Sermon by Rabbi Angela Buchdahl, "The Cries of Isaac and Ishmael | Erev Rosh HaShanah 5786" September 23, 2025
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This war has tested our empathy. All of us.
I see the ways that my fear has disabled my empathy response.
I still struggle to find the emotional bandwidth
to read the tragic stories coming out of Gaza
while my extended family is still held captive,
while calls to “blacklist Zionists” or to “globalize the intifada”
still ring around the world, and even this city.
But who do we become when we harden our hearts?
Rachel Goldberg Polin, whose son, Hersh, was taken captive on October 7,
held in tunnels for nearly a year before he was executed by Hamas,
she more than anyone, would be justified in losing herself to rage.
But instead, she had the courage to say:
“I can feel bad for the innocent in Gaza, because my moral compass still works.
You don’t need to choose."
This Rosh Hashanah, we are invited
to create the moral universe we want to inhabit.
One where empathy is not finite but expansive.
Where we see the suffering of the other and we do not harden our hearts.
The opponents of empathy call it a weakness.
Our Torah sees it as our superpower.
Judaism teaches us that this feeling of otherness
that we are feeling right now,
there is a purpose to that exile—
it is how we forge the heart of a stranger.
A “heart of many rooms,” our tradition calls it.
A heart that is big enough to care for our own, and the other.
A heart that is strong enough to respond to the cries of both Isaac and Ishmael.
A heart with empathy enough for ALL of God’s children.