- 5785/2024
- Rabbi Fein
- Yom Kippur
Yom Kippur 5785/2024
Rabbi Leah Fein
Wilshire Boulevard Temple, Los Angeles
Exactly one year ago today, on October 12th, 2023, I was standing on the central lawn of the Columbia University campus. Being in my fifth year as a rabbi at Columbia/Barnard Hillel at the time, I knew the place well and felt so comfortable there. This lawn was where I hosted socially distant Shabbat picnics for students in 2020, the lawn where a senior introduced me to a nervous first-year student whom I would later bat mitzvah, the lawn where I would sit with students sipping our iced lattes, hearing about their backgrounds and what they wanted and needed out of Jewish life in college. This lawn was always a place of connection for me on campus, where I would catch up with students I knew and meet students with whom I got to build new relationships.
But October 12th, 2023 was different. As I stood in the middle section of the lawn, the initial pangs of discomfort set in as I was surrounded by campus public safety officers, Columbia University administrators and various media outlets. To my right was a fenced-in section of the lawn with many familiar faces. They held Israeli flags and signs with pictures of hostages, and of friends or family who had been killed only days earlier. Many of these students were weeping, as friends and strangers comforted one another.
To my left was a separate fenced-in section of the lawn, this one with many more students, mostly wrapped in keffiyehs, chanting and waving Palestinian flags, at times cheering.
It had only been a few days since the October 7th terrorist attack. I was raw. Hearing the cheers and the applause was jarring and confusing, but still I couldn’t look away. It was an unwelcome jolt into the reality that there was a war on the other side of the world, while a very different type of struggle was underway on our campus.
Later that night, back at the Hillel building, I was about to leave for the day and walk home to my apartment. As I exited the building, a group of NYPD officers met me on the other side of the door. They told me to walk as quickly as I could in the opposite direction, because the protest was marching toward Hillel’s block. Public safety was going to lock down the building, now. I could hear the chanting growing louder, coming closer.
If I’m being honest, in that split second I didn’t know what to do. A few days earlier, on Monday, October 9th, I’d come back from maternity leave. But how could I go home when there were over 100 Jewish students inside with many of my fellow staff members? So I turned around, went back in, and the building was locked behind me. The blue and red flashing lights from police cars eerily illuminated the interior of the building through the large entry windows. There was a lot of nervous chatter among the students and staff, sharing experiences and feelings from the day. But all the conversations still didn’t drown out the chants and drum beats from outside on the street. We were scared, not for our physical safety in that moment, but for our overall sense of security now and the question of it moving forward.
You all read the news, you saw the pictures and videos over the past year. You know how bad it got and continues to be for many Jewish students not just at Columbia and not just at universities, but on a variety of school campuses around the country. In some ways it wasn’t as bad as what you saw and heard, and in some ways it was worse. Every student had a different experience.
So today, I want to share the part of the story of this past year at Columbia - and so many other campuses - that you didn’t read about or see footage of on the news, and that probably didn’t even make it to your social media feed.
In late October, our Hillel team realized that we were overlooking something critical. For many students, college is an opportunity for exploration as an independent Jewish adult for the very first time, a time for Jewish identity to blossom. At Hillel in the days after October 7th, we were doing a great job of providing community, safety, and space for grief. But the joy of Judaism, the excitement of being Jewish in college and exploring one’s Jewish identity, had been sidelined. Our students needed support, but support had to include more than crisis response.
So as a staff team, we thought deeply about the aspects of Jewish life in college that our students loved and craved. What had made them seek out Jewish life on campus to begin with, and want to continue their involvement? What stories did they share about Jewish life at home that animated why they wanted to connect to Jewish life in college?
The answer was Jewish joy.
Leaning into Jewish joy on a campus roiled in antisemitic rhetoric and anti-Zionist protests may sound as odd as leaning into Jewish joy on Yom Kippur. But for all its abstentions, acting out our own death, and talk of the sins we have committed in the past year, Judaism actually has a long precedent of treating Yom Kippur not as a sad or somber day, but as a joyful day.
As early as the Talmud, which is nearly two-thousand years old, Yom Kippur is described as one of the two most joyful days of the entire Jewish calendar. The other most joyful day of the year, the rabbis teach, was Tu B’Av, which is essentially the Jewish Valentine’s Day. The Talmud goes on to address this peculiar claim, anticipating the objections and questions that might be raised from such a statement as “There were no days as happy for the Jewish people as Yom Kippur.” (Taanit 30b)
The Talmud explains that Yom Kippur is a day of joy for two reasons: one, because it is an opportunity for pardon and forgiveness, and two, because Yom Kippur is the day on which the second pair of tablets were given. When Moses came down Mt. Sinai with the first set of tablets inscribed with the 10 Commandments, he famously saw the Golden Calf and shattered the tablets on the ground. So Moses went back up the mountain for a new set of tablets, which our tradition teaches was given on Yom Kippur. This was both a sign of repentance and forgiveness for the sin of the Golden Calf, and simultaneously the forging of a renewed covenant between the people of Israel and God.
What’s most interesting to me about the examples that the Talmud gives for why Yom Kippur is one of the most joyous days of the Jewish year is that the common thread is one of relationship and connection. Pardon and forgiveness are only possible when two parties are in relationship, when an effort is put forth by one, and grace extended by the other. And so too with the new set of tablets, they are only resonant insofar as God and the Israelites take the covenant to heart, and uphold their responsibility to the other.
Jewish joy, we learn from the Talmud, is something very specific, it is a joy derived from relationship, a joy that is grounded in connection.
In my nine years as a Hillel rabbi, I found that Jewish college students are hungry for personal, genuine connections to Judaism, a space where they can safely, confidently and joyfully be their full Jewish selves. And even amidst the antisemitism and anti-Zionism, through the chaos and toxicity of their campus, Jewish students at Columbia in the weeks following October 7th were no exception to this. They were craving joy in connection to Jewish community and tradition. Not as a dismissal of the campus experience they were caught in, but as a response to it.
So our team continued setting up a hostage table at Shabbat dinners, continued inviting speakers such as Nova music festival survivors and Israeli politicians and educators. Especially with the escalation of harassment and intimidation targeted at Jewish students on campus, we continued to double-down on our advocacy to administrators at Columbia, and we continued to hold the spaces for grief.
And, we leaned into Jewish joy and connection for our students, hosting a Shabbat dinner for one thousand guests on Columbia’s main basketball court. We had Matisyahu and Ishay Ribo concerts, with Israeli flags waving and students singing and excitedly jumping up and down. I tried my best to recreate my Syrian grandmother’s Sephardic tradition of a Seder on the floor, reclining on blankets and pillows for a cozy candle-lit Seder. Sitting knee to knee were Jewish students who had barely left the Hillel building in the past months, next to Jewish students who had come from the encampment and would return there after the Seder. We shared matzah and charoset and sang familiar Passover songs of gratitude and freedom together, each person’s heart tugged somewhere beyond the room in which we sat.
These and many more moments of Jewish joy may not have made the headlines. But for all the division on campus, opportunities for Jewish connection that felt meaningful and authentic and joyful were what ultimately helped students cope with their campus reality while maintaining their Jewish pride and connection to Jewish community.
Having accompanied and supported students as they experienced some of the harshest circumstances in our country over the past year, the ancient wisdom of the Talmud feels truer now than ever. No matter what a year may hold, the most joyous times of a year for the Jewish people are the ones in which we can tap into the unique power of connection and relationship, grounded in our Jewish tradition and identity. Jewish joy, I have found, can be a transformative key to nurturing current and future generations of Jews - young Jews especially - who love being part of a Jewish community, and who find depth in our tradition.
Today, Yom Kippur, one of the most joyful days of the year, is our opportunity to reflect on moments of Jewish joy in our own lives, those Jewish connections and relationships that have inspired and uplifted us. As we begin this new year, I invite you to think about and commit to the concrete ways that you will continue to nurture Jewish joy for yourself and the people in your life. Maybe it’s developing a family ritual for Friday nights to welcome in Shabbat together and connect; or cooking latkes for Hanukkah or baking hamentashen for Purim with your kids and talking to them about the significance of these foods; or helping a friend pick out a special mezuzah that means something to them and hanging it with them in their home; or inviting someone to your Yom Kippur break-fast if they don’t yet have a place to go.
One year ago today, on October 12th, 2023 on that divided lawn at Columbia, I could have never anticipated giving a Yom Kippur sermon in the same sanctuary where I attended Yom Kippur services as a child. For me, being here with all of you today, on October 12th, 2024, this is one of the ways I’m nurturing Jewish joy for myself. Celebrating this Yom Kippur for the joyful day of connection and relationship that it is. Grateful to my students and team at Hillel who helped me through pain and grief by returning even more resolutely to the joyful Judaism I’ve always connected to so deeply.
And that is my commitment to you as a new rabbi at your synagogue: to support you on your Jewish journey as you both seek and find the connections and relationships that bring you joy in our tradition. One year from today, on October 12th, 2025, may we say that this was a year of Jewish joy for us all.
Gmar chatimah tovah.
In memory of Yakov Shapiro z”l