Kol Nidrei 2025 Disagreement for the Sake of Humanity Part 2

My favorite part of the week is coming to Neshamah Hebrew school on Sunday mornings.  Nothing is more uplifting than seeing our students, some in their cozy pjs, rolling out of their cars and into the sanctuary for some Jewish music and prayer and sitting with their teachers for their lessons in Hebrew, Torah study and Jewish values. 

Just a few Sundays ago, one of our teen teachers bounded over to Kira and I and said, I have to show you guys something. Mia proceeded to share with us how she had been following an influencer online, how she admired her leadership in LGBTQ movement, how impressed she was that she was organizing rallies and protests all while still in high school.

And then Mia dm’ed her and said (I’m editing for space here but you should read her full message): 

Hi Lyn, My name is Mia and I’m 16. I am in awe of everything you have done and are trying to do. This is my passion. I am pro choice, against guns, pro science, pro lgbtq and more. However, I am also Jewish. My grandparents were Holocaust survivors and I care very strongly about the Jewish community. I believe that Israel has the right to exist and so does Palestine. I believe that both sides have the right to protect themselves … I truly believe that the Jewish community needs awareness and less hatred. I would like to work with you to allow our generation to be on the right side of history. Again, regardless of what we disagree on, you are amazing and I strive to be like you. 

What struck me most wasn’t just Mia’s courage, but the way she chose to engage: with respect, conviction, and curiosity. She didn’t silence herself, but she also didn’t attack. 

Mia was a perfect example of what I spoke about on Rosh Hashanah: makhloket lsheim b’nai adam – a disagreement for the sake of humanity. 

I truly believe this is the unique gift Jews and Judaism can offer our troubled world. We have a method for disagreeing that builds rather than destroys. 

Judaism teaches that while we pray for peace, we work with the reality of conflict and in fact, we welcome disagreements because they are a profound path to spiritual growth.

Our world needs sane humans who can argue, disagree and debate without killing each other. It sounds so simple but our reality has proven otherwise.

So I want to continue with this subject of disagreement for the sake of humanity.  … I’ve never given a multi- phased sermon like this so consider this Episode 2!

Tonight and tomorrow, I’m going to present more specific examples of how this concept can be applied in our families, our work places, our politics and even online. 

We can learn from other people’s examples, like Mia’s, and from our Jewish tradition as we always do.

Maybe you’ve heard of Megan Phelps Roper. 

Megan was a chubby cheeked, blue eyed five year old when she went to her first protest. She held a sign that she couldn’t yet read … “Gays are worthy of death.” 

She was representing Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kansas. This was her childhood. Hate was in the air she breathed and the food she digested. It was planted and nourished in her without reprieve. And no surprise, she grew into a hater, intolerant of Jews, Gays, anyone who violated her church’s definiton of God’s will. 

Twenty years later – when Megan got on Twitter, one of the first people she targeted was David Abitbol, who ran a blog called Jewlicious. 

Her first tweet to him was about Jewish people needing to repent. 

In a typical Jewish response, David says with humor, “Thanks Megan, that’s handy what with Yom Kippur coming up.”

But Megan was not amused. She doubled down, telling him Jewish customs were “dead rote rituals that would lead them all to Hell.”

At first, David responded angrily, but over time, conflict gave way to conversations and a semblance of  friendship. 

When Megan’s church protested a Jewlicious event in Los Angeles, David actually came and talked to her, shielding her from angry counter-protesters. 

Did you hear me? A protester was protected by her very own protestee! But even that didn’t fully change Megan’s mind.

Megan said, “The turning point came when David asked me a question I couldn’t answer.”

He asked her about supporting the death penalty. 

Her older brother had been born out of wedlock—if her mother had been appropriately punished for that sin, she would never have had a chance to repent, and Megan herself might not have been born.

Megan paused. Maybe he had a point. Maybe she needed to slow down, to reconsider her views. She was seeing cracks. After that conversation with David, Megan stopped carrying signs calling for the death penalty, but also stopped communicating with David so he couldn’t further challenge her beliefs. 

As she continued to interact with Jews online, Megan noticed, many people who challenged her also asked questions about topics unrelated to the church—music, food, everyday life.  

She said, “They cared who I was outside of the church and my religious beliefs.”  And to her very great surprise, Megan cared about them too. 

In 2011, her mother was accused of not following church doctrine.  Watching the church turn on her beloved mother—someone she knew was being wrongly accused—shattered Megan’s faith in the perfection of the church.

A year later, after months of doubt and secret discussions with her younger sister, Megan and her sister  both left the church. It was devastating personally but also opened the door for a new kind of hope for Megan.

“We literally had a website, ‘The World is Doomed.’ Megan said.

“When David taught me about Tikun Olam, that you could do something to repair the world, that idea was hopeful and liberating. Can we fix what we broke? This really gave me hope.”

Since leaving the Westboro Baptist Church, Megan has written a book, Unfollow: A Journey from Hatred to Hope, given a Ted Talk and become an educator on the power of empathetic dialogue. She is in the trenches with schools, law enforcement, faith groups practicing our Jewish principle of makhloket l’sheim b’nai adam – disagreements for the sake of humanity. 

Her core message is powerful: “Listening is not agreeing. Empathy is not a betrayal of one’s cause. These are tools of effective persuasion.”

Judaism knows this. Jews embody this. 

Even in the political realm which can seem so impossible to navigate, there are opportunities for real communication and change. 

Who would have ever thought that Megan would truly be influenced and converted by an online encounter with a Jew named David.

Who would have thought that a teenager from Boca, would reach out to an influencer about political differences in a calm and respectful manner. But here they are. 

Let’s never say never.

The Talmud, as I mentioned on Rosh Hashanah, is a veritable master class on disagreements.  Hillel and Shammai – two of the greatest Talmudic scholars – have more than 300 recorded disagreements in the Talmud. Everything from how to light the Hanukah menorah to what kind of sukkah is kosher, to laws of marriage and divorce. These were not abstract concepts -these issues affected daily life in their society. And they argued forcefully for their own points of view. 

But guess what …  When it came time to sit in a sukkah, or to light the menorah, they were able to co-exist.  There was no uncle we don’t speak to anymore, no branch of the family estranged from another.

And even more, the Talmud applauds both camps for continuing to marry each other despite their opposing views. The relationship was always more important than who was right and wrong. 

Judaism does not ask us to avoid conflict. Judaism asks us to transform conflict. To see it not as a battlefield, but as a classroom. To use conflict as a pathway to connection and new creations. 

Of course there are caveats, as I said on Rosh Hashanah. Not all disagreements are worthy and at the same time some disagreements are simply too fundamental.  If we don’t agree on facts, if we don’t hold human life and dignity as a sacred value then we don’t have anything to talk about. 

But my strong belief – and my fervent prayer – is that the common ground with most opponents is still wider than we think, or at least wide enough to find this path of constructive disagreement – for humanity’s sake.

Like Mia did when she opened the door to that influencer. Like David of Jewlicious did when he engaged rather than shouted back at Megan. Like Hillel and Shammai and their students did for hundreds of years. That is our Jewish way, our Jewish wisdom, our Jewish “weapon.” 

Tonight we ask ourselves, where can we follow in their footsteps?

There is one more story I want to share.

The Dead Sea, the lowest place on earth and the saltiest sea, this wonder of the world, is shrinking by over a meter a year. It is disappearing before our very eyes. Over the last 10 years, the Dead Sea has lost one third of its area.

Hotels that used to be right on the shoreline, are now so far away from the water, you need a shuttle bus to get there. The whole sea is surrounded by sinkholes destroying roads and buildings that made this a thriving tourist destination. 

At this pace, our children will be the last generation to see the Dead Sea in real life. 

Just a few years ago, three men—an Israeli named Oded Rahav, a Palestinian named Yusuf Matari, and a Jordanian named Munqeth Mehyar—looked at the shrinking Dead Sea and realized that if they didn’t work together, this ancient wonder might disappear in their lifetimes.

Knowing how difficult politics and collaboration can be in the Middle East, they decide to do something seemingly simple, non-political. 

They decide to organize a swim across the sea from the Israeli side to the Jordanian side. The three of them, an Israeli, a Palestinian and a Jordanian – they would each recruit swimmers from their countries and they would make this swim together as a symbol of shared concern for the Dead Sea. 

Swimming in the Dead Sea isn’t easy. Swallowing even a half a cup of this salty water can cause death. The recommended time for people to float in the Dead Sea is about 10 minutes. Swimming across the Sea would take the swimmers 7 hours. 

Wearing protective masks and with a crew that sprayed clean water on their faces and bodies every 30 minutes to rinse off the salt, 28 swimmers from around the world completed the Dead Sea Swim.  

There were hurdles, of course. 

The permission to come ashore in Jordan was granted literally in the last hour before the swim. 

One swimmer from Australia jokingly said you brought us all the way here and you didn’t even have permission to be on their beach – and Oded the Israeli swimmer said, “True, we didn’t have it, but we had hope!”

There was the hurdle of recruiting swimmers. In the end, no Palestinian swimmers, other than Yusef the organizer, agreed to participate. 

But these three men created something others said was impossible. They built friendship and dialogue and a common cause they work on together.

At the end of the Dead Sea Swim, with camera rolling and an impressive audience cheering them on, the three men come together and sign a document in Hebrew, Arabic, and English—pledging to work together to save the Dead Sea. 

And then Oded speaks. He says:

“One day, people will tell the story of how we saved the Dead Sea—not with a battle, not with violence, but with a swim. If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go with friends.”

This is machloket l’shem b’nai adam. 

Even with centuries of political and religious disagreements, we know so well, this Dead Sea Swim is an example of a “new way” that’s really the old way, the original way we Jews have done so well for all our history. 

Here we are on our most holy of evenings. The music, the rituals, the last supper … it steers us to deeply reflect and confess with humility where we have missed the mark. 

Where we were caught in ego, where we closed rather than opened doors. And perhaps where we went too far – accommodating too much and losing ourselves and our values. 

Yom Kippur is the day of rebalancing. Of coming home to our neshamahs which will guide us on our truest path.  As we step into the new year 5786 I pray for us all:

May our arguments be for the sake of humanity.

May our conversations lead us not to despair, but to tikkun olam—repairing the world.

May we have the courage not to go fast alone, but to go far together.

Gmar Hatima Tova – may you be sealed for a good new year.