Connecting to Sacred Community
by Rabbi Shoshana Kaminsky
I want to introduce you to a passage from the Mishnah, which is the earliest compilation of Jewish law, dated to about the year 200 CE. The passage comes from tractate Middot, which is concerned with measurements of the ancient Temple. Scintillating! Here is the start of chapter 2: “The Temple Mount was five hundred cubits by five hundred cubits. The greater part of it was on the south; next to that on the east; next to that on the north; and the smallest part on the west. The part which was most extensive was the part most used.” And here is the passage the follows: “All who entered the Temple Mount entered by the right and went round [to the right] and went out by the left, save for one to whom something had happened, who entered and went round to the left. [He was asked]: “Why do you go round to the left?” [If he answered] “Because I am a mourner,” [they said to him], “May God who dwells in this house comfort you.”
I am indebted to Rabbi Sharon Brous, who rescued this remarkable passage from obscurity and has shared it with the world in her book The Amen Effect. This is what she wrote about it: “The text speaks of an ancient pilgrimage ritual, when hundreds of thousands of people would ascend to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, the focal point of Jewish religious and political life in the ancient world. The crowd would enter the Courtyard in a mass of humanity, turning to the right and circling—counterclockwise--around the enormous complex, exiting close to where they had entered.
“But someone suffering, the text tells us, the grieving, the lonely, the sick—someone to whom something awful had happened—that person would walk through the same entrance and circle in the opposite direction. Just as we do when we’re hurting: every step. Against the current. And every person who passed the brokenhearted would stop and ask, “What happened to you?” “I lost my mother,” the bereaved would answer. “I miss her so much.” Or perhaps, “My husband left.” Or, “I found a lump.” “Our son is sick.” “I just feel so lost.”
And those who walked from right to left—each one of them—would look into the eyes of the ill, the bereft, and the bereaved. “May God comfort you,” they would say, one by one. “May you be wrapped in the embrace of this community.”
In her book, Rabbi Brous notes that all of us will come to a point in our lives when we are the ones circling the other direction. Some of us are already doing it now. All of us will encounter grief and brokenness. All of us will be in need of comfort. Before that happens, we need to do all we can to strengthen our connections to each other.
Our Torah reading this morning is an obvious choice for Yom Kippur because of its exhortation to all of us to choose life. On this day when we reflect back on the last year with decidedly mixed emotions, the Torah declares to us that the right choice to make is to embrace hopeful possibilities for the future. But the opening words are no less important, as they call us together: “You stand this day, all of you, before your God Adonai...to enter into the covenant of your God Adonai, which your God Adonai is concluding with you this day, with its sanctions; in order to establish you this day as God’s people and in order to be your God... I make this covenant...not with you alone, but both with those who are standing here with us this day before our God Adonai and with those who are not with us here this day.”
We are reminded of a time when all of us stood together at Sinai. The rabbis understood that it was not only Jews who lived at the time who received God’s revelation at Sinai, but all Jews who would ever live and all those who would ever choose to embrace Judaism. That’s what it means by “those who are not with us here this day.” Tradition is unstinting in its view: we were all there. We are all tied together by that covenant that weaves our lives together.
How deeply sad it is that we place so many obstacles between ourselves and other Jews. I daresay that we are the masters of the art! Think back to that old joke about the man marooned on a desert island who builds two synagogues: the one he attends regularly, and the one he would never set foot in. We have divided ourselves based on how kosher we are, who we marry, how we pray, what we believe, who we vote for. Gifted this powerful message of unity in the Torah, we have been hellbent on division.
What we’ve learned over the last year is that we need to rely on each other because there are ways in which we are very much on our own. I spoke last night about the terrifying rise of anti-Semitism in the world. I wish I could say with complete faith that the tide will turn. But I have little confidence that this will happen anytime soon. So it is up to us to look after each other. What I have observed since my arrival here in South Bend is that this community does that very well. And here’s something else I’ve observed: I believe that South Bend is a single liberal egalitarian Jewish community despite the existence of two synagogues. You are connected by history, by family connections, by deep friendships. And yet, there is the perception of division and worry about what a joint future might look like.
Many of you will know that I spend some Shabbat mornings at Sinai Synagogue. It has been an absolute pleasure to attend Shabbat morning services there as a Jew in the pew, rather than the rabbi charged with facilitating a worship experience for all in attendance. The Shabbat morning service is almost entirely in Hebrew, and it typically lasts 2 ½ hours. People arrive late, and there’s always the possibility to sneak out and catch up with friends in the foyer. There’s no question that the Conservative way of prayer is quite different from Reform. But that’s an issue of style, not substance. What we value is very much the same: family, community, our Jewish future, our worries for the world. I was quite touched to read Rabbi Friedland’s Rosh Hashanah sermon, and I’d like to share a bit with you here, in part because I feel that I could have written it myself:
“We all are linked through our sacred texts.
We all are linked through our concern for fellow Jews.
We all are linked through our commitment to egalitarian practice – that Jewish men and women have equal access to sacred ritual.
We all are linked to our understanding that the Land of Israel is special to our people.
We all are linked through our commitment that the Jewish people are a global people, not limited to narrow racial differences.
We all in the Liberal Jewish tradition are linked through our acknowledgment that gender and sexual orientation is fluid and God is the author of that reality.”
He then goes on to say that those who harass or demean others for their views are explicitly not welcome. We seek to erect a big tent, but there is no space for those who try to build themselves up by tearing others down.
God brings the ancient Israelites together to establish a covenant with them—a contract rooted in sanctity and mutual respect. As Sinai Synagogue and Temple Beth-El are discussing a sacred space to share, I wonder whether we might imagine what such a covenantal agreement between our two congregations might look like. We are contemplating moving in together. Imagine creating a ketubah in which we consider the commitments that we make to one another. Imagine a sacred partnership in which we might create holy space for study, prayer, conversation, dinners, children, teens and elderly….together… Imagine, to quote from Rabbi Brous’ book, “Looking directly into each other’s eyes to care for each other at illness and death, at birth and celebration.” May this new year bring us all closer together. May it see an end to hatred and divisions. And may it bring us closer to a time of true peace. Amen.