Step into the water
Learning, unlearning, and the songs of liberation
“You gotta put one foot in front of the other, and lead with love.”
This powerful anthem, written by my dear friend Melanie DeMore, rippled through the chapel as the congregation responded to each line: “I know you’re scared, and I’m scared too; but here I am - right next to you.”
And then I began my sermon.
(The below is a composite of two sermons I gave at Congregation Beth El of Montgomery County this past weekend as artist-in-residence for Shabbat Shirah.)
Shabbat Shalom. What an honor to be back here, and to be here on Shabbat Shirah, where we lift up the power of singing together. As it was important for our ancestors, it is vital for us now, as we surely have our own seas to cross in America in 2026. I’m grateful to have a chance to speak to that. To do that best, I want to tell you my story.
My name is Micah Hendler, and I grew up right here, at Beth El. I sat in these seats, definitely squirming through services at times, but living for the moments when we got to sing. Some of you remember me as a kid singing duets with Hazzan Lubin and eventually founding Marak HaYom, the teen a cappella group that’s still meeting, more than 20 years later, and that you heard perform today.
For me, singing was never just about the music. It was about belonging. Growing up, I was a pretty awkward kid, and that followed me wherever I went - except in groups of people who were singing. When I sang, when I was part of a group making harmony together, I felt confident. I felt included. I felt like I had a place in the world.
Music was what kept me connected to this community, even through the times when I was wrestling with harder questions. It was my thread, my home.
And it’s that same thread - music as a way of building community, of creating belonging across difference - that would eventually lead me to the work I do now, as Founder & Artistic Director of the Jerusalem Youth Chorus.
When I was in high school, I went to Seeds of Peace, a summer camp in Maine that brought together teenagers from regions of conflict around the world. It changed the course of my life. Completely opened my eyes to perspectives I’d never encountered before. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict suddenly became real people with real stories, not just the simple narrative I’d grown up with.
And at that camp, surrounded by kids who were supposed to be enemies, I noticed something important: music was doing something dialogue alone couldn’t do. When we sang together - camp songs, table cheers, bunk chants, whatever - something shifted. Guards came down. People who’d been yelling at each other in dialogue sessions lifted their voices together in song an hour later.
So what was working? I became fascinated by that question. What is it about singing together that builds trust and community, even - especially - across lines of conflict?
So I studied it. I apprenticed with Dr. Ysaye Barnwell of Sweet Honey in the Rock, learning how to use music to build community and counter violence. I made a pilgrimage to meet Pete Seeger and ask him my most paradoxical questions. I studied Arabic and Arabic classical music in Damascus, the summer before the war - though nobody knew that then. And at Yale, I double-majored in music and international studies, writing my senior thesis exploring whether music could create the conditions for Israeli and Palestinian teenagers to see and care about each other - not just at a summer camp where you control all the variables, but on the ground in Jerusalem where you control none of them.
After graduation in May 2012, I moved to Jerusalem to try to find out.
I was 22. I had this wild idea to start an Israeli-Palestinian youth chorus. People thought I was crazy, which was correct. Some told me I’d be lucky to get five singers by January.
By October, I had 80 auditions. And the majority were Palestinian.
Turns out, teenagers in Jerusalem - Israelis and Palestinians - were hungry for this. Not because they already agreed with each other or wanted to be “peacebuilders.” They didn’t. But because they wanted to sing. They wanted to use their voices. They wanted to be heard.
And so the Jerusalem Youth Chorus was born. That was now almost 14 years ago.
Let me tell you what it looks like. Every week, about 30 teenagers from East and West Jerusalem come together. They’re Israeli and Palestinian. Jewish, Muslim, and Christian. They speak Hebrew, Arabic, and English, and other languages. Many of them live in the same city but might as well live on different planets.
And every rehearsal follows what we call a “music and dialogue sandwich.” We begin with singing - because science tells us that when we sing together, oxytocin floods our bodies, our hearts literally synchronize, trust builds on a neurological level. Then we do facilitated dialogue - professionally led, with translation, creating space for singers to share their stories, their fears, and their histories. And then we end with more singing.
The dialogue is hard. Really hard. These kids talk about trauma they’ve inherited and trauma they’ve experienced firsthand. They talk about checkpoints and terror attacks. They talk about 1948 - what for Israelis is Independence and for Palestinians is Nakba, catastrophe. They talk about grandparents forced from their villages, about family members killed in violence. They talk about hostages, about genocide. They talk about being afraid just getting to choir rehearsal.
This is all part of their experience, and they bring it all into the room.
Some of the words that our singers use might make you uncomfortable. That’s part of the work. These are our singers’ lived realities, and being able to show up fully and honestly is what allows them to keep meeting. They know that if they can sit in their discomfort while listening to their fellow singers, their fellow chorus members will do the same for them, even when its hard. And here’s what’s remarkable: These kids keep showing up. Even during wars. Especially during wars.
Even after October 7th, and after everything that has unfolded since, the chorus has kept meeting. Many similar programs had to shut down or pull back to not tear themselves apart. But for our teenagers, JYC has become their safe place. The one place where they can be their full selves, where they don’t have to choose between their identity and their friendships, where they can love their own people and also care deeply about someone from “the other side.”
Two springs ago, the chorus was on tour in the US. We had just performed on America’s Got Talent and upon arrival in Boston, our singers turned on their phones to headlines: Iran had launched direct strikes on Israel. Both Israeli and Palestinian singers - all of them had family back home in danger. All of them were scared of what might happen.
The next day, two friends - one Israeli, one Palestinian - stood up in front of hundreds of people onstage and said: “We were never supposed to be friends. We were always told to hate the other side and that they wanted to harm us. Yesterday was not an easy day. We felt really unsafe and our families were unsafe. Last night, I called my parents and I was so worried about them that I started crying. And the first person who comforted me was the one standing right here.”
This is the power of what our singers are building. Not that they all agree - because they don’t. Not that the conflict is solved - because it surely isn’t. But that they’ve created something new - a community where Israeli and Palestinian teenagers are each other’s first call in a crisis. Where they’ve become family.
Now I want to say something personal about this family, about Beth El, where I grew up and learned so much.
I want to acknowledge that much of what I learned through meeting Palestinians, through founding JYC, through this journey - it challenged narratives I’d learned growing up here. The story I learned about Israel as a kid was simpler, more one-dimensional, than what I discovered when I got to know Palestinians as human beings with their own stories and trauma and dreams.
I want to share with you the personal story that opened my mind.
I had been taught that any criticism of Israel was fundamentally grounded in hatred of Jews, and there wasn’t anything else to it. That was it. But sitting in the dialogue circle during my first summer at Seeds of Peace, I listened to my new friend Ahmed share a story. Through his tears, he said, very simply:
“My cousin Yousef was playing soccer one day after school with his friends. He was the sweetest kid, just having a good time. Then, the Israeli soldiers came by. They shot him for no reason—while he was playing soccer—and he died.”
And then he said, “I don’t care what religion you are. You can be Muslim, Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, I don’t care. I’m happy to accept you as you are. But how do you want me to feel about a country that killed my cousin while playing soccer?”
Nearly every Palestinian I have met has a story that feels like this.
But Ahmed’s story was the first for me in a journey of many learnings - and unlearnings - on the path of seeking and pursuing peace, as our tradition demands we do.
The unlearning was hard. I often feel distant from parts of the Jewish community because of it.
But here’s what I’m so grateful for: our community has also been on a journey. Beth El today creates more space for complexity, for Palestinian voices, for hard conversations about Israel-Palestine in ways that frankly wouldn’t have happened when I was growing up here twenty years ago.
That’s sacred work.
And the fact that I’m standing here today, on this bimah, telling you Ahmed’s story - the fact that you’ve invited me to be an artist-in-residence this weekend, to share work that includes Palestinian narratives alongside Israeli ones - means the world to me. Because it means I can come home. It means the music that kept me here as a thread has led me back to a community that’s also evolved and been on its own journey.
So thank you for that. Thank you for growing. Thank you for making space.
Because this isn’t just about Jerusalem. This isn’t just about Israel-Palestine. This is about us. About this moment in America where we’re told we can’t talk across political divides. About every place where people have given up on each other.
The question is: will we accept these barriers as permanent, as the Red Sea seemed for our ancestors - until it parted - or will we step into the water?
When I think about the power of sustained dialogue, of staying in relationship through hard conversations, the most powerful example I have is actually my own relationship with my mom, who is the one who taught me to sing.
After I first came back from Seeds, it took years before we could talk about Israel without fighting. It was extremely hard.
But we stayed in it.
I shared my experiences. She listened, argued, wrestled with it, and so did I. By the time I moved to Jerusalem to start the chorus, she understood my “why” in ways she never could have before - and I’ve grappled with hers. And once JYC came to be, my parents were all in - they’ve been on nearly every tour, met nearly every singer who’s ever been in the chorus.
On a tour a year and a half ago, my mom and Adam, one of our Palestinian singers, both got COVID and had to stay back in the hotel to quarantine. So they spent the day talking. Adam is the sweetest kid, but has a very hard story - one that’s hard for our community to hear. One that was hard for my mom to hear. But as Adam told me, “when you suffer, your heart either breaks or it grows bigger.” That was his approach to life. So Adam and my mom talked together for hours, neither pulling back. Through ChatGPT translations, and singings, and misunderstandings, and understandings, they became COVID-buddies - and ultimately family. Adam now calls my mom “Mama Deebra.”
I’m grateful my mom and I stayed in dialogue all these years instead of giving up on each other. And you won’t be surprised to hear that music was an important part of what kept us connected when things have gotten tough.
It’s the same for me with our community.
When we sing together, something transcends our disagreements. We remember we’re human. We remember we belong to each other. We imagine another world, and we begin to create it.
When everything seems torn apart, maybe song is the thread that can weave us together. In our families, our communities, our world - maybe music can help us find each other again.
Now I want to connect this back to our parsha, to this moment at the Red Sea.
Our ancestors are trapped on the shores. Behind them, Pharaoh’s army. Before them, impossible waters.
And God says: “Tell the Israelites to go forward.” Stop waiting for the miracle. You are the miracle. Step into the water.
The midrash tells us the waters didn’t part until Nachshon walked in up to his neck. Only when he took that impossible step did the sea split.
This is what these teenagers are doing. They’re stepping into impossible waters, one foot at a time, week after week, even when their communities tell them they’re betraying their own people by caring about “the other side.” They are leading with love.
And after the crossing comes the song. אז ישיר משה - Then Moses sang.
ותקח מרים הנביאה את התוף בידה - And Miriam the prophet took up the drum in her hand.
Think about this for a moment. The Israelites have just escaped slavery. They fled Egypt in such a hurry they didn’t have time to let their bread rise. They’ve been running for their lives, carrying whatever they could grab.
And somehow, Miriam thought to bring a drum.
In the chaos of liberation, in the terror of Pharaoh’s pursuit, Miriam - the prophet - had the vision to know: we’re going to need this.
Because here’s what Miriam understood: You can take a people out of slavery, but how do you take slavery out of a people? How do you help a community that’s been enslaved in body and mind - that’s been told for generations they’re powerless, that’s forgotten what freedom even feels like - how do you help them actually experience their liberation?
Miriam knew the answer. Music. Song. The drum in her hand.
She knew that you can’t just think your way into freedom. You can’t merely reason your way there. You have to feel your way there. You have to sing your way there. You have to let freedom move through your body, your breath, your voice raised with others.
This is the power I want to name this Shabbat: When we sing together, we tap into something ancient and essential. Singing in community isn’t just beautiful - it’s how we access our collective power to cross impossible waters and build the world we need.
Our ancestors knew this at the sea. Miriam knew this when she lifted the drum. The freedom fighters of the Civil Rights Movement knew this when they sang “We Shall Overcome” as billy clubs fell. Protestors in Minneapolis know this as they gather by the thousands in the dead of winter to sing and dance their way to a community steadfastness that can beat back tyranny. They knew - and we know - that singing together doesn’t just express power - it generates power.
When we sing, we remember: we are not alone. We are not powerless. We are part of something larger than ourselves, something that can move mountains, part seas, and bend the arc of history toward justice.
So before we sing together, I want to invite you into a moment of reflection.
What are the ways our own minds might be enslaved today?
Maybe to fear - of the future, of the other, of scarcity. Maybe to stereotypes that keep us from seeing each other fully, or the polarization that turns neighbors into enemies over a difference of opinion. Maybe to the constant pull of social media, the scrolling that keeps us numb. Maybe to hatred we’ve inherited and don’t even know we’re carrying.
The kids I work with in Jerusalem, Israelis and Palestinians, are growing up trapped in systems that keep them afraid of one another, keep them from seeing the fullness of the reality that surrounds them, keep them from realizing that it is actually in centering their common humanity that they can, together, build power to change their common destiny.
In the Jerusalem Youth Chorus, our collective song rises beyond the meitzar - the narrow place: the narrowness of vision, of empathy, of curiosity, of care that our ancestors fled in Mitzrayim but we have stumbled back into today - and brings these kids who are supposed to hate each other to touch what a shared future, free of fear, full of friends, feels like.
They are not alone in their need for this freedom. We need it too.
Take a breath. And ask yourself: What freedom do I want to embrace, on this Shabbat? What would it feel like to be liberated from that particular slavery?
Hold that kavanah, that intention, as we sing together. Let the music move through you. Let it help you feel your way toward that freedom.
This is Shabbat Shirah - the Shabbat of Song - because our tradition knows: Liberation demands music. Freedom requires harmony. The world we’re trying to build won’t be argued into existence - it will be sung into existence.
That’s what JYC shows us. In a world where politicians and systems and centuries of trauma tell us that Israelis and Palestinians are doomed to hate each other forever, these kids stand up and sing together and say: No. We refuse that future. We are the alternative. We’re singing a different song.
And we need your help.
Of course yuou can support JYC.
But more than that: do this work in your own lives. Find the people you’ve been told you can’t talk to. Find the walls you’ve been told are impermeable and test them with curiosity. Find the waters that seem impassable and take one step in.
Lead with love. One foot at a time. That’s what Shabbat Shirah teaches us in this moment, in the Jewish community, in the America of 2026.
So I want to invite you all into this practice right now. I’m going to teach you a song I wrote for moments like this, called “Raise Your Voice, Walk With Me.”
This song is an invitation. It’s saying: I can’t do this alone. You can’t do this alone. But together - if we raise our voices, if we walk together - we can cross impossible seas.
It’s what our ancestors did at the Red Sea. It’s what these Israeli and Palestinian teenagers do every week in Jerusalem. It’s what I’m asking all of us to do now - not just in this moment, but in our lives.
Raise your voice. Walk with me.
Let’s show the world what’s possible when we open our hearts and sing our way into the future we can only build together.
Shabbat Shalom.
Surpassingly beautiful, wise, and inspiring words, Micah. Thank you for sharing your journey with us!
Beautiful inspiring words! Thank you Micah.