“A Reflection on Being Jewish in America! And on Yom Kippur!,” by Rabbi Elaine Zecher – Yom Kippur 5787 sermon & Shabbat Awakenings 10/2/26

Here we are, gathered on the most solemn day of the Jewish year with our community committed to living Jewish lives together. And I propose to speak with you about being Jewish. In America. On Yom Kippur.

Let me be clear from the start, all those who sit, reside with, who love a Jewish person, who feel connected to the Jewish people are invited into the Jewish community and this sermon. We are all in this together.

I begin by sharing my own story.

There were not many Jews in our small suburb when my parents moved to Monroeville from Squirrel Hill, the Jewish epicenter of Pittsburgh. They soon launched a Reform Temple where I spent many hours of my childhood. My mom sang in the choir and my dad stood in the back and welcomed friends and newcomers. Their commitment became our family’s commitment.

It was a happy time but it wasn’t easy. All my friends were evangelical Christians. Churches lined the main street from the parkway to our house. When I told a friend about someone who converted from Christianity to Judaism, she told me that was backwards. Jews are supposed to convert to Christianity, she said. It wasn’t the first time I encountered implicit and explicit bias. The feeling of belonging, but not really belonging, colored my experiences growing up. I learned to assert myself as a Jew, finding courage in being unlike everyone else. My real refuge was the Temple Youth Group and Jewish summer camp, where I felt I could be my truest Jewish self. Those experiences shaped my view of the world.

And I was a proud American. This was my home. We had acculturated into a way of life in suburbia, even as my encounters at school made me question how much I truly felt included as a Jew.

And then I learned about Brandeis. It was the only school I applied to. We were going to be a perfect match. Arriving there I felt like I hit the jackpot of Jewishness. A Jewish sponsored nonsectarian liberal arts university? 80% Jewish? I wouldn’t have to worry about missing school on a Jewish holiday, which always happened back home. In the eyes of a bright eyed 18 year old who had struggled being part of a small faction, it was marvelous.

But then, I was in a different kind of minority. Most of my classmates had grown up surrounded by other Jews. Jewishness wasn’t a big deal to them and they couldn’t figure out why it was to me. Except for the observant community, I witnessed no effort, no consciousness, no need to assert one’s Jewishness. Was this what happens to Jews when they don’t have to work hard at being Jewish? I was surprised and actually concerned.

Would I become like them I wondered. Why not meld into the community and just be like everyone else? Was a particular way of living necessary in a universally accepting culture?

I became an American Studies Major because I wanted to understand what it means to be Jewish in America. And what is it about Judaism worthy of ensuring that future generations benefit and find meaning in it.

The questions remain as relevant to me today as they were then.

Looking more closely, I saw the commonalities, the shared values, fundamental to both Jewish and American traditions encircle and strengthen us. From both perspectives, we are joined by the threads of obligation and covenant, threads that have held us through centuries.

At the same time as I was growing up, there was much travail for many other Americans, societal challenges that should have been addressed. Alienation, inequality, and racial injustice was everywhere. This is part of the ongoing American story, too.

Our Jewish tradition began with a covenant. When God summoned Abraham, the covenant seeded the first growth of Judaism. Abraham’s relationship with the Divine shaped Judaism all the way to Sinai when we received the Torah. We are a people bound by that covenant, guided by how we care for one another, expressed through ritual, textual depth of learning through curiosity, and communal responsibility. It translates into observance. Not just to be but to do. Yom Kippur, Passover and all the rest of the holidays, the way we bring in Shabbat with rest and joy, the symbols used to transform a couple into marriage and the way we accompany and mourn translates into prescribed specific Jewish acts. All that we do to bring Judaism to life in our lives are part of the covenant, too.

The covenant is at once horizonal and vertical. It exists between people and also between us and the Divine. And covenant establishes a loyalty that transcends any particular person or power. Over centuries, across time and space, tyrants have sanctioned and despised Jews for refusing to bow to their will, whether a Pharaoh, a Haman or any other dictator, self-appointed or not. Jews maintain their allegiance to a sacred covenant inspired by the Divine.

Judaism and the Jewish people have survived when other civilizations have faltered. Ancient Rome, Babylonia, Persia and other empires across the world rose and fell and disappeared. I believe the idea of covenant, of that moment at Sinai has lasted, because that moment of revelation, that moment of sharing our covenant continues as we engage and re-engage with curiosity as part of being Jewish and being part of the Jewish people.

America was founded on a parallel covenant, a binding secular commitment that called upon the people to care and respect one another. It asked for regard for many differences and recognized individual integrity but sadly not for all people. The tragedy of this American covenant is how it specifically excluded slaves, native peoples, and women.

The strength of our American covenant, conveyed in the remarkable and radical US Constitution, called upon citizens to look beyond themselves and to embrace a higher purpose.

While the concept of covenant is Biblical, America’s founders shaped our Constitution to define being an American through obligation, weaving a thread through and around us asking us to see ourselves as parts of a connected whole. If we are interconnected, we are not totally free to do as we please. Our religious and civic obligations fashion and influence our decisions.

Rugged individualism may define the American experience for some, but we know we are at our best when we declare our interdependence and bring others in.

What then does it mean to be a Jew or to be part of the Jewish community, to embrace Judaism in America today? The answer lies in how we are bound by covenantal obligation with collective responsibility. We all stood at Sinai and Sinai still stands with us just as we all live in America with legal obligations and expectations.

How do we take this forward?

We turn to this exact day of Yom Kippur which provides a path toward a strong future. Today is a day of self-retraction, of taking up less space than more, of recognizing that the world does not revolve around us. In our humility, we begin to see ourselves more clearly.

To invoke the Declaration of Independence, we have the potential to become “more perfect,” while recognizing the impossibility of ever reaching perfection. That is the eternal path of our humanity and our individual paths as Jews. As we aspire to a more perfect union, we also seek to be a more perfect human.

The internal work we do on Yom Kippur puts us on path of self-discovery, of seeing ourselves as part of a greater community, of possessing the humility that there are those who came before and will come after us and that we must work to guarantee continuity. It is also our willingness for self-exploration by investigating within each of us how we can be a Jew and a part of the Jewish community. To be able to engage in T’shuvah, returning to our best selves and Tikkun, finding the corrective actions to arrive there has the potential to bring great joy.

It offers us agency to decide. We determine the narrative. Throughout history as Sarah Hurwitz, in her book, To Be A Jew describes, Jews have been the object of how others regarded us, often in harmful ways. But, we have the power to reject that and regard ourselves as the subject, the true determinants of our story. We have the ability to emerge from this day inspired by these sacred moments to inform our Judaism throughout the year by structuring our thinking to gain strength in the way we identify as Jews and as part of the Jewish community.

The experience of Yom Kippur motivates and nourishes us especially with many challenges facing us. In the past but also definitely, now in America.

The prophet Jeremiah offered motivation to the Jews displaced to Babylonia about living among others, even when we might not have been welcomed. He said: Seek the welfare of the city to which I have exiled you and pray to God in its behalf; for in its prosperity you shall prosper.

When Jews came to America, they took these words to heart, even when they faced tension about belonging and acceptance. Lies abounded together with vicious calumnies about depravity and ruthless hunger for money. Jews have confronted these slanders over the centuries and we haven’t disappeared in America.

Many of us, ourselves and many of our children, have faced antisemitism.

And I know some of us have felt that hatred of Jews might have dissipated for a time, but it has never disappeared. As Jews, we have shown our resilience even in the face of bigotry; even with signs that said: No Jews. No Blacks. No dogs. Yet others have said, when no seats at the table are offered, build your own table. In many instances, we certainly have.

Jeremiah’s words continue to apply because the success of Jewish Americans prospered all of America as well.

Still, we are living in challenging times. Antisemitism and bigotry are very much with us and are increasingly threatening. Anti Zionism, the dismissal of the belief that Israel has the right to exist and self determination also chips away at a sense of security. Democracy is threatened on all fronts and moral clarity and vision in governmental leadership here and in Israel make things difficult for us all.

And yet, I declare from this bima not just because I am a Rabbi but because I love being Jewish, that we don’t need to live in a Jewish fortress in which everyone is Jewish or live as a beleaguered minority. I believe we need to look toward the future together with intention. Being Jewish necessitates action and demands persistence and gratitude. This is what our covenant asks of us.

Our identity as Jews matter. Rabbi Jonathan Sachs of blessed memory offered us this lesson:

“Judaism… it’s an identity. And you can’t sell an identity. But you can lose it… Our ancestors have given us the gift of a past… [W]e should not relinquish it simply because we don’t know how valuable it is… If we truly wish to hand on our legacy to our children, we must teach them to love it… What we love, we inherit. What we fail to love, we lose.”

His words ring true.

Here in our own synagogue, we have work to do and reasons to celebrate. We are always looking closely at how we live Judaism together with purpose, reflection, and significance. We feel the responsibility of guaranteeing the strength of the democracy of our country, of responding to food insecurity and of helping the vulnerable as Judaism values so dearly. We continue to care deeply about Israel. We moved to this site 100 years ago when it is was a dirt road with horse drawn carriages and occasional automobiles. For a congregation established in 1854, we have weathered many challenges from the outside and the inside guided by both our covenant and the Constitution. Our perseverance and commitment to Jewish life remains solid and joyful. I count my blessings that we have Temple Israel of Boston and life in America. I hope you do, too.

When I think back to those days at Brandeis, I realize how much I grew in my understanding how being Jewish is not a passive endeavor. We are summoned, called to embrace a tradition that dates back thousands of years and at the same time speaks to us right now. Whether we hear it and are attuned above the noisiness of our active lives is left up to us. No one can be Jewish or a part of the Jewish community in our place. Judaism’s future depends on how we regard ourselves not just as descendants, but rather to view ourselves as the ancestors our future descendants will praise and be grateful for what we have accomplished.

Our challenge together on this Yom Kippur is to consider deeply, purposefully, and meaningfully what it means for each of us to love Judaism, to love being a part of the Jewish community, and to love how each of us can shape our life by our actions, our obligations, and our continual pursuit of T’shuvah, always striving to be better and a little more perfect.

Our Jewish and American story is still being written and we are its authors.