It was the year 70 CE
and the Second Temple in Jerusalem was under siege by the Roman Legions. Before
the Romans breach the walls of the city, Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai, one of the
leading rabbinic figures of the time, and his students decide to abandon the
spiritual and governmental capital of the Judean state. To give up Jerusalem, even while the Temple
is still standing.
Ben Zakkai knew there was an agreement made with the Roman
soldiers, that every night the dead were moved outside the city walls of
Jerusalem. He realized that he needed to
speak to the Roman General Vespasian, and at great personal risk to himself and
his students, Rabbi Yochanan along with his students’ help, faked his own
death. That night they brought the great rabbi’s casket to the Old City walls,
where the story goes, that even the guard did not believe the veracity of the
claim and ran a sword through the coffin. Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai managed to
survive and get an audience with the Roman General.
He came before Vespasian and told him that he was about to
become the emperor of Rome and that the Temple in Jerusalem would soon be
destroyed. At that very moment, a messenger arrived telling Vespasian that he
was indeed appointed the emperor. In turn for receiving such good news,
Vespasian granted Yochanan three wishes:
a)
spare the family of Rabbi Shimon ben Gamaliel –
who would later go onto become the Nasi
b)
give medical attention to Rabbi Tzadok
c)
that he spare Yavneh. This last request was
immortalized in the Talmud with the words, “Give me Yavneh and its sages.”
In other words, with this last request he asked Vespasian to
spare the Sanhedrin and let it be reconstituted
as an academy in the town of Yavneh.
Yavneh is a city in the north of modern day Israel, where
Rabbi Yochanan would gather the greatest Jewish scholars of the time to begin a
conversation on how to reconstitute the Judaism that existed in the Temple.
They realized quickly that while Jerusalem was The Holy City, they believed in
a God that was accessible from all points on earth. They also knew that one of
the great miracles of the Temple was that in brought everyone together to a
central location. There was no “satellite” location of which to make a
sacrifice, you had to come to Jerusalem or give someone your sacrifice to make
on your behalf.
Had our communal obituary been written after the destruction
of the Temple I doubt scholars would have spilled much ink telling our story.
Yet as we are all aware, merely by the fact that we are sitting here today,
this was not the end of the story. The story of the founding of Yavneh represents
the birth of Rabbinic Judaism, a way of life focused on Torah and Jewish law,
rather than Temple worship or political sovereignty.
What took place in Yavneh was the single greatest shift of
religious priorities the world had ever seen. Thankfully, our ancestors, while
deeply devout and pious, were also incredible change agents. They realized that a religion based on a
specific place could never survive. What came out of Yavneh was a Judaism that
was migratory, a Judaism based on values and actions, not on location. And at
the center of this rebranded Judaism
was the Beit Knesset, was the house of worship, the synagogue.
While some synagogues or gathering spaces had existed before
the destruction of the Second Temple their purpose was about to change and
become wholly different. The synagogue has changed profoundly and regularly over
the past 2000 years. The role the synagogue had in Babylonia during the exile was
different from that which it held in the Golden age of Spain. And the
synagogues built in the shtetls of Eastern Europe were shells of those built in
post-World War II America. The synagogue, not unlike Judaism, has reinvented itself in every new
generation.
No other institution in Jewish Life touches more Jews than
the synagogue. And no other institution
has the ability to influence, inform and empower Jews like a synagogue. Yet
today, the synagogue faces a challenge no less threatening than the Temple
faced in the 1st century. The stakes are just as high and our
thinking must be just as sharp as the sages who 2000 years ago reimagined Judaism.
The beauty of a synagogue has always been, whether built 20 years
ago or 2000, is that it is a place where people would come together in times of
great joy and in times of terrible sadness. It was the place we would come when
we simply needed a quiet place to think, a shelter from the storm that is the
world outside. In his book Re-Envisioning
the Synagogue, Zachary Heller writes:
“[For] the past two millennia the
synagogue has been the central point of engagement for Jews and continues to be
the locus of religious, cultural, an educational expression that is a focal
point for Jewish identity, education, cohesion and community… The synagogue
must be open and fighting to all Jews, both for those who already are committed
to Jewish tradition and find fulfillment in it as well as for those who find
the language and symbols of the synagogue either unfamiliar or lacking in
meaning” [Re-Envisioning the Synagogue; Helller, Zachary I; Hollis Publishing
Co. 1995. p.vii]
[Please take a moment
and share your most vivid synagogue memory with your neighbor; introduce
yourself to the person next to you, not your spouse or family member. Be it from
this congregation or another – what stands out to you about synagogue? Was it a
wedding, a bris, Kol Nidrei … perhaps even a funeral ]
I would imagine that for many of us our memories revolve
around lifecycle events. We came in search of a synagogue to mark the most
important events in our lives, whether they were of great joy or terrible
sadness and that is still at the heart of what we do as a synagogue.
Yet today, perhaps more so than any other time in its
history, the modern-day American synagogue sits at the crossroads of our Jewish
and secular lives. Many today are worried that in the ongoing struggle between
the religious and secular world, secularism is winning out. Yet synagogues
since the beginning of time have always stood at this precarious intersection. Synagogues,
you may know, have not always been categorized by denomination; spend anytime
in a major Jewish population center and you will find an Italian Synagogue,
Spanish-Portuguese, perhaps Dutch or German. These synagogues differentiated
each other not just by the language they spoke, but by the rites and customs
they followed. The prevailing culture has always seeped into the flavor of our
religious framework.
The crossroad of the religious and secular worlds is exactly
where Synagogues have stood since their inception. Yet there is an overwhelming
fear, right now, that synagogues are no longer the institutions they once were.
This is due in no small part to the fact that the world around us has changed,
and synagogues have failed to keep up. For the better part of the 20th century
the synagogue sat at the center of most families’ religious and social lives.
If a Jew in the 1960s or 70s wanted to join country club, they created a Jewish
country club as so many were not open or welcome to Jewish members. If a Jew in
the earlier part of the 20th century wanted to join a gym, they went to the JCC.
Our lives revolved around being Jewish, in no small part because the outside
world wanted nothing to do with us. And of course we know today that while
certain stereotypes still exist, with rare exception, the world is at our
fingertips, and the data supports these conclusions.
The PEW study told us that synagogue affiliation 10 years ago
was 46% and today it is at 31%. It’s hard for me to digest such large and abstract
numbers; what does 15% actually looks like? What keeps me up at night is that each one of those 15% represents a person
who found the doors to our buildings to be too high to scale or too heavy too
open.
I will be the first to admit that the numbers are not good,
yet the numbers create incredible opportunity for change. Change is difficult,
and often needs to be done very slowly, yet when faced with your own mortality,
people as well as institutions are much more willing to look themselves in the
mirror and make hard choices.
While it is not always been the case, Beth El has made great
strides becoming a more welcoming and inclusive congregation. I list only but a
few of the changes we have made, and ask that as I go through the list you
think to yourself about how these changes have personally touched you or your
family.
- More individualized approach to Jewish Education
- Increased social programming
- Increased interfaith participation in services
and lifecycle events - Interfaith burial
- Greater youth participation (AAA Yad Squad)
- Increased funding to Jewish Summer Camp
attendees (31) - Building a playground
- Willingness to perform a Same-Sex Marriage
- New service options on Shabbat Morning (minyan
in the round or cup of coffee with God)
While these changes are important and noteworthy there is
still much more work to be done. Just as our ancestors needed to be agents of
change, so do we. Does anyone doubt that
the Jewish Community can once again rise to the occasion?
Right before Rosh Hashanah there was an article in Tablet
Magazine entitled “To See Those Pews Full Again, Synagogues Should Learn From
Best Buy” [http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-life-and-religion/193316/learn-from-best-buy].
The article recounts the fact that many experts believed that Best Buy was doomed
to the same fate as its competitors… a slow death at the feet of online
merchants. Yet, Best Buy decided to change the story and leverage what they
felt was their competitive advantage, which was the fact that they were a big
box store. The leadership team reimagined the customer experience; they knew
that while people may enjoy making purchases in their underwear from home,
people still like to touch products. People like holding the camera before they
buy it, they like seeing if the new smart phone will actually fit in your
pocket before buying it. Best Buy could not compete with the purchasing ease of
Amazon, but they had something Amazon did not…Best Buy could offer an
experience. The author notes that Best Buy fighting Amazon was a bit like David
vs. Goliath and “the first principle of fighting Goliath is that if you have to
compete against Alex Rodriquez, [he recommends that you] play chess instead of
baseball.”
There are those in Omaha and outside who have the best of
intentions, and believe that the modern day synagogue needs to become a cross
between a yoga studio, local theatre and a Starbucks. I will be honest and tell
you that I am not there yet… If you want yoga, come talk to me and I will tell
you where I go (and it beats throwing mats down in the social hall any day). If
you want coffee, nothing beats the experience of Starbucks. I go there to do
work all the time, it’s as if productivity and creativity are in the air, you
go there to be with other people who you imagine to be productive and creative
and if that wasn’t enough…they know my name and what I drink! But at the end of
the day Coffee and Yoga are not our
businesses.
So how do we thrive like Best Buy and not falter like
Blockbuster and Borders? The answer is by reimagining
the Synagogue Experience.
[One more favor…close
your eyes for a moment, think about what your perfect synagogue would look like,
what would be inside, what color would the walls be painted, what type of music
would be playing, what would it smell like?]
Can you see it?
In the clutter of the outside world, we all need:
- a place to disconnect
- a place to reconnect
- a place to learn
- a place to find God
- a place to open your mind
- a place to examine and reflect on your life
- a place to cry
- a place to laugh
- a place to tell stories
- a place to question God
- a place to remember
- a place to sing
- a place to play
- a place to forgive
- a place where everyone is equal
- a place to pray
What would you add to my list?
All of the meaningful changes that we’ve made in the past
five years or more, at their core, have all been about creating a more
meaningful Jewish experience. A young family wants their children to have a
place to run around and play after Hebrew school or Shabbat morning services,
so group of talented and passionate leaders push for playground to be built…we
created a Jewish experience. An
interfaith couple comes to me, thinking about their own mortality, worried
about end-of-life issues and says, “Rabbi, you allow us to be members, my
non-Jewish spouse can attend whatever they so choose, why can’t we be buried
next to each other?” While perhaps morbid…we created a Jewish experience.
And herein lies the answer to the question of the 21st
century synagogue; it will be a synagogue that seeks to create a deeper level
of meaning and engagement for its congregants. If God forbid Beth El was gone
tomorrow; you would not miss the coffee or the yoga. Rabbi Elie Kaunfer, the
founder of Kehillat Hadar and Yeshivat Hadar, points out in his book, Empowered
Judaism “that for the first time in centuries, two Jews can marry each other
and have Jewish children without any connection to Jewish heritage, wisdom or
tradition.” [Empowered Judaism; Kaunfer, Rabbi Elie; Jewish Lights Publishing.2010
p.157] We must create more meaningful JEWISH
experiences.
That is what Beth El can provide. We will never be your yoga
studio or your coffee shop. That’s not what we do, that’s not what we know. But
we know how to add meaning and worth to people’s lives. Perhaps we need to do
it better, perhaps we need to work a little harder, but meaning and engagement
are our business.
Our sages bet the future existence of Judaism on the relevancy
of Torah and the importance of community. They realized that the place doesn’t
matter if you have the people and values. I believe they were right then and
they will be proven to be right again.
When we talk about Beth El, it is important for us to
realize that a synagogue does not exist in a vacuum. We are a part of a much
larger community. The Omaha Jewish community is unlike any other Jewish
Community I have ever known – a community that is sitting on a golden
opportunity. We are large enough to support three thriving synagogues and an
active Chabad. We are small enough that I am lucky to call the other
Synagogue’s Rabbis my dear friends. You
have to realize that other Jewish communities around the country, and most
likely around the world, are deadlocked with politics and animosity. You have
three Rabbis in town who are all under the age of 40 (and can be found grabbing
coffee together!). All three synagogues are at a tipping point and able to
reimagine themselves. Think about how
powerful and amazing our Jewish community can be if we are intentional about
our collective future. It is my hope
that as we continue to reimagine what our synagogue can be, and that we do so
arm in arm with the other synagogues as well as the Federation and its entities.
Only by sitting down together, at the same table, will we be able to craft a
vision for our community’s shared future.
Beth El, as you well know, does not have a Yom Kippur appeal.
After our first Kol Nidrei here while walking home with Shira, I turned to her
and said, “oh my God, they forgot to ask for money”. Right or wrong that isn’t
what we do at the moment. Nevertheless I will make my own appeal, but not for
money, it is for your willingness to forgive. I believe that we can talk as
friends, this being my fifth high holy days spent at Beth El. We sit her
tonight and tomorrow on this hallowed day and we ask God for forgiveness, for
the sins we have committed publicly and the sins for which we have committed in
secret. We ask God to give us a second chance… We ask the same of our friends
and family for whom we have hurt or offended. I would like to think our synagogue has the
same right to ask, to ask us for a second chance. Whether it be for the sin of a
service taking too long, or not meaningful enough, or not relevant, or the sin
of not touching your souls when it mattered most… For all of these sins a
synagogue can atone and ask for your forgiveness to move forward.
Forgive us. Pardon us. Grant us atonement.
“There is no institution like the synagogue that has such a
possibility – of touching a person’s soul and connecting that soul to God, to
the Jewish people and to the community.” [Re-Envisioning the Synagogue;
Helller, Zachary I; Hollis Publishing Co. 1995 p.146] I will continue to do my
part, along with the Hazzan and our board, to make sure that we are a welcoming
synagogue with the doors wide open, but you
still need to walk across the threshold.
I’ll end this evening with a story I heard before starting
rabbinical school. There was a young man who while growing up lived what many
of us would call a moderately observant family. His grandfather was a learned
and well-resected scholar in the community, a man for whom he adored. His
father worked long hours, and so it was his mother who would take him and his
sister to synagogue. When the man’s sister turned 18 she went to the beach with
friends and never came home, dying of meningitis. I don’t think he ever forgave
God for that. The young man enlisted during the Vietnam war, serving his
country honorably, and decided to surprise his parents by coming home for the
high holy days, yet when he reached the doors of the beautiful synagogue, in
his full military dress uniform, he was greeted by an usher and asked if he had
a ticket as there were no seats available. The man did not step foot in a
synagogue again until after his son was born. In fact I’m not sure at what
point he forgave Judaism or for that matter the synagogue, but had my father
never given the synagogue a second chance, I certainly wouldn’t be standing
before you today.
My message to you tonight…join us and come back home.
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