On Rosh Hashanah, we’ll hear the shofar blown 100 times in Ashkenazi synagogues. 101 in Sephardic ones.

Is the shofar’s blast a cry, a wail, a groan, a sob? A call to action, a call to quiet, a call to reflect?

Is it an echo of the cries of our matriarchs Sarah or Rachel, or perhaps, more unexpectedly, the cries of Sisera’s mother as she mourned her son, the enemy Canaanite general who fell in battle against the Israelites?

A reminder of our resilience? A manifestation of our pain?

Yes, and yes, and yes.

All competing explanations of why we blow the shofar on Rosh Hashanah.

That’s what it's always meant to be a Jewish people that has leaned into debate. That’s codified the back-and-forth arguments themselves into one of our most precious Jewish texts, the Talmud, a text that continues to be pored over and debated more than 1,500 years later.

Across generations, we’ve always found meaning in exploring multiple interpretations, recognizing the difficulty and complexity of discerning truth.

So why is it so hard today — at a time of such dramatic challenge, both here and in Israel — for our community to come together and openly discuss the enormous complexity of the moment?

Let’s name this moment clearly. We're nearly two full years into Israel’s longest war. Forty-eight hostages are still in the tunnels of Gaza. More than 900 Israeli soldiers have been killed since October 7 — six in the last week alone. Israel has grown increasingly isolated on the world stage, including very much so here in America. And antisemitic incidents continue to escalate across the globe.

Questions abound about the right way forward, some of them existential.

And yet, at this moment, when the need for our community to unite across difference has never been more critical, ideological divisions, briefly sidelined on October 7, have only grown more intense. 

Where once there was nuanced argument “for the sake of heaven,” now there are oversimplified attacks on social media. Where once there was room for dissent, now there is vicious demonization of the “other.” 

Even when the so-called other is no less committed to Israel’s future.

As author Daniel Gordis recently wrote in his “Israel From the Inside” column, bemoaning the unwillingness of competing sides to engage in honest conversation about the current situation: “It’s lonely to embrace complexity.”

It is — but it shouldn't have to be.

We, a tiny people, cannot afford estrangement from one another.

We need to give ourselves permission to ask uncomfortable but essential questions. And we need to have the patience to listen, even to what seems wrong to us.

Wrestling with these questions does not weaken Israel or ourselves; it strengthens our ties to Israel and each other, fortifying our investment in a shared future.

Rosh Hashanah allows us to begin anew, as we undertake a personal accounting during these Days of Awe. But the liturgy is also very much designed as a communal reckoning. An opportunity for serious reflection about how we engage as a community, about how we should exist with each other.

Standing on the verge of 5786, we have more questions than answers, more heartache and complexity than any people should have to sit with.

Still, we also have one another, and if we allow it, it's here where we can find enormous strength and hope in the year ahead.

Listening to the shofar with all its multiple meanings and interpretations, may we be bound together in that hope.

Hope that the new year will bring all the hostages home and our soldiers back to their families.

Hope for a safer and sweeter year.

Hope for a lasting and secure peace — for Israel, for the Jewish people, and for all.

Shanah Tovah