Yair D. Robinson

Rosh Hashanah 2025

The Angels in our Midst

It is a hot and humid mid-summer day, and there is a woman sitting in my office. She is about my age, with a husband and a pre-teen daughter. She is a scientist and college professor, a political liberal as many academics are, was raised Methodist and attends a local church with her family. She has attended one Shabbat service in her entire life, and that was the week before. She knows nothing of Judaism or Jewish practice, knew very little about Israel or Israeli history, except what her fellow academics have shared, the increasingly tedious canards about being a European colonialist enterprise and so on. But at some point, this year, she has found herself listening to podcasts about Judaism from sources like Rabbi David Wolpe, and has started asking herself the question, “what if I were Jewish?” She finds herself wondering if Judaism is the religion and practice for her if this is her real home. Much as Abraham says throughout Torah and especially our portion, she is saying, perhaps hesitantly, “hineini,” here I am, waiting for an answer.

There’s been a lot of ink spilled about the so-called October 8^th Jew, Jews around the world who, in the wake of the attacks on October 7^th and the too-long war that has followed, who had been distant from their Jewish identity and Jewish community for a variety of reasons, now find themselves reidentifying and reconnecting with their tradition and their people. We’ve seen notable thinkers like Yehuda Kurtzer of the Hartman Institute, Sharon Brous of Ikar, Rabbi Wolpe, author Dara Horn, and others, explore what it means that, in the wake of terrible tragedy and the rise of antisemitism, a visible number of Jewish folks are finding their way back into Jewish practice, community and learning, each one saying, “hineini”, here I am.

Less has been said, I believe, about the October 8^th non-Jew. Or rather, what we have mostly heard post October 7^th has been about anti-Israel protests, hostility toward Jews in public and private spaces, especially in educational spaces, and a general sense that Jews no longer feel safe, no longer are safe, even when with those who have been our historical allies. Less has been said about those who have been supportive of us, irrespective of their position on Israel. I remember a couple of weeks after the October 7^th attacks, I was in an interfaith clergy gathering and found myself preemptively flinching and waiting for someone to push and attack, as had happened to so many colleagues, or simply stay silent. Instead, much to my surprise, I was the recipient of heartfelt words of support. Needless to say, hearing those words made it difficult to keep my composure.

But there is another October 8^th Non-Jew, one that I am encountering more and more. Non-Jews like the woman who sat in my office this past summer, people from a variety of backgrounds and religious upbringings, with different levels of interface with the Jewish community. Some of them have been thinking of conversion for years, or even decades, some had been spiritual seekers in general, but in the last two years found a new urgency to not only be supportive of the Jewish community, but part of it. I wish I could present data beyond the anecdotal, but in talking to my colleagues, there is something happening in our synagogues, as not only Jews but non-Jews increasingly seek to join us.

What could this mean, then? While we are not a proselytizing religion (as the joke go, while other religions may say, ‘join us!’ we tend to say, ‘leave us alone!’), it seems to me that we’ve always been welcoming, or at least strove to be welcoming, rejoicing in people who choose to count themselves as one of us, whether they formally convert or not. At least as a congregation, if not a movement within Judaism. At the same time, since the Fall of 2023, we have, as a greater community, and perhaps also as individuals, become increasingly insular, especially when it comes to entering activist and interfaith spaces. I know I have found myself, at a minimum, asking different questions about safety and engagement than I might have before, and even hesitating to participate or engage in case the space we are in becomes a hostile one. Which could mean that even as we as a greater Jewish community recede even as many people—not the loudest but still there—are trying to engage with us. How terribly ironic. Perhaps it is a natural response to the current and generational trauma we have experienced, and we could be forgiven our concerns. But at this moment there are also those who want to be with us, a part of us, embrace us. People who, with an earnestness and compassion we are not accustomed to experiencing, would join themselves to the household of Israel. From where I stand, they are not just friends or allies, they are messengers of holiness. We have a word for such messengers, of course. The word is malachim. Angels.

It is probably not the word you are expecting to come out of my mouth. I know we Reform Jews not big on angels of the Michael Landon variety or otherwise. And yet, in our Torah text, in the akedat Yitzchak, the binding of Isaac, it is the Malach, the angel’s voice, that stays Abraham’s hand holding aloft the knife. Indeed, it is the Angel’s, who speaks urgently and without judgement, who keeps this story from being called the korban Yitzchak, the sacrifice of Isaac. There are neither emanations nor angels, writes the poet Ruth Brin but people are the messengers of God. People, acting with a striving for justice and freedom and peace, are melachim, and we are surrounded by them.

Years ago, my teacher Michael Marmur taught me that there are two angels who might participate in every encounter between two or more people, an angel of winning and an angel of learning, and our behavior determines which angel is present. I think about that teaching pretty much every day, and especially now in this moment in our country and our world.

Friends, it seems to me in this moment, where we so palpably feel the presence of the hand with the knife held above us, that there are angels around us, angels of learning and attention and compassion and care, that we, bound up in our trauma and fear, cannot hear. And those angels are calling us with urgency and without judgement, to reengage with the world.

I am sharing this in this moment when I am feeling a profound sense of weariness, maybe even exhaustion. And I suspect I am not the only one. We have tried, haven’t we, to make a difference in this world? Sometimes with more energy, sometimes less. The world, as the poet Martha Smith writes, is at least half-terrible, and we are feeling that these days. We are—I am—struggling to see the good in this moment, to hear the voice of the angel of learning in this moment, to see past the fire, past the angel of winning, who seems to drown out the voices calling for understanding and compassion for all. But those voices are still there, still calling out to us, asking us to respond, to come back into the world. Calling us to say “hineini,” here I am. Calling us to affirm our presence in the world, our values, and our commitment to action, to making a difference. Calling us to live our values aloud, no matter how much louder everyone else seems to be.

What does that look like? In so many ways, it looks like what we are already doing: feeding the hungry, welcoming the stranger, supporting the sick, comforting the bereaved, advocating for the voiceless, extending kindness to those we encounter. And that will be a comfort to many of us. And a source of pride. And we should be proud of who we are and our values. As a Jewish community and Jewish individuals, we have striven in ways large and small, loud, and quiet to make this world better, not only for ourselves but for everyone, and we should be proud of that work, energized by that prophetic legacy.

AND—you knew that ‘and’ was coming—AND, we must be willing to be even more present in the world, especially those who see us clearly and embrace us. While our instinct may be to recede from the world, we should strive to be louder, to take up more space, to be willing to push past our own comfort to express ourselves. We need to assert our presence and the work we do, assert our values of justice and freedom and peace, as well as our need for safety in this moment. We often focus on the first part of the sentence from Pirkei Avot: that we may not finish the work, but the second part is the more important one at this moment: nor are we free to desist from it. And that means sometimes being in the room with people we do not always agree with, who do not understand us as a people, our concern for safety, or our relationship with Israel and Israelis. It is both unfair and unsurprising to many of us. If I told every story of every well-meaning pastor who simply did not get it, we would never make it to Tashlikh, and I would need to fast an extra hour on Yom Kippur, at least! It is enervating trying to do this work with people who do not get us, but others do. Let them lift us up. Let their voices be the ones in our head when we confront the injustices we see in our midst—and beyond.

Yes, beyond. There is nothing easier for us in our First State, our Small Wonder, but to focus on who we are and what is happening here. And we should and we do. But that is also a trap, a gauzy, pleasant way for us to ignore what is happening north of Naaman’s road, West of the University of Delaware, and south of the Beaches. How often have I heard from people—activists, people involved in the civic life of our city, county and state say “well, Delaware is safe.” Or ‘well, that might be a problem in other places, but not here. We are different.’ Chevre, we are not so different from our friends in Philadelphia and New Jersey, or Baltimore. Or along the Kerr River in Texas, or Los Angeles, or Tel Aviv, or Jericho. Their problems, their struggles, are ours. They must be. Their voice calls out to us as well—with encouragement and with help. We must learn what other communities are doing to support and sustain themselves and their own vulnerable—the poor, the immigrant, the abandoned, the justice involved, the sick—so that we can do that work here, and we must be the angels of learning and love and support for those communities as well. None of us can do this alone: we must do it together.

There are Melakhim among us. Messengers of love and support, of learning and compassion, of justice, freedom, and peace. They are asking to join us. They say, “we are here. We are with you.’ We must also be willing to join them, to also say, we are here. I am here. I am with you.’ In this fraught moment, especially, with the knife held aloft, we must listen to that voice and heed its call, their call, our call. Before the knife falls. Before it is too late. Amen.