WATCH: Rabbi Rubin's Sermon on Erev Yom Kippur 5786
Moving Away From the Place Where We Are Right
Sermon by Rabbi Jill Rubin on Erev Yom Kippur
October 1, 2025 / 9 Tishrei 5786
To view the entire service, click HERE.
Sermon Text
In my office upstairs, I have a poetry anthology on my bookshelf by Yehuda Amichai, one of the greatest Jewish poets of the 20th century, and often known as the national poet of Israel.
In this anthology, there are over 500 pages of beautiful poetry, and I have three poems bookmarked. I’d like to share one of them with you on this Kol Nidre evening.
It’s called, “The Place Where We Are Right.” Perhaps you’ve heard it before.
From the place where we are right
flowers will never grow
in the spring.
The place where we are right is
hard and trampled
like a yard.
But doubts and loves
dig up the world
like a mole, a plow.
And a whisper will be heard in the place
where the ruined house once stood.1
This poem has resonated with me for quite some time. I adore Amichai’s use of language in general, especially in the original Hebrew, but I have always found profundity in this particular poem. And today, more than ever, as Jews around the world reflect on our lives, as we stand before God and ask for forgiveness on this Kol Nidre, this poem rings especially true.
All of us are here because, in some form or another, we have truths to reckon with, truths that are quite difficult to face.
As I said to you all on Erev Rosh Hashanah, many of us have forgotten the value of compassion in our polarized world. Some of us are facing estrangement from family because of our political beliefs, and some of us have experienced the fracturing of relationships because someone has hurt us, or because we hurt someone else.
As a Jewish community, we are facing a rise of antisemitism, over 700 days of a brutal war in Israel and Gaza started by Hamas’s terror attacks on October 7th, hostages still in captivity, the loss of IDF soldiers defending their country, and a humanitarian crisis for Gazan civilians.
And as an American community, we are facing serious threats to the democratic norms of this country, and one of the most polarized political climates that we have ever seen - including the cancellation, dehumanization, and even killing of those who think differently from us.
So much of what we thought we knew, the assumptions we made about the world or the things we were taught growing up, has been challenged. And that is incredibly destabilizing for all of us. There is no manual for how to live in today’s world - if one existed, I’m sure it would be a bestseller.
On Rosh Hashanah, Rabbi Mosbacher gave us a beautiful answer to the urgent question of how we can not only survive, but thrive amidst the current chaos of our times - he spoke about how we can find light in the darkness, how sometimes we can find untapped light within ourselves, or our light can be renewed by the light of others.
And this evening, I want to suggest another possible response to the question of how we move forward in these difficult times: we can try to move away from the place where we are right. After all, as Amichai so poignantly teaches, life cannot grow or flourish in the hard and trampled place where we are right.
We cannot expect to see change or to make progress in our personal lives or in the world if we are stuck in the mud. Some of us have experienced this same feeling when our cars get caught in the mud; despite stepping on the gas as hard as we can, the tires spin and spin and we go nowhere. The only way the car is going to move is if we try another approach. This is the challenge of this Yom Kippur, and the challenge of the 21st century.
In the New York Times bestseller, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know, organizational psychologist and Wharton professor Adam Grant speaks about the critical importance of our ability to “rethink and unlearn.”
Through eye-opening stories and scientific data, he claims that if we human beings are able to “master the art of rethinking” and embrace doubt, or as he calls it, “confident humility,” we will be “better positioned for success at work and happiness in life.”
While Grant’s book is not explicitly Jewish (he is, in fact, a Jewish man), the idea that human beings have the capacity to change is a Jewish idea, one that we speak about on Yom Kippur.
On this most holy day in the Jewish calendar, we acknowledge that change takes courage, but it ultimately leads us to better lives. So if this is true for our behaviors, then shouldn’t it also be true for our mindsets?
I’ll return to Adam Grant in a few moments, but for now, I want to turn our attention to a prophet that we read about every Yom Kippur, A prophet whose story we will read tomorrow afternoon once again: Jonah.
Jonah’s story is one that most of us are familiar with - many of us learned it as children as “the story about the whale who swallows the prophet who runs from God.”
The adult version of Jonah is a little bit more complicated. First of all, it’s not a whale that swallows Jonah whole, but a dag gadol, a big fish that God provides to teach Jonah a lesson. Does the difference matter?
Not really.
But perhaps it is a first step in humbly reminding ourselves that we might not have all the answers. That sometimes, we may be wrong.
And, more importantly, Jonah is not the hero that many of us thought him to be. In the biblical story, God calls upon Jonah to travel to the wicked city of Nineveh and “proclaim judgment upon it."2 However, instead of going to Nineveh and sharing God’s message, Jonah boards a ship going in the opposite direction to flee from God’s service.
In anger, God sends a dangerous storm, and the crew of the ship throw Jonah overboard in a last attempt to save their own lives. It is at this point that Jonah is swallowed by the giant fish.
Ultimately, Jonah makes it to Nineveh, he proclaims his warning from God, and the once evil people repent immediately. However, instead of being overjoyed that the people of Nineveh heeded his warning, Jonah is bereft. He cries out to God, insisting that he wants to die, and sadly leaves the city to sit by himself in the shade of a large plant.
The story ends in a rather depressing and bizarre way: God punishes Jonah by killing the plant that provided him with shade, and once again Jonah begs God to die.
Of course, there are many ways to interpret Jonah’s story. Perhaps he flees from God because he is afraid of the responsibility God has bestowed on him, or perhaps the main lesson of the story is about God’s ultimate kindness, how God is always ready to forgive us for our transgressions.
However, according to brilliant Torah scholar Avivah Zornberg, Jonah’s story is about the danger of what she calls “compulsive knowingness.”
She writes, “[Jonah] always already knows: there is nothing therefore, that can surprise him, throw him back into that uncertainty from which he flees.”3
She highlights multiple instances in the biblical text where the Hebrew word yodea, to know, is used in reference to Jonah.
First, Jonah insists that the other sailors throw him overboard amidst the raging storm, because “I knowthat this terrible storm came to you on my account.”4 His knowledge turns out to be correct, but as Zornberg writes, “this knowledge leads him unequivocally to death… [it] is knowledge to die by, not to live by.”5 He doesn’t realize that there is another possibility, that perhaps he could stand aboard the ship and apologize instead of being swallowed by a giant fish.
And again, when Jonah delivers his message to the people of Nineveh and they repent, Jonah bitterly reproaches God, saying “Isn’t this what I said would happen! This is why I did not want to come here, because I knowyou are a compassionate God, a God who is prone to forgiveness.”
Jonah was again correct in his prediction, but he is so obsessed with being right that he actually rebukes God for forgiving the people of Nineveh.
In Zornberg’s words, “a sense of mystery, of standing in a Presence, shapes the responses of all the characters in the narrative… The only exception is Jonah, whose knowledge remains unshadowed by wonder.”6
So this “compulsive knowingness” is Jonah’s downfall.
The sages tell us that Jonah initially fled because he was concerned that people of Nineveh, an enemy to the Jewish people, would repent upon hearing his words, while the stiff-necked people of Israel refused to repent every time they heard a prophetic call. So, in his obsession with being right, Jonah makes the incorrect assumption that God would either punish Israel or turn from Israel entirely. He thinks he knows God, but he really does not.
Jonah stands firm in the place where he is right, and ultimately, he is unwilling to re-think, re-learn, or move.
Now, back to Adam Grant.
In a chapter of his book called The Joy of Being Wrong, Grant speaks about how difficult it is for us as human beings to not only accept when we are wrong, but to then have the mental agility to change our minds. He explains that there are two ways that we typically respond to new information.
First, if we’re presented with an “idea or an assumption that doesn’t matter deeply to us, we’re often excited to question it.” For example, when we learn about a new scientific discovery that we didn’t think possible, many of us respond with surprise and curiosity.
Really? What an interesting discovery - tell me more!
However, Grant writes, “when a core belief is questioned …we tend to shut down rather than open up. It’s as if there is a miniature dictator living inside our heads, controlling the flow of facts to our minds.”7 He explains that the psychological term for this is the “totalitarian ego” and its main job is to keep us safe from what we perceive as threatening information.
In fact, neuroscientists have found that “when our core beliefs are challenged, it can trigger the amygdala, the primitive ‘lizard brain’ that breezes right past cool rationality and activates a hot fight-or-flight response.”8
In Jonah’s case, he firmly, yet incorrectly, believes that God only has enough compassion for one people. His fight or flight response is immediately kicked into high gear when this belief is challenged and God asks him to be a messenger, so he flees.
And like Jonah, so many of us have experienced challenges to our core beliefs over the last few years.
Our belief that America is a safe-haven for the Jewish people, or that the rule of law and freedom of speech will always be upheld.
Our longheld assertion that Israel can and should be both a Jewish and a democratic state.
Our hope that Jews would be united on pressing issues such as antisemitism - you’ll hear more on this tomorrow morning.
Or maybe, on a more personal level, our belief that a loved one was trustworthy, or that we ourselves were worthy of trust. Or our insistence that our friends and neighbors definitely held the same opinions as us, and valued the same issues that we did.
And I know there are so many more that I have not named. Beliefs that we held as truths that all of a sudden have been disputed by current events or people around us. And because we are human, instead of entertaining the possibility that we could have been wrong, that perhaps there is another way to look at it, many of us shut down, either fighting or running away, leaving no room for discussion or the possibility of changing our minds.
We, like Jonah, become caught in the cycle of “compulsive knowingness.”
I don’t have to tell you that this is not healthy for us as individuals or for us as a society. As Amichai says, flowers will never grow in the place where we are right.
When we become so attached to our core beliefs that we become alienated from others, oftentimes those we love, when we become so single-minded that it becomes impossible to see another perspective, we are stuck, just like our car in the mud.
We cannot make change, we cannot grow, we cannot prosper in this place.
So the question for us becomes, how do we make room for these challenges?
How can we on the one hand stay true to who we are, while at the same time accepting that we might not always have it right? Or even if we do have it right, how can we let go of our obsession with being right in order to maintain our relationships?
Again, I turn to Amichai, who one might call a modern-day prophet. As he says at the end of his poem, “doubts and loves dig up the world like a mole, a plow.” Perhaps one of the only ways that we can break new ground, and move from the place where we are right, is by making room for doubts and loves.
I know that for me, this concept has made a big difference. Of course, there are so many challenging issues in our time that I could speak to, but here’s one I’d like to share with you tonight: the issue of religious pluralism in Israel.
I was in the 8th grade the first time I visited Israel on a family vacation, and I immediately fell in love with the country.
It was not only the beauty of the Hebrew language or the unbelievably fresh food, but it was also the people and the Jewish culture that permeated all aspects of Israeli society. I will never forget going to Machane Yehuda, the main shuk in Jerusalem, on a Friday morning, and being wished Shabbat Shalom by the baker who sold me a roll of bread.
Because I had grown up in an area that was not very Jewish, and because I had never before visited Israel, I was captivated by the casual nature in which everyone on the street and in the market wished each other a Shabbat Shalom!
I visited Israel many times after that initial trip with my family - spending time with extended family who lives there, and traveling all over the country with teen leadership programs.
When I arrived in Jerusalem for my Year in Israel as a rabbinic student, I had read many of the seminal books on the Jewish state, and I had not only spent time in the land, but with Israelis who showed me the “real” Israel.
For me, Israel was first and foremost a place for all Jews, a country where any Jew would be welcomed, where any Jew would be greeted with “Shabbat Shalom” in the shuk.
However, it was only a few weeks after I arrived in 2017 that this core belief of mine was challenged. Perhaps you could say I was naive. Or perhaps up until that point, I was only seeing what I wanted to see.
Early on in our year, my classmates and I spent a day with an Israeli rabbinical student, who opened our eyes to the mistreatment of Reform Jews in Israel by the Israeli government and the Rabanut, the Chief Rabbinate of Israel.
We learned that the Orthodox communities in Israel received funding from the government while the Reform movement received little to none, and that if you were to get married in Israel, the onlylegal officiant was an Orthodox rabbi.
When I visited a Reform community in the outskirts of Tel Aviv that held their Kabbalat Shabbat services in the local school, I learned that the municipality was attempting to block their petition to move into a larger, permanent building.
Over the course of the year I heard firsthand about Jews of color who were treated poorly in the streets, in stores, and even in classrooms because of their race.
And when I went to the Kotel for morning services with Women of the Wall, a feminist Israeli organization that fights for equal access for men and women to the Western Wall, my fellow daveners and I were met with hissing, water thrown at us, and physical violence.
Each of these experiences was a blow to my long-held, core belief that the Jewish state was a place for all Jews. At first I was defensive, thinking the examples I learned about were exceptions to the rule. However, after some time, I started to push away what Adam Grant refers to as the miniature dictator living in my head, the part of me that is stuck in the place where I am right.
I had two choices: either I accepted that I did not previously know the full story, or I held my ground and invalidated the experiences of those around me, including my own.
But I think my next response was even more important. Instead of fighting with my lizard brain, and instead of fleeing like Jonah, I made a conscious decision to lean in with doubts and loves.
I knew that I loved Israel, that didn’t change, so I doubled down in my commitment to a strong Jewish state while also supporting organizations that fight for religious pluralism, like the Israel Religious Action Center and Reform congregations in Israel.
And I embraced my doubts, moving from a place of “I know” to a place of “I wonder.”
I asked questions about what it meant to be Jewish in Israel, and specifically what it meant to be a Reform Jew. And why and how certain strands of Judaism were favored above others in the Jewish state.
I learned a lot that year, and I continue to learn to this day, about living a Jewish life in Israel. It is nowhere near as straightforward as I initially thought it was, and yet, moving away from the place where I was right allowed me to see and appreciate Jewish life in Israel, and in the diaspora, in a whole new way.
Leading with our doubts and our loves, moving from “I know” to “I wonder,” might be the only way to move out of the endless cycle of “compulsive knowingness,” in which we find ourselves today.
This is part of the introspective work we do on Yom Kippur, when we vulnerably stand before our creator, and it is my hope that we can all engage in it together over the next 25 hours and in the year ahead, perhaps first by considering where our core beliefs have been threatened and then contemplating how we can respond in a productive way.
How we can move away from the hardened places With our doubts and our loves.
On Erev Rosh Hashanha, I spoke about the dire importance of opening our hearts. And tonight, on Kol Nidre, I remind you about the dire importance of opening our minds. The two go hand in hand, and it is up to usto do the work to get there.
We are the ones who are writing the next chapter of our history. We are the ones who the following generations will look to as role models for how to live good, meaningful lives. Let’s make them proud and together, move away from the place where we are right, and move toward growth, renewal, and hope in 5786.
G’mar Chatimah Tovah.
Yehuda Amichai, “The Place Where We Are Right”
Jonah 1:2
Zornberg, The Murmuring Deep, 89
Jonah 1:12
Zornberg, 89
Zornberg, 90
Grant, Think Again, 59
Grant, Think Again, 60
