by Rabbi Julie Saxe-Taller
Tomorrow morning, we will read from Deuteronomy, as Moses speaks to our people at the end of their long years in the wilderness: אַתֶּ֨ם נִצָּבִ֤ים הַיּוֹם֙ כֻּלְּכֶ֔ם לִפְנֵ֖י יְהֹוָ֣ה אֱלֹהֵיכֶ֑ם “You stand this day, all of you, before your God—to enter into the covenant…” The meaning of the word nitzavim or “stand” is not about whether we are standing up on two feet. It means to position or post ourselves with purpose. Moses has taken upon himself to renew the covenant that we entered at Sinai, where we began the transition from serving Pharoah to answering to God.” And he spells out the inclusive nature of the covenant – it explicitly includes men, women, children, strangers who are in the camp of the Israelites, people of both high and low status and of all ages. (The radically inclusive nature of this passage makes me sure that if it were written today, it would include all of the genders.) But there’s even more. Moses continues: “Not with you alone do I make this covenant… rather both with those who are standing here with us this day before our God and with those who are not with us here this day.
The Talmudic Rabbi Abahu interprets the inclusion of “those who are not here” to mean that all the souls of our people were there, even those not yet born. WE were there, and so were the generations still to come after us. Our covenant – our sacred pledge to build a society that answers to the deepest Voice of Conscience – is shared from one generation to the next.
This generational transmission is beautiful, but not easy. When I was 16, my parents, my brother and I and our grandmother, whom we called Omi, stood outside of a locked car, somewhere in Switzerland. The sky was a gorgeous blue and the sun glinted brightly off the white car. I had manually locked the door – do you remember when that was a thing? – innocently, no even responsibly – having no idea that my dad had left the key in the ignition in case I needed it, while I waited in the back seat for the others to return from an errand. But when I decided to stop waiting and go find them, I locked the car, and we didn’t have an extra key. So, there we were, and I had never seen my Omi so angry – actually, I had hardly ever seen her angry at all.
She was one of my favorite people, fun, flexible, interesting and interested. And she had taken us on this trip to see her childhood home in Frankfurt. It was a trip planned around her and my mother’sambivalence
about going to Germany. Omi wanted us to see where she had spent her first 19 years, but she didn’t want to stay long. So, as planned, we spent just two days in Frankfurt and then moved on to Switzerland. We were having a wonderful time, but I wasn’t fully aware of how much fear was stirred up and simmering under the surface for Omi by being back in Europe. There we stood, three generations outside of our rental car, as she berated me for my mistake, a look on her face that was unfamiliar to me. Though I figured we would quickly find a solution, I was bewildered by her response, frightened, and becoming angry myself. It took many years until I could put together how stressful and full of mixed emotions the entire trip must have been for her, and how vulnerable she felt, tolerating my parents’ choice to find places to stay day by day, when we knew she would have liked to have firm plans booked ahead of time.
I was not there in 1936 when she fled Germany at the age of 19, the first in her family to realize that it was time to leave. So, while we shared abundant love as well as memories from our times together, I could not see the world from my Omi’s viewpoint, and sometimes she did and felt things that I did not understand, at least not without working hard at it.
These gaps in perspective between generations, and also among people divided in other ways, are common and painful. Last week, when the shofar was blown so beautifully, among the many cries I felt I was hearing was that of someone who kept calling out but was not answered or understood. How many of us have had this feeling of not being understood even while talking with another person who is ostensibly listening to us? Maybe my grandmother felt just this way as she spoke in anguish and I thought she was just making a big deal about having to wait for help to get into our car.
*******
This issue of understanding is vital, not only among the people of the covenant, but in our whole country
where we also must communicate to prosper together. Increasingly, we sometimes do not even share a basic ground of facts or what we consider to be reality. This creates profound obstacles to implementing a covenantal system of justice, since so much of what we think is fair is based on which versions of truth or history we have learned.
Last fall, during the Presidential election, I had the chance to speak with people whose lives and perspectives are more different from mine than most people I talk with regularly. I canvassed door-to-door in Phoenix and Philadelphia,and in Reno on the campus of University of Nevada. Unlike in California, in all of these cities, there were still many people who had not yet decided who to vote for,
or whether to vote at all.
We did not start our conversations by asking people who they were voting for, but by asking what were their main concerns. My team of canvassers worked hard, persisted when conversations were awkward,
put aside our feelings of shyness or frustration, and approached new people over and over. We had to bring our warmest, most relaxed self to each conversation and to be truly curious about people. It was hard work, and it was also a huge pleasure. There was something uniquely fulfilling about connecting with people across class, racial, religious and political divides. As I listened to people’s stories and concerns, I felt my heart and mind stretching.
In Philadelphia, I met a woman whose religious perspective on reproductive rights was her bottom line,
and it was in direct conflict with mine. This was the one thing preventing her from voting for the candidate she said she would otherwise support. As she described her pastor’s teachings on this topic
through his daily streamed talks, I had to remind myself several times that, despite my sense that she was misinformed and led by her pastor to an illogical conclusion, her convictions were sincere and caring. Mostly I had to listen, ask questions, and share small parts of my perspective that I thought might matter to her. I felt triumphant for both of us that we accomplished the connection we made – two women committed to our faiths, of different racial and class backgrounds, both caring about women, children and fairness. Just when I thought the conversation was about to end in a warm agreement to disagree, she asked for the campaign materials I was carrying and said she was ready to think about the issue differently. I almost fell off her brick stairway in shock.
But it was not only she who learned to think differently that day. I confess that I began my experience of canvassing with a lot of judgment and plenty of assumptions about people who had not yet decided on their votes. But I now carry with me the memory of this woman, the caution with which she first answered my knock from her window, the effort it took for her to move her chair so she could sit and speak with me, and the care she took to think things through.
On campus at the University of Nevada in Reno, my canvassing partner and I learned by trial and error –
it was mostly error on our first day. Most students were friendly and would stop when we asked if they had a moment to talk, but when we asked how they were thinking about the election, they closed their mouths or shook their heads, especially if they were with friends. Over and over, they glanced at each other and told us, “I don’t want to talk about that right now.” We learned from some students that they were afraid of losing their friends if they talked about politics, and many did not know what their friends thought about the election. The political environment was so tense that we learned we had to start by talking about that.
By day two, my opening spiel was something like, “Hi! We’re here to ask students how it’s going, since the election is so tense, and it seems hard to get your questions answered when there is so much judgment and yelling.” This completely changed the responses we got, and we spent the whole day hearing about how hard it was for many students to sift through the flood of opposing messages they were receiving on their social media, as well as in the mail and from their families. These students wanted help, and once they knew we would not attack or criticize them, they shared their personal stories, concerns and questions. One student was weighing the decision to vote differently from her family and wondering if that would be disloyal to her immigrant parents, who she respects, even though she thought her candidate would be better for immigrants.
It took a combination of hubris and humility to do this work – we had to imagine we could make a difference both in our country and in a single person’s thinking, one at a time. And we had to be ready to change our assumptions, to listen and learn, to encounter moments when we felt offended and when we did not know what to say. I would like to invoke these abilities in myself all the time,
but canvassing required them.
Posted at the mountain, surely the Israelites found themselves next to people they did not understand and who did not understand them, just as we do now. Even if we don’t travel to canvass in swing states, that same chutzpah and openness required for canvassing is also needed to nurture relationships in our families, in our Jewish community, and beyond. To foster a culture where people are committed to solutions that work for everyone, we need to practice talking with people. I mean this in both senses of the word “practice” – to improve our skills in listening to and talking with people who hold a wide variety of perspectives; and also “practice” as a discipline or spiritual practice that promotes our overall growth. Becoming good at warmly showing others that we care about them, even if we disagree with them, is one of the very things our namesake, the great Rabbi Hillel, is known for. I met a number of people while canvassing who were particularly warm to me though we knew early on in our conversations that we were in disagreement. I could feel their powerful decisions to connect and treat me with kindness.
We can talk with people we disagree with and still take stands. And we had better do both. We see the division, isolation and anger that have been sown in the gap where care and connection should have grown. Where the covenant of our values must grow – the dignity of all people, care for the planet, care for ourselves and the entire Jewish people, remembering our history and standing with all who are targeted by those who seek to profit rather than sharing the bounty of our world, and those who would blame others to deflect responsibility for their actions. These are our basic values, and in 2025, we are called to stand for them, because in our country, our covenant is under a calculated and unabashed attack beyond any level we have known in the lifetimes of most of us here.As Rabbi Jonathan Roos said in a similar message to his congregation in Washington DC just 10 days ago, “Judaism is not just about apples and honey… Our history is filled with resistance to authoritarian rulers. These are the heroes we celebrate. This is what our holidays are really about.”
To be nitzavim when we renewed the covenant was not merely to be standing. It was to be purposefully stationed, positioned to stand for something. Yom Kippur has just begun. We will talk tomorrow about taking stands as a Jewish community, welcoming and celebrating diversity of thought, addressing antisemitism, and opportunities for us to engage with our neighbors. May you be sealed in the Book of Life for a year of health and happiness, ready both to listen and to speak, standing strong in both humility and confidence. G’mar chatimah tovah.
Erev Yom Kippur 2025/5786
October 14, 2025 by tbhrich • High Holy Days
by Rabbi Julie Saxe-Taller
Tomorrow morning, we will read from Deuteronomy, as Moses speaks to our people at the end of their long years in the wilderness: אַתֶּ֨ם נִצָּבִ֤ים הַיּוֹם֙ כֻּלְּכֶ֔ם לִפְנֵ֖י יְהֹוָ֣ה אֱלֹהֵיכֶ֑ם “You stand this day, all of you, before your God—to enter into the covenant…” The meaning of the word nitzavim or “stand” is not about whether we are standing up on two feet. It means to position or post ourselves with purpose. Moses has taken upon himself to renew the covenant that we entered at Sinai, where we began the transition from serving Pharoah to answering to God.” And he spells out the inclusive nature of the covenant – it explicitly includes men, women, children, strangers who are in the camp of the Israelites, people of both high and low status and of all ages. (The radically inclusive nature of this passage makes me sure that if it were written today, it would include all of the genders.) But there’s even more. Moses continues: “Not with you alone do I make this covenant… rather both with those who are standing here with us this day before our God and with those who are not with us here this day.
The Talmudic Rabbi Abahu interprets the inclusion of “those who are not here” to mean that all the souls of our people were there, even those not yet born. WE were there, and so were the generations still to come after us. Our covenant – our sacred pledge to build a society that answers to the deepest Voice of Conscience – is shared from one generation to the next.
This generational transmission is beautiful, but not easy. When I was 16, my parents, my brother and I and our grandmother, whom we called Omi, stood outside of a locked car, somewhere in Switzerland. The sky was a gorgeous blue and the sun glinted brightly off the white car. I had manually locked the door – do you remember when that was a thing? – innocently, no even responsibly – having no idea that my dad had left the key in the ignition in case I needed it, while I waited in the back seat for the others to return from an errand. But when I decided to stop waiting and go find them, I locked the car, and we didn’t have an extra key. So, there we were, and I had never seen my Omi so angry – actually, I had hardly ever seen her angry at all.
She was one of my favorite people, fun, flexible, interesting and interested. And she had taken us on this trip to see her childhood home in Frankfurt. It was a trip planned around her and my mother’sambivalence
about going to Germany. Omi wanted us to see where she had spent her first 19 years, but she didn’t want to stay long. So, as planned, we spent just two days in Frankfurt and then moved on to Switzerland. We were having a wonderful time, but I wasn’t fully aware of how much fear was stirred up and simmering under the surface for Omi by being back in Europe. There we stood, three generations outside of our rental car, as she berated me for my mistake, a look on her face that was unfamiliar to me. Though I figured we would quickly find a solution, I was bewildered by her response, frightened, and becoming angry myself. It took many years until I could put together how stressful and full of mixed emotions the entire trip must have been for her, and how vulnerable she felt, tolerating my parents’ choice to find places to stay day by day, when we knew she would have liked to have firm plans booked ahead of time.
I was not there in 1936 when she fled Germany at the age of 19, the first in her family to realize that it was time to leave. So, while we shared abundant love as well as memories from our times together, I could not see the world from my Omi’s viewpoint, and sometimes she did and felt things that I did not understand, at least not without working hard at it.
These gaps in perspective between generations, and also among people divided in other ways, are common and painful. Last week, when the shofar was blown so beautifully, among the many cries I felt I was hearing was that of someone who kept calling out but was not answered or understood. How many of us have had this feeling of not being understood even while talking with another person who is ostensibly listening to us? Maybe my grandmother felt just this way as she spoke in anguish and I thought she was just making a big deal about having to wait for help to get into our car.
*******
This issue of understanding is vital, not only among the people of the covenant, but in our whole country
where we also must communicate to prosper together. Increasingly, we sometimes do not even share a basic ground of facts or what we consider to be reality. This creates profound obstacles to implementing a covenantal system of justice, since so much of what we think is fair is based on which versions of truth or history we have learned.
Last fall, during the Presidential election, I had the chance to speak with people whose lives and perspectives are more different from mine than most people I talk with regularly. I canvassed door-to-door in Phoenix and Philadelphia,and in Reno on the campus of University of Nevada. Unlike in California, in all of these cities, there were still many people who had not yet decided who to vote for,
or whether to vote at all.
We did not start our conversations by asking people who they were voting for, but by asking what were their main concerns. My team of canvassers worked hard, persisted when conversations were awkward,
put aside our feelings of shyness or frustration, and approached new people over and over. We had to bring our warmest, most relaxed self to each conversation and to be truly curious about people. It was hard work, and it was also a huge pleasure. There was something uniquely fulfilling about connecting with people across class, racial, religious and political divides. As I listened to people’s stories and concerns, I felt my heart and mind stretching.
In Philadelphia, I met a woman whose religious perspective on reproductive rights was her bottom line,
and it was in direct conflict with mine. This was the one thing preventing her from voting for the candidate she said she would otherwise support. As she described her pastor’s teachings on this topic
through his daily streamed talks, I had to remind myself several times that, despite my sense that she was misinformed and led by her pastor to an illogical conclusion, her convictions were sincere and caring. Mostly I had to listen, ask questions, and share small parts of my perspective that I thought might matter to her. I felt triumphant for both of us that we accomplished the connection we made – two women committed to our faiths, of different racial and class backgrounds, both caring about women, children and fairness. Just when I thought the conversation was about to end in a warm agreement to disagree, she asked for the campaign materials I was carrying and said she was ready to think about the issue differently. I almost fell off her brick stairway in shock.
But it was not only she who learned to think differently that day. I confess that I began my experience of canvassing with a lot of judgment and plenty of assumptions about people who had not yet decided on their votes. But I now carry with me the memory of this woman, the caution with which she first answered my knock from her window, the effort it took for her to move her chair so she could sit and speak with me, and the care she took to think things through.
On campus at the University of Nevada in Reno, my canvassing partner and I learned by trial and error –
it was mostly error on our first day. Most students were friendly and would stop when we asked if they had a moment to talk, but when we asked how they were thinking about the election, they closed their mouths or shook their heads, especially if they were with friends. Over and over, they glanced at each other and told us, “I don’t want to talk about that right now.” We learned from some students that they were afraid of losing their friends if they talked about politics, and many did not know what their friends thought about the election. The political environment was so tense that we learned we had to start by talking about that.
By day two, my opening spiel was something like, “Hi! We’re here to ask students how it’s going, since the election is so tense, and it seems hard to get your questions answered when there is so much judgment and yelling.” This completely changed the responses we got, and we spent the whole day hearing about how hard it was for many students to sift through the flood of opposing messages they were receiving on their social media, as well as in the mail and from their families. These students wanted help, and once they knew we would not attack or criticize them, they shared their personal stories, concerns and questions. One student was weighing the decision to vote differently from her family and wondering if that would be disloyal to her immigrant parents, who she respects, even though she thought her candidate would be better for immigrants.
It took a combination of hubris and humility to do this work – we had to imagine we could make a difference both in our country and in a single person’s thinking, one at a time. And we had to be ready to change our assumptions, to listen and learn, to encounter moments when we felt offended and when we did not know what to say. I would like to invoke these abilities in myself all the time,
but canvassing required them.
Posted at the mountain, surely the Israelites found themselves next to people they did not understand and who did not understand them, just as we do now. Even if we don’t travel to canvass in swing states, that same chutzpah and openness required for canvassing is also needed to nurture relationships in our families, in our Jewish community, and beyond. To foster a culture where people are committed to solutions that work for everyone, we need to practice talking with people. I mean this in both senses of the word “practice” – to improve our skills in listening to and talking with people who hold a wide variety of perspectives; and also “practice” as a discipline or spiritual practice that promotes our overall growth. Becoming good at warmly showing others that we care about them, even if we disagree with them, is one of the very things our namesake, the great Rabbi Hillel, is known for. I met a number of people while canvassing who were particularly warm to me though we knew early on in our conversations that we were in disagreement. I could feel their powerful decisions to connect and treat me with kindness.
We can talk with people we disagree with and still take stands. And we had better do both. We see the division, isolation and anger that have been sown in the gap where care and connection should have grown. Where the covenant of our values must grow – the dignity of all people, care for the planet, care for ourselves and the entire Jewish people, remembering our history and standing with all who are targeted by those who seek to profit rather than sharing the bounty of our world, and those who would blame others to deflect responsibility for their actions. These are our basic values, and in 2025, we are called to stand for them, because in our country, our covenant is under a calculated and unabashed attack beyond any level we have known in the lifetimes of most of us here.As Rabbi Jonathan Roos said in a similar message to his congregation in Washington DC just 10 days ago, “Judaism is not just about apples and honey… Our history is filled with resistance to authoritarian rulers. These are the heroes we celebrate. This is what our holidays are really about.”
To be nitzavim when we renewed the covenant was not merely to be standing. It was to be purposefully stationed, positioned to stand for something. Yom Kippur has just begun. We will talk tomorrow about taking stands as a Jewish community, welcoming and celebrating diversity of thought, addressing antisemitism, and opportunities for us to engage with our neighbors. May you be sealed in the Book of Life for a year of health and happiness, ready both to listen and to speak, standing strong in both humility and confidence. G’mar chatimah tovah.