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Sermons 5785/2024

Kol Nidre Sermon 5785
Painting Leaves on Bare Branches
Rabbi Igor Zinkov on 11 October 2024 at the LJS.

It is hard to be a public speaker in the Jewish world nowadays. Many people are anxious about their leaders saying something too radical or critical about Israel. Others worry that a person speaking on behalf of the Jewish community might not be bold enough regarding the Israeli government. It is impossible to please everyone. Perhaps it is also unnecessary—a rabbinic voice is not always meant to be one of comfort.
I am fortunate; I serve a community that upholds a true sense of freedom of the pulpit. Nobody tells me what to say, what topics to choose, or which events to attend. Can you imagine being in a position where you could not speak about Israeli politics—the most complex and morally challenging topic of our generation?
I also respect and understand why many people prefer not to talk about Israel, so here is a story from Lebanon instead[1]:
In the village of Hamadin, a woman lived with her only daughter. One day, the girl became ill and was ordered to rest. So, she lay on her bed near the window and looked out at the only tree in the garden. Days, weeks, and months passed, and autumn came. But the girl's condition didn't improve.
On the contrary, she felt worse. And so, one day, as she looked at the tree, she said weakly, "You see, Mother, see those leaves. When the last leaf falls, I will die." The mother's heart shrank, and she watched anxiously as the leaves fell.
One night, the wind was very strong and cold, and she was full of despair as she saw it taking the last leaves. With every leaf, her heart sank even deeper. At last, there was only one leaf left.
She ran outside and spent hours painting a picture of one leaf so that it looked real from the window…
This is not the end of the story. I promise I will reveal it later. But let me ask you: What would you do? Would you do anything that could give the girl hope, even if it meant telling a lie?
We know that a painted leaf cannot heal, but it can offer hope to both the mother and her daughter. On the other hand, when you analyse this story a bit deeper, you see that the girl didn't have to make that promise, and her mother didn't have to agree to connect her daughter's health with the leaves on a tree. This story is about promises, oaths and vows. Promises we make affect us deeply, which may be why we begin Yom Kippur—the holiest day in the Jewish year—with Kol Nidrei, a text that reminds us to take our promises seriously.
On Rosh Hashanah, I made you a promise. Now is the time to remind myself of it:
 
“In the presence of this congregation, on this Rosh Hashanah, I promise never to make New Year’s resolutions.”
 
I also promised to explain this joke in great detail on Kol Nidre.
Yes, I know. Quoting myself in a sermon doesn't make me a good scholar, and probably doesn't make the best impression, especially if you are seeing me for the first time. I ask you to suspend your scepticism and trust me for the next 15-20 minutes.
Also, to those of you who are still unsure about this turn... I'll take your scepticism as a compliment. If congregants take rabbinic authority with a healthy amount of irony and criticism, the LJS is doing something right.
 
Let me explain what just happened. During my rabbinic studies, I was told never to say “I” in a sermon. However, at some point, I came across Dale Carnegie's advice: "To be interesting, be interested," and I have followed it since. The best approach to Torah and Judaism is to offer you a window into my thinking and understanding of the world. Hopefully, this will open a space for you to share your thoughts and begin a dialogue—even if you don't necessarily agree with everything I say. Sometimes, a good disagreement is worth more than a thousand nods.
Let's return to the original resolution and why I am spending so much time talking about it now. My New Year’s resolution was never to make New Year’s resolutions. The paradox of this promise, I believe, explains the world we live in today. Sometimes, two statements can both be true and yet incompatible with each other. If I keep the resolution and never make another, I break it because I kept it. If I keep making resolutions, I break it again.
Life is full of such paradoxes, tensions, and conflicts—many of which can never be fully resolved. Perhaps, instead of fighting them, we need to find a way to live with them.
A perfect example of such a paradox is beautifully expressed in the film God on Trial. This thought-provoking story, set during the Holocaust, depicts prisoners in Auschwitz who hold a mock trial to determine if God has broken the Covenant with the Jewish people.
Throughout the film, prisoners engage in passionate debate, presenting arguments defending and condemning God. They wrestle with topics like free will, justice, and the concept of ‘chosen people’. The prosecution points out the atrocities they are enduring, wondering how a just God could allow such horrors. The defence, on the other hand, argues that the relationship between God and the people was never about an absence of suffering, but rather about faith even in the darkest of times.
Ultimately, the arguments of the prosecution become the majority. In the end, the group of prisoners reaches a chilling verdict: they find God guilty of breaking the Covenant, guilty of abandoning Jewish people.
However, this isn't the end of the story. Immediately after delivering the verdict, the prisoners hear the guards approaching to take some of them away. At this moment, something profound happens - the men begin to pray.
This ending crystallises the most powerful message of this film. It reveals the complexity, paradox, and tension of religious thought. Even after concluding that God is guilty, the prisoners still choose to pray.
Relationships with God go beyond logic and rational judgment. People can be angry with God yet still need God, judge God yet reach out to God for mercy and support. We need something that gives us meaning, but at the same time, we can be very uncomfortable with it.
This same dynamic is present in many aspects of our lives. We live in a world filled with conflicts, disagreements, and unresolved questions. We seem to live in a permanent state of dissatisfaction and disillusion.
As a reflection of this state, we often define our life and time using negative statements. We talk about what we are not rather than about what we are. There are many examples of such definitions. Most of them use the prefix ‘post-’:
Post-Truth: the world where objective facts and evidence do not have the same weight as they used to.
Post-Secular: our world is not secular anymore. Religion today coexists in spaces previously dominated by secularism and science.
Post-Industrial: our society is no longer based on a manufacturing-based economy.
Post-Colonial: we live in an era after colonial rule, focusing on the legacy of colonisation.
Post-National: Fewer and fewer people today find meaning and identity in belonging to their nation.
Posthuman: Many scholars think technology and artificial intelligence will take humanity to its next evolution stage, integrating technology into human bodies — scary and unchartered territory.
What do all these ‘post-’s have in common? They label this world using negative rather than positive definitions.  They focus on what is rejected or left behind. We are disillusioned by or dissatisfied with something and approach it with scepticism, denial or irony.
Ultimately, this negative approach leads to a divided and compartmentalised world. The postmodern person looks at all previous eras with scepticism and irony. The world of modern manifestos and big ideas—e.g., Marxism, Nationalism, Liberalism—has become a laughable past. Postmodern irony deconstructed past ideas without offering any substitute.
As a result, people have lost something very important—big ideas, narratives, and a sense of purpose. People approach everything with disillusionment and humour. Even messages of hope have become a subject of cynicism. They say that if you see the light at the end of the tunnel, don’t be too hopeful—it might be a train moving towards you. It is not the world I want to live in, but, at the same time, there is something useful, some truth in this radically pessimistic approach, too.
There is a story about the famous atom scientist Niels Bohr:
A visitor once told him: I’m surprised you have a horseshoe hanging over your door. Do you, a man dedicated to science, believe in that superstition?
To which Bohr replied — Of course not, but I’ve been told it works even for those who do not believe in it.
This story exemplifies how we approach the world today. We are sceptical about everything that used to give us grounding and hope, but we still need hope. In the past, we had big ideas and important learned people. Today, many live ‘as if’ big ideas exist without fully believing and committing to them.
‘As if’ seems to be the principle that applies to many situations. It reflects many tensions, internal conflicts, and moral dilemmas. Initially, I considered this a wrong way of thinking, dishonest, and hypocritical. However, now I see advantages to this approach. The question we must ask ourselves is this: instead of fighting it, can we find something positive and constructive in this hopelessly ironic generation? Or, perhaps, can we be ironic about them and confront their cynicism with ours?
In 2009, two scholars, Timotheus Vermeulen and Robin van den Akker had a similar question in mind. They did extensive research into 21st-century culture. In their conclusion, they said that today's world “oscillates between the modern and the postmodern. It oscillates between a modern enthusiasm and a postmodern irony, between hope and melancholy, between naïveté and knowingness, empathy and apathy, unity and plurality, totality and fragmentation, purity and ambiguity.”[2]
This way, when the world’s ‘enthusiasm swings toward fanaticism, gravity pulls it back toward irony; the moment its irony sways toward apathy, gravity pulls it back toward enthusiasm.’[3]
In other words, the very core of the world today is not static. We swing from one side to the other. In the past, people considered such behaviour indecisive or lacking opinion, but this has changed today. The idea behind the oscillation is that we need both sides to balance each other.
Imagine a string fixed between two points. We need both of them. We also need the tension in the string to fulfil its purpose. The tension makes the string sound beautiful in the hands of a skilful cellist. If you choose only one side, one point, the string will lose its function.
You can also compare it to a suspension bridge. When you build or walk on the bridge, you don't choose a side; you use it to go from one end to another. We live in a world where people force us to take sides. Instead of denying it or taking only one side, we can accept both sides as inevitable, a natural part of our lives and existence.
Many centuries ago, Rabbis taught a similar lesson:
“A person might think, ‘Since the House of Shammai declare unclean and the House of Hillel clean, this one prohibits and that one permits, how, then, can I learn Torah?’ …
A single Shepherd has given all these words, one God created them, one Provider gave them, the Creator of all deeds has spoken them. So make yourself a heart of many rooms and bring into it the words of the House of Shammai and the House of Hillel, the words of those who declare unclean and those who declare clean.” (Tosefta Sotah 7:12)
The world may ask us to choose between irony and sincerity, religious faith and scientific scepticism, belonging and individuality—but perhaps what truly defines us as Jewish people is our ability to dwell in the spaces in between and make a heart of many rooms. Do we need to choose the side and only tell one story? Why can’t we build a bridge between them and let people walk on it and cross the boundaries? Why can’t we put a string between two sides and let skilful musicians play a beautiful symphony? Perhaps the tensions and conflicts we face are not problems to be solved but opportunities to learn about each other.
The mother in the story painted the last leaf to preserve hope. Perhaps this is what we must do as well. In the face of deep division, uncertainty, and brokenness, we can choose to paint our leaves—symbols of the hopes we long for, even when we are unsure if they bring any real change.
This is not hypocrisy but the courage to live 'as if.' To live as if justice, compassion, and hope are more than abstract theoretical concepts from the past. We should live as if our prayers reach beyond our doubts and as if our actions today are part of a big story still unfolding. To live knowing there is a tension between who we are and who we might yet become. In that space of suspended potential, we may find the strength to create, heal, and hold on to hope together.
Mishnah Pirkei Avot has an example of such approach to life. It calls it disagreements for the sake of Heaven:
כָּל מַחֲלֹקֶת שֶׁהִיא לְשֵׁם שָׁמַיִם, סוֹפָהּ לְהִתְקַיֵּם. וְשֶׁאֵינָהּ לְשֵׁם שָׁמַיִם, אֵין סוֹפָהּ לְהִתְקַיֵּם. אֵיזוֹ הִיא מַחֲלֹקֶת שֶׁהִיא לְשֵׁם שָׁמַיִם, זוֹ מַחֲלֹקֶת הִלֵּל וְשַׁמַּאי. וְשֶׁאֵינָהּ לְשֵׁם שָׁמַיִם, זוֹ מַחֲלֹקֶת קֹרַח וְכָל עֲדָתוֹ:
Every disagreement that is for the sake of Heaven will, in the end, endure, but one that is not for the sake of Heaven will not endure. Which is the disagreement for the sake of Heaven? Such was the disagreement of Hillel and Shammai. And which is the disagreement that is not for the sake of Heaven? Such was the controversy of Korah and all his congregation. (Mishnah Avot 5:17)
Bartenura, a 15th-century Italian Rabbi, comments on this Mishnah:
The disagreement for the sake of Heaven: its purpose and its desirable end is to obtain the truth… And a disagreement which is not for the sake of Heaven: its purpose is to achieve power, and the love of victory…
Conflicts have the potential to make us better. Disagreements and disputes can become a force for progress and growth if both sides engage with them for the sake of humanity and peace, not for the sake of power and personal gain. This Rabbinic wisdom asks us an important question: Are we engaging in current disagreements and conflicts for the sake of power and personal gain or for the sake of peace for all? Are we able to listen and hear the other side?
Jewish tradition has two main names for God.
Elohim is often used to reflect God’s attribute of justice.
Adonai – the attribute of mercy, compassion and kindness.
At the end of Yom Kippur, we proclaim: Adonai hu haElohim! The God of compassion is the same God as the God of justice. We need both to be in harmony and balance.
Over the last year, too many Jewish people have chosen only one side – justice – and completely ignored mercy, forgiveness and understanding. Because of this imbalance and inability to see both sides in ourselves, many people will not forgive us and will not forget it about us. We need the balance of both, we need to remind ourselves and the world that we can be kind too.
Let us return to the story about the painted leaf. This is how it ends:
When the girl woke up, she looked out the window and saw one lonely leaf. Days, weeks and months passed. From time to time, she looked out, and she always saw that last leaf still hanging on to the bare branch of the tree. A new spirit entered the girl. Slowly, slowly, she recovered, and at last, she got well.
Unfortunately, her mother did not live to see her daughter recovering and never told the girl about the painting. After that wintery cold night when the mother painted the leaf, she got ill and did not survive the illness. Only later, when the girl was well enough to leave her bed, she found the painting and understood the love that saved her life.[4]
This story is beyond tragic. The mother saved her daughter’s life by giving her a sense of hope, but she did not live to see her recovery.
We may not live to see the healing of this broken world. We may not live to see disagreements between our fractured peoples becoming for the sake of heaven. We may not live to see two poles, two sides of a conflict, understanding each other. But it does not mean it will never happen. We waited for 2000 years for the return to the Promised Land; Now we can and must wait for peace in that Land, too. We must live with deep conviction that the era and the time of peace, of post-October, post-War, post-Conflict, will come. We should live as if it will happen soon, as if the agreement and solution are close, and as if it can happen tomorrow.
Midrash tells the story of the Roman Emperor Hadrian, who was travelling near Tiberias and saw a hundred-year-old man planting trees in rocky soil. Hadrian asked, "Do you think you'll live to eat their fruit?" The old man replied, "If I'm fortunate, I will. If not, just as my ancestors planted for me, I plant for people who will live after me."
We can and must be brave to embrace the contradictions and conflicts of our times and see both sides. The Jewish task of our generation is to plant trees where possible and paint leaves on bare branches if necessary. We must do so not because we deny the reality but because we believe in something more—something that’s still possible. Let’s live 'as if' our hope, acts of kindness, and our belief in humanity can shape the world, even when we're unsure how. Let’s find beauty in the spaces between certainty and doubt, in the gaps between what is and what might be. If we could begin building a bridge now, future generations will finish and walk on it forever. If we could paint that leaf now and keep the hope burning, this world may yet be healed one day. If we could attach a single string between two opposite sides now, one day, it could be used to play a masterpiece, a symphony of peace and coexistence.
 
אם תרצו אין זו אגדה. Im tirtzu ein zo agadah.
‘If we want, it will not be just a dream.’
 
גמר חתימה טובה  G’mar Chatimah Tovah!
May we all choose the path of peace and life.
 

[1] Barbara Rush, The Book of Jewish Women's Tales, p. 124. See also Sharon Barcan Elswit. The Jewish Story Finder: A Guide to 668 Tales Listing Subjects and Sources, 2d ed.

[2] Vermeulen, T., & van den Akker, R. (2010). Notes on metamodernism. Journal of Aesthetics & Culture, 2(1). https://doi.org/10.3402/jac.v2i0.5677

[3] Ibid

[4] Source: Barbara Rush, The Book of Jewish Women's Tales, p.124-125. See also Sharon Barcan Elswit. The Jewish Story Finder: A Guide to 668 Tales Listing Subjects and Sources, 2d ed.

Fri, 14 February 2025 16 Sh'vat 5785