D’Var Torah
Rosh HaShanah Day 1 – 5787

What is our full potential? What is the very best that people are capable of? 

While the season of repentance urges us to face our sins and shortcomings honestly, the Mahzor also encourages us to imagine the fulfillment of the greatest of human capabilities. 

Drawing upon the visions of the prophets of ancient Israel, the Mahzor expresses one the most radical, and influential, concepts in all of human history: Moshiach – the Messiah – the true Divine leader – and Malkhut YHVH – the Sovereignty of G-d. 

Honestly, the idea of Moshiach has often made me uneasy. Growing up Jewish in a largely Christian society, I learned early how claims about the “true Messiah” could become claims that Jews were spiritually deficient. Jewish history has also taught us the dangers of false messiahs and messianic movements, from Bar Kochva to Shabbtai Tzvi. And in our own time, we can see how messianic ideologies motivate violence and cruelty.

So I approach messianism cautiously. But this year, I encountered a way of understanding Moshiach that has helped me see why this radical idea has remained so important.

I am inspired by the depiction of the Moshiach in Sefer Alei Shur, by Rabbi Shlomo Wolbe, of blessed memory. Rabbi Shlomo Wolbe was one of the great 20th century teachers of Mussar: a Jewish spiritual discipline dedicated to cultivating ethical character traits. 

In his magnum opus on Mussar titled Alei Shur, Rav Wolbe teaches that the entire point of creation (and of Judaism) is for the sake of developing the greatness of the human character which is rooted in our immense capacity for awareness, for compassion, and for ethical behavior. Rav Wolbe calls this shiur komato shel adam שיעור קומתו של האדם—the full stature, or full measure, of what a human being can become.

In Wolbe’s perspective, Torah was created to serve this goal of human development – to give us a blueprint for the cultivation of our capacities of wisdom, compassion, and generosity. Temptation was also created to serve the goal of our development. Every day we are given the chance to make decisions which can help us to realize our potential for morality and compassion. 

Our holy Biblical predecessors led humanity along the path towards the realization of our potential through their great spiritual consciousness and compassion. 

Avraham Avinu took a great step in his insight that there is One Creator of All – and this led him to lead a life of compassion and hospitality. 

Moshe Rabeinu continued the process by translating the Divine opposition to slavery and oppression into a system of laws meant to guide an entire nation towards a balance of justice and compassion. 

Like every human – Abraham and Moses were flawed. Yet, they were still capable of making great strides towards realizing human potential: שיעור קומתו של האדם. In this, they also model for us that we can refine our character, that we can achieve remarkable measures of compassion, generosity, and spiritual awareness. 

Similarly, Rav Wolbe claims that the Jewish idea of Moshiach represents an ultimate realization of what human beings are capable of. Moshiach is an immeasurable exemplar of compassionate ethics – a leader by virtue of the spiritual authority of compassion. 

He says, Moshiach will be someone who reaches such a state of elevated spiritual consciousness that they would be able to demonstrate to others the righteousness of their ways – without any resort to force or coercion, but rather purely through the moral authority of compassion. Through being a loving, living example, Moshiach will awaken us all to the truth of the greatness we are capable of. 

This can only happen when people are persuaded by the power of compassion – not by force, violence, or compulsion. 

The prophetic vision of Moshiach is anchored in the belief that for anyone to truly reach full human potential, then everyone will need to be treated with unqualified compassion. 

This is because none of us becomes fully human in isolation. Our character is formed in a web of relationships. A society built on humiliation, fear, and domination deforms everyone—not only its victims, but also those who benefit from those systems.

So, to realize our full human potential, Moshiach will guide us toward a world in which we turn to loving-kindness to help each other realize our potential. In the straightforward language of the ancient psalmist (89:3): Olam Hesed Yibaneh – a world of loving-kindness will be built. 

While this vision may seem farfetched, Rav Wolbe points out that in relatively recent Jewish history many of our greatest spiritual leaders did not hold official positions of communal authority. Many of these great “rabbis” earned a living in business, accounting, or medicine, yet even in their lifetime they became regarded as spiritual authorities by virtue of the examples they set by the way they lived their lives and treated others. 

By invoking these great leaders who achieved their stature through spiritual awareness and ethical character, Rav Wolbe conveys to us that there is an aspect of Moshiach which is accessible to others, to ordinary folks. Even though it is unlikely that any one of us will be the Moshiach, we are all capable of cultivating a measure of the redemptive qualities associated with Moshiach. 

Namely, we can all seek to help everyone around us reach towards their full potential through the power of compassion, honesty, and integrity. We can all acknowledge that for us to reach our full flourishing, this will require everyone around us to also realize their potential. 

We can strive to allow this awareness of our interconnection to permeate our behavior such that we seek to influence others through compassion and not through coercion. 

Seriously, imagine with me. What would it look like if we lived in a world where we realized that full human flourishing is the opposite of a zero-sum-game?

• How different would our workplaces be if we all truly saw each other as collaborators and not competitors?
• How would our schools change if we understood that the flourishing of any one child is limited if all children are not flourishing?
• How might our family dynamics and our community organizations (like synagogues) change if we each accepted full responsibility for our part in creating a world of loving-kindness through our behavior?

This is the hope of the prayers we find in our High Holiday Mahzor. We pray that every living creature with breath in our lungs throughout the whole world will recognize that the only true authority in the world is G-d – and that G-d’s true power lies in the creative force of loving-kindness! We remind ourselves that we are capable of working towards this dream. 

Even though this dream seems so far from where we’ve been in 5786, the prayers of Rosh haShanah urge us to allow ourselves to hope that 5787 really can be different.

Even though we will almost certainly not realize this vision of full human flourishing in 5787, our holiday season encourages us to take seriously the possibility that we can each contribute greatly to this goal in the year to come. 

We can treat everyone as holy; model overwhelming compassion in a way that can spread to those around us so that our circles of family, friends, and community can truly become more compassionate, honest, and generous. 

When we come across all too rare examples of people who seem to be living out a version of this ethos, we can lift up their voices and take their messages to heart. 

In that spirit, as I was studying Rav Wolbe’s inspiring depiction of Moshiach, two men from Eretz Yisrael came to mind, whose voices you may have heard recently in one of their many interviews: Maoz Yinon and Aziz Abu Sarah.

These two men, one Israeli and the other Palestinian, know immense personal grief as a result of the conflict in the Land. 

Maoz is from a family who built the first kibbutzim in the Negev along the border with Gaza. On October 7th, his parents were murdered – as were some of his closest friends, many of the people with whom he grew up in Kibbutz Nir Am. 

Aziz is from East Jerusalem and as a young boy during the first Intifada threw stones along with his older brother. Then, his brother was arrested, beaten, tortured, and soon after he was released from detention, he died as a result of untreated trauma to his internal organs. This is a story that mirrors those of many of the people with whom Aziz grew up in Jerusalem. 

Yet, in the face of unimaginable loss and grief, Maoz and Aziz refuse to be enemies and instead choose to be brothers. In every platform they can find, they insist that if we treat everyone with respect and compassion, eventually the world will awaken to the truth that violence, force, and coercion will never bring true peace, safety, or redemptive flourishing.

They are not politicians – and if they ran in this month’s election in Israel they probably would not earn a single seat in the Knesset. But, in fact, that’s precisely how Rav Wolbe understands the Messianic process working: not primarily through the institutions of official politics and power. 

Here is how Maoz and Aziz describe their vision in their recent book The Future is Peace: (p2-3)

“We both know the agony of losing those we love most to this conflict. We understand that in the face of suffering and grief, when so many lives have been lost and families shattered, talking about peace can feel too vulnerable – dangerous, even. When each side believes that the other is a threat to its existence, talk of peace can feel like a betrayal of one’s people. Wherever we look in the world, we find these growing divides. Siloed into a false mentality of us versus them, we perpetuate zero-sum arguments fed to us by the politics of fear. The biblical book of Proverbs says, “Where there is no vision, the people perish.” And today, we are too often sold a vision that leads to more violence, instead of one that leads to harmony and a strategy for lasting peace. But there is another way. 

Peacebuilders have been marginalized, both at home and abroad, for far too long. We are not invited to sit at negotiation tables or included in international summits with those making decisions on behalf of our peoples. We are used to being dismissed as dreamers and mocked as being naive. Yet we are realists. We know that bombs will not bring quiet, walls will not protect us, and war will not bring security, or that any strategy to end the horror of this conflict can succeed without dreamers and visionaries at the vanguard.”

I invoke the examples of Maoz and Aziz not because they solve the complex political questions of the Middle East, but because they illustrate the kind of moral authority Rav Wolbe is describing. The vision of Maoz and Aziz moves me to believe that perhaps what Rav Wolbe describes is possible. 

If Maoz and Aziz, even while living through the ongoing grief of war in eretz yisrael, are capable of choosing a magnanimous path of compassion and empathy, then surely we are capable of rising above our instincts to anger and violence and – instead – embracing the redemptive path of unending hesed – of kavod haBriot – of dignifying every human being with the respect we all deserve.

So – my prayer on this first day of this new year – is please, let us be a part of this grand, radical hope. Despite all of the reasonable doubts we may have, let us each play our part in pursuing the great dream of our tradition – the dream of a world in which we can truly realize the full potential of humanity, shiur komato shel haAdam. Oh G-d, please strengthen our hearts to serve You through cultivating the quality of compassionate moral authority that can spread throughout the world. 

Bimherah B’Yameinu.