A Lesson from Rabbi Weitzman: Parshat Nasso

Dear Congregation Beth Emeth,

This week, we had the privilege of welcoming Rabbi Rick Jacobs, President of the Union for Reform Judaism, to Congregation Beth Emeth. Rabbi Jacobs spoke about Israel at a crossroads. He reflected on the widening tensions within Israeli society, the growing strains between Israel and Diaspora Jewry, and the painful reality that many of these divisions are increasingly being felt within our own Jewish communities.

As I listened, I found myself returning to a teaching of Rabbi Hillel that Rabbi Jacobs shared:

If I am not for myself, who will be for me?But if I am only for myself, what am I?

For many Jews, especially since October 7, we have understandably gravitated toward the first half of Hillel's teaching. We have felt the need to stand up for ourselves. To defend Israel's right to exist. To confront antisemitism. To support fellow Jews in moments of fear and vulnerability.

And Hillel would surely affirm that instinct. But Rabbi Jacobs challenged us not to stop there.

If I am only for myself, what am I?

The second half of Hillel's teaching reminds us that Jewish responsibility extends beyond ourselves. We are called to care about the suffering of others. To remain attentive to questions of justice and human dignity. To resist the temptation to retreat entirely into our own pain.

Holding both truths simultaneously is not easy.

This tension was on vivid display this week at a conference of Reform rabbis and educators in New York. Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch argued passionately that a seminary which ordains anti-Zionist clergy has no future in America. Our movement cannot be indifferent to outcomes that betray our deepest commitments. HUC President Andrew Rehfeld pushed back, insisting that liberal education requires the freedom to question, even when students arrive at conclusions we find deeply troubling. To guarantee the right answer in advance, he argued, means abandoning the Enlightenment principles that gave birth to Reform Judaism in the first place.

Both men are asking a version of Hillel's question.

Hirsch asks: if we are not for ourselves, for our people, our movement, our commitments, who will be for us? Rehfeld asks: if we only enforce our own conclusions, if we allow no room for genuine inquiry, what kind of teachers are we? What kind of movement are we?

What strikes me is that Rabbi Hirsch is not a distant figure. He leads Stephen Wise Free Synagogue in New York, a Reform congregation not unlike our own. These debates are not happening in the abstract halls of academia. They are happening in communities like Beth Emeth, among rabbis like us, in the very movement we call home. The divide is not out there. It is here.

I will not resolve that debate in this letter. I am not sure anyone can resolve it, or that resolution is even the goal. But I find myself moved by the fact that two serious Jewish thinkers, in deep disagreement, are wrestling so urgently with the same question: what do we owe the Jewish future, and how do we prepare the next generation to carry it forward?

Perhaps that is why this moment feels so important. We live in a time that constantly pressures us toward certainty, toward ideological camps, toward simplistic answers. Yet Judaism has rarely thrived through simplicity. The Talmud preserves minority opinions not because they won, but because the argument itself has value. Our tradition calls us to hold competing truths in conversation and to remain in relationship with those who see things differently.

This Shabbat, we begin the Torah portion Nasso with the instruction: Nasso et rosh — "Lift up the head." The Torah could have simply said "count the people." Instead, it tells us to lift up each individual.

Every person matters. Every voice matters. Every soul matters. And yet every individual is counted as part of something larger than themselves.

Perhaps that is the challenge before the Jewish people today. To remain committed to our own people without becoming indifferent to others. To engage in passionate disagreement without abandoning one another. To hold fast to our convictions while remaining open to learning.

The Jewish future will not be secured by unanimity. It never has been. But we will secure it through our willingness to stay in relationship with one another, even when the questions are difficult and the answers are incomplete.

Shabbat Shalom, 

Rabbi Greg Weitzman