When I first applied to rabbinical school back in 2013, operating as I was from something of the periphery of the Jewish community, I did not imagine that, post-rabbinical school, I would be the rabbi of a synagogue. The conventional wisdom at the time (and in some places this is still the case) was that synagogues were a dying institution — a brick and mortar relic — when the world was moving online or into startups or popups or other forms of more low-commitment encounters with Jewish life.
As I shared in a High Holiday sermon last year, I had my skepticism about the enduring efficacy, necessity, and dare I say, holiness, of a synagogue community.
Boy, was I wrong.
As I’ve shared over the past several years many times, I have been so moved by the unique role synagogue communities play in Jewish life, in the lives of individuals, and in the life of society at large. I’ve watched the way synagogue communities serve as sources of nourishment and strength for people going through deeply challenging times — the loss of a loved one or an illness in the family; people looking to share their simhas (joyous moments) with others — a child becoming b’nei mitzvah, the birth of a child or a grandchild, or a wedding; and for people looking for accompaniment through the normal rhythms of a year — holidays, Shabbat, and beyond.
The way in which a synagogue community can serve as an anchor in people’s lives can give people a sense of rootedness and community, even if they’re not entering its doors week after week, has become more relevant over time — not less. In an age where life seems to move faster and faster, where world events can leave our heads spinning, where online life both lets us know how much is going on in the world around us, and yet, can evoke experiences of anxiety and disturbance, synagogue life helps keep us rooted, helps give us a sense of togetherness, reminding us that we are not in this alone, and opens our hearts to the timeless conversation of Jewish wisdom, enabling us to gather the resources to help us navigate the challenges that confront us.
But synagogue communities like Society Hill Synagogue — in fact, Society Hill Synagogue itself — cannot survive without financial contributions and generosity from the very people, like you, who are reading this email. Society Hill Synagogue needs to raise $71,000 by December 31 to ensure that we remain on track to have the funds we need to be financially healthy. I’ll be making a gift to this community that I love, and I hope you’ll join me.
The thing about synagogues like Society Hill Synagogue is that we cannot continue to exist and be available to people when they most need us — the High Holy Days, a life cycle event — unless people give generously over the course of a year to sustain their synagogue’s existence: to help pay the staff who work tirelessly over the course of the year to keep the building safe, secure, and clean; to keep teachers who pour their hearts into ensuring a child or an adult can have a transformative, rooted experience in a classroom; to purchase meals to accompany Shabbat services and holidays so that our congregants can build community with one another.
Unlike other charitable enterprises, synagogues receive no government funding; they rarely ever receive grants from institutional donors; and they often don’t receive support from people who aren’t a part of the community. Synagogues rely almost exclusively on the generosity of the individuals and families who benefit directly from their community — who attend its services, who read its emails, who are a part of the community. It’s just us.
Please, if you are reading this, make a point to give an end-of-year gift to Society Hill Synagogue. Even a thriving synagogue community like ours needs each and every household to step up and do what they can with an end-of year gift.
Thank you, and I wish you (an early) Hanukkah Same’ah — Happy Hanukkah!
This past weekend was an astounding experience at Society Hill Synagogue, as we hosted the world-renowned Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum. She did not disappoint. Her words on the sacred capacity of each of us to find the or haganuz, the hidden light, layered throughout the world were inspiring, as was the story of her personal journey, navigating the AIDS crisis that devastated her synagogue community in the early 1990s.
While Rabbi Kleinbaum notoriously does not write down her remarks, and I therefore cannot share them, I know her message will resonate for some time to come.
I humbly offer in its place the words I shared on the topic of resilience this past Friday night:
The topic heading for our scholar-in-residence Shabbat this weekend is “resilience.”
Resilience has been a watchword in the contemporary Jewish community for the better part of a decade now, if not longer. So much so that my alma mater, the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, started a podcast focused specifically on the topic of resilience back in 2017 which has been ongoing ever since. So when I was thinking about what I wanted to invite my teacher, role model, and longtime dear family friend, Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum, to teach about this evening, there was a part of me that thought, even though resilience was an obvious choice… shouldn’t we be past that by now? Aren’t we onto something new? Haven’t we exhausted this topic?
But another part of me recognizes that “resilience” isn’t the full topic for this Shabbat. The full subject line for our scholar-in-residence this weekend is “Resilience in the Face of Adversity.” And the truth is, until we’re done with adversity, we’re not done with resilience.
And I don’t think I’m going out on a limb when I declare before you all this evening that we are not done with adversity.
Whether that adversity shows up in a rise of antisemitism, or authoritarianism, or war around the globe. Or, whether it’s adversity in the smaller corners of our lives — family strife, generalized anxiety, inner loneliness — there’s no doubt we encounter adversity wherever we are. One Hebrew word for adversity is tzarah, from tzar, Mitzrayim (Egypt), the narrow place. As the famous Jewish political philosopher Michael Walzer taught in his seminal work, Exodus and Revolution, wherever you live, it is probably Egypt.
Now, at first listen, that may sound despairing: everywhere is Egypt? What’s the point of it all, then? Why even bother with resilience? But this is actually profoundly optimistic. First, it is rooted in our real lived experience: of where we are, of the wilderness that lies before us, and also of our demonstrated capacity to journey through that wilderness to the promised land. Because what is more intrinsic to Jewish self-understanding than the story of the Exodus, which we recall, not once a year on Passover, but every single day, twice a day, in our prayer services like we did this evening. We sing the words our ancestors sang when they broke free from Egypt. “Mi Khamokha” we sing. “Who is like you” among the cosmos, Adonai, source of life, who journeys with us, who serves as our source of strength as we break free from Mitzrayim, the place of adversity, on our way to Eretz Yisrael, the land where our ancestors engaged in the divine struggle, and prevailed.
Still, as Jewish life recognizes, while on a political level, there may be a state of Israel, on a cosmic level, on a spiritual level, we have not yet reached the promised land.
Jewish tradition is clear-eyed about the nature of the reality in which we find ourselves. We understand that ever since Adam and Eve were exiled from the garden of Eden, to labor, to strive, experiencing adversity, is a persistent element of life: בְּזֵעַת אַפֶּיךָ תֹאכַל לֶחֶם, by the sweat of your brow shall you make your bread, עַד שֽׁוּבְךָ אֶל־הָאֲדָמָה, until you return to the ground. No promises that any chapter of life is going to be easy.
Not easy doesn’t mean not joyful, however. It doesn’t mean not without purpose.
Another representation of the idea of persistent levels of adversity in Jewish tradition is sh’virat hakelim — the shattering of the vessels — the midrash which teaches that, when God said vayehi or, let there be light, and there was light, God encased that foundational light of the universe in cosmic vessels. The vessels, the midrash teaches, could not contain the light, and they shattered: the universe, including the world as we know it, resulting from this combination of shard of vessel, and spark of light, shard of vessel, and spark of light, so that we have a task on earth: to redeem all the sparks of light from the shards of vessels wherever they are, which we do through our fulfillment of mitzvot, sacred actions, serving to return these sparks of light to their source in the Divine, helping to bring about redemption. This work may not be easy, but wow is it purposeful. As Viktor Frankl wrote in Man’s Search for Meaning, citing Nietzsche, “He who has a ‘why’ to live for can bear almost any ‘how.’”
So, Jewish tradition says, until we reach that messianic, redemptive end of days, which Judaism and other faith traditions imagine, using different tones and textures and palettes, until we reach that time, the world as we know it cannot be equated with the absence of adversity. That’s not the standard.
In fact, the absence of adversity doesn’t equate to reality; it equates to utopia. And, as I learned from that other sage of Jewish wisdom, the TV show Mad Men, utopia has two meanings: yes it means the good place, but it also means the place that cannot be.
In Judaism, in the world as we know it, we don’t have utopia.
We don’t have utopia; but we do have something else, and here is another part of resilience. In Judaism, we don’t have utopia, but we do have Shabbat. Shabbat, according to the Talmud, is me’en Olam Haba, which literally means “something like” Olam Haba, something like the world to come — something like that blissful state of existence in which we have transcended Egypt. We get a glimpse of it, a taste of it, an experience of it, in miniature, in the here and now.
And, wow, is it transcendent. We’re blessed with the opportunity each week to immerse ourselves in that experience of peace, of rest, of repose, of joy. Resilience comes about in part through our spiritual experience of Shabbat. While we face adversity seemingly each and every day as a part of life, we get that opportunity each week, to get a taste of what else can be. A day, as Heschel says, “in which we may partake of the blessedness in which we are what we are… In which we especially care for the seed of eternity planted in the soul.” (And, tradition says, we all — each of us — have that seed planted in our souls.) Nourish it, tradition says. Part of resilience is giving ourselves permission to exhale as we need to in this way, drinking in the flow of the timeless source of our people. A large measure of resilience is giving ourselves permission to partake of the blessedness in which we are what we are.
And the other six days? How does resilience show up there? Well, there we’ve got a job to do; we’ve got a purpose. That’s resilience, too. Just as it is a mitzvah, a sacred calling, to engage in Shabbat, it’s a mitzvah to get to work. “The seventh day is Shabbat unto the Lord thy God, but six days a week shalt thou labor and do all thy work.” I reversed the order, but otherwise, that’s exactly what it says in the Torah as many as six different times. Getting to work, rolling up our sleeves, is a mitzvah, too. We express our resilience through this combination of work and repose — of recognizing the world is broken and needs repair, and needs the commitment we bring to it each day, the many big and small ways we bring value to the world, the kind exchange with a neighbor, cleaning up our littered earth; we recognize the world is broken and needs repair; and, at the same time, as Heschel says, once a week we recognize that “the world has already been created [without us] and will survive without our help.” We hold both at once.
The reason that the verse from Pirkei Avot לֹא עָלֶיךָ הַמְלָאכָה לִגְמֹר — it is not upon you alone to complete the work, וְלֹא אַתָה בֶן חוֹרִין לִבָּטֵל מִמֶנָה but neither are you free to desist from it — the reason that verse is so popular these days is because it does this: it holds both at once. We can’t look at the brokenness of the world, the magnitude, the scale of that task, and think, “if I don’t singlehandedly fix this as fast as I can, we’re doomed.” We can’t think like that: it’s not productive; it’s not accurate; it’s not sustainable. We’re entitled — indeed we’re obligated — to rest and repose. To marvel at this created world and its Source. That is a sacred part of resilience. At the same time, being overwhelmed by the task before us is not an excuse for not doing our part, day in and day out; for laboring, for recognizing the blessings inherent in the task of responding to adversity — this labor, too, is a blessing, a mitzvah, a sacred act to fulfill.
I pray for each of us to have the strength to pour our hearts into that work; the humility to recognize that we’re not in this alone; and the wisdom to recognize where we are. Even when it’s Egypt.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi K.
P.S. Please, if you haven’t yet made an end-of-year gift to Society Hill Synagogue, use this link to provide your financial support to this community.
