Before we existed, the story goes, God convened a heavenly council—calling on the angels, each representing a different facet of the divine.
There was the Angel of Peace, calm and serene, who spoke first. “Don’t create them,” Peace said, voice steady but firm. “Humans will bring strife and conflict, they will tear at each other, and at the world you made.”
Next came the Angel of Justice, eyes sharp and discerning. “Create them,” Justice argued, “for they will seek fairness, they will build laws, and they will try to make things right, even when they fail.”
Then Mercy, with a soft and knowing smile (said), “Create them. They will love, they will forgive, they will comfort each other in moments of darkness.”
And finally, Truth stepped forward, tall and unyielding. “Do not create them,” Truth declared. “They will lie, deceive, and twist reality to suit their needs. They cannot bear the weight of Truth as it is.”
God listened to them all, and then realized:
- Never ask an even number for a vote.
- God didn’t need the angels to weigh in after all, as God WANTED to make humans.
So God did something unexpected — God cast the Angel of Truth down to earth, shattering Truth into countless shards. In that moment, the choice was made: humanity would be born, but not with the whole of Truth. Instead, each of us was given a fragment, just a sliver of the infinite.
Now, here we are, wandering through life, each of us holding our tiny piece of Truth, like a shard of broken glass — sometimes it cuts us, sometimes it reflects the light just so, illuminating something beautiful we hadn’t seen before. But here’s the thing: none of us holds the whole Truth. We can’t. We were never meant to.
And that’s why our work on earth is so vital. It’s up to us to pick up the pieces, to look at the jagged edge of our own fragment, and then, to reach out to others — to see the Truth they carry, to fit our pieces together, and maybe, just maybe, catch a glimpse of something bigger, something whole.
What I’ve just read, is the beginning of a longer piece by author and Media Editor at Times of Israel, Sarah Tuttle-Singer.
Truth in the media is often discussed. Does it exist any more? How do we know which sources are truthful and which are biased? How do we know which ones to trust?
It used to be that we could turn to people we trusted for guidance – rabbis, teachers and professors, parents, wise friends. . . But this year something extraordinary and deeply disturbing happened: we didn’t only lose faith in media reporting, we lost faith in those we usually trust.
In the months since October 7th, the ensuing war has moved faster than we could have imagined; faster than we can keep up with.
The horrific stories, the numbers, the onslaught of videos we cannot bear to watch. What happened, and who did it happen to, and where? There are so many conflicting narratives. There is so much devastation.
In the beginning – in the shock and grief of it, we were united. The Jewish community came together and mourned. But then – it seemed like in a blink of an eye, sides were drawn.
Zionist. Anti-Zionist. Pro-Palestinian. Pro-Peace.
We began to throw these terms around like sweets at a barmy. But did we really know what they meant?
We used terms like “Just War” and “Colonialism” and “Genocide”; Words like “empathy” and “nuance”. But did we really know what they meant?
And here’s a difficult question: Does it matter?
When I look at how divided our community has become this year, I can’t help hearing the classic childhood nursery rhyme:
Humpty dumpty sat on a wall
Humpty dumpty had a big fall
All the kings horses and all the kings men
Couldn’t put humpty together again.
How are we going to recover from these fractures; these deep and seemingly intractable divides?
On Tisha B’Av, each year, we talk about sinat chinam, the sin usually translated as “baseless hatred”, which the Rabbis of the Talmud pointed to as what led to the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem. But the translation of “baseless hatred” is problematic, because it leaves space for us to justify hatred that isn’t baseless. Hatred like that we might feel for the perpetrators of October 7th, or for the Nazi’s, or for any other group who inflict the worst kinds of evil on their fellow human beings.
What sinat chinam really is, in the context of Tisha B’av, and sadly, perhaps, in the context of the year we’ve just survived, is the sin of hatred among kin, or, perhaps even more specifically, hatred among those we expect to be aligned with, but find instead that we differ from on critical matters.
Somehow it hurts more when we find that our closely guarded truths and values are not reflected in those we love, trust, or with whom we share community.
In teaching about sinat chinam, the Rabbis bring forward a text about Kamza and Bar Kamza. In it, an anonymous man has a friend named Kamza and, strangely enough, an enemy named Bar Kamza.
The man throws a party to which Bar Kamza is mistakenly invited in place of Kamza. The host is livid to find his enemy at his soiree, and embarasses Bar Kamza by throwing him out. When the rabbis who were present at the party do not intervene, Bar Kamtza is further offended, and decides to get revenge.
He goes to the local Roman authority and informs him that the Jews are rebelling Rabbi David Hellman in New York, in writing about this text, points out that, “it seems quite a jump: from being embarrassed at a party to calling in the Romans!
Furthermore,” he asks, “wouldn’t this only result in new (edicts) or persecutions . . .that would affect Bar Kamtza and his family as much as the host and the (Rabbis)?”
As it turns out, this isn’t a story about petty rivalry. It’s a story about politics.
Rabbi Hellman explains that since Bar Kamtza had access to a high level Roman official it would seem reasonable to surmise that he was a wealthy, prominent citizen of Jerusalem belonging to the faction who cooperated with the Romans.
The host, on the other hand, belonged to the faction in Jerusalem that was anti-Roman. Rabbi Hellman writes that, “this great conflict was tearing apart Jerusalem from within, with nothing less than the future of the Jewish people at stake…
Understandably, these debates were fierce and each side thought that the other was leading the nation into catastrophe.”
Sound familiar?
In an article in Mishpacha Magazine, I found another definition for sinat chinam.
“Sinat chinam is the rejection of another for no reason other than that he is not me and his way of serving (The Creator of the Universe) is different from mine. So long as one cannot accept that (God) has created each of us (differently), and with (our own) unique path to (God), one is engaged in sinas chinam.”
Rabbi Hellman seems to agree with this definition, teaching that the story of Kamtza and Bar Kamtza brings forward a vital and complex challenge: to not allow legitimate disagreements over issues of principle — even ones of incredible consequence — to turn into conflicts that are fueled with hatred for the human beings on the other side.
The Talmud is not critical of the anonymous host because he embarrassed Bar Kamtza, or because he had a disagreement with him. The tragic sin of the host was that he saw Bar Kamtza’s views as not only wrong and dangerous, but that he saw Bar Kamtza the person as contemptible. In the language of today, Bar Kamtza had been canceled. He was so reviled that he was unwelcome in the presence of the host and his guests.
He was not one of them.
This year, on top of the heartbreak I felt for the victims of October 7th – for the hostages and their families, for the victims of sexual violence, for the Israeli soldiers who have died defending the security of the Jewish people, for the innocent civilians on both sides of the conflict, for far too many dead children –
On top of all of that heartbreak, was the additional heartbreak in seeing more and more people step back from their shul, from their rabbis, and from their fellow Jews, because of differences of opinion, values, narrative – differences of Truth.
Let me be clear – I am speaking about people on all sides. We are too Zionist for some. For others, we are not Zionist enough.
It’s impossible to say something that doesn’t offend someone.
It’s impossible to say nothing.
There is heartbreak in this, and there is heartbreak in seeing that far too often, we have let one another walk away in anger, in despair, and perhaps even in hatred.
Al cheit sh’chatanu l’fanecha…. For the sins we have committed against you by turning away from one another; By canceling one another; By no longer seeing ourselves as part of the same community. . .
In addition to the Humpty Dumpty nursery rhyme, I keep hearing the pithy but apt cliche: United we stand, divided we fall.
How will our community survive if we are so divided that we refuse to be in the same space with one another? That we question whether we still belong here, and whether others still belong here?
How many are watching online tonight because they didn’t feel comfortable being here in person?
My heart breaks.
I want to believe that we can find our way back to one another.
But how can we?
Returning to the piece by Sarah Tuttle-Singer we may find part of the answer:
“This isn’t easy,” she writes. “It takes humility, it takes patience, and it takes a hell of a lot of courage. Because when we hold our piece of Truth up to someone else’s, we might see that our edge isn’t as clean as we thought, that our understanding isn’t as complete. But it’s in that mess, in that beautiful collision of shards, that we start to see the bigger picture. . .
God wanted more than isolated, solitary beings. God wanted a world where we depend on each other, where our survival, our growth, our very understanding of the world and the divine requires us to come together.
The shards of Truth are scattered not as a punishment, but as a divine design, pushing us toward unity, toward connection. In this fragmented world, unity isn’t just an ideal; it’s a necessity… “
Sarah’s vision of unity is beautiful, but it is also hard.
To achieve it we have to be willing to examine the truths we hold, and to open ourselves up to the possibility of other truths.
To achieve it we must not alienate ourselves from one another. We must not allow ourselves to forget one another’s humanity,
We must put unity AHEAD of division, not by ignoring that which divides us, but by valuing diversity of opinion – perhaps even welcoming it.
Rav Kook, the first Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of British Mandate Palestine,taught that there are two types of t’shuvah, gradual and sudden.
While I do not agree with many of Rav Kook’s teachings, or with the forms of religious Zionism that are attributed to his legacy, there are other of his teachings that I do appreciate.
It would be a shame if I canceled Rav Kook – if I refused to learn anything from him because I don’t agree with the political stances he took.
When contemplating Kook’s idea of sudden t’shuvah, t’shuva pitomit, Rabbi Jordan Brauning, of the Jewish Studio Project, asks how change – complete and total transformation – can happen in an instant. “We have the capacity,” he writes, to receive a burst of insight and to shift our way of being completely.
Perhaps, it is just when we have given up on the idea of transformation…that change takes hold.”
Coming back together in community with one another is possible.
We don’t have to spend years processing our disagreements and our pain. There will be time enough for that. In this moment, all we have to do, is decide.
Decide to turn back to one another;
Decide to embrace and forgive one another;
Decide to accept one another, and move forward together.
It is Rosh Hashanah. Yom Kippur is not yet here.
We have the time. We have the capacity.
I pray that we have the will.
Kein Yehi Ratzon
