This summer as we’ve been
reading the book of Deuteronomy, I’ve been identifying with Moses, as he gives
his last speech to the Israelites before they cross into the Promised Land, leaving
him behind. He exhorts them to not forget all he has taught them and to remember
their larger purpose as a People in covenant with God.
It may be presumptuous to
imagine this as a Moses moment for me. But I would venture to say that I get
where he is coming from. As we enter this last year for us together as rabbi
and congregation, I too have an urge to exhort you to not forget all we have
learned together, and to remember what your larger purpose is.
Another image has occurred to
me these past couple weeks, as I’ve watched the overstuffed station wagons
passing me on Rte 95 - that of a mother sending her children off to college.
I’m anticipating being an empty-nest rabbi, watching from afar, rooting for you
every step of the way. Before you fly away, I want to leave you with some last
words of insight into who you already are and who I believe you can become.
In our Torah portions today and
tomorrow, we have two stories of parents having to let their children go. This
morning, Abraham puts a skin of water on Hagar’s shoulder, and sends her off
with their son Ishmael, into the desert. And tomorrow, Abraham will take his
son Isaac to the top of Mount Moriah, intending to offer him up as a sacrifice
to God.
These are heart-wrenching stories
of abandonment and near-sacrifice of children, and they are very disturbing.
But over the years, perhaps because of my own experience of parenthood, and our
experience of growing together as a congregation, I’ve come to see these
stories in a new way.
These stories are surely not here
to ask us to sacrifice or abandon our children. But they are here to evoke the
raw, painful feelings of letting go. They are here to ask us what parenting is
for in the first place. Parenting is not about holding on to our children so
tightly that they can never grow up. It is about giving them all the love and
guidance we can and then letting them go so that they can become who they are
meant to be in the world.
But these stories are bigger
than just parents and children – they are really about the covenantal
relationship between God and the Jewish People. Isaac is the only heir to the
covenant. By asking Abraham to sacrifice his son, God asks Abraham to put the future
of the whole covenantal project at risk.
It’s a paradox – similar to
parenting. Abraham personally has to let
go of control over the future of the covenant so that the covenant itself might
be fulfilled. In order for the Jewish people to become who we are meant to be,
God and Abraham both have to let go enough that they risk losing us altogether.
These stories ask us to consider letting go of what is most precious to us –
our children; our sacred tradition –so that this preciousness might manifest
even more fully in the world and become what it is meant to be.
As a congregation, these
stories teach us to risk who we are and how we sustain ourselves as a synagogue
in order to keep Judaism and the Jewish People alive and vibrant in the future.
We are taking such a risk this year. In order to lower barriers to involvement
of families with younger children, we have made the fees for our kids’ learning
programs a freewill gift – allowing families with kids in Kindergarten through
3rd grade to decide how much they will pay for religious education
for their kids.
This community should continue
to take these kinds of meaningful risks - to see its mission as reaching beyond
who is already here and beyond who you already think Jews are.
A congregant recently showed me
a powerful video[1] of
the actor Michael Douglas accepting the Genesis award in Israel. In his
acceptance speech, which he delivers in front of an audience that includes
Prime Minister Netanyahu, he speaks about how his father Kirk Douglas and his
son Dylan both inspired him to embrace his Jewish identity, late in life.
Michael Douglas is a patrilineal Jew – his mother was not Jewish, his father
was, and so according to strict interpretation of Jewish law, he is not a Jew.
But in the Reform movement, we consider anyone with one Jewish parent, who is
raised as a Jew, to be Jewish. Douglas’ public affirmation of Jewish identity,
passed down by the father, was actually a radical thing to do, especially in
Israel, where the Orthodox rabbinate does not recognize patrilineal descent.
And Douglas, who gets to determine where the prize money goes – announced that
a portion of it would go to organizations that promote the welcoming of
intermarried families into the Jewish community.
The future of the Jewish People,
and of this community in particular, is going to rest in its willingness to
open the doors as wide as possible and to go out there and find people who are
unaffiliated, who marginally identify as Jews, who grew up with one Jewish
parent or maybe even just one Jewish grandparent –and for sure, people who are
intermarried – and invite them to investigate and cultivate their Jewishness
and the Jewishness of their children. This community cannot afford to interpret
the covenant in narrow terms – as only including those who were born into
unambiguously Jewish families – as only including those who would naturally
walk into a synagogue without an invitation. You must risk the terms of the
covenant to fulfill the covenant.
By taking these kinds of risks,
we keep Judaism from becoming stagnant – we keep it alive. And this brings me
to the second story we read this morning – the Haftarah’s story of Hannah. This
summer at the Hartman Institute in Jerusalem, I studied with Bible scholar
Michah Goodman, who sees this morning’s Haftarah as a critique of institutional
Judaism.
Hannah goes up to the Temple in
Shiloh every year with her family, to offer sacrifices and enjoy a festive
meal. She is barren and deeply yearns for children. One year, Hannah stands
outside the Temple and weeps bitterly, praying for a son. Her lips move, but no
sound can be heard. The High Priest Eli, who is in charge of the Temple, sees
her and accuses her of being drunk. His instinct is to push her away. When she
explains herself, he finally gets it, and her prayer ultimately is answered.
But we all know that if we were to push someone like Hannah away from our
doorstep, she probably would not come back and try again. She would be lost to
us.
Later in the story of Eli, we
learn that he and his sons are corrupt priests, skimming money off the top for
themselves.
So, here we have the High
Priest, who wears the breastplate with the names of the 12 tribes of Israel
inscribed on it, as a constant reminder that he serves the whole People of
Israel. And he walks outside the Temple and can’t recognize the spiritual needs
of an actual Israelite standing right in front of him. He can’t see that her
spirituality – spontaneous, creative, and outside the walls of the institution
– is authentic. He is so focused on maintaining the institution, tending to the
sacrifices, doing things the way they have always been done, and reaping the
benefits of that, that he forgets whom he is supposed to serve and why the
Temple exists in the first place.
According to Michah Goodman,
this story is meant to reveal how easily religious institutions, especially
those with fancy buildings! – can become self-serving, inward-looking, and
stagnant. How easily we can forget that we have a larger mission beyond keeping
the institution itself operating –and enjoying this community as it already is.
This synagogue is so vibrant
and successful, and it will continue to be those things only if you don’t
forget why you are here. You are here to help Jews know how to be Jews and to experience
how Judaism can enrich their lives. You are here to meet people’s actual spiritual
needs, to respond to where they are and to take them further –through Torah
study, through prayer and music and other forms of spiritual practice, through
celebrating Shabbat and holidays. You are here to make Judaism live and breathe
– to get creative and let in new ideas. You are here to make Torah speak to
your lives and make it touch the world – by taking on difficult issues and
engaging each other in bold acts of social justice. You are here to care for
one another – those whose names you know, and those whom you’ve only just
met. You are here to see the person
standing outside, trying to connect, and to help them feel part of something
larger.
So many religious institutions
become all about themselves, all about their buildings, and all about what they
have always done. You are an amazing community. You already know how to push
the boundaries on what is possible. You already know how to keep changing and
adapting. This gorgeous building is an asset. Don’t forget that these blessings
are meant to be harnessed to bring Jews close to Judaism and to each other, to
cultivate people’s souls and to heal the world.
So far this morning, I’ve
brought you teachings from the Torah and from the Prophets. I can’t conclude
until I’ve brought a Talmudic teaching I studied this summer that I believe has
a message for this congregation as well.
In the Mishnah, the rabbis
discuss, when building a town, whether it is necessary to build a wall around
the town, with a gate with a bar, and a gatehouse. Rabban Gamliel argues that
it is not always necessary to have these things, and therefore you can’t compel
a resident to pay for it with their tax money. The next generation of sages take
up the question in the Gemara. Some propose that these security measures are
considered an improvement (which would imply that you should tax people for
them). But others disagree, and tell a story to illustrate their point. They
tell the story of a pious man who would converse with the prophet Elijah, and when
this pious man suggested that building a wall and a locked gate around a town
would be an improvement, Elijah refused to converse with him anymore.
A puzzling text. Thankfully, the
Medieval commentator Rashi comes along and explains it. He says: these security
measures are not considered an improvement and in fact are a loss to the town.
Why? Because the wall, the locked gate and the gatehouse prevent the sound of
the cries of the poor from reaching the town.
We are blessed to live in a
privileged area. It is beautiful and wealthy, and white, and can seem far from
the suffering and the cries of the poor. The Talmud is telling us, that it can
be a detriment to our Jewish community when we shelter ourselves from the cry
of those who are suffering.
In fact, there are people who
are in need in our very congregation, in our bucolic little towns, in the
prisons just down the road, and in the cities surrounding us. Elijah is telling
us, it is harder to be a good Jew out here. We can collect tzedakah, do mitzvah
projects and teach our kids about Tikkun Olam – and we must do that. But it
takes a larger effort to move out of our safe, peaceful communities to the
places where we can hear those cries. This effort must continue to be at the
heart of this congregation that has in its name “Rodfe Zedek,” seekers of
justice.
Eight years ago today, I stood
here and gave my first Rosh Hashana sermon in this community. And I spoke about
this beautiful ark, which has become a Jewish text for me over the years. I
want to conclude this morning with one more commentary on it.
About 6 years ago, our family made
a pilgrimage to Mass MOCA to see the LeWitt wall drawing retrospective. There
is a segment of the exhibit with a wall drawing that looks a lot like this ark.
We stood in front of it, and I remarked to our daughter Amina, who was about 4
years old at the time – “look Amina! Do you recognize that? It’s the same
painting that we have on our ark at home in the synagogue!!” I was so excited
for her to see the connection and couldn’t wait to hear her reaction. Which was… “Ima, that is not the same as the painting in
our synagogue.” Boy was I confused!
“What do you mean Amina? Of course it is!” And she said, “No Ima, it’s missing
a color – it doesn’t have the grey!” I
had never noticed that this ark had a grey color in it. But Amina had noticed.
This ark – this unique place – had already made a distinct impression on her.
This place has made a deep
impression on me – and on my family. And we will be carrying so much with us
across our river to wherever we are going next.
I believe and will say with all
humility, never having met the man, that this community embodies what Sol
LeWitt created in this piece. The covenant – the Jewish People – the Torah - are really forms of conceptual
art. The concept lives on long after the artist is gone, and it can be made
manifest in every moment, and in every generation, and in every place that we
dwell.
This community is a unique and
colorful manifestation of the ancient concept of Judaism. Keep returning to
that concept - and make it new, make it dance, make it live.
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