5769 Rosh Hoshanah Sermon
The Community Room in our Congregation
by BAJC Sh'Liach Tzibur James Levinson
Several years ago I surveyed our congregation about the ways in which we pray, about the nature of our spirituality, and then presented back what you reported at a High Holiday service. That sermon – your sermon - has been circulated by a national publication to rabbis all over the country, and remains one of my great favorites.
We did something similar this year. It was precipitated by a wonderful “Jews by Choice Commitment Ceremony” at which members of our congregation, whether Jewish by birth or not, were invited to reaffirm their commitment to their Jewish heritage, and, if they chose to do so, to say a few words about the point at which that choice was made, and perhaps the circumstances that triggered it. In this year’s survey, our congregants were asked to put some of this into writing. We also were asked to identify the room or rooms of our congregation where we feel most at home. Jewish congregations have sometimes been described as a house containing four rooms: one each for worship, education, social action and community. Some of us dwell primarily in one room, some in several. And time spent in one room often leads us to others.
So what did we find in this survey? Let me speak this evening about just a portion of the results. There was lots of evidence that our worship is very important to us, and that interest and participation in our educational and social justice activities is substantial – more than substantial. But virtually every respondent underlined the importance of community – indicating that at least one foot was in the community room. In a few cases, interestingly, that foot was in the room of our community of women – where is Yael, and Phyllis and Susan and Emily and Nanci and all the Women of BAJC? And in one case – ready for this? - that foot was in the community of mah jongg women! Where are our mah jongg women?
So this is telling us something. Whatever else we may be about, our sense of community is of vital importance, and just maybe, it is an engine at least partially responsible for keeping the adrenolin flowing in the other rooms of our synagogue.
I don’t know if others of you have felt this, but I’m sometimes struck by the fact that when we’re gardening together or doing cleanup together or being with our kids together at one of our Shabbat evening potluck suppers, there is just no sense at all of any “us” or “them.” Instead we are linked in a pulsing common network in which anything that any one of us is doing for our shul is being done on behalf of all of us. We also have felt that way when Faith and Abe or Linda or Paul represented us at a URJ function, and when members of our congregation represented us in the interfaith “Hate has no home here” part of the 4th of July parade, and when groups of us went to the aid of Elm Street burnout victims and volunteered at the Overflow Shelter, and when our chevra kadisha has performed a tahara, the prayer-filled cleansing and purification ceremony for one of our loved ones at the time of death.
And, by extension, the more we are functioning as genuine community together, the less of self, the less of ego is in each of us. How lovely is that?! This idea which sounds like it might have been borrowed from the psychotherapists or from the Buddhists is, in fact, a kabbalistic concept – that in order to be able to receive God’s presence and blessing, we need to invoke the concept of bittul, of canceling the “I” or the ego.
There were two themes to your comments about community which, as a sequence, provide I think a compelling narrative: first that we are joined together by our heritage; and second that in being so joined we can help one another and collectively reach out to others in need.
To illustrate the first of these themes, that we are joined together by our heritage, let me simply quote directly from a couple of your responses:
“When did I ‘choose’ to become Jewish? I was sitting in my uncle's Paris apartment when I was about 25 and he told me that whether or not I believe in God or religion, this is my heritage and I should know about it and understand the history of our people. After racing through about 20 books he gave me, I found myself reading "Voices from the Holocaust," and suddenly recognized that this old woman from Hungary in 1935 and this young lady from Denmark in 1948 sounded almost word for word like my Grandmother or my cousin... and, in many ways, just like me. There was something that tied us together over time and place.”
Wow!
Here’s another:
“I will never forget the power of the moment when, as I gave the “Mommy” speech at my daughter’s Bat Mitzvah I explained how she was extending a long line of women going back through the generations. It took my breath away. I felt so connected to the Jewish people, to my family, to past generations and future generations. I saw my place in a continuum of time. Again, it was a moment of affirmation, of actively ‘standing at Sinai’ and making a conscious decision about who I was and how I was going to live my life.”
So we are tied together over time and across space with Jews – tied together with that common heritage.
After reading those marvelous excerpts, I came across another compelling one on this same subject of heritage – this a proverb from our Chasidic tradition which says: We must follow the religion of our fathers (we’ll change that to “parents”), or else we will lose it. But we must reinvent our religion, or it will mean nothing to us. What’s that about? What does it mean to “reinvent” our religion?
What it surely does not mean is scrapping our heritage. Rather, what the Chasidic masters seem to be telling us is the importance of our recovenenting from time to time – connecting to our heritage in new and fresh ways which resonate with the premiums and demands of our world today. Looking at the history of modern Judaism, we can see clearly that Jews have done this on numerous occasions – and, I daresay, have done it well. We saw this recovenenting with the establishment of the Reform movement, first in Germany and then in this country, and of its sister Reconstructionist and B’nai Or movements. We saw it, I believe during the civil rights movement when large numbers of Jews saw new purpose in their religious responsibilities rediscovering the meaning of tikkun olam – and when, interestingly, many Reform rabbis began wearing yarmulkes for the first time so that our Jewish presence in the civil rights marches would be recognized.
Going back a bit farther, I believe that some Jews may have carried out some “reinvention” of their Judaism in the years following the Holocaust when the idea of an interventionist God that would “break their sword when our own strength failed us” was replaced with a new understanding of God – one which recognized the ills that can result from human free will, but one that saw God as standing with us nonetheless, mourning with us, weeping with us, and comforting us when that sword proved overpowering.
Moving into the present, perhaps that recovenenting took place right here in numerous congregations in the 1970s, our own included, which, in reaction to earlier patriarchal synagogue leadership made decisions to “do” Judaism themselves rather than having a rabbi “do” it for them.
And maybe there will be new inventing and recovenenting to be done in the years to come as we continue to take up the great challenge facing Jews for the first time ever – the challenge of American Jews to continue to hold to our heritage despite the absence of overt discrimination.
If we both hold to our heritage and continue to recovenent and reinvent we will surely be yet better equipped to address the second theme that emerged from your survey comments – the theme of a healthy community in which we are able to serve one another.
Here’s a quote on that subject from our survey:
“I have actually felt most “Jewish” when I’ve been able to reach out and help others, both within our own community and beyond, and particularly when these are genuinely random acts of kindness and anonymous. This may sound strange, but sometimes it actually feels holy, and I can close my eyes and think of these deeds as part of some larger purpose. My Judaism just won’t allow me to get too caught up in my own narrow wants and needs.”
The Talmud tells us much the same in the story of Rabbi Joshua who actually meets Messiach – sitting, not surprisingly among the poor at the city gates. “When are you coming?” Reb Joshua asks. And Messiach answers, “Today.” But when the day came to an end, Messiach had not arrived. The disappointed Reb Joshua went to the Prophet Elijah to complain, and was told by Elijah, “You must understand what he meant, for it is written: “Today – if you will but hearken to God’s voice.” Elie Wiesel explains this further when he writes that while Messiach may not come in our lifetime, we can provide Messianic moments for one another. And that if indeed we do so, it will be as if Messiach were actually here.
And here’s one more bit from the Talmud providing us with wisdom on how we can serve one another in a healthy community. Reb Beroka of Bei Hozae meets this same Elijah in the market. And Reb Beroka asks the prophet, “Is there anyone in this market who has earned eternal life?” Just then two persons walk past, and Elijah says, “These two have earned eternal life.” Reb Beroka goes to the two and asks, “What do you do?” And they reply, “We are jesters. We make the sad to laugh. And when we see two people quarreling, we strain ourselves to make peace between them.”
How about that for Talmudic wisdom?! Put plainly, the Talmud is telling us to “butt in.” Indeed this is one of the commandments we are asked to follow. Butting in in the name of peace. And if we can do it with a smile, as these jesters did, so much the better.
And finally, a last story from one of you – one which combines your themes of heritage and outreach. A group of young people from one of our Jewish congregations went down to New Orleans with their rabbi after Hurricane Katrina and were cleaning out a classroom from a school house together with local residents. After doing this for several hours, the Jewish group went off to the side for mincha prayers. Some of the local folks, intrigued, stood around and listened, and following the prayers began asking questions, leading in turn to a rich conversation about religious heritage and traditions. And then, imagine this: on instinct, one of the young Jewish participants picked up his guitar and began strumming away at tunes everyone in the room would know: “Joy to the World,” “Yesterday,” “All You Need is Love,” and even “The Saints Go Marching In” and “Amazing Grace” (sung also to the tune of House of the Rising Sun). The singing went on for another hour, and when the work resumed, there was something new and different in the room, and everyone there knew it.
Wondrous wisdom from our own hearts and voices. Wondrous wisdom from the Talmud. The message: community is central; in keeping it central we must cling to our heritage while being willing to recovenent or reinvent from time to time. And when we are true community, when we put aside self, when the mitzvahs performed by one of us are carried out on behalf of all of us, when we provide messianic moments for one another, when we are willing to butt in with a smile in the name of peace, then we are indeed living out our great responsibility of tikkun olam, we are indeed healing the world. Pretty good wisdom, I think, for the New Year!
Amen and L’Shana Tova
|
