September 17, 2025

For my wife, when the blast of the shofar cuts through everything else, that ancient sound isn’t just a religious ritual — it’s a reigniting of who she is as a Jewish person. It’s more than ceremony; it’s a state of being, a call that reminds us not just of our obligations, but of our identity itself.

As we enter 5786, this season of teshuvah — of washing away what clings to us and beginning anew — we face a profound challenge that goes beyond personal reflection and renewal. The story of the Jewish people is being rewritten, and we are not the ones holding the pen.

The power of antisemitic narratives has seeped into mainstream discourse with alarming effectiveness. To the uninformed and ill-intended the stories are believable and palpable, and leave many Jews feeling bereft and uncertain. When the entertainment industry boycotts Israeli filmmakers, when the International Association of Genocide Scholars passes resolutions against Israel, we respond as we must — with counter-narratives, with counter-facts, with our own scholars and creatives pushing back. But the genie is out of the bottle and there is no putting it back. 

The uncomfortable truth: countering a narrative you didn’t write is not a strategy for success. It is not about Jews being bad at PR, or being outspent. When we exert all our energy reacting to hatred and lies, we cede the fundamental power of something we mastered millennia ago — storytelling itself.

I liken the current situation to a storm on the ocean. Do not underestimate it, it has the power to kill. Its violent force consumes every moment with its battering waves and howling winds. But not far below the surface, the deep ocean currents continue their ancient circulation around the globe.

Those currents take approximately 500 years to circumnavigate the earth. The last time the same body of water touched the eastern seaboard of America, Christopher Columbus was sailing the surface. It seems like a long time — until you realize the Jewish people have made that journey at least seven times in our documented civilization. We have weathered many storms. We know something about moving through deep waters.

This is the power of the Jewish story: it’s not about memes or tweets or moments of viral gratification. When the shofar blows, it is about who we are at a fundamental level, rooted in 3,500 years of values, tradition, and enduring identity. As brand guru Eitan Chitayat says, “The Jewish people have the best brand.” The solution therefore isn’t to fight harder against the narratives of inferior and hateful brands, it’s to tell our own story better.

Every Jewish person has a story. Whether you can trace your lineage back to Maimonides through centuries of learning and tradition, or you converted to Judaism in Los Angeles two years ago and are celebrating your third Rosh Hashanah as a Jew (me), you are an inheritor of the same long history. Everyone has their own unique story to tell as a Jew living in the world today.

When I converted and Rabbi Adam Kligfeld insisted I take the name David Ben Avraham v Sara, I protested. I had other ideas. But he reminded me there is no greater honor than to be the son of Abraham and Sarah—not just inheriting Abraham’s lineage as the first person to choose Judaism, but becoming an inheritor of the entire Jewish story that began right there.

That’s who we all are: inheritors and authors simultaneously. We carry forward an ancient narrative while writing new chapters with our own lives, our own choices, our own ways of being Jewish in this moment.

This Rosh Hashanah, as the shofar calls us back to ourselves, we need to remember that we are more than our reactions to antisemitism. We are more than they care to identify by. We are more caring than indifferent, more embracing than exclusive, more healing than harming, more building than breaking, more living than surviving, more hopeful than afraid.

This is who we are. We are the Jewish people — many stories, but one people. We flow in the same deep enduring current.

It is time to stop letting others define us and start defining ourselves — to be authentic, confident, and never hide who we are. We may need to defend ourselves but the Jewish story is not a counter-narrative, it is the foundational and defining narrative of West European civilization.   

As we enter this new year, let the sound of the shofar remind us: we are not just responding to the storm on the surface. We are the deep current itself, and we have been moving through these waters for thousands of years.

The question isn’t whether we’ll survive this moment. The question is: what story will we choose to tell?

L’shanah tovah u’metukah — may this be a good and sweet year, filled with our own authentic voices. 

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Stephen D. Smith is CEO of Memory Workers and Executive Director Emeritus of USC Shoah Foundation. 

The origins of a beloved Rosh Hashanah ritual are as murky as a fish-filled pond.

Tashlich, from the Hebrew word for “tossing away,” is the centuries-old practice of gathering at a local body of water on Rosh Hashanah afternoon to recite a short prayer articulating our spiritual desire to cast our sins into the deep. 

How the now-popular practice emerged remains a mystery.

The penultimate verse in the biblical book of the eighth century BCE prophet Micah describes a time when God “will take us back in love; He will cover up our iniquities. You will cast all their sins into the depths of the sea.” But it wasn’t until over a millennium and a half later, during the time of the medieval German rabbi known as the Maharil, Rabbi Yaakov Moelin (1365–1427), that there are written accounts of Jews physically acting out the metaphor of this verse – by shaking out crumbs from their clothes in order to feed the fish in the local river. 

The Maharil objected to that crumby part. After all, giving food to creatures that aren’t your pets on Shabbat and holidays is muktzah, forbidden labor. But the purpose of the practice? He posited that it is meant to recall the Binding of Isaac, whose central role in Rosh Hashanah is reflected in the blowing of the shofar, the ram’s horn that recalls the animal sacrificed in lieu of Abraham’s beloved son. 

How so? 

Rabbinic legend has it that Satan placed a lake to block Abraham’s path on the way to the fateful near-sacrifice of Isaac on Mount Moriah, and the water rose up to the patriarch’s neck. Abraham prayed successfully to God to dry up the river so he and his son could continue on their way toward the mountain. So too, goes the theory, Jews demonstrate their unyielding commitment to the divine commandments, come Hell or high water.

The 16th century Polish sage Rabbi Moshe Isserles, known as the Rema, added no less than three additional explanations. Gazing into the local stream is meant to evoke Jacob’s blessing to his son Joseph that his family should multiply like fish in the sea, a hope for a fruitful year ahead for the Jewish nation/family. Secondly, just as fish, the rabbis taught, are impervious to the cynical glare of the “evil eye,” so too should we communally be free from its ill effects. Rabbi Isserles’s last suggestion was that in gazing at the grandiosity of a large body of water, one can’t help but be awed by God and repent from disappointing Him.

The Rema’s student Rabbi Mordechai Jaffe wasn’t satisfied with his teacher’s suggestions and added his own. He mused that perhaps the meditation is a warning, meant to remind us that just as fish can get ensnared by fisherman’s netting, so too we can all be entrapped by iniquity.

Subsequent scholars have offered sundry theories, from the monarchical to the messianic. 

Just as kings were anointed next to bodies of water in ancient times, so too we, on this holiday marking God as our Ultimate Monarch, assemble in homage next to water.

Perhaps it is meant to reflect our aspiration for the Temple in Jerusalem to be rebuilt. After all, as the Second Temple was being joyously dedicated by the community of exiles who had returned to the Holy Land, the Book of Nehemiah tells us “the entire people assembled as one man in the square before the Water Gate, and they asked Ezra the scribe to bring the scroll of the Teaching of Moses with which the Lord had charged Israel.” We stand next to water now to recall the Water Gate then.

Then again, still others proposed ritual-by-the-lake is a lesson in humility. Just as water stays low to the ground, we too must keep our egos from rising.

Whatever Tashlich’s true origin, perhaps it was inevitable that we mark Rosh Hashanah by assembling next to water. As the third Lubavitcher Rebbe, known as the Tzemach Tzedek, noted, the Hebrew word for year “shanah” means both “repetition” and “change.” Like a constantly flowing river, we aspire, both individually and collectively, for steadfast forward progress and refreshing self-transformation.

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Rabbi Dr. Stuart Halpern is Senior Adviser to the Provost of Yeshiva University and Deputy Director of Y.U.’s Straus Center for Torah and Western Thought. His books include the newly released “Jewish Roots of American Liberty,” “The Promise of Liberty: A Passover Haggada,” “Esther in America,” “Gleanings: Reflections on Ruth” and “Proclaim Liberty Throughout the Land: The Hebrew Bible in the United States.”

Your heart beats fast. You can feel it thumping in your chest. A wave of heat comes over you. Beads of sweat form on your forehead. Your breath quickens. It feels rapid and shallow. Your arms and legs are tense. The muscles in your shoulder and neck feel tight and strained.

Have you ever felt that way?

It’s natural. It’s your body’s way of responding to threat or danger. Your body is preparing you to fight the threat, run from danger, or freeze in the hopes that the threat will leave you alone and move away.

We, as a people, have been in this very fight, flight or freeze mode for almost two years. It began the morning of Oct. 7, 2023, when our Jewish family in Israel was brutally attacked and cruelly targeted for death and destruction. When our family members were butchered, burned, tortured, raped and captured for ransom.

Horrific beyond words. Terrifying beyond description. We’re still living the trauma of that October morning  today — 700 days later. The pain, trauma and fear are still with us. They’re in the cells of our bodies. We remain tense and hypervigilant, scanning the environment for another sign of attack. Even here in America, 7,600 miles away.

We are justified in our fears. They’re valid. Just four months ago, two young people in Washington, D.C. — a beautiful couple soon to be engaged — were gunned down as they left a Jewish museum. Doubly tragic, this couple was dedicated to peace and reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians.

We are justified in our fears. They are valid.

Only this past June, 15 people were wounded, one of whom later died, in the serene, idyllic city of Boulder, Colorado. A man with a homemade flamethrower sprayed fire against an innocent crowd gathered in a park. He torched an 88-year-old Holocaust survivor among the 15 innocent victims of the attack.

What are we to do with this ongoing trauma and continued threat? How are we to heal our bodies and minds of their justified fears of another attack — in Israel, America, Europe — anywhere in the world where Jewish people live and are targeted by antisemitism and people who hate?

I don’t pretend to have all the answers. I’m no expert in responding to baseless hatred. To the would-be terrorist. To the person lurking in the shadows, intent on violence.

I do, however, know something about calming our bodies and minds when we feel threatened, when the threat has passed, or when it’s not imminent, even though the trauma remains. Because I’ve been studying mind-body science for over 30 years. I’ve been practicing it just about every day during the past three decades. Yet, so much more importantly, Judaism has been teaching it for over three thousand years. 

The Jewish world needs these practices and teachings now to meet the moment we’re in. The moment we’ve been in for close to two years, since Oct. 7. Truth be told, we’ve all been in this traumatized state even longer — since Oct. 27, 2018, when the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting occurred.

We’re on a journey of collective recovery. Wise, loving compassion and kindness will guide our steps and give us the healing that we need.

Judaism offers us each day — and especially at this time of year, during these Yamim Noraim, these High Holy Days of Awe — a path of compassion. God, the Source of life, is the Source of our compassion. Our tradition teaches that compassion is one of God’s primary attributes. As the Torah says, Adonai, El Rachum v’Chanun. “The Eternal is a God of compassion and grace” (Exodus 34:6).

This beautiful Hebrew word rachum comes from the Hebrew word rechem which means “womb.” A mother’s womb that surrounds her child with warmth, nourishment and support. So too, in this moment of our deep need for healing from the trauma of antisemitism, we surround ourselves with healing warmth and support.

Where does it come from?

It comes from family, friends and community. Loving community that embraces our collective pain and trauma, and holds it in its arms, cradling our suffering, like a mother cradles a crying baby in her arms — to soothe her and him.

That’s what we need from one another. That’s what we have to give one another: Compassion. Rechem. Rachum. Rachamim.

Modern neuroscientists describe compassion as the heartfelt desire to alleviate suffering. It is built into our brains and bodies as mammals. We all have it. We all can turn to it and use it. We move from the fight, flight or freeze mode of our sympathetic nervous system into the soothing, compassionate, care system of our parasympathetic nervous system in our bodies.

We move from fear to love. From fear to compassion. We reach out and connect with each other in bonds of kindness, love, and caring. And we heal. We heal our broken and constricted hearts through the innate wholeness and openness of one another. The great Hasidic master Rebbe Menachem Mendel of Kotzk taught: “There is nothing so whole as a broken heart.”

We offer our broken hearts to God.  We share our broken hearts with one another. We turn toward our trusted neighbors, friends, family members, community members and allies — and we connect with them. We sit or stand in their presence. We talk. We listen. We laugh. We cry. We celebrate. We mourn. We give. We receive. And as Jews, of course, we eat and drink together.  

We offer our broken hearts to God.  We share our broken hearts with one another. We turn toward our trusted neighbors, friends, family members, community members and allies — and we connect with them. We sit or stand in their presence. We talk. We listen. We laugh. We cry. We celebrate. We mourn. We give. We receive. And as Jews, of course, we eat and drink together.

We do all the things that friends and family and community do with one another to relate, connect and heal. We heal our collective trauma and renew our collective nervous systems with connection, lovingkindness and compassion.

There is at least one more important path to our recovery that also moves us from fight-or-flight to calm and safety, from sympathetic to parasympathetic nervous system activation in our bodies and minds. That is the age-old Jewish spiritual practice of blessing and gratitude.

It’s called hakarat hatov. Literally, “seeing the good.” Seeing the blessings in our lives — in gratitude.

Judaism guides us to wake up each day in gratitude, to begin anew each day in appreciation of all the good that surrounds us — all the good which is within us.

Prominent voices in the Jewish world have rightly lamented that we felt abandoned on Oct. 7 and the days that followed. Many people turned a blind eye to our shocking suffering: friends, former allies, teachers and students on college campuses, local school boards, local, national and international leaders. Not all, but many of them hardened their hearts like Pharoah of ancient Egypt. They hardened their hearts to the unfathomable pain of our broken hearts.

We felt abandoned, alone, our trauma invalidated. All true. And, at the very same time, when we turned toward the good, hakarat hatov — when we lifted our tear-soaked eyes to perceive the goodness surrounding us, we could see many people standing right beside us, offering us their love, compassion, and kindness.

We saw the brave souls near Nova, like Bedouin minibus driver Youssef Ziadna and Israeli farmer Oz Davidian, who risked their lives and families to save our young sisters and brothers under brutal attack right outside Gaza. Closer to home, the courageous security guards here in America who stood watch — and continue to do so — over us, our families and Jewish institutions, risking their lives and families to keep us safe and protected.

God bless them. We see their goodness.

We recognize all the Jewish and Jewish adjacent organizations in Israel, America, and around the world, who worked and continue to work day and night, tirelessly, to keep our people safe, comfort us, and help us to heal.

God bless them. We recognize their wise and loving acts.

We acknowledge all our Jewish and non-Jewish friends and neighbors who spoke to us — and who continue to — in sympathy, solidarity and understanding. Their warmth and succor help us feel safe and soothe our troubled spirits.

God bless them. We see the beauty of their souls. We are deeply grateful.

We appreciate how our Jewish community and the thousands of Jewish communities across the planet are a source of love, friendship and support during these difficult times. 

We are enveloped by at least 100 blessings each day, as the Talmud reminds us (Menachot 43b).

There is still much healing that needs to be done. So we can feel safe. So we can truly begin again, as these High Holy Days beckon us to do.

In this new year, we can begin again when we acknowledge and embrace our fear and pain. We will begin again when we open our hearts to compassion, lovingkindness, appreciation, and the good will of those who are standing right beside us — whether they be near or far, Jew or gentile, human or Divine.

May God bless us for a new year of health and safety, for goodness, wholeness, and healing.

Shanah tovah u’metukah. Wishing you a good and sweet year. 

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Rabbi Rick Schechter is the spiritual leader of Temple Sinai of Glendale, California.

Each year we come back to the same place, once again, moving through the contemplative time of the month of Elul, preparing for the coming Holy Day, Rosh Hashanah, the New Year. It is a circle that repeats yet also elevates, a sphere that rises a little higher from the year before. It is a familiar journey yet totally different from year to year.

Rosh Hashanah is the 1st day of Tishrei, however, the rabbis teach that it is six days before the New Year begins that we celebrate Creation, the time in which the Light of the Divine, the all-encompassing infinite light enters the world yet it is on Rosh Hashanah that we celebrate the birth of the human being.  Both are a recognition of G-d’s ability to bring life into existence. Tradition teaches it is with words that the Creation comes into being while the human is formed, as Torah teaches, “And HaShem, our G-d, formed the Adam from dust of the earth and then blew into the nostrils the soul of Life and the Adam became a Living being.” All of Creation is spoken into existence while the human is intimately formed by Hashem and connects each one of us through the breath/spirit of G-d, enlivening the human with a spark of the Divine. 

There are so many levels of honoring and celebrating this coming moment. We attempt to detoxify the past, everything from discretions to missed opportunities to the awareness that whatever was not fulfilled has another opportunity, a clean slate and a fresh start. On another level it is having an opportunity to be mindful of where one is in their life, their challenges, their successes, for themselves and their relationships with others. 

On a more Kabbalistic level there is a very different goal and awareness. It is in the understanding that the original Adam, the human, is androgenous with male and female qualities. On Rosh Hashanah we honor and remember the wholeness of being, male and female, when they were joined together as one.  Then, the separation occurs. Once they were joined at the back, they are then able to be “face to face,” each with their own unique identity.

Hassidic commentary points out that at the New Year we go back to that original time, the moment of wholeness of being human, in his/her original form, a time of simplicity and being connected to the original light of the Holy One. Once separated, on their course and journey, life becomes encrusted with “garments,” those things that we attract, attach, and/or surround ourselves with that bring, not only reality, but complication and distance from the infinite light that filled the world at its beginning. We unknowingly create separation from the Holy One and G-d’s deep desire to be in proximity which each one of us.

At this time when so many are filled with toxicity, trauma, complexity and chaos from all that occurs in the world and especially in this country, we have layers of shmutz on our N’shamahs that have caused us to lose touch with the beauty and simplicity that Rosh Hashanah is here to remind us. Rosh means head, shanah means year but also change and renew. We all desperately need to renew our deep well of pure, uncomplicated and simple way of being. We need to rediscover the excitement and amazement of life by going back to the beginning, which is what Rosh Hashanah, on one very deep level, is about. 

Rosh Hashanah is also called The Day of Remembrance when we are to recall and remember, through the head of our consciousness, the place of awareness and understanding, that it is the birthday of the human, a time of renewal, letting go of the destructive forces that prevent seeing the positive and the possibility of hope and light shining through.

The sound of the shofar, with all of its depth of meaning, is also a simple call from G-d to come back, “return,” rediscover the glory of the pure self, being renewed and rebirthed, once again, as in the beginning, whole, integrated, and one with our Creator.

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Eva Robbins is a rabbi, cantor, artist and the author of “Spiritual Surgery: A Journey of Healing Mind, Body and Spirit.”