- 5786/2025
- Rabbi Nickerson
Kol Nidrei 5786/2025
Rabbi Joel Nickerson
Wilshire Boulevard Temple, Los Angeles
The Still, Small Voice
There’s a story in the Talmud about a man named Elazar who spent his life running from anything that required him to take a stand. When life demanded courage, he’d find a way to disappear. When the world needed him to step up, he’d step back. He always convinced himself that someone else would say what needed to be said or do what needed to be done.
One day, someone who knew him well saw him duck away yet again. They shook their head and delivered a brutal truth: “Elazar, you have no future. You have no place in the world to come.” And in that moment, he knew they were right. The shame was overwhelming. He believed his fate was sealed.
So Elazar ran to the mountains and begged them to intervene with God. He turned to the stars, to the universe itself: “Speak for me!” But each one answered the same way: “We can’t do this for you.”
Elazar broke down. And in that moment of complete defeat, something extraordinary happened. He stopped looking outward and heard something he’d been avoiding his whole life - his own voice. And he said five words that changed everything: “Ein ha-davar talui ela bi. The matter depends on me alone.”
Immediately, the Talmud says, a heavenly voice proclaimed: “Rabbi Elazar is destined for the world to come.” The voice named him “Rabbi” for the very first time - not because he became perfect, but because he stopped waiting for someone or something else to save him. He chose to take initiative. He accepted responsibility. He stepped into his own life.
“The matter depends on me alone.” The idea is both haunting and liberating. Because right now, many of us are feeling the world is too broken, too polarized, too far gone for anything we say or do to matter.
But tonight, and over the next 24 hours, our tradition tells us differently. Kol Nidre offers us the same choice Elazar faced: we can either wait for someone else to fix what’s broken, or use our own voices to help begin the repair ourselves.
Yom Kippur is a time of accounting – for the sins we have committed in the past and the sins we hope to avoid in the coming year.
And there is one sin that I feel looms large right now: The sin of thinking that nothing we say or do will make a difference. It’s so easy to think that the divisions are too deep, the other side too stubborn, the situation too complicated. So we convince ourselves our voices don’t matter, and we stay silent. But silence doesn’t bring peace. It stuffs our hearts with unspoken grief until we ache. And sometimes we hide behind the need for ‘civility’ when it’s really just another excuse to stay silent. True civility doesn’t pretend everything is fine while people suffer.
All year, over coffee and in quiet moments around the synagogue, I've heard the same confession: "Rabbi, I'm so upset. I'm so troubled by what's happening around me. But I don't think I can say what I feel to my friends…or to that family member…and definitely not to that coworker."
Running from hard conversations isn’t new. Tomorrow afternoon, we’ll read Jonah, who literally threw himself into the sea to avoid delivering God’s message. The famous prophet, Elijah, after standing up to corrupt power, fled to the wilderness. Confronting the throne was easier than confronting his community about their own faithlessness, so he ran. Both prophets discovered the same truth: you can’t escape the hard conversations forever.
When Elijah was all alone in that wilderness, he searched for God. He didn’t find God in the wind that split mountains, or in the earthquake that shook the ground, or even in the fire that blazed around him. God was in the kol d’mamah dakah - the still, small voice. It’s so hard to hear those still, small voices right now, but they are out there and they are trying very hard to be heard.
The still, small voice doesn’t come with certainty; it comes with curiosity:
- A woman who tells her oldest friend - "I've been losing sleep over what's happening with immigration. The ICE raids. These detention centers. I honestly don't understand what we're trying to achieve. How do you see all of this?"
- A man who speaks to his college-age son - "I have to be honest, your post about Gaza really shook me up. I realize I don't understand your perspective on what's happening there. Would you help me see it through your eyes?"
- Someone who talks to a friend who voted for a different candidate in the last election - "I'd love to get your take on something - I keep hearing people say the current administration is either protecting Jewish interests or making things worse for us. The university funding, the Israel policies, all of it. What do you think?"
And yes, I know what you’re thinking: “Rabbi, you actually want me to do that? You want me to open the door to those conversations?” Yes. Because vulnerability isn’t weakness - it’s the only thing that changes hearts.
Think about it: when someone comes at you with absolute certainty, shouting their position, what do you do? You shut down. You defend. You stop listening. But when someone says, "I need help understanding" - that's when your guard drops. That's when real conversations become possible.
The Talmud knew this. Hillel didn't defeat Shammai by shouting him down. He listened so carefully that he could repeat Shammai's arguments back to him perfectly. And that’s when Shammai was willing to listen to Hillel's perspective.
Abraham understood this. Picture the scene: he's sitting at the entrance of his tent in the heat of the day, still recovering from the circumcision he performed on himself. He's in pain and vulnerable when he sees three strangers approach - whose intentions he can't predict, whose beliefs he knows nothing about.
He runs toward them. He doesn't wait until he feels strong enough. He doesn't spend time figuring out their politics or their positions. He simply says, 'I see you. Come in. Let me wash your feet. Let me feed you. Tell me who you are.'
He enters that conversation with no agenda except genuine curiosity and hospitality. And because he was willing to be vulnerable first - to approach strangers while wounded, to offer kindness without knowing if it would be returned. Those strangers become messengers. That vulnerable conversation changes the course of history. Because they are the very people who then bless him and his wife, Sarah, with the gift of a child.
So, we know exactly what's at stake. We talk about it constantly - in our coffee conversations, in our group texts, in our book clubs. We've created little bubbles where we can be thoughtful and nuanced. But outside those bubbles? We stay silent. And in our silence, the extremists get to define us. The people who reduce everything to slogans, who turn every issue into a loyalty test, who think complexity is cowardice - they're speaking for us while we hide.
The reasonable voices haven't just gone missing. We've deliberately vacated the arena, convinced that silence is dignified. It may feel noble. But it's not protecting the pillars of democracy. It's abandoning the field to people who will make decisions about our future without any input from the thoughtful, sophisticated, layered thinking that we do in private but refuse to do in public.
And that's not just bad for democracy. It's dangerous for Jews. Because when moderate voices disappear, when nuanced thinking gets shouted down, when complex situations get reduced to slogans - that's exactly when Jewish communities become scapegoats. That's when Israel gets isolated. That's when us-versus-them thinking takes over and antisemitism thrives.
The stakes couldn’t be higher. Tonight, Kol Nidre demands that we stop making excuses: I don’t have the time. I don’t want to make things worse. Someone else will do it.
Our sages imagined the same pattern unfolding on the grandest scale. They say that at the end of days, all the nations of the world will come before God. They won’t deny their failures, but they will bring excuses: “We were too busy, too afraid, too overwhelmed.” But God’s response will be unyielding: “You had opportunities, and you did not act.”
Kol Nidre doesn’t ask us to be perfect. It asks us to be brave. To use our still, small voices not just in comfortable bubbles, but in the conversations that matter most.
As we reflect on the ancient words of the Kol Nidre prayer, let’s release what has been binding us:
Tonight, we release the burden of staying silent until we are certain.
Tonight, we refuse to treat others as positions instead of people.
Tonight, we pledge that we’ll no longer save our best thinking for people who already agree with us.
It starts with one conversation. One topic you've been dancing around. One moment of courage.
I know that while you've been sitting here, at least one person has come to mind. Someone you've been avoiding. Maybe even someone you miss engaging with in conversations beyond the weather, the Dodgers, or the latest episode of that show. And I know what you've been telling yourself about why you haven't reached out: "They won't listen anyway." "They're too far gone." "I don't know enough." Those are excuses, not reasons.
Maybe it's about politics - that family member who posts opinions that make you crazy; that friend whose views on Israel leave you speechless; that neighbor whose yard sign makes you shake your head.
Or maybe it's not about politics at all. Maybe it's the conversation with your adult child that you keep postponing. The difficult discussion with your spouse about something that's been eating at you. The honest conversation with a friend about how their behavior has hurt you. The talk with your aging parent about their health, their finances, their future.
The principles remain the same. Vulnerability works. Questions open doors. Curiosity builds bridges that statements cannot.
Elijah heard that voice - that one that lived within him. And it sent him back into the world - back to his mission. Tonight, that same voice speaks to us. To every one of us. It is the voice already stirring in your heart and it is pleading to be answered. Listen to it. Trust it. Follow it.
Because in the end, the matter depends on us alone.
And if we answer it; if we let our voices rise together, then this year can truly be the beginning of something new.