Sermon for Second Day of Rosh Hashanah 5772 September 30, 2011

Transcription

1 Sermon for Second Day of Rosh Hashanah 5772 September 30, 2011 A realtor was driving on a back country road to scout out a property. As he was navigating the deserted road, he noticed what appeared to be a chicken running alongside his car, and he was traveling sixty miles an hour. As the chicken passed him, he noticed that the chicken had three legs. Curious, the realtor followed the chicken into a farm, and stopped his car. He approached the farmer and asked him: Did you see a chicken run into here? Yes, he answered. Did the chicken have three legs? Yup, the farmer answered. I raise them that way. How come? the realtor asked. I ll tell you, the farmer explained. I love the drumstick. Mom loves the drumstick, and now Junior, too, loves the drumstick. I got tired of all the fighting over the drumsticks, so I have been breeding three-legged chickens. That s amazing, the realtor said. How do they taste? I don t know, the farmer answered. I haven t been able to catch one yet. We live in a society where modern technology keeps producing new products so rapidly, we can t begin to keep up with it. Yet it is interesting that our tradition has provided us with an invention that goes back thousands of years and which gives us a chance to catch our breath and appreciate all that exists in this world. That invention, of course, is Shabbat. Six weeks from tonight, on November 11 through 13, we will welcome Rabbi Steven Sager to CBI as our Scholar-in-Residence, a program supported in part by the Merrimack Valley Jewish Federation and by generous donors in our community. We hope everyone will plan to be with us for some portion, or all, of that weekend. Our topic then and, to some degree the theme of our Adult Educational programming throughout the year, will be Making Shabbat. How can we take this ancient tradition, that has been considered a gift of God to the Jewish people and, in fact is a gift of the Jewish people to much of the world, and make it a significant part of our lives? Shabbat is the only holiday which appears in the Ten 1

2 Commandments. Minimally observant Jews like to say, Well at least I keep the Ten Commandments. However, if Shabbat is not part of one s life, then how can one really make that claim? If Shabbat is so important that it made God s top ten list, then how can we think of ignoring it? Yet, we know that Shabbat observance can be very complicated and can impose severe limitations on our lifestyle. There are so many laws and restrictions. Is this really worth bothering with? What are the benefits of keeping a traditional Shabbat and how traditional must one make it in order to feel authentic, for we know that as in all areas of Jewish life there are significant variations in the ways that different Jews choose to observe our traditions. There are many levels of Shabbat observance and, for a Conservative Jew, the important thing is to make a beginning and go from there. One doesn t necessarily need to follow every jot and tittle so to speak, in order to create a Shabbat experience. On the contrary, for some of us, Shabbat is not a day governed by the Shulchan Arukh or the Talmud, by the details of Jewish law, but is a unique day that we have set aside for our own understanding of spirituality and while that may not be exactly what Rabbi Akiva or Maimonides had in mind, it may work better for us than a more austere version from a book. Which aspects to embrace is a question that each person must grapple with in their own hearts and in their own homes. I was trying to recall my own first encounter with Shabbat. I have a few vague memories of going to synagogues in my very early years. One of my earliest memories is of entering a large room with one of my parents and I have just the image of a sea of hats in the downstairs section of what I later learned was the High Street Shul in Bridgeport, CT, an Orthodox congregation where my grandfather was a long-time member. I don t recall anything of the service or of the synagogue except for the hats, in retrospect, a symbol of tradition, of reverence for the divine presence, and of the ancient religion that my grandfather brought over to this country from Russia in My parents, beginning in the early 40s, sang on Shabbat and High Holidays for some 25 or 30 years in the synagogue choir at Rodeph Sholom, the Conservative shul on the other end of town from my grandfather s shul. They attended Friday night services quite regularly in order to sing but we, my sister and I (and later, our younger brother) rarely, if ever, went with them. I guess it was just past our bedtimes. I started going to Shabbat services on my own, however, on Saturday mornings when I was about eight years old. My Mom arranged for me to meet a ten- 2

3 year-old boy, Harold Levy, at the bus stop in Stratford near where we lived and together we would take two buses to get to the North End of Bridgeport where the synagogue still stands. We changed buses downtown and had about a 15 minute layover, long enough to get the latest Superman comics at the newsstand next to the bus stop or to run across the street and buy a snack at Morrow s Nut House, and then catch the second bus to shul. The prohibition of commercial transactions and carrying on Shabbat obviously did not come up at that point in my life. I went to shul, at first because I was expected to learn the Yigdal to sing at the end of my older Cousin Jerry s bar mitzvah, so I had to meet with the cantor after services for several weeks to practice. But after Jerry s bar mitzvah, I decided I liked going to shul and I kept going and I haven t stopped going since. I don t know that there was that much spirituality involved in my early decision at age 8 or 9. I liked the ride on the bus and the opportunity to stop and shop downtown, even for a few minutes. I liked the wonderful catered kiddushes that were served after services each week. But I also enjoyed the service, the stories that Mr. Skovronsky, one of the teachers who led the program, read us and the prayers that we sang together as a group - a large group of baby boomers, the melodies became ingrained in my mind and soul. I enjoyed our joining the adult service for Musaf whenever there was a Bar Mitzvah. I liked the opportunities, as I learned the prayers, to get up and be a leader in the service and, in fact, I even delayed the beginning of my Bar Mitzvah lessons (I really didn t need a whole year and half to prepare, I decided) so I put them off so I could become a macher in the Junior Congregation before graduating to the main service. I became the Junior Congregation President. It was the only time I was a congregational president. I do recall that at some particular time, around the same time that I was starting to get involved in Junior Congregation, my parents introduced Shabbat into our house as well. Maybe they heard a sermon from the rabbi that convinced them to do it. I never really asked what prompted this innovation. Suddenly, we had some new rituals and a special meal every Friday night. We set the table in the dining room, very fancy, as if we were expecting company. Mom picked up a challah at Zeisler s Bakery every week and there was Manischewitz wine on the table for us all. My mother lit the Shabbos candles, Dad chanted the Kiddush in his deep bass voice and made hamotzi over the challah, a wonderful home cooked meal followed, and it was Shabbos in our house, every week, for many years. As we got older, we still were expected to be at the table for Friday night 3

4 dinner. It got a little harder when we were in High School, particularly when my father opened his own business and sometimes had to work late, but most weeks, at least until I went away to school, we had Shabbat at home on Friday nights and I had Shabbat at shul on Saturday mornings. I got to experience a complete Shabbat for the first time, when I went away to Camp Ramah in the early 60s, as a 13- and 14-year-old, but it wasn t until I went off to college, after a summer in Israel in 1967, following the Six Day War, that I decided to observe Shabbat more traditionally on a regular basis and to avoid many activities that were prohibited by the Torah and by rabbinic law. I decided that I would not do any school work on Friday night and Saturday, but would participate in the activities at Hillel. I loved joining the Orthodox group there at the sundown service and singing all the prayers together, eating in the Hillel dining room with upperclassman, rather than with the other freshmen in the Quad, and then joining in the exuberant Israeli dancing that took place after the second service, the 8 o clock Conservative chapel service and the oneg downstairs. Shabbat became for me a wonderful, joyous occasion every week, a break, a kind of refuge, from the grind of a full schedule of class work and my Hebrew School teaching job, three days a week, and the hours of homework at night. What a wonderful invention! Who ever came up with such a brilliant idea? And it got better. A bunch of us created a Jewish Residence House on campus during my sophomore year. It was an old sorority house that was slated to be torn down in a year s time, that we rented for next to nothing from the redevelopment commission and where a few of us who knew how to cook prepared our own meals for the group every night. They were much tastier than the Hillel meals we loved to complain about. Every Friday night, after the Friday night service at Hillel, we d invite all the regulars, some 25 to 30 people, to join us for Shabbos dinner. We d eat our fill and then sing our hearts out, clapping and pounding the table for an hour or more until finally it was time for birkat hamazon, the grace after meals. And we repeated this again on Saturday. Everyone came back to the house after services for cholent and cold cuts and more exuberant singing. In the late afternoon, after a shabbos nap or a walk, we d head back to Hillel, study a bit, pray the afternoon service, eat a light meal, daven some more and then make havdalah, the closing ritual, as the magical day came to an end and we headed out to enjoy Saturday night in Philadelphia. I have wonderful memories of these early shabbatot, in my 4

5 childhood synagogue, at camp, and at college and later, at Seminary. Shabbat in the midst of a community of observers is a wonderful thing. I ve gone on too long perhaps with these sweet memories, but I wanted to emphasize two aspects of Shabbat that I have found essential, not only back then in college, but throughout life, as I tried to carry that spirit of Shabbat with me into my home and congregational life. One piece of it is the connection with a community, being a part of a group that values some aspects of Shabbat, the service, the oneg afterwards, singing, maybe even a moment of study. Or the home celebration with a special meal often in a special place, the candles burning, the blessings before the meal, and as our son was growing up, the special blessings that we imparted to him each Friday night at dinner. These are experiences that any of us can create in our own homes, in our own lives, if we so desire. The fact that my parents were able to decide one week to introduce a ritual into our home and maintain it for a decade or more, is an indication that others can do the same and create memories for their own children and themselves. If the words or the melodies are unfamiliar, we at the synagogue are only too happy to assist you and make recordings from which to learn them. The other aspect has always been the concept of Shabbat itself. The word Shabbat literally means to stop, to cease and desist from any kind of labor. The Modern Hebrew word for a labor strike is shvitah, from the same root as Shabbat. It is not that God rested on the seventh day - He never gets tired - but He stopped, He stopped creating and so we are urged to stop our creative labor on this day too. In college, I stopped working on term papers and class assignments. I did not go shopping or do my laundry or any other chores on this day. It is not a day for cleaning the house or weeding the garden, it is a day to be together with the family, a day to take a walk, take a nap, visit friends, read a book. Stop trying to change the world. Most important, in this day of constant electronic stimulation, it is a day to unplug, to turn off the computer, put away the Smartphone, the I-pod, the I-pad, and all the other paraphernalia and look around, at the world, at nature, and maybe even at the people with whom one shares one s home. In the recent book, Hamlet s Blackberry; Building a Good Life in the Digital Age, author William Powers tells us how his family has decided to take a break each week from their connection to their video screens. They unplug the modem on their computers each weekend and create a Sabbath for themselves that has nothing necessarily to do with religion, but everything to do with restoring the family and taking a needed break from the eternal download of s and voice mails and 5

6 tweets and instant messages, the grind of being on call 24/7 and never really taking a time out. Does it take a non-jew to remind us how essential the gift of Shabbat is to our lives? We had a Methodist minister friend in Charleston who did her doctoral dissertation on the Sabbath and she invited Janice and me to come to her church one evening and talk to a group of her parishioners about the Jewish Shabbat. She found that she couldn t make Sunday into a real Sabbath, she was just too busy with her ministerial duties, so she took her day off on Thursday and created a personal retreat each week in the beautiful setting of the nearby monastery of Mepkin Abbey. This was her Shabbat. Often, we don t appreciate what a wonderful invention the Sabbath is until someone else, outside of our community, points it out to us. Senator Joe Lieberman, who is an Orthodox Jew who has faithfully observed Shabbat all his life, just put out a book describing his personal observance and how he manages his official duties around keeping Shabbos. For him, there s not such thing as too hard to observe it, it just involves a little creativity, of course, it doesn t hurt to have a few handy staff members around as well. He also encourages all peoples to consider creating a Sabbath of their own and he highlights some suggestions after each chapter in his book, on how to introduce elements of Shabbat into your life whether you re Jewish or not. Lieberman is only one of several people who have recently written about Shabbat. There is a book by Judith Shulevitz, the Sabbath World, in which she recounts her childhood Shabbat observance in Puerto Rico and then explores Jewish and Christian ideas about the Sabbath and ultimately about how she and her family have adapted it and made it a part of their lives today. I ve also found several other non-jewish authors, including Wayne Muller, an ordained minister, who also see Shabbat as a way to get back to nature and to a more natural way of life. Shabbat is a basis element of our tradition and an ever more necessary component of modern living if we are to survive in this digital age. Our adult education chair, Yoav Shorr, and our committee have chosen this topic as one that we, as a congregation should take time to explore in its many facets over the course of this year. We ll be doing so in our monthly Kiddush Roundtables, in other courses, through sermons, and, as I mentioned, as the focus of our weekend with Rabbi Sager in 6

7 November. Our hope is that we might encourage more people to introduce elements of Shabbat into their own lives on a regular basis, to enjoy what we have discovered in this extraordinary creation of Jewish life, simply that by making one day each week holy, separated from the rest of the week, we can infuse life and energy into the rest of the days and increase the meaning of our Jewish connection. On this second day of the new year, as we continue the process of reviewing our lives and renewing our efforts in the days ahead, may we consider how we can enhance our family life, our personal well-being, and our connection with the community by remembering the Sabbath day and making it holy, sacrosanct, a sanctuary in time, protecting us from meaningless running to no end for no purpose. As the Sabbath angels come to visit us each week, may their prayer be that next Shabbat may be even more meaningful, restful, and renewing than this Shabbat and may we all strive to reach that day which is described as Yom shekulo Shabbat umenucha, a day which is entirely of Shabbat and rest. Amen. 7