Playing Together

Kol Nidre 5786

October 1^st, 2025

Rabbi Sydney Danziger

Masa Seattle

If you will indulge me for a moment, I want to walk you through a memory of mine. It’s a memory from my year in Israel as a first-year rabbinical student. A rather simple memory, but one that is so bright, and joy filled that it gives me hope for the future. As we sit here on Erev Yom Kippur and perhaps, God willing, the eve of the end of the war in Gaza, this is the memory that buoys me.

It was a sunny Spring afternoon in Jerusalem in 2009. Our studies at Hebrew Union College were finished for the day and a couple of my friends and I decided to go to a local park to practice for our upcoming student/faculty soccer match. When I say student/faculty soccer match, I am sure you are all envisioning a strange scene between a bunch of 20-something-year-old grad students running circles around a small group of geriatric and winded professors. Not quite…but I will get back to that later.

We reached our practice field in the park and set up two goals, but before the ball even hit the turf, three local kids swarmed us: “Can we play? can we play, please!?” One of them was a young teen, but the other two were no older than 9 or 10. We shrugged our shoulders, deciding that this would be our community service for the afternoon since we weren’t going to get any real practicing in. We were wrong. The local kids were good. It was three on three, us against them, and they trounced us. Throughout the game they yelled encouragements to each other and displayed incredible teamwork. After the game I asked how long they had been playing together. They looked at me strangely. This was the first time they had ever met each other. After talking with them more, we discovered that one of the children, Itzik, came from a more traditionally observant Jewish household in Jerusalem, the other, Itai, was completely secular, and the older boy? Ahmed was Palestinian.

As the sun began to set, my friends and I decided to head home, but the three boys chose to stay because Ahmed had agreed to teach the two younger ones how to ride his bike. When we got to the edge of the park, we heard a horrible crash. Itai had lost his balance on the bike, which was really too big for him, and slammed into the ground with a sickening smack. We ran over, worried that he may have broken something or hit his head. Ahmed abandoned his precious bike to help the younger boy. As we all circled around to assess his injuries, in what must have looked like a rugby scrum, I saw the injured boy holding his shoulder at a weird angle and immediately exclaimed “oy vey!” There was a pause, total silence, and then raucous laughter, from both the injured boy and his newfound friends. “You sound like my grandma.” Itai said. “How old are you? Like 90?” The other boys dissolved in a fit of laughter.

“Clearly, you’re fine” I snapped. And he was. He got up and they returned to their bike lesson with Ahmed, laughing and patting each other on the backs. And that is how my evening ended, being beaten at soccer by children who weren’t even bar mitzvah age and savagely mocked for being “that dorky American Jew.” But despite my utter humiliation, I was also feeling something else, a hopeful glimmer of something I couldn’t quite define.

Years later, when reflecting on this memory, I realized that I had experienced what I would now describe as Yerushalyim l’malah, a heavenly version of the holy city of Jerusalem, and a taste of olam ha’bah, the world as it should be, rather than olam hazeh, the world as it is. Ordinary kids from different backgrounds—adversarial backgrounds—simply playing together. Carefree and at peace. It stood in stark contrast to an incident that happened, just a few months before, when one of my classmates had been forced to take shelter behind a park bench as a Palestinian day laborer from East Jerusalem mowed down 3 pedestrians with his front-end loader.

A few weeks later, we faced off against the “faculty team,” which was anything but geriatric and mostly not faculty.  Comprised of two of our English born professors and the entire HUC maintenance staff, who were all young, fit, Arab Israelis. The “faculty” team, just like those kids in the park, had been playing soccer their entire lives. Their team captain, Salim, had even played semi-professionally.  Yet again, as you can imagine, we experience a humiliating defeat, but, just like before, I witnessed a kind of peaceful co-existence and camaraderie that many might find hard to imagine today.

I think a lot about those moments playing soccer during my year in Israel. Precious memories that remind me, no matter how bad things get, there is another way. I know it sounds naive, and three kids on a soccer pitch are not representative of the entire Arab/Israeli world, but I know that this fear and distrust isn’t innate. It’s not in our blood. I have to believe that Jews and Arabs, Israelis and Palestinians, are not destined to fight and kill each other for all time. This cannot be our fate.

What began with just a single afternoon with three local kids on a soccer field in Jerusalem, became for me a vision for what could be.

Glimpses of hope for that vision have been few and far between since Oct. 7^th. In my desperate search for them, I’ve read many fascinating books about the conflict and its roots. Two books were particularly gripping, but also excruciatingly gut wrenching: 10/7 written by Lee Yaron, a journalist with Ha’Aretz, Israel’s left leaning newspaper and “Ghost of a Holy War: The 1929 Massacre in Palestine that Ignited the Arab Israeli Conflict” By Yardena Schwartz, also a left leaning journalist. Both books are excellent, but you must have a strong constitution, and an even stronger stomach, to get through them. If you are looking for a left-leaning, kumbaya, “peace is possible” kind of read, as I was, you should probably look elsewhere. While reading these books, I had to take frequent breaks and read something lighter and more life affirming before diving back in. Both books expose the darkest, most depraved side of humanity and expose eerie similarities between the Hebron Massacre in 1929 and Hamas’s onslaught on 10/7. Reading them back-to-back (which I don’t necessarily recommend unless you are a masochist) really shook my faith in humanity. 

But both books are about more than just human atrocity. While much of each book focuses on human beings at their absolute worst, they also highlight a few human beings at their very best, risking life and limb to help friends, neighbors and even strangers. Writing about the 1929 Hebron Massacre, Schwartz notes that somewhere between 200 and 400 Jews were saved by their Arab neighbors, ordinary people like 75-year-old Abu Shaker who physically blocked rioters from entering a house harboring Jews. He lay in front of the door, refusing to move even after being stabbed in the leg by a member of the mob. He stayed in place, shouting that the attackers would have to go over his dead body to reach the house. Or Haj Eissa El Kourdieh, who saved 33 Jews by insisting they take refuge in his cellar. Outside, Arab women stood guard, defying the multitude that demanded the Jews be handed over.

Similarly, there are unsung Arab Israeli heroes who emerged on October 7^th.  Like Masad Armilat, an Arab Israeli who worked at a gas station near Sderot. When he heard gunshots on Oct. 7, instead of staying away, he ran toward the danger, collected wounded or fleeing people, brought them into his gas station, locked the doors, and used gas balloons to discourage attackers from entering. He saved 14 people that day. There was also Awad Darawshe, an Arab Israeli paramedic working with Yossi Ambulances. On October 7, he stayed at the site of the Nova music festival in southern Israel despite escalating violence, to help the wounded. He paid for this act of bravery and solidarity with his life. While I realize that these acts were rare and saved only a small number, it flies in the face of a disturbing narrative forming on the extreme far right in Israel that there are no “innocent” Palestinians.

In my final year of rabbinical school, I had a disturbing encountered with a colleague, who told me very bluntly and with a straight face that he thinks we should “get rid of all the Palestinians.” I was dumbstruck. This was a person studying to be a rabbi! How in the world could he say such a thing? He must be kidding? Right?

“Your kidding, right?”, I asked. 

No, he was not.

As you might imagine, this is a very fringe viewpoint, especially in the rabbinate, and particularly among the more progressive denominations. But as morally repugnant as his statement was, I am sure there are others who feel similarly within the Jewish world, and notably, in Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right coalition. Likewise, there are those in the Muslim world who wish the same fate for us Jews. 

It pains me that for two people who trace their lineage to the same ancient ancestor, Abraham, there are those in our respective communities who will enthusiastically and sometimes violently deny the humanity of the other. We should see each other as brothers and sisters, not animals or monsters. Avraham Avinu, Abraham our father, was a true believer in humanity’s innate goodness. In the story of the cities of Sodom and Gemorah, God vows to wipe out the inhabitants of these two cities because they are filled with wicked people. Abraham, wanting to believe that absolute wickedness is impossible, debates with God in what can only be seen as a kind of human/divine bidding war. Abraham convinces God not to destroy the cities if innocent people can be found therein. Abraham has the chutzpah to start with 50 and whittle his way down to just ten. He then says “Will you truly wipe out the virtuous with the wicked? Will the judge of all the Earth not do justly? Chalilah! Far be it from you”

As I contemplate these words, I feel our ancestors whispering to us from down the generations. “Will you wipe out the virtuous with the wicked? Chalilah! Far be it from you!”

Unlike the Sodom and Gemorah story, which ends in destruction because ten righteous cannot be found, I know there are innocent people on the other side of this conflict. Not just innocent, but truly righteous, and certainly more than ten.

Israeli author and journalist, Yossi Klein HaLevi, who leans center-right, recently wrote a blog for the Times of Israel in which he wrestles with the morality of this ongoing war. He writes:

Even when fighting an existential war against enemies without moral restraint, there are limits to what is morally permitted to the Jewish state… Because we have no choice. Because preserving our moral credibility is essential for our strength. Because we cannot let the haters determine the inner life of the Jewish people. Because engaging in moral introspection reminds us that Zionism has won and that, even though we are vulnerable, we are no longer victims. Because we owe an accounting of our actions to our friends who have stood with us. Most of all, because Judaism demands it.

Abraham had the courage to ask “will you wipe out the virtuous with the wicked” Chalilah! Far be it from you.” At this stage of the war, it is the same question we must ask ourselves.

This war needs to end for the rebuilding to begin. In just the last 72 hours, the Trump administration has put forward a plan that has overwhelmingly broad support from Arab countries and European allies (as the old saying goes, even the devil is right some of the time). If Hamas accepts, we may see our hostages coming home in the next few days. The siege on Gaza will end, Hamas will be disarmed, IDF reservist can return to their families and businesses, and suffering Gazans can start rebuilding their lives without the oppressive stranglehold of Hamas. It’s a comforting vision after such a horrific war. I am cautiously optimistic.

We are entering a new year with a lot of trepidation but also a lot of hope. As I read these words, the reality on the ground may have already shifted dramatically—for the better, or for the worst. Only the next few hours and days will tell, but regardless of the immediate outcome, a lasting peace must be our goal. Not winning or losing. This is not a soccer match. In war, everybody loses. The real question is not whether we are vanquished or victorious; it’s whether we can ever learn to play together again.

B’ezrat haShem and Inshallah, may God help to make it so. Amen