I want to begin this morning with the story of a very
courageous 11-year--old.[1]
This year, Tennessee state
lawmakers attempted to pass a measure, called the “Classroom Protection Act.”
This bill expanded on a failed bill that came to be known as the “Don’t Say
Gay” bill, which would have banned elementary and middle-school teachers from
mentioning the phenomenon of homosexuality. This year’s “Classroom Protection
Act,” added language requiring school officials to inform parents if
they suspect one of their students is gay.
Thankfully, the measure never made it to the floor of the Legislature.
Meanwhile, an 11 year old boy named Marcel Neergard spoke
out. Marcel learned that his state representative John Ragan, the sponsor of
these homophobic bills, was being given an educational “Reformer of the Year”
award by an organization called “StudentsFirst.” Marcel circulated a petition
nationwide for StudentsFirst to rescind the award. Marcel, a 6th
grader, was being homeschooled because of severe bullying that he suffered the
year before. In 5th grade he came out as gay, and other students
began to target him with hurtful names. Despite his parents’ loving support for
him, he because depressed and suicidal.
Marcel took a huge risk, going public in order to raise
awareness and protect others like himself. He posted videos and wrote articles,
telling his story. Ultimately, Marcel’s activism persuaded StudentsFirst to
rescind the award John Ragan’s award.
Marcel may not feel safe in his
school. But, as I watched his story unfold, I witnessed a larger community out
there supporting him, writing positive comments on his web-posts, and signing
his petition. Although Marcel may not yet be able to bring the fullness of who
he is to his school community, he has discovered a larger circle of love and
support. This embrace has given him the courage to express himself and make a
difference.
This June, after the Supreme
Court struck down the Defense Of Marriage Act, lifting the federal ban on gay
marriage, my Orthodox colleague Rabbi Avi Orlow posted a teaching on his blog.
He based it on Mishnah Pirke Avot, which says, “Al tifrosh min hatzibur,” “ Do
not separate yourself from the community.”
The simple meaning of this
statement is already quite powerful. Be a part of your community – we need
you! But Rabbi Orlow interpreted the
text differently. He read it as “don’t divide yourself within yourself,”
meaning, you should not be required to hide parts of yourself from your
community. A holy community is one where it is safe to be all that you are and
where we need you to engage your whole self.
Both the Defense of Marriage
Act and Tennessee’s “Classroom Protection Act” masquerade as measures that protect
“us” from some kind of threat. Marriage needs to be defended and classrooms
need to be protected from those people out there who are different from “us.” The
real impact of laws like these is to force some human beings to hide parts of
themselves from the world. This hiding can lead people like Marcel to turn the
hate that others have for him in on himself. The real impact is to prevent a
whole segment of our population from fully engaging in the community. The real
impact is to cause suffering for human beings who are just as much a part of
“us” as anyone.
“Do not separate yourself from
the community” - “Do not separate
yourself within yourself.” Our communities need to be places where we can bring
our whole selves: gay, straight, married, single, with or without children, old
or young. And building that whole and holy community requires reaching out to
others as well as helping others to reach within themselves.
This morning’s Torah and
Haftarah readings illustrate this challenge of overcoming separation between
and within people.
In our Torah portion, Sarah has
all but given up hope that she will be able to bear a child. A few years prior,
she had encouraged her husband Abraham to have a child with her maidservant,
Hagar, and Ishmael was born. Now, in her nineties, Sarah miraculously bears her
own son, Isaac.
One day, Sarah finds Ishmael
and Isaac playing together. This could be a healing moment for Sarah - an
opportunity to reach out to Hagar and commiserate about motherhood and to
overcome the jealousy and anger she previously felt about her barrenness. Instead,
Sarah experiences separation within herself. Jealousy rises up again, and she
is unable to enjoy watching the boys laugh together.
So Sarah banishes Hagar and
Ishmael from the camp. The slavewoman and her son are now “other” - separate
from herself and her family.
In our Haftarah, we have
another story of exclusion. Every year, Hannah, her husband, and her husband’s
other wife Peninnah, would go up to the altar at Shiloh to worship. Peninnah
has children, but Hannah is barren. And every year at this feast, Peninnah
taunts Hannah, making her miserable. Hannah’s husband tries to reassure her
that he loves her, but Hannah has internalized this sense of exclusion such
that she can’t really hear him – his words of comfort do not reach her. One
year Hannah approaches the Temple, praying and weeping in her misery. The
priest, Eli, accuses her of making a drunken spectacle of herself, only adding
to the alienation she feels.
In these stories, people don’t
see each other or themselves as part of a shared circle of belonging. Those
perceived as separate are either banished or bullied to the point that they
exclude themselves. Thankfully, though, by the end of these stories, we see a
way back to connection.
After their banishment, Hagar
and Ishmael are wandering in the desert. Having run out of water, Hagar can’t
bear watching her child die of thirst. So she leaves him under a bush, lifts up
her voice and weeps. God hears her suffering and responds, showing Hagar a well
of water. God then blesses her child, assuring Hagar that Ishmael will grow up
to be a leader of a great nation.
For Hannah, once she overcomes
her sense of alienation from the priest and explains that she is pouring her
heart out to God in her anguish and distress, the priest actually listens. The
next year, God takes note of Hannah, and she bears a son who becomes the great prophet
Sh’muel.
It isn’t a coincidence that both
sons in these stories – Ishmael and Sh’muel – have names that mean “God hears.”
God listens to Ishmael and
Hagar, Hannah and Sh’muel, and embraces them in a circle of caring and
awareness. To God, all of these people are worth taking note of. To God, they
all belong.
This is what Jewish community
and synagogue life should be about – creating that circle of belonging– that
sense that we all are worth taking note of – that someone is listening. At our
Reform movement camps, they call that circle of caring and belonging the Eisner
or the Crane Lake bubble.
There is actually a traditional
Jewish word for that bubble. It is called an “Eruv.” Jews who observe Shabbat
according to strict interpretation of Jewish law, are prohibited from schlepping
objects from the private domain into the public domain on Shabbat. For instance,
you wouldn’t be allowed to carry a potluck dish from your house to the
synagogue on Shabbat. However, our ancestors created a loophole. You can erect
a physical boundary called an Eruv, using poles and wire or string, that
encircles the area in which your community lives. The Eruv transforms what was
once considered the public domain into a private domain.
This means that on Shabbat, I
can carry what I need from one place to another within that boundary. My house,
your house, the synagogue, the playground, the street, the yard – if they are
within the Eruv - are now all part of the same private domain. We all now live
together in one extended home.
As we are well aware, our
congregation has a very wide geographic spread. It would be impossible to erect
a physical
Eruv around our community. But what if we reimagined the concept of the
Eruv and recognized that we do have a giant invisible Eruv that
includes all of our homes.[2]
We could say then, that the sense of CBSRZ community does not only exist in the
synagogue building. It now exists in each of our homes, and in every place in
between.
The implications of this are
quite powerful. It means that no matter how far away I live from you, we are
both woven into the same web of relationships, caring and responsibility. When
I look around this sanctuary, I know that these are the people I can turn to
for help, and when I am called upon to help, I will respond. It may be as
simple as an older member knowing she can ask a fellow CBSRZ member for a ride
to services or as mundane as knowing that if I need a dentist or a contractor,
I can look at our online business directory for a lead.
But these relationships go far
beyond the mundane. The concept of Eruv creates a reality in which we see each
other as all living in the same private domain. This doesn’t mean that I must share
my personal business with everyone in the congregation. But it should mean that
when there is a death in my family, or when I’m sick, I can count on this
congregation – those who know me well, and those who may not know me yet – to
respond with caring. It means that we pay attention to each other - we attend to
each other, and we bring our whole selves to this community.
We may not worry about carrying
objects on Shabbat, but in this circle, you can you carry your tears and know
you’ll get a hug. In this Eruv, you can schlep to feed others and get fed yourself,
both gastronomically and spiritually. In this bubble, other adults share the
work of helping your kids to be mensches.
When we create this Eruv-like
embrace around our community, our assumptions begin to change about who belongs.
Because not only does the Eruv include people who are already members of CBSRZ,
but it also includes unaffiliated Jews and their families in our towns whom we
need to figure out how to touch. And the Eruv also includes folks who are not
Jewish, but who can be our partners in making our community at large a better
place.
So, we do have an Eruv. But, according
to Jewish law, you don’t just put up an Eruv boundary and leave it to the
elements. This series of poles and wire requires constant attention. The
community is responsible for regularly checking for gaps in the Eruv and fixing
them.
Here at CBSRZ we can’t become
complacent, thinking that we have this fantastic sense of community, and if
left on its own, it will operate just fine. We need to regularly care for this
Eruv. And the way do this is one relationship at a time.
There are a number of ways we
build relationships around here. A major
initiative for us this year is our participation in what is called a Listening
Campaign. In October, side by side with the AME Zion Church in Middletown, a few
dozen CBSRZ members will be trained to go into our CBSRZ community and have
one-to-one conversations with our members.
The main purpose is to deepen connections
within our congregation. During these
conversations, congregants will share their concerns and their passions, what
they need from and how they want to contribute to our community. The larger
themes that emerge will then go to our Board to help determine congregational
priorities. We also hope to emerge from this with a relationship to the AME
Zion Church – a vibrant African American congregation that is within our Eruv –
and with some possibilities for working together in the future. Most importantly,
we hope that the outcome will be a stronger, more interconnected community.
At the same time that you are having
these conversations with each other, I will be conducting my own listening
campaign. After 6 years of being your rabbi, it is time to take our relationship
to the next level. I want to connect with folks whom I happen to see at
services or classes but haven’t sat down with to chat for a long time. I want
to listen to your passions and concerns, whether you are a new member, a
long-time member, active, or not so active. I will be reaching out to folks
myself, but if you want to come and chat with me, please call the office, and
we’ll make a date.
There are many other ways we
tend to our Eruv, whether through home-based Shabbat dinners where we gather in
small groups or through the critical work of our Chesed committee which cares
for congregants when they are ill or in need, and much much more. However you
engage, we hope that you will bring your whole self to this community – whether
you are in need of help or have help to offer.
I want to close with a story
from the Talmud about two men - Elisha ben Abuya and Rabbi Meir. Elisha ben
Abuya is a brilliant scholar who has a crisis of faith and rejects the
fundamental belief in one God. He publicly transgresses Jewish law to the point
that the rabbis erase his name from the record and refer to him as “Acher,” the
“Other.” Everyone in the community abandons him. The only person who does not
cut himself off from Elisha is his greatest student Rabbi Meir. Rabbi Meir
persists in being in relationship with his teacher, even though Elisha has
strayed from proper Jewish ways and beliefs.
One day Elisha ben Abuya is
riding a horse on Shabbat, which is, of course, not permitted. But Rabbi Meir
walks behind his teacher anyway, to learn Torah from him. Eventually, Elisha
and Meir cross the Eruv – the Shabbat boundary. On Shabbat, it is also not
permitted to walk more than a certain number of paces beyond the Eruv. So Elisha
says to Meir, “I have been measuring the paces of my horse, and you need to
turn back. We are about to go beyond the permitted distance.” Meir responds,
“You too go back!”[3]
In this story, we see the love
and the caring between these two men whose lives have taken radically different
turns. Elisha cares so much about Meir that he watches out for him. Even as he
flagrantly violates Shabbat himself, Elisha vigilantly attends to Meir’s needs,
counting the paces of his horse to make sure that Meir doesn’t violate Shabbat
as he walks behind him.
Meir still values his
relationship with his beloved Elisha such that he is willing to be seen with
him in public while his teacher rides a horse on Shabbat, even though his
teacher has been ostracized by the rest of the community. While Elisha
literally goes beyond the pale, Meir pursues him, even beyond the Eruv and
urges him to not separate himself from the community. “You too go back!”, he
pleads, as if to say, “You are still an important part of my life and the life
of our community – we need you – yes! Even YOU! to be a part of us.”
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