My Sermon from Erev Rosh Hashanah 5787, Delivered September 11, 2026. Audio podcast here or on Apple/Spotify at The Urban Rabbi. Video here.
Kol HaOlam Kulo, Gesher Tzar Meod…
There’s a story told of Reb Yisrael who loved to study Torah but earned his livelihood as a sandal-maker. One day, a crass and disgruntled customer challenge Reb Yisrael: “Tell me the nature of heaven and hell,” he taunted. “If you’re so learned you must know something about them!” Reb Yisrael mustered scorn that did not come easily to him and responded forcefully: “Get out, take your business elsewhere! I’ve no time to waste with you and your condescending questions!” The customer became apoplectic, flew into a rage, grabbed a sharp implement and cried out that he could kill him for his words.
“Ah,” said Reb Yisrael, “that is hell.”
The customer grew flustered. He immediately realized what he had done. After a few moments, he calmed down and gently replaced the tool. “Thank you for teaching me.”
“And that,” said Reb Yisrael, “that is heaven.”
Tonight, we enter into a New Year. There is so much to celebrate, and tomorrow I’ll have the chance to talk to you about Hamakom and my excitement about our beginning this journey together. Today, however, is not just any date on the calendar. Yes, it’s the first of Tishrei, but as you know it’s also September 11th, 25 years to the day since the worst terrorist attack on American soil. Only the Battle of Antietam saw more people killed in a single day, and of course the victims of 9/11 were not Union or Confederate soldiers— they were 2,977 non-combatants. They were as old as 85, as young as 2. They were women and men. They were citizens of more than 90 countries. They were regular Americans, government employees who simply went to work. They were passengers on their way to family, long anticipated vacations, or home. To ignore this history, on this day, would feel to me like an abrogation of my duties as your Rabbi.
The good news is that we Jews are adept at the art of navigating forces of good and bad alike. We understand the tension between heaven and hell. Leaving eschatology aside for a moment, we know both of these can exist here, on earth. 25 years ago today, a group of men, guided by a nefarious leader and a malevolent worldview determined to make a hell in New York City, in Washington DC, in the United States of America. The question for us on this Rosh Hashanah, the question I would invite us to consider on this day, is not why did this happen? That’s an important question. I hope to be with you for a long time. Some other time we’ll tackle questions of theodicy, why bad things happen to good people.
Today, I’m more interested in the question of how best to live in such a world. There’s our individual process of teshuvah, of striving to recognize, in ourselves, the choices we must avoid. To choose heaven over the living hell of unbridled rage. To be better than those who did the very worst to us on this day.
But 9/11 was also a collective attack, on our nation and on our way of life. It shook us to our core, and I think to this day, we Americans haven’t fully recovered from that trauma.
What technology does our tradition offer? How are we to move forward in such a world? The answer, I would suggest, is all about balance. This coming February, the Ahmanson will present Fiddler on the Roof in Yiddish. Our family saw it on Broadway a few years back, and it’s wonderful, so try to see it if you can! The image of a fiddler on a roof is poignant because we Jews understand well Tevye’s words from the opening monologue: “here, in our little village of Anatevka, you might say every one of us is a fiddler on the roof trying to scratch out a pleasant, simple tune without breaking his neck.”
The image derives from Marc Chagall’s famous 1912 painting, but Rebbe Nachman of Bretzlov, the early 19th century Hassidic master, taught something similar: “Kol haOlam kulo, gesher tzar me’od, all the word is a very narrow bridge. V’haklal, v’haikar lo lefached klal, the general principle, the essential thing, is not to give in to fear.”
Kol HaOlam…
When Colum McCann wrote his 2009 novel Let the Great World Spin, he did so with his father-in-law’s shoes sitting in a box nearby. The shoes, covered with dust from the implosion of the World Trade Center, accompanied the man as he hastily made his way down from the fifty-ninth floor of the north tower. The book, however, is McCann’s stirring fictionalized account of Manhattan in 1974, the day on which funambulist Philippe Petit walked a tightrope wire between the newly built twin towers. In the novel’s afterword, the author writes: “One thing that has always struck me is how tenderly my father-in-law thinks of the young firefighters who were climbing the stairs of the towers while he was given the chance to come down.”
McCann’s book captures a moment in time when the twin towers were new, and an act of daring captivated the city. But I think there is some of the tightrope walker in all of us, isn’t there? We are all trying to balance, like a fiddler on the roof, “trying to scratch out a pleasant, simple tune without breaking our necks.”
I don’t know about you, but since September 11, 2001 it does feel to me like we’ve been off balance. I’ve been alive 50 years now. During my first 25, the very worst national event my generation dealt with was probably the Challenger Explosion. But the second 25? The world in which my kids have been raised feels like walking a narrow bridge or a tightrope between the twin towers, 100 mile-an-hour winds whipping about and pushing us back and forth, over and over. The success of the tightrope walker depends on her being able to remain upright through micro-adjustments. We cannot forever endure radical swings from one extreme to the next.
In a certain conception, heaven is up and hell, as it were, is down. But that’s not the message of Reb Yisrael. Hell is rage, paralyzing fear, despair. Heaven is growth, compassion, and hope. “Thank you for teaching me,” said the customer. Heaven is having the self-awareness to be better than someone caught us being just a minute before.
To balance over the abyss is hard, it takes practice and self-awareness, but our creation narrative itself suggests it is also in our nature to do such things. In the beginning, the world is created through words, God speaking “light” into being. But before that moment of creation what do we read? “V’ha’aretz haytah tohu vavohu, the earth was unformed and void. V’choshech al p’nai tehom, with darkness over the surface of the deep, v’ruach Elohim m’rachefet al p’nai hamayim, and the spirit of God hovering over the water” (Gen. 1:2). God floats above the waters, suspended over the tehom as if balancing on the highwire or standing on a narrow bridge. If we are to fulfill our calling as those created b’tzelem Elohim, in God’s likeness, and lelechet bidrachav, to be humans striving to walk in divine ways, we must discover what it means to find balance in a world where chaos and darkness also exist.
The Holy One, our inherited tradition, our Jewish community, these are the pole that offers us balance, the fiddle we play, the music we make to cast light and joy into the dark corners. These past 25 years have been scary. But a refusal to give in to fear of it, that’s the difference between heaven and hell. That’s the real secret. Hell isn’t below while heaven is above. Heaven and Hell are ever-present on the bridge. The difference between them is knowing how to walk, finding balance. Hell is flying planes with hundreds of people into buildings filled with thousands. It’s rage and hate. Heaven is the firefighters who passed Collum McCann’s father-in-law on the stairs, who ran up those towers 25 years ago today searching for lives to save.
Kol HaOlam…
One last thing: I learned this melody in late October 2023. In Jerusalem. I was on a solidarity trip to Israel just weeks after the bloodshed of Oct 7. We arrived on Monday and departed Wednesday night. Just before heading to the airport, we sat by candlelight on the floor of the Moreshet Yisrael Conservative synagogue on Rechov Agron. More than 100 strong, our voices filled the sanctuary. Over and over, we chanted this haunting tune, the Berdichever Niggun, Rebbe Nachman’s words about a bridge-world and the courage we must summon to walk above the swirling waters. In the aftermath of yet another devastating Islamist attack, we were angry and terrified, our collective grief was overwhelming. But this song, it rescued us for a time, it buoyed us. Staring into the abyss, we touched the possibilities of heaven.
As we enter this New Year, on this date which lives in infamy, may we stand together. May we sing. May we grow and learn and live our lives in service of something holy. May we shine light into the darkness. May sweetness linger on our tongues, and courage guide our steps. May we find our balance once more.
