The Yom Kippur News Cycle: The War, the Yankees, and What Actually Matters

So let me get this straight. It’s Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish year. A 25-hour period of fasting, reflection, and atonement. And the biggest moral crisis facing a certain segment of the population in New York is whether to watch the Yankees play the Red Sox.

Rabbis are literally having to go on the record and say, "Record the game and go to Yom Kippur service. Don’t record the service and go to the game."

This is not a parody. This is a real headline.

It’s a beautiful, perfect snapshot of the absolute brain-breaking dissonance of modern life. We’re being asked to choose between God and Aaron Judge. One fan, a die-hard Red Sox guy, is worried that if he skips temple, God will not only make the Sox lose but will curse the Patriots, Celtics, and Bruins, too. It’s a bizarre choice. No, 'bizarre' doesn't cover it—this is a five-alarm dumpster fire of priorities.

It’s almost quaint, really. A throwback to 1965, when the big moral stand was Sandy Koufax refusing to pitch in the World Series. A clean, simple conflict. Man vs. Schedule. Faith vs. Fame. We could all wrap our heads around that one.

But that’s not the world we live in anymore, is it?

When "Symbolic Hunger" Looks Like a Sick Joke

The Hunger Games

Down in Los Angeles, Rabbi Sharon Brous is staring down a much uglier version of the same problem. She’s getting ready to lead her congregation, IKAR, through the same 25-hour fast. The sun will set in LA at 6:19 P.M., the fast will begin, and as she puts it, the first pangs of hunger will probably hit her around 9:00 a.m. the next morning.

And she says, flat out, that there’s "no way to separate that from the ache of those who are hungry in the world."

She’s talking about Gaza.

She’s talking about the famine that’s been raging since the Israeli goverment decided to seal off the strip and restrict humanitarian aid back in the spring. While some people are wrestling with their DVR settings for a baseball game, Brous is trying to figure out how to explain to her congregation that the symbolic hunger of their fast is happening against a backdrop of real, literal, mass starvation. A starvation enacted by the government of the Jewish state.

People are arguing about whether to watch baseball or pray for forgiveness, while an entire population is...

You see the problem here. The scale is just broken.

"Respectful Disagreement" or Just a Smarter Muzzle?

Welcome to the "Medium Tent"

So how do you handle that? How do you stand up in front of a room of people who are all over the map on this—some horrified by Israel's actions, others terrified by rising antisemitism and feeling like any criticism is a betrayal—and say anything meaningful?

Brous calls her solution the "medium tent."

It’s a great piece of branding, I’ll give her that. It’s not a "small tent" where everyone has to be a clone. And it’s not a "big tent" that welcomes, in her words, "people who advocate violence" or "dehumanize the other." It’s a medium tent. A curated space for "respectful disagreement."

My cynical translation? It’s a space for people who are willing to feel uncomfortable, but not too uncomfortable. A place where you can talk about the tragedy, as long as you use the right vocabulary and don't raise your voice. It’s the spiritual equivalent of a corporate HR diversity seminar.

And maybe that's the only way to keep a community from shattering into a million pieces right now. I don't know. Then again, maybe I'm the crazy one here. Maybe just showing up and trying to talk at all is a heroic act.

This isn’t just a synagogue problem, by the way. This is everywhere. Every family dinner table, every office Slack channel, every online forum is trying and failing to build its own "medium tent." We’re all just drawing lines in the sand and daring each other to cross them. It’s exhausting. It’s also why I barely use social media anymore, which is probably the only sane choice left.

Rabbi Brous talks about an "atrophying of our moral muscles." She says the Jewish community has been so afraid that they’ve "stopped speaking out when Israel's government behaves in ways that are fundamentally antithetical to our Jewish values."

She’s right. But it ain’t just her community. Those muscles are wasting away everywhere. We’ve been doomscrolling and shouting into the void for so long that the idea of applying a "strict moral analysis," especially to our own side, feels impossible. It’s easier to just pick a team. It’s easier to worry about the baseball game.

So as the sun sets in Jerusalem at 5:44 P.M., and in New York at 6:19 P.M., and London at 6:20 P.M., millions of people will begin a fast. They'll pray for forgiveness for the sins of the past year.

But the real, agonizing question isn't whether you'll be forgiven. It's what, precisely, you're asking forgiveness for. Missing a game? Or staying silent while the world burns?

Good Luck Squaring That Circle

At the end of the day, everyone is just looking for a story that lets them sleep at night. Some people find it in a box score, others in a prayer book. Rabbi Brous is trying to write a new one, this "medium tent" story. I'm just not sure anyone, including her, actually believes it can have a happy ending. It's a nice thought, but offcourse it is. Reality is a whole lot messier.

Reference article source：

• A rabbi reflects on her Yom Kippur message, as Israel's war in Gaza continues
• Gaza Flotilla may reach israel's waters on Yom Kippur
• NYC rabbis remind Jewish faithful not to ditch Yom Kippur services for Yankees-Red Sox series: ‘Record the game’