This piece was originally delivered as a sermon titled “The Cries of Isaac and Ishmael” at Central Synagogue on the first day of Rosh Hashanah in 2025.

I have been a rabbi for 25 years, 20 of them at Central Synagogue, and I have never been so afraid to talk about Israel.

I want to tell you about my unconditional love for the Israeli people and our beleaguered homeland, still desperately struggling to bring its hostages home, still trying to eliminate Hamas — terrorists that not only refuse to lay down their arms but intentionally trap their own people inside a combat zone.

But if I tell you these things, all of which I believe, some of you will just stop listening. And decide that I’m no longer your rabbi.

I also want to tell you how my heart breaks over the civilian deaths, and tragic suffering in Gaza, the shattering destruction of Palestinian homes and cities. I want to denounce settler violence in the West Bank. And the rhetoric from far right government ministers who talk about annexation of the West Bank and expulsion of Gazans instead of ending this war and bringing our hostages home.

But if I tell you these things, all of which I also believe, some of you will just stop listening. And decide that I’m no longer your rabbi.

It’s scary to talk about this. Not because I’m afraid of losing my job. But because I’m afraid of losing you.

This Israel conversation is ripping our community apart. Not just here at Central, but across the Jewish world. Among friends. Within families.

It’s been the most painful experience of my rabbinic career. It’s keeping me up at night, watching the world, and many in our community, lose all empathy for the State of Israel. And at the same time, watching so many of us lose all empathy for the Palestinian people.

It now seems that any expression of compassion for “the other side” is regarded with suspicion – as disloyal, or even threatening. Is our capacity for empathy so finite? Are our hearts so small, that if we increase our empathy for certain people, That we need to reduce it for others — until one day, we conclude: that ‘other side’ is not deserving of any compassion? Any regard?

This zero-sum, empathy calculus has encouraged us to dismiss and demonize each other. And not just in Israel’s war, but in ideological battles being fought in our nation every day. I’m terrified today – not only by the chilling rise in antisemitism, by frequent mass shootings, and the contagion of political violence, but also by people’s responses. Over and over I see a shocking lack of decency or compassion, even for murder victims. People feel emboldened to say: ‘They deserved it.’ It’s a cottage industry of schadenfreude, vengeance and even glee.

Not only do people act as though empathy is finite, some people want us to believe that empathy is actually dangerous.

Once upon a time, empathy seemed as unobjectionable and wholesome as motherhood and apple pie. Who could be against it? But in the last few years, an unlikely coalition of politicians, professors, even pastors have used it as a political weapon, calling it “toxic,” and waging a “war on empathy.”

A Christian theologian published a book this year entitled “The Sin of Empathy.” Empathy, he argues, demands we inhabit the feelings of another person, which doesn’t help the sufferer. He offers a simple analogy: if someone is drowning in the river, empathy asks us to jump in alongside them, putting us both at risk. Whereas sympathy says, I’ll keep my distance, stay on firm ground........

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