“On the Precipice of Possibility: Tempering Judgmental Rigor with Compassion” Rabbi Zecher’s 5786 Kol Nidre Sermon

Rabbi Elaine Zecher
Kol Nidre, October 1, 2025 
Temple Israel of Boston 

My beloved community, on this Yom Kippur eve, we are on the precipice of war and peace, love and hate, blessing and curse.

From this bima, I am going to share with you where I am today on the critical issues that face our Jewish world: Israel, Gaza, statehood, and much suffering. And then I will offer a Jewish navigational tool of how we engage with one another. All this still needs
our consideration regardless of what is in the news at this moment.

Check your blood pressure, pay attention to your inner conversation and responses.

I am a Liberal Zionist. I believe in Israel’s existence, and I hold her to a high standard of moral behavior. I am also a patriot. I believe America should exist and I hold our country to an equally high moral standard. I care deeply about both nations and the people who inhabit both. I’m disappointed at times with the lack of moral clarity of the leaders of both countries, yet, I’m heartened that there is any peace plan on the table now offered by President Trump and endorsed by Prime Minister Netanyahu and many Arab leaders. I remain hopeful and eager to see what happens.

I will never forgive or forget that Hamas is heinous, wicked, and brutally attacked Israel.

They are terrorists. I will never forgive or forget that Hamas could have—and still can–end the suffering imposed on the people of Gaza by
releasing the hostages and leaving Gaza, just as the Arab League demands they do and, as the recently reported peace plan insists as well.

If I were in Israel, I would join the demonstrations of hundreds of thousands of Israelis demanding the return of the hostages, every single one of them. I would continue to push Israel’s government to examine what motivates the continued destruction of Gaza, along with unchecked settler violence.

I have come to believe, and I admit, not easily, that Palestinians also need to have a country of their own. Do I wish that the partisan plan had been accepted in 1947? Or the conditions of the Oslo Accords in 1993? For sure. Though many in the world have made declarations of recognition, they are empty without strategy and guarantees of a safe, Iran free, Hamas and terrorism-free society where Palestinians can live and prosper. There must be safety and security for two countries living side by side, established by both Israelis and Palestinians in a morally and politically responsible manner. As Yehuda Kertzer, President of Hartman Institute, recently wrote and helped me understand: “It is a worse failure of moral imagination and political opportunity to reflexively oppose Palestinian statehood, especially since movement towards positive change for Israelis and Palestinians is the dream for Zionism—not its nightmare.

The suffering must end. Hunger, debilitating sadness, war torn ravaged homes must cease. Where there is suffering, we are all responsible. There is no zero-sum equation to this kind of pain. The hostages must be returned into the loving arms of their families.

A peaceful future cannot only be a dream.

Let me stop there and take a deep breath. You should, too. Some of you may feel provoked, others satisfied. Yet, this is not a litmus or loyalty test.

As senior rabbi of this congregation, I believe strongly that we cannot be a bubble of one opinion or only a singular point of view. It is my responsibility to hold the center regardless of my opinion and more importantly to guarantee our ability to engage with one another. Ultimately, we are a community. The alternative will rip us apart.

How do we exist together, live Judaism together, as our mission statement begins, if we disagree? How do we represent ourselves within the larger framework of a varied population of many families and hold ourselves accountable to engage in ways that draw us in rather than push us apart? The Jewish community needs each other more than ever.

This is happening not only in the Jewish world but everywhere.

We stand on the precipice of toxic polarization. As Americans, we are here now and have been here before; deeply divided about slavery, the Vietnam War, the struggle for civil rights, to name a few.

And it’s been in the Jewish world, too. We recall the tragic assassination of Yitzchak Rabin by a Jewish zealot just after Rabin had sung a song of peace. Centuries earlier, baseless hate and toxic polarization contributed to the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem. Judaism could have disappeared then because opposing Jewish factions inside the walled city sought to destroy each other. A heroic escape by Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai who hid in a coffin and had his followers carry him out moved the story from Jerusalem to Yavneh where these defiant rabbis rebuilt Judaism, internalizing the very idea of dispute and discourse. Their creative reinvention birthed the Talmud and our Jewish way of learning and disagreeing.

We are an opinionated people, often the many varied views can come from just one person. That is the Jewish way of how we have survived in the past, but will it take us into the future?

It feels different now, more intense, because everywhere I look, we are ready to disagree and then disengage. This is a real threat I hope we will not underestimate. And it’s personal.

Often, there isn’t a day when I don’t encounter diametrically opposed opinions: We or I am not responsive enough to Palestinians’ suffering. We or I am only concerned, even obsessed, with Palestinian suffering.
I am challenged:

“How are you a Zionist, Rabbi Zecher?”
“Why would you be a Zionist, Rabbi Zecher?”
“You don’t show your love of Israel enough Rabbi Zecher?”
“Where do you stand?”
“Why do you sit when all this is going on?”
“You don’t have an opinion.”
“You have too many opinions.”

And I do love serving as rabbi of this congregation. It is one of the greatest privileges of my life. Truly.

The Jewish way is to disagree. The idea of two Jews three opinions may amuse us, but it also reflects a reality. Arguing is our Jewish national sport. The Talmud, our seminal legal code is filled with majority and minority opinions to illustrate the diversity of the differences. One of the most insightful lines within the Talmud comes from a story about an argument that concludes with the profound appreciation of varied viewpoints:

“These and those are the words of the living God.”
אֵלּוּ וָאֵלּוּ דִּבְרֵי אֱלֹהִים חַיִּים

The rabbis emphasized, however, that it is HOW we disagree that matters. This past Spring, I attended a gathering of many leaders of the greater Boston Jewish community sponsored by CJP and the Hartman Institute with the goal of addressing the question of how we can create community across difference. There is no quick fix. I was struck by a challenge from Yehuda Kertzer, of the Hartman Institute, to use the idea
of compromise differently as a navigational tool to disagree rather than disengage.

Let’s try it.

Let’s rethink compromise, rather than think about it as an agreement where everyone loses. Let’s think of it more in terms of a value, a guiding method of recognizing the humanity of the other and of lifting the importance of the human connection of community as we approach a difficult situation, debate or disagreement. The placement of the mezuzah demonstrates our value of compromise. The
commentator, Rashi, declared that the mezuzah should lay horizonal, replicating the way the tablets had been carried through the wilderness. Rashi’s grandson, Rabbeinu Tam, disagreed, stating that the Mezuzah should be vertical and given the respect its contents deserved. Then a century later, Jacob ben Asher, created the compromise by advocating for the slant, halfway up and halfway down. It’s a beautiful reminder to compromise as we enter a room and to use as a guiding tool.

This leads to what I call the “Agree to Disagree” Method of Compromise which rests on five principles. You already know these ideas, and even so, paying attention to them lifts our ability to engage.

Principle one recognizes that no one can hold the ultimate truth. That resides in the heavenly sphere. Whoever believes they absolutely without a doubt know what is right, doesn’t. A midrash 3 asserts that when God prepared to create human beings, the Angel of Truth begged God not to do it. ‘They are full of deceit, and their imperfection could not exist side by side with pristine Truth,’ the Angel of Truth argued.
God concurred yet still sided with humanity and hurled Truth to the earth where it broke into millions of pieces. God quoted Psalms, “Truth will grow up from the ground.” Truth can only be pieced together by those who dwell on earth.

Can we be open to finding truth in unexpected places, perhaps even among the opinions and perspectives with which we disagree? We have been placed here on this earth to discover truths not the truth. It happens through our interaction with others,
even when we disagree.

Principle One: No one person holds the absolute truth.

Principle Two: Compromise needs humility and is a muscle that takes practice. Without humility, our viewpoints may seem so complete and correct they leave no space for dissent and disagreement. We can exercise our human ability to contract, to remove some of ourselves so that we can provide space for other perspectives even without agreeing with them. This is called constructive disagreement 4 as described by Daniel Taub in his book, Beyond Dispute.

Principle 3: Empathy anchors our ability to see the humanity of others. The Mishnah 5 tells us that most people entered the ancient Temple in Jerusalem from the right and went out to the left. But those to whom something bad happened entered from the left, prompting the question of empathetic concern, “Why have you come in from the left?” “What is going on with you?” One response given might have been that a person had been excommunicated. “I have been cancelled” is what we might say. They understood even then that disagreement has the potential for expulsion. But here, we learn a helpful response that takes both parties’ behavior into consideration. The Talmud speaks of words of blessing offered: May God… inspire YOU to LISTEN to the words of YOUR colleagues so that THEY may draw YOU near again. The onus is on everyone and leads us to:

Principle 4 demonstrates curiosity as a sacred way to listen and draw near. It takes courage to listen, really listen to that which differs from our own understanding and not to disengage. The Yiddish saying goes “if you cross over the fence, you acquire other
ideas.” The values of compromise that are formed from truth pieced together; humility, empathy, and curiosity are four of the five principles toward a new definition of compromise.

Before we arrive to the final principle, let’s consider the question: how far is too far? What are the outer limits of our terms of engagement? This makes me ponder what diplomats must deal with. They sit with those who may be moral and mortal enemies. I am not asking us to do their work as they consider the ramifications of adversarial collaboration. There is a big distinction between that extreme and what we encounter in our own lives. Let’s not confuse them. The value and importance of a community connected where we allow ourselves to disagree by agreeing to disagree is the fifth and last part of compromise. That is the crux of it all. Call it compromise, call it agreeing to disagree, but most importantly how we act toward each other in this moment matters. We often speak of paradoxical thinking, of holding ideas that may contradict one another at the same time. The difference here has to do with the human who is promoting that conflicting idea. How do we regard that person and show understanding even as we may continue to respectfully disagree? “Climbing over the fence,” even for a short moment and allowing those opinions does not betray our values, our traditions or even ourselves whether we are in a lecture, class, program, sermon or a conversation one with another.

Compromise demonstrates our power to feel humanity and to show compassion to another person, understanding that we might hold a piece of the truth and they may, too. We can be more curious rather than condemn and to hold uncertainty as an opening to allow space to gain understanding. In doing so, we stretch our intellectual heart in the pursuit of humanization across difference.

I have shared with you my thinking about challenges facing us all. I am, like you, picking up the pieces of truth scattered on earth, trying to be curious and have humility while recognizing the humanity in each of us. This is how we all can hold each other and our community up. And when we speak of the issues of our times, we can also employ these ideas to the challenges we face.

The school of Hillel and the school of Shammai of the Talmud argued for three years without reaching any compromise. Ultimately a divine voice proclaimed. These arguments and those arguments are both the words of the living God.
אֵלּוּ וָאֵלּוּ דִּבְרֵי אֱלֹהִים חַיִּים

But the majority opinion sided with Hillel. How could that be? the Talmud asks. When Beit Hillel taught, they cited the opinions not only of their own but also of Shammai, showing deference to them.

Compromise is at the heart of our tradition because we learn that our hearts have many rooms, filled with the potential for understanding, even for those with whom we disagree. It is a moral commitment not just for us but for those who come after us.

We exist together, live Judaism together, as our mission statement begins, because we can disagree. None of us hold this responsibility alone. We are in this together. During these holidays, as we do our own work of returning to our best selves through t’shuvah, we pray that just as the Divine will move from the rigor of judgment to compassion, we can, too, by how we value and enact compromise as a hope for our redemption in this fractured world.

May it be so, may we make it so.

1 https://www.jta.org/2025/08/28/ideas/the-zionist-case-for-palestinian-statehood
2 Eruvin 13b:10
3 Lev Rabbah 1:14
4 Daniel Taub, in his book, Beyond Dispute, has helped to inform many of the ideas of this sermon. I am grateful for his insights.
5 Middot 2:2
6 Eruvin 13b: 11
7 Hagigah 3b