Rabbi Janet Offel
Rosh Hashanah Day 5767
Community
Once there was a Jewish man who found himself shipwrecked on a deserted island. Think of a Jewish version of Tom Hanks in Castaway. But this guy was industrious. He didn’t spend his time talking to a volleyball. Instead he set about building a community for himself on the island. First, in typical Jewish fashion, he built himself a home. Next he built a little market, and then his synagogue. As time went on, he kept building more and more, metamorphosizing into an Eli Broad kind of guy. Eventually, he blanketed the island in buildings of every shape and size. And unlike Tom Hanks, this guy was lucky. One day, out of the blue, a ship appeared to rescue him and take him home. But first, he insisted on showing the captain around his little paradise. As they walked, our castaway showed the captain all that he had built: his home, his market, his synagogue. As they toured the island, they soon found themselves all the way around on the opposite side, where the castaway pointed out yet another synagogue. “But wait,” said the captain, “I thought that you already showed me your synagogue on the other side of the island.” “Yes,” replied our Jewish Tom Hanks, “but this is the one I wouldn’t ever be caught dead in.”
As Jews, we are known for our humor. Self-critical and often self-deprecating, we use humor to deal with our own inner conflicts and turmoil. And the Jewish angst towards our own religious institutions—well, that’s legendary.
The nature of community, how to
build and sustain it, has always been of great interest to our scholars. Shortly after the destruction of the
In the earliest discussions of the rabbis, the nature of community centered around the physicality of buildings. How long must one live in a community before being considered one of the people of the community? What was one’s responsibility towards the upkeep of the courtyard, walls, doors and security? (M. Baba Batra 1:5)
But in time, as Jews became settled into their new lands and the physical structures were in place, the focus of the rabbis turned from the material realm to the spiritual.
In a Talmudic reference to community we read:
Rabbi Yehuda said: great is charity for it brings salvation nearer. He used to say: ten things were created in the world:
Rock is hard, but iron cuts it.
Iron is hard, but fire softens it.
Fire is hard, but water puts it out.
Water is hard, but clouds carry it.
Clouds are strong, but wind disperses them.
Wind is strong, but a body bears it.
One’s body is strong, but fright breaks it.
Fright is strong, but wine banishes it.
Wine is strong, but sleep works it off.
Death is stronger than all of them, but righteousness saves one from death, as it is written in Proverbs (10:2): “Tsedakah saves one from death.” (B. Baba Batra 10a)
What does all this mean? What Rabbi Yehuda is saying is that our relationships with each other bring us strength, they literally ward off death. It is through our human bonds that we are sustained and nourished.
But is it really that easy or simple?
Rabbi Lawrence Kushner, in The Book of Words, says about kahal or community, “Home is where they have to let you in simply because you’re you. And family are the people who live there. They are the ones whom you get whether you like them or not. In the last tally, they may be all any of us have.” He notes that “As Adin Steinsaltz is alleged to have quipped, “The worst thing about being a Jew is that you have to associate with them.”
Kushner continues, “The power of congregational life comes precisely from the involuntariness of association. We look about the room and realize these people are not friends or even acquaintances; we do not agree with them about much; these are simply people we are stuck with. The often cited teaching of the sages that ‘All Israel are intermingled with one another,’ probably means something more like ‘We are all stuck with one another.’ This generates a kind of love, both more intense and more complicated than the voluntary variety. These members of our community, just like the people in our family, literally make us who we are.”
Don’t forget, as I mentioned earlier, the sages teach us that the reason why the Second Temple was destroyed in Jerusalem was because of sinat hinam, unwarranted hatred, one Jew to another. The truth is, we aren’t the easiest people in the world! Throughout the Torah, God and Moses constantly refer to the Israelites as “a stiff-necked people.” We complain, we moan, we groan. We have high expectations for ourselves and those around us. And how we treat our families! Just look at all the jokes.
I have to tell you one of my favorites that’s making its way around the internet these days:
The year is 2012 and the
She calls up her mother a few weeks after election day and says, “So, Mom, I assume you will be coming to my inauguration?”
“I don’t think so. It’s a ten hour drive, your father isn’t as young as he used to be and my gout is acting up again.”
“Don’t worry about it, Mom. I’ll send Air Force One to pick you up and take you home. And a limousine will pick you up at your door.”
“I don’t know. Everybody will be so fancy-schmantzy, what on earth would I wear?”
“Oh, Mom,” replies Susan, “I’ll make sure you have a
wonderful gown custom-made by the best designer in
“Honey,” Mom complains, “ you know I can’t eat those rich foods you and your friends like to eat.”
The President-elect responds, “Don’t worry, Mom. The entire affair is going to be handled by
the best caterer in
So Mom reluctantly agrees and on January 21, 2013, Susan
Goldfarb is being sworn in as President of the
The Senator whispers back, “Yes, I do.”
Says Mom proudly, “Her brother’s a doctor.”
No, it’s not always easy to be a member of a Jewish family, and we all realize it. We say things without realizing the hurt we have caused, we have incredibly high standards for our institutions and ourselves, and sometimes we just aren’t very good at giving each other a break.
Rabbi Karyn Kedar presents an interesting notion of community in her essay entitled “Community,” She writes, “The desire for community is not necessarily the search for friendship. It is the search for shared responsibility. The word ‘responsibility’ bids you to respond according to your ability: if you can, respond when I am sick, respond when I give birth, respond when I bury my father. When we have shared moments of celebration and sorrow, we respond by showing up.”
She continues, “Community comes from the word “common.” The word assumes an awareness that we share in the most basic way: tears, loss, love joy, fear, birth, death, life. We are not meant to live alone. We are not supposed to ignore or deny what we have in common as human beings. That is the power of community. It is the acknowledgment of the universals of life, the sameness, the common ground. It is the knowledge that I will never be alone when I am sick; that I can share the mixed emotions I will have when my children go away to college; that when I pray for the secret desires of my soul, I will be joined by others doing the same. I live amid strangers, acquaintances, friends, and even a few people whom I don’t like. What makes us a community is the sense of shared responsibility: when one is in need, the other simply responds.”
A true
story. Shortly after I started working
full-time at Kol Tikvah in July, a friend of mine told me about a friend of
hers: a longtime resident of the
But in June, Sara’s mother was diagnosed with cancer and was scheduled for major abdominal surgery within the month. In speaking with her mother’s surgeon, Sara asked if there was anything that she could do in preparation for her mom’s surgery. The response from the surgeon: your mother might lose a lot of blood during this surgery. Call your synagogue and see if they will send out a notice to congregants requesting that members with your mom’s blood type donate blood in anticipation of her surgery.
Blood drives, stem cell drives and the like have become commonplace in our synagogues today. Suddenly though, it hit Sara. She didn’t have a synagogue community that she could call her own. Although she had connections in many synagogues, she wasn’t a member of any of them. The lack of a formal synagogue commitment in her life, not a problem day to day, unexpectedly loomed before her as a giant void. Of course, a number of synagogues stepped up to ask their members to donate blood for Sara’s mom. But facing her mother’s upcoming ordeal, Sara also came to realize the importance of joining a synagogue again. Sometimes it takes a crisis in our lives to realize the importance of community.
We all realize, the days of active communal association, most closely identified with the 1950’s and 1960’s are long past. Bowling Alone, the title of a 2000 book by Robert Putnam says it all. “We have become increasingly disconnected from one another.” The social and religious institutions that played such a vital role in people’s lives only 40 years ago are struggling to address this new world order. My friend’s friend could be just about any one of us. Yet as Rabbi Kedar notes, “We are not meant to live alone. We are not supposed to ignore or deny what we have in common as human beings.”
We are all familiar with the four children of the Passover hagaddah. Some scholars note that they represent four different character types; others suggest that they illustrate four different facets within each and every one of us. Each of us combining these facets in different ways.
I would like to propose a typography of four types of congregants in today’s synagogues:
The wise one: This is the member who delves into synagogue life, wanting to be involved. The wise one sees the synagogue in all three of its traditional dimensions: as a place of worship, study and community. This member plays a positive role in the health of the congregation through any of the three W’s of involvement: work, wealth and/or wisdom.
The wicked one: The wicked one sees the synagogue as a marketplace. I pay my money and expect certain services for it. Known as “transactional Jews,” the concept of community doesn’t enter into the wicked one’s understanding of congregational life. The synagogue is merely a functional facility that they utilize for their own purposes, and they see their membership dues as the cost of doing business.
The simple one: Tentative, inquisitive, but afraid to step too far inside the door—whether because they are new to the Jewish community or are embarrassed by their lack of knowledge of synagogue life… Many of our non-Jewish family members fall into this group, and plenty of us who were born as Jews, too.
The one who does not know how to ask, how to enter: Overwhelmed by the synagogue community, they send their kids to nursery school or religious school but leave the congregation soon after, because they don’t feel a sense of connection. They have never gotten involved because they have never felt particularly welcomed.
Which one are you?
I think that most of us fit into more than one category of this typography. There is probably a little of all of the above in many of us, depending on where we are in our own lives.
Perhaps the bigger question, as a synagogue community, is how do we respond to this typography?
For the wise one, we need to open more doors for involvement. We need to provide more meaningful worship services, more engaging learning opportunities and more exciting prospects for communal involvement. We need to build the infrastructure of the synagogue, so that members feel that their voices are being heard.
The simple one needs to be helped to feel comfortable and secure. To know that no question is stupid, and different viewpoints are acknowledged and even welcomed. And to realize that feeling comfortable takes time; community involvement doesn’t happen overnight, and it takes a commitment on both sides to make it work.
To the one who doesn’t know how to ask: We must open the door and beckon him or her in. Each and every member of the congregation has a responsibility to be personally welcoming and inviting. In transactional Judaism, all of the responsibility tends to fall to the paid staff who serve the congregation; in a community, everyone takes some responsibility for creating a welcoming and warm synagogue environment.
And for the wicked one? I don’t really believe in the wicked one. I think that those who fall into this category also have within them the qualities of the wise, the simple and the one who doesn’t know how to ask. But the synagogue becomes just a means to an end when it isn’t being nurtured as a community.
Our strength as human beings is in our ability to reach out and connect with each other. The strength of a community is in its spirit. And our synagogues, in order to survive, must offer opportunities for those connections to flourish.
Kol Tikvah is your synagogue, your community. It is not a building, a rabbi, a cantor or any one individual. Its strength comes from the gift that each and every one of you brings by your presence. Over the course of this year there are going to be opportunities to draw out the wise one in all of us. But it begins with a commitment to community on the part of everyone. Yes, to a certain extent, it is always going to be the community of Rabbi Kushner:” We look about the room and realize these people are not friends or even acquaintances; we do not agree with them about much; these are simply people we are stuck with,” but we must also remember as Rabbi Kedar writes, “What makes us a community is the sense of shared responsibility: when one is in need, the other simply responds.”
Our sages
teach that until the time that the Israelites crossed the