Believing: Rabbi David's Yom Kippur 5786 Talk

The sticker from Rabbi David's water bottle.

Click on Rabbi David to access the video of his talk.

Over the last few years, you may have noticed the sticker on my water bottle. It's a bright yellow sticker, with a single word written on it in block letters: the word is

BELIEVE. The sticker is a reproduction of a sign from a television show called Ted Lasso. I know that not everyone here has seen the show - it’s on Apple TV Plus, a streaming service that not everyone has access to - so let me tell you a bit about it. The show is about an American college football coach, named Ted Lasso, who is hired to coach a British professional soccer team - despite knowing almost nothing about soccer. It sounds like a comedy set-up - which it definitely is - but the show is really about something deeper: it's about kindness, and resilience, and the many, complicated ways that people can love, and fail, and grow. Although Ted doesn’t bring knowledge of soccer to his job coaching soccer, he does bring optimism and humor, an unusual willingness to accept people's flaws, and the stubborn, heartfelt belief that people can be better together than they are apart. Early in the first season, he tapes that homemade BELIEVE sign above the door to the team's locker room. Over the show's three seasons, it serves as a reminder to the team that no matter how difficult the soccer season gets, no matter how many mistakes the players make, belief - in themselves, in one another, and in being open to the whole person each of one of them is, including their flaws - can ultimately lead to success, fulfillment, and what we would call shalom.

In the weeks since my father died in the middle of August, I’ve been rewatching episodes of Ted Lasso, which I've found I can always count on as a source of comfort. One of the things I most love about the show is the way it models what it looks like to accept people as they are: to appreciate their strengths, to acknowledge their weaknesses without condemnation, and to hold both of these truths at the same time. In moments when I've encountered darkness - both because of my own grief, and because of the seemingly never-ending tumult and chaos in the world right now - the show has also helped me to remember that there's nothing wrong with that, that darkness is also a part of life. And so, that sticker on my water bottle - a replica of a little sign that's hanging up in a fictional locker room - has become more than just a fan’s token. It's become a reminder to myself that it's possible to believe, to hold onto hope. I think it's important to remind ourselves that believing doesn’t mean ignoring the darkness. Optimism doesn’t mean pretending everything is simple. If anything, true belief requires the courage to face the world in all its complexity - and to insist that even in complexity, good things are possible.

I believe that seeing value and importance in complexity is a very Jewish idea. One of the things I cherish most about Judaism is that it is not monolithic. We don’t believe in only one way of thinking about God, or seeing the world; instead, we are constantly invited into a sacred multiplicity of differing perspectives about the same issue. Judaism is a tradition that has never shied away from complexity and multiplicity. At the very beginning of the Torah, we are offered two different versions of the story of Creation. In chapter one of Genesis, God creates the world in six days, by speaking it into existence, a cosmic liturgy of “Let there be.” In that story, humanity is created last - in God’s image, both male and female together. Then, in chapter two, the story changes. Now, creation is hands-on, earthy and intimate: God forms the first human being from dust, breathes life into nostrils, plants a garden, and fashions a partner from the side of the first human. In this version, humanity is created first, not last. Traditionally, a story that supposedly reveals the truth wouldn't work this way, so we're left asking which story is true, which one is quote-unquote "correct." Judaism’s answer is: both stories are. There isn't only one version of Judaism's creation story. Both of them reveal something about God, and about us. Side by side, these stories don't compete with each other - they complete each other.

The same thing happens with the Ten Commandments. They appear twice in the Torah: once in Exodus, and once in Deuteronomy. The two versions are nearly identical - nearly, but not quite. One commands us to “Remember the Sabbath day,” while the other tells us to “Guard the Sabbath day.” One grounds Shabbat in God’s creation of the world, while the other grounds it in our liberation from Egypt. Again, you might ask the question of which one is correct, which version is the quote-unquote "real" one. Again, Judaism says: both are. In fact, in the Friday night Kiddush we say that Shabbat is “a remembrance of creation and a remembrance of the Exodus.” Even though they point in different directions, we hold both of these truths at once.

One of the most famous teachings from the Talmud says: Eilu v’eilu divrei Elohim chayim - “Both these and those are the words of the living God.” When the ancient rabbis disagreed about the meaning of Torah - which happened all the time, about almost everything they discussed - their arguments and conclusions were recorded side by side in the Talmud. They didn't do this because they couldn’t pick a winner. They did it because they believed that divine truth doesn't require singularity, but instead often lives in multiplicity. Jewish tradition has always insisted that more than one thing can be true at once. Two Jews can disagree, two Jewish communities can hold different practices - and yet the Divine is present in both.

This isn’t just a unique theological trait - it’s at the root of how and why Jews have survived for millennia. When the Second Temple was destroyed, Judaism easily could have died with it. The Temple was the absolute focal point of everything that was important in the religious life of Ancient Israel. But after its destruction, the ancient rabbis didn’t give up - they were determined to find a way for their people to survive. So, they reinvented Jewish practice entirely, creating prayer to replace sacrifice, synagogues to replace the Temple, and study to replace priestly ritual. That reinvention wasn’t a betrayal, or a surrender - it was an act of faith, and of resilience. It was a manifestation of the belief that something new could grow out of destruction, and it was the realization that finding a new way to practice and live was better than dying because the old ways couldn't continue.

These same principles are written into our law. Out of the 613 commandments in the Torah, the Talmud teaches that only three cannot be broken in order to save a life: the prohibitions against idolatry, premeditated murder, and certain forms of sexual violence. Every other law - Shabbat, kashrut, fasting on Yom Kippur - can and should be set aside for the sake of life. That principle is called pikuach nefesh - preserving life, and prioritizing well-being. It means that ideology must never become a prison. Rules are sacred, but life is more sacred. Ideals are holy, but human beings - living creatures that are made b'tzelem Elohim, in the image of God - are holier. Judaism both models and teaches that flexibility is not weakness. Flexibility is the faith that even when the present feels unbearable, there can still be a future - as long as you're open to multiplicity and change.

By the way, this is what Coach Lasso does, too. He reminds his team that they are more than their mistakes, and more than their record on the field. He helps them become a home for one another, a place where joy and sorrow, strength and weakness, can coexist. He allows and encourages everyone he meets to be not just their best selves, but their fullest selves. He encourages others to work to be better, but not to castigate themselves, or each other, because of their flaws. He recognizes that we are all walking around holding, and being examples of, multiple truths. You might say that he is constantly advocating for shalom.

Frustratingly, the culture we live in right now so often pushes us away from this way of thinking. On social media, in political debates, and in the way news is reported, we are constantly pressured to make a statement and choose a clear side: Are you for this or against it? Do you wholeheartedly support it, or do you think it absolutely needs to be abolished? Are you red or blue, left or right, Reform or Orthodox, pro or anti? In this very absolutist way of thinking, complexity is frequently mocked, and nuance is regularly dismissed as weakness. Judaism says instead that true strength comes from holding more than one truth at the same time, and from recognizing that there's almost always more than one way to think about the issues in our world. This embrace of nuance and multiplicity can seem almost deviant in a culture that both prefers and rewards simplified, black-and-white thinking.

This is not just a theoretical attitude, nor is it an approach that's only relevant regarding religious matters. Thinking this way is actually very practical, and I believe it is crucial that we hold fast to it, and apply this approach to pretty much everything we encounter. There are so many conflicts in the world today that we can think about through this lens. The most personal one for Jews is, of course, Israel. There are Jewish people whose truth is that most things the Israeli government and military does should prioritize the health and well-being of those with whom they're engaged, because that's how they understand and apply Jewish values. There are Jewish people whose truth is that most things the Israeli government and military does is ok, because they feel that the only Jewish country in the world needs to do whatever it takes to protect itself. That's how those people understand and apply Jewish values. There are Jewish people who feel very strongly about what's happening in Israel, and there are Jewish people to whom it's not a particularly important part of their lives. And there are Jewish people whose truth combines some or all of these different perspectives, in any of a number of different permutations. As with most issues, looking at the situation realistically has to involve recognizing at least some of these multiple truths, and figuring out how to hold them at the same time. When talking about complex global situations like Israel, I think it's vital for us to remember that we are not required to collapse our hearts into a single slogan, or perspective. We are actually required to resist that collapse, and to live with the complex reality of most situations.

We live in a world that is also overflowing with complex social problems. Jews are taught that our purpose on this planet is to partner with God in the work of creation - which often means to tikkun our olam, to repair our world and to make it a better place. Judaism teaches us to feed the poor, to stand up for the underprivileged, to defend the rights of those who are discriminated against, including immigrants and racial and ethnic minorities and people who are LGBTQ. Judaism teaches us to stand up for ourselves, by fighting against antisemitism, and all other forms of anti-Jewish expression. Judaism teaches us to be stewards of the earth, and to resist tyranny and authoritarianism. The call for us to advocate and fight for these issues is clear and unquestioned - and yet so often, how to realistically do that is somewhere between inexact and deeply unclear. For example, how far can you push a tight budget in order to make your physical space more environmentally friendly? How do you decide which minority group to spend your time trying to help and protect? Should you work on Shabbat, missing your opportunity to rest and care for yourself, if that's your only chance to help someone else? How often can or should you do that?

This last point reminds me of what I spoke about on Rosh Hashanah morning - Judaism also teaches us to pursue shalom, wholeness, in our own lives. We cannot help others, we cannot do any of these things, if we ourselves are falling apart. Just as the flight attendant tells us to put on our own oxygen mask before assisting others, so too does Judaism remind us to care for our bodies, our spirits, and our families. We can't help everyone all the time, and we can't help anyone if we haven't helped ourselves. How do we balance all of these needs? What do we do with the multiple truths that we are responsible to the world, and we are also responsible to ourselves; the truths that we are all obligated, and we are all also limited?

As we know, the answers to these and other questions like them are rarely clear or obvious. They usually involve a great deal of complexity and nuance, they usually require holding multiple truths at the same time, and the answers are almost always going to be different for different people at different moments of their lives. This leads to a few things I'd like to suggest to you on this Yom Kippur morning. As we move forward into the new year, I invite you to recognize the value of seeing things in a complex way, of recognizing that more than one thing can be true at the same time. I invite you to celebrate the fact that this is what Judaism teaches you, and to be loud and proud about teaching and modeling this fundamental Jewish value to others. I invite you to actually think about and do things in a complex way, allowing yourself to hold on to multiple truths, and to advocate for, and as much as possible carry out, solutions that are not overly simple, but instead that actually address the many different sides of our world's very complex problems. I also invite you to advocate for this way of thinking, and to do everything you can to not allow the culture that harshly pushes for simplicity to push you to be simple. It's so easy to get caught up in the push to make it seem like complicated issues have simple solutions. It's easy to think that most issues have clear "for" and "against" sides; and that we should take positions that fit in a Facebook post, a bumper sticker, or a TikTok video; or that are exactly what public figures and political leaders are saying. Lived experience shows us that overly simple solutions are rarely, if ever, effective - if they were, the problems they propose to solve would actually be solved. Instead, Judaism - like Ted Lasso - teaches us to be honest about reality, by embracing complexity. It's usually the only way forward.

I feel the need to note that there's a very real reason why I'm talking about these ideas today, on Yom Kippur. You may have heard me say that if there's a practice or ritual that Jews do differently on one day of the year, the odds are that that day is Yom Kippur - a day that is like no other. There are so many reasons for this, but one I'm betting you haven't thought about a lot is that Yom Kippur itself is the Day of Complexity. It's a day when we fast, partly to remind ourselves that hunger exists - yet fasting also teaches us to be grateful for abundance. It's a day when we wear white to emulate the vibrant angels who are closest to and most focused on God, but the white garments we wear are also our future burial shrouds, forcing us to spend the day confronting our mortality. We spend the day rehearsing death - reciting the confessional prayers that we're supposed to say before we die, abstaining from food and drink and intimate contact, and reciting prayers about who shall live and who shall die. And then, we end the day by affirming life; blowing the shofar, singing about renewal and joy, and enjoying a festive meal. Yom Kippur itself teaches us that the holiest path is not one that avoids complexity and multiplicity, but one that walks directly into it.

I'd like to go back to Ted Lasso, and to that yellow Believe sign above the locker room door. While only one of the creators of the show is Jewish (a British actor named Brett Goldstein plays one of the main supporting characters, and is also one of the show's writers and executive producers), I feel like the show teaches and embodies so many of the important themes that I've shared with you this morning. Ted teaches us that believing does not mean pretending that things are simple. Believing does not mean closing our eyes to pain, or pretending that contradictions aren’t real. Believing does mean holding onto the possibility that something good can grow out of brokenness. Believing means refusing to be trapped by ideology - especially when life is at stake. Believing means trusting that if we face the world’s complexity with acceptance, openness, and courage, then together we can find a way forward. That's why I so frequently carry around my Believe sticker. And that's one of the biggest reasons why I am so proud to be Jewish.

Because, Judaism asks us to believe:

That God can be revealed in more than one story of creation.

That Shabbat can be both a remembrance of creation and a remembrance of liberation.

That two opposing rabbinic opinions can both be the words of the living God.

That life is more important than ideology.

That survival and adaptation are themselves acts of faith.

And that complexity and nuance is not weakness, but strength.

And so, my friends, as we move forward into this new year, let us believe.

Let us believe that Judaism’s wisdom - its flexibility, its contradictions, its insistence on multiplicity - can help us to not only survive, but to live with courage, depth, and meaning.

Let us believe that by holding multiple truths, we can face the complexity of the world with less despair.

Let us believe that by caring both for the world and for ourselves, we can all live with shalom.

And, let us believe that through it all, the God of life walks with us, inviting us to hold all the truths together, to find wholeness in the midst of brokenness, and to begin this new year renewed.

Ken yehi ratzon - let this be God's will.

And let us say: Amen.