Zion: A Place. A People. Choosing Life—Together

What does Zion mean to the Jewish people—and what happens when Jews themselves profoundly disagree about its meaning? In this Kol Nidrei sermon, Rabbi Yoshi Zweiback traces Zion through the arc of a Jewish life and explores two ancient teachings: U’vacharta bachayim—“Choose life”—and Atem nitzavim hayom kulchem—“You stand this day, all of you.” At a moment of deep division, he offers three challenges for sustaining the Jewish story: Know it. Teach it. And make room for one another inside it.

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I want to tell you a story. A story about the life of one person. A Jewish child is born. We gather family and friends. We give that child a Hebrew name. And usually we set aside a special chair at the ceremony. The chair of Elijah the prophet. And who was Elijah? The Bible introduces him as Eliahu Hatishbi, Elijah the Tishbite from Gilead, which is east of the Jordan. But his story in the Bible takes him across the land from Samaria to Mount Carmel and through the Jezreel Valley. And so at the beginning of a Jewish life, we invoke a prophet rooted in a particular place. Flash forward. That eight-day-old baby is now 13. They stand in front of the Aronha Kodesh with their family. They read from the Torah. They lead us in prayer. And at the end of the service, the rabbi and the cantor place their hands upon the young person's head and offer words Jews have been saying for thousands of years. May God bless you and may God keep you. Those words are ancient, but there's a remarkable story about just how old they are, how rooted they are in a particular place. In 1979, an archaeologist named Gabriel Barcai was excavating an ancient burial complex at Ketzefchinom in Jerusalem. And he had a group of 12 and 13-year-old middle school students helping him. And one student actually helped uncover a treasure trove of antiquities, including two tiny silver scrolls. It actually took scholars several years to figure out how to unroll the scrolls without damaging them. And when they finally did, they found words written in ancient Hebrew more than 2,500 years ago. Words from the priestly blessing. And then that child grows up and God willing finds their besherte, the partner they are meant to be with. They stand beneath the chupa. The rings are exchanged, the shiva brachot are sung. The final blessing includes words from the prophet Jeremiah. Imagining a time after the destruction of the first temple when once again we will hear in the towns of Judah and the streets of Jerusalem voices of joy and gladness of groom and bride. And then just before the glass is broken, at the height of our joy, we invoke the words of the psalmist, Im Eshkachek Yerushelaim, Tishka Mini. If I forget you, O Jerusalem, may my right hand wither. Two Jews standing beneath a chupah here or in New York, London, or Buenos Aires, and at the climax of the ceremony, they remember Jerusalem. Well, God willing, they live a good and long life. And when that life ends, wherever we bury them, there is an ancient custom of placing earth from Eritz Yisrael into the grave and orienting the burial toward Jerusalem. Think about the life that we just followed at birth, at 13, under the Chupa, at the grave, and in between, wherever we gather, traditionally we turn toward Jerusalem when we pray. And tonight, on this holiest day of our year, you don't have to take my word for it. Just look down at the Mahsor in your hands. I counted it today. The word Yisrael appears 163 times in our Mahsor and Yerushalayim. The references are everywhere. So why is the life of a Jew so deeply intertwined with one particular place, thousands of miles away? A place known by many names. Canaan, Eritz, Zavat Khalav Udvash, the land flowing with milk and honey, Yisrael. And then about 3,000 years ago in the book of Samuel, another name appears. The Bible tells us that King David captured Mitsudat Sion, the stronghold of Zion, which is in the city of David. Sion. Zion. There it is. The first time that name appears in the Bible, 3,000 years ago. At first it refers to a specific place in Yerushalaim. But over the centuries its meaning expands. Sion comes to mean the whole city of Jerusalem and then the whole land of Israel. And it even becomes a name for the Jewish people. In the book of Isaiah, God tells the prophet, Velemor T Zion Amiata, say to Zion, you are my people. And now we understand what has been running through the Jewish life we just followed. Zion. For 3,000 years it has been part of our people's story and our individual stories as well. In the 19th century, this ancient word takes on a modern political meaning. After violent pogroms in the Russian Empire, Jews organized around the dream of returning to our ancient homeland and listened to what they called themselves Chove Sion, Lovers of Zion. And then in 1890, the Jewish writer and activist Nathan Bernbaum coined a new word to describe the emerging Jewish national liberation movement, Zionism. The political movement was new. But the word from which it came was 3,000 years old. Zionism gave modern political expression to an ancient Jewish attachment, a national liberation movement centered on the return of a people to its indigenous homeland and the restoration of Jewish national life there. And then in 1948, after nearly 2,000 years without sovereignty, the Jewish people returned to national independence in the land of its ancestors. The place where Elijah, Jeremiah, and Isaiah prophesied, the place where those scrolls were unearthed, the very place we vowed each year to celebrate next year's Passover Seder. The Zionist movement had achieved its goal. The hope of 2,000 years was finally realized. But we've all witnessed something terrible has happened to this word. A word rooted in millennia of Jewish memory and longing has become in so many spaces a dirty word. Zionism is increasingly portrayed not as the national liberation movement of the Jewish people, but instead as something inherently racist, supremacist, oppressive, even evil. So much so that sometimes even Jews flinch at the word. So much so that some of our children discover that the label Zionist can make them unwelcome in certain spaces. So much so that it has become uncomfortable for many of us to watch award shows or walk around public spaces or attend concerts. So much so that some Jews now ask, maybe it's just time to let the word go. Maybe that word has become too damaged, too toxic. Recently I asked my friend Amanda Behrman, the founder of the Zionist movement, this very question on my podcast. And she warned that if we stop calling ourselves Zionists today, we might find it difficult to call ourselves Jews tomorrow. If we allow others to decide which parts of our identity are acceptable, where does that process end? We cannot allow others to erase our story. And tomorrow morning, at the heart of our Torah reading, Moses helps us understand why. As he puts it, I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Choose life, Moses says. But don't stop reading there. The verse continues, so that you and your children may live, and then La Shevet Alha Adama Asher Nijba Aronai La Avotecha, La Vraham, Litzchak, Uliyaakov, to dwell upon the land that God swore to your ancestors, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. So pay close attention to what the Torah binds together life, our children, and the land. Thousands of years before anyone coined the word Zionism, those three ideas were already bound together in the Jewish imagination. And it all begins with an existential imperative. Uvacharta Bachhaim, choose life. Yes, it's certainly true that Jews can live without sovereignty. We did it for nearly 2,000 years. We survived. But oh, what a terrible price we paid for our powerlessness. Jewish life depended upon the goodwill of those who held power over us. We could be expelled, persecuted, slaughtered with precious little power to stop it. Survival alone has never been the Jewish dream. And Jewish sovereignty changed that. For the first time in two thousand years, Jews once again possessed the power to defend Jewish life. And we must acknowledge sovereignty is messy because power is messy. Power can corrupt. And military power, even when its use is justified, can cause enormous suffering. Sovereignty, therefore, creates moral obligations, restraint, accountability, and high standards our tradition demands of us. That same prophet Isaiah calls us to be a light unto the nations. But we know the cost of Jewish powerlessness. For us, Uvacharta Bachhaim, choose life means the ability to defend ourselves. It makes it much more difficult and costly for our enemies to spill Jewish blood. But there is another kind of life at stake as well. Choosing life is not just about keeping Jewish bodies alive. It's also about keeping the Jewish story alive, the spirit of who we are. A people needs more than physical survival, it needs memory and language and ritual, and it needs the freedom to tell its own story. So when someone tells us that our story, that our history is invented, that our longing for national aspiration is shameful, or our relationship to the land of Israel is something to hide, we must insist on our right to tell our own story. And we must embrace our obligation to pass that story on. But there's another teaching in tomorrow morning's Torah portion that we need to hear tonight. Before Moses tells us to choose life, he begins his final address to the people of Israel with these words. Think about that scene for just a moment. Moses is addressing the entire Jewish people. And surely they didn't all agree, did they? We're talking about Jews. There had to have been some Israelites standing there that day as Moses gave his final speech, thinking, you want that we should cross that river over there and fight the Canaanites? Have you heard the stories about the Canaanites? They're giants. And maybe there were others, more optimistic and courageous, who said, Moses, enough with the talking already. We've been wandering for 40 years. Let's cross the river and get on with it. Let's go. And then I'm sure there were some mavens of navigation saying, Moses, why are we crossing there? Maybe we should cross over there. It looks a little better. And finally, the foodies among the Jewish people with their helpful input. Moses, really, this for Shtunk and Amana, it's enough already. It's every opinion you can imagine. Somebody in that crowd of Jews had it and was willing to share it with Moses. But what does Moses say when he addresses this delightfully diverse group? He says, Atem Nitzavim Kulchem. You stand all of you. Not the ones who agree with me alone, not all of you who understand our history and our story the same way I do. Not all of you who share the exact same vision I do about what will happen when we cross that river. Moses simply says, Kulchem, all of you, every last one of you, and then the Torah details by name almost all of the Israelites. And so at this moment, this present moment of deep division among Jews here in the diaspora and in Israel, I wonder, are we capable of the same? Can we make room for one another as Moses did? Is it possible for us to be Kulchem today? There are Jews in this room tonight and certainly in our extended families and Jewish networks who understand Zionism very differently than I do. Some Jews, Jews, have come to equate Zionism with the very worst excesses of the current Israeli government or the lawlessness of extremist settlers like the Hilltop Youth. That is a profound distortion of Zionism. A government is not a people. A parliamentary coalition is not a 3,000-year-old story. No prime minister gets to define for us what Zion means, just as no college campus protester does. But here is the harder part. Neither do I get to define another Jew out of the Jewish people, out of the Jewish story. My friend and colleague, Rabbi Elliott Kosgrove of Park Avenue Synagogue, said it beautifully this past Rosh Hashanah. There is no us and there is no them. There is only us. It's a beautiful sentiment. And it expresses a core Jewish value. But I want to be honest about how difficult that sense of radical unity can be for me sometimes personally. And I know for many of you as well, this is not an intellectual exercise. In 2009, Jacqueline and I made Aliyah. Though we live here now, we and our daughters remain proud Israeli citizens. And our youngest, who just graduated from college this spring, moved back to Israel three weeks ago, and is in the process of enlisting in the Israel Defense Forces. She will serve in Anaf Hanifqaim, the casualty branch, which provides support for wounded soldiers and bereaved families. So when I hear Jews speak about Israel in ways that I believe betray our history, deny our story, dismiss the necessity of Jewish sovereignty, or distort reality, I don't experience it as some interesting ideological disagreement. I feel it in my bones. And sometimes it makes me angry. Sometimes I don't want to make room for those opinions. And maybe that's precisely why I need to hear Moses' words tonight. Kulchem, he said, all of you. If we are to take Moses seriously, and we should take Moses seriously, we have to make space for each other. Some of you may hold views about Zionism with which I vehemently disagree. And of course, you might feel the same way about mine. So I want you to hear me. There is room for you here, not just at Stephen Wise's Temple, but inside Am Yisrael, the Jewish people, even when we disagree passionately. Because making room doesn't mean agreeing. Sometimes it means agreeing to disagree with one another. Sometimes it means having enough patience to listen a little longer, or enough empathy to ask, what experiences brought you to see this so differently from the way I see it? And our tradition calls this machlokit leshem Shamaim, disagreement for the sake of heaven. This Jewish value does not, mind you, ask us to believe less strongly. It asks us to remain in relationship while holding on to what we believe. Can we argue and still remain Mishpucha? Family? Kulchem, Moses declares, all of us. And make no mistake, there is urgency to this. There are enough forces attacking the Jewish people from without. We cannot afford to pull ourselves apart from within. So, yes, I will argue passionately with Jews whose understanding of Zionism, I believe, is profoundly mistaken. I will try to persuade them, but I will never stop loving them. And I will never stop including them as part of our people, as part of our family. I believe in a Zionism that is large enough to contain our arguments and strong enough to survive them. Because these two teachings from tomorrow belong together. Stand together, all of you, and Uvacharta Bachhaim, choose life. Because we cannot fully choose Jewish life if we refuse to choose each other. For me and my family, loving Zion means believing in what Israel can yet become and taking responsibility for helping to shape its future. So in late October, we will fly to Israel for one principal reason to vote. We are Israeli citizens. And Israel's future matters enough to us to fly halfway around the world to exercise that responsibility. For us, there's no absentee ballot. If we want to participate, we actually have to show up. And maybe that is the challenge for all of us. To show up. You don't have to be an Israeli citizen. You don't have to get on an airplane. But if Zion is part of our story, a story that belongs to each and every one of us, then we cannot simply stand on the sidelines. We have a responsibility to carry that story forward. So tonight I want to ask three things of each of you. First, know the story. Really know it. Take yourself back 3,000 years and study. Know why Jerusalem appears again and again in our prayers and rituals and what Zion meant before anyone coined the word Zionism. Know the historical forces that convinced the founders of modern Zionism that the Jewish people needed sovereignty and the scale of the catastrophe that followed when we did not have it. But know that Zion is more than just a refuge for Jews in crisis. It's where Jewish language and culture, ideas and imagination and creativity can flourish. In the place where our story began. And if you really know the story, then you'll see yourself in it. You will inhabit it and you will own it. Second, teach the story. Teach it to our children. Because if we don't teach them our story, someone else will. And chances are they will begin it in 1948 or 1967 or October 7th. So we have to teach them. We have to teach them why generations of Jews who never saw Jerusalem still prayed toward it. Why we end the Passover Seder year after year for more than 2,000 years with Lishana Ha Ba'ab Yerushalaim. Why we carried Sion with us everywhere we go. And yes, we have to teach the difficult parts too. Loving Israel doesn't mean pretending that Israel is perfect. Being a Zionist doesn't require approving of every government, every leader, or every policy. One can question Israel and criticize Israel and wrestle with Israel because we wrestle with what belongs to us. We wrestle with what we care about, with what we love. But don't always, but don't only teach them facts either. Teach them your heart. Teach them why you care. Tell them why you love Sion. Tell them what Israel has meant in your life and in your family's life. And third and finally, make room in the story. Make room for Jews you disagree with to be part of that story. Not because our disagreements don't matter, they do, they matter very much. Not because we're going to agree. We might not ever be able to agree. But because the person with whom you disagree is still part of the Jewish people. No matter how much we disagree, we cannot leave a single Jew behind. Kolchem, Moses tells us, all of us. I want to end where I began. A child is born, they're given a Hebrew name, they become Bar or Bat Mitzvah. They, God willing, find their beschert, and they live a long and meaningful life. And one day they are laid to rest. But of course, that was never just the story of one Jewish life. It's our collective story. The story we inherited from those who came before us, the story we will entrust to those who come after us. We have an obligation to know it, to teach it to our children and to anyone else willing to listen and to make room for one another inside it. Because the story of Tzion is not simply the story of a place. And if we can carry that story forward, then perhaps we'll be able to fulfill the command Moses gives us tomorrow morning. Uvacharta Bachayim. Choose life together. Well, that's our episode. Thanks for listening to Search for Meaning. If you enjoyed today's conversation, please like, subscribe, and leave a review. It really helps others discover the podcast. And consider sharing Search for Meaning with a friend. They might appreciate the insights and inspiration found here. Special thanks to our editor Josh Sterling and our production coordinator, Raz Husseini. Our theme song was composed by Maestro David Cates and myself, produced by Kenley Mattis, and features a vocal by cantor Josh Goldberg. Stay healthy, stay hopeful, and stay tuned.