WATCH: Rabbi Rubin's Sermon on Erev Rosh Hashanah 5786
This is Water: Choosing Compassion in a Broken World
Sermon by Rabbi Jill Rubin on Erev Rosh Hashanah
September 22, 2025 / 1 Tishrei 5786
Sermon Text:
“There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them, and says, ‘Morning, boys. How’s the water?’ And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes, ‘What the hell is water?’”1
The author David Foster Wallace began his 2005 commencement address to graduates of Kenyon College with this parable. What does it mean? In Foster Wallace’s own words, the “immediate point of the fish story is merely that the most obvious, ubiquitous, important realities are often the ones that are hardest to see and talk about.”
In this very short story, the young fish are of course swimming in water, but because it is so commonplace, because it is metaphorically-speaking, part of the very air they breathe, they don’t even know what water is. Or, to Foster Wallace’s point, sometimes the most obvious things are invisible to us.
David Foster Wallace’s entire commencement speech hinges on the plain and obvious fact that we human beings have choices and freedoms that are seldom spoken about, but there is really only one type of freedom that is worth fighting for.
He writes: “The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day. That is real freedom.”
I stand here before you tonight, on this Erev Rosh Hashanah, completely inspired by words delivered 20 years ago, words that I first heard over 10 years ago and revisit every year around this time.
As we welcome a New Year into our midst this evening, I believe it is worth stating what is so painfully obvious that few of us have said it at all: we have a choice.
As Foster Wallace argues in his speech, we have a choice about how we live our lives, and we have a choice about how we treat others.
Of course, we can’t control some of what happens to us - whether it’s a bad diagnosis, a layoff, or a natural disaster. Life is hard. Life can be so unfair and painful in ways that are beyond our control. We all know that. But, at the end of the day, it is within our control to choose how we live. This, unfortunately, is something that so many of us have forgotten.
And on Rosh Hashanah, we are invited to remember it once again.
Over the past year, I have been floored by the lack of compassion and care that I see in human beings, and trust me, I am not excluding myself.
I’ve seen fights break out in Broadway shows because someone opens their candy too loudly; I’ve seen people screaming at each other on airplanes when someone steps into the aisle too quickly after a flight lands; and I have been scolded and publicly embarrassed when my child was squealing too loudly in a New York City restaurant.
I have personally judged others way too quickly, making assumptions about them and their lives before I knew one thing about them. And I have heard people say disparaging things about one another simply because of the candidates they voted for last November in the presidential election, and this past June in the mayoral primary.
I could go on. And I’m sure you could, as well. With the rise of extremism and fear in our country and all over the world, we have become more reactive, and we have forgotten that every single day we make a choice about how we live.
And sadly, this trend has only intensified within the Jewish community. If we are choosing to see things as they actually are, we have to acknowledge that it is a farce to refer to a time when all Jews were united - since the beginning of Jewish history Jews have always disagreed and maintained opposing stances on just about every issue - but I fear that we are on the brink of a new period.
A period, in the words of Jewish American journalist Ezra Klein, where Jews no longer understand one another.
The way we respond to one another - within the Jewish community and without - is entirely within our own control. And when we choose compassion over cruelty, awareness over indignation, we have “real freedom.” This is work that we can do starting tonight.
Our own Rosh Hashanah liturgy, especially the well-known words of Un’taneh Tokef, remind us that our actions are indeed the only aspect of life that is in our control.
B’rosh haShanah yikateivun, uvyom tzom kippur yeichateimun.
On Rosh Hashanah this is written, and on the Fast of Yom Kippur this is sealed: How many will pass away from this world, and how many will be born into it, who will live and who will die…?
Utshuvah, utfilah, utzedakah maavirin et roa hag’zeirah.
But through teshuvah, return to the right path, tefilah, prayer, and tzedakah, righteous giving, we can transcend the harshness of the decree.2
We cannot know what will become of us or our loved ones, the words of Un’taneh Tokef starkly remind us, but we can make the pain of the unknown more bearable by living life with intention. By waking up every morning and saying, “I am going to choose kindness today.”
“Our actions may not change the ultimate outcome one iota,” writes my teacher Rabbi Aaron Panken, alav hashalom, “but they alter our attitude, bolster our ability to withstand challenges, help us handle unavoidable misfortunes better, and see life’s value amid chaos and dismay.”3
And there are countless Jewish stories that preach the same reality - the undeniable, maybe obvious truth that we make choices about how we live, and that compassion can be one of those choices.
In the Talmud, the Rabbis tell a story about Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai, a man who lived in the land of Israel in the 2nd century CE. Shimon bar Yochai lived under Roman rule, and when he and his son, Rabbi Elazar, were caught criticizing the Roman government, they were reported to the authorities and sentenced to death.
Fearing for their lives, Shimon bar Yochai and Elazar fled to hide in a nearby cave, where they studied Torah and prayed all day long for 12 years, until the death of the Roman Emperor.
They had been so devout during their time in hiding that when they emerged from the cave, they were absolutely shocked to see people plowing fields and sowing seeds, engaging in mundane, everyday, non-religious activities.
However, their shock didn’t lead to compassionate curiosity. Instead, it led to vitriol and anger. “How dare these people engage in temporal life, doing something for their own personal benefit, rather than engaging with God in the eternal life of Torah study!” they cried.
And their anger did not end with their words - fire flew out of their eyes, and everywhere that they looked was instantly burned. In just a few moments, they wreaked havoc on the entire community around them.
Furious at their behavior and the destruction they caused, God immediately ordered them back into the cave.
“Did you emerge only to destroy My world?” God demanded of them. So back they went, for another 12 months, until God asked them once again to emerge.
The Talmud implies that Shimon bar Yochai and Elazar repented in those 12 months back in the cave, and when they emerged again they did so with a greater sense of humility and tolerance for those around them.
Instead of spewing fiery anger across their community, like they had done the first time, they made a choice to respond to their neighbors with compassion. And though their questions remained and their way of life differed from those around them, they responded the second time with a gentleness and respect that had been previously lacking.4
In the spirit of Rosh Hashanah, I have to admit that I see myself in the characters in this story, and perhaps you do, too. Just a few years ago I had my own Shimon bar Yochai moment, when I was the Hillel student rabbi at Bowdoin College. I had just finished leading Rosh Hashanah morning services, and was walking around the beautiful campus with my family who had come to Maine to support me.
We were enjoying the crisp weather and the orange leaves on the trees, and I was feeling relieved to be done with another High Holiday service when the Chabad campus rabbi came up to us.
He was carrying a shofar, and like many of us who live in New York City have experienced, he approached us wanting to know if we had fulfilled the mitzvah of listening to the shofar yet.
Perhaps in an act of pride, or maybe in an act of ignorance, I tried to keep walking without engaging with the man. After all, I had fulfilled the mitzvah. “I knew what he stood for,” I told myself, and he didn’t know anything about me. I didn’t want to give him the time of day.
However, as I kept walking, a member of my family stopped, and replied graciously to the man, “We did hear the shofar, thanks so much!” and pointing to me said, “She was the rabbi this morning at the Hillel services.”
Without missing a beat the Chabad rabbi smiled at me. “I heard services were beautiful this morning!” he said, “Shanah Tovah.”
I stopped in my path and mustered back a “Shanah Tovah,” feeling incredibly ashamed of how I had reacted. At that moment, I acted like I had no choice but to keep walking, no choice but to ignore this person whom I thought I understood. How easy it would have been to respond to this man’s question with grace and compassion. Instead, like Shimon bar Yochai and his son, when I emerged from my cave of Torah study and prayer, my eyes burned with fire.
And I suspect that many of you sitting here in this sanctuary, and watching online, have been here, in very similar positions to me.
How many times have we jumped to conclusions, assuming the worst in the people around us?
How many times have we let fear get the best of us, responding to potential threats with a knee-jerk reaction rather than questions and a thoughtful conversation?
How often do we forget that we control our choices - as David Foster Wallace put it - that we human beings have the real freedom of “attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and sacrifice for them”?
And, how often is this lack of compassion directed at those within our own community, members of the Jewish people?
If you recognized yourself in any of these questions, you are not alone.
We have all been guilty of lacking compassion for others, especially in the last couple of years, and this does not make us bad people. Rather, it makes us imperfect human beings who are trying hard to navigate a world that is not always kind or fair to us.
And the leadership that we see modeled throughout the world, including in our own country, is not particularly aware or compassionate. This is of course not an excuse, but perhaps an explanation for the callousness that we see today in all facets of our lives.
This July, Ezra Klein wrote a fascinating and timely opinion piece in the New York Times about the fracturing of the Jewish community, entitled “Why American Jews No Longer Understand Each Other.” I’m sure many of you read it when it was published.
For those who did not, or for those who could use a refresher, Klein speaks about the fracturing of the American Jewish community, which I’m sure every single one of us has felt in the past 24 months. As someone who leads this community and speaks to congregants from all perspectives and backgrounds, I sadly could not agree with Klein more.
He argues that the “consensus that held American Jewry together for generations is breaking down. That consensus, roughly, was this: What is good for Israel is good for the Jews. Anti-Zionism is a form of antisemitism. And there will, someday soon, be a two-state solution that reconciles Zionism and liberalism. Every component of that consensus has cracked.”5
While his consensus might feel like an over-simplification, I think for many of us his overall hypothesis rings true. He goes on to speak about NY mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, Israel, and antisemitism - three charged issues within our very own community at this moment.
He argues that Mamdani’s victory in the mayoral primary highlights the stark division, among other things, between older Jews and younger Jews in this city, that Israel’s actions since the Hamas terror attack on October 7th have caused one group of Jews to double down in their support of Israel and another group to question their long-held beliefs in the possibility of a liberal, democratic Jewish state, and that our community is even divided on the issue of antisemitism.
There is an underlying assumption that Klein does not outright name in his article - something I have already named this evening and that I will name again - we in the Jewish community have not only stopped understanding one another; we have lost compassion for one another. Perhaps the one has led to the other.
Because of the issues that Klein names, some members of the larger Jewish community are calling their neighbors and peers Nazis, while others are calling to expel those who do not espouse the same Zionist beliefs as them. Jews are calling one another antisemites - I have seen it with my own eyes. This has become the heartbreaking reality where we find ourselves today, and I am sure each of us has personal stories to boot.
In a country where we make up 2% of the population, and in a world where we make up .2%, we can’t afford to tear each other apart in this way. And yet, here we are, in a place where so many of us are overwhelmed and scared and feel like we have no choice but to turn on one another.
However, as this holiday season reminds us, as our tradition reminds us each day, we actually do have a choice. Instead of putting our heads down and ignoring the realities around us like the fish in Foster Wallace’s story, we can face the world with our eyes open.
Instead of assuming the worst in one another, like Shimon bar Yochai and his son, we can share our stories and listen to the stories of others, in an attempt to understand the personal experiences that have shaped our belief systems.
Instead of assuming we know someone’s intentions, like I did, we can leave ourselves open to the possibility of being surprised. We can ask ourselves - do I know the whole story here? We owe each other this much.
And I want to clarify that compassion – curiosity about the motivation of others – is not a synonym for being nice; it is much deeper than that.
In the words of American Buddhist and best-selling author Pema Chodron, “Compassion practice is daring. It involves learning to relax and allow ourselves to move gently toward what scares us… In cultivating compassion we draw from the wholeness of our experience - our suffering, our empathy, as well as our cruelty and terror. It has to be this way.”6 While it may feel counterintuitive to imagine that having compassion involves relaxing, it’s critical for us to remember that we cannot know what other people are thinking and feeling, what other people’s intentions are. When we relax into that truth, we allow ourselves room for more empathy and care.
So perhaps, one way to choose compassion each day is to ask ourselves “is this how I would want someone to respond to me? Is this how I would want to be treated?”
Again, it’s obvious. This is the golden rule that we teach our kids in kindergarten. But somewhere along the way, we forgot it ourselves.
There will never be a time when all Jews are united on the issues that Klein detailed in his article - as I said before, that is not the nature of the Jewish people. But we can, and should, strive for a time when Jews are united in their pursuit of compassion and empathy for one another.
When we as Jews emerge from our caves not with fire in our eyes, but with warmth in our hearts. Because if we don’t have compassion and empathy for one another, how could we possibly foster compassion and empathy for those outside of our community, or hope that they will act with compassion toward us?
Yes, it is vitally important for us as Jews to care for one another. But as Jews who live largely in secular society, who don’t exist only within a Jewish world, I want to make clear that our decency and compassion cannot be limited solely to other Jews.
Compassion does not need to have boundaries. And in the world in which we are living at this moment, I cannot suggest that it should have boundaries. How we treat one another as human beings is just as important as how we treat one another as Jews.
This is not a matter of niceties; the stakes are very high. I fear that we, both as a Jewish community and as a society, are on the brink, almost to the point of no return. Where we go next is up to us: whether we continue to shoot fire from our eyes, acting like our choices are predetermined because of the beliefs we hold, or we open our hearts and our minds to the people around us. What will you choose?
On this Rosh Hashanah, may we remember that which is hidden in plain sight: we have choices, and compassion is one such choice that we can make.
Like so many things, it is so obvious, so ubiquitous, that “we must keep reminding ourselves over and over: This is water. This is water.”
Shanah Tovah.
David Foster Wallace, This is Water
Un’taneh Tokef
Mishkan haNefesh
b. Shabbat 33b
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/20/opinion/antisemitism-american-jews-israel-mamdani.html
Pema Chodron, The Places That Scare You
