by Rabbi Moshe Grussgott
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed here are that of the writer and do not necessarily represent the views of the Union for Traditional Judaism, unless otherwise indicated.
Rosh Hashanah 5785 Day One
Rabbi Moshe Grussgott, Kehilath Israel Synagogue, Overland Park, KS
Shanah Tovah. It should be a good new year for us all, and especially for the citizens of the State of Israel, who have been in our hearts all year. Just a couple of days ago, we bore witness to the dreamlike spectacle of 200 Iranian missiles being intercepted and shot down over the skies of Israel, with the footage that my aunt took on her phone from her balcony looking like something out of Star Wars. We are living in surreal times; miraculous times; troubling times; and all at once. And through it all, Israelis maintain their positive spirit. As one Israeli woman, Yael Tzin, tweeted yesterday: “the Iranians don’t understand that we all have a lot of food prepared for the next 3 days”!
Our number one prayer this Rosh Hashanah should be for all of the hostages to finally return home. The 101 remaining hostages and their families are foremost in our souls today. The weight of October 7th looms above everything this Rosh Hashanah.
However, I always prefer to begin on a positive note. I was thinking, in the days after October 7th, when trying to explain to my kids about the war in Israel: what are some of the more positive historical events that have happened in my lifetime that I can tell them about? To instill in them that history is not only doom and gloom.
I thought of the fall of the Berlin Wall, an early childhood memory of mine. Or, of the US victory in the first Gulf War, another early memory. However, there is one, more recent event that stands out as the single greatest thing to happen in my entire lifetime, an event which I believe to be supremely underappreciated and underrated: Exactly 3 years ago, in October of 2021, when the actor William Shatner flew into outer space with Jeff Bezos, on board the Blue Origin rocket, at the age of 90. (Shatner, who is Jewish, is now 93, and we wish him a Shanah Tovah!)
Some of you might remember that I was so excited by this event, that I dedicated my sermon to it on two shabbats in a row – something that I had never done before, and have not done since. And now, here I am again, three years later, returning to that same subject yet again. Why?
Because it exemplifies the sense of wonder that brings me back to my childhood. I’m a sentimental person. William Shatner, of course, played Captain Kirk on Star Trek. The fact that we as a society took something that had been relegated to the realm of science fiction, and we decided, decades later: let’s actually send that guy into space for real! Not for any scientific purpose, but purely for sentimental reasons. It’s that sense of sentimentality that actually makes us human. It speaks to our capacity to imagine a story, and then to will it into reality.
That’s what the State of Israel is all about. As famously expressed by the Zionist motto of Theodore Herzl: “If you will it, it is no dream”. The State of Israel remains the essential thing that brings me back to that childhood sense of wonder, and by orders of magnitude even greater than Shatner in space. From when I first learned all of the stories in the Torah about the Promised Land, and quickly realized that, unlike Neverland or Narnia, or other mythical places that I had heard about, Eretz Yisrael is actually real. And that the reconstituted Jewish State there is real.
The most popular sci fi movie of this age is not Star Trek, but The Matrix. In the plot of The Matrix, the machines take over planet earth, and the only human refuge left is called Zion. That’s the Biblical idea of Zion in the Western mind. Something from the domain of religion and fantasy.
In JRR Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, the realm of Middle Earth is inhabited by various different races: there is the Race of Men, the Hobbits, the Elves, and the Dwarves, amongst others. The Dwarves live in exile from their Homeland, and they sing sad songs about their exile. Tolkien based the Dwarves on the Jews. Lest you think that this is an antisemitic portrayal, quite the opposite: Tolkien was actually sympathetic to the Jews.
Such was the sad state of the Jewish People in the Western, Christian mind, for centuries. Even those who liked us viewed us with pity as those plucky Old Testament people, still hanging on, still holding on to the antique hope for their return to their Land, and to their former glory. Such charming faith in a quaint old dream that everyone knows will never actually happen. Fantasy, science fiction; and all rooted in religious delusion.
Why did the most devout Jews, the fervently Orthodox, at first reject the Zionist movement more than anyone? Pious Jews had always assumed that the long-awaited Return to Zion could only happen in the most supernatural and utopian of ways. The Heavenly Shofar would sound across the world, the Messiah would come flying through the clouds, and the Third Temple would descend onto Jerusalem from the sky.
We still await the Mashiach with perfect faith. But the fact that that first stage, the Return to Zion, ended up happening in such a this-worldly and pragmatic fashion ended up being the greatest and most unexpected miracle of all. Or, perhaps, the second greatest miracle of all…
William Shatner, age 90, in awe, in Outer Space, October 2021
The greatest wonder of Zionism is actually to be found in the following historical irony: that the vast majority of Jews who actually went to Palestine did not end up doing so out of sentimentality or idealism. They fled there because they had nowhere else in the world to go. They escaped there from pogroms and from massacres. They went there out of sheer necessity. And their progeny fights today as an extension of that necessity.
In 1995 two Israeli Generals visited Vietnam to meet with the legendary General Vo Nguyen Giap. After a lengthy meeting, when the Israelis rose to leave, Giap suddenly turned to the Palestinian issue. “Listen,” he said, “the Palestinians are always coming here and saying to me, ‘You expelled the French, and you expelled the Americans. How do we expel the Jews?’”
The generals were intrigued. “And what do you tell them?” “I tell them,” Giap replied, “that the French went back to France and the Americans to America. But the Jews have nowhere else to go. You will not expel them.”
That communist General articulated the miracle of Zionism more succinctly than most Jews are able to put into words. It’s not just that we turned fantasy into reality. It’s that we did so out of necessity. The making of fantasy into reality out of necessity. The confluence of those factors is nothing short of a miracle.
I would like to suggest that it is precisely akin to the following analogy: Imagine if, three years, ago, William Shatner had flown into outer space because a doctor had informed him that that was the only way that he could survive! He had some rare condition that can only be healed in Outer Space. Imagine what a story that would be. The making of fantasy into reality, out of necessity. Only Providence can bring that about.
Turning fantasy into reality out of necessary requires sacrifice, and it entails inevitable suffering. Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai taught (Berachot 5a): There are three things that are called Divine Gifts for the Jewish People, but they can only be acquired through suffering. They are: Torah, Olam Habaah (Heaven), and Eretz Yisrael. Jews have always sacrificed and suffered to stay true to the Torah. Olam Habaah, The World to Come. The Sages taught that Righteous Gentiles also have a share in the World to Come. Perhaps Rabbi Shimon describes it here as a gift for the Jews which requires suffering, precisely because our path to Heaven is actually a bit harder: We are meant to observe the whole Torah and to be a light unto the nations. It’s hard to live up to that.
And Eretz Yisrael. You can retain a primal attachment to one distant spot on earth, through centuries of exile and persecution, and retain your hope of returning there; but not without suffering for it. The Holocaust survivors in the DP camps understood that. When they were asked to fill out a form listing their top two preferred locations in the world to resettle, they largely filled the form out as follows: Choice one – Palestine. Choice Two – Crematorium. Those Jews understood that nothing could redeem the suffering that they had gone through but the transcendent and timeless sense of meaning which is attached to Eretz Yisrael.
People around the world spoke about the exploding beeper operation in Lebanon as if it’s something out of a James Bond, or Mission Impossible spy novel, something from the realm of fantasy; something which only the State of Israel could pull off in the real world. But people speak less about the somber fact that Israel is the only nation which is compelled to carry out such fantastical operations, just in order to be able to survive. It is the stuff of spy novels, but it gets turned by Israel into reality out of cold hard necessity.
Holocaust survivors with Israeli flag
Yes, most Orthodox rabbis opposed Zionism. The greatest notable exception was Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook. Rav Kook was largely derided as a naïve mystic in his time. Don’t be fooled by the fact that these Zionists like Herzl are so irreligious and secular, Rav Kook taught. Their longing for Zion emerges from deep within their Jewish soul, in a way that even they themselves do not yet understand.
Rav Kook also taught the following: The Torah speaks of the concept of Teshuva, repentance. Nowadays, we relate to teshuva as a process of personal introspection and change. But in the Torah itself, the word teshuva originally meant to return to God, and to do so in a national, and collective way. The Torah speaks this way about the End of Days: God will return you to your Land, and you will, in turn, return to Him there. These returns are intertwined. The Return to Zion is an essential aspect of the final Teshuva, Rav Kook taught, in the most literal and original sense of that word: the return to the Land. This would lead to the subsequent return to God.
I used to find Rav Kook’s idea to be just a pleasant rabbinic homily. Since October 7th, I now consider it more of a prophecy. Rav Kook understood that the same suffering and persecution that caused even the most secular of Jews to return to the idea of Zion, even if only out of desperation, would inevitably lead to a more comprehensive return to their Jewish roots in general. As the famous expression goes: there is no atheist in a foxhole. The rawest form of return to God comes from a place of suffering, when you have nowhere else to turn.
As it happens, the current chief of staff of the IDF, General Herzi HaLevi, perhaps the most important Jew in the world today, is a great nephew of Rav Kook. He is someone I am keeping in my prayers today, with great gratitude for his heroism in protecting the Jewish State about which his great uncle prophesied.
The only answer to October 7th is to be found in that comprehensive sense of Return. The Jewish kids on college campuses understand that. When the ideologues among them cast the Jewish State as the great Scapegoat of our time, uniquely embodying all of the sins of white European colonialism, the most powerful response is to simply return to the roots of our identity, an identity which predates their fleeting postmodern dogma by centuries.
The survivors of the Nova Music Festival have developed a beautiful slogan: We Will Dance Again. Or, in Hebrew: Od Nirkod Shuv. We will return to dancing. These survivors know that the redemption for their suffering can only be found by returning to the sacred act in which they were engaged at the moment of their trauma: singing and dancing, in the desert, in a spirit of peace and community.
Those young partygoers were not observing Shabbat and Yom Tov on that day to Orthodox standards; but they were still singing and dancing on Simchas Torah, in the Land of Israel, in the Hebrew language, and in Jewish community. Even the most secular Israeli is so authentically Jewish in that way; another miracle of Zionism. All made possible by the comprehensive Return, as foretold by Rav Kook.
The increase in anxiety and depression which can be seen amongst young people nowadays is largely due to having too many options. You go on dating apps, and you can swipe right or left a thousand times. It’s all too much. There’s a sense of peace and harmony that comes from having fewer options.
Why are Israelis so resilient in the face of adversity? Because, as the Communist General Giap understood far better than the neo-Marxist posers in the universities today: Israelis know that they have no other choice.
Rav Kook (center) speaking with Christian clergymen in Jerusalem
Zionism is no longer just an abstract movement to argue about. Jews in the diaspora increasingly and tragically continue to assimilate. We are rapidly approaching a moment when an outright majority of world Jewry will be living in Israel. That number now stands at around 45%. It climbs increasingly towards fifty one percent each year. It will sneak up on us as fact, on a coming Rosh Hashanah, not far away.
On Israel’s fiftieth anniversary, in 1998, the late Charles Krauthammer (who, like both me and William Shatner, was a Jew from Montreal) wrote the following prescient words:
“The return to Zion is now the principal drama of Jewish history. What began as an experiment has become the very heart of the Jewish people — its cultural, spiritual, and psychological center, soon to become its demographic center as well. Israel is the hinge. Upon it rest the hopes — the only hope – – for Jewish continuity and survival…
To destroy the Jewish people, Hitler needed to conquer the world. All that is needed today is to conquer a territory smaller than Vermont. The terrible irony is that in solving the problem of powerlessness, the Jews have necessarily put all their eggs in one basket, a small basket hard by the waters of the Mediterranean. And on its fate hinges everything Jewish”…
[Without Israel], some Jews and some scattered communities would, of course, survive. The most devout, already a minority, would carry on — as an exotic tribe, a picturesque Amish-like anachronism, a dispersed and pitied remnant of a remnant. But the Jews as a people would have retired from history”.
That might sound ominous. But Israelis themselves live in the face of that reality with a faith and serenity that I couldn’t comprehend in the weeks after October 7th. In those early days of last year, when I was still languishing in depression, it was my Israeli relatives and friends themselves who were the ones to reassure me that everything would be ok.
I understand the root of their confidence now. It isn’t naïve. It’s the blunt serenity that comes from knowing that you that have no other choice. With that enormous weight on your shoulders, there is no other place to go but to return, with great faith and courage, to your roots: to nationhood, to identity, and to tradition. Just as Rav Kook foretold.
Rav Kook’s major prooftext is the first three verses of Devarim 30, which we read five days ago, on the last shabbat of the just-ended past year:
| 1 And it will be, when all these things come upon you the blessing and the curse which I have set before you that you will consider in your heart, among all the nations where the Lord your God has banished you, | א וְהָיָה֩ כִֽי־יָבֹ֨אוּ עָלֶ֜יךָ כָּל־הַדְּבָרִ֣ים הָאֵ֗לֶּה הַבְּרָכָה֙ וְהַקְּלָלָ֔ה אֲשֶׁ֥ר נָתַ֖תִּי לְפָנֶ֑יךָ וַֽהֲשֵֽׁבֹתָ֙ אֶל־לְבָבֶ֔ךָ בְּכָ֨ל־הַגּוֹיִ֔ם אֲשֶׁ֧ר הִדִּיחֲךָ֛ יְהֹוָ֥ה אֱלֹהֶ֖יךָ שָֽׁמָּה: | |
| 2 and you will return to the Lord, your God, with all your heart and with all your soul, and you will listen to His voice according to all that I am commanding you this day you and your children, | ב וְשַׁבְתָּ֞ עַד־יְהֹוָ֤ה אֱלֹהֶ֨יךָ֙ וְשָֽׁמַעְתָּ֣ בְקֹל֔וֹ כְּכֹ֛ל אֲשֶׁר־אָֽנֹכִ֥י מְצַוְּךָ֖ הַיּ֑וֹם אַתָּ֣ה וּבָנֶ֔יךָ בְּכָל־לְבָבְךָ֖ וּבְכָל־נַפְשֶֽׁךָ: | |
| 3 and the Lord, your God, will return your exiles, and He will have mercy upon you. He will once again gather you from all the nations, where the Lord, your God, had dispersed you. | ג וְשָׁ֨ב יְהֹוָ֧ה אֱלֹהֶ֛יךָ אֶת־שְׁבֽוּתְךָ֖ וְרִֽחֲמֶ֑ךָ וְשָׁ֗ב וְקִבֶּצְךָ֙ מִכָּל־הָ֣עַמִּ֔ים אֲשֶׁ֧ר הֱפִֽיצְךָ֛ יְהֹוָ֥ה אֱלֹהֶ֖יךָ שָֽׁמָּה |
The Talmud (Megillah 29a) comments: the verse does not state that God will cause the people (V’heishiv) to return, but rather, that He Himself shall return them (V’Shav): this teaches that God Himself will return, with the people, to the Land. Rashi adds – the return to Zion will be full of difficulties and challenges, such that God will have to take each Jew personally, by the hand, so to speak, and bring back each one with His own hands.
It says in Yeshaya 51:3
| For the Lord shall console Zion, He shall console all its ruins, and He shall make its desert like Eden and its wasteland like the garden of the Lord; joy and happiness shall be found therein, thanksgiving and a voice of song. | כִּֽי־נִחַ֨ם יְהֹוָ֜ה צִיּ֗וֹן נִחַם֙ כָּל־חָרְבֹתֶ֔יהָ וַיָּ֚שֶׂם מִדְבָּרָהּ֙ כְּעֵ֔דֶן וְעַרְבָתָ֖הּ כְּגַן־יְהֹוָ֑ה שָׂשׂ֚וֹן וְשִׂמְחָה֙ יִמָּ֣צֵא בָ֔הּ תּוֹדָ֖ה וְק֥וֹל זִמְרָֽה |
Let those words be written on the walls of the rebuilt communities of Be’eri, and Kfar Aza, and Nachal Oz, and Sderot, together with the words “We Will Dance Again”, and with the words of the prophet, already emblazoned on the wall at Ben Gurion Airport, from tomorrow’s haftorah, that we invoke for our beloved hostages with the entirety of our souls: “V’Shavu Banim L’Gvulam – And the children will return to their borders”. Amen
IDF Chief of Staff, General Herzi Halevi, the Jew who is foremost in my prayers today, for God to give him wisdom, guidance, and strength.
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Rabbi Moshe Grussgott is a second-generation member of Morashah, the rabbinic fellowship of UTJ.
He has engaged with all types of Jews worldwide. From Belarus and Minsk to Australia and New Zealand, he worked with Jewish teens and teenagers with special needs. He has been both a hospital and military chaplain. These experiences have enriched and informed his perspective as a synagogue rabbi – his life’s main passion.
Rabbi Grussgott was educated for 8 years at Yeshiva University, during which time he earned a BA in Psychology, an MA in Medieval Jewish History, and rabbinic ordination.
Rabbi Grussgott serves as rabbi of Kehilath Israel in Overland Park, Kansas.