A Yom Kippur Sermon
Given 1 October 2025
10 Tishrei 5786
By Bob Mendelsohn
Introduction
Situations of pain
Last year, the Harbour Bridge was shut, at a standstill. A southbound driver had slid into the northbound lanes, and a head-on crash ensued, killing 2 and injuring many others and stopping traffic for hours. The culprit broke the rules and as a result broke more than his share of trouble. People died. Their end came.
Another moment: Our Jews for Jesus IT department had a major issue one morning a few weeks ago. The lights bubbled and throbbed relentlessly and as a result, all those 0s and 1s caused hundreds of emails to be sent, globally, to each recipient in an exercise. Our email servers were overloaded; the fix took hours. What an annoyance! Those of us who saw the emails barraging our inboxes almost immediately knew there was a problem, but what the answer was, that was way above our paygrade, as they say.
Another one. Last month, while my wife Patty and I were in Athens, whilst riding on a crowded metro train from the City Centre, on exit, I noticed that my wallet had been stolen; I’d been pickpocketed. Later in conversation, we replayed the scene repeatedly. Suspicion was high, and we think we know when and even how it happened, but that didn’t get my financial and health cards and driver’s license back. It was evil, and bothersome and wrong on so many levels, but how do we fix that, or can we?
Can we know peace?
With all that as introduction, and with October 7 as the most recent dark side of our people, with antisemitism rising in Melbourne and here in Sydney, and with Yom Kippur as our setting, we are at a time in the modern days where the longing for justice and peace in our neighbourhoods and our world and even in us as individuals is a major concern. Is that true of you? Is that true of the news channel you watch? Is that true of your family?
With these questions—where is justice? Where is peace? Or how do we fix the dark side … we turn our attention to the Scripture and to our Jewish tradition for answers. If indeed there even are answers. What do you think?
What’s your solution?
Migrate to Israel
One Christian recently wrote on his Facebook account,
“God is clearly doing something in Israel and perhaps the rise in antisemitism is God’s call to Jews to return to their land. I believe that Israel is the safest place for them to be.”
Safe? You’ve got to be kidding, I thought.
Politics
Many want to call on the US government to shake things up in Israel and call his good friend and Prime Minister Bibi or the Arab league leadership to force some handshakes and treaties, some hostage handovers, some bombing or no bombing, some peace deals or some takeovers… everyone seems to have an idea, but let me tell you, government won’t solve this one. The land of Israel was a hotbed of controversy since forever, and a handshake or a music festival or a weekend away won’t solve this ugliness.
Governments will come and go, as will good will between nations. So where can we turn?
Religion
Religion is always on offer in our world. In fact, tens, hundreds, thousands of religions are broadcasting just now on the internet or live somewhere-- advancing their philosophies and ideas so that you would have peace or retribution or revenge or information enough to stand against the tides of evil in our world today.
There is always more you can do, more money to send, more fasting or prayers, more service projects, religion never tires of asking its recruits and its generals to do more. Listen, I grew up an Orthodox Jewish boy and as an adult became more religious, by passing the religion of my parents and the modern Orthodox synagogue where I had my Bar Mitzvah. I became a ba’al teshuva and learned with rabbis and recruited other Jewish man to join me in laying tefillin and practicing our religion more fervently. But when push came to shove, I was able to perform ritually, but still didn’t have peace; I still didn’t have what might be called ‘the answer’ to the dark side.
The problem wasn’t all external. I had plenty of dark side in myself. That was a shock to me; or as Pogo would say, “we have met the enemy, and he is us.”
Queensland psychologist Anne-Marie Elias wrote in the Melbourne Jewish Report in September “atonement can play a vital role in societal healing…can foster a sense of closure and facilitate healing among affected communities.” She lists some caveats like the “sincerity of the remorse expressed” and “if the wrongdoer is perceived as insincere or self-serving, the process is likely to fail.”
Where is there peace and reconciliation then, if not in government, if not in religion, if not in psychology?
Was Germany safe in 1925?
Think back 100 years ago with me. Imagine the safety of Jewish people living in Germany in 1920. We had significant power and status, good neighbourhoods and some fine positions in society, but not every rabbi was comfortable with who we were then.
For instance, Rabbi Elchonon Wasserman (1874–1941), a Pre‑Holocaust Lithuanian Rosh Yeshiva, warned that Europe’s Jews were in trouble and therefore, divine retaliation was unavoidable. He wrote, “The Jews in Europe declared war on Hashem. And now He has declared war on them. And that’s why He’s sending His armies against them.” (cited by Rabbi Avigdor Miller quoting Wasserman on the cause of Europe’s downfall https://www.torasavigdor.org )
Rabbi Avigdor Miller, an influential American haredi rabbi, said this was neither isolated nor random (1908-2001) and said something shockingly similar after World War II, “This colossal tragedy of history ... was God’s open demonstration against assimilation whether physical or mental, ... only the most blind could ignore it.” (The Holocaust (bauk.org) He maintained the Shoah was a divine wake-up call against secularism.
Before Messianic Jewish author Art Katz passed away 18 years ago, he had a significant impact in my life, and his books still speak to me. We had first met in 1973 in Pennsylvania, and we last spoke in person in the US in 2003 or so. His notion of the Holocaust as judgment on the Jewish people never sat comfortably with many messianic leaders and people, but, and I say this with deep sadness, his thesis sits very well with me. Basically he argued that if God did not judge the Jewish people for the manner in which we had disobeyed and disregarded the Lord, he would have to apologize to the Jewish people of Jeremiah’s day.
Now I don’t pretend to imagine that this is a popular thesis. Some of you may have just stopped listening to me, live or on YouTube as a result of this comment. Fair enough.
Judaism’s non-answer
Contemporary Jewish leadership—especially in mainstream and denominational circles—focuses on collective responsibility, external threats, and psychological resilience, rather than framing national trauma through a theological lens of divine discipline.
This reflects a shift toward modern, pragmatic responses to crisis, differing from older paradigms that interpreted calamity as Heaven’s correction—a motif more often found in certain traditional or Messianic schools, not in present-day mainstream discourse.
But if you can, please listen to these words from different Jewish prophets who wrote just before the destruction of the First Temple and the exile by the Babylonians in 586 BCE.
The prophets spoke long ago
“For I have wounded you with the wound of an enemy,
With the punishment of a cruel one, because your iniquity is great, And your sins are numerous. ‘Why do you cry out over your injury? Your pain is incurable. Because your iniquity is great, And your sins are numerous, I have done these things to you.” (Jeremiah 30.14-15)
“In vain I have struck your sons; They accepted no chastening. Your sword has devoured your prophets like a destroying lion.” (Jer. 2.30)
“ O LORD, do not Your eyes look for truth?
You have smitten them, But they did not weaken;
You have consumed them, But they refused to take correction.
They have made their faces harder than rock; They have refused to repent.” (Jer. 5.3)
“Alas, because of all the evil abominations of the house of Israel, which will fall by sword, famine and plague! He who is far off will die by the plague, and he who is near will fall by the sword, and he who remains and is besieged will die by the famine. Thus will I spend My wrath on them.” (Ezek. 6.3-5,11)
“Judah did not keep the commandments of the LORD their God, but walked in the customs which Israel had introduced. The LORD rejected all the descendants of Israel and afflicted them and gave them into the hand of plunderers, until He had cast them out of His sight.” (2 Kings 17.19-20)
Judgment by God on his people, on us, on our people, is ever warranted. The rabbis teach that we lost the First Temple due to adultery, idolatry, and murder. Sin has consequences.
The purpose of the judgments
You might think I would leave us here, with judgment deserved and without hope to conquer the dark side at all, but I won’t do that.
Art Katz said, “Judgment is not an end in itself. It is God’s last, severe mercy to turn a people back to Himself.”
Never forget that the purpose of these judgments (again, not punishments, not permanent disregards) was for one purpose, “that we might know that He is the Lord.” (Ezekiel 6.7-13, 1 Kings 20.28) The purpose was not academic or to win a trivia contest. The purpose was to forge and shape a relationship between us and the Lord. No pretence; no gamery. God wants and wanted and will want our attention. And our devotion, and our love. And he wants us to receive his love and devotion and attention. That’s what a relationship is all about.
That means you, oh Bondi. That means you Eastern suburbs. That means all of us Sydney, and all of us Jews in Australia, and all of us Jews worldwide. 15 million or so of us, 7 million living in the land of Israel. 100,000 or so of us here in Australia.
The purpose of the Holocaust was not to make a nice shiny new nation and government in between Lebanon and Egypt. It was to make us repent and cry out for forgiveness and to know God.
The purpose of 7 October was not to gain world sympathy, as if it did come, it didn’t last very long at all. God’s judgment on the Jewish people is designed to make us turn to face him and to repent and to ‘go and sin no more.’
Won’t reform work?
Patty and I met many Jewish people while on leave, and two Jews in Athens stand out in my memory. One was from Colombia, the other from New Jersey. Each wondered aloud as we discussed global problems, “What did we do wrong?” when pondering global antisemitism. Each of them averred that we as Jewish people took care of others and were kind. We didn’t deserve this tragedy. But I challenged them both. And Yom Kippur challenges us boldly tonight. We have sinned. Is it not obvious?
A Jewish woman and God’s finger pointing
Do you remember the story of Yeshua and his finger? A woman who had been caught in adultery was grabbed and forcefully dragged to be brought before him. (John chapter 8) When they literally threw her in front of Yeshua in the makeshift courtroom, he stooped down and wrote on the ground with his finger. (8.6)
I imagine the prosecution was hoping he would point his finger at the woman and like them, label her as a sinner, and worthy of execution. (Leviticus 20.10) That’s in fact what John tells us in the biography here, “Teacher, this woman has been caught in adultery, in the very act. Now in the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women; what then do You say?” (8.4-5)
Obviously, this was a trap, and the men accusers didn’t really care about this woman at all. It was designed to catch Yeshua out and have grounds to disregard or even arrest and rid them of him.
God in Exodus wrote on stones; Jesus here writes on dirt; what did he write?
Many aver opinions, but I’m convinced that Yeshua was writing the sins of the people who accused the woman by writing commandments they broke. He might have been writing “Thou shalt not murder” or “Thou shalt not bear false witness” or “Thou shalt love thy neighbour” or any number of commandments that he found the men breaking that day.
Listen to another passage from Jeremiah, “All who forsake Thee will be put to shame. Those who turn away will be written down on the earth” (Jeremiah 17.13)
I believe Yeshua was writing the men’s sins and they were seeing their own error.
John brings part of this story to a close by saying that “one by one beginning with the older ones, they began to go out.” (v. 9) I like that. The older ones knew their sins and admitted them faster than the hot-headed younger ones.
God’s finger wrote justice for the men and at the same time it wrote forgiveness for the woman that day.
The story ends with Yeshua declaring forensic freedom for her, “Neither do I condemn you. Go and sin no more.” (John 8.11)
God’s finger still writes God’s laws, in our days. He writes them on hearts of flesh. He writes them in the consciences of people who have hearts and ears to hear what His message is to humanity. I hope you are a person who wants to know God’s ordinances. I hope you want to know God personally. If so, then the commandment and the choice and the freedom of forgiveness and the love and the God of it all is available to you. And for you. And ultimately for Him and His glory.
And it’s summed up in the person and work of Messiah Yeshua. He is the great atonement for our sins and the sins of the whole world.
The most quoted characteristics of God are first said in Exodus, “The LORD, the LORD God, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in lovingkindness and truth; who keeps lovingkindness for thousands, who forgives iniquity, transgression and sin; yet He will by no means leave the guilty unpunished, visiting the iniquity of fathers on the children and on the grandchildren to the third and fourth generations.” (34.6-7)
This is the first of 8 times this sentence is spoken in the Tenach. Three of them in the Psalms (86:15; 103:8; 145:8) and one each in Num 14:18; Joel 2:13; Nah 1:3; Neh 9:17; Jonah 4:2)
This was said to Moses. And he told us. And we are still learning about God. So that we can call him Father. So that we can call him friend. So that our lives will be with him and in him.
Tonight.
Tomorrow.
From now on.
Amen?
Pickpocketing will still happen. Thieves are gonna steal. IT departments will still need to repair glitches the computers create. Car accidents will still happen, and wars and rumours of wars will continue until Yeshua puts his foot down on the Mt of Olives in Jerusalem.
But until that time, each of us has a chance to be forgiven by the sacrifice of Yeshua, and to know God personally through the kindness of God our Saviour. If you repent, just now, and receive Yeshua as your Lord, you will know eternal life and his forgiveness of your sins. The dark side will be quashed; your new life will begin. Neither does God condemn you; go and sin no more.
Have an easy fast.
Shalom.
https://www.facebook.com/reel/794488249615663 Elon Gold on repentance.
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