This is my first day Rosh Hashanah sermon at Woodbury Jewish Center of 2015/5776- while the message is particular to setting a vision for the synagogue, the themes translate into the types of Jewish communities we all want to create.
Shana Tovah! I’m Rabbi Tow, the new Rabbi at Woodbury Jewish
Center, and I’m excited to be here to welcome in the New Year with you. I look out today at our congregation and I
wonder how was it possible for a small group of founding families to come
together and create a community, about 2 bar mitzvahs of years ago, that now
numbers over 400 families?
It takes courage. It
takes a willingness to invest all of ourselves into the project. And a willingness to live with uncertainty
and vulnerability of living without all the resources we need at any given
time, as we build with creativity and compassion, with a deep faith in our
potential.
Today I will lay out a vision for the Woodbury Jewish Center
for the coming year, a vision informed by one on ones and parlor meetings over
the summer, with inspiration from founding members I’ve had the privilege to
meet, and past presidents, religious school students and families, nursery
school students and families, seniors, and many more.
It is a vision rooted in the mission statement of our
synagogue. As mission statements go, it
is well done…Woodbury Jewish Center is an egalitarian Conservative congregation
that embraces the religious, spiritual, educational, & social needs of a
diverse membership. Through mutual
respect for one another and a foundation built on traditional values, we guide
our members towards a Jewish identity where worship, love of Israel, education,
charity, and a commitment to family & community are integrated into our
lives.
Our mission statement though is a product of a vision that
we inherited long ago from Abraham and Sarah the heroes of the Rosh Hashanah
stories we chant today and tomorrow from the Torah. The language of guiding our members puts us
back into the story of Abraham and Sarah who in their journey from Haran toward
the Holy Land were part of a new creation of the world! “Vayomer Ado-nai el Avram Lech’Lecha!” God said to Avram, ‘Go forth!’ The Bal HaTurim reminds us that God created
the world this way in the first place, through speaking.
This is the same creation and renewal we are celebrating
today! – The way our community guides and show the way is what inspires me, the
stories of how the founders made phone calls, met one on one, held small group
meetings to build a core, is what inspires me to carry forward the energy and
excitement of special and defining moments, when the synagogue acquired this
land to build, when Victor Hatami stood by the first brick of the building that
he and Dolores sponsored. This summer we
celebrated the aufruf for a founding family, and the family said, ‘We built
this place with the hope of celebrating occasions like these here.’
Inspired by the founders and their commitment, full of
energy and enthusiasm meeting many of you already and looking forward to
meeting everyone, thrilled by the sound of children’s voices filling up the
hallways upstairs and downstairs now that school’s started, I want to share my
vision for the days ahead and invite you to be partners with me in sharpening
this vision and making it real.
After all, that’s the way Abram and Sara did it, they did
not make their journey alone, they brought along many people with them.
We are going to
infuse more joy and meaning into everything we do. As Rebbe Nahman of Breslev taught us, mitzvah
gedolah lihyot be’simcha tamid, it is a great mitzvah to always be joyful. We are here to celebrate the miracle of the gift
of life our ancestors gave to us – the words we sing, the people we join with
to pray, to study, are all miracles.
Let’s celebrate them!
We do not just want to be
joyful, we want to spread and share it with others. We will reach out more to each other, to offer our
help and support even when we do not know who the other person is whom we are
preparing to support. Rebbe Nahman also
taught that if a group of people are happy and dancing, and they see someone nearby
who is sad and blue, we are supposed to, even against their will, bring them
into the circle to dance, and transform sadness to joy, or at least to create
the possibility for joy.
We are also going to
establish stronger community connections inside and out. The story of Abraham and Sarah we read today
tells of divisiveness, a family that is separated by jealousy between Sarah and
Hagar. When there is unnecessary
division, when we are not in tune and in touch with our fellow Jews, our fellow
Jewish congregations, and with other faith groups, the same division
happens.
Following the holidays, I will continue to reach out to my
colleagues in the area, the Rabbis of all congregations, all movements, as well
as to the clergy of other faiths.
Our ancient Rabbis in the Talmud taught us an important
lesson, that we are to reach out to our fellow Jewish communities to be an
‘agudah achat’, as we pray in our high holiday prayers, one unit, bound
together to bring the Torah’s vision of the world into being. And we also hear their ancient wisdom – we
are taught to support the needy of all faiths, to visit the sick of all faiths,
and to help bury people of all faiths.
We will renew this call to action for us to be in contact and in active
partnership with other faith communities this year. We continue to be part of the partners in
caring network, with the constant help available of social workers who can
guide us through difficult times.
That’s the story of our work with people outside our
community, what about right here inside the WJC family?
We have many in our community who feel lonely. If you would like to reach out and call
someone, or visit someone, to schmooze and share time, call up our office and
we will match you with someone to visit.
If you would like to cook a meal for someone in need, if you would like
to help drive someone to services, let us know.
No one should be left out. No one
should feel left out. And mitzvah
goreret mitzvah, one mitzvah leads to another.
We will expand offerings for seniors and others who are around during
the day and keep our building buzzing with activity. A mitzvah is also a call for us to a new
perspective – in that moment when we are helping someone, we are also giving a gift
to ourselves, to keep reminding ourselves of what is most important.
A few years ago, I was counseling a congregant who had just
lost his father. He had never
experienced a shivah where members of the community, outside of a familiar
group of family and friends, would come into his house, let alone pray together
and support him. The first night, he
welcomed at least a dozen members of the community into his house he had never
met before to offer him comfort, and at the end of the service he said, “I
never could have imagined how powerful and comforting it would be to open my
house to everyone.” The following
Shabbat, he kept repeating how touched he was that all these people he really
did not know, people he now saw again at synagogue during services, had come
for him
It was a watershed moment, a moment of enlightenment, for
him, just as Rosh Hashanah is for us.
Maimonides/Rambam teaches us the sound of the Shofar is meant to do the
same for us, to raise our awareness, to bind us together, to call to spark in
us the energy to look beyond the enormous and consuming routines and schedules
we have – all of us doing good things, work, school, activities, sports and
more. A call to reach out to one
another.
I also recognize that just joining the community can be a
challenge. Newer members may find it
hard to establish new friendships. If
this is your first time in this room, with so many people, and the TV screens,
it can feel a little overwhelming. And
these Rosh Hashanah days and Yom Kippur, with our room full, can be difficult
to feel close to each other – literally, this is a big space, and we can join
our voices together, but we don’t have much time for developing relationships,
really getting to know one another today.
So this year, we will be working to bring our families together
for Shabbat meals, matching families to open up our homes, opening up chances
to bring Shabbat into our lives in a meaningful and fun way. Shabbat Shalom – Shabbat Shalom Hey!...
Another goal is to
celebrate education here, early childhood, religious school, adult education,
and educating out in the community.
This year, each month, we’ll welcome families for Shabbat Yachad, age
appropriate prayers, songs, and stories, then Shabbat blessings and Shabbat
dinner yachad, together. Even as soon as
today, we’re rolling out the Very Happy Rosh Hashanah Service, that will both
open up high holidays in a new and fun way for families, and also be a part of
our outreach as we welcome in members of the larger community from far and
wide, those who are unaffiliated, and to give them a place to be to get a
special taste of the holidays. This is
the work both of education and of keruv, of bringing people closer, closer by
opening up the doors of our synagogue wider, as we grow by welcoming and
sharing our knowledge and expertise with each other.
Please help us to strengthen the foundation of our early
childhood and religious school programs even if your children have finished
these programs – greet families and students when they arrive, attend
confirmation and graduation, get to know these families that are the future of
our synagogue – share with them your own stories and listen to theirs.
And we will strive to
fulfill the mitzvah of hoda’ah, the mitzvah of gratitude.
Our tradition places such a high value on gratitude that the
final third of every Amidah we recite, the central prayer of every service, is
the theme of gratitude, Modim anachnu lach – We thank you God for
everything…for the miracles large and small with us everyday…Miracle happen
here all the time, miracles like the way we put together these services for
Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. Our ritual
committee leaders Paul Chaskes and Ellen Feit, and ritual members, put
significant work, countless hours, into making these holiday services run
smoothly. There are many more people to
thank – including all of you! Thank you for being here today, whether
sitting right up front or in the back – I look forward to greeting each of you
today, and I hope to see you all at our house for the Havdalah and Sukkah party
on Saturday evening October 3.
Joy and meaning, stronger community connections inside and out, new
heights in Jewish education, and a spirit of gratitude all around. I hope this is a vision that catches your
attention and gets you as inspired and energized as I feel today to get to work
and make the vision into a reality.
I’ll share with you a story of the Jews of spain, in the
late 14th century, a time of persecution, a story of a group who
could not wait to make vision into reality.
A young Jewish boy was imprisoned with others in a dark
dungeon. Somehow he found a charcoal to
draw a picture on the wall. Whatever he
drew suddenly started to come to fruition.
They were hungry and thirsty, he drew food and drink and miraculously he
and his fellow prisoners had full bellies.
He always drew to take care of their needs. One day there was a rumor circulating that
all the prisoners would be executed. The
young boy was despondent – he would never become an adult – never have the
chance to get married or to have children.
One of the other prisoners suggested he draw a way out of the
prison. The boy doubted whether he
could. He had only drawn little
things. He was too sad to draw. All of the prisoners began to implore him,
please draw so that you can save yourself and all of us. A man put chalk in his hand. He drew a boat on the sea, and suddenly they
felt a breeze as they had never felt, and they were all free.
Like our Ancestors Abraham and Sarah, and like the founding
families here in Woodbury, all of us are
carrying forward the spark that we light today, as we set out like the former
captives toward new horizons together, striving to be free from anything, any
assumptions or notions that hold us back -- on Rosh Hashanah, the beginning of
a New Year, the beginning of our work together, along with Cantor Cohen,
Cindy Common, Dr. Meisel, Linda and Silvia in the office, Arnie and his staff
and with all the lay leaders.
One final story, Rabbenu Yonah in his classic work on
repentance, tells a wonderful story, similar in its context to the story from
Spain. A story about how we cannot wait
to move forward, to set a course toward making the vision for our lives for our
community into reality. Two convicts are
in a jail. They dig a tunnel that opens
to the outside. They crawl through the
tunnel and the first leaps out and runs.
The second holds back, sits inside the tunnel unable to move. All of a sudden, whack!, the warden comes up
behind him and hits him with his warden’s staff. The convict, white with fear, turns around
--- and what does the warden say? He
says, “Hey you, how come you didn’t continue and escape? What are you waiting for? Himalet
al nafshecha! Get going!”
May we have the courage to envision, to dream, and to step
forward together to bring these to life.
Shana Tovah!
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