Empathy: The Jewish Superpower Yom Kippur Morning 5786

Rabbi Daniel Gropper, Community Synagogue of Rye

When I sit with students to prepare for b'nei mitzvah, I ask them a series of three questions. The first is, "What do you like about being Jewish?" The answers usually include “being part of something larger than themselves or on tactile things like food, family, and holiday celebrations. The second is, "What do you find difficult about being Jewish?" Before October 7th, the answer was usually fasting-- or fear of fasting-- on Yom Kippur.  Nowadays their concerns have shifted to war and antisemitism.  And the third? "What do you think is the essence of Judaism?" This is a much harder question. I often have to lead students to think in terms of the morals and values that underpin much of our behaviors—values like justice, righteousness, compassion, loving kindness and above all, empathy. 

Last spring I asked these questions to a young man who had just starred in an off-Broadway play. He spent countless hours raising thousands for Broadway Cares Equity Fights AIDS. The more we talked, he came to realize that his dedication to support the cause came from core Jewish values, specifically chesed and rachamim. These two might best be translated as empathy—the emotions we feel when we sense another's pain, joy, embarrassment, elation, or shame. Those feelings that connect us to others.  At that moment, this young man realized he understood the ikar, the essence of Judaism.

Empathy has recently come under attack. A Christian theologian published a book this year entitled "The Sin of Empathy." Empathy, he argues, demands that "we inhabit the feelings of another person, which doesn't help the sufferer." He offers a simple analogy: If someone is drowning in the river, empathy asks us to jump in alongside them, putting both at risk. Whereas sympathy says, "I'll keep my distance, stay on firm ground and throw you a life preserver." His analogy might sound reasonable on the surface, but in practice, it dismisses the cries of victims and excuses indifference and cruelty. 

This thinking is used to justify some strange policies in his church. For example, the pastor claims that women’s natural tendency to “excessive” empathy is why women shouldn’t be ordained. Let me just say that I have little empathy for that argument. 

Going further, another conservative Christian podcaster said: "Empathy is dangerous. Empathy is toxic. Empathy will align you with hell." And a third said, "Empathy needs to be struck from Christian vocabulary." Strong words for an emotion and behavior that Jesus himself so emphasized in his ministry. But then, as soon-to-be-cancelled talk show host and devout Catholic, Stephen Colbert, said, "this sounds like a Christianity even Jesus wouldn't recognize."

What is going on? Why is the idea of sensing another's pain and then feeling drawn to help them—a very human instinct--suddenly the object of so much ire? Why, for example, would Elon Musk say that the fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy?

This question feels particularly pertinent when it comes to Israel and the ongoing war with Gaza. For some, to have or show empathy is seen as weakness. It's not. Not having empathy is NOT Jewish. As Rabbi Angela Buchdahl courageously stated on Rosh HaShanah: "Many of us whose hearts are so aligned with our Israeli brothers and sisters, so finely attuned to the dangers they face, have become callous to a generation of Ishmael's children, cast from their homes, wandering in the desert, many of them without enough to eat or drink.” We have to remember: This war is not the fault of the children of Gaza. Regardless of what they are taught in school, they did not start this war. Whether the hungry children of Gaza number in the hundreds or in the hundreds of thousands matters far less than the simple fact that there are children who are suffering and desperate. That should pull at our heartstrings. That demands our empathy.

Rabbi Buchdahl continued: "We can feel brokenhearted for the suffering of the children of Isaac and Ishmael. Indeed, we must... We need to understand that feeling empathy for the other is not a betrayal of our side. It is not disloyalty.” Empathy is not a zero sum game.

Imagine being an Israeli who is caught in this quagmire of endless war and violence; imagine being a hostage who has endured almost two years in the dungeons of Gaza– or being a hostage family who has waited and wondered in vain about their fates; imagine being the parents of a child serving the IDF, fighting a war they’d rather be over. Imagine being a reservist who has been away from his family and job for hundreds of days. And imagine being the parent, the spouse, the child, or the sibling who will never see their loved ones again.

And at the same time, imagine being a Palestinian who was dragged into a fight he’d rather not be involved in or an Arab Israeli who just wants to be a good citizen in the land of her birth. Imagine being a Palestinian of the West Bank who is the target of settler violence; imagine being one of those who continues to work for peace despite the Sisyphean task ahead of him?  Are we capable of showing an empathy that is large enough and expansive enough for all this? I think so. I hope so. 

But you know who I cannot conjure much empathy for?  The zealots and the radicals on all sides: members of the Israeli government who insist on prolonging this war (even with a potential deal on the table); settlers who resort to violence in the name of a Judaism I do not recognize; Jews who harden their hearts while they litigate history to justify Israel's actions; and other Jews who turn on their own people in the name of human rights. Above all, I have zero empathy for Hamas who, in their religious fundamentalism, only want to murder every Jew between the river and the sea. The work for me, on this Day of Atonement, is not to try to understand or to empathize with these groups. My work is to not become so hard hearted, that I say to myself, that these zealots are so beyond the pale, that they cannot atone and redeem themselves. For as our tradition teaches, “God does not seek the death of sinners but that they turn from their ways and live.” (Hosea)

So what exactly is empathy and how does it differ from sympathy? Author Brené Brown explains: "Empathy fuels connection, sympathy drives disconnection."

Brown points out that, “Empathy is feeling WITH people.” And here's what it looks like: when someone's in a deep hole and they shout out from the bottom, "Hey, I'm stuck, it's dark, I'm overwhelmed," empathy looks down and says, "Hey," and climbs down, and says. "I know what it's like down here, and you're not alone."

Sympathy is: "Ooh! That's bad, huh? You want a sandwich?"

Acting with empathy is a choice, and it's a vulnerable choice, because in order to connect with you, I have to connect with something in myself that knows that feeling.

In the face of another’s pain, so many of us try to make the other feel better. We offer advice. We bring food and gifts. We do things to shield ourselves from feeling their pain. We do things to shield ourselves from feeling our own pain. We use drugs, alcohol, food, sex, porn. We exercise excessively, we shop excessively, we work excessively. But that doesn’t help. What makes something better is a connection. So the next time someone trusts you with something difficult, and you don’t know what to do, try this. Look them in the eyes and say, "I don't even know what to say right now. I'm just so glad you told me." Just that can make a world of difference. 

There’s a famous passage in the Babylonian Talmud that reads like a rabbinic version of "Name That Tune." Various historical figures try to distill Judaism into its essence. Rabbi Simlai starts with 613 mitzvot. King David reduces them to 11. Isaiah brings it down to 6. Micah counters with 3. Rabbi Akiva does it in one,“Love your neighbor as yourself.” So does Ben Azzai, “We are all made in the image of God.” 

Who wins? Well, it’s a rabbinic text, so the rabbis do. But which one? Akiva or Ben Azzai? In classic Jewish response: they both do. “How?” you might ask. Well, loving your neighbor as yourself is the action, the what. Seeing the other as made in the image of God is the why. It’s the belief that leads to that action. Why do we love our neighbor - even with all the challenging questions that commandment raises? Because our tradition stresses that every human being is created b'tzelem Elohim—in the image of God. 

My teacher Tomer Persico has written a remarkable book called "In God's Image: How Western Civilization Was Shaped by a Revolutionary Idea." His research shows that this biblical concept—that all humans are made in the image of  God —is the foundation of everything Western civilization holds dear: individual dignity, human rights, equality, liberty, and democracy. All this, he says, Judaism brought to the world (along with the ideas of heaven and Shabbat). 

Tomer points out that in Mesopotamian societies, you could trade life for money. If someone killed your son, you could accept payment instead of justice. People were punished for the sins of others—if I killed someone's son, my son would be executed in return, even though he was innocent.

The Torah revolutionized this. "Children will not be punished for the sins of their parents.” “Parents will not be punished for the sins of their children. Each will be held accountable for their own sin." This is a direct contradiction of Hammurabi's Code. The Bible is saying: each person is a world unto themselves, significant and sacred. Why? Because we are each made B’tzelem Elohim, in the Divine Image.

When Christianity adopted this idea and spread it throughout the Roman Empire, it slowly transformed civilization. No longer were heroes defined as brutal warriors who glorified violence. The new hero was the one who showed compassion, who would endure suffering for truth, who valued the dignity of every person.

This idea—that we are all created in God's image—is the source of empathy. It's what makes us see the stranger not as other, but as kin. It's what compels us to care for those beyond our tribe, our family, our people. Empathy is Judaism’s superpower. It is what that Bar Mitzvah boy learned when he raised all that money for Broadway Cares.

Sadly, we live in an age where caring about others' suffering is now dismissed as "virtue signaling" or “Wokeness.” Where showing compassion is called weakness. Where the capacity to feel another's pain is labeled as toxicity. This is not just an attack on empathy. It is an attack on the bedrock of Western civilization itself.

This creates not just a political crisis but a spiritual one. When we lose empathy, we lose our humanity. When we stop seeing others as created in God's image, we become capable of unspeakable cruelty. When we stop loving our neighbor the way we want to be loved and instead see the world as us vs. them, we undo the social compact at the heart of Western civilization. We run the risk of returning to a Hobbesian world that is “nasty, brutish, and short.”

Rachel Goldberg-Polin, whose son Hersch was kidnapped and then held captive for eleven months before being murdered by Hamas, would understandably lack empathy for Gazans. I continue to be in awe of her. After Hersch was murdered she said, "I can feel bad for the innocents in Gaza, because my moral compass still works." This from a mother whose son was tortured and executed in a tunnel. She understood that empathy is not finite but expansive. That caring for others' children doesn't diminish care for our own.

This past summer, I experienced this truth firsthand. I spent nearly a week with 30 other faith leaders at the Modern Elder Academy: Zen Buddhists, Christian ministers, Muslim and Hindu faith leaders, and rabbis.

One exercise asked us to become very honest and vulnerable. We placed stickers on our shirts expressing hard truths about ourselves. Standing in silence, we stared into each other's eyes for 10 seconds before looking at their stickers. It felt like 10 minutes.

Here's what I learned: regardless of race or gender, when you look into another's eyes, all you see is their humanity staring back at you.

Two participants said things that made my EQ, my empathy quotient shoot up. One, a Black Episcopalian minister, said, "That was the longest I've ever looked into the eyes of a white man." Another, a Muslim scholar of East Asian descent, said, "That's the first time I've looked at others and they didn't avert their gaze."

At that moment I understood something profound about what it means to truly see an other—and why it matters so desperately for our world today. Seeing others, being present for them and understanding their pain is what love truly is. It's what it means to be truly human, it is what empathy is all about.

This year at CSR, we're leaning into the practice of really seeing each other, of hearing one another, of learning each other's stories. Our mission statement says it clearly: “to be a caring Jewish community.” This isn't just a phrase hanging in our lobby on that new piece of art —it's our sacred work.

We're doing this through our Modern Mavens, where midlifers gather to share their journeys and support one another. Through our work with Resetting the Table, learning to have difficult conversations with grace. Through SAJE, where we tell our stories and discover our shared humanity. In our Jewish Information Class, we won’t just fill our minds but will grow our souls. Even in our 7th grade - not always the most empathetic age - we begin each session with connection questions like, "If you really knew me right now, you'd know that..."

These aren't just programs—they're spiritual practices. They're how we strengthen our empathy muscles.

Chris Voss, who for 25 years served as the FBI's lead international kidnapping  negotiator, teaches that empathy is a skill, not just an emotional characteristic. For those who see empathy as soft and weak, Voss adds an adjective: tactical empathy. If you understand that feeling the heart of another helps you achieve your goals, then you'll practice it. And here's the beautiful part: practicing tactical empathy helps you become genuinely empathetic.

As Voss says, “Empathy is a highly evolved application of emotional intelligence.” Besides, it’s also good for business. A 2021 study found that employees who report having managers with empathic leadership skills are more likely to be innovative, engaged and resilient. According to one recent survey, toxic workplace culture, not compensation, is the leading reason for employee turnover. Empathy, applied with ethical integrity, is a driver of performance, not a drag on it.

You know what this means for us sitting here today? It means we can't actually fix ourselves in isolation. Your spiritual health is tied up with the person sitting next to you, with the person who cuts your hair, with the person you pass on the street.

Look around this room. When you were sitting shiva, did others show up? When a baby was born, did your friends pitch in? That help, love, and concern meant something to you. But it did something else—everyone who exited your home left feeling better too. Not because they did a good deed and got to feel righteous, but because your pain was actually their pain, and helping heal it helped heal something in themselves.

Empathy might be under attack right now, but I believe if we want to begin righting this ship—and let's admit it, in this unforgiving, polarized age, this ship is not in calm waters—the only way forward is to begin with a big dose of empathy, of loving your neighbor as yourself, of seeing them made in the image of God; even if it's hard, even if it's uncomfortable. That’s not weakness. It’s moral strength

For some of you, this is the last sermon you'll hear until next Rosh Hashanah. So here's what I want you to remember: loving your neighbor isn't just a nice thing to do. It's how you complete yourself. It's how you become fully human. 

In a world that often seems divided, where differences can easily overshadow our shared humanity, we must remember that we are all part of a greater whole. The song "One" by U2 resonates with this idea beautifully. It reminds us that despite our differences, we are called to unity—that we are stronger together, that our empathy is a bridge to healing, and that the love we extend to others enriches our own lives.

Cue Music: The opponents of empathy might call it weakness. Our Torah sees it as our superpower.

May this year bring us closer to that truth. And may we find our way back to each other, again and again.

G'mar chatimah tovah.