It’s All Of Us, Whether You Like It Or Not: Judaism, Zionism, and Peoplehood©

Parashat Nizavim 2025/5785 - Rabbi David Baum

I was interested in watching Hacks — I’d heard good things. But after the Emmys on Sunday night, I thought, if I haven’t started by now, maybe I won’t. Because instead of comedy, what caught my attention was controversy. Hannah Einbinder, one of the stars, ended her acceptance speech with: “Go birds, Forget ICE, and free Palestine.”

She later explained backstage, “I feel like it’s my obligation as a Jewish person to distinguish Jews from the state of Israel because our religion and our culture is such an important and longstanding … institution that is really separate to this sort of ethno-nationalist state.”

But, how can I square this with the following: 

Hannah Einbinder is not just “Jew-ish,” but fully Jewish in her upbringing and expression. She grew up at Temple Isaiah in Los Angeles, had a bat mitzvah themed like an awards show, and said of her Torah chanting, “Ve’ahavta — this is my jam. Let’s rock.” For her, Judaism was music, art, love, and faith: “I’ve been religious since I was a child. I have had a personal connection to God since I was a kid.” This is the same Hannah Einbinder who, on the Emmy stage this week, spoke out about Gaza. Agree or disagree with her politics — I know I do — her words came from a profoundly Jewish place, rooted in Torah, prayer, and the imperative to love and care.

But, how can I square her love of Judaism, and her mission to fulfill what she calls her obligation as Jewish person, to distinguish Jews and Judaism from the state of Israel, and, separate herself from 7 million Jews living in Israel and Zionist Jews like us living in America? 

Honestly, I don’t know how you felt, but hearing a Jewish actress yell Free Palestine didn’t feel like I should re-think my stances, it just felt like another gut punch. Here’s more fodder for the antisemites who are going to call us baby killers in the parking lot. 

But then, I remembered, whether we like it or not, and whether she likes it or not, we are part of the same people, and its because of this week’s parashah that we are bound together:

“You stand this day, all of you, before the LORD your God—your tribal heads, your elders and your officials, all the men of Israel, your children, your wives, even the stranger within your camp, from woodchopper to waterdrawer—to enter into the covenant of the LORD your God, which the LORD your God is concluding with you this day, with its sanctions; to the end that He may establish you this day as His people and be your God, as He promised you and as He swore to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. I make this covenant, with its sanctions, not with you alone, but both with those who are standing here with us this day before the LORD our God and with those who are not with us here this day.”

The commentators were puzzled by this statement by Moses: why another covenant? We already had Sinai, we already reaffirmed at the Mishkan, so why gather the people again?

According to the Orach Chayim, Rabbi Hayyim ben Moshe ibn Attar (1696-1743), the purpose of the covenant in Nitzavim was to bind the Israelites in mutual responsibility for one another’s observance of the commandments. Each Jew must work to prevent others from stumbling, but this obligation applies only to public sins (haniglot), not to hidden ones (hanistarot), which remain between the individual and God. 

The phrase “you are standing here today” (atem nitzavim hayom) is understood as “appointed over,” emphasizing that every Israelite holds a degree of authority and responsibility within their own sphere. By adding the word kulchem (“all of you”), Moses underscored that this responsibility extends to every member of the community. 

Drawing on Shabbat 54, the Orach Chayim explains that anyone who can protest wrong doing but fails to do so is considered complicit, though the scope varies—leaders bear responsibility for their tribes or cities, while each person has authority within their household.

This statement gives us pause when think about the comments Jews make “as a Jewish person.” And, I like to give the benefit of the doubt, always, so perhaps she was truly looking out for us? Maybe she read the Orah Charm’s commentary and was speaking out as a leader?

And what was her high holiday message to us, the Jews watching around the world? If you’re a Jew, you should be ashamed of Israel. Do Teshuvah and renounce the ethno-state. 

I don’t know about you, but that isn’t really a unifying statement. I don’t know how many people will come to shul for that sermon. 

But with all due respect, a Hollywood acceptance speech is not what binds the Jewish people together, and frankly, it shouldn’t separate us either. Speeches like that may win headlines, but they do not build covenant, they do not sustain a people, and they do not connect us to the generations who prayed facing Jerusalem.

What has connected us, across generations and lands? In my eyes, it has always been Israel: either the actual land, or the idea of the land. It is what has always bound us together, with the Torah, morality, at its center. In every minyan around the world, Jews had the words of the Torah, and the words of the prayer book with its longing for Jerusalem and Zion. 

And yet, there is are many many more voices in our tradition, and yes, even today, just as insistent, that says Judaism and Zionism are inseparable. 

Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch, in his article Judaism and Zionism Are Inseparable, reminds us that from the very first words to Abraham in Genesis 12, God ties our people to both nationhood and land. Every time we pray for Jerusalem, every time we read of return, we affirm that Judaism is not just religion but peoplehood, and not just peoplehood but rooted in the Land of Israel.

Herzl put it bluntly: “We are a people, one people. We shall live at last as free men on our own soil… Whatever we attempt for our own benefit will redound mightily and beneficially to the good of all mankind.”

Hirsch insists that Zionism didn’t invent a new philosophy — it restored the essence of Judaism. He writes:

“These two foundational principles of Judaism — nationhood in the Land of Israel — accompanied us throughout the centuries of dispersion. Unlike every nation of antiquity that lived by our side, we did not disappear when our national sovereignty was dissolved. Miraculously and unprecedentedly, we learned to adapt and survive.”

Herzl, too, saw this with almost prophetic clarity: “Our enemies have made us one whether we will it or not. Affliction binds us together and thus, united, we suddenly discover our strengths.”

And Hirsch concludes:

“Judaism absent Jewish peoplehood is not Judaism; it is something else. One without the other diminishes both. Whenever Jews abandoned their commitment to Am Yisrael, they eventually drifted away.”

This week’s parashah is like a mirror to the situation we are facing today, or that we face every year: they are about to enter into a new land, to cross over a boundary from one place to another, together as a people; and we, are about to embark on a journey not in place, but in time, from one year to another, together, as a people. 

There will be many different types of Rosh Hashanah services this year, some in synagogues, some in auditoriums, some in classrooms, some in bars, some outdoors, but you will hear the tune we all know to Avinu Malkeinu being sung at every service and some version of the Unetaneh Tokef will be read. 

All of us, from Jews in Hollywood, California, to Jews in far off places around the world, including Israel, are part of that same journey, whether we like it or not. 

So here’s the truth: you can try to separate Judaism from Zionism, but you cannot separate yourself from us. I hope that Hannah sees this in the 7 million Jews who live in Israel, the only state in the world where they are truly welcomed as free people, for the first time in 2000 years. 

Whether we like it or not, we are bound to the same covenant, kulchem nitzavim hayom, all of us stand here today. Some among us may deny the land, but they cannot deny the people. They may reject Israel, but Israel will not reject them in their time of need. There will always be a place waiting for them when them realize that our future, like our past, is written in the same story: a people, a Torah, and a land.