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What happens when the world makes you uncomfortable being a Jew?
Do you retreat, hide, apologize—or come home?
In 1878, a brilliant young Jewish painter named Maurycy Gottlieb was trying desperately to escape his Jewishness. Then an antisemitic attack changed him.
Instead of making him ashamed to be a Jew, it made him ashamed that he had ever tried not to be one. He returned to his people, to his soul, and ultimately painted himself back into one of the great Jewish paintings of Yom Kippur.
That is teshuvah: not merely repentance, but return. Coming home to the deepest part of who you are.
Nearly 150 years later, Jews again find themselves confronting hatred—this time from both right and left.
An extraordinary Midrashic reading of the splitting of the sea sees the waters surrounding the Jews not merely as chomah, walls, but chemah, rage: hatred on their right and hatred on their left.
Yet G-d's command was not to obsess over Pharaoh, analyze the hatred, or allow our enemies to determine the Jewish agenda.
It was two words: Go forward.
But how does a Jew go forward?
The Midrash gives a remarkable answer: Torah and tefillin. Know who you are, and live who you are.
The sermon brings that idea powerfully into the present through the extraordinary courage of Julie Kuperstein, whose son Bar was held hostage in Gaza, yet who refused to allow even a Hamas terrorist to dictate her identity or her faith.
Jewish strength is not allowing those who hate us to decide who we become.
And that leads to a striking challenge for Yom Kippur.
The answer to a world telling us to become a little less Jewish is not to become angrier or more afraid.
It is to become 10% more Jewish.
One more mitzvah. A little more Torah. A little more tzedakah. One Jewish choice we were not making yesterday.
We do not defeat antisemitism by allowing antisemites to occupy more of our minds.
We defeat its purpose by becoming more fully, proudly and joyfully who we already are.
