Sermon given on Kol Nidre, September 20, 2026.

Kol Nidre 2026 - Moral Courage

In 1944, Nazi forces had conquered wide swaths of Europe and had established large Prisoner-of-War camps for the almost 100,000 Allied forces who were captured by Germany during the fighting.

Roddie Edmonds, then 25 years old, was captured and held captive along with hundreds of other Americans in one such camp. He was imprisoned for months, and became a natural leader among the prisoners as the highest-ranking non-commissioned officer held at the camp. The Nazis took note of him and the respect other prisoners gave him.

On January 27, 1945, Edmonds was summoned forward by the Nazi officers in charge of the camp. He was commanded to point out which of the American prisoners-of-war were Jewish, and the implications of the deadly order were clear. 

Edmonds, a Methodist from Tennessee, famously replied: “We are all Jews here.” 

In 1901, Ho Feng-shan was born in the Hunan province of China. He was diligent and hardworking, and rose in the ranks of the civil service until he achieved the post of consul general in Vienna, Austria in the 1930s, and a doctorate. After Kristallnacht, the Chinese national issued hundreds of visas to Jews to escape to Shanghai. Though his superiors gave him direct orders to stop issuing the visas and threatened him, Dr. Ho refused to cease. In fact, he redoubled his efforts, personally signing thousands of visa permits for Jews fleeing for their lives, earning the ire of the Chinese government and ultimately losing his position and his reputation. 

In the Netherlands in 1920, an Austrian girl named Hermine was taken in by Dutch foster parents. After finishing high school, she became a secretary at a spice firm, married, and came to be known as “Miep Gies”. After the Nazis took control in the Netherlands, Miep took in and hid her Jewish boss, Otto Frank, and the rest of his family including his daughter Anne for two years while also supporting the organized Dutch Resistance, at direct risk of her own life.       

And finally, on December 14, 2025, in an attack for which ISIS has since claimed responsibility, two gunmen attacked Jews at Archer Park in Bondi Beach, Australia. Amidst the carnage, incredible footage emerged of an unarmed bystander tackling one of the gunmen to the ground and disarming him, saving Jewish lives while being injured himself in the process.

The man’s name was Ahmed al-Ahmed, a 43-year-old Muslim of Syrian descent. He has been hailed as a hero by Jewish institutions around the globe. Rabbi Yehoram Ulman of Bondi Beach described al-Ahmed’s appearance and actions that day as “miraculous” and “holy”.

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Edmonds, Ho, Gies, and al-Ahmed. These four people were raised in different faiths, different countries, and speaking different languages. They had different habits, different favorite foods, different pet peeves, different hobbies, different levels of education. 

And yet, when forces beyond their control placed them in extreme, decisive moments, they embodied moral courage, and in doing so, they each saved Jewish lives.

Edmonds, Ho, Gies, and al-Ahmed were ordinary people living ordinary lives– and, when it really counted, they acted extraordinarily. 

I share their stories today not only because it is important to honor and remember those whose bravery has saved Jewish lives, at any time in history,

But also because we are yet again living in a time, as Jews, where the joy we want to feel at being Jewish– the celebrations we want to share with friends and family, the pride in our heritage and traditions that we want to wear around our necks or chat openly about with coworkers or post about online– that joy coexists alongside the knowledge that hatred is yet again on the rise, and that our people are yet again one of the targets.

Many of us in this room have had to have horrible conversations within our families these last few years– conversations wondering, which of our friends would hide us, if it came to it? Where would we run, if we had to? Who would we trust to protect us? Who would risk their lives to keep us safe, today?

That we have had these conversations ourselves, and know how scary it can be, helps us to have a tiny glimpse into the frightening experiences of the Jews who were helped by Edmonds, Ho, Gies, and al-Ahmed. Each of the Jews they rescued, assisted, or saved knew what it was like to ask those questions– and each of them had their answer. Each of them was helped by a non-Jew with absolutely nothing to gain and absolutely everything to lose.

Yad Vashem lists 28,707 individuals as formally being “Righteous Among the Nations”, as having knowingly put themselves at direct risk in order to save Jewish lives specifically during the Holocaust. Edmonds, Ho, and Gies are among these thousands of Righteous. Yet the number of Righteous is assuredly far greater in reality. This is for many reasons: in some cases, long-kept secret identities helped protect Jewish children for years after World War 2 had ended. In others, some of the Righteous hid their bravery even from their own families. In others, some of the Righteous eschewed the limelight and declined to be publicly honored or thanked, even by Yad Vashem, because of deep moral and religious convictions. And in some cases, the Righteous themselves were captured, and punished, sometimes with death, for helping Jews– before their heroism could be recorded. 

It is unlikely that we will ever know the exact number of individuals who defied the Axis powers in order to help our ancestors and other minorities targeted by the Nazis. But what we DO know for certain is that despite the military might of the Nazis;

and despite the poisonous propaganda of the Axis powers;

there was also, from the beginning, a strong, stubborn, defiantly compassionate undercurrent of moral courage, worldwide, that fought back against the encroaching hatred of Nazism– and that moral courage persisted even after the Shoah had ended. 

The indefatigable, universal nature of this moral courage is also noteworthy. 

It defies logic, defies safety, defies ease, defies comfort– and it is strongly connected to a person’s sense of self in relation to all others. 

Until her death, Miep Gies resisted attention or accolades for her actions in hiding and protecting the Frank family, simply saying, “I am not a hero– I just did what any decent person would have done….. Even an ordinary secretary or a housewife or a teenager can, within their own small ways, turn on a small light in a dark room. ”     

In broken English, al-Ahmed told Australian press that, quote “My soul asked me to do that… everything in my heart and brain just worked… to manage and to save the people’s life “

Dr. Ho wrote, “I thought it only natural to feel compassion and to want to help. From the standpoint of humanity, that is the way it should be. “

Edmonds, his fellow soldiers testified, was deeply religious and drew strength from the book of Proverbs, often quoting chapter 28, verse 1: “The wicked flee when no man pursues, but the righteous are bold as a lion.”

There is a common, brave undercurrent in the words and practices of each of these individuals. Edmonds, Ho, Gies and al-Ahmed each had a conscience that was taught, shaped, and supported for decades by different family, friends, teachers, and religious institutions, as well as different cultural and societal norms. And yet one thing was true for each of them: the combined effects, though widely varied, each reinforced the unshakeable value of all human life. Period. This gave them each the moral tools and reinforcement they needed, in the moment, to be able to respond in a way that saved Jewish life.

All four understood that if they wanted to see more goodness in the world, they themselves had to go out and do good.

This is a powerful reminder for all of us this Yom Kippur, regardless of whom or what we believe in, regardless of our background. Just as evil is never inevitable– it is taught–so too, moral courage is not accidental. It is also taught, and reinforced, and shaped, and supported– and that means that we can teach it, and reinforce it, and shape it, and support it this year, too.

The undercurrent of bravery and moral courage and resistance that inspired and nourished the Righteous Among the Nations is still alive today, still ready to help us, still ready to be welcomed into our hearts. 

And as Jews, our hearts are primed to welcome that moral courage in. The pain we have suffered as a people has given us the most beautiful superpower, one that can never be taken away: and that superpower is our empathy, and our compassion. We KNOW what it is like to be in bondage; we know what it is like to be scapegoated; we know what it is like to be targeted by powerful governments and propaganda; we know what it is like to have our rights legislated away. 

Which means we also know it when we see it happening to others–

and it means that we know what will happen if we do not make the choice to nurture moral courage in ourselves and our families, starting this Yom Kippur. 

Just like Edmonds, Ho, Gies, and al-Ahmed, we are ordinary people, living ordinary lives. But just like them, we each– every single one of us– also have the opportunity to love, and to live, in extraordinary ways.

Authors of a study on moral courage from the Max Plank and Wuppertal Institutes in Germany concluded that, quote “Our everyday lives might be rich with opportunities for morally courageous behavior when we witness unfairness, harassment, discrimination, bullying, ostracism, dishonesty, corruption, violence, or other… harmful, and norm-violating behavior.”

This is certainly true of our world as it is today; we need not look far to find ample opportunities to undertake the work. 

We can also start small, and practice, and work together. 

Practicing moral courage can begin at the dinner or kiddush table and with other parents in playground conversations. It starts with considering the jokes and prejudices we tolerate or laugh at and the behaviors we reward and reinforce. Moral courage can look like championing our kids when they stick up for a friend or stand up to a bully and rallying behind our partners when their commitment to ethics means a lost promotion. Practicing moral courage can mean reviewing and rehearsing difficult conversations or scenarios with family about what they wish they could have said or done, if they could go back and do a situation differently. Moral courage might sound like “I’m proud of you for what you said” or “I’ll come along to the protest too” or “I’ve got your back no matter what”. Moral courage means you know you’re not alone in fighting for the value of all human life, and you make sure others know they are not alone, either.     

Practicing moral courage in public is important, too. Having moral courage can mean speaking up in the supermarket when we hear someone saying something racist, or sexist, or transphobic. It can mean reaching out to our kids’ or grandkids’ schools and offering to come in and talk to their class about antisemitism and our family history. It can mean having difficult yet compassionate conversations with friends over questionable social media posts that make sweeping generalizations. It can mean intentionally utilizing our resources of time, money, and social privilege in ways to further equity.

But in addition to all that bravery, there’s something important we can’t lose sight of about moral courage: and that’s the fact that moral courage is also about embracing honesty and joy during uncertain times, like those we are living in now. 

That means that as Jews, part of having moral courage is also embracing our identities, and living our Jewish lives in a genuine way, never apologizing for being who we are, even when it’s scary or difficult, especially when it’s scary and difficult. Moral courage teaches us that our lives are sacred and our way of being is sacred and doesn’t want us to apologize for being who we are. And moral courage reminds us that our kids are watching us, too, and it asks us to be aware and intentional about what we want them to learn from us about what it means to be a Jew, today.

Because the number one thing we can do to ensure our kids love being Jewish and want to be part of Jewish community is for them to see us loving being Jewish and prioritizing being part of Jewish community– not out of guilt, but out of true joy. To see us being brave, and being bravely Jewish, and to see that we believe it is worth it. Not because it is easy, but because it is wonderful. 

If I could make a wish for all of us this year, it would be this: that we go forward from these High Holidays with hearts resolved to moral courage both inside and outside of these synagogue walls, and with the knowledge that our Jewish community is strong, joyful, and rooting us on.

I wish for us to go forth from these High Holidays with the knowledge that if and when we are called on to take a stand and have moral courage this year, we will do so, proudly–and we will be able to call on each other for support. 

I wish for us all to go forth from these High Holidays with the understanding that we, too, can choose to be extraordinary. That we have what it takes to be Righteous. 

I’ll leave us with a final thought: Like the book of Esther, this entire sermon is missing a word– God. It’s also missing any quotes or citations from our Torah scrolls.

This is intentional and significant. It’s significant because moral courage does not require belief in God– it requires belief in justice and in the preciousness of all human life, but it is available to all of us, regardless of belief.  We can all have moral courage.   

And, it’s significant because, just as our liturgy tomorrow morning will begin with “Mah tovu ohalecha yaakov”-- a line from the Torah, quoting someone who is a non-Jew– sometimes our most important teachers are not Jewish. Sometimes the most important life lessons transcend the bounds of religion or creed. And this is one of those times. 

My friends: May the actions and the words of Roddie Edmonds, Ho Feng-shan, Miep Gies, Ahmed al-Ahmed and all of the Righteous, accompany us from this place tonight and inspire us and guide us this year.   

May we be inscribed in the book of Life, and may our Lives be guided this year by moral courage and by Jewish joy.   

G’mar chatima tova.