What Should The Flag Symbolize?

Rabbi Malcolm Cohen

Rosh Hashanah Morning 5786 | Tuesday, September 23, 2025

I need to say something before I begin any of my sermons at this year’s High Holydays. Firstly, I’m writing the three main sermons I’m giving this year in direct response to the pain which many congregants have expressed to me, for lots of different reasons. Our tradition tells us that the Gates of Tears are always open, that the heavenly realm accepts, much more easily, the prayers of the broken-hearted. That’s where these sermons are coming from, they’re in response to my role as a pastor, a response to real pain. I can’t turn away from that. Secondly, I realize that not all of our congregation will feel the same way so please forgive me if what I say doesn’t sit well with you or if you don’t connect with what I’m saying. I know I’m speaking in front of a diverse crowd. As the Kotske Rebbe said, we don’t look alike, so why should we think alike?

Thirdly, whatever I say over these next ten days, I don’t think it’s the objective truth, it’s just my take. Just because I’m the rabbi, it doesn’t mean I’m right, I’m just trying to work through the issues, guided by Jewish tradition. Lastly, if you feel really strongly that you disagree with me on something or I have it wrong, great. That’s the Jewish way. You’ve got an open invitation to make a coffee date with me and we’ll talk it out on the basis of mutual respect. The heart of Jewish life is machloket l’shem shamayim, disagreement for the sake of heaven. I’m sure any discussions we have about my sermons will bear that in mind…

…I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands. One nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

As a relatively recently minted new citizen, the Stars and Stripes, the flag, means so much to me. As a rabbi, there is nothing more moving than officiating at a funeral but the emotion is heightened when I do a funeral at a military cemetery or for a service member. At the end of the main part of the service, an honor guard will play the beautiful musical piece, ‘Taps’, on a bugle. The soldiers, sailors, airmen, or marines will solemnly march to the coffin of the deceased and take the flag off it.

Two of the honor guard will diligently fold the flag into a tight triangle, folding it thirteen times. Then the presenter will kneel in front of the next of kin, holding the flag to their chest, and say, for example, if the deceased was a soldier, "On behalf of the President of the United States, the army, and a grateful nation, please accept this flag as a symbol of our appreciation for your loved one's honorable and faithful service."

It’s at this moment that whoever is the recipient of the flag, if they haven’t up until then, bursts into tears, in my experience. The combined meaning of the end of their loved one’s physical life intertwined with their relationship and service to their country usually pushes them over the emotional edge. In that moment, the flag stands for service and sacrifice. It stands for putting your personal needs below that of your country’s. It stands for your family’s pride that you, and by extension they are part of something bigger.

Each of us have seen the flag flying in so many different places: on the battlefield, above the Capitol, at the cemetery on Memorial Day, at the Olympics above the podium, outside private homes, even at political rallies or protests. Some of us get goosebumps when we belt the anthem out before a sports event as we face the flag. When you see the flag billowing in the wind, do you think about it in the same way as you did five years ago? Ten years ago? Twenty? How do you think about it today? Did it represent different things in the past or is it a constant and consistent symbol? What should the flag stand for? As American Jews, what do we want it to stand for? When that flag swells in the wind, what values should it remind us of?

I ask these questions this morning, at this moment, because I speak to people every day, who look to me pastorally, for emotional and spiritual support. I raise the issue of the flag also, because next year we will approach the two hundred and fiftieth Fourth of July, a time to take stock.

Some people are scared, some feel under threat. Some worry that our democracy is at risk. Democracy to Americans is like the Torah to Jews. It’s our life blood, the reason this country exists. Some people who come to speak to me fear for their individual rights. Some are concerned at the misuse of government power. Others are aghast at the attempted, and the successful, political assassinations. Some people who talk to me are stressed at how immigrants are being demonized or the LGBTQ community. Some fear anti-semitism and anti-Israel sentiment. Others worry about freedom of speech. Some are worn down by toxic political polarization. The flag should be a wonderful symbol of unity but there seems to be so much division and pain in our country.

I care about this because I’m such a proud American, an American by choice. I think that I’m qualified to speak about what the flag symbolizes since I am a relatively new American Jew, having been naturalized on May 24, 2019. I’m both an insider and an outsider. I admit, a guy with an obviously English accent, having only lived here for a paltry sixteen years, telling a bunch of American Jews what the flag should symbolize could be the ultimate definition of chutzpah but that hasn’t stopped me before.

I will never forget my swearing in ceremony as a U.S. citizen. Fifty of us, from almost fifty countries, filled the courtroom in downtown Las Vegas. Some of them shared the story of their journey towards citizenship. Tears flowed and I happily registered for voting and a passport as I exited the building. That Shabbat, my congregation thoughtfully dressed in red, white, and blue for the evening service. The sanctuary was a sea of color, as everyone waved small American flags before we welcomed Shabbat! My heart was full as I surveyed the scene. It wasn’t quite a ticker tape parade but it wasn’t far off!

Most of all, I remember thinking to myself, “Don’t sleepwalk through this moment, never forget it.” There are very few occasions in life which compare to taking on the citizenship of another country. I wanted to savor the transition, the crossing of a threshold, in many ways, to a new life. As I did a special oath of allegiance, I looked at the flag, as a proud American by choice, and wondered what it stood for and what the flag would mean for my Jewish children and grandchildren.

Now you could argue a sermon about what the American flag symbolizes has no place in synagogue. “That’s America, this is Judaism”. It’s not as simple as that, we don’t split those two parts of our identity so neatly. Indeed, the Jewish part of us breathes a new kind of life into the American part and vice versa. As the great modern thinker, Mordechai Kaplan said, “The American Jew will not be fifty percent Jew and fifty percent American, but 100 percent of each, for he will have achieved a synthesis in his own personality of whatever is valid in both the Jewish and American civilizations”1 . So, in theory, therefore, we can be fully American and fully Jewish. Our Jewish background, culture, traditions, and knowledge informs and molds our approach to America. We are American Jews so we don’t look at the flag exactly the same as every other American.

I’ve alluded to thinking about what the flag symbolizes but let me just lay it out clearly. The values I’ll be talking about are essential to who we are as Americans. Just like the words of the Shema or V’ahavta, talk about teaching words of Jewish wisdom to our children, constantly, when we lie down and when we rise up, so the values symbolized by the flag surround us when we live in America.

First and foremost, democracy is what I think of when I look at the flag. We have thrown off the shackles of King George and the monarchy. When we see the flag, we think of the involvement of American Jews in city councils, county commissions, state governments, and Congress, not just as elected representatives but as active participants in the grass roots of democracy. We, as Jews, used to live in ghettos, totally cut off from our neighbors until modern forms of government gained traction, so we know how precious a Republic is. When we see the flag, we know that it is meant to represent anything but a monarch, a despot, an autocrat. As we move towards two hundred and fifty years of America, democracy remains a guiding light but democracy is fragile, it’s delicate, it can never be taken for granted.

Wrapped up with democracy comes freedom of speech, the freedom of dissent from the majority and also the freedom to offend our fellow citizen. Freedom of speech is not absolute, of course. Forbidden is incitement to violence, true threats, and defamation, but the First Amendment restricts the government from regulating private speech. This is such an important part of democracy. As our Book of Proverbs says2 , “Death and life are in the power of speech”.

If democracy is one of the things the flag represents, so is religious freedom. “Huddled masses, yearning to be free”, says Emma Lazarus in her poem etched on the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty. As American Jews, we flocked here in our millions. Some turned East, towards the Land of Israel, but so many strove westward. We believed, along with other nascent Americans, that, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”. These phrases are as precious to many of us as the recitation of the Shema. When we say, in the V’ahavta prayer, v’shinantam l’vanecha, you shall teach them diligently to your children, we don’t just want them to know about our tradition. We also want them to know the sacred texts of America, the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, as if they’re hanging on the doorposts of our gates.

We didn’t arrive here, squashed into ocean liners, because we wanted everyone in America to be Jewish. We came here so no one would bother us, whether we were Jewish or not! As Jews, we lived for thousands of years, not in control of our own destiny, with no influence over our own fate. The ideal of America, represented by the flag, offered us something different. In so many other places democracy was a completely alien concept. We suffered religious oppression and domination wherever we wandered, until we arrived at these shores. From that moment on, we have been able, more or less, to be proudly Jewish in this country, full participants in society.

When I see the flag, I don’t just see democracy and religious freedom. I also see the belief in economic and social mobility, for everyone to make something of themselves. Folks who have been to Maxwell Street in Chicago or Essex Street in Manhattan’s Lower East Side will have imagined the sight of various traders’ pushcarts crowding those neighborhoods, Jewish immigrants featuring heavily amongst them. They did backbreaking work because they had heard, back in the old country, that this was, in Yiddish, the ‘Goldene Medina’, the country where the streets were paved with gold, where you could make your fortune even if you started by selling pickles.

The final values I want to mention this morning? The liberty and justice mentioned in the Pledge of Allegiance. That’s also what we’re meant to think of as we look at the flag. We have a well established tradition of both liberty and justice in Judaism. Our origin story is the Exodus. Our Torah implores us to forgive debts and free slaves at the Jubilee every fifty years. Our prophets force us to not turn away from the widow, the orphan, and the stranger. “Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream”, says Amos3 .

I love this country. I am so proud to live here. It might not be perfect but just look at how many people from around the world want to move here, not least the Jews. The ideals symbolized by the flag are personal, now. America is not a movie I watch in an English cinema. She is real. She has always stood for these things. They are as fundamental to Americans as the Shema and V’ahavta are for Jews.

The values represented by the flag, democracy, religious freedom, economic and social opportunities, liberty, and justice, all have strong connections to us as American Jews. How do we help our country live up to them, though? How do we work towards a time where every word of the Pledge of Allegiance and the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights ring true, and are not just aspirations? How do we teach our children diligently the great values symbolized by our flag?

We have to think of democracy as the very American air that we breathe. Democracy is meant to be the ideal environment in which America can flourish, in which it can be nurtured. Democracy is the very basis on which America was formed. It was molded as a reaction to despotism, to power exercised in a cruel and arbitrary way. America would not exist if it were not for the love of and adherence to the democratic ideal. Just as we teach our children the basics of Judaism from a young age, “talk about them when you lie down and when you rise up”, as American Jews so should we continue to talk about and work for democracy with our neighbors, our colleagues, our friends, our family. “We the people”, is not an accidental phrase. It is the heart of the matter. Leaders come and go but we, the people, Jews, alongside others, are the ones who are the heartbeat of this republic, the ones who threw off the yoke of the British Empire!.

Don’t lose sight of the values of the flag. If you feel stressed about threats to democracy, political assassinations, demonization of minority groups, anti-semitism and anti-Israel sentiment, freedom of speech or toxic political polarization.If you feel frightened about the state of the country, use your power, as a citizen, to buttress the values that are represented by that flag. Understand the values are eternal. They can be damaged but they cannot break.

Having mentioned the Kotske Rebbe, the great Hasidic leader, earlier, let me pass on another teaching of his, that, as Jews, we are forbidden to despair. Jewish people are simply not allowed to despair. This time is no different. If, like me, you care deeply about America, we have to keep our eyes on those values the flag represents; robust democracy, precious religious freedom, delicious opportunities to make a good life for us and our families, sweet liberty, balanced justice. We are not free to turn away from this great project we call America and reject her. We should be doubling down, as American Jews, on these values. If successive generations of American Jews held fast to the Shema, the V’ahavta, to the idea of teaching our children our Jewish values diligently, the same should be said for the values the flag represents.

Then, our future as American Jews, will be full of possibility. Beyond all the noise, and distraction, the endless, negativity. Focus on the flag and the values it symbolizes. As we approach a quarter millennium of America, which is, in the words of Lin Manuel Miranda, “America, that great unfinished symphony”4 , let those values carry us forward. Let us never lose sight of them. Let us teach them diligently to our children as if they were carved on to our doorposts. I invite you now to rise physically or spiritually with me, turn to face the American flag, and as American Jews, renew our pledge of allegiance as we say…I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands. One nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Shana tova.