God never promised it would be easy.

This morning’s Torah portion tells the story of the banishment of Hagar and Ishmael. Sarah recognizes something untoward in the way that Ishmael is playing with her son. She demands that Abraham send him out into the wilderness with his mother.

When their supplies run out, Hagar places her son underneath a bush so she does not have to watch him die. God hears the cry of the boy and sends an angel to Hagar with a prophecy.

Fear not, for God has heeded the cry of the boy where he is. Come, lift up the boy and hold him by the hand, for I will make a great nation of him.

Then the angel reveals a well of water, and they are saved.

A midrash (Tanchuma Vayetzei 5:2) describes a scene that transpires in heaven, just before this moment. When God commands the angel to reveal the well, the angel objects: “Master of the Universe, why do you bring forth a well for this wicked person who will ultimately waylay travelers and wayfarers?”

The Holy One, blessed be He, retorts: “What is he right now? Is he not righteous? I judge a person only according to the moment at which he stands before me.”

The midrash derives this response from the Torah’s language: God has heeded the cry of the boy ba’asher hu sham – “in the place where he is.”

Midrashim often put into words their authors’ struggles with the Sacred Text. In this case, we witness the tension between the suffering of a child, for which any human with a heart must feel compassion and pity; and tribal protectiveness. This struggle is personified through Sarah versus Hagar, Isaac versus Ishmael.

The angel’s objection captures our defensive instinct to close ranks and protect our own. God ‘s rebuke expresses the universalism which seeks to break down barriers between peoples and treat individuals as they are, human beings made in the Divine image.

God does not suffer from human parochialism.

It is a particularly poignant midrash for us this year, conveying this tension between tribalism and universalism. I ask myself, in this moment: “Do I resonate more with the angel, or with God?”

As we celebrate Rosh Hashanah, welcoming 5785, it is a time for us to reflect on the ways in which we value peoplehood and humanity. Or is it peoplehood versus humanity?

One of the most beautiful expressions of this was described by Rav Abraham Isaac Kook over one hundred years ago, at a time which bore certain similiarities to our own.

Rav Kook is considered to be be the founder of religious Zionism. He was born and grew up in Russia in the second half of the nineteenth century. In 1905, he moved to Yaffo, in Palestine, then controlled by the Ottoman Emprire.

At the outbreak of the first World War, Rav Kook happened to be in Germany, where he was interned as an alien. He managed to escape and lived for the remainder of the war in London, stuck in exile, unable to return to Palestine.

It was a tumultuous time, full of danger, uncertainty, and change. The world was at war. Empires fell while nationalist movements reared their heads. Russia was aflame in revolution. A global pandemic was incubating. It was during this time period that Rav Kook wrote Shir Meruba, A Four-Fold Song.

He imagines four ways that a person might see themself; might orient their life and find meaning. He describes each of these four ways as a kind of song: the song of the self, the song of the nation, the song of humanity, and the song of the universe.

There is one who sings the song of oneself, and in themself findseverything, full spiritual satisfaction in its entirety.

There is another who sings the song of one’s people. He leaves the circle of his own individual self, because he finds it without sufficient breadth, without an idealistic basis. He aspires toward the heights, and he cleaves with a gentle love to the whole community of Israel. Together with her he sings her songs. He feels grieved in her afflictions and delights in her hopes. He contemplates noble and pure thoughts about her past and her future, and probes with love and wisdom her innerspiritual essence.

There is another who reaches toward more distant realms, and going beyond the boundary of Israel to sing the song of humanity. Her spirit extends to the wider vistas of the majesty of humanity in general, and its noble essence…

Then there is one who rises toward even wider horizons, until he links himself with all existence, with all God’s creatures, with all worlds, and he sings his song with all of them…

As Rav Kook describes so evocatively, each of us sings one of these four songs. He describes them as reflecting wider and wider perspectives, ever-expanding concentric circles.

What is my primary area of concern? Who do I care about most? Where do I invest my emotional energy? Form which wellsprings do I draw meaning and purpose in life?

Do I wake up each day to advance myself? Am I devoted to the Jewish people? Do I work for humanity? Or is my concern even more global?

Which song do I sing most strongly?

Rav Kook suggests that most people primarily sing one of these four songs. It is tempting to restrict our perspective to the narrowest of the concentric circles. Perhaps that is the song that most of us sing, most of the time.

This is the drive for self-preservation, for placing self over others.  It evokes the most famous teaching of Hillel the Elder in Pirkei Avot: 

אִם אֵין אֲנִי לִי, מִי לִי. “If I am not for myself, who will be for me?”

The next part of Hillel’s teaching warns of the risk of only focusing on the self

וּכְשֶׁאֲנִי לְעַצְמִי, מָה אֲנִי. “But if I am (only) for myself, what am I?”

Hillel suggests that a self-focused life is incomplete. Meaning and worth must include a concern for and commitment to others. But his teaching does not go so far as to distinguish how far that concern should extend: just to the Jewish people, to humanity, or to all of creation.

As we look back at the past year, I fear that we may have placed too great a focus on the universal, and not enough on the particular. Maybe we did not emphasize enough to our children how important it is to form our structures of meaning specifically around the history, values, and traditions of the Jewish people. We did not sufficiently emphasize that it is not only ok but necessary to feel particular connection to our Jewish brothers and sisters around the world.

We are now being taught that lesson. The borders that surround us are pressing in.

We are four days away from the one-year anniversary of the October 7 massacre, which changed the way Jewish people everywhere view ourselves as individuals, as part of the Jewish people, and within the wider society of humankind. 

Within hours of that horrific event, antisemitism had already begun its surge.

This past year has seen the international double standard against the world’s only Jewish state laid bare. We are still praying for the return of 97 hostages.

Many university campuses became unwelcome places for Jewish college students. We felt the need to further harden the barriers around our houses of worship and Jewish institutions, increasing our stress and fear.

So many experienced abandonment by friends, who could not bear to even have a relationship with someone who supports the legitimacy of the State of Israel.

And some of us painfully faced the conflict between the song of the nation and the song of humanity within our own families.

How have these forces, pushing in against us, affected our song?

After October 7, so many of us sought out one another, to be together, shed tears, express our grief, find solidarity —to experience some measure of comfort.

Many of us were surprised to find ourselves feeling connected to the Jewish people more profoundly than ever before.

This amplification of our song has not only been reactive. We are experiencing renewed eagerness to embrace Jewish tradition and practice. Participation in Jewish life is rising all over the world. 

Membership at Congregation Sinai is at its all-time high, along with the number of children learning in our religious school. What began as a defensive reaction has evolved into an awakening curiosity and eagerness to explore and find meaning in Judaism’s rich history and culture.

As we gather as a people to observe the new year, what are we to make of this seeming dissonance between Jewish peoplehood and universalism?

Rosh Hashanah is not a particularly particularistic holiday. It does not have an historic or symbolic connection to the Exodus from Egypt. It does not mark any moment in the history of the Jewish people. 

We describe it as Yom Hadin, the Day of Judgment. Not judgment for the Jewish people – but rather, judgment for all humanity. Unetaneh Tokef describes how “all who live on earth shall pass before You like a flock of sheep.”

A few lines later, we sing “On Rosh Hashanah it is written and on the fast of Yom Kippur it is sealed.” The fate of every living person in the year ahead is determined.

Rosh Hashanah is said to take place on the sixth day, the day on which God completed all the works of creation by forming humanity in the Divine image.

It is the most universal of Jewish holidays. Perhaps Rosh Hashanah is a holiday for singing the song of humanity, or the song of the universe, rather than the song of our people.

Does it have to be either/or? Must concern for the Jewish people come at the expense of concern for humanity, or vice versa? Let us return to Rav Kook’s Four Fold Song, which continues from where we left it. He imagines the rare individual who harmonizes the four competing melodies

…into one ensemble, each joining their voices… lending vitality and life to one another. They are sounds of joy and gladness, sounds of jubilation and celebration, sounds of ecstasy and holiness.

The song of the self, the song of the people, the song of humanity, the song of the universe continuously merged…

Rav Kook describes this four-part harmony as a “song of holiness.” It is the song of Yisrael, which, with the first two letters switched, spells Shir El – the song of God.

Rav Kook challenges us to merge our various identities. We start by asking: Which song do I primarily sing? Has my song changed in the past year?

With Israel at war, and the Jewish people threatened, is there space left in my heart to maintain my commitment to myself and my people, as well as to humanity and creation?

Rav Kook would argue that I do not have a choice. Humanity’s mission is to strive towards wholeness and perfection. Israel, like other peoples, has a unique contribution to make.

From the beginning, when God first revealed Godself to Abraham, our challenge as a people has always been to be a blessing to the world, as a distinct people, and through our commitment to Torah. 

For humanity to rise higher, we must be able to sing both songs. Rav Kook wrote:. “The upright person must believe in their own life.” He also wrote “the Love of Israel requires the love of the whole of humanity.”

Even when segments of humanity do not behave so lovingingly towards us.

We celebrate our new year with complicated emotions. We pray that our brothers and sisters still held hostage will return to their families embrace. We pray for God to protect our people who are at war, and to deliver the brave souls fighting to defend them.

We pray that we be strengthened in our communities and drawn closer as a people. We pray for love, connection, and healing within our families.

We pray for all people, everywhere, to learn to recognize the Divine sparks in one another. We pray for unity in humanity’s collective striving for wholeness, for each person and nation to contribute their own blessings to our shared task.

May all of these prayers blend together to produce a glorious masterpiece, the song of God, the Song of Songs.