The following is the text of my shabbat sermon from Aug. 23, 2025. Read below or listen above (or on Apple Podcasts or Spotify at The Urban Rabbi).
Rabbi Lawrence Kushner tells the following story in his book Invisible Lines of Connection:
“A light snow was falling and the streets were crowded with people. It was Munich in Nazi Germany. One of my rabbinic students… told me her great-aunt, Sussie, had been riding a city bus home from work when SS storm troopers suddenly stopped the coach and began examining the identification papers of the passengers. Most were annoyed, but a few were terrified. Jews were being told to leave the bus and get into a truck around the corner. My student’s great-aunt,” writes Kushner, “watched from her seat in the rear as the soldiers systematically worked their way down the aisle. She began to tremble, tears streaming down her face. When the man next to her noticed that she was crying, he politely asked her why. ‘I don’t have the papers you have. I am a Jew. They’re going to take me.’ The man exploded with disgust. He began to curse and scream at her. ‘You stupid bitch,’ he roared. ‘I can’t stand being near you.’ The SS men asked what all the yelling was about. ‘Damn her,’ the man shouted angrily. ‘My wife has forgotten her papers again! I’m so fed up. She always does this!’ The soldiers laughed and moved on. Rabbi Kushner says his student’s great-aunt never saw the man again. She never even knew his name.”
The Chofetz Chaim teaches: שכל הכופר בגמילות חסד כאילו כופר בעיקר, “Anyone who denies the importance of hesed (lovingkindness), it is as if they deny God’s very existence.”
In the Babylonian Talmud (Sotah 14a) we’re told that “Rabbi Samlai taught: With regard to the Torah, its beginning is an act of kindness and its end is an act of kindness…. As it is written: “And the Lord God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skin, and clothed them” (Genesis 3:21). And, it is written: “And God buried him in the valley in the land of Moab” (Deuteronomy 34:6).” God clothes the very first humans and in the final verses of Torah, buries (with divine hands) our greatest prophet.
One final text on hesed: “How do we know the significance of gemilut hasadim, acts of hesed? As the Prophet Hosea said: "For I desire hesed, and not sacrifice." The world began only with hesed, as it says in Psalms: "olam hesed yibaneh, the world is built with hesed….” One time it happened that Rabban Yohannan ben Zakkai was leaving Jerusalem, and Rabbi Yehoshua was walking after him. He saw the ruins of Solomon's Temple. Rabbi Yehoshua said: "Oy! What a devastation for us that the place where Israel atoned for our sins has been destroyed." Rabban Yohannan replied: "My son, do not fear. We have another form of atonement that is just as effective." What is it? Gemilut hasadim. This is what the verse from Hosea means when it says: "For I desire hesed, and not sacrifice" (Avot D'Rabbi Natan 4:7).
As you might have guessed, today I want to talk about hesed which seems to be a precious and rare commodity these days. Some of this is perception, the algorithm’s amplification of bad behavior. As Nico and Devon Hase say in their book, How Not to Be a Hot Mess: A Survival Guide for Modern Life, “most people most of the time actually treat each other pretty okay” (p. 60). But there is a problem, and at the heart of the problem, I think, is that there is a growing obsession with loyalty that is masking our capacity for kindness. The most extreme examples are of people like Steve Bannon, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Steven Miller, and troll du jour Laura Loomer who confessed to an Atlantic writer this week she desires for her loyalty purges to help “make McCarthy great again.” All these characters, in their own ways, insist on loyalty – above all else – to President Trump. And Trump, of course, attracts characters like this because he, too, insists on loyalty to himself.
But you might ask, doesn’t our Jewish tradition demand loyalty? Check out chapter 15 (v.7-8) of our parasha which is often cited as evidence of our compassion for those in need.
כִּֽי־יִהְיֶה֩ בְךָ֨ אֶבְי֜וֹן
If there is a needy person.
תִּפְתַּ֛ח אֶת־יָדְךָ֖ ל֑וֹ
You must open your hand and lend him sufficient for whatever he needs. And that’s beautiful, except the middle part of the verse is:
כִּֽי־יִהְיֶה֩ בְךָ֨ אֶבְי֜וֹן מֵאַחַ֤ד אַחֶ֙יךָ֙
If, however, there is a needy person among you, one of your kinsmen in any of your settlements in the land that the LORD your God is giving you, do not harden your heart and shut your hand against your needy kinsman.
The context is the shemitah/sabbatical year when you are permitted to press non-Jews on their debts but must forgive the debts of your kinsmen. And you must release your Israelite indentured servants but not necessarily your foreign slaves. To be clear, slavery is now forbidden. Period. And a fuller picture of Jewish tradition most definitely obligates us to others in need. But the parochialism is real. Which is probably why Jewish communities tend to have a strong internal social safety net, why we have a mitzvah of pidyon shevuyim to redeem our captives, why Rashi says (quoting Talmud) ani’ei ircha kodmim, the poor of your city first.
There’s something powerful in looking after our own, but then of course there are limits. Im ein ani li mi li? Asks Hillel the Elder, If I am not for myself, who will be for me? But the second phrase is also important: u’k’sheani l’atzmi mah ani? If I am only for myself, what am I? Loyalty has its limits, sometimes because we need to have enough empathy in our hearts for the many other human beings our foundational text insists are also created in God’s image. And sometimes because certain particular Jews are unworthy of our loyalty.
Marjorie Taylor Greene, as Adam Sandler might say: “not a Jew.” But what about Steven Miller or Laura Loomer? Do we owe them our loyalty because they are Jewish? Does Steve Bannon get partial credit because he invested in Seinfeld? No, I think I can say categorically these folks do not have my allegiance. Would I count Miller or Loomer in a minyan? Tough call. If pressed, I’d probably say “yes.” But I wouldn’t go out of my way to offer them an aliyah. And I don’t feel especially loyal to Mr. Roizman who used to own the Emersonian, Esplanade, and Temple Gardens and neglected our neighbors within. Nor Ms. Kaplan who ran Madison Park North into the ground – making way for Reservoir Square. And, if I ever made aliyah, guess who I would not be voting for?
The problem with loyalty tests, of course, whether to certain people over others or to ideals over human beings, is that they are both important in certain contexts and incredibly dangerous in others. Which is why, I think, our tradition is so insistent on hesed, on kindness. Hesed is our check against our quick tongues, the self-righteousness we all feel sometimes. It’s the breath before we speak, write, publish or post words that may hurt.
But here’s the thing. These, hesed and loyalty, aren’t necessarily different. The Rabbis tend to use the word hesed to mean lovingkindness or compassion, and it does mean those things. But it’s original meaning, it’s biblical meaning is (believe it or not) loyalty! Hesed is the love, the compassion, the consideration which grows out of a covenantal relationship. I have hesed for Miriam because she’s my wife, because we made a commitment to one another that is meant to amplify the joy and withstand the strains of living.
The problem with loyalty tests, of course, whether to certain people over others or to ideals over human beings, is that they are both important in certain contexts and incredibly dangerous in others. Which is why, I think, our tradition is so insistent on hesed, on kindness.
One way successful couples or people in all kinds of relationships do that is by insisting on the possibilities of goodness, even when life is challenging. Seeing holy possibility is an excellent bulwark again disloyalty, better than fear-mongering and threats. In the early 2000’s, psychologists at the University of Maryland conducted an experiment. They had a group of students solve a maze puzzle. Students were divided into two groups. Each group had a simple task which they could complete in about two minutes: help a cartoon mouse get safely to its mouse hole by tracing a pencil through the maze to the end. But while one group’s maze had a delicious looking piece of cheese near the mouse hole at the end, the other group had no cheese. Instead they confronted an image of an owl poised to swoop and capture the mouse in its claws at any moment. Just after completing the maze, all participants were asked to do a different, apparently unrelated test that measured creativity, the capacity to see new possibilities. What’s fascinating is that the students who had to avoid the owl did 50% worse on this second piece than the students who chased the delicious cheese.
Loyalty is achieved in two ways: through lack and fear or through love and the possibility of greater abundance. Hesed is that second kind of loyalty. The Magid of Mezerich, prime student of the Ba’al Shem Tov teaches this about a verse from Psalm 32 (v. 10):
וְהַבּוֹטֵ֥חַ בַּֽהֹ חֶ֝֗סֶד יְסוֹבְבֶֽנּוּ׃
“The one who trusts in YHVH will be enveloped in lovingkindness.”
And when it’s the opposite,” says the Maggid, “when we are constantly afraid of the attribute of din (judgment) and punishment, we cleave to severity…. For whatever place we think about becomes the place we cleave to. If we think severe thoughts we cleave to severity. And when we trust in loving-kindness (hesed) our soul will then cleave to that place and loving-kindness will envelop us. Therefore, we must always insulate ourselves in the blessed One.
Hesed is covenant loyalty, and it grows out of the foundational covenant, the brit we share in triangular fashion with one another and with God. Do I believe we should grant loyalty to our fellow Jews above all, under any circumstances? Of course not! But I get what our parasha means when it says we should be careful not to squeeze each other too hard or marginalize each other too much. Truth is, I’m not a great fan of calling out Jews as Jews when we think they are behaving badly. When occasionally I have, I’ve tried to be very careful not to claim my own moral superiority but, instead, to spotlight the gap between their behavior and our shared responsibility for hesed, our covenantal call to kindness.
This modern tendency to cry “not in my name” has its costs. We can be critical of someone whom we feel is not living up to Torah values, but to do so publicly, to call someone who is Jewish out for being not only a shmegegge but an inadequate Jew, or to minimize the experience of fellow Jews to amplify our own, risks compounding tropes or narratives that undermine our shared destiny. Kol yisrael aravim zeh bazeh, says the Talmud (Shevuot 39a), “all Jews are bound up together.” We are an ancient people, chosen for righteous living by a loving God. Let’s be each other’s cheese and not each other’s owls! Getting through the maze is only half the battle. We want to be better on the other side.
רְאֵ֗ה אָנֹכִ֛י נֹתֵ֥ן לִפְנֵיכֶ֖ם הַיּ֑וֹם בְּרָכָ֖ה וּקְלָלָֽה׃
“See, this day I set before you blessing and curse,” our parasha begins. The curse comes when we turn away from God and treat one another with indifference or sometimes cruelty. It’s easy to the do that when everyone else is doing it. It’s even surprisingly easy to disregard the feelings of the people we are closest to, who may be sitting right next to us, who may share a classroom with our kids, or stand next to us in line at kiddush. The beracha, the blessing, hesed, is the choice to do otherwise, to listen, to try to understand. God desires not sacrifice, but hesed. As the Chofetz Chaim taught, to deny the importance of hesed is to turn our backs to God. If the stranger in Rabbi Kushner’s story could risk his own safety, in the midst of the Shoah, for a Jew he’d never met, can we not give just a bit more to one another, to our fellow Jews? After all, complicated though we are, we’ve been a people, a family, for a really long time. And I think that counts for a lot.
