On coming home & community
Erev Rosh Hashanah 5785
It’s been a hard year for the Jewish people.
Entering into these high holy days, it is hard not to feel the pinpricks of memory that link the beginning of this festival season with the end of last year’s festival season. The seasons do indeed go round and round. As we anticipate the rhythms that will take us from Rosh Hashanah, to Yom Kippur, to Sukkot, and again to Simchat Torah, I know that in this space tonight, we are likely feeling it all. A desire to hear words of comfort and hope, a feeling of responsibility to hear words of honesty and action, a need to be reminded of the eternality of the Jewish people, and our role in the world.
Tonight, I want to share with you some of the things that I am thinking about for our community, our congregation, and our people.
For me there is an overarching truth to this moment:
What we are here to do is not build community only for communities’ sake— but to create a vast web of interconnection that is so beautifully woven, that you cannot fall out of it.
Even when you have hard conversations.
Even, and especially when those hard conversations are about things like:
The future of American Judaism.
The future of our democracy.
Israel.
Palestine
The world we want our kids to inherit.
But first, we have to start here. At home. At Hevreh.
There’s a story I love that is told by Dar Williams in her book, “What I Found in a Thousand Towns: A Traveling Musician’s Guide to Rebuilding America’s Communities One Coffee Shop, Dog Run, and Open Mike-Night at a Time.”
She tells the story to illustrate a concept that she calls “positive proximity”, which she defines as ““state of being where living side by side with people is experienced as beneficial”. Sounds simple, right?
She tells the story of a hill:
You start with a hill. You say to yourself, That hill, off the side of the high school, would be perfect for sledding. I know someone who could mow it with his riding mower. You call that guy and ask. He says, “Sure.”
… The snow falls, and you invite your kids and some of their friends to take a maiden run. All parties inform you that it’s awesome. By afternoon there are twenty kids. The parents talk while the children sled.
A woman from the PTA approaches and says “Hey, would it be ok if the PTA came next week and sold hot chocolate? We’re trying to fund some new community programs”
“Anyone can do anything,” you say. “I have no claim on this. I just knew a couple of guys.”
By the next year, the sledding hill is the place to go. People bake for the PTA table, and a local farm is the milk sponsor. The PTA has accumulated a fleet of volunteers who tutor at the school. The woman from the PTA is dating the guy with the mower. Next year [there’s talk] of a small community herb garden, and someone has approached the guy with a plow about starting a tool library. He says he’ll talk to the gal at the VFW Hall. Maybe they could do it there. That’s when a father from another town, watching his kids speed down the hill, turns to you and says, “This is a great town. I wish we lived here.”
I think about this story a lot when I think about who we have been, and who we are becoming as a Hevreh community.
We know that in our Jewish tradition, names really matter. From the moment that Jacob is forever transformed by a nocturnal wrestling match and is renamed Yisrael, it is embedded in our peoplehood that names reflect who we are. We are Yisrael— those who wrestle with God. And we are Hevreh— a community built on the kaleidoscope of meaning that comes from one tiny, three letter Hebrew root, Chet, Vet, Resh: chaver, meaning friend. Chevruta, that dynamic understanding of spiritual partnership that illuminates our learning— and Hevreh: community. Society. A collection of friends. Or simply— “my people”.
Truly, it has never felt more important to be Hevreh.
That story of the hill that ends with one father saying to another, “this is a great town, I wish we lived here” is a beautiful parallel for what I dream about for us as Hevreh— and it already reflects much of who we are.
It is how Hevreh’s story began 50 years ago; with a group of people looking to one another and saying out loud: we need each other.
It is how Hevreh’s story evolved and grew; with more groups of people looking to one another and saying— being in Jewish community with you makes my life better and more meaningful.
It is how some of the most transformative moments in Hevreh’s history unfolded: with individuals and families in this community looking to one another, and saying, this is a community worth building. Some of those most important moments in my time at Hevreh began with the question “what if we…?”
“What if we had a religious school band with students and parents together?”“What if we had an Early Childhood Center?” “What if we had something that combined art and Torah Study?”
“What if we had really strong partnerships with organizations that feed people, and house people, and help keep them healthy?”
“What if we…?” were the words that brought us to the Boker Tov Hevreh band, the ECC at Hevreh, and Creative Beit Midrash. It’s how we have a relationship with important community organizations like Construct and the People’s Pantry and Volunteers in Medicine— and it’s how we will soon relaunch a newly instituted Southern Berkshire Interfaith Clergy Association.
This moment now, is a moment for us all to ask ourselves “What if we…..?”
And so, for this new year: What if we really saw our mission as two-fold: to foster a deep sense of connection between and among ourselves, to Jewish tradition and to living Jewishly on Jewish time, and also, to see ourselves as an important and proud part of our Berkshire community? What if we were a community that was strong enough, and closely knit enough to have tough conversations without coming apart at the seams?
I know that this past year has given many of us pause: we have questioned our safety, both physically and spiritually as Jews here in the Berkshires.
We have had hard conversations and in some cases, confrontations, with friends and neighbors. And I know- we are tired. We are weary and tired of figuring out what to say.
But, what if, instead: we were to decide to come closer. To lean into that idea of positive proximity, because we know in our bones that living side by side is not only beneficial, but crucial.
I am more sure than ever that what we are here to do is be a connected community: not an island, but an integral part of Great Barrington and all of the towns we call home.
What we are here to do is be proud and unafraid to say “I'm Jewish and I'm a member of a faith based community that has been in Great Barrington for over 50 years and my Jewish values guide me in wanting to contribute to making this a great place to live”
What we are here to do, is to model for our children that the Jewish story is long and deep, and an important chapter is unfolding right here, right now here in the Berkshires. We are not here incidentally or accidentally. Our Jewish lives are intertwined with this place we call home, and we should celebrate that.
What if, in this moment, we were to “err on the side of presence”--- continuing to show up in the overlapping circles of connection that connect Hevreh, our Jewish home, with the broader community?
I know that many of us are entering into this new year in a state of spiritual fatigue— daunted by the enormity of the world, as it were.
And perhaps, you are sitting here right now thinking to yourself “Oh- she doesn’t know the half of it!”
But, I do. I know how much intensity this moment holds.
Some of us sit here tonight with a single and solitary prayer: peace.
Some of us sit here tonight wondering if we are in the right place— is this sanctuary big enough to hold my doubts, and my fears?
Some of us sit here tonight and wonder how much more we can do— like Sisyphus pushing that boulder uphill. It might feel impossible to pick ourselves up— and yet, maybe we don’t have to.
Maybe the answer is that with real community, we pick each other up.
In these moments of doubt and fear, when the last thing we can stomach is sugar coated optimism, I want to suggest that our tradition offers us a place to start, and that place is at home.
There’s a saying that is often shared at Jewish weddings in particular communities that I am reminded of at this moment— rather than a simple mazel tov, one might say to the wedding couple “May you be zoche to build a bayit neeman b’Yisrael!”
Which means, “may you be zoche— may you merit, or be fortunate to build a bayit ne’eman— a faithful or sturdy house in Israel”.
That blessing resonates for me now as a blessing for us as a community— that in this new year we should continue to merit to build a bayit ne’eman a faithful and sturdy home for ourselves amongst the people Israel, right here on State Rd.
To build a sturdy house, we have to continue to fortify our foundation: a commitment to educating the next generation in the ways of living a meaningful Jewish life. To invest in the families, the students and the teachers who are helping us to raise up that next generation of Hevreh.
To build a sturdy house, we have to be clear about the role of this sanctuary.
This sanctuary is not a fortress, but a refuge— and yet, it is not a hideaway, but rather, a spiritual charging station. A place where we can come to be reminded of the crucial project of Jewish community, renewed and strengthened to go back out into the world and live those values out loud.
To build a sturdy house, we have to be committed to keeping those doors wide open, committed to the idea that every person who is a part of the great unfolding love story of God and the Jewish people, can enter.
These High Holy Days are an invitation— a beautiful way in which our Jewish tradition reminds us of who we have been, and asks us to consider who we want to be as a people.. Over the course of the days ahead, we’ll have the opportunity to join together in prayer and silence, melody and meditation as a way of answering that invitation.
My hope and prayer is that you will find meaning in the rites and rituals of our tradition; words that beckon us to come home. Because here, in our Jewish home— we have a lot of work to do.
We have broken hearts to heal.
We have babies to raise and children to teach.
We have friends to comfort and celebrate with.
We have worlds to transform, and lives to change.
We have a community that needs us.
May this new year be a better one for us all— Shana Tovah.
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