So here we are to celebrate our Chatan Torah and Kallat Bereshit. In some ways, it’s a funny name to extend to this honor, to the honor of recognizing two distinguished legacies of service to our synagogue community.
It’s a name that goes back centuries to the distinguished community members who were given the honor of the final aliyah of the Torah, when we completed the reading of the Torah after a year’s worth of study and dedication, and immediately following, the honor of the first aliyah of the new Torah reading, signaling our enthusiasm to start the process all over again.
Of course the names of the honors themselves have very relevant meanings. Chatan Torah, the groom, the bridegroom of the Torah. For centuries it was also the Chatan Bereshit, the bridegroom of Bereshit, the beginning of the Torah, before, thankfully, these honors began to be extended to women in many communities.
So the central metaphor we have to celebrate Simchat Torah, the completion and beginning of the torah cycle, and to celebrate service to Jewish community, is a wedding metaphor, a marriage metaphor. Why is that?
Well on its face, those of you who were here to celebrate Simchat Torah with us, or who have ever celebrated Simchat Torah, can begin to sense some of its similarities to a wedding celebration. The festiveness and joy, the dancing and the seven circles we do with the torah, like the seven times beloveds circle one another at a jewish wedding; as people saw on Monday night, many communities have the tradition of holding tallitot, prayer shawls over the heads of the kids for a moment in emulation of a mini chupah. The holiday has a similar ta’am, a similar vibe to a wedding.
But the metaphor of wedding to Simchat Torah and the Chatan Torah and Kallat Bereshit runs deeper than that. Weddings, as we know, are not ultimately about joy and festiveness, as important as those features are. They are about commitment. They are about dedication. They are about love.
The annual recipients of our Chatan Torah and Kallat Bereshit honors reflect this level of commitment, dedication, and love to their Jewish communities. They recognize, as manifested through their actions, that for a community, just like a marriage, to thrive, it takes commitment, dedication, and love, from its members.
I can’t think of a better way to articulate this than through an exposition on the work of renowned sage Gary Chapman, the work known to readers of the internet the world over as The Five Love Languages.
For those uninitiated with this concept, love languages are the different ways we give and receive love to and from our partner. While of course we could imagine a seemingly infinite number of ways to show love, Chapman demonstrates that we can essentially boil them down to five categories. The five categories are as follows: Quality Time. Words of affirmation. Gift giving. Physical Touch. Acts of Service.
Each of these are ways that our partners, and our communities, need us to show love. Without them, their—our—tanks run empty, and eventually corrode, deprived of life sustaining nourishment. So healthy partnerships, and healthy communities, are filled with actions in these categories.
Just as our partner needs us to set aside quality time for them—to listen when things get hard, to spend time together celebrating, and putting the work of our jobs and the household aside—these communal leaders, our Chatan Torah and Kallat Bereshit, spend hours of quality time dedicated to this synagogue community. Whether it’s hours of evening meetings when you’d rather be watching the Phillies, whether it’s coming to Shabbat or holiday services to fully experience what this synagogue has to offer, taking time to listen to members of the community about their experience of it so they can help improve it, these synagogue leaders have helped nourish this community by devoting hours of time to it.
Words of affirmation. Our partners need to feel seen and affirmed for the value they bring to the world. We need to tell them how much we love them and how much we appreciate them in ways we know they yearn to be seen and valued. I’ve experienced firsthand our communal leaders do this for this community. Just the other day Alexis stopped me mid Torah procession to say how much she was amazed by our Shabbat morning Torah discussions with the students from the Hebrew School; just this week, Jeremey shared his appreciation with me for helping steward this community though the early stages of the pandemic; Carmen got up Yom Kippur morning and, by name, thanked so many of the volunteers and staff who have contributed to the thriving of this synagogue. People need to be recognized in order to keep showing up, and our honorees do that in spades.
Gift giving. Chapman studied anthropology and in every culture he studied he found gift giving to be a part of what he calls the love-marriage process. Even those of who don’t consider ourselves particularly interested in “stuff” can’t help but feel our spirits lifted when our parter gives us a gift. It makes us feel valued and, yes, loved.
This is no less true in communities. As I have shared before, the Mishnah teaches im ein kemach, ein Torah, where there is no bread, there is no Torah. Communities need sustenance, financial uplift to thrive. These leaders have not only given their quality time, not only offered words of affirmation, they’ve given gifts, given dollars, knowing that for communities to thrive they need more than one measure of value. Partnerships, and communities, are nourished by gifts.
Physical touch. If you think it’s going to be harder for me to stretch this metaphor from marriage to community… you’re right. It is not a 1:1, not apples to apples. Marriages, loving partnerships often need physical touch to thrive. Apparently, studies show that babies who are held and touched develop a healthier emotional life than those left for long periods of time without physical contact. Marriage thrives off of this too, with partners looking for ways all along the physical spectrum from holding hands to a well timed hug to everything else to help one another feel loved.
I’m not going to offer a direct comparison to communities except to say I have noticed a number of times in this community when someone is grieving a loved one or going through a hard time and someone else in the community will, when it is welcome, extends them a hug, an arm around the shoulder, a different kind of a signal to show them how much they are loved, and how much of a difference this can make. Strangers high five at eagles games. Different communities connect in different ways and this can be one of them when welcome. Our leaders get that.
Finally, acts of service. This might be the one area where it is almost more intuitive in the communal setting than the marriage setting, and yet our marriages, our partners, need us to perform acts of service. Whether its fixing something that’s been broken for so long we forgot what it was like when it worked, or doing the dishes when it was our partner’s turn, filling the gas tank unexpectedly, all of these lighten our partner’s load and make them feel like they’re not in this alone, like their supported.
Synagogues need this, too. Synagogues have broken boilers and HVAC units just like houses do. Synagogues have finances that need to be crunched, and contract language that needs to be reviewed. These service leaders have performed countless acts of service from serving as the synagogue’s solicitor to leading a successful capital campaign and serving as the synagogue’s president. They know acts of service.
One of the primary insights of the love language paradigm is that partners often have different primary love languages from one another. I, for instance, might be most nourished, my tank filled most significantly, through words of affirmation. If Caroline tells what a good dad I am or rabbi I am, that might really work for me. For Caroline, on the other hand, while words of affirmation might not hurt, they may not be the thing that lands most profoundly. For her the extra basket of laundry I’ve folded might make her feel like I really care. The challenge is that the language of love I’m most inclined to give is the one that resonates most for me—in this example, loving words. I have to become fluent in her love language, chapman teaches, for her to feel nourished.
Service leaders, in serving an entire community, don’t have the luxury of learning just one language. They have a whole community of people who have different needs, different yearnings. In helping to ensure this community is nourished and thrives, we as a community, led by our leaders, have to ensure someone is contributing in all the different ways this community needs nourishment. It is no small task.
Fortunately for us, we have had leaders like Alexis Berg Marmar and Jeremey Newberg to help steward the way for us.
Chatan Torah and Kallat Bereshit, these sacred partners to the story of our Torah, the story of our people. And of course how is that story manifest but through through commitment, through dedication, through love, like the love of our leaders on behalf of our community. Mazal tov, Alexis and Jeremey.