different sources. We read a Fox News article 4 about a Palestinian food aid worker who faced harassment and lawlessness in Gaza. The report was from last February, before Israel’s aid embargo in March, yet it was published in August—just as headlines about famine filled
the news. We listened to a podcast 5 featuring a young Palestinian journalist describing his family’s losses, horrific indignities, and struggle for food and shelter. He repeatedly deflected questions about Hamas and portrayed Israelis as a monolithic entity.
We often went in circles: Do we trust the numbers, the photos, the journalists abroad, or the teenagers posting TikToks from Gaza?
It was fascinating to see which sources made Jaimee furious and which made me roll my eyes—and vice versa. Much of the world is caught in this cycle of rage and self-righteous indignation. And that is all by design.
So what can we believe in a culture designed to stoke rage rather than demand moral clarity? Where do we even begin?
Maimonides, the great Jewish philosopher, turned to the story of Adam and Eve to ask: how do we know what to believe?6 He notes that before eating from the tree, Adam and Eve had intellect but not moral discernment. When the serpent urged Eve, she couldn’t ask, “What’s in it for the snake?” Only after their sin were they given the defining gift of humanity: the ability to distinguish between the morally good and the corrupt, even amid conflicting facts. Adam and Eve lost paradise but gained a moral compass.
That’s not just theology—it’s a framework for this moment. We live in a world of conflicting truths. So how do we discern wisely, with integrity? We cannot personally verify every number or picture, but we can ask ourselves – “why was this written?”
We read an article 7 about a Gazan child reported dead and later found alive—framed as proof that reports of violence are exaggerated. My instinct was to say – “But what about Hind Rajab, the five-year-old who cried “Save me” before being killed by Israeli fire as her family tried to flee Gaza City?” Jaimee’s instinct was to say “what about Ariel and Kfir Bibas, the red-headed brothers taken hostage and brutally killed by Hamas”?
Together we realized both our instincts are absurd. Arguing trauma with trauma is an unending trap. Children have died and that breaks us. There is no morality in pitting victim against victim – this is a travesty. Dehumanizing the other—Palestinian or Israeli, Jew or Muslim—is wrong.
At this very moment, Jaimee is leading her congregation with a parallel sermon—some of you might even prefer her words. Before this war, criticizing Israel was anathema to her worldview, but today she is speaking about the deep conflict she feels as she discovers what it means to be among the ‘troubled committed.’ I, in turn, feel called to wrestle openly with the enormity of the moral crisis we face as a people. I believe our Judaism demands bravery and profound moral courage.
We must name the catastrophic destruction in Gaza and the atrocities committed by Israel over the past two years. We must bear witness to escalating settler violence in the West Bank. Tens of thousands have been killed, including thousands of children; Israeli sources estimate 83% of Gazan casualties are civilians. Gaza’s infrastructure is in ruins—70% of buildings destroyed, every university demolished, nearly every hospital damaged or leveled. Israeli restrictions on food and medicine have fueled hunger and disease. And we must also lift up the voices of ordinary civilians who want this war to end: in August, half a million Israelis joined a national strike in Tel Aviv to demand peace
and the return of hostages, while in Gaza, protesters risked their lives to stand up to Hamas.
And yet, even as we name these horrors, we face another unbearable truth: that Jews around the world are being blamed for these atrocities. Many people cannot or will not distinguish between a government waging war and the millions of Jews who have no say in that government’s actions. Too many fail to differentiate between the name of a middle eastern country and the name on this building. Two souls were killed and three seriously injured in the UK – THIS MORNING, while attending Yom Kippur services.
And while some are conflating all Jews with Israel, others conflate all Palestinians with Hamas.
This article has been posted several time, most recently a few days ago:
https://www.foxnews.com/world/gazan-boy-alive-after-ex-ghf-whistleblower-falsely-claimed-idf-killed-him
Both are baseless hatreds. And both must be rejected. Our world and our people are in a moral crisis.
This summer, Rabbi Ismar Schorsch 8—Holocaust refugee and former Chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary—implored us to return to the prophets and “re-assert the ethical legacy of Judaism.” He warned that the unremitting violence of the Gaza war risks condemning Jews with “a repulsive religion riddled with hypocrisy and contradictions.” Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harari recently said 9 that in all the millennia of Jewish trauma, “we have never faced a catastrophe like we are dealing with right now… a spiritual catastrophe for Judaism itself.” For him, that catastrophe is the worship of power and violence at the expense of Torah—the deep, complex conversation about the
moral values that guide our lives. Both Schorsch and Harari implore us: Do not look away. We must be better. To defend Israel blindly, even when we know its actions are unethical, is to make Israel into an idol—and that is blasphemy.
And we are no friend to Israel if we let cognitive dissonance excuse brutality and extremism. We are no friend if we give up on the values of democracy, religious pluralism, and commitment to international law found in Israel’s Declaration of Independence.
Deuteronomy warns us of the pitfalls of human power. God tells Moses that Israel will one day demand a king “like all the nations.” God does not forbid it, but warns that a king will hoard wealth and take their children. The safeguard is that the king must keep a Torah scroll beside him always, to “learn awe of God… so that his heart not be raised above his brothers.”10
Human authority is our choice, but it has limits. All Jews, even kings are subject to Torah’s moral law. But putting Torah into practice in the real world is no easy task. Rav Joseph Soloveitchik, offered this prophetic warning ten years after the birth of the State of Israel:
“The Jew has experienced persecution and brutality… We never had political power… Now, with the State of Israel, the test has come. Will we behave like any other state? Will we restrain ourselves from practices that conflict with basic Judaic ethics? … If the State of Israel does not live up to Jewish ethics, people will reinterpret Jewish history in a whole different light. The question is not whether Israel will defeat the Arabs on the field of battle, but whether we will defeat the evil within our own community and be victorious in this field.”11
What would Soloveitchik say today, seeing how we are using this precious gift of self-determination? How would Yitzhak Rabin respond to the settlers who murder their Palestinian neighbors and are not brought to justice for their crimes? In 1994, after a Jewish terrorist murdered 29 Muslims in Hebron, he said:
“I am shamed over the disgrace imposed upon us by the degenerate murderer. You are not part of the community of Israel… You are an errant weed. Sensible Judaism spits you out… You are a shame on Zionism and an embarrassment to Judaism.”
What would Rabin say today— How would he react to Kahanists in power who advocate expulsion, violence, and justify bombings that risk the lives of our hostages? What would he say to the protesting hostage families, maligned by the government meant to protect them?
Soloveitchik and Rabin’s voices are not merely historical—they call to us today: What kind of Judaism, what kind of Israel must we build?
Jaimee has asked me several times: —so, what do you think should be done? My first instinct is to ramble about the return of hostages, an immediate ceasefire, the replacement of Hamas, aid for Gaza, anything to lessen the suffering. Today, I’m praying that the current deal on the table finally ends the bloodshed.
But slowing down, I realize that my only honest answer is I don’t know.
I don’t know how a century-long conflict ends. I don’t know how two traumatized peoples learn to see each other’s humanity. I don’t know how we survive as a people if disagreement tears us apart, or how Israel moves forward from this war.
Military solutions have brought death and destruction; political solutions have so far led to impasse and insecurity. But from a place of not knowing, we can begin to imagine human solutions—bridges instead of walls. With humility, we can make space for curiosity, for questions, for debates that spark new ideas. But we must be brave enough to tolerate the conversation.
From a place of not knowing, we open ourselves to true teshuva—the opportunity to change and grow. As God pleads in a midrash:
“My children, create for me a small opening of Teshuvah, as tiny as the head of a pin, and I will open for you openings that even wagons and chariots can pass through.”12
We must create that opening. We must believe that an unimagined future of peace is possible. My conversations with Jaimee didn’t change what we think—if anything, we’re better practiced at articulating our views. But they did change how we think. And though we still disagree, we are far closer friends than we would have been otherwise. The rabbis taught, “iron sharpens iron,”13 – our thought partners should not be mirrors, but challengers who test us, stretch us and teach us to grow. I am grateful to my friend, and for the chance to let this small act of teshuvah expand my capacity as a human being, and my commitment to help guide this community through struggle and heartbreak.
This is an extraordinarily difficult moment for the Jewish people. I am in it with you. My door is always open for conversation. In a few weeks I’ll be teaching a class called Conflicts of Interest, where we will explore the complex and contradictory historical narratives of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Let’s go to these hard places together.
The poet Yehudah Amichai wrote: “From the place where we are right flowers will never grow… But doubts and loves dig up the world like a mole, a plow.” When we speak with courage, listen with humility and remember that we belong to each other, we participate in shaping a resilient, wise, and morally grounded Jewish community for generations to come.
Ken yehi ratzon – We pray that this may be so.
1 https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/20/opinion/antisemitism-american-jews-israel-mamdani.html
2 Mishnah Avot 5:17
3 Isaiah 42:6
4 https://www.foxnews.com/world/she-fed-100k-gazan-families-free-now-terrorists-local-merchants-want-h
er-dead
5 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/israeli-strike-on-iran-inching-closer-netanyahu-survives/id154844
1108?i=1000712645099
6 Maimonides. Guide of the Perplexed. 1:2
8 https://www.jassberlin.org/post/a-hard-tisha-b-av-rabbi-dr-ismar-schorschchancellor-emeritusjewish-theol
ogical-seminary-7-6-2025
9 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pp-g8dpOrP4&t=41s
10 Deuteronomy 17:14,18-20
11 https://www.smolemunius.com/ideas/chaim-seidler-feller-smol-emuni-conference