Hillel and Shammai were known to disagree. Tradition considers their disputes to be controversies “for the sake of Heaven” (Pirkei Avot 5:17). But even Heaven has a limit.
The Babylonian Talmud (Shabbat 17a) relays a time that Hillel and Shammai argued over the purity of pressed oil and pressed wine. As the story goes, the debate turned contentious. A brawl broke out. The fight broiled over with shouts and threats. At the climax of the fray, a sword was thrust into the threshold of the study hall. A proclamation went out: “All who wish to enter the debate may enter, but whoever desires to leave may not leave!” Violence, as it were, stood waiting at the doorway. The attendees were trapped, indefinitely, in the vicious debate.
To lower the temperature in the study house, Hillel submitted. His students witnessed him bowed and seated below Shammai. Shammai’s ruling on the issue thus won the day.
Yet, the community outside the study hall was disgusted by the unbecoming process by which the law was determined. Talmud states, “that day was as grievous as the day the Golden Calf was forged.”
As we know, Jewish tradition venerates debate, sees it as healthy and essential for the future vitality of our people and the world. Yet the sages were also keen observers of human psychology and understood how vicious we could be to one another, especially when our convictions cross from reasonable opinion to iron-clad principles.
To be so sure of oneself, to be locked into position and to be willing to “fight to the death,” as it were, is akin to idolatry. In the Jewish mind, idolatry traffics in ultimatums and platitudes; it indulges in self-righteousness. It is a shallow understanding of God's nature disguised as piety and devotion.
The sages’ anxiety around this weaponization of conviction is so extreme that the Talmudic story of Hillel, Shammai, and the sword additionally appears in the Jerusalem Talmud, a cousin to the more definitive Babylonian Talmud. The Jerusalem Talmud’s story mirrors the Bavli’s, albeit with an even more tragic ending.
In the Yerushalmi's telling, the sword appears not just as the specter of violence, but a call to it. In the alternate telling, the students of Shammai, energized by their master’s win, and fueled by self-righteousness, take up arms and massacre the students of Hillel.
The story of Hillel and Shammai exposes that while this is not a new problem, it is a dire one. This is today’s political reality. The sword waits at the doors of our communities, our workspaces, our families and even our own hearts. The stakes feel alarmingly high and the pain is devastatingly real. And just when we think we’re being hyperbolic about the current state of affairs, we see a bloody rise in political violence and the violent study hall comes into focus again.
The pain we feel is compounded by the fact that the sword at the entrance - the entrance to our institutions and to our own hearts - is not just a dividing line but also a trap. We can try to declare certain topics off limits, or turn off our phones in the name of self-care, and yet it still feels impossible to leave the conversation. To walk out or shut down can feel like capitulation, the internal monologue being: “Well, if I stop fighting, the other side wins.”
Or the concern may be more self-critical: “How dare I turn my back when other people are suffering more than I am?” There is no emergency exit, no backdoor to sneak out of. We have been thrust into this moment of discord and division. The sword stands at the doorway and it has already drawn blood.
We can speak about this globally and nationally, but where it hurts the most this Rosh HaShanah is within the Jewish community itself. Rabbi Benjamin Berger explains that: “The mood is tense, the lines are drawn…Across American Jewish life, we are facing crises of belonging and trust. Institutions that once held diverse constituencies together are straining under the weight of polarization. Generational, ideological, and communal divides are widening [in Jewish spaces]…”
He then becomes more pointed in just what debates he’s addressing:
“Disagreements over what kinds of criticism of Israel are legitimate; how much attention should be given to Palestinian suffering; how best to confront antisemitism; or whether government actions, like those of the Trump administration’s punishment of universities, have deepened our divides. These are not abstract debates; they cut to the core of identity, values, and belonging. And in the current climate, they too easily turn disagreements into ruptures.”
So I will begin today with words of gratitude. Gratitude to you, my community. By and large, Woodlands Community Temple has weathered society’s turmoil. Our community has endeavored, quite counter-culturally I may add, to be humble enough, to be open-minded enough, to be able hold many truths at the same time - particularly on issues having to do with Israel, Palestine and anti-semitism. We have aspired to give one another space to feel and hold many emotions at one time, knowing that just because we grieve over one group of people, does not mean that we do not have compassion for another.
In many ways, we have resembled the ancient study hall as the rabbis intended it: filled with the sweat and tears of struggle that lead to a diverse community deeply committed to one another.
This tent we sit in today is not just a physical space to accommodate our numbers. It represents the ethos we strive for in this very special community of ours: at our best, we are an open tent of ideas and experiences. Know that while you may be unique in your opinion, you are not alone in your struggle.
Do not mistake my appreciation for naivete, though. Our tent walls are porous and messaging comes from other places - Jewish and not. We are impacted by politicians and media, and by our own family and friends. The storm of opinion and debate may lead you to question your place, at our synagogue, in the Jewish community, in the global Jewish family.
So many of you have come forward expressing shame - lamenting the violence being “done in our name,” wondering if your struggles and doubts take you outside of the Jewish tent.
I also hear the anger you feel, astounded by others’ indifference to the violence inflicted upon the Jewish people. We need to be louder, you suggest. If we don’t stand up for ourselves, who will?
Both of these perspectives make sense to me. The problem of this moment, though, is not the perspectives, but how trapped in them we are.
A few weeks ago, I was deeply moved by the words of Etger Keret. Keret is a well-respected modern Israeli writer. He recently wrote of his experience protesting the war in Gaza while living in his native Tel Aviv:
“Most Saturday evenings, my wife and I join a silent vigil in Tel Aviv where each participant holds a photograph of a Gazan child killed in recent IDF attacks…
Some passers-by stop to look at the pictures and read the children’s names; others throw out a curse and keep walking…
On a recent Saturday, the vigil was more charged than usual. Hamas had just released a monstrous video showing the skeletal Israeli hostage Evyatar David digging his own grave upon his captors’ orders. A few people stopped as they walked past us. A man wearing swim shorts stared at me and asked me if I had seen the video: “He’s your people. It’s his picture you should be holding.” [We entered into a heated argument.]
All of a sudden the whole scenario seemed less like a political dispute and more like a modern Tower of Babel, where God made everyone speak different languages to stop their effort to build endlessly upward, a check on human arrogance. It’s a story in which we are all living in a building, trying to reach the clouds. It keeps growing and growing, and we keep climbing up with it, higher and higher: with more knowledge, more confidence, more purpose, yet somewhere along the way — and not just because of arrogance — we lose our fundamental ability to communicate. Each of us is trapped in our separate feeds, our separate languages, with different facts and different conclusions, which grow only more and more solid…
…At the end of the biblical story, the people abandon their project to build the tower. Many stories in the Bible end badly, and ours seems to be heading that way, too. That is, unless we can manage — me, the guy in the swim shorts and everyone else — to find a common language again…”
Keret's words cut to the heart of our moment and they bring us back to the story of Hillel and Shammai. Hillel, being a peacemaker, allows Shammai the win. But the people protest, knowing that a verdict reached by authoritarian violence cannot hold in the long run. In a profound turn of events, the Talmudic story continues to say that while Hillel submitted to Shammai, the people outside the study hall refused Shammai’s decision. The people demanded that the sages re-engage in the debate and bring forward a fairly adjudicated verdict.
The re-engagement is not just the story’s conclusion, it's the moral. Hillel’s resignation is not enough. For the sake of the community’s health, every person in that study hall had to find the humility to return to the table. The people outside the study hall demand that the students expand their horizons at the same time that they sharpen their arguments. The real world is full of complex viewpoints and the study hall should be too.
To remove the sword from the threshold, to counteract the violence and consuming meanness we show one another, we need to reflect on our character and the ethos of our society today. In my estimation, there is one main ingredient that we are lacking, personally and communally, that until we cultivate it again, we will go nowhere.
The not-so-secret ingredient is humility. It is one of the hardest human attributes to nurture, which is why it is front and center during the High Holy Days. Our job during this season is not just to repent for our sins, but to cultivate humility. We say to God- “Avinu Malkeinu, we are not so arrogant and stiff-necked as to say before You, we are perfect and have not sinned.”
But that’s just articulating an intention. The reality is that we are arrogant and stiff-necked, aren’t we? Conservatives and Liberals alike. All of us.
I’ll give you my recent “aha moment,” when I tasted my own pretentiousness. It was a small, silly moment, but no less profound. I was watching stand up comic Gianmarco Soresi, a fellow Jew and liberal. He was on a roll doing a bit when he snuck in an off-color joke. The crowd balked. Feeling the room shift, he said, “Hey, hey! I have progressive views…that doesn’t make me a good person.” Boy, did that hit home for me.
We are bloated with self-righteousness and moral superiority and, regrettably, we seek to release it by passing judgment on others.
Writer/Thinker Tim Urban warns of the dangers of what he calls ‘the Primitive Mind’: “The Primitive Mind sees [your] beliefs as a fundamental part of your identity…the last thing the Primitive Mind wants is for you to feel humble about your beliefs or interested in revising them. It wants you to treat your beliefs as sacred objects and believe them with conviction.”
Treating your beliefs as sacred objects - sounds a lot like idolatry to me. Which explains why humility is an essential character trait in Jewish tradition.
When it comes to Hillel and Shammai, why do Hillel’s rulings usually win the day? “Because,” the Talmud states, “Hillel’s students were humble - they taught their own opinions only after sharing Shammai’s first” (Eruvin 13b). The process by which the ruling came to be was more important than who uttered it and what side they stood on.
Urban observes: “For most beliefs, we’re so concerned with where people stand that we often forget the most important thing [is really] how they arrived at what they think.”
Our tradition holds that humility is not about lowering yourself. Humility is really about creating space for other people. It is the elixir to absolutism and authoritarianism. It requires grace and cultivates kindness, which in turn creates partners - not in building towers of greatness, but cities of goodness.
Today, we asked God, Avinu Malkeinu, עֲשֵׂה עִמָּֽנוּ צְדָקָה וָחֶֽסֶד, deal with us with generosity and kindness. But before we can even dare to ask this of God, we must demonstrate it with one another.
Because it seems to me that amidst all the spiritual and physical violence the thing we all have in common right now is that we are all scared and hurt. “Hurt people hurt people,” Yehuda Berger says, and we’re watching this truth unfold in real time.
The rabbis taught that the world itself rests on three things: Torah, worship, and gemilut chasadim—acts of kindness (Pirkei Avot 1:2). In other words, kindness is not just a virtue, it is a load-bearing beam of existence. If it buckles, everything around it begins to crack. But kindness towards an injured person can restore dignity. Kindness can break isolation. Kindness can plant possibility.
“But rabbi,” you might think, “humility and kindness can’t take down an evil regime. They can’t restore freedom of speech or guarantee my basic rights under the law. Debate is great until someone decides to throw a sword!”
I know, and I agree. I maintain that we must still march, strike, and advocate in order to protect our rights and make large-scale change. Engaging in debate isn’t enough, especially when we are just arrogantly trying to win, not truly trying to understand.
That said, we must also believe in the power of humility and kindness. These attributes aren’t weak, and they most certainly don’t demonstrate submission. They clear away the clutter of self-righteousness so that when we act, we act with clarity and integrity. Together, they help us to create a shared language again, shared expectations of what it means to be a citizen; what it means to be a neighbor.
Humility and kindness start in small interactions, and with enough repetition, create a ripple effect, creating communities of good-will that, if they persist, can change the jet-stream of today’s climate.
I have seen our community, the Woodlands community, endeavor to meet this fraught moral moment with humility and kindness. We’re not perfect at it, our liturgy today demonstrates that no one can be. But I challenge us to reinforce this skill over the next 10 days, culminating in the observance of Yom Kippur, our Day of Atonement. Can you make space, create an open tent within your heart? Can you then demonstrate this with others, shifting the tides here in our little corner of the world?
On these most auspicious days, let us endeavor to remove the sword in our heart’s doorway. May we seek the open tent, where our many perspectives can be held in compassion.
May we be humble enough to welcome one another inside, and kind enough to make space for God’s presence to dwell among us. In that shared space, may we write a different ending than the one in Hillel and Shammai’s day, one marked not by the sword but by kindness. May we be remembered not for the swords we brandished, but for plowshares we pushed, turning up fertile ground. I believe healing and progress are possible, we just have to be bold enough to make space for it.
Closing words
Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel was known to have said, “When I was young, I admired cleverness. Now that I am old, I find I admire kindness.”
So may it be for us, too. As we enter this new year, may arrogance give way to compassion, argument give way to listening, and fear give way to understanding. May the swords at our heart’s thresholds transform into plowshares, creating fertile ground yet again. May our open tent be filled with humility, kindness, and God’s abiding presence.
Ken Yehi Ratzon. May this be God’s will. Shanah Tovah!
